Page 20 of Finance Bros

“Then come with ideas on Monday. I’m going back to bed.” I’m also frozen in place. “Good night,” I tack on, rushing to hang up.

“Good—”

His voice cuts off. I drop my phone onto the mattress and let my head fall back on my pillow. My heart—goddamn. It feels like I just ran nineteen miles.

Monday is startingoff as one of those mornings where my hands won’t work right. It’s not because I have some hand disorder—I just keep dropping things. My hair gel. My toothbrush. The coffee pod. And it’s not like they’re shaking—more like they won’t close all the way—or they forget what they’re trying to do the second they touch the thing I’m trying to hold. One thing after another slips from my grasp.

“Up All Night” by Slaughter is stuck in my head. It’s got the most repetitive chorus next to “Shout” by Tears for Fears. I don’t know which would be worse right now, but “up all night, sleep all day” on repeat is not cool, especially when sleeping all day isn’t an option I’ve got this morning. What’s more annoying is I wasn’t up all night. I slept. Some.

Deacon is watching me, silently noting my chaotic state while he pulses through some stationary lunges in the livingroom. I still want to text my mom to ask her what the fuck she was thinking giving Malcolm my phone number, but my damn hands haven’t been functioning properly since I hung up with him Friday night.

There’s this other thought I’m having—that I’ve been having since I woke up—that I dreamed it. Whenever I fell back asleep, it was deep and hard and the kind of disorienting that makes me doubt my memory. It’s that bizarre uncertainty making me bumble through my morning routine.

It’s very difficult to believe he called me. It’s harder to believe he asked me to partner up with him for the challenge. Because that wouldneverhappen. And the whole forgiveness spiel? I had to have made that up in my imagination.

And yet…Malcolm’s waiting for me at the elevator bank when Jia and I arrive at work. I spot him the second I come through the glass doors, and he keeps his eyes on me while other elevators open and close without him getting on. My mouth is bone dry, and my heart is a jackhammer in my chest.

I hate how perfect he looks. Tall and broad and golden like a god. He’s always been larger than life. A sun I once orbited, rarely feeling worthy of his light. Deserving of being put into his shadow when he turned on me.

His ruthless cruelty was also perfect in its precision. Like the careful cuts of a master chef meant to carve me down to size. Kaylin was only his first slice. She was the closest I ever got to having an official girlfriend. We shared a science class, studied together, ate lunch with each other for more than a month before I got the flu that changed the course of my life.

What fucking doctor prescribes narcotic cough syrup to a teenager with the flu? And my mom—a nurse—just left it in my room. I loved the stuff. It made me feel amazing. Euphoric and hazy and a shit ton better than the virus fucking me over at thetime. I nevereverwould have said what I said to Malcolm if it weren’t for that medicine.

Like any teenage boy, I was all over the place emotionally, but I wasn’t self-destructive. I’d gone a whole year without telling Mal how I felt, and I would have gone the rest of my fucking life not saying it, but he’d been snuggled up next to me watching our favorite movie, and for a minute it felt so good and perfect, I couldn’t conceive of the possibility that those feelings were anything but mutual, so I said it.“You know I’m like completely in love with you.”

And no—no hehadn’tknown that. And he was neversupposedto know that. And I was perfectly fine with him being foreverunawareof that.

It’s just that we’d had a few moments—before the cough syrup—where I felt like he might feel the same way. For example—he never pulled away from a hug first. Believe it or not, I used to be a hugger because ofhim. He was the one who started the whole hugging thing in the first place.

One time in particular—the time that really got my hopes up—was a hug goodnight. Our parents had been fighting about money—a credit card bill. They didn’t often fight in those years, but since Malcolm and I were best friends, when they did fight, it sucked a little bit extra to think they might get a divorce. We’d been in my room, lying silently side by side on my bed listening to yelling we weren’t bothering to drown out with the TV or music.

Our shoulders were touching, and I remember thinking that if he and his dad moved out, I’d have to work to keep him in my life. I could easily see us drifting apart in high school. We were already on separate tracks—him planning to try out for all the sports and me doing the nerdy mathlete thing. Chess club and shit like that. We didn’t have much in common even then other than both having a dead parent, but what tied ustogether most was home where we were more or less inseparable.

