Page 96 of Best Friends, Tennessee

“You know,” I said, sitting up a little taller. “I didn’t protect you back then because I thought you needed it. I knew you didn’t need it.”

Ori breathed deep. “So why’d you do it?”

I puffed out a laugh, shaking my head. “Ah, fuck.”

“Finn,” he said, reaching out to squeeze my shoulder.

Fuckin’ keep it together.

“I think it was for me,” I managed to spit out. “I needed to feel useful. Like I mattered.”

“Don’t know how you could ever doubt how much you mattered,” he said in a soft tone.

I swallowed. I really felt like I was watching this conversation from above now, like I was out of my own body.

When had it all gotten so real?

“You know,” I said, “I didn't even have my own home for a while in high school. Maybe I never felt like I had one at all. Mom high all the time, Dad gone. I never let that get to me back then. Kept my head down. But sometimes, if I think too hard about it, it makes me feel like I’m going to die, Ori. You know?”

It was more than I’d said on the topic in years.

More than ever, maybe.

How could I explain how empty my childhood had felt?

How empty it had beeneverywhereother than with Ori?

His arm came around my shoulders, pulling me in, like a hug from the side. “I can tell you that I never would have admitted it back then, but Iwasglad when you came to stay with us for a while.”

“Hah. Bullshit.”

“You were the worst. But you were the fuckin’best, Finn.”

My heart felt too big for my chest. I couldn’t look at Ori right now, but the weight of his arm around me felt so good I couldn’t really make sense of it.

I squinted up at the sky. “You used to even make fun of the cereal I ate.”

Ori snorted. “Because what other teenagers actuallylikeraisin bran?”

“I’m sure plenty of them do.”

He hummed. “No way. You’re special,” he said. “I did like walking out and seeing you eating it every morning. I likedknowing you’d be happier on days you had a football practice lined up. Fighting over the TV with you, too.”

I was lost in memory. “God, that one time. With the lemonade.”

“You had the fucking balls to pour a whole goddamn Big Gulp of icy lemonade on me,” he said. “Just because I changed the channel.”

“Your Mom screamed at me, but she was even laughing later on.”

“Yeah,” Ori said. “I even liked that. Fucker.”

We were silent for a bit, and I felt like something was thawing inside me, slowly and steadily. Like I was coming alive after the longest winter of my fucking life.

Ori was looking down when I glanced back over at him. He kicked a patch of the dirt with the toe of his shoe, his brow knit, lost in thought.

“You know,” he finally said, “there’s averysmall art museum at the college in Sable Valley. Except, it’s not really that small anymore, because there was some rich-ass guy in their alumni who donated a million for the museum. They’ve done good things with it, apparently, and, well… I was thinking of checking it out, and I might even like working there for many years, if—”

“Ori,” I interjected. “Don’t do this.”

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