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We barely make it five silent minutes in the rental car before Miles pulls over.
“Sorry, I just—need a moment,” he says, leading us onto a side street and cutting the engine in front of a sprawling rhododendron. It’s clear that ever since we arrived at the hospital, he’s been holding back his emotions.
I’m not sure what it’ll look like when—if—he lets the dam burst.
“I’m sorry,” I say, in part to fill the quiet but also because I was the one who pushed him to answer the phone.
“You have nothing to be sorry about,” he says to the steering wheel, shoulders as stiff as ever. If I reached over and touched him, he’d be as solid as brick.
“Is Max… an addict?”
Slowly, Miles nods, fingertip moving back and forth along a loose thread on the wheel’s stitching. I’m about to tell him that we don’t have to talk about it, not if he doesn’t want to, but then he swallows hard before opening his mouth again. “We were so close as kids. I was obsessed with him, wanted to wear the same clothes, do the same things. And he always let me tag along with his friends—I was never the annoying little brother. Max was the life of the party, the literal embodiment of ‘the more the merrier.’ There could never be too many people around, and they were all usually half in love with him.”
“I can see that,” I say.
Miles taps the side of his face, just underneath his left eye. The crescent-moon-shaped scar. “I got this when we went sledding down that big hill over there as kids. Smacked right into a tree, got scraped up by some branches. Max felt so terrible about it, he brought me breakfast in bed for three weeks afterward. He also—he didn’t have the best grades, but when he set his mind to something, he just did it. When he was thirteen, he decided he wanted to teach himself Japanese before we visited some of my mom’s family for the summer. For six months before the trip, he immersed himself in it, and when he talked to our grandparents and aunts and uncles, they all remarked on how amazing his Japanese was.
“When he started using, I was in seventh grade.” Miles lets out a long, shaky breath, as though the memory is causing him physical pain. It might very well be. “It was maybe a year before our parents caught him. I didn’t understand it at first. We’d had all the antidrug programs at school, and I couldn’t even conceive of how someone could get drugs. It just felt so outside my world.” He glances at me for the first time since he started talking, and there is so much ache behind his eyes that I can’t believe he hasn’t overflowed until now. Can’t fathom carrying this every day. “This was his third time in rehab. He’s relapsed each time, and I want this to be his last time so fucking badly, it feels—it feels like a physical piece of me. I volunteered to pick him up because my parents were working, and it happened to be the first day of school, and I just… wanted to make things easier for everyone, I guess.”
Everyone except himself.
He’s back to picking at the steering wheel.
“Miles. I’m so sorry.” Sorry feels too light in this situation. My throat is dry and there’s a painful squeeze in my chest and I wish I could give him more than sorry. I think back to that family photo on the beach. Had this already started happening then, or was it about to?
“I’ve picked up the phone at least a dozen times today, but this was the first time in maybe a month. I love him. I do. And I want more than anything for him to get better. Whenever I don’t go pick him up, I hate myself a little. I wonder who he calls, and if it’s one of his old friends, and if he falls into those old habits.”
“Don’t,” I say, gently but firmly. “You can’t be expected to do this seventy-odd times.”
Miles being Miles, he can’t help correcting me. “Seventy-nine, at this point.” Any hint of superiority vanishes as he continues, “And it breaks my heart, every time I go. Every time I don’t go. Every time my phone rings. Every time I ignore it. Every time I answer it. Every single time—another little piece of it breaks off.” His voice cracks, and when he speaks again, it’s in a whisper. “I’m surprised there’s any of it left.”
Jesus. I want to wrap this boy in cellophane and then wrap that in a blanket so he never has to get his heart broken ever again.
It breaks my heart. Four words I never imagined Miles Kasher-Okamoto saying. It’s wild, really, that you can spend a single day weeks with someone and still barely know them.
“There is,” I say, turning in my seat so I can fully face him. I need him to know that it matters to me, that he’s telling me this. That I’ll keep it safe. “If there weren’t, you wouldn’t be here. Or you would have kicked me to the curb a long time ago.”
Miles allows a smile at that, one of his slight ones, but still, it has to be a good sign. “No,” he says. “I—I’m glad you’re here. Sometimes I think… if I never leave the loop, then I never have to know if he relapses. He’ll always be getting better.”
“I’m not going to pretend to know what this feels like, because I don’t,” I say. “But I want you to know I am really, truly sorry. And if it’s something you want to talk more about, or less about, or anything at all… I can listen.”
“Thank you.” A pause, and I think he’ll tell me he’s done talking. That we should leave. But instead he says, “I want to be normal with him. I don’t want to be weird and stiff or act like he’s something delicate. It maybe wasn’t my best showing, when we were with him today. I didn’t want you to see me that way.” He averts his eyes when he says this, the bashfulness in his voice sounding somehow both foreign and familiar.
“I’m not judging you,” I say softly.
His hand is right there. Just right there on the console between us, and I can’t help myself. Maybe it’s all the years of wishing someone would comfort me, but whatever it is, it compels me to reach out and stroke his fingers.
There’s a slight tilt of his head as he glances down at our hands, as though confirming what’s happening is actually happening: my hand cupped around his, thumb dragging up and down his index finger.
This isn’t like when we held hands on the flight to Disneyland, or when we jumped into the ball pit. This is something different, something new and delicate and terrifying.
“You put so much pressure on yourself,” I say as I run my fingers along his, from the bumps of his knuckles to the joints and then back. My hand should know his at this point, but the touch sends a jolt down my spine nonetheless. “That doesn’t come from your parents, does it?”
Slowly, slowly, he turns his hand, fingers clumsy as they slide against mine.
“If it does, they don’t talk about it.” He’s not looking at our hands anymore, probably because he’s barely thinking about what they’re doing. “But after everything with Max… I didn’t want them to have to worry. I know not everyone starts college sure of what they’ll major in, but I’ve always loved physics. My mom didn’t push me to study it—our parents wanted us happy and healthy, more than anything—but I knew she loved that I loved it. So I didn’t do anything in high school that might jeopardize my future. I didn’t spend much time with friends and I didn’t go to parties. I didn’t join any clubs, except for the one month I tried out film club. I took the SAT four times, and that last one was just for fun. My parents didn’t even give me a curfew—because I never needed one. I just… studied. A lot. I always wanted to go to UW—because it would make my parents happy, and I wouldn’t be too far from Max. And when I got in, it felt like the biggest sigh of relief.”
Now my heart is the one that’s breaking. The version of Miles from only months ago, who shut himself inside and shut himself off—he was aching in ways I couldn’t have imagined.
