Chapter Fourteen

Rain tapped gently against the kitchen windows.

It had started sometime after breakfast, turning the sky a dull shade of gray and filling the Elsher house with the kind of lazy silence that only rainy afternoons could bring.

Sarah had gone grocery shopping.

Micah had been called into the rehabilitation clinic for an emergency consultation.

For the first time since Nate had arrived home...

The house belonged to only two people.

Neither of them spoke.

----------------------

Nate occupied the dining room table, which had disappeared beneath mountains of medical textbooks.

His notes covered almost every available inch of wood.

Colored sticky notes stuck out from anatomy atlases.

Flashcards littered the floor around his chair.

His laptop displayed practice questions for his licensing examinations.

He answered one.

Deleted it.

Answered it again.

Deleted it again.

Finally, he sighed.

"I swear these questions get dumber every year."

No one answered.

He looked toward the staircase.

"Talking to yourself again," he muttered.

"Great sign."

----------------------

Upstairs...

Max was hunting for a phone charger.

His own had finally died after years of abuse.

He searched his bedroom.

Nothing.

The living room.

Nothing.

The kitchen drawer that somehow contained batteries, birthday candles, spare keys and three different screwdrivers.

Still nothing.

Then he remembered.

The attic.

His mother kept old storage boxes up there.

Maybe there was an extra charger buried somewhere.

He pulled down the folding ladder and climbed into the dusty space above the house.

The attic smelled exactly the way attics always did.

Dust.

Old wood.

Cardboard.

Memories.

Sunlight streamed through a tiny circular window, illuminating stacks of neatly labeled boxes.

Christmas Decorations.

School Projects.

Simon.

Max paused at that one before forcing himself to look away.

Near the back sat another cardboard box with faded black marker across the side.

NATE

Curiosity tugged at him.

He wasn't looking for Nate's things.

He was looking for a charger.

But...

One glance couldn't hurt.

Right?

He pulled the box toward himself.

Inside were pieces of someone he'd never really known.

Old biology textbooks.

A faded football jersey.

Hospital volunteer badges.

Certificates from science competitions.

A cracked stethoscope.

A notebook full of terrible doodles.

Max smiled despite himself.

Nate couldn't draw to save his life.

He turned another page.

There was a cartoon sketch of Micah asleep during history class with exaggerated drool running down his chin.

Underneath it, eighteen-year-old Nate had written:

"Future physiotherapist. Current professional napper."

Max laughed.

"You were such a loser."

"Excuse me?"

Max nearly dropped the notebook.

Nate stood halfway up the attic ladder, one eyebrow raised.

"I leave you alone for twenty minutes."

"And suddenly you're robbing me."

"I wasn't robbing you."

"You were absolutely robbing me."

"I was looking for a charger."

"And somehow ended up reading my high school sketchbook."

"It was an accident."

"Mhm."

Nate climbed into the attic.

"I believe you."

"You shouldn't."

"I know."

----------------------

Together they sat cross-legged on the attic floor.

Nate picked up one of the old notebooks.

"I forgot I still had these."

"You kept everything."

"My mother did."

"You know how parents are."

Max nodded.

His own mother still had every birthday card he'd ever made.

Nate smiled softly as he flipped through the pages.

"I haven't seen these in years."

He found another photograph tucked between the notebook pages.

Four teenagers smiled at the camera.

Micah.

Nate.

A girl with bright purple hair.

And another boy standing beside Nate with an arm casually slung around his shoulders.

The boy smiled directly into the camera.

He looked about eighteen.

Dark curls.

Warm brown eyes.

Confident.

Happy.

Max frowned.

"Who's that?"

Nate glanced at the photograph.

"Oh."

His smile became smaller.

"Daniel."

"Friend?"

Nate looked at him.

Then...

A grin spread slowly across his face.

"You really don't know."

Max blinked.

"Know what?"

Nate leaned back against a box and started laughing.

Not loud.

Just genuine, uncontrollable amusement.

"What?"

"You honestly have no idea."

"I clearly don't!"

"Oh my God..."

Nate laughed harder.

"I completely forgot you were only ten when I left."

"What does that have to do with anything?"

Nate held up the photograph.

"That's my boyfriend."

Silence.

"...Your what?"

"My boyfriend."

Max stared.

Then looked at the picture again.

Then back at Nate.

"...Boyfriend?"

Nate nodded.

"Yep."

"...Like..."

He gestured helplessly.

"...boyfriend boyfriend?"

Nate burst out laughing again.

"There are different kinds?"

"I..."

"No?"

"I don't know!"

Nate wiped tears from the corners of his eyes.

"This is amazing."

"It is not."

"It really is."

"You seriously never knew I was gay?"

Max folded his arms.

"No."

"You thought Eric was..."

He stopped.

"...Eric."

