“What are you doing?” I asked, as if it wasn’t obvious.
“Getting rid of this. Me and your brothers are going to build a new one.”
Him, Brad, and Nolan. Not me. Not Will, who he’d always told Mom he thought was a little soft.
“You guys wanna go throw the football around at the park?” Dad asked them.
“Yeah, sure, Dad,” Brad replied.
“You gonna go?” Nolan asked. I shook my head. Dad hadn’t invited me. He was disgusted by me.
They left and went to play together. Dad never built another treehouse. He just made excuses. I never saw Bill again either. He was homeschooled after that. Dad must have said something to his father.
I’d catch Dad watching me, trying to figure me out. When I was drawing with Will once, he told me to stop and go work in the garage with him, gave me the look that said he was remembering what happened with Bill. When he found a sketch I’d made of Bill, he said I was a sissy, so I stopped drawing. I wanted him to love me, to be his favorite again. When he watched me, I knew he was looking for signs in me, and I decided then to prove him wrong.
I wouldn’t let myself be gay. I’d show Dad I was the kind of son, the kind of man he always wanted me to be.
Eventually I did, and he loved me again.
CHAPTER ONE
Jonathan
I watched my brothers Nolan and Brad laugh. We had just finished a job, the two of them sitting in the bed of my truck, a large Carson Construction magnet on the side. I was leaning against the door, only half listening. I had no idea what they were chuckling about, but that wasn’t anything new nowadays. The three of us used to be close. I should have been sitting with them instead of standing off on my own, but ever since I came out last year, things have been different between us.
We pretended it wasn’t because that’s what Carson men did best—pretend shit didn’t exist until we believed it. That’s what I’d done with my sexuality most of my life, except for those few times when I’d let loose, find a guy on an app to hook up with, and then hate myself for it. Pretending was what my dad had done when he’d caught me in the treehouse with my best friend, then afterward tore down said treehouse, and I lost said friend.
The only person in our family who had never pretended, never lied, was our youngest brother Will. He’d become a bit of an outcast for it, making the dynamic me, Nolan, Brad…then Will on his own.
Now I knew how Will felt, and it fucking sucked.
Something thumped the side of my head, and I looked down to see an apple core rolled up in a napkin hit the ground.
“Hello? Earth to Jonathan? We were talking to you,” Nolan said.
“Nice, fuck-face.” I bent down and picked up his trash. “What did you say?”
“I asked if you had plans this weekend,” Brad said.
I shrugged. “I was gonna go into Atlanta and see Will.”
Everything got quiet between us, awkwardness and tension making a home there. It was sad that it happened so easily now, or at just the mention of Will’s name. Before I came out, I never would have gone into the city to hang out with him, and me doing that reminded Nolan and Brad that I was gay too—well, Will was bi. He liked women as well. I’d tried, tried for years and years to convince myself I was attracted to women, but I could never do it.
It was so fucked up that me being gay made things weird. That going to spend time with Will made things weird, as well, but that part I could blame on myself too. We’d never been fair to our brother, always making excuses for why we weren’t close to him, when really, it was because we were homophobes—me, clearly internalized.
“So you guys are like, um…pretty close now,” Nolan said.
Jesus, did he have to say it like the words got stuck in his mouth? “He’s our brother.”
“Yeah, but how often did you hang out with him before you were…gay?” Brad asked, making me roll my eyes.
“I was always gay, jackass. I just lied about it. And we didn’t hang out with him because we’re dickheads.”
“Fuck that. I don’t care that he’s gay,” Nolan countered, and I didn’t bother to correct him and remind them Will was bi. “I don’t spent time with him because we don’t have shit in common. I still love the little twerp.”
“Yeah, same,” Brad agreed.
And maybe in some ways they were right. I knew they loved him. But even though we tried to get past it—tried to become more of a family once I admitted I was gay, and Will shared how he’d felt blacklisted his whole life—we were still a fucking mess. What made this even shittier was that sometimes it was awkward with me and Will too. I’d gone right along with Brad and Nolan, giving Will the shaft before I’d come out to him. I’d left him to deal with feeling like an outsider all alone, while internally I felt the same.
Oh, and that didn’t even include the time when Will brought his boyfriend home and I realized he’d been one of my anonymous hookups. Jameson had given me a handjob, and I’d run out on him without returning the favor. Both Will and Jameson said it was in the past, and it didn’t seem to bother them, but I couldn’t be around them without feeling like the world’s biggest dickhead. It was another reminder of how I’d failed at basically fucking everything in my life. I was good at making a mess of things.
“Whatever. It doesn’t matter. Anyway, anything I need to know about work?” I’d always taken control of most things Carson Construction related. Keeping busy had helped me forget other shit. I was the oldest. I’d been Dad’s favorite, the one he’d wanted to take over the business. It had always rested on my shoulders.
Truth be told, we’d been struggling for a while. We’d almost had to call someone in to bail us out, and likely would have lost the company my father built. If Will hadn’t come through and helped with some funds, I wasn’t sure what would have happened. Nolan and Brad seemed to forget that, but I didn’t.
Speaking of, the two of them were looking back and forth at each other in a way that told me they had something to say. “What?”
Nolan spoke first. “Listen, um…we were talking, and things are steady right now but not too overwhelming. If you ever wanted to take some time off or something, this would be the perfect opportunity.”
I froze, my insides turning to ice. “Are you trying to fire me from my own business?”
Brad huffed. “You know that’s not what we’re doing, just like you also know you haven’t been into it for a while. You’ve been delegating more responsibilities to us and dropping the ball on things. We’re just trying to say that if you wanted to figure shit out, you can.”
“No one wants you to go anywhere,” Nolan added. “But it’s been a tough year for you, and, well, if there’s shit you wanna do or you need some time, we’ll be fine. You could come back anytime you wanted, obviously.”
Maybe they were trying to do the right thing, but it sure as fuck didn’t feel like it. What it felt like was a knife to the back, a kick to the gut, like they didn’t want to be around me anymore but didn’t know how to go about it. “Without me? The two of you were talking without me and decided you’re going to give me permission to take a break?”