Page 22 of The Amazing Alpha Tau Fratmas Experience
“How do you do that?” I asked while the coffee machine bubbled away.
“Do what?” Marty asked, wrinkling his nose.
“Just—justsaythat?” I felt like an idiot. “What you said to Dalton.”
“That I love him?” Marty shrugged. “Bro, I just say every thought I ever have.”
Well, that was certainly true.
“Sometimes I think if I didn’t open my mouth and let them out, my brain would explode,” he said, “but I asked Dalton if exploding brains were a thing, like a medical thing, and he saidno. Brains don’t do that.” He scratched his cheek. “Imagine if they did, though!”
I could relate to the whole feeling like I might explode if I didn’t get the words out, but how was I meant to just… say stuff like that? I’d spent my life curating my words like I was afraid they’d be stolen by the British Museum. It wasn’t like I could just start throwing them around the place now.
Could I?
I looked around the kitchen. It was practically spotless. And when I followed Marty through to the living room and watched him throw a cloth over the coffee table, I had to admit it was as clean as it had ever been. Something gleamed, and out of the corner of my eye I saw that there was still a piece of tape stuck to the wall where Marty had taped up his stupid reindeer game. He followed my gaze and quickly pulled the tape off, and I pretended I hadn’t seen him do it. Marty had killed it with Fratmas, and someone should tell him that.
And maybe that someone was me.
“Hey, Marty?” I pushed down my dumb nerves. What I was about to do was new territory for me, but how hard could it be?
Marty took in my pinched expression. “I swear, the table’s not that bad,” he said quickly.
“No, it’s not that,” I said. “I just wanted to say thank you. You did a really good job with Fratmas, and with the cleanup.”
Marty’s eyes grew wide, and his face lit up with a smile. “Scout, did you just say somethingnice? Holy shit, it’s a Fratmas miracle!”
And then he hugged me.
It wasn’t completely awful.
Marty thumped me on the back enthusiastically and pulled back at last. “Anyhow, we’re almost finished cleaning up, so we’ll be heading out soon. Dalton wants to beat the traffic, and I’m like, ‘Bro, it’s Harrisonburg. What traffic?’” His expression grewdistant. “Huh. Maybe he meant I-64. Anyway, everyone’ll be out of your hair soon, just how you like it.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Last night was really fun, though. I mean that.”
He beamed. “It really is a Fratmas miracle!”
I’d made his morning, just by saying one nice thing.
Then his smile grew to impossibly wide dimensions, and he said, “Hey, Scout?”
“What?”
“I love you, bro.”
I grunted and punched him in the shoulder.
“You’re a work in progress,” he said, giving me finger guns.
“Go get your boo and get out of here,” I said, “before I tell Trey about the table.”
“Work in progress,” he repeated and bounded up the stairs.
I went back to the kitchen, filled our coffee mugs, and put them on a tray. Then I headed back upstairs, my heart pounding. I pushed our bedroom door open and Trey greeted me with an easy smile from where he was sitting, his back propped up against the headboard, reading something on his phone. I set the tray down on the desk and sat on the bed next to him, my legs folded under me.
“Why is the coffee over there and not over here, Scout?” he asked.
I fiddled with the corner of the quilt, tracing the seam with my fingertips. My nerves jangled like a pocketful of keys, but I pushed them down. I was doing this.
