I shake my head. “Definitely not. Boston is home. Pittsburgh was the life I had with Allie, and even though I miss living close to my friends, that’s not my place anymore. New York was my in-between. But this? Everything about this feels exactly right except for the fact that Jo isn’t here.”
“Does she not want to be here?”
“I never asked her to come with me,” I mumble, looking into my beer as if it holds all the secrets of the universe. Or at least my current predicament.
I can feel my dad staring at the side of my face, but I keep my gaze averted. “You love her, don’t you?”
“So fucking much. It’s like I can’t do anything but love her.”
“Sorry for asking the obvious question, then, but why are you sitting on my front porch while Jo is in Pittsburgh?”
I set my beer down on the end table by the swing and blow out a breath, scrubbing my hands over my face. “I couldn’t say the words, Dad. They were right there, but I couldn’t make myself tell her. It wasn’t fair to ask her to uproot her entire life to move to my hometown hundreds of miles away from everyone she loves when I couldn’t tell her the whole truth of how I feel about her.”
“Why couldn’t you?”
“I don’t know,” I mumble, propping my elbows on my knees and staring out at the darkened street where I learned how to ride a bike and played basketball with my brothers and kissed a girl for the first time the summer I was fifteen. This is the place that holds all my memories, and I want to make more. I just need the person I want to make them with.
My dad lays a hand on my shoulder. “Want to give that answer another try?”
I sit up, quirking an eyebrow at him. “You and Mom could try and know a little less of everything, you know.”
My dad chuckles. “No can do, Jord. It’s our lot in life that we know all there is to know about all four of you boys. So, why couldn’t you tell Jo you love her?”
I take a slow, deep breath. “Because I was scared. Am scared,” I amend.
My dad nods like this is the exact answer he was expecting. “Scared of what?”
I shrug. “Of feeling this way again and losing it. When Allie died, I thought the romantic part of my life was over. I thought she was my one great love, my soulmate, and her dying didn’t make that any less true. I figured if I ever found someone one day, I would settle for something comfortable. Maybe a deep like or a mild love. For sure, whatever it was would be second best to what I had already experienced. But then I met Jo.”
My dad gives me a wry smile. “I’m assuming from the look on your face when you say her name, you’re not exactly settling for a deep like or a mild love.”
Now it’s my turn to chuckle. “Fuck no. She’s…Jesus, she’s everything. She blew into my life and shined her light everywhere, and it’s like I was living in the dark until her. She makes me smile and laugh, and she makes me think, and she is more fun than anyone I have ever known in my life. She understands me, Dad. It’s like she got what I’ve been through right from the start and sees me exactly as I am now. Not as the person I used to be before, or the broken grieving guy I was for two years, but just…me. I didn’t realize how badly I needed to be seen. The way I love her is enormous and wild and perfect, and it turned my life upside down. She makes me happy, Dad. So, so happy. And I think I make her happy too.”
“So, what’s the problem, Jord?”
I shift uncomfortably and clear my throat. “What if I lose her?” I say quietly. “I know what that’s like, and I can’t go through it again. I wouldn’t survive it. So many people don’t even get one great love in their life, and now I’ve had two. Who gets that lucky? Thinking about something happening to her is terrifying. But thinking about not being with her is terrifying too. I can’t live without her.”
My dad puts an arm around me, squeezing my shoulder in comfort. “So don’t live without her. As much as I hate it, for the rest of your life, you’re always going to remember what loss feels like, in the most devastating way imaginable, and of course, that makes you cautious. But Jordan, Jo is still here. I can’t predict the future. I can’t promise you that nothing will ever happen to her, or to you, or to any of us. But right now, your second great love is alive and well and currently gushing with your mom over their mutual love of romance novels. I saw the way Jo looked at you when you were here together over the summer. That girl loves you in the same big, huge way you love her. She’s yours to lose, Jord. So what are you going to do about it?”
I sit silently, a little stunned, my dad’s words spinning around in my brain.
She’s yours to lose.
Fuck. I would die before I would lose her.
But if I did lose her one day, I would want to know that we loved as hard as we could while we had the chance.
So what the fuck am I waiting for?
“Where’s my beer?”
Noah’s voice breaks me out of my epiphany moment, and I look up to see all three of my brothers making their way down the front walk.
“To what do I owe the honor of all four of my sons in the same place at the same time?” my dad asks, getting up to hug all three of them.
“We were hungry.” Cooper plops himself down on the swing next to me and grabs my abandoned beer, taking a long sip. “We figured if Jordan gets to eat dinner here every night, we should too. And El had that look he gets when he’s been sitting in front of his computer for too long. The one that makes him look like he’s about to become one with the machine. Freaks me the fuck out, so I had to tear him away.”
“Did not,” Elliot mutters as he slaps me on the back and drops a big box into my lap.
