I had been sitting on the grimy floor of my apartment for what felt like days, staring at my cell phone as I tried to get a hold of him. It had been weeks since he called, and I was afraid I had messed things up for good. The closest I got to contact with another human being was the robotic, monotone voice of his message inbox. Please leave a message after the beep.

I never did.

After all, he was only my half brother.

"There's something I need to tell you," Mom said, pacing up and down our white ranch-style kitchen.

"Okay?" I said nervously, figuring she probably dented the car and wanted me to soften the blow by telling Dad first. "What is it?"
Mom took a deep breath and closed her eyes. She waited a few seconds before saying, shakily, "You have a brother."

I laughed. That was my first reaction. "You're kidding." When Mom still had the same pale look on her face, like the full moon just outside the window, I added, "What do you mean?"
"It was before your father. I found out I was pregnant, and I gave him up for adoption."

My life had been a mile-a-minute for as long as I could remember. My dad used to say that my little pauses in a torrent of conversation were like coming up for air after being underwater for too long. For the first time in forever, I was speechless.

Mom proceeded to let me know that he would only be three years older than me, fresh out of college. She had secretly named him Charlie, but his adoptive parents named him Nathan. When I started applying for colleges, she started searching for her son. How could I not have known there was someone out there like me? I had always resented being an only child, and, finally, I wasn't. I couldn't wait to meet him.

The shrill ring of the phone sounded and I jumped, knocking over my water on the wooden floor in the process. I swore under my breath and used the sweatshirt lying next to me on the ground to clean it up. Putting the phone to my ear, I was too nervous to even mutter a greeting.

"Sweetie, are you there?"

I sighed, and the tension in my body eased. "Hi, Mom."

"Don't forget to do your laundry today."

After a few minutes of arguing with my mom about the importance she placed on Saturday as a laundry day, she finally hung up. Ever since I had been off on my own at college, even as a sophomore, she would constantly plan my every move, as if not convinced that I was actually, surprise surprise, an adult.

Mom wiped a stray tear with her left hand, opening the door for Dad with her right. He hobbled into the minuscule dorm room with boxes stacked between his arms like a skyscraper. "You have to remember to call me every day, okay? A few times a day, even."

I laughed and rolled my eyes. "I'll be okay, Mom, I promise."

Later that night, as I watched her leave from the dorm lobby, a part of me broke. I was no longer a child. A part of Mom, the part that had raised me, would never be the same.

I had to find my brother, for Mom. For me.

The TV blared in the living room with the sound of a reality show, a pile of unfolded laundry lay strewn on the couch in front of it. I walked past the mountain of dirty dishes in the sink and grabbed the picture of the boy that was supposed to be my brother off the kitchen counter.

He didn't really look anything like me at all. I noticed a few similarities in the shape of our noses and the color of our eyes, the same shade of sage, but I figured I was just reaching for something connecting me to him. Maybe I just wasn't destined to have a brother.

"I found him." Mom rushed into my room wielding her laptop, her reading glasses tottering precariously on her nose.

I didn't even have to ask who she meant.

We called him. Nathan. My brother, as weird as it was to say. I sat on my bed, playing with the freshly washed sunflower sheets while she talked to him for a good thirty minutes. The nerves in her voice were wind chimes, making it a whole octave higher than usual. She fidgeted with the edge of her sweater while a small smile blossomed on her face. "I understand," she said and looked at me with unimaginable hope in her emerald eyes as she hung up the phone. "He said he needs some time, but he's not ruling anything out." She squeezed my shoulder. "I have a son."

My phone started to vibrate in my hands while an unknown number blared on the screen. "Is that...?"

"It is," Mom said, and excitement radiated from her voice into my heart. I'm not an only child anymore.

I picked up the phone.

I was starting to get restless. Did I do something wrong? Did he not want anything to do with me or my family anymore? Insecurities piled up as high as the laundry as I scanned my brain for a possible reason for his silence. Maybe he really did just need more time to think everything through, but I thought our last conversation went better than I ever could've imagined. He didn't seem resentful to have been put up for adoption; he understood Mom's situation, being young and single and still in school, even though she met my father just months later. Was it just me then?

A knock on the door reverberated throughout the practically empty apartment; I had moved in a few weeks ago, but still hadn't gotten around to unpacking everything. I was a little preoccupied, to say the least.

Opening the door, I peered out at the stranger standing in front of me, and the hand I had raised to push the hair out of my face fell limply to my side. He was a stranger, undoubtedly, yet he was also a carbon-copy of the picture I had left on my counter. A million thoughts raced in my head while my mouth opened and closed multiple times, trying to get something out. For the second time in forever, I was speechless.

"Hi," said Nathan. His eyes, an exact match of mine, looked behind me into the apartment curiously. He sort-of-smiled, and I noticed a small chip in one of his front teeth; I made a mental note to ask him how he got it. Nathan took a deep breath, filling his lungs with the tentative silence between us, and said, "Can we talk?"