"So, when's Freddie coming back?" Cole randomly asks me as he's washing the dishes in the sink.
I dry off the pots and pans before putting them back in the cabinet. "I don't know. He didn't say."
Freddie has been away for almost two weeks now. He didn't give me much detail about the business he's taking care of beyond what I already vaguely know—he never really does, really, and I never ask him about it. In fact, I can't remember the last time I texted him. I probably should. I haven't warned him about the possibility of Code Maroon yet. I didn't want this to throw him off while he's occupied with whatever business he's doing right now.
"He's really busy," I tell Cole. "I don't know if he's gonna spend the rest of the holiday here. Summer break's almost over, anyway."
"Oh. Okay." I look up, noticing the unusual tone in his voice. His face doesn't give anything away, though, as he's rinsing the plate he's holding.
"I'll give him a call tonight," I promise him. Cole doesn't say anything back. I frown a little at the silence. "You okay?"
"Do you love Freddie, Hannah?" he randomly blurts out instead. I almost drop the kitchen towel I'm holding.
I open my mouth and close it again. He glances at me from the corner of his eye at my hesitance. "Uh, yeah. Of course. I love him."
That's not even a lie. I do love him. He's one of my best friends, whose last name I've legally taken.
"What's wrong, Cole?" I ask him gently.
He turns off the faucet and finally turns to me, although he isn't really looking at me. "I like Freddie."
Okay. "I know that."
"He's really nice. Even though he doesn't visit us often. But I get it. It's because he's busy."
"Uh-huh," I nod in agreement. "He's a really important guy, you know. He has a lot of responsibilities in his company."
"I really liked Jonah, too," he says then, looking up at me.
I keep my face neutral, even though I'm feeling confused. I don't know where this conversation is going. "Uh-huh," I repeat myself.
He adds, "But then I kinda didn't, because you hated him."
I blink a few times. "I... never hated him."
He eyes me skeptically. "Well, I've heard you say that you hated him—when you were on the phone with Gina. You also kept changing the channel whenever he was on TV after he won that cooking show. I know it was a long time ago, but still. I figured he'd done something and he really hurt you."
I sigh heavily. Cole was always too perceptive for his own good. Or maybe I just never kept anything subtle. "Well. Sometimes I get emotional, and I say things that I don't really mean."
The teenager rolls his eyes at me. "Duh."
I try not to take offense at his tone, and explain to him, "Jonah and I had a falling out. It was a while ago." Emphasis on the while. "But we saw each other at the reunion and we're cool now."
"Right." He nods once, then turns back to the dishes. I stop him before he turns the faucet on again.
Nudging his shoulder playfully, I ask him, "What are you thinking in that big brain of yours, huh?"
He shrugs, avoiding my eyes. "Are you gonna hate Freddie, now that you like Jonah again?"
"... Huh," I say instead of answering. "I'm trying to follow your train of thoughts here, buddy, but I'm kinda struggling."
Cole sighs exasperatedly at me. "Can you just answer the question?"
"I mean, I don't know what you mean by that. Do I have to hate one to like the other? Why is this a competition? And why do you care so much about who I like?" I question him back in a joking tone, and he smiles a little.
"Yeah. I guess that's a stupid question."
"No. Not stupid. Just a little bit confusing." Then, as sincerely as I can, I tell him, "I like them both. Just in different ways. I'm allowed to, right?"
"Yeah."
"Where's this coming from, hm?"
My little brother shrugs again, before turning around and sitting down on the kitchen stool. "I think I have a crush."
... Ooookay. He doesn't sound like he's happy about the discovery. It sounds like it's stressing him out. And, honestly, I'm getting a bit of whiplash from how this conversation is going. Carefully, I sit down next to him. "I see."
"I really like them. But we've been friends for a long time. They're my best friend."
"Alright. So, you want to ask them out? Is that what you're thinking?"
Another lazy shrug. "Maybe. But I'm scared. What if we start dating, but then something goes wrong and we break up, and I don't have my best friend anymore? I don't want to lose my friend. I'd have no one else in school."
He looks like he's still not done talking, so I keep quiet, while making sure he knows that he has my full attention.
"I've been really thinking hard about it. And then I thought about you, too. You really liked Jonah, and so I liked him too. And then you stopped liking him, and I never saw him anymore. Now you have Freddie, but what if one day you stopped liking him too? Would I have to hate Freddie too, then?" He looks frustrated by his own thoughts. "I dunno. I've just been thinking... I guess what I mean to say is... I just don't see the point of having feelings for someone when it's inevitably gonna go wrong and then I end up hating them. Like when you broke up with Jonah. Even when you said you didn't hate him."
"Oh, Cole." I wrap my arms around him and squeeze him tightly, pressing kisses on the side of his head. He doesn't even try to pull away. "Okay. First of all, you don't have to like everyone that I like, or hate everyone that I hate. Alright? Don't base your personal feelings for people on mine. You're allowed to still like people that you think I hate. I won't mind."
"Um, okay."
"The world isn't so black and white," I tell him. "And I think you're stressing too much about all of these what-ifs. I know I do that too, sometimes. I do that a lot, actually, so I understand. I've been really trying to be better. But the thing is—the thing I'm still learning myself—you never know what will happen, until it happens."
I let him go from my tight hug. He's looking at me now, listening attentively.
I shrug. "Relationships begin and end all the time. I know you've seen it happen, and I get why you're scared that you're going to lose a friend. But that's the thing, isn't it? You haven't even told them that you like them. Why are you already so convinced that you're gonna date them and then break up with them? Who's to say they won't even reject you right away?" I tease him, making him laugh a little. "Sorry, that's probably only making it worse."