Nate laughed so hard he nearly fell backward into another storage box.

"You've got to be kidding me."

"I swear!"

"I thought..."

Max rubbed the back of his neck.

"...I don't know."

"I just never thought about it."

"You've been calling Eric 'she' in your head this entire time?"

"I thought Eric was one of those names that worked both ways."

Nate stared at him.

"...Fair... I've heard worse."

----------------------

For several minutes they simply laughed.

It was unexpected.

Easy.

The first truly relaxed conversation they'd shared since Nate came home.

When the laughter finally settled, Max looked at the photograph again.

"So..."

"You've always known?"

Nate shrugged.

"Since I was about fifteen."

"Were you scared?"

"No."

"You weren't?"

"No."

"My parents figured it out before I did."

Max blinked.

"What?"

Nate smiled.

"My mother sat me down one day."

He lowered his voice, imitating her perfectly.

'Nathaniel... are you trying to tell us something?'

"I said no."

"She looked at me for about ten seconds and said..."

'Sweetheart, you've spent six months talking about the captain of the football team.'

Max laughed.

"No."

"Oh yes."

"My dad laughed so hard he nearly dropped his coffee."

"What happened?"

"They hugged me."

"That was it."

"No drama?"

"No."

"No yelling?"

"No."

"They just wanted me to be happy."

Max looked down at the photograph.

"You were lucky."

"I was."

Nate's smile softened.

"They weren't perfect, but they loved me exactly as I was."

----------------------

Max picked up another photograph.

This one showed Nate and Daniel sitting on the hood of an old pickup truck.

Daniel was kissing Nate's cheek while Nate looked thoroughly embarrassed.

"Ew."

Nate reached for it.

"Oh, give me that."

Max held it out of reach.

"You were adorable."

"I was awkward."

"You still are."

"I know."

"You smiled more."

The words slipped out before Max realized he'd spoken them aloud.

The attic became quiet.

Nate looked at the picture.

"I did."

"You looked..."

Max searched for the right word.

"...lighter."

"I was."

"What changed?"

Nate didn't answer immediately.

Instead, he carefully placed the photograph back into the box.

"Life."

"Medical school, losing my parents, loving people, losing people." He smiled sadly. "Growing up."

----------------------

Max studied him.

For the first time...

He wasn't looking at the older boy who used to throw footballs with him in the backyard.

He wasn't looking at the medical student who seemed to know everything.

He wasn't looking at the man who constantly criticized his decisions.

He was looking at someone who had once been eighteen.

Who had once laughed all the time.

Who had once fallen in love for the first time.

Who had once believed life would always stay that simple.

"When did you meet Eric?"

"First year of medical school."

"You loved him?"

Nate laughed quietly.

"I bought a ring."

Max looked up.

"You proposed?"

"No."

"He proposed first."

"I just bought the ring because I wanted to surprise him with another one."

He shook his head.

"Kind of stupid now."

"No." Max answered before thinking. "I don't think it is."

Nate looked at him.

"You don't?"

"No."

"It just means you really loved him."

For a long moment, neither spoke.

Then Nate smiled.

"Aren't you supposed to be making fun of me?"

"I probably should."

"So why aren't you?"

Max looked at the photographs spread across the attic floor.

Daniel.

School trophies.

Volunteer badges.

Medical acceptance letters.

Football medals.

Birthday cards from Sarah.

Christmas ornaments Simon had carved by hand.

Six years of memories frozen inside cardboard boxes.

"I don't know."

He answered honestly.

"I guess..."

He shrugged.

"...I forgot you had a life before all this."

Nate followed his gaze.

"I did."

"You weren't always..." He gestured vaguely. "...sad."

"No."

"I wasn't."

The rain continued tapping softly against the roof.

For the first time, Max understood something that had never occurred to him before.

Nate hadn't left home as a broken man.

But he had come home carrying years of invisible losses.

His parents.

His first love.

His confidence.

His future with Eric.

And somewhere along the way...

The smiling boy in the photographs had become the quiet man sitting beside him.

Max carefully placed every photograph back into the box.

When he stood to leave, he paused at the attic ladder.

"...For what it's worth..."

Nate looked up.

"I think I like Daniel better than Eric's."

Nate stared at him for exactly three seconds.

Then he laughed so loudly that the sound echoed through the attic.

"That," he said, wiping tears from his eyes, "is the most sixteen-year-old thing you've said all week."

Max rolled his eyes.

"I was trying to be nice."

"You were."

Nate smiled—a real, effortless smile that reached his eyes.

"Thank you."

Max disappeared down the ladder before Nate could see the small smile tugging at his own lips.

Neither of them would admit it aloud.

But somewhere between dusty photographs, old memories, and laughter echoing through the attic...

Another piece of the wall between them had quietly fallen away.