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I began to exit the mud room but paused again as the soft voice said, “Brett, you didn’t tell your parents we were coming? Are you sure it’s okay that I’m here?”

“Dude, trust me, she loves when I bring friends home. But watch out. She always says I don’t share enough about college. She will start grilling you. Besides, did you not just see her? She’s bursting to have her baby boy home early for the holiday. And we live at the beach; we’ve got family and friends coming to visit all the time. Our house is Grand Central Station all summer long, so Mom’s used to company! She loves it. Trust me, it’s not a big deal. I’ve got two beds in my room, so we can share. And I know you want to spend as little time at home as possible. So you stay here for a week before the holiday, and we get a week, or maybe even two, after graduation for our road trip. Trust me, it’s really fine that you’re here.”

“If you say so.” Brett’s friend didn’t sound so sure.

“Plus,” my brother continued his campaign, “this way, hopefully, we’ll have some graduation money when we do go down to New Orleans. We can really do it up right.” He ended on, “Party!”—sounding very much like the stereotypical frat brother he was.

His friend laughed and agreed. “Point.”

“Excellent point.”

My brother lowered his voice. “And we’ll have my dad’s employee discount for a hotel down there. What’s a few more weeks before I start working for him? Before we start just like, what, working for the rest of our lives? This is perfect. You get to see Breakwater Beach now, and we have an excuse not to come right home after graduation. And who knows, maybe you’ll …”

“Maybe I’ll figure out exactly what I’m going to do with the rest of my life? We’re six months from graduation; it feels like I should have done that by now. At least you have a job lined up at the hotel. I’m probably going to end up back in Wisconsin, doing who knows what, so yeah, what’s two more week of college fun before I go back to the rest of my life?”

Brett’s friend tried to end that speech on a positive note, but it didn’t sound very positive to me.

“Dude, forget about all that. I was going to say that you need to find a hot guy to party with in New Orleans!”

The friend—Turner, Brett had called him when they were talking to my mom—scoffed at that. “Dude!” he sounded embarrassed. I could almost picture the blush on his face even though I’d never met a friend of Brett’s named Turner and had no idea what he looked like.

“Dude!” my brother repeated, seemingly ignoring the embarrassment I could hear so clearly from my hiding place.

Turner laughed awkwardly as if proving my point.

“Whatever. Sure. A hot guy for me with a hot sister for you.”

“Exactly.”

My brother and his friend, his gay friend, were laughing as they clomped up the stairs.

I burst out of the mud room in time to witness two sets of jean-clad legs ascending the stairs, where they would end up on a landing that overlooked the first floor. I had raced right past Mom, who was at the sink in our kitchen—our open-galley kitchen, as Mom always called it—for that glimpse of them running up the stairs. I then moved to the living room to catch them on the landing. The landing railing had a wreath hanging off it, which blocked some of my view as I stared at the two guys arriving on the second floor.

From behind me, Mom cleared her throat. I was startled to find her standing right next to me, following my gaze to the second level, or more accurately, to the wreath that blocked any view of my brother’s friend.

“Oh yeah, surprise!” Mom pulled my attention from the landing with her jazz hands and her excited smile. “Brett’s home. And he brought his friend Turner.” I glanced at her and nodded dumbly before staring up at the landing again.

“How’d it go?” Mom asked.

Brett often talked about his group of friends from school. He’d had a few visit over the summers, but I hadn’t met anyone named Turner and didn’t recall Brett ever mentioning him, not even when he’d talked about taking the trip to New Orleans.

I would have remembered if he’d mentioned that one of his friends was gay. Mostly, we heard about fraternity shenanigans and had visits from Brett’s “brothers.” They weren’t bad guys, they were polite house guests and all, but they all definitely seemed like … well, like fraternity brothers to me. There was always lots of talk about hot women, beer drinking, and party antics when my brother’s friends visited.

It made me very curious about the quiet guy Brett had dragged to the beach in the dead of winter instead of for a week of fun in New Orleans.

Brett was so much older than me that we never really talked much. Still, it would have been nice to know he was cool with having a gay friend. My big brother, the fraternity president, was so clearly straight, and he and his high school friends had made enough stupid jokes back when I was little that I had worried a lot about what he really thought of gay people, despite the fact that my family had always assured me they were fine with me being gay, and that they “had my back.” Well, it was mostly Mom who said that, and it was pretty much exclusively Mom who I talked to about that kind of stuff.

I’d come out to both my parents at the same time, about two years ago.

The day I’d come out, Mom did most of the talking, way more than me and approximately one hundred percent more than my father. All my dad did was look down at his shoes. He had only smiled at me, awkwardly, when my mother prompted him with an, “Isn’t that right, dear?” after the heretofore-mentioned “we’ve got your back.”

When Mom had ended the conversation that day by asking if I wanted to tell my brother personally, or if I wanted her to handle it, I’d taken the easy route, being thirteen years old, and asked her to let Brett know.

I’d never had the courage to talk to my fraternity-loving brother about it since I came out. So when he arrived home with a queer friend that winter break, I still had no idea what my brother thought about me being gay and out of the closet in our little, everyone-knows-everything-about-everyone-else town.

Maybe not talking to Brett hadn’t been the easy route after all. Staring at that landing, I thought, and hoped, that maybe Brett was okay with it, okay with me.

From above I heard Brett, who was still blocking my view of his mystery friend.