“Yourbike?”
“It’s in my name, Tate.”
“Why are you doing this?” he asked, pulling his seatbelt on and twisting in his seat to look at me. “Can’t you accept that I’m doing what’s best for me, that I’m living my life the way I want to live it.”
“Have I given you a hard time about that?”
He waved his arms at me, indicating that it was exactly what I was doing right now.
“I think this is warranted. I told you the moment your schoolwork started to suffer that I was going to get involved. You promised me that our living at The Hut wouldn’t interrupt your school or your football. You swore you had it all under control.”
“But that was beforeeverythingchanged!” he roared, rubbing his face with his hands. He dragged his fingers down leaving pale marks against his anger-reddened skin. His eyes, so familiar to mine, grew red as tears pooled over the bottom lid. He desperately blinked, trying to rid himself of them, but it was too late. I’d seen them. They were anger and sadness and frustration.
“Change happens, Tate. It’s inevitable. It doesn’t mean we have to like it. It doesn’t mean we always deal with it well, but you’re out of control. You’re pushing everyone away, even the girl you’re trying to hold onto. You’re so stuck inside your own head that you can’t see that your behavior is touching everyone.”
Tate moved a hand to his mouth. I’d known him all his life, and I knew he was trying to stuff all that emotion backdown, not allow it to verbalize itself because once it was out there, he couldn’t take it back.
“I let myself get too close,” he muttered under his breath, shaking his head in denial.
It was those six words that led to my epiphany. I finally understood why he was pushing everyone away. This didn’t excuse his behavior, it didn’t lessen my anger at him, either, but it helped me see what I’d been missing. I threw the car back into park so I could look at him properly.
“People die, Tate. Whether you love them or not, people die. It sucks and hurts, and it can destroy you, but pushing people who are still alive away isn’t going to save you that pain. It will just make you lonely. Mom and Dad didn’t choose to leave, and neither did Harry. It was all just shitty timing and a bunch of assholes with a thorn in their paws. People are going to come and go in your life, but that doesn’t mean you should stop loving the people who love you.”
Fat tears rolled down Tate’s cheeks in perfect lines as he just stared at me. He seemed like he was in disbelief that I could have figured it all out, that I could ever understand what he was feeling, but like most kids, he was self-involved with his own pain. He hadn’t considered that I’d suffered those same losses and felt all those voids in my chest just as brutally as he did. We all did.
“I can’t go back to the way things were,” Tate said quietly, his voice thick and raw.
“I don’t expect you to,” I said, placing my hand on his cheek. “Just try directing your anger at the people who deserve it. Stop pushing away the people who love you, and for fuck’s sake, screw your girlfriend in more appropriate places.”
He let out a thick chuckle and leaned into my palm. “Iwill try and do better.”
“You also need to stop bottling this shit up. If you need to talk, I am always there. Always. I love you, Tater Tot.”
“Don’t call me that!”
“Tater Tot,” I said, dropping my hand and staring at him pointedly.
“Stop.”
“You know what I want,Tater Tot.”
“Oh, God.” He shook his head in exasperation. “I love you, too.”
I nodded in satisfaction and put the car into drive again. He was silent for a while, choosing to fall into thought rather than talk, but I was okay with that. The weird tension that seemed to hang around him most days was absent for now, the silence more companionable.
When I pulled onto the street that led to The Hut, he glanced over at me.
“What?” I asked.
“Does this mean I can keep my bike?”
I laughed once. “You can have it back in two weeks.”
“Fuck!”
I hid my smile as I turned into the yard. He was lucky it wasn’t indefinitely.
Chapter Twenty-Four