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Adam nods. “Yeah, I know. I want that for you too. Eva and I… well, there’s no point thinking about what might’ve been.”
I walk into the kitchen, hugging my brother again.
The sun shines through the window, though there’s ice in the air, making the garden shimmer.
Adam’s cell phone rings.
“Hey, bro,” he says, and I know immediately that he’s talking to Bryson.
I’ve heard that so many times, theHey, bro. Since I was a kid, I hungered for any scrap of Bryson, the most fleeting sight, firewood for the flickering, the raging, the crackling in my mind.
“Yeah, sounds good. I’ve got the room ready.”
There’s a pause, and I repeat Adam’s words over and over. He’s got the room ready. Does that mean Bryson is staying here?
It’s an effort to keep myself somewhat composed, to stifle all the butterflies in my belly. My thigh burns as though Bryson has his hand pushed against it again, and suddenly, I wish I was somewhere else, anywhere else, so I could sink into the pleasurable fantasies. So I could press down on my core and close my eyes tight and see him, feel him, my man, in thoughts as I never will in reality.
Bryson loves me, I wrote once, hundreds of times in a notebook, trying to make it true.
Adam hangs up.
“Is Bryson staying here?” I ask, probably way too eagerly.
I can’tnotask.
“Yeah. I asked him to.”
“I thought he’d be going back to the West Coast soon.”
“He’s helping with my business.”
I sit at the table, hoping it doesn’t look like I collapsed from exhaustion into the chair, as though the thought of Bryson is taking all my energy for anything else.
“Is something wrong?” Adam asks.
“No,” I say quickly. “Well…”
Think, think.
“I guess it would be good to know exactly what happened between you two. What the argument was about.”
Adam joins me at the table, resting his forearms, and looking at me with a tight mouth. “It’s difficult to talk about that. Anyway, I want to put it behind me. Truthfully, I wish I hadn’t sent him away so quickly. I wish I’d thought it through. I knew he’d go if I asked him, but I felt I had no choice.”
“Was it about Eva?” I ask, remembering Tiffany’s theory.
That’s a mistake.
Adam bolts to his feet, his chair making ascreechingnoise on the hardwood floor. His chest rises and falls quickly, his eyes bulging with rage.
“What do you know about Eva and Bryson?” he snaps.
“N-nothing,” I say. “Adam. I’m sorry.”
He tilts his head at my tone, as though realizing how wild he’s become, and then grips the back of the chair. “No. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have snapped.”
I say nothing, waiting for him to go on.
“I can’t talk about Eva and Bryson. Don’t ask me about that again.”
