22. Arlo

What feels like a literal second after Noah sends the text his phone is ringing.

“Do I answer?” he asks us.

“What exactly did you text him?”

“I said that I popped over ’cause you invited me for dinner but you won’t open the door, and I’m pretty sure I smell something burning inside.”

“Don’t answer, we need him to come here to find out what’s going on,” I say, and Harrison nods.

“He’s probably dialing from his truck and is on his way over already.”

Noah flicks his blaring phone onto silent and puts it on the counter.

“Okay, the door is unlocked. Noah, you go up there in the hallway, and we’ll stay here on the couch so he can’t see us until he comes in. I can’t believe we’re actually doing this. It’s like an intervention or something,” I say, my knee bouncing.

“It’s exactly like an intervention,” Noah calls back to us from the hallway. “We are intervening with our brother being a dick. I hope he gets here soon though, cause my stomach is grumbling so badly after smelling dinner. Do you think there will be leftovers I can take back to school?”

“If he doesn’t stick around you can have the whole pot,” I reply, and then we hear him. Gordon yells for Noah as he runs up the hall.

“Noah, where are you? Is he okay, Noah?” Gordon yells, barreling through the door of my apartment.

“He’s in the living room,” we hear Noah reply, and then Gordon freezes in the doorway the second he spots us on the couch.

“What the fuck is this?” he asks, turning back.

“This is your intervention, big brother. Now sit the fuck down,” Noah says, slapping him on the shoulder and pushing him toward the living room. He tries to shrug him off, but Noah is just as strong and helps lead him over.

“I don’t have anything to say to them,” Gordon tells Noah as he sits in the armchair opposite us. Harrison’s fingers tighten their grip on my hand. This is it.

“Well, we have things to say to you,” I tell him, my voice is nowhere near as strong as I would have liked it to come out, but not bad either. Noah nods and takes a place behind Gordon, his hands resting on the back of the armchair like he’s preparing to hold him down if needed. Fuck, I hope it’s not needed.

“I think Harry here said plenty today.” Gordon glances toward Harrison. He didn’t tell me he spoke to Gordon today, but that’s probably because it got him nowhere and he didn’t want me to feel like tonight might end the same way.

“Well, now you are going to hear from me. And then if you want to leave, I won’t stop you, but I’m hoping you’ll stay. I made Dad’s casserole, and you promised I could cook for you after the cast came off.”

Gordon’s eyes flick to the kitchen, then Arlo’s hand linked with mine before resting on the coffee table between us.

“Go on then.”

Okay, this is it. I take a steadying breath and begin my rehearsed statement.

“I get that you’ve always felt like you had to look out for me, but looking out for me doesn’t mean you get to tell me how to live my life.” I don’t pause for him to respond yet, because I need to get this part all out. The few times I tried to practice in the mirror, my eyes stung with tears and I had to keep starting over, so I’m hoping to not have that happen here now. “I know I’m not like you and Noah. I’m not strong or athletic. I trip walking in my apartment and break my fucking wrist. Where you can do a backflip, then throw a ball with perfect precision right into Harrison’s glove.”

“Or at my head,” Harrison interjects, and I swear I catch a slight smirk fighting to appear on Gordon’s lips.

“Did I always have a thing for Harrison? Yeah—”

“Wait, really?” Harrison asks, and I squeeze his hand and smile.

“Not the time, we’ll go over that later.” I return my attention to my brother. “But you knew. You saw how many of my sketches were of him when I was making your book.”

“I figured it was a crush, you’d get over it. I even warned Harrison about it so he could let you down easy.”

“To be fair,” Harrison interjects again, “that was after we were—”

“And that’s not important either,” I cut him off and take back over the conversation. “But even with my attraction to Harrison, that’s not why we are together. Harrison didn’t seek me out or try to hook up with me for some one-night stand business I know you think he still wants. He sees me in a way no other person ever has. To him, I’m not some clumsy geek that needs to be looked after.”

Noah smiles and gives me a thumbs-up from behind Gordon.

“We were friends before anything else, and that should be what you want for me. You should want me to be with a guy who doesn’t want to fix me, doesn’t want to control me, doesn’t want to steal from me or hide me away.”

“I do want that for you,” Gordon says, his jaw tight. “Are you done, can I respond now?”

I had more prepared. I wanted to tell him about how we would talk for hours after the readings, how he helped me see myself in a whole new light, how my confidence to even do this, comes from having him in my corner, having his support, but I nod and give him the floor.

“Okay, so yeah I wasn’t convinced that Harry had changed, but he told me he had a boyfriend and just hearing him use that word made me think okay this might be real, he might be giving himself a shot here at more, and then I walk in on him groping you up against a wall and I saw red. I didn’t know you were his boyfriend. For all I knew, Harry was cheating on this guy and taking advantage of my little brother who I just warned him has a crush on him.”

Okay, so lining it all up like that does kind of make his reaction more our fault than his.

“But after you found out the truth, you were still pissed,” Harrison says, and Gordon stands. Noah reaches to grab him, but I shake my head. If he leaves, he leaves. We tried to talk to him. If he still won’t listen, then I guess that’s it.

But he doesn’t leave, he walks to the window instead.

