We Leave Together

"You understood," I said.

My voice sounded strange in the kitchen. Too calm. As though the fear had left room for only one sentence at a time.

Mom stared at me.

Nate's hand fell from my back. He moved beside me rather than in front of me.

"Rachel," he said. "We were going to talk to you tomorrow."

She looked at him with an expression I'd never seen her use.

"Don't."

He stopped.

She set her keys on the counter very carefully.

"Elliot. Come here."

For twenty-one years, I'd moved toward that voice.

I took one step.

She looked at my face as though checking for something she'd missed.

"What is happening?"

"I'm in love with him."

Her eyes closed.

"No."

"Mom—"

"No. You can't be."

"I am."

She looked past me at Nate.

"I asked you to look after him."

The words struck somewhere old and tender.

"He's not my guardian," I said.

"I'm speaking to him."

"Then please hear me too."

Her hand rose before I understood what was happening.

The slap wasn't loud. It was worse than loud.

For a second, the room became very sharp. The edge of the counter. The clock above the door. Her fingers still raised between us.

She looked as shocked as I felt.

Nate moved immediately, then stopped at my side.

"Don't touch him again," he said.

His voice was quiet enough to frighten me.

I put my hand on his sleeve.

Not to excuse her. To keep him beside me.

Mom lowered her arm.

"Elliot," she whispered.

I touched my cheek once.

"I'm still here," I said. "I'm still your son."

She made a small sound and turned away.

Victor appeared in the doorway.

"What's going on?"

No one answered quickly enough.

He looked at my face, then at Nate.

"What happened?"

"Rachel heard us," Nate said. "Elliot and I are together. That's what we were going to discuss tomorrow."

Victor stared at him.

Then he laughed once, sharply, as if Nate had made an obscene joke.

"Explain that."

Nate didn't move.

"I love him."

Victor's face hardened.

"You ended your engagement for this?"

"I ended it because I couldn't honestly marry Claire. Yes, I'm in love with Elliot. Both things are true."

Mom put a hand against the counter.

"You've lived in this house as brothers."

"I know how it looks," Nate said.

"You know nothing about how it looks."

"Dad."

"Don't use that voice with me."

I had heard Victor angry before. At employees. At Nate for missing dinners. Once at a contractor who had shouted at Martha.

I'd never heard him speak as though the house itself had been insulted.

"I trusted you," Mom said to Nate.

I stepped forward.

"He didn't talk me into this."

"You're young," Victor snapped.

"I'm twenty-one."

"Exactly."

I looked at him. This man had taught me to drive. He had sat through school concerts and taken photographs with a pride I had trusted completely.

It hurt to understand that loving me didn't mean he could hear me.

"You don't have to approve tonight," I said. "But you can't make my feelings disappear by deciding I'm too young to know them."

"This is a family," he said.

"I know. It's mine too."

Mom began crying silently.

I wanted to go to her. Every part of me knew how. I could say I was confused. I could call this a mistake. I could make the next five minutes easier for everyone except the two people who had to live afterward.

Nate looked at me.

He didn't tell me what to say.

"I need you to understand something," he said to my mother. "Whatever you're feeling about us, you were right to be angry about the way I treated Elliot before. About the way I treated you. I owe you both more than an apology. But I won't use that history to pretend I don't love him now."

"And when you change your mind?" she asked.

The question found its target. I could see it in his face.

He took a breath.

"Then I'd have failed him again. I understand why you don't trust me."

"That's not reassuring."

"I don't have an answer that makes this easy."

I looked at Mom.

"I'm afraid of getting hurt too," I said. "That doesn't mean you can choose my life for me."

Victor pulled out a chair, then seemed to forget why.

"This ends," he said. "Tonight. You need distance. Elliot can stay with Rachel's sister. Nathaniel, you'll remain here."

There it was: a plan. A problem divided into separate rooms.

For a moment, none of us moved.

Then I said, "No."

Victor looked at me.

I wasn't sure I'd ever said the word to him that way before.

"I'm not going away so you can persuade him to forget me."

"You think that's what this is?"

"I think you're frightened and angry. I think you love us. I also think you're telling me to pretend my own life is something shameful."

He turned toward Nate.

"If you encourage this, don't expect to stay under my roof."

Nate looked at me.

He didn't reach for my hand until I reached for his.

"We'll leave," he said.

Mom looked up.

"Elliot."

I could barely breathe.

"I'm not cutting you off," I told her. "I want to talk again. But I'm not staying here to be hit or separated like a child."

She looked at her own hand.

I wished she hadn't had to.

Upstairs, I packed badly. A sweater. Underwear. My laptop charger and two books I didn't need. I forgot my toothbrush and remembered the little bridge in the drawer.

Nate stood outside my room.

"Do you want me to call Ben?"

I looked up.

"What?"

"You can stay with him tonight. Or I can find somewhere. Leaving together doesn't mean you have to go anywhere you don't want to."

My eyes filled before I could stop them.

All evening, everyone had told me what I was too young to decide.

He was asking.

"I want to go with you."

He nodded.

"All right."

"But tomorrow, I need to go to class."

"I'll drive you. Or we can find the bus schedule."

I laughed once through the tears.

"Very romantic."

"I've been told practicality is attractive."

"By whom?"

"I'm hoping you. Eventually."

I crossed the room and leaned against him.

He held me without telling me everything would be fine.

I needed that more than I needed optimism.

Downstairs, Mom was sitting at the dining table. Victor stood by the window.

The house looked exactly as it always had. I found that almost offensive.

I stopped beside her chair.

"I'll call you tomorrow."

She didn't look up immediately.

When she did, her eyes went to my cheek.

"I shouldn't have done that."

I swallowed.

"No."

"Elliot—"

"We can talk about it tomorrow."

She nodded, crying harder now.

I wanted to kiss her cheek. I wasn't ready.

Nate carried our bags to the car. I walked out on my own feet.

At the gate, I turned back.

There was a light in my bedroom window. I'd forgotten to switch it off.

I almost went back to fix it.

Then Nate opened the passenger door and waited.

I got in.

The drive to the coast was quiet. Halfway there, he asked whether I was cold. I said yes. He adjusted the heat without making anything of it.

I cried when we passed the last set of city lights.

He pulled into a safe place beside a closed shop and waited with me.

"I love them," I said.

"I know."

"I don't want this to mean I don't."

"It doesn't."

I wiped my face with a tissue he found in the glove compartment.

"I'm not sorry I chose you."

His hand closed gently around mine.

"I'm glad," he said. "But you can be sad too."

At the house, he opened the gate. The porch light came on, illuminating the crooked steps.

Inside, the rooms smelled faintly of paint and the sea.

He put the keys on the kitchen counter.

"There's a guest room," he said. "Nothing has to happen tonight except sleeping."

I nodded.

He took my bag upstairs and showed me where things were. There were clean towels, a blanket, an unopened toothbrush from a multipack in the bathroom cabinet.

I sat on the guest bed, suddenly exhausted beyond language.

He crouched in front of me.

"Do you need anything?"

I looked at him.

"Will you stay until I fall asleep?"

His expression changed, remembering another night in another room.

"Yes."

He pulled the chair beside the bed.

I caught his hand before he sat down.

"Nate?"

"I'm here."

I held on.