Page 67 of Finance Bros

“Don’t blow me off, asshole. You were acting fine when you left last night. What happened? Gay panic?”

He barks a laugh.

“Laugh it up, but it’s fucking rude as shit to act how you acted last night with me and then treat me like I don’t exist today.”

He whirls to face me. “Is it? Is it kinda like trusting someone to be there for you a certain way and then finding out they had something else in mind all along?”

My head rears back. “No. Actually, it’s not. It’s more like being used and tossed aside because you got bored or changed your mind again. It’s like feeling disposable.”

His jaw sets, and a muscle in his cheek twitches. “Sorry,” he somehow manages to force from his mouth.

I don’t like this feeling. The constant uncertainty. The desperate wish for this to be a simple case of boy loves boy who loves him back, but that was never us, and it won’t ever be. It hurts, and I fucking hate it. Why I keep coming back for more is a mystery, except maybe it’s like getting tattooed. You get addicted to the burn. The permanent marks that prove who you are to yourself and the world.

Is it a badge of honor? A sign of strength? Or a cry for help?

“Don’t worry about it,” I mumble. “Let’s just forget about it and move on, minus the hostile ten years in between. Can we do that?” I honestly don’t know if I can, but if he’s willing to try, I am, too.

He frowns, an odd stillness coming over him. “Can I tell you what happened when I left last night? Before you move on?”

“I was there. I already know what happened.”

“No, I mean after I left.”

I narrow my eyes. “Okay.”

He sits down on the edge of his bed, putting Stephanie on the mattress next to him. She snuggles into this side, pressing against his hip and promptly falling asleep. He glances at me, sees I’m not moving from the spot I’ve staked out in the doorway, and looks down. “I was actually pretty happy when I left. I mean, I wasn’t ready to leave, but I could tell you needed your space.”

I didn’t need space. I was afraid to ask him to stay. Afraid of the way he’d look at me when the sun came up. Or whether he’d still want to look at me at all. Big difference.

“I wanted to talk about it more, you know? Tell somebody you and I were… Anyway, the first person I thought about telling was my dad. And then I remembered you and I were brothers for what? Twelve years?”

“Thirteen,” I whisper.

“Yeah, right. Thirteen. And I used to ask him all these crazy questions about sex—like no filter, you know?”

I don’t say anything, but it’s true that he lacks a filter—or at least, he used to.

“And I didn’t want him thinking you and I were like—inappropriate way too young, and I figured he might think that, because I think we kinda were. You know?”

“No we weren’t,” I say, surprised he thinks so.

He wipes at his nose and sniffs before bracing both hands on the mattress and tilting forward slightly. “I think I was. Not on the outside, but like—in my head.”

Malcolm looks and sounds totally unlike himself—incredibly small and uncertain. Troubled, even. I tread lightly. He was in therapy a lot as a kid, dealing with his mom’s death. I wouldn’tbe surprised if he still sees someone. I know losing her was hard for him, and he was no fan of talking about it. I know his dad took good care of him, and my mom loved him a lot, but he had a lot of nightmares and was prone to losing his temper over small things. The way he turned on me was an extreme example, but neither of our parents would call him an easy kid.

“Can I just say something happened a few times before my mom died that made me a little more aware of sex than I probably should have been?” he says softly.

I swallow hard. “Yeah.”

“Okay. I’ll leave it there, then.”

“Okay,” I say, barely above a whisper.

“Thanks. Anyway, it wasn’t gay panic or whatever—it was holy shit, he’s my stepbrother, and I decided a long time ago it was wrong. Like really, really wrong to look at you like that. But you don’t look the same, and you’re basically a stranger now.” He laughs softly. “Which is weak, but that’s all I’ve got. Momentary lapse of judgement or whatever.”

“So last night was wrong,” I say, just to clarify.

He meets my eyes and asks, “Don’t you think?”

---