I nodded, trying to swallow the emotion that rose up. I didn’t want to get too emotional about this. I’d always had a hard time with emotions. Rampant emotions were the gateway to Anxiety Land, and I was pretty fucking determined not to have a panic attack in the middle of this conversation, in front of the only two women I truly loved.
“Sure.”
Breathe.
Four in. Hold four. Four out…
“Are you sure you want me to be here?” Taylor asked quietly, and I met her eyes. “I can go. Or wait in the other room, if it’s better for you.”
“If you want to,” I said, and I took her hand. “But I want you to stay.”
She glanced at Courteney, then looked at me again and nodded. “Okay. I’m here.”
“Maybe you can start by telling me about Gabe when you guys were young,” my sister said. “What was he like as a best friend?”
I drew one more deep breath and took a moment finding the right words. “He was like a brother to me,” I said. And as soon as I started talking about it, the words just started to flow. It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. Maybe because I had the right audience. “I guess… I was like that for him, too, because he had no siblings. You weren’t even born until I was fourteen, and I really couldn’t take a baby on the back of my mountain bike or anything. So I was pretty much an only child growing up. By the time you could even play with me, so to speak, I was eighteen. I grew up with Gabe more than I grew up with you, which is too bad, in a way. I would’ve liked to have hung out with you more.”
“You were a great big brother,” Courteney said.
“I could’ve been around more.”
“You always made time for me. You always made me feel special.”
“You are special,” I said simply.
She cocked her head a little, and I could see how she softened at that. My little sister loved me. I knew she did. She looked up to me, too.
You’re doing the right thing.
Just get through it.
“Thank you,” she said. “But this isn’t about me, so I hope charming me with compliments isn’t your play to get out of talking about Gabe.”
I smiled a little. “No. We can talk about Gabe.”
“So tell me more about growing up with him.”
“We were pretty inseparable. We met when we were nine. He’d moved into the neighborhood, just a few blocks away. We met at the skateboarding park.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“He was new in the neighborhood, but already making friends. He was there with some older guys, skateboarding. And there I was, sitting on the sidelines, just watching. He said hi to me and asked me if I wanted to use his skateboard. I didn’t like doing things like that in front of so many people, so I said no.”
“You had social anxiety, even back then?”
“I think so. I thought I was just shy. That was what all the adults said about me. They said I’d grow out of it. I remember I always felt like a freak, though. I didn’t like speaking up in school or playing sports. I didn’t like people looking at me. It made me anxious. I knew I was different, that I wasn’t normal. But I didn’t know why. I didn’t make friends easily because of it. I’d be invited to a birthday party or something and I’d feel sick and have to go home, or I wouldn’t even make it there. I don’t even know why Gabe hung out with me. I guess I was lucky I was the only kid his age at the park that day. Maybe that was why he gravitated toward me. But he didn’t seem to notice that I was weird. Or it just didn’t bother him.”
“You guys had chemistry.”
“Yeah. We were friends from that day on. It was summer, and when we found out he wasn’t even registered in the same school as me that fall, we petitioned his parents to move him to my school, and they did it. They were always cool like that.”
“I’m sure. They still are.”
“Gabe loved his parents. That was one thing that always stood out to me. I mean, he really liked them. They hung out together all the time, listened to music, joked around, and it was just a totally different vibe than it was