could make this ache in my heart vanish. Not even my Big Man.
“I guess it was an awfully emotional trick.”
“A trick?” he asked.
“Yeah. Because now you have to share yours with me.”
“Fair is fair,” he said.
I could still tell he wanted to be there more for me than he could.
“Thank you,” I told him.
“What for? I’m not able to do anything for you.”
“It does more just telling someone than keeping that all to myself.”
“I’m glad I could be the one you trusted with it.”
Trust. Interesting word. I didn’t trust many people, but I trusted him. Maybe I was foolish to trust him, but I did.
“Kyle, I—”
A clicking sound came.
Fuck.
Our time together had gone too fast.
As Kendra popped in, I faced away and grabbed some books. I didn’t want her to see me looking like a mess.
“Good news. The sitter could get Finn, so I think we’ll be able to knock out a lot of this in no time.”
Although, I didn’t want to move too fast, since I knew once this was gone, one of the few opportunities I had to see James would vanish with it.
24
James
As I thumbed through an old photo album of me and my family, my eyes fixed on a picture of my little brother and his classic broad smile and bright eyes. The happiest kid in the world, at eight, holding up a catfish, eagerly displaying it for the camera, with me, rather oblivious that a picture was being taken, at his side.
I swept my thumb across the image of his face. Those full cheeks, speckled with freckles.
I needed the picture to really remember what his face looked like back then.
I was only ten at the time, so it made sense that the distant memory would feel elusive, but even more than that, they had nearly become inaccessible, as though my mind sought to tuck these into the darkest corners of my memory to protect me from the pain.
But without pain, there was no Cody.
Even memories from high school, from our late-night trips to the Shake Shack, I had to chase them through my mind to keep them from escaping me. It made me regret all those tear-streaked nights when I’d pushed those memories away to deny myself the agony, the pain that felt so potent, it could only lead to my end…
When Saturday came, Kyle and I worked together inside the house since we had too many decking supervisors arrive that day. We conversed and joked as usual, but the way we interacted made it evident things would never be the same between us after what he’d told me about that hospital bill.
Kyle didn’t make any remarks or jokes that made me feel like he needed to know my wound in any hurry, but I would need to tell him, not only to reciprocate, but to have a chance at the sort of catharsis I watched him experience as he opened up to me.
I took my time crafting my response. There could be no shortcut when it came to allowing myself to be as vulnerable with Kyle as he had allowed himself to be with me.
The following week arrived, and Kyle and I exchanged one of those soulful glances I found we could without anyone realizing what we were doing.
“So now that we’re beginning our descent into Frankenstein, who wants to start off, maybe by giving me their feelings about the first few chapters?”
I searched for hands.
I knew from my chat with Kyle on Saturday that he’d finished the novel already, and was about as much of a fan as I figured most of the other guys in class would be.
No one volunteered right away, so I said, “Any thoughts…?”
Still no one, leading me to fear that perhaps not many of them had made it through the chapters I’d assigned.
“Brian?” I asked, picking someone at random.
I felt bad that I had when I saw the doe-eyed expression on his face as he glanced at me from his desk.
I hadn’t meant to put him on the spot. His responses in class and in assignments led me to believe he typically made time for the readings, even if they weren’t the sort of in-depth analyses I’d come to expect from Kyle. It was, however, the minimum required from someone trying to get by in their high school English class.
Brian hemmed and hawed for a moment before I said, “Who is Victor Frankenstein telling the story to?”