Page 21 of Stray for You

I’m lying on my bed looking at a music book when he struts in, taking in my room like it belongs to him. I sit up, teeth grinding together when I tell him to “get the hell out.”

“Relax,” he says with a roll of his eyes. “Our moms are busy being cute. They need some space. Where else am I gonna go?”

“Home,” I suggest.

He ignores me, flopping onto my bed beside me. His blond hair fans out around him as he lies there looking at the posters I tacked to the ceiling.

“Why there?” he says.

“What?”

“Why’d you put your stuff on the ceiling instead of the walls? Kind of hard to see it this way.”

I’m crushing the music book in my hands. I stare at the carpet between my feet instead of looking at him. “So I see it before I fall asleep.”

I hear him sit up beside me. “Seriously?”

“Why would I bother lying?”

“Damn,” he says. “That’s some kind of hardcore genius stuff.”

“The hell are you talking about?”

When I glance over, Julian is smiling at me, and it’s not as unpleasant as it should be. “Geniuses are always weird abouttheir genius thing, you know? Tesla barely slept. Einstein hated socks. Marie Curie had a radioactive night light.”

“None of that is true, is it?”

“Who knows?” Julian shrugs. “But this is your genius thing.” He waves at the posters on the ceiling. “Falling asleep thinking about your heroes.”

I don’t know what to say to all this, so instead I keep quiet and look back down at the floor. Julian shuffles a little closer, close enough for our thighs to meet.

“I’m gonna have a genius brother soon,” Julian says.

The knee-jerk “I’m not your brother” response springs to my tongue, but I never get it out. Julian’s hand lands on my thigh. He squeezes, and I look up to find his face way too close to mine. Those pretty blue eyes fill my vision, but for once they’re not laughing. They’re deadly serious.

My lips part around a gasp of surprise. Julian leans in. I have half a heartbeat before this starts becoming something way, way different than our usual bickering—

And that’s when someone knocks on my bedroom door.

I shove Julian so hard he falls off the edge of the bed with a thump. My heart jolts back to life, pounding so hard I can feel it my throat.

“What the fuck?” I snarl at him.

“Cameron?”

My mother stands in the doorway, her face ashen. Julian’s mom is only a step behind her, and she takes in the scene — my face flushed with rage, Julian on the floor, the crumpled music book — and her expression hardens.

Just like that, this happy family dinner crumbles between my fingers.

“We should get going,” Miss Brooks says.

Mom looks devastated before she can stop herself. “We haven’t had dessert.”

Miss Brooks leans over to kiss her. “Let’s save it for next time, okay?”

But there never is a next time. There never is another attempt at bringing both families together. Mom and Miss Brooks see each other less after that, growing more and more distant until the relationship finally ends. I ask Mom once if it’s because of what happened that night, if it’s because they found their sons about to make out, but Mom always denies it.

I don’t buy it. Julian crossed the line that night. Our moms were trying to find some happiness, and of course he had to go and make it about himself. Of course he had to put all of us in an untenable situation. He took my mother’s happiness away that night, squandered it in service of his own selfishness. And I’ve never forgiven him since.

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