Nicky turned in his chair to face me. “Yeah, exactly like that. What happened, dude?”
“Josie called Annie in tears last night,” George said succinctly. “She got an absurdly good score on her test and instead of being happy for her, Andy got freaked out because he’s convinced Josie is going to dump him for a hotshot doctor in another state.” He leveled me with a cool, even stare. “Did I miss anything?”
It wasn’t sarcasm—he really was leaving the door open for me to fill in the blanks.
“I’d been worrying about it for a long time,” I confessed, slumping back in my chair. “She’s so smart, you know? And I love that about her—I love her, but I’m just some boring blue-collar construction guy who fades into the background, and I’m worried that she’d wake up one day, roll over and realize that a guy who hangs drywall for a living is just not enough for her.”
Ian sat back in his chair, nose wrinkling as if he smelled something unpleasant. “Who told you that you fade into the background?”
“Nobody has to tell me.” I stabbed at a piece of potato with my fork. “Remember how people used to remember all of our names except mine? How all of you still have art and trophies and stuff on display at our old high school? I didn’t do any of that. I didn’t make the baseball team and my shop teacher wrote Have a great summer, Ian in my yearbook. Ian, not Andy. Nicky was almost done with college by the time I started high school and one of the senior girls found me to ask if he was single. Because she saw his picture in a trophy case.”
Nicky smothered a laugh behind a hand, but George and Ian had the good manners to wince. I shoved the potato in my mouth and glared at them as I chewed.
“So yeah, I was a little worried that the coolest, smartest, most interesting and sexiest girl I’ve ever met might go to some gold-plated medical school and meet a guy who shares her passionate interest in, like, long-chain hydrocarbons or the Krebs cycle or something.”
I swallowed and set my fork down to grab my beer. “I’m just Andy, and I like that, but I’m not a complete idiot. I know that I’m just a regular guy and not…not a fucking miracle like she is. She’s going to cure cancer or help paralyzed kids walk someday, and I’m going to lay tile. And for the record, she said some shitty things, too. It was a fight, and everybody sucks in a fight.”
“I don’t know what long-chain hydrocarbons are,” Ian said, just as George made a face and said, simultaneously, “Nobody likes studying the Krebs cycle.”
I just rolled my eyes. “Anyway, George, if you want to come grab her stuff, she probably wants it.”
Saying it out loud was painful, unexpectedly so, and I couldn’t stop the emotion that welled up in my throat. I’d hated seeing her clothes hanging in our closet this morning, and the sight of her abandoned toothbrush had me brushing my teeth in the shower instead of at the sink where I could see it.
“Listen to yourself.” Nicky’s voice was brusque, but kind. “You talk about the things that makes you a great contractor like they don’t matter, like anybody knows how to do those things, but I’m telling you, they don’t. I tried out some Mister Fix-it shit around my house last year and nailed myself in the thigh with a staple gun. I am an idiot about that stuff, but you look at falling-down houses and rotting bathrooms and you only see the things you can build. That’s imagination, Andy, and you have a lot of it. As much as Ian, but yours doesn’t come out through tattoos or paintings.”
“You’re just being nice,” I grumbled.
“I was jealous of you,” George added.
My eyes widened with surprise, and he nodded.
“It’s true. Reading was a little tough for me at first, but when you were in kindergarten, it was like you just picked up a book and knew how. And I was two years ahead and still had to meet once a week with a reading tutor.”
I stared at my third brother. He slumped a bit in his chair, his big body curling in on itself as if the confession made him self-conscious. “You love to read, though,” I said. “You read as much as I do.”
George shrugged. “I do love to read. But I honestly don’t do it as much as you do. I don’t know anybody who does, and it’s something I really like about you. It makes you interesting and funny because you’re always absorbing something new.” He cocked his head, fingers drumming against the tabletop. “Annie has been telling me for weeks that she thought you and Josie were great together. Every time Annie talked to her sister, Josie talked about you like you hung the moon—all the funny things you said, the books you were reading, the things you made and the projects you worked on. She’s crazy about you, man, and it just sucks to hear that you don’t think you’re enough. Because none of us think that, and she doesn’t think that, either.”
“That poem you wrote for my wedding,” Ian cut in, his voice a little softer. “The one you read at the rehearsal dinner?”
I nodded slowly. A sestina—I’d worked on it for a few weeks and asked to read it for him and Sam. I’d been nervous as hell, but it went well enough.
“You gave Sam your handwritten copy that night and she’s got it framed in her studio. Makes her cry whenever she reads it.” His eyes glittered suspiciously. “Me too, honestly. You have a gift with that stuff.”
My plate of food was forgotten as my fingers shredded at the label on my beer bottle. My brothers were impressed with me. They were proud of me and I’d—fuck.
“I fucked up so much,” I muttered, placing a hand against the tight pressure in my chest. “I hurt Josie so badly. She’s so proud of being smart and how hard she works and studies. It really hurts her when people use it against her, and I knew that. I could have told her earlier that I was anxious about her test and medical school, but I just—I didn’t say anything because she was so busy studying, and it just grew like this ugly little seed inside me and finally it just spilled out.” I looked around at my brothers feeling sick to my stomach. “I literally got upset because she did too well on a test. What the fuck is that?”
Nicky raised his beer and took a careful sip, then set it down gently on the tabletop. “It’s not great,” he said mildly. “But all of us have fucked up in our relationships, and we all managed to make it right somehow.”
Across the table, Ian and George nodded in agreement.
Nicky continued, “Is it worth trying to fix? Do you want to figure it out if she’s open to it?”
I nodded miserably. “God, yes. I should try and call her tonight.”
“Maybe give it until tomorrow,” George advised. “Her parents took her out to dinner to celebrate her score and then she and Annie plan to eat ice cream and watch movies at her parents’ house.”
My stomach nearly dropped out of my ass when I remembered. Her parents’ house. “I’m still working over there,” I said, dropping my face into my hands with a groan. “Fuck. Awkward.”