He doesn’t answer, so I push the door open a smidge.

He’s sitting on the bed, hair still dripping from the shower. I sit next to him, the bowl of parsley balanced in my hand. “You okay?”

He looks over at me, his eyes sad and dark. “I’ve got to tell you something and I don’t know how,” he says.

· twenty five ·

JULIAN

Elijah’s face goes pale as soon as the words are out of my mouth. He sets the bowl of parsley down on the floor. “Just say it.”

“Figg told me what happened twenty years ago,” I start, shifting uncomfortably on the bed.

“Yeah, you already told me about that,” he says. “My dad got the whole team in trouble, and they had to forfeit the game.”

Words tumble around in my gut, and I don’t know how to pull them out and put them in the right order. My damn ribs burn. “That’s not… that’s not exactly how it actually happened,” I finally say, haltingly.

Elijah stands up and wipes his hands on his shorts, kicking the bowl with the parsley in it. A hunk of mashed parsley lands on my carpet. “Oh, shit.” He crouches down and tries to clean it up with the corner of his T-shirt.

I sit down on the floor with him and grab his wrists. “Hey, don’t worry about that right now,” I say, moving my head so that he’s looking me in the eye.

He picks his chin up. “Hi,” I say when his eyes land on mine.

“Hi,” he says back, looking worried.

“It wasn’t your father’s fault that the game was forfeited. He didn’t start the fight,” I say, my stomach whirling.

Elijah frowns. “He didn’t? I thought… I thought it was my parents the Taylor Titans were making fun of with those beach balls,” he says. My hands don’t leave his wrists, and he twists his hands and holds onto my wrists, too.

“It was,” I tell him. “But it wasn’t your father that started the fight. He actually… um… he actually tried to stop the fight.”

Elijah pulls his hands from my grip and stands up. “Wait… what? Who started it, then? Why?”

“It was actually my father,” I say, looking down. “He and your dad were friends, and he couldn’t handle the Taylor team making fun of him like that.”

I explain everything while Elijah stands very still, braced against my dresser. The whole time I’m talking, he never looks up from the floor.

“Even Figg didn’t know the real truth until after we were born,” I finally say.

Still Elijah doesn’t talk.

He leans against my dresser, bracing himself on his hands, and looks at the floor. His breathing is measured and even, but his eyes dart around wildly, like he’s trying to make sense of this huge puzzle.

“You okay?” I ask.