Nobody said anything for a long time.

     I sat heavily back down in my chair and stared at the glass of water in front of me, waiting with stiff shoulders for someone to break the silence. I hadn't looked at any of their expressions since I said it. I couldn't bear to.

     The ticking of the grandfather clock on the wall made the room thunder. A car honked somewhere outside, and I jumped.

     "Can one of you," my voice was muffled by a quivering hand over my mouth, but I didn't move it, afraid my words would shake even worse, "Any of you, say something."

     But nobody came forward. I raised my gaze to stare forward at Jacob, but the look in his eyes was blank. I turned away from him with a shudder and reached for my water, unable to hide the desperation in my grasp as I brought it to my lips. It didn't snuff the flame in my stomach; it didn't even get close. It felt as if it stopped somewhere in the middle of my throat, and I choked, the glass slipping from my fingers to the wooden floor. It shattered with a noise loud enough to make me shrink back.

    "Sorry," I said, sounding as if there was sandpaper in my throat. "Sorry, I'll--"

    I started to stand to clean up the mess, but my mother's voice tied me to my chair. "Leave it."

    I chanced a glance at her. I wasn't sure exactly what I'd been hoping to see when I looked into her eyes -- acceptance, understanding, even just tolerance.

     Whatever it was, it wasn't there.

     I'd never heard my parents so much as mention sexuality in this household. I hadn't even learned what the word "gay" meant until I was the fourth grade and one kid got in trouble for saying it as an insult to another. My mom and dad were religious, but not extremely so; we went to a non-denominational church every once in a while and prayed before meals and bed, but we'd never been the family to sit around reading the bible. They had never said anything to make me believe that they were intolerant. I'd never heard a disapproving comment from them when lgbt matters appeared on television or in movies, at least.

     Part of me had always figured they'd be pretty accepting. They hadn't ever seemed opinionated enough to be  upset by the news. I had figured I would tell them someday, and they'd be surprised and maybe a little bit uncomfortable, but overall fine with it.

     As I looked into my mom's face now, I wondered just how right Jacob was about how little anyone in this family knew about each other.

     "I need you to do something for me," she said slowly, after several moments of looking over me in silence. "Will you?"

     I nodded immediately. Anything, I'd do anything for her to stop looking at me like that. Maybe I'd let go of my hope to early -- she still sounded like my mom, like nothing had changed. Nothing had to change.

    "I need you to tell me that you aren't sure."

     That tiny little bead of hope, the one that had been resurfacing behind my rib-cage, tentative but stubborn, plummeted back down to my gut. My lips felt cold as I opened my mouth to lie to her -- I was desperate enough, I would do it if it would change the way she was looking at me. But then I felt Jacob's stare, and even though I was far from owing him anything at that point, the words to leave my mouth were, "I can't."

     My mom pinched the bridge of her nose, her ponytail swinging back and forth as she shook her head. I felt like I might throw up if I looked at her any longer, so I turned to my dad. I knew I must have looked pathetic -- I was pleading with him, silently begging him not to take the same route -- but he only shook his head and looked away.

    "Dad," I said. I'd meant it to come out stronger than I felt, but it was a whisper at best. Right then, there was no such thing as stronger than I felt. The shaking, breaking feeling in my chest was who I was, as good as it would get, and every part of me reflected that. Even my breaths sounded as if they were struggling to find a place at this goddamned dinner table.

     He didn't say anything. Seeing him avoid my eyes, like he couldn't even bear to look at me, stabbed worse than any words, but I was fixed on his face, desperate to find something I recognized -- something goofy and affectionate -- there. "Dad, mom, it's -- it's okay. You don't need to be upset, right? It's just me. I'm just me."

     My voice wouldn't stop wavering, no matter how many times I cleared my throat. I sounded like -- I felt like -- I was a tightrope walker, but someone had just pulled the safety net from below me. Every time I looked down at the drop, my stomach lurched sickeningly, but I couldn't stop looking. 

   The dining room was quiet. The whole house was quiet. Then my mother spoke again.

   "I wish you hadn't told us."

     I knew then that I'd lost. Whatever fight, whatever battle, whatever war this was, I'd lost.

