Maybe I’ll crash there so I don’t have to deal with the snow, I say.

Mom smiles, happy that Connor and I are close enough that I’d head out in a storm to walk his dog. It’s odd, my mother’s smile. It isn’t the smile of a mother who allowed her son to be kicked out of the house. It’s the smile of a mother content with things that don’t really exist. She lives in a strange kind of world where Connor is straight and an executive at a bank or a successful filmmaker or a hotshot journalist, anything instead of what he is, a gay shop clerk with more friends than she’ll ever have, and a taste for free will.

On the other hand, my father’s emotions are written all over his face. The grimace he wears now is the one he always has when I mention Connor. The one he filled the house with, along with his rage, the night Connor graduated from high school and came out to my parents, St. Sebastian’s, and all of the Upper West Side as he accepted his diploma, high as a kite, and announced his unfortunately short-lived love for Tony Ramos.

Even now, I can’t meet my father’s eyes. While he won’t go as far as forbidding me from seeing Connor, he makes his feelings clear. I’m not sure if he’s more worried that I’m lying about going to my brother’s or telling the truth, and he’s too afraid of my answer to ask directly. Afraid I might confess to being “that way” too.

In truth, Connor wouldn’t need me to walk his dog, he’d probably have friends lining up to do it.

Connor has a knack for collecting people. He meets them at clubs, and in stores, at parties and shows. He strikes up conversations with bartenders and librarians, taxi drivers and street performers. Connor lives his life out loud, but until that night at graduation, I hadn’t really noticed how loud, and even though it’s been four years, the reverb is deafening.

You have to take control of your life and run with it, Connor tells me. Don’t let anyone hold you back. There’s a world waiting for you. It’s big and flashy and exciting, and you need to put yourself out there and grab it. Or let it grab you, you know, whatever you’re into.

And while he talks, I can picture it. This community, this family he’s replaced us with. These people who can dance all night fueled by rhythm and freedom, drugs and each other. These people who have grabbed their lives away from everyone who has told them they’re wrong and they can’t and they’re damaged. These people who have made themselves into who they want to be, even if it’s just for one night.

These people who are not me. Not yet, anyhow.

I don’t know if I’m jealous of Connor or of the people he hangs out with. I only know that my brother has moved on to someplace I’m not.