"Because he's your best friend and Ren is his brother and you think wanting him is a betrayal."
"Because it is a betrayal. The code exists, Luca. You don't fall for your best friend's sibling. It's messy and it's selfish and it puts the friendship at risk, and the friendship is the most important relationship in my life."
"The code," Luca repeated. He leaned forward, elbows on the table, and his expression had the specific intensity of a man who was about to say something important and wanted it to land properly. "The unwritten rule that says you should spend your entire life alone rather than pursue the person you love. Because of familial proximity. That code?"
"It's not arbitrary."
"It's completely arbitrary. You know what's not arbitrary? Ten years. A decade of wanting someone is not a crush. That's not a passing interest you can file under 'things I'll get over.' That's a structural condition. That's load-bearing. And the structure is going to collapse if you don't do something, because I've been watching you for two months and the weight is showing."
"What am I supposed to do? He's straight."
"Is he?"
"He's dated women his entire life."
"Wes dated women his entire life. Then he met me and discovered that his entire life had been operating on incomplete data. People are not categories, Jonah. People are people. And sometimes a person who has been looking in one direction for twenty-four years turns around and finds something they didn't know they were missing."
"And if I tell him and he doesn't feel the same way? I lose him. I lose Cole. I lose the two people who matter most to me."
"And if you don't tell him, you keep them both and lose yourself." Luca's voice was gentle and relentless. "Which loss is worse?"
The question sat between us like a detonator. I did not have an answer. The question was a fuse, lit and burning, and the explosion was coming whether I answered or not.
Luca squeezed my shoulder. The touch was warm and brief and said everything his words hadn't: I see you. I've been where you are. The other side exists.
He returned to Wes, who had apparently reached his social capacity and was signaling departure by standing motionless near the door with his jacket on and his murder face engaged. Some couples communicated through words. Wes and Luca communicated through strategic deployment of the murder face.
I drove home. Ren was on the couch with a book and the reading lamp, which he had carried from the guest room to the living room because the overhead lighting was inadequate. The lamp sat on the end table like a warm, amber accusation.
"Hey," he said. "How was the bar?"
"Loud. How was your night?"
"Quiet. I tried Luca's nonna's pasta recipe."
"You made pasta?"
"He said anyone who lives with an Italian-adjacent person needs basic pasta competency. I don't know what Italian-adjacent means but I'm choosing not to question it."
"It means Luca has adopted you. Resistance is futile."
He smiled and passed me a bowl. The pasta was overcooked and under-seasoned and I ate every bite because Ren Briggs had made it for me and I would have eaten wallpaper paste served with the same intention.
After he went to bed, I called my mother. Eunhee Park answered on the first ring because Korean mothers do not play games with phone calls from their children.
"Jonah-ya. How are you?"
"I'm good, Umma. I'm stuck on something."
"Stuck how?"
"There's something I want and I'm afraid to reach for it."
She was quiet for a moment. My mother was a thoughtful woman who approached her son's problems with the same patient precision she applied to her garden, which was legendary in our Minnesota neighborhood and which produced tomatoes that won regional competitions.
"Stuck usually means you know what you want and you're afraid to reach for it," she said.
"That's exactly what it means."