Four Summers

I feel like shit that Alec knows Brandon better than I do, so basically the guy just pisses me off all the way around. Not a real cool thing to admit.

Mom is still hanging in there and the baby is still doing well, so I try to focus on that stuff instead.

And Charlotte.

“Hey.” We just finished a game of pool and she’s putting her cue up. “Sneak out with me tonight?” I wink at her. Dad comes back and forth a little, but he’s spending most of his time at the hospital, but pretending we have to sneak out sounds fun.

Her face lights up. Tell her you still love her. That you’re going to Columbia and that you want to be with her.

“Same time?”

“Nah. I can’t wait that long. We’ll be rebels and sneak out early tonight.”

“I didn’t know you were such a troublemaker. What time were you thinking?” She crosses her arms.

I look at my cell. “How about…right…now.”

“I’ll grab my telescope!” Charlotte runs to the stairs. I’m right behind her. We grab her telescope and I get a blanket out of the closest. Unlike at her place we have neighbors close, but the backyard is private and it’s quiet.

I lay the blanket out and even though we’re in New York, it feels the same as it has the hundreds of other times we’ve done it. Charlotte sets up the telescope and I sit and watch her as she looks through it. Of course the stars aren’t bright, but she makes them seem that way.

“So?” I ask, when she doesn’t say anything.

“They’re incredible.”

“They’re the same as they are in Virginia.”

“Not to me.” Charlotte shakes her head. “The stars here and the ones there are each special for their own reason. You grew up looking at these, while I looked at mine. Now we’ve both looked at each of them together.”

Not for the first time, I’m in awe of her. “No one I know looks at things the way you do. I’ve never known anyone like you.”

Charlotte crawls over to me and straddles my lap. “You said that to me the first summer too.”

“You remember that.” I brush her hair from her face.

“I remember everything.”

“Me, too.” And then I kiss her. She tugs on my hair and kisses me back. I pull back far enough to say, “I still love you, Star Girl.”

“I love you, too.”

“Come up stairs with me?” I ask.

“Yes,” she replies. I take her hand, and hope this time, I never have to let her go.

Alec and Charlotte are gone for the day. She’s going to Poughkeepsie, and Brandon and I decided to hang out. We went to the park and played basketball. He had a friend of his buy us some beer and now we’re back at the house, downstairs, drinking together.

“I owned you today,” I tell him. We played two games of one-on-one and I beat him at both. Brandon can take me any time where football is concerned, but we’re pretty evenly matched in other sports. Today was my day.

“Everyone gets lucky once in a while,” he teases.

“Yeah. I just get luckier more often than you.”

We both laugh. It’s the first time in a long time that I remember us hanging out all day without fighting.

After we settle down, Brandon downs the rest of his beer before saying, “So you really are in love with her, huh?” He opens a beer and downs another big swallow.

“Yeah.” I sit on the couch while Brandon leans against the pool table. “I think I’ve always loved her. She’s…I don’t know, she’s just always in my head, ya know? Everything about her.” Then those times come that make me wonder what I’m doing. There’s still something going on that I don’t know about and it sucks that she doesn’t trust me with it. The way I didn’t trust her that night?

Brandon nods. “Yeah. I know.”

But really I don’t get how he does. As far as I know, Brandon has never been serious about any girl.

He’s fidgeting with the bottle in his hand, peeling the paper. When he sets it down, I could swear his hands are shaking. An anchor suddenly weighs down my stomach. “What is it?”

“I’m just going to say this even though I’m scared shitless to do it. I’m mean, I’ve never even said the words out loud before, but you’re my brother and who can a guy talk to if he can’t talk to his brother? Mom talking about how strong the Chase boys are and everything…I want to be strong. At least by telling you.” He shakes his hands like they fell asleep and he’s trying to wake them up or something.

My heart is going crazy, trying to figure out what could have Brandon this stressed out. Fear fills me.

“Don’t freak out on me, okay, Nate? I really need you to not fucking freak out on me.”

“Dude, I’m your brother. You can tell my anything—” All sorts of thoughts are ru

“I’m gay.”

I stop breathing. Totally not what I was expecting.

The bottle in my hand slips through and falls to the floor, beer foaming out. I don’t even pick it up. “Excuse me?” It’s not that I’m homophobic or anything. Hell, what other people do is none of my business. To each their own, but hearing my brother tell me he’s gay isn’t something I ever thought I’d hear. I never suspected.

“I’m gay, man.”

“Since when?”

“What do you mean since when? Since forever. It’s not just something someone wakes up and decides.” He starts pacing the room.

“Shit.” I run a hand through my hair. “I didn’t mean to ask that. I just…you go out with girls. You talk about sleeping with them all the time. Hell, I saw you having sex with Sadie once.”

“That’s because I didn’t want to be gay!” he yells. “Who wants to deal with that? People judging you and looking down on you. I’m a fucking football player, Nate. You play sports. You know how that is. You hear the shit people say. I just…” He stops moving and looks at me. I’ve never seen my brother look so lost and scared in my life.

“I thought maybe I could fake it…or change it. Didn’t you notice I wasn’t really with anyone after her? It was wrong. I had sex with her and then I went home and ignored all her calls because she wasn’t what I wanted. I felt sick, but then even worse for feeling that way because I should want her, right? That’s what everyone says. That would make me fucking normal, right?”

Wow.

Brandon falls onto the couch, his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands. And I just sit there. I don’t know what to do or what to say.

“Tell me I’m normal, Nate?” Then, my brother starts to cry. It’s not just tears in his eyes, but full out crying. “Tell me, tell me, tell me,” he says over and over.

I’ve never seen strength like I see from my brother right now. Because even though he’s breaking down, he’s ma

Brandon looks over at me with red eyes. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

He breaks down crying again and this time and I hug him. It’s awkward at first. I don’t think I’ve hugged my own brother since I was five years old, but soon it feels more natural. He’s still crying and I’m still trying to process what he said. It’s hard to work through it, but I don’t want him to see me struggle. I just want to be here for him.

My brother is gay.

He’s been lying to us, to everyone his whole life.

But he told me now.

It feels like forever until he stops crying. I scoot back and Brandon wipes his face with his shirt.

“Shit. I can’t believe I just broke down like that. That makes me feel more like a pussy than being gay.”

He laughs and even though I don’t feel like doing it, I laugh, too. Neither of us feels it, but we need to try to do something to lighten the mood.