A long lane at night

2.2. COURAGE

**JACK**

NATE HAS ALWAYS BEEN A MASSIVE PART OF my life. In my mind, he's always been there, just like my family. I could never really picture my life without Nate, so why the hell did it take me so long to picture my life with him?

My dads' words keep ringing in my brain as I take the short drive back down to his house on the town that's two kilometres away from our upper-state home. Has Nate always liked me like that? Have there been any kinds of signs that I missed along the way? All of the years of my friendship with Nate come back immediately to my mind.

One of the very first memories I have is of meeting Nate, the first child who ever hugged me. The kids at the orphanage never got too close, they were all to scarred to try. God, I'm happy I took Alice out of that life so soon she won't even know what an orphanage feels like.

The afternoon playdates with Nate pass by me in a blur. Nate, who always shared any toy he was holding with me. His sixth birthday, when he desperately cried because some other kid got a slice of cake before I did. We always gave each other our first slices. Our fathers didn't even care anymore. So many different faces of Nate with different ages rushing through my mind at the same time, making the short and fast drive seem like it's taking hours.

How we would always be placed in the same classrooms and sit side by side every day. How once a French teacher was in a bad mood and placed an assignment in pairs she had already chosen, purposedly giving Nate and I different pairs. That was the first time Nate made a drawing, not a very flattering one of our teacher being eaten alive by cockroaches. We would like to have only laughed it off, but his father found the picture and Nate got grounded for a month.

That was a tough one. Nate had all of his devices confiscated and we could only talk at school. He always arrived with a sad face, but soon he would light up. All these years, whenever that memory found its way back to the front of my mind, I would only think he was happy to be around people, away from the prison his bedroom had briefly become. Could it have been that what changed his mood was actually seeing me?

Have I always had that effect on Nate? How old were we back then? No more than eleven, I'm positive. Eleven-year-old kids don't have romantic feelings, right? I know I didn't. And if Alice does when she's still so young, she'll be so grounded.

Focus, Jack.

I didn't have romantic feelings when I was eleven. In fact, have I ever had romantic feelings? I never felt like dating anyone.

Some folks from secondary school liked to say that Nate and I were a couple. The first time that happened, I can remember Nate nervously trying to laugh it off, but when he saw I drew no reaction to it, he let it go and, whenever a classmate would say something along those lines, the both of us only shrugged it away. I never wanted to date anyone, but the idea of dating Nate wasn't something I gave any attention to, but it wasn't something that I needed to clarify was a lie.

I try to push my memory in vain, searching for a single moment when Nate would have made some kind of advance towards me. I can't find anything, not a single moment. Nothing. Not a word, or a joke, or a physical move.

I decide to park my car next to a tree before I reach the town and allow my brain to go on with its search.

My mind wanders off to the times we travelled. Sometimes a school excursion, but most times with my dads and Uncle Henry. Nate and I always shared a room when we travelled. There was this one time that the hotel concierge apologised a thousand times, but nothing could be done and we had to share a double bed. We stayed at the hotel for five days and nothing was different. When bed time would come, we each would take our turns in the shower and talk our ears off until sleep overcame us. On the last night, we had fallen in a comfortable silence, staring at one another until we fell asleep. We woke up the next morning in the very same position.