     "I wish it wouldn't matter that I did."

     "What do you expect from us, Liam?" She sounded exhausted.

     I looked up at her, locked eyes with her. If she wouldn't hear me, I would be damn sure that she'd see me, so she'd know how much she was hurting me. "I exp-- I want you to realize that this doesn't change the guy I am. I've known for years, and we've been fine. You've been my mom. You --" I chanced a glance at my dad, but he still wouldn't return it. My voice broke. "You've been my dad. I've known, and nothing has changed. Not even when I had a boyfriend."

     My mom took in a sharp breath, and I wished with all of my heart that I hadn't said that.

   "Why can't you just see that I'm still the same guy I was yesterday?"

    "Because now we know," my mother said. Suddenly I felt guilty; I had managed to make our screwed-up family even worse with my stupid, stupid, unnecessary honesty.

    I didn't even try to look at Jacob. If I turned to him now, and he wore the same unwelcoming expression as my mom, or wouldn't look at me like my dad, or still had on the blank stare from earlier -- like he didn't even know me -- I wouldn't be able to handle it. It would be the final pound of a hammer against my glass walls, the killer blow that shattered me.

    I hated him. Right then, I didn't care that it wasn't fair; I had never hated him more. For being so distant. For never telling me how he felt. For letting our relationship slip -- no, plummet -- through the cracks, for stepping on my fingers whenever I tried to grab at it. For blaming it all on me. For making me feel like I owed him some shred of truth; for what happened when I gave it to him. For the way that, even now -- even after he'd ignored me for years, even after what had just happened -- I still felt as if one look from him could destroy me. He didn't deserve that power over me, and yet he still had it, and I hated him for that.

     "Jacob," I muttered under my breath, "Get out."

     I heard the sound of his footsteps as he left.

     "It isn't a bad thing," I said meekly. A final, last-ditch attempt. "It's only love."

    "It's wrong," my mom said. She never looked away from me as she said it. That was the worst part. "It's . . . abnormal. I can't and won't accept it." Tears were welling up in her eyes. She raised a shaky finger at me. Her voice nearly as unsteady as mine, she added, "And you . . . you need to fix it."

     Then she couldn't look at me any longer. She cast her gaze at the wall and stood to leave. I watched her go. My dad followed her without a single glance at me.

     "Dad!" I called after him. He didn't pause for me.

     I didn't move from my seat for a long time. I was frozen in place with my eyes glued to the doorway, as if they might return at any moment with a change of heart.

     It was stunning, in a twisted way. How a dinner intended for one thing -- to salvage our unsalvageable family -- had become something so different. How, over the course of one meal, things had so quickly gone from bad to worse. And I was the culprit.

     For a moment -- one selfish, ungrateful moment -- I wished that my parents had been as bad with me as they had with each other. That they had been just as unable to care for me individually as they had been together. That my mom hadn't played football with me in the backyard when I was a kid, that my dad hadn't coached me in math up until high school. Maybe if my mom hadn't always been there to give me honest, sometimes blunt advice, and my dad hadn't always known the right time to make me laugh . . . well then, maybe this wouldn't hurt so much.

     It was unreasonable. A lot of kids would kill to have parents like mine, dysfunction and all. But right then, I wasn't reasonable. I didn't want to be reasonable. I wanted my parents. Pathetic as it sounded, I wanted a fucking hug.

     But my mom wouldn't hug me now. My dad wouldn't hug me now. Jacob hadn't hugged me in years. Stevie was hours away in college.

     I was totally alone.

     I felt a sting in the corner of my eyes, but I cast my gaze upward and blinked the tears away, refusing to cry. It wouldn't make me feel better. Maybe if Stevie was here, and I could rest my head in her lap while she ran her fingers through my hair. But not now.

     The ironic part about all of this was that now, when it seemed the perfect time for my body to go into overdrive, I felt nothing. So many times in the last couple months, I had panicked for no reason at all. Simply sitting at my desk in school, or playing video games at home, I'd heard that ticking time bomb in my head and known exactly what was coming. And yet, at that moment, there was nothing. I wondered, not for the first time, why my mind and my body worked the way they did. I dreaded the moment -- and I knew it would come, if not now, then later -- when everything would finally hit me.

