He wasn’t a snitch. My chest was puffing with those deadly, restrained, silent tears, and even though a gigantic part of me wanted to tell him I was fine, or at least that I would be fine, and explain it was no big deal, my big mouth went for it as my crying went straight to weeping—gasping breaths, shaking shoulders, a headache that went straight to pounding. “He wants me to give him socks.”

There was a pause and a “What?” in that rumbled voice that got mostly buried beneath my tears and gasps.

It probably didn’t even come out of my mouth correctly, but I answered, “Louie told me I could give him socks from now on.” I didn’t want to believe I was wailing, but it was probably pretty damn close to it.

Through the tears blurring my eyes, Dallas’s lips parted and his face went pale. “You can’t… you can’t afford to buy him socks?”

I put a hand over my heart like that would help the ache pounding away. “No. I can.” I wiped at my face as I hiccupped and noticed him closing his mouth. “I used to give my brother socks, and now Louie wants me to give him socks since I can’t… I can’t… give them to my brother anymore.”

There was a pause and then, “This isn’t about the socks?”

He didn’t even know. How could he know? It wasn’t about the fucking socks. At least not totally. It was about everything. About life and death, and white and black and gray. It was about having to be tough when you weren’t used to it. About having to grow when you’d thought you were done growing. In the back of my head, I knew what I’d said didn’t make any damn sense. But how could I explain? How could I begin to tell him that I had lost a part of myself with my brother’s death, and I was trying so hard to keep what I had left together with duct tape and paper clips?

“I miss….” My throat hurt, and I swore my entire chest ached. I couldn’t get the words out. Or maybe I just didn’t want to. I rarely talked about Rodrigo to anyone except Van, but Van was different. She was my sister from another mister. With a cracked tone that could embarrass me later on, I blurted out what I could never say to my mom and dad, to this man who lived across the street from me. “My brother died, and I miss him so much.” My voice cracked; it felt like my soul did the same all over again. I rubbed my palm over my mouth, like it would erase the pain those words gave me. “I miss him so, so much.”

“I’m sorry. I had no idea,” came Dallas’s soft reply.

“It’s hard… hard for me to talk about.” I shrugged and rubbed my lips again, feeling this crushing weight of heartache and mourning.

How could this hurt so much after so long still?

For some reason, I kept on unloading in front of my neighbor. “I have to tell Louie stories because he doesn’t remember him well anymore. I’m pretty sure Josh doesn’t either. And they’re stuck with me. Me. He left them to me.” I rushed out before another half-gallon of tears streamed out of my eyes uncontrollably. I hadn’t believed it after Mandy, and I still couldn’t. They had chosen me, of all the people in the world. “What was he thinking? I don’t know what I’m doing. What if I fuck up more than I already have?”

I didn’t take into consideration that he didn’t even know I had a brother, much less know anything about him. He wouldn’t understand why I missed him so much. How could he?

“Jesus Christ,” he muttered steadily. His gaze was zeroed in on me like he didn’t know what to do or say. His forehead was lined, his eyes pinched, his mouth slightly parted. He was stuck, and I mean, what was there to say or do? I was unloading on him and crying, and I didn’t even know his middle name.

“I’m sorry.” I wiped at my face futilely again. “It’s been a long day and you’ve already been so much nicer than you needed to. I’m so sorry. This is Louie’s and his damn sock’s fault.”

He seemed to study me, some emotion I couldn’t completely comprehend tightening the area around his eyes and the skin along his jaw. “The boys… both of them… are your brother’s?”

I nodded, sniffling, not even slightly regretting getting all of that out.

His expression only changed for a brief moment, too quick for me to really process it, and then he frowned. He opened his mouth wider and closed it. His hand went up to the back of his neck and he cupped it. Lines appeared at his forehead. He shrugged his shoulders and shook his head, blinking before the words burst out of his mouth. “What the hell are you apologizing for? You’re upset and you miss your brother.”

I was too shocked to even nod.

In the blink of an eye, he was looking at me like I was crazy. “You’re still a kid raising two other kids, and you care enough to worry about what kind of people you’re raising them to be. None of that sounds unreasonable to me.”

I tipped my face back and fanned at my eyes, trying my freaking hardest to get the crying under control. I gurgled some kind of noise that said I heard him.

Minutes passed with the only sound between us being me making noises. I didn’t want to look at my neighbor, so I didn’t. Eventually, after however long it could have been, he sat on the second step, so close the side of his arm bumped into my lower leg. “How long has it been?”

“Two years,” I croaked, still waving my hand back and forth. Crying usually made me feel better, but in this case, I wasn’t so sure if that was the case. “The longest two years of my life.”