Nico looked at the cake, not at me. "What was I supposed to think, Jules?"
"That I was busy. That work was work."
"For four years?" He laughed, but there was nothing in it. "You said you had a desk in Georgia. You said paperwork."
"It was easier," I said.
"Easier than telling your brother you got promoted to major?"
"Yes."
He finally looked up. "Say that again."
"It was easier," I said. "Not better. Easier."
The party noise came through the door, muffled. On the table his framed chevrons sat beside the cake.
"You want to know when I decided?" I said. "I did not. There was never a meeting in my head where I voted. I just kept not saying it until not saying it became the thing."
"That is a decision," he said.
"I know that now."
"Do you? You have a line for everything."
"Name them," I said.
"I'm fine," he said. "That one came first. I asked how Sangin was and you said, I'm fine, like I had asked about the weather."
"You were twenty three," I said.
"I was a Marine."
"I know."
"Second one," he said. "It's classified. You used that for the promotion, for the move, for Thanksgiving in twenty nineteen."
"Some of it was," I said.
"And some of it was you not wanting the conversation."
"Yes," I said. "Some of it was that."
He nodded once, like he had expected an argument. "Third one is my favorite. I'll tell you later. Later never came, Jules. Later was a door you kept closing."
"I kept thinking there would be a right time," I said. "A quiet one. Not a party, not Christmas."
"There were ten years of quiet times."
"I know."
"So why?" he said. "Give me the real one."
I folded my hands so they would stop shaking. "When I came home, I wanted to be your sister. Not the person I had been over there. In Sangin I was a captain with a radio and a call sign and people depending on me not to panic. Sticky Six could handle anything, that was the job. At home I wanted to argue about Dad's sauce and steal fries off your plate and not watch you look at me differently."
"I would not have looked at you differently."
"You would have," I said. "Not badly. Just differently. And I could not stand losing the one place where I did not have to be her."
He said, "That is not the whole thing."
"No," I said. "The other part is worse."
"I thought I was protecting you. From things you could not change. You could not fix what happened over there. You could not fix the nights I did not sleep after. So I decided you did not need to carry any of it."
"You decided," he said.
"Yes."
"You decided what I could handle, what I needed, what version of my own sister I got. Because you are three years older."
"Nico."
"No, let me finish. You do not get to decide what I can handle just because you are older. That is not protection, Jules. That is being managed. I have had commanders manage me. I did not need it from my sister."
"You are right," I said.
"I am not done being mad just because you agree."
"I am not asking you to be done," I said. "I kept making decisions for you long after you were grown. Carrying things alone became a habit. I got good at it and I called that love, and it was not fair to you."
"I am sorry. No conditions on that. I should have trusted you with the truth and let you decide what to do with it."
He rubbed his thumb against the edge of the table. "I owe you one too."
"You do not have to balance this tonight."
"I am not balancing. I have been making the same joke for years. Jules and her secret desk. Everyone laughs, you smile, I get to be the funny one instead of the one who is hurt." He swallowed. "I am not sorry for joking. We joke, that is us. I am sorry for making you the joke. There is a difference and I knew it."
"Some nights, yeah. I knew I was aiming at you because aiming straight felt worse."
I nodded. "I accept that. Thank you."
"Do not thank me yet. I am still angry."
"I know," I said. "I am still sitting here."
"Yeah," he said. "So am I."
Outside, someone knocked and then stopped. We stayed seated, the cake uncut between us, not fixed, but honest for the first time in years, and neither of us reached for the door.
Chapter 16: First Slice
Barrett opened the door himself, and the noise came back slowly, like a room remembering how to breathe.