     My limbs shook with effort as I pushed myself out of my seat. My legs ached with every step I took out of the dining room. It didn't make sense that my body would be in so much pain after nothing but an argument. Funny how my body and mind only ever seemed to fall in sync when I was hurting.

     "What did I do?" I muttered to myself.

     It was a vague question, and it was incomplete. But saying the rest out loud would just make me more pathetic.

     What did I do to deserve this?

     All of it. The divorces. The anxiety. The panic. The brother. The breakup. The reaction.

     "What did I do?" I whispered again. Somehow, it tasted worse the second time.

     My legs led me outside, to the backyard where I'd made some of my best memories. I bypassed the patio chairs in favor of sitting on the ground, in front of the rosebush where I used to hide every single time Stevie and I played hide and seek. Somehow she always found me.

     I stared ahead at the grass where Jacob and I had played ball with my mom, and my dad and I had taught our dogs tricks, and Jamie and I had scarfed down a makeshift picnic on Stevie's favorite blanket (the look on her face when I told her was priceless). I looked at the fence that Stevie, Jacob and I used to climb -- instead of using the door like normal people -- to go explore the patch of woods behind the house. It was really nothing more than a clump of trees with a few squirrels and the occasional butterfly, but back then, it had been the biggest adventure. That one was almost enough to make me smile. Instead, I stifled back a sob.

     I heard a soft pattering on the grass and turned my head to see Sadie, our old beagle mix, the first dog Stevie ever brought home. She'd been around for eleven years now.

     "Hey, girl," I said softly, reaching out to scratch behind her ears. She sensed my mood in that uncanny way dogs could and settled down at my side with a whimper, resting her head on my lap. I took a slow breath.

     Then I remembered that I had shut the patio door behind me. Sadie was smart, but not that smart. I looked around the rosebush and saw Jacob standing at the edge of the terrace.

     Just a glimpse of him was enough to light a spark beneath my skin; I turned away before it could become a full-blown firestorm and said, "If you've come to gloat, you can fuck off. You got your wish; now mom and dad see me like you do."

     Somewhere in my mind, I knew it wasn't fair. I knew he hadn't said anything that didn't need to be said, and I didn't have a single right to be mad at him. Wherever that was, though, it was surrounded by torrents of frustration at the way the night had transpired, and I didn't have the energy to brave those waters to find what they hid for his sake.

     For a moment, I thought he'd left, and somehow that fanned the flames. Then he said, "I'm not here to gloat."

     I didn't know what to say to that, or to him. So I didn't say anything.

     "I just want you to know . . . I don't care if you're gay."

     It should have felt amazing. It should have been the biggest relief in the world, to know that there was someone in this house on my side.

     "Thanks for the validation," I sneered. I refused to let him be the one to crack me open. If I broke down in relief now just because he didn't hate me any more than he already did, I would only be setting myself up for a rude awakening. I would allow myself to depend on him, and once I tried to lean on him, he would let me fall.

     "I'm trying to be nice," he grumbled.

     "That makes the first time in what, three years?"

     That had been as much my fault as his, if not more. There wasn't an ounce of me left feeling strong enough care.

     "Liam --"

     I pushed out an aggravated sigh and cut him off. "Can you not right now, Jacob? I hear you, I get it, but right now I just want to be alone and pissed off for a while. You should go."

     Jacob hadn't listened to me in years. I wasn't sure why I'd assumed he would start now.

     He sat down at my side instead, legs criss-crossed, our shoulders inches apart. I rolled my eyes. "Or not."

     Jacob ignored my blatant irritation and asked a question that was so unlike him -- because it was random and weird and the type of thing a brother would ask -- it took a second to process. "You know how everyone has a crush on a cartoon character when they're little?"

     I gave him an unimpressed look. Jacob was staring at the floor. When I didn't offer anything, he followed up with, "Who was yours?"

     Despite myself, I told him, "Eric from The Little Mermaid."

     Jacob didn't say anything after that. The silence stretched on, and I felt more annoyed with him with each second. If he had come just to disrupt my quiet, piss me off with his presence, and only decide to shut up after he'd asked his pointless question . . .

