Page 35 of My Brother’s Best Friend

I sighed. “Before today, I hadn’t picked up a paintbrush in months. Every time I think about trying to make art, I feel sick to my stomach, knowing it’s just one more piece that no one will want to buy, one more example of how I’m not measuring up.”

“You don’t have to measure up,” Cam said softly.

“This, from the guy whose social anxiety is so bad he either goes mute in public or rambles to strangers about melons for half an hour?”

“You know what I mean,” he said with a laugh. “It’s enough to just be yourself.”

“It’s really not.” I looked at him helplessly. “I was supposed to be the one of us who made it out of here.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that Levi puts a good face on things, but do you think he really wanted to be stuck on this island, running a coffee shop for the rest of his life? Taking care of his sister’s kids? Giving my mom her thousandth second chance when she decides to drift into sobriety for a couple of weeks every year? Holding things together because nobody else in our family knows how?”

I closed my eyes, trying to hold back the tears that pressed to get out. “When I graduated high school, he told me he wanted me to leave. To get out of here. He even helped pay for art school. He tried so hard to give me the life that I wanted, and in the end, I wasn’t worth it.”

“Jordan, that’s—”

“It’s true. Here I am, complaining that Levi doesn’t realize I’ve grown up, but when you get down to it, have I? Have I done anything to prove I’m a functional adult? Like, we’re not even talking about being a success here. We’re just talking about being able to pay rent and buy groceries.”

I opened my eyes and stared at the undulating flowers and trees on the far side of the patio, the honeysuckle that twined up a lamppost and filled the air with its scent.

“Maybe I should just move back here permanently. Accept that I was never going to get out.”

“Is that what you want?” Cam asked.

“Does it matter?”

“It has to.” There was a quiet fire in his voice. “Even if you can’t always do what you want, the knowing matters.” The intensity in his eyes pinned me in place. “Sometimes the knowing is all you have to hold onto.”

I exhaled. What did I want?

I want you. I’ve wanted you since before I knew what wanting was. And I’ll never have you. You’re just another impossible, childish dream I should have grown out of ages ago.

I thought of Levi again. Of everything he’d done for me. Thought about how no matter how much I screwed up, he’d still let me come home.

“I used to want to run away from my family,” I said slowly. “To go somewhere no one knew our reputation. Somewhere my mother had never spent the night in jail, sleeping off whatever she’d taken. Where no one knew my stepfather’s record, or why my sister was dead.” I swallowed around the lump in my throat. “But I didn’t realize that kind of freedom comes with a price. When you have no ties, it’s like you lose a piece of who you are. I’m not sure I like being anonymous anymore. It’s too easy to fall through the cracks. Too easy to become…”

“Invisible?”

Cam’s voice was so soft, I wasn’t even sure he was talking to me. But it was like he’d read my mind. I stared at him.

“I might not have moved away,” he said with a sad smile, “but I’ve spent my life making myself small. Sometimes, it’s like I don’t even exist.”

I frowned. “Cam, you’re famous. You’ve written three bestselling books. They made a PBS special out of one of them.”

“My work is famous, maybe. But the bigger it gets, the more I want to hide.”

“But why? That’s what I don’t understand. I’d give anything to have the kind of success you’ve had, but you act like you’re embarrassed of yourself. It doesn’t make any sense.”

“It does if you’re me.”

The quiet anguish on his face broke my heart. He didn’t speak for a long moment after that, and I began to regret pushing. But I couldn’t accept the fact that Cam felt that way about himself. Right when I was about to tell him that, he spoke again.

“I’ve always been bigger than everyone I know. The elephant in every room.” His words were precise and measured. Like he was trying to hold them at arm’s length. “When I was a kid, my mom used to go on these diets, and she’d make me do them with her, but they never worked. No matter what she tried, I just kept growing. Up and out.”

“You were a kid. Kids are supposed to grow.”

“Not like me. Not as big as I was, not that young.” He pressed his lips together for a moment. “Kids in my class used to call me the marshmallow man. Used to throw rocks at me to see if they’d bounce off. This one boy, Scott, got all his friends to poke me with sticks because they didn’t think I could feel it ‘with all my blubber.’”