Page 95 of Finance Bros

It’s one thing to tell someone my mother had an affair. It’s another to disclose who she had an affair with and what any of that had to do with me.

It’s all so fucked up. “Do you think I’m normal?” I ask.

“I’ve never liked the word normal,” she says.

“Do you think I’m fucked up?”

“I think you’re human. Perfectly imperfect.”

“What if I told you I’m in love with my stepbrother?”

“I’d remind you that you no longer have a stepbrother.”

“Is that really a label that goes away, though? Former stepbrother, ex stepbrother, are you catching the brother part?”

“I remember Ryan, yes. You haven’t talked about him in a while.”

“I thought he was gone,” I say. “But he’s in my internship.”

“Why haven’t you mentioned that?”

“I was processing it.” And we’ve mostly been talking about the break with Kaylin. Ryan hasn’t come up, and I guess that was on purpose. But now that the “room” is lit up like a fucking carnival, it’s harder to avoid.

“Love feels like quite the leap,” she says.

“It’s not,” I say, sighing again. “It’s more like a laying down of arms.”

“Hm. I know sex isn’t your favorite topic?—”

“It’s fine,” I say, in full surrender mode. I feel like shit, and if this makes it worse, who cares? On the off chance it might help, I’ll talk about Ryanandsex. “It’s just complicated, and I don’t expect anybody to understand it, except I thought maybe he would, but he’s not talking to me right now, which is fair since I made his life hell.”

“I don’t recall you being particularly happy at that time either.”

More tears fall remembering how miserable I was in high school. The soul shriveling loneliness. How being with Ryan was unthinkable, but being without him was just—fuckingdevastating. I abused alcohol and Adderall. I had sex with Kaylin literally any chance I got just to be held and stop thinking. I tried out for the goddamn football team for the body contact for fuck’s sake while also hoping to find a friend I could be close to the way I’d been with Ryan, but maybe not mix so much love in with it.

Back then, I refused to admit I missed him even to myself. And I didn’t just miss him as my friend and someone I could say anything to, I missedeverything. The physical closeness. Thesafety and containment. The unconditional acceptance no matter how rotten I was.

Something about losing a parent when you’re that young makes most people weird around you, especially kids. Everyone I told, with the notable exception of Ryan peeled themselves away from me like it wastheirfucking mom who died. I felt like an infection.

Andrea helped me reconcile that piece. I understand grief better now. She was okay with my decision to stop telling people my mom died. She was also okay when I started lying and claiming she was still alive, living out of state.

Andrea said as long as I was honest with her and my father, I was allowed to cope however I needed to. But part of my teenage rebellion involved not telling her about what happened with Ryan. At the time, it was because it embarrassed me. Now I’m mostly embarrassed that I was embarrassed. The thought of trying to explain it all so long after the fact is exhausting when all I can think about is whether he’s going to start turning everyone against me the way I did to him.

But in answer to her question—about how fucking miserable I was in high school, I say, “I didn’t understand what I was feeling. I didn’t get what I liked about him or what I wanted.”

“But you do now?”

“Yes.”

“In retrospect as well?”

“Yeah.”

“Which I’m assuming was a more physical relationship?”

“That’s what I’m assuming, too,” I say, so frustrated with my brain’s inability to wrap its arms around the totality of who I am. “I’m still really confused about a lot of it.”

“Well, why do you think that is?”

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