     He reached into the pocket of his hoodie and pulled something out. A paper booklet. A Spider-Man comic.

     At first, I didn't understand. "What, Mary Jane?"

     Then I noticed that he still wasn't looking at me, and my eyes went wide as I finally got it.

     I probably could have reacted better than I did. But all of the stress of the night, all of the anger and frustration and loneliness and regret, had worn down whatever filter I had, and it was with a slight note of hysteria that I hung my head and chuckled.

     That was enough to get Jacob to look up. He stared at me like a tree had sprouted from my forehead.

     "Our homophobic parents," I snickered, shaking my head in disbelief, "Ended up with three out of three queer kids. Imagine the chances."

     Jacob pursed his lips. "Stevie, too?"

     The sound of his voice killed my laughter. She'd never told him. This was what he'd been talking about earlier. The way Stevie and I talked to each other about everything and left him to watch through a foggy screen.

     I nodded slowly. Jacob locked eyes with me for a few more moments before he trained his stare on the grass.

     "I'm sorry," he said quietly, so quietly I could hardly hear him. "For tonight. I -- I didn't know. If I had, I never would've . . . I feel like I forced you out."

     "You didn't," I said. "I made the choice to say what I said."

     Jacob drummed his fingers against his knee anxiously. "Well," he said, and I still felt like I was straining just to make out his words, "I'm still sorry. For everything else. Things have always been the way they were -- with you and Stevie, I mean. And it didn't bother me too much until . . . I guess I started figuring things out about myself a few years ago, and God, I don't know, I felt so alone all the time. And I took it out. On everyone. So I'm sorry."

     I took a steadying breath in. I didn't trust myself to do this. I knew that whatever went down right now, in the backyard that raised us, would decide the future between us. After everything that had just happened, with my emotions on high, I didn't feel ready to do it right.

     But then, could I ever be ready for something like this? Maybe this was the only chance I'd get.

     So I took another breath, a longer one, and I let it flow through me until I could feel it everywhere.

     "I never meant for things to be that way," I told him, and suddenly I understood why he was so quiet; I felt as though I couldn't speak louder if I tried. "With you, me, and Stevie, I mean. I didn't even realize . . . I guess it might be because you were so young when the first divorce happened. She and I leaned on each other a lot back then. But even afterward, when you got bigger, we never made room to let you in. Looking back on it now, it's so fucking obvious to me. I don't know what I would've done if I'd had to go through all of my, uh, 'self-discovery' on my own. I'm sorry I wasn't there. I'm sorry I didn't even have a clue."

     Jacob shrugged. "I never let you in. You tried to reach me after I shut you out, but I fought it, no matter what. I just always told myself, he would try harder if it was Stevie."

     I stared at my hands in my lap. It was with a breed of shame I'd never felt before -- one that I'd never forget, either -- that I said, "I probably would have."

     Jacob chewed his lip. "I know."

    "God, that's so fucked up," I said. "I'm so sorry."

     "Me too," he said. "I guess we both have a lot to be sorry for."

     I finally found the nerve to look at Jacob again and found him watching me.

     I studied his face. He looked like he always had; the same pointed features, the same pale skin, the same brown eyes. The same freckle below his lip, on the left side. The same nearly-black, wildly curly hair. But I hardly recognized him. I wondered if it was because he was looking at me differently, of if I was looking at him differently. Maybe it was both.

     "Stop staring at me, loser," he said. He cracked a smile. So did I. Before I knew it, we were both laughing, and I think it might have been one of the best feelings in the world. Laughing with him again.

     But then his laughter came to an abrupt stop, and I turned to see him with a hand over his face. His entire body shuddered with a raking, trembling sob.

     Every bit of anger and resentment I'd felt for him -- every last year of it -- drained away from my body and seeped into the ground. "Jacob --" I tried, but he cut me off with a shake of his head.

     "I'm sorry," he said miserably as he wiped beneath his eyes. He turned his head completely away from me. "I shouldn't be . . . you're the one that-- that came out, I d-don't know why I'm fucking crying."

     He started to stand, and I could feel him trying to raise a feeble barrier between us, but I knocked it down with determination as I gripped at his wrist and pulled him back down. Before he could protest, I wrapped an arm around his shoulders and pulled him against my side.