If we lost that, I would have to make an effort to stay his friend. And it was an effort I wasn’t sure he’d make in return because Malcolm didn’t really worry about stuff like that. It was easy for him to fit in, while I had a harder time with it.

That night, because I couldn’t verbalize any of that—my fears or my concerns if things with our parents didn’t work out—I walked him to my door once the yelling stopped. He’d had his hand on my back, and he was rubbing a reassuring circle between my shoulder blades. He hugged me, and I hugged him back.

I held on a long time. Both of us were breathing heavy, relieved that the fight downstairs had dropped in intensity, but still worried that it might be the beginning of the end. His hand moved from my back into my hair as he held me against him. It felt so good, I’d done the same to him, and he didn’t pull away.

It was the closest I’d ever been held. It aroused me in a way holding him never had before. I considered pulling away but didn’t. On a shared breath, we’d looked each other in the eyes, and whatever I saw lingering in his gaze made me wonder—maybe—maybehe felt it too? This thing I’ve never felt for anyone else? Love that hits a little harder, weighs a little heavier, invades me a little deeper than any other love in my life.

It was the kind of moment I’ve shared with women since—the moment before the first kiss. I remember wanting it and being terrified of it at the same time. He was my stepbrother. He was my best friend. He was a guy. And I didn’t like guys—or I never had before him. Never thought of themthat way. But I’d been thinking of Malthat waysince he turned thirteen and started wearing cologne. So, my thoughts slipped through the gears pretty quickly as we stared at each other before fisting each other’s hair and embracing again.

Obviously I read too much into it. I saw what I wanted to see, and didn’t recognize it for what it was. He just needed a hug, and he took it. My mind ran away with it, and in the days before I got sick, my mind ran away with it constantly. I started trying to put us into situations where he’d hug me like that again. I approached it like a science experiment to see if close proximity yielded the same results as the first time. Whether if more heat was applied, the reaction would intensify, or if the conditions were too different to replicate the outcome.

That day—the day I’m now forgiven/not forgiven for—he’d had his head on my shoulder, a leg draped over mine, and his hand on my rattling chest. I don’t know why we were wrapped up like that other than that was how we watched TV sometimes. I’ll probably never know why he was that close on that particular day since I was a flu factory at the time.

But anyway, I said it. I told him what I’d been tossing around in my head ever since I saw him flirting with a girl at the pool the previous summer and got irrationally jealous. At first I thought I was jealous because the girl was cute, and I’d never be able to flirt with someone the way he did so effortlessly. But it wasn’t the girl. Or it was—because she was the one I was jealous of.

And of course, at first I thought it was because if he got a girlfriend, he wouldn’t have time to be friends with me. But then I started noticinghim. And more specifically my reactions to noticing him. The feelings were hard to swallow at first. But as I tested them, poked and prodded at them, I started having fantasies. Daydreams at first—experimental thought exercises, and then soon enough, I was masturbating to thoughts of my own damn stepbrother—experimentally, and then when I realized how fast I got off when he entered the scene in my head, he became the unmoving center of my universe.

By the time I told him I was in love with him, I meant it withmy whole chest. I just never would have said it if it hadn’t been for the drugs.

I completely understand that it was a dick move. I overdid it with the cough syrup. My lack of control—my irresponsibility—was on me—my fault. I didn’t blame him for pulling away. For wanting nothing to do with me. The real issue—other than being rejected—was how far he took it—the lengths he went to in order to prove he wanted no fucking part of me. It most definitely changed me for the worse.

For the record, I’ve never looked at another man that way. I’d like to say lesson learned, but the problem I had then is the same problem I have now. I may hate him, but I’m also still sort of in love with him. He’s a foundational part of me. Loving Malcolm is part of who I am.

I don’t think it means I can’t love anyone else. I don’t think love is finite. But I don’t think I’ll ever love anyone else in the all-consuming way I once loved him. It doesn’t matter how he treats me—how many years go by without seeing him. Nothing changes the fact that some part of me is still deeply in love with the stepbrother I used to have.

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