"I get what you mean, though," he chuckles. "But I can't really stop myself from thinking this way."
"I understand. Happens to me too. You know, I'm not even the best person to be giving you advice about this, because I'm probably doing even worse than you." Understatement of the fucking century. I think of my big little secret I'm still keeping from Jonah, and my stomach churns in protest. I pat Cole's knee gently, my throat feeling like sandpaper as the words come out, "But if there's one thing that I've learned, it's that I'm always going to feel scared. Of taking all these little leaps. And it's okay to feel scared, but I can't let it stop me from having good things happen to me."
Cole is quiet next to me, digesting it. I understand what he's feeling all too well. I am feeling it right now—so terrified that I'm going to fuck things up by saying the wrong thing.
"I was around your age when I first dated Jonah. Just a bit older," I tell my brother. "I was really scared when I confessed to him that I'd liked him for a long time. But I did it anyway because he deserved the truth. Even though I didn't know what his reaction would be like."
I think about the diamond-encrusted wedding band that Freddie put on my finger, one I've been keeping away from my sight, and I taste something sour in my mouth.
"We had so many great moments together. But then we broke up—and, yeah, maybe I did hate him a little. But did I ever regret that I confessed my crush to him? Did I ever regret that we dated, even though it eventually ended?" I shake my head no. "Breakups hurt. Losing a friend really sucks. But it's just a thing that everyone will have to go through. And maybe it's going to take a really long time to get over that hurt, and you'd have to struggle a little. I can't say it was easy for me. But is life really meaningful, if we never get to experience all the good things we might have, just because we're a little scared of what might hurt us?"
I can't help but think about myself, and all the choices that I've taken. All my regrets, and all the things I'm thankful for. So many things have happened to me in the past few years—things that have defined who I am, even though I know I still have a lot of growing up to do. I've had to face my worst fears and lived my worst nightmares and almost didn't survive. But just because I survived it, doesn't mean that I'm now immune to feeling fucking terrified. I'll always be terrified of the things I can't control, and I think that's alright. I think that makes me human.
I'm saying words to Cole that I need to hear for myself, and it's a weird feeling to be hearing my own voice out loud. Not bad weird, though. Just a little strange.
I just hope that I'm saying the right things, that I'm helping him out. How I wish Tony's still here with me. He was so good at pep talks. He would've been much better at this than me. I can't stop the way my eyes start to feel warm as they brim with tears.
It wasn't fair. Tony wasn't present in the first few years of Cole's life, when he ran away from home over the guilt of the car accident that put me in a coma. Cole was finally starting to bond with Tony, accepting him as a brother rather than a half a stranger, when Tony was suddenly taken from us. Cole really looked up to him, and he'd come to Tony whenever he needed someone older to talk to about his troubles.
I feel like I'm not doing this as well as Tony would. How dare I tell him to be brave, to be honest, to be courageous, when I can't even do the same?
When I still can't bear to be honest to Jonah? When I'm too scared to lose him that I keep avoiding the truth?
I inhale another shaky breath and force myself to focus back on this conversation. This isn't about me, now. This is about Cole.
"Now, I don't know what will happen to me and Freddie," I lie. We've mapped out the timeline of our relationship before it even started. And even though the timeline's all a bit wonky now, I know where we'll go next. "But I know that, whatever happens in the future, I will never regret marrying him. And you won't ever have to hate him, unless you've made your own judgement and made that choice yourself. Okay?"
Cole nods.
"Alright. So that's me. Now, I can't make the choice for you. I don't know how your friend will react. You're the one who knows them. All I can say is that: having a crush on someone is a natural part of life. It's not pointless, even if things eventually go wrong. Just because Jonah and I broke up, doesn't mean that our relationship was pointless. I learned a lot of things about relationships. I learned a lot of things about myself that I wouldn't have discovered otherwise."
He's quiet for a while, until he suddenly crashes into my arms and hugs me tightly. "I'm really scared."
"It's okay." My chest feels warm from how easily he trusts me. I wrap my arms around him, and rub his back comfortingly. "You don't have to tell them right away. Maybe test the waters, first? See if they have any interest in you. Do a few small, nice things for them, that you haven't done before as their friend. Hmm. I'm not really sure, actually. It's been a while since I've had a crush on someone."
Cole laughs into my shoulder. "What did you do when you had a crush on Freddie?"
I scrunch up my face where he can't see it. I don't even know if I've ever had a crush on Freddie. Not even when we were in college and dated for those two short weeks. "Ummm. I can't remember. It's really been a while."
"Hmmm. What about Jonah?" Cole asks, pulling away.
"Well, we were a bit unconventional. We weren't friends before that. In fact, he kinda hated me at first. Because I kept annoying him on purpose, to get his attention."
My brother's face is twisted in bewilderment. "Right."
"Kind of like, you know, the equivalent of tugging on your crush's ponytail when you're, like, five years old. Definitely don't do what I did."
"Uh-huh, sure."
"No, seriously. Just stick with cutesy niceties and see where you can go from there."
"Ooookay. Sure. I can totally do that." He nods, and then smiles a little shyly. "Thanks for listening, Hannah."
"Anytime, Cole."
He starts to stand up, returning to the sink. Then pauses and turns to me once again.
"You and Freddie are doing okay, though. Right?" he asks with a small frown.
I furrow my brows in confusion, before trying to replace whatever expression on my face with something neutral. "Yeah. We're great. Don't you worry about it."
He accepts it, and we both return to the dirty dishes in comfortable silence.