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I feel my whole body go tight. “Talk fast, Jude?”

Jude nods but doesn’t look worried. “It was after your divorce. She came to Europe with some…media tour or something. I didn’t recognize her, Eli, not at first. I was on the circuit the whole time you guys were married. I didn’t come home for like, a decade. I didn’t even go to your wedding. Sorry about that, by the way.”

I’d been pissed about that, I remember, but that’s neither here nor there now. “Keep going,” I say, still unsure how pissed I should be.

“When I met her I was in a bad place. Very bad. My career was over.” He points to his knee. It was a catastrophic ACL tear that did him in. He still has the faintest limp sometimes when the weather’s cold. “She tried to take me back to her hotel, but I kept thinking she looked familiar. When I finally figured it out, she burst into fucking tears. Told me everything. How she destroyed the best thing that ever happened to her.”

The anger finally falls away, replaced with only confoundedness. “Why didn’t you ever tell me this?”

Jude sighs, stretching his arm across his chest. “Because you would have tried to get her back. And that shit was not in your best interest. Not when you didn’t really want to be with her in the first place.”

I run my hand over my jaw, trying to process this new information.

Footsteps sound outside, louder now, and there’s the clank of someone dropping something, followed by a burst of laughter.

“We should go,” Jude says.

But I don’t move. “So, why did you think I was ready to hear all this now?”

“Because you’re in love with someone who looks at you the way I did, when I was a kid. Like you walk on air.”

“It’s water,” I croak, my pulse squeezing in my throat, stuck on the wordlove.Because that’s what it is, isn’t it? I love her. I want her to be my forever.

“What?”

“Walk on water…never mind. Jude, can I tell you something?”

“Yeah, man. Anything.”

“Reese and I—it wasn’t real, at first. She and I pretended to be together because I kind of insinuated we were. To Kelly. It was a whole mess. But Reese agreed to pretend with me, just so I wouldn’t humiliate myself. Then it just kind of turned real.” I run a hand over my head. “So the thought now that I could lose her again? It feels like falling off a cliff and landing in a hole. A thousand times worse than before.”

“Listen, you can fix this, Eli. You just need to show her that everything’s real.”

I throw him a look. “You didn’t even blink at the part about how Reese and I weren’t really dating before.”

Jude shrugs. “Nora and I pretend all the time, like when women are hitting on me, she acts like she’s in love with me so they’ll get the hint. She’s really good at it. So, I’m used to it.”

I don’t know whether to laugh or shake my head.

“Anyway, you deserve to be happy, man,” Jude continues. “Just like, maybe get a little therapy or something. I dunno. I’ve heard it’s good.”

I take in my brother as if he’s a totally different person.

But he’s not. He’s the same person. I’d just never noticed him like this before. I never gave him a chance. “Hey, Jude? I’m sorry.”

“For what, being a dick to me?”

This time I do laugh, a quick bark with no humor. He’s smarter than he acts. It’s just part of his schtick to play happy-go-lucky.

“Yeah, for that. Over the years.”

“You weren’t always. But it’s okay. I deserve it for kicking your ass at sports when we were in school.”

I narrow my eyes and throw Jude a punch on the arm. “Except baseball.”

But it’s not hard, and he laughs, darting easily out of the way of the next one. “Fine not baseball. But shit, maybe some anger management would be better for you.”

The plastic flap flutters again, making both of us jerk our eyes in its direction.