“I didn’t want to be, but yeah, I’m pissed. You both lied to me for weeks.”

“We knew you wouldn’t trust that this was real until you saw for yourself that I was done with the whole hookup scene,” Harrison tries to explain, but Gordon shakes his head.

“You deleted the apps and stopped going out clubbing and calling me at three a.m., I knew you were done. I wasn’t sure you wouldn’t go back, and you know what, I would have been cool if you did because you are my best friend, and if you want to live your life fucking everything that crawls in your bed, then you can do that.”

“As long as the guy he’s fucking isn’t me?” I ask, and all eyes go to me. My cheeks burn, and Noah laughs.

“Go, Arlo,” he says, holding out a fist like I could reach it from here to bump anyway, and I shake my head.

“Yeah, okay, as long as it wasn’t you,” Gordon concedes.

“Why?” I ask.

“Because you’re special.”

“Dude,” Noah starts, but Gordon cuts him off.

“Not like that, dickhead. Arlo, you’re the sweetest most trusting person I know, and I just didn’t want to see you get hurt.”

“I would never want to hurt him,” Harrison says.

“But you can’t know what will happen and you might, and then I lose a best friend and have to pick up the pieces of my brother’s broken heart yet again.”

I let go of Harrison’s hand, and I walk over to my brother by the window.

“No one knows what will happen in the future. I could break his heart for all you know, but that outcome you are so worried about is already happening, and you are the one causing it.”

“What?”

“You’ve hardly talked to your best friend in days, and my heart is broken because my big brother won’t get over himself and see that I’m not a little kid and I’m happy for the first time in a really long time, and it’s because I’m in love with the most amazing man.”

Gordon looks over my shoulder to Harrison and Noah behind us.

“You already know how I feel about Arlo,” Harrison says, and Gordon’s attention comes back to me.

“I guess I could have handled it better,” he says.

“You couldn’t have handled it worse,” Noah chimes in.

“He could have decked me,” Harrison adds.

“I would never have done that,” Gordon says, the anger in his voice almost gone. “Might mess up my pitching hand.”

We laugh, and it’s like someone’s popped the balloon around us and we can suddenly breathe.

“I’m sorry for being a dick,” Gordon says, and I wrap my arms around my big brother and squeeze tight.

“I’m sorry you were being a dick, too,” I say into his chest and his large arms wrap around me. “But I’m sorry we lied to you, too.”

“Yeah, man, sorry,” Harrison says, his voice growing nearer, and then his arms are around me too and his chest is against my back, and it”s like being crushed between two bears.

“I want a hug, too,” Noah says, and I’m knocked off my feet a little when he launches himself at us and wraps his arms over Harrison’s and Gordon’s shoulders.

“Getting hard to breathe in here,” I say, and they laugh and let go.

“Did you really cook Dad’s casserole?” Gordon asks, and I smile.

“I told you I’m normally a great cook. Are you hungry?”

“I kind of had dinner plans with Niki, but—”

“Invite her,” Harrison says, and I agree.

“She can come, I made plenty,” I say, and Noah frowns.

“I guess there goes my leftovers.”

“I’ll make you another batch just for you,” I say, and his face lights up.

“Cool, there are like thirty guys in the house, so you think we can make enough for all of them?”

“Not in this kitchen.” I laugh.

“You can come to the frat house. We can help, you can be the boss, kitchen man, or whatever they call it.”

“Head chef?” Harrison offers, frowning at Gordon. “And you were worried about this one?” he asks, pointing at me.

Gordon laughs. “I know, strange, right?”

“Totally. So is Niki coming?”

“She’ll be up in a minute,” Gordon says, putting his phone back in his pocket.

“That was quick,” I say.

“She was waiting for me downstairs. We were on our way out when I got Noah’s text. Dick move by the way. Didn’t Dad ever teach you what happens to kids who cry wolf?”

“They get their brothers to show up at their dickhead interventions?” Noah asks, all serious.

Gordon just shakes his head and goes to meet Niki at the door.

Harrison pulls me to him and kisses me soft and sweet.

“You were amazing. Have I told you lately that I love you?” he asks, and I kiss him again.

“It never gets old hearing it.”

“Get a room,” Gordon jokes, walking back in with Niki by his side.

“Oh, we have one. It’s just there. Would you like us to—”

“Nope, just kidding. Okay, can we focus on dinner please before I throw up and can’t eat anything?” Gordon laughs, and Harrison releases me.

“I’m sure we could show you a thing or two. Tell us the truth, Niki, he needs a little help, right?” Harrison asks, and Niki blushes but doesn’t miss a beat.

“Oh no, he’s good, trust me. He knows how to push all the right buttons, if you get my drift.”

“Okay, now I’m going to throw up, can we please just eat?” Noah asks, claiming the seat at the head of the table and holding up his bowl. “Me first, please.”

I go to grab the pot from the stove, but my wrist is a little weak from being in the cast, and it’s heavy. Gordon is watching me from the table, and I catch him shift his chair like he’s about to get up.

“Harrison, could you carry this over for me, please?” I ask, and Gordon smiles. I might not need someone to look after me, but I’ve learned that it’s okay to ask for help when you need it, too.