“What?” Brandon asks.

“We’ll stay here. Find a room or whatever you guys need. Just stay close. The second Dad comes out, I’ll text you. You shouldn’t be alone in this.”

Brandon rushes to his feet, grabs me and pulls me into the tightest hug. “Thank you. I’m sorry. Thank you.” Something tells me he’s thanking me for more than just this. Maybe this whole time, he’s been afraid we wouldn’t accept him.

“There’s nothing to thank me for,” I tell him.

When we pull away, Alec looks at me. The guy I’ve hated for four years. The one who’s hated me and maybe loves my brother, holds my stare and says, “Thanks, man. You’re all right, you know?”

I nod. As they’re walking away, I sit down again. I pull Charlotte to my lap, wrap my arms around her waist and bury my head in her neck. “I want my brother to be okay. Both of them.”

“They will be. I think the Chase boys can do just about anything.”

That one sentence gives me hope. It’s not the exact same, but close enough to the same thing I said before.

There are so many words that could be said right now; I’m sorry, forgive me, I trust you, I love you, but I’m not now is the time. Eventually? Yeah, but I think deep down, we all already know them, regardless.

Only twenty-five minutes after we get there, Joshua is born. He weighs 1.5 pounds. His lungs are weak. He has to have tubes all over him, but he’s here. And I know he’ll be okay. He’s a Chase.

Charlotte and Alec stay all night with us. Charlotte doesn’t let go of me the whole time. I don’t want her to. Alec is never more than a foot away from Brandon either.

In the morning, she and Alec make plans to leave. Their plane leaves to take them home in two days and they have things to take care of before they go.

Alec and Brandon have disappeared again. They’ve done that a lot over the summers, I realize, and it makes me feel even worse for them. So many times I could have tried to get to know my brother better. Maybe if I would have, he would have realized he could trust me. That I would always love him no matter what.

Charlotte and I walk outside. They’re taking Brandon’s truck back to our house for their things, and then a cab to the train station. It sucks not to be able to take them ourselves, but we need to stay here with our family.

When Charlotte looks at me, tears fill her eyes. “You’d think I’d get used to saying goodbye to you.”

I cup her cheek; brush her tears away with my thumb.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“No, I’m sorry. You’re right. I could have found a way.”

“Maybe you could have, maybe you couldn’t. I was selfish and jealous. I’m pretty sure I made it too hard for you to be honest, anyway. I don’t think it matters. None of us are perfect, Star Girl. I forget that sometimes. I think we all do, but that’s life, right? You make mistakes and you learn from them and you grow up.” That’s what we’ve done together—grown up. The first time I saw her, she was this skinny tomboy, who stumbled over her words in front of me and I kind of liked that I made her react that way. That I gave her something that no one else did.

And then the next year, she was giving that to me.

We’ve grown and changed, screwed up, but at the beginning of each summer, we found each other again. Or maybe we never really lost each other.

“Over the past four years, nothing important has ever happened in my life that I haven’t shared with you. Even if it was months later, or through the computer, or in the middle of a lake, or under the stars. I should have trusted you.”

The tears keep coming and I keep wiping them.

“I’m going to Columbia in the fall,” I finally tell her.

Her eyes go wide, and she kind of shakes her head a little. “What? Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I don’t know, but I’m saying it now.” I think back to last year, what I told her while we sat in those chairs by the lake when she wore her yellow bikini. “I want to be with you. I’ve always wanted to be with you. For three years we said goodbye at the end of each summer. We made plans to keep in contact, but that didn’t always happen. We made plans to stay together and that never happened. This time we’re saying goodbye after only two weeks, but at the end of the summer, you’ll be back.”

“We’ll talk every day,” she uses my same words from last year.

“And when you get back, I’ll take the train to see you every weekend.” It’s not perfect, but it’s doable. An hour and a half is nothing compared to everything we’ve been through.

“I love you, Nathaniel Chase. I’ve loved you since I stepped out of that cabin and I dropped the keys in front of you. Every first I’ve ever had is with you and I want to keep having them.”

“I love too, Star Girl. You’re it for me.” I drop my forehead to hers. Slide my hand around to the back of her neck. And then I kiss her, knowing this time, we’re ready. All those other summers and those other kisses and everything else we shared, my dad choosing some random lake in some random town to stay in one year, the fights and the screw ups that helped us learn and gave us experiences with other people. They were all meant to happen, and our paths were supposed to cross over and over again. Until we found that point, the bright star in the summer sky that would be ours forever.

Out of all the years, this is the one she changed and grew the most, the one we both did.

“I’ll see you soon,” I tell her.

It’s not goodbye anymore.

“See you soon.”

As if on cue, Brandon and Alec walk up. My brother hugs her goodbye. I look at Alec and hold out my fist. He bumps it with his.

“What are you going to do?” I ask Brandon, after they disappear.

“I don’t know. It’s hard.”

“You know Mom and Dad won’t care. They’ll support you no matter what.”

“I know.”

“And me.”

“I know that too,” he tells me.

“I feel like shit that you didn’t think you could tell me who you are. Whatever I did, I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault. It’s not always feeling like you can’t trust someone…I think it’s also about being honest with myself. If it was a secret, I could pretend it wasn’t true. Shitty, right? That I’m not man enough to be proud of who I am.”

“What?” I grab his arm. “You’re a hell of a lot stronger than you give yourself credit for.”

Brandon nods. “It’s not just my secret. It’s Alec’s too.”

“You have shitty taste in guys,” I tease him.

Brandon punches me. “Dickhead.”

“I’m kidding. He’s not too bad.”

He opens his mouth as if he’s going to say something about Alec, but I can tell he’s not ready. Brandon takes a deep breath. “Come on. Let’s go see Joshua.”

“I’m here, man. Know I’m always here.”

Brandon nods.

I walk inside with my brother, my best friend and hope he’s able to be himself one day. Hope he sees there is nothing wrong with who he is.

My phone vibrates in my pocket and I pull it out.

I’ll see you soon

I smile at Charlotte’s text. Maybe everything isn’t perfect. I don’t know if it ever is. But if you ask me, it’s pretty close.

For the first time, everything went as planned. Alec and I went back to The Village. We worked all summer, helping Dad. His parents were always there too, even though things are still strained with Alec and his dad. Nate and I talked every day. He told me about his trips to the hospital to see Joshua, who was getting stronger all the time. Josh was a Chase boy, after all. We talked about Brandon and Alec, who kept in touch, but still didn’t now what they were going to do. Brandon had to go back to Ohio for school soon. It wasn’t like it was the moon, I’d told Alec. He looked at me one day and said he finally got it. He understood why I wanted out. Not that there was anything wrong with The Village, but there was a whole other world out there, too. He always thought if he stayed here, stayed with me, he could deny who he really was. I told him to be proud of who he is, I hoped he’d explore the world one day. That there would always be a place for him, for my best friend, with me.