Page 29 of Heartbeat

“You may be right,” I said after a beat and opened the bay window next to the piano.

“Is this you?” Ethan asked, and I assumed he was looking at the picture Sam had taken from the piano and left on the couch.

“If it’s a photo of a guy wearing white speedos and looking extremely high, then, yes. Yes, it is.”

“No, no speedo.”

I turned around, and he had a different photo in his hand, one showing a smiling seventeen-year-old in winter clothes and standing in snow.

“See?” He turned the frame.

“Oh, that,” I said, walking over. “That’s not me. It’s, uh, my brother.”

“The one I saw leaving just before I got here?”

“No, not Noah. That’s Liam, my older brother.”

“I didn’t know you had an older brother.”

“Yeah. He died two years ago,” I said, looking at the picture.

“Shit, I’m sorry, I didn’t—” he said nervously but stopped himself.

I half-smiled, not really knowing how to reply. All these years, I never once said, “It’s okay,” when someone uttered the words, “I’m sorry,” in referencing Liam. I knew it was just one of those things people tend to do, but I’ve never liked it. First, because it wasn’t okay, and I hated being disingenuous; also, I’ve always thought silence, in occasions such as these, was more fitting, somehow. More respectful.

“You look like him,” Ethan said, carefully putting the frame back on top of the piano, in the exact same spot he’d removed it from.

“Yeah?”

“Uh-huh.” He nodded.

We both stared at the frame for a few seconds in silence.

“He looked cool,” Ethan said kindly.

“He was. He was awesome. Even though he was a couple of years older than me, we were always together, you know? Ever since we were little, he was just never able to get rid of me.”

Ethan smiled.

“Even when it came to friends, we even shared that,” I said. “His friends were my friends and…mine were his.”

“Your parallel universe,” Ethan said with such warmth.

I’m in so much trouble.

“Yeah,” I said softly. “My ghosts.” I all but whispered.

“I can’t even imagine how hard it must be—”

“Why are you here?” I blurted out, finally finding the courage to ask.

“I—I wanted to see if your head was any better.”

“Oh. Well, I hadn’t even—”

“That’s actually a lie.”

“It is?”

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