     He sank into me, burying his head in my neck and crying into my shoulder. For the first time in a long time, or maybe ever, I realized that I was the older brother, and I resolved to fill the role as best as I could to make up for lost time. All of the protectiveness I'd been missing over the last few years came surging to my chest all at once, and I found myself pulling him as close as I could, rubbing soothing circles into his back, muttering comforting things into his hair as he wept.

     It didn't matter that I'd been the one to come out to our parents that night. It didn't matter that I'd been the one rejected and shunned by my mother and father.

    Jacob had spilled his heart out onto the dining room table. He'd torn himself raw yelling his feelings -- about mom, about dad, about me and Stevie. He'd admitted just how lonely and rejected and unloved he'd felt growing up, how little he'd identified with his family. Every truth he'd guarded for the last few years had come pouring out of him, whether he'd wanted it to or not.

    He'd found out that the most important truth, the one he'd had to figure out all by himself in the most vulnerable years of his life, was something his parents wouldn't accept. He had watched from the front row as his mom and dad made it painfully clear that they couldn't bear who I was -- who he was.

      On the other hand, he and I had just had the first real conversation of our lives. And he'd learned that he wasn't alone.

      All of that, in one night. And he was only fifteen. Just a kid. I couldn't imagine myself handling all of that at fifteen. So I didn't expect him to; I just held him close and rubbed his back and muttered every comfort word I could think of.

     After a while -- a long while, long enough for his shaking to stop and his breathing to ease -- I felt his arms wrap around me.

     "Can we just . . . try?" he whispered.

     "Of course," I said. "That's all I want."

     He nodded, then fell silent for a short time. After a while,

     "Can you guess who the last person I liked was?"

     "Give me a hint," I said, clueless. I had no idea what kind of guy Jacob might crush on; probably some edgy, dyed-haired school kid with facial piercings and a bad attitude.

     "Okay. He's a junior," Jacob said. I raised my eyebrows at him expectantly -- that didn't narrow it down at all. He thought for a second, then added, "He's blonde and pale and kind of small . . . and he seems to have a thing for football players."

     I shoved Jacob away from me with saucer-wide eyes. He was laughing as his back hit the grass.

      "Shut the fuck up!" I gasped.

     "So I'm right," Jacob said triumphantly. "He was the boyfriend. 'Helping him study' my ass."

     "You better be fucking joking."

     "I pass him in the hall after art every day," Jacob said, shaking his head. "I kind of freaked when you brought him here. He's even cuter up close."

     "Alright, see, what we're never gonna do again," I said, raising a threatening finger, "Is say that."

     "I'm kidding," Jacob said. "I mean not really, but it was never serious. Just one of those wow you're gay and you're really really attractive things. That's all. Most of the time."

     "Oh my god!" I exclaimed. "Stop talking!"

     A grin slipped onto Jacob's face. "Sorry," he said sheepishly.

     The way he was looking at me -- with that little smile, and a laugh in his teary eyes -- made me so happy to be his brother, I couldn't even stay mad. "Next time I go to Stevie's, you should come with," I said. 

     His smile fell away with shock. "Are you serious?"

     The surprise in his voice made that shameful feeling come back. "Yeah, I'm serious. I really want you to."

     Jacob and I stayed out there until he started to doze off on my shoulder and I insisted he go to bed. We weren't perfect. We had too much bad blood between us for perfect to come so quickly. But, as of that night, we were better.

     I walked back to my room feeling as though things were finally starting to look up for me. Then I got to bed, and I was alone again, and I finally remembered everything else.

     I had been right earlier, when I guessed that it would all hit me at a later time. That later time came when I was in my bed, trying to sleep, and I remembered the sound of my mom's voice, the look on my dad's face after I told them. My mind jumped to tomorrow, and what it would be like when I had to face them. That was what got me.

     The panic attack I had that night would be my last bad one for a long time.

     Maybe my body knew that. Because it seemed determined to make it the worst, too.

++++

i never meant for jacob's character to take this turn but you guys kept speculating that he was gay at this one part of ch 16 and i figured why the hell not, sounds like fun