“No apology needed,” he insists. “I was only calling so you had a way to reach me. If you wanted to. But if you don’t want to reach me, that’s perfectly all right.” His eyes gleam. “It will leave me devastated. Despondent. Hopeless. But it’s all right.”
“Stop, please,” I beg. “I deal with enough guilt as it is. Always trying to be perfect for Mother.”
“Tryingto be perfect?” he asks. “Youareperfect.”
“Hardly.” I giggle nervously. “I have so many flaws.”
“For example?”
“I’m horribly afraid of... so many things.” Before he can ask for an example, I give him one. “Like calling you back. I wanted to. But I was too scared. I’m not brave like you.” Gazing at Jack, Brendan, and the boys, I add, “Like all of you.”
He offers me his hand. There’s red nail polish on it. “There’s more than one kind of bravery,” he says. “The way you express yourself. Your emotions. Your vulnerability. The way your heart speaks through the music you play.That’sbravery too.”
I hold his hand. Run a finger along the satiny crimson of his nails. “I almost called you so many times,” I confess. “But each time, I put the phone down.”
“Why is that?” he asks.
“I—” I think of all the easy excuses I could make. I was too busy with school, with wrestling. I wasn’t feeling well. I had a big test. “I told you. I was scared.” He seems to bring out the truth in me.
“Of?” he asks.
“Do I need to say it?” I ask.
“I find that when we speak our fears aloud, they lose a little bit of their power over us,” he says.
“Really?” I wasn’t raised to speak fears. I was guided into hiding them.
“Try it,” he says firmly.
“Well, I—” I search for the words. “I suppose my biggest fear is hurting my mother. She’s already lost her husband, and she’s sacrificed her whole life for me. Works herself to the bone all day, and then comes home and cooks and cleans for me. My brother as well, I suppose. But he’s in New Haven now. And besides, he never cared for her like I do. If she knew that I...” I drift off, unsure how to form the words.
“That you...”
“That I am...”
“The way you are...”
“It would destroy her,” I declare with finality.
“May I make an observation?” he asks. “With a disclaimer thatI know very little of your situation and will be making some rather large assumptions.”
“Sure.” I turn my gaze to him now, waiting.
He smiles before he begins. “From what little I know, your mother is strong. You say your father is gone, and still, she holds her head high, working to raise her family alone.”
“That’s right.”
“I would also wager she’s kind and deeply intelligent, because she raised you.” He bats his eyelashes quickly. They’re thick and long even without mascara, but with the makeup, they’re like wings taking flight each time he blinks. “You, Oliver, strike me as a person who was raised with love.”
“I—” I nod. “My father was... I feel sick speaking ill of him when he’s gone, but he was harsh. And selfish. But Mother... She... Yes, she always made me feel loved.Makesme feel loved. And I love her too. Too much to be a burden to her, ever.”
“It shows.” He moves a little closer to me. At the other corner of the room, the boys are gathered around Brendan, who squeezes himself into some kind of Elizabethan gown that looks worthy of Lady Macbeth. “I would hope a woman like your mother, a woman who loves her son and always did, would continue loving him no matter whohechooses to love.”
“She won’t understand it to be love,” I argue.
“Perhaps in the beginning,” he suggests. “But what I see is that your deepest fear is losing her love. The fear of losing love is... well, it’s a fear I don’t understand, I suppose.”
I look at him with real sadness in my eyes. “Your parents—”
