Page 56 of Flagrant Foul
I feel a familiar flash of rage at his words, not because he said them, and not because I know it’s true, but because Sev seems under the impression that Nate’s preference is more important than mine. “He’s my brother, not my keeper, Sev. He doesn’t get to decide my future, and besides, he loves me. He wants me to be happy.”
“He does love you. He loves you like crazy.” He’s quiet for a while, and the air in the room grows heavy with tension. I breathe through my nose to calm myself as Iwait for him to continue. “That’s why he doesn’t want me to be with you.”
“That’s ridiculous! He loves me?That’swhy we can’t be together? Do you know how ridiculous that sounds? It doesn’t even make sense. Can you hear yourself right now?” I take hold of his arm and squeeze firmly. “We could be good together, Sev. We could be life-changing—the real deal, the rest of our lives—and you’re sitting here spouting crap about Nate and his precious little feelings.”
Sev’s face transforms into a series of hard lines. Hard lines only. No emotion. Only rigidity and a dim, distant expression that looks a lot like acceptance.
“I don’t know what to tell you, Teddy,” he says eventually, voice far away and devoid of life. “It is what it is.”
Fury and pain rise with such force that I couldn’t hold them in even if I wanted to. “No, it fucking isn’t what it is! I’m not having my entire fucking life ruined on the whim of my brother. That cannot be it. I won’t fucking allow it to be it. Why do you care so much what he thinks?”
Sev has gone quiet and still, leaving him no more than a mute statue of himself, so of course, he doesn’t answer. I’m angry and upset, but I know this is his way of dealing with things that feel big to him.
I steady myself before asking the question that, for me, has festered under the surface of every interaction we’ve had over the past five or six years. “Are you and Nate a thing? Have you ever been a thing? Is that what it is?”
It’s my worst nightmare. The product of my worst fears and greatest dread. The bone-chilling answer my sleep-addled brain spits out at me on nights when I’ve lain awake for hours, wracking my brain for ways to explain why I’m almost positive Sev feels the same way about me as I feel about him, and yet he always, always pushes me away.
He looks at me as if I’ve taken leave of my senses. “No!”
“Do you want to be with him?”
“No!”
“Does he want to be with you? Is he in love with you?” I’m not sure which option is worse: Nate wanting Sev or Sev wanting Nate. I go back and forth on it whenever I let myself think about it. Right now, the thought of Nate wanting Sev makes me feel more unhinged than the alternative. “Because if he is, fuck him,you’re mine.”
“Teddy,” Sev says sharply, “Nathan is straight. He’s not into guys, and I’m not into him. It’s not about that.”
“Then what’s it about?” My voice cracks as years of doubt and uncertainty crash into me. I’ve lived with oursituation for so fucking long. I think about it all the time, despite trying not to. It kills me and breaks me because no matter what happens on the surface, I know there’s more to it. “Please tell me. Just tell me. Whatever it is, just tell me. I can’t live with not knowing anymore.”
Sev plants his elbow on the arm of the couch and looks away. My heart beats and sinks and flutters with hope, and then sinks again. It does everything a heart can do in a few seconds. A few seconds that determine whether I’m going to know peace in my future or not.
Eventually, he speaks. “You know how, when people say ‘found family,’ you always imagine a group.”
I’m not sure I follow, but I nod all the same.
“A lil’ motley crew of people you found on your journey, you know? A queer couple, maybe. Someone who’s nonbinary or ace or trans or something completely different from you, but they feel like family?”
“Yeah.” I get it. I have friends with found families, and many of them fit Sev’s description.
“And maybe a random straight person thrown into the mix,” he continues. “Someone you worked with years back, a colleague or something, who has a husband, two kids, and a cat, and a totally heteronormative life, but she’s ally as fuck?”
“Yeah,” I say again.
“Well, my found family is nothing like that.” He smiles weakly and flicks his gaze to my face, pausing at my lips and dropping it before meeting my eyes. “It isn’t a group of people. It’s not a collection of souls I found as I bumbled through life. It’s one person.”
He pushes the blanket off his legs and onto the floor, turning and leaning against the arm of the couch to get a little more space from me. He opens and closes his mouth as though he’s deliberating whether to go on.
“Did Nate ever tell you about my dad?” he asks when the decision is made.
I think back. “No, not really. Just that he’s an asshole.”
He snorts humorlessly and bobs his head. “Yeah, he’s an asshole for sure. He was always an asshole. For the first seven or eight years of my life, he was an asshole who drank too much now and again. Then he became an asshole who drank all the time. Not long after that, he became a violent, abusive asshole.”
My insides clench violently. Painfully. I understand the gravity of what he’s saying, and more than that, I feel it. I feel his pain in every joint in my body.
Guilt that I had no idea how bad his home life was makes my bones feel brittle and my teeth ice cold.
“My mom did her best for a really long time, but a couple of years before I met Nate, she just…gave up, Iguess, and started drinking too. I, uh…it was…not a good feeling. Nothing was ever predictable in my house again. There were days when everything was a party and everyone was happy, and days when it was a warzone and my mom and I were wounded.” My chest aches from how much I hate what he’s saying. “There were times when it was both of those things in the same day.”
