By the time we arrive at my house, it’s 10:50 p.m., giving us ten minutes to spare before my curfew.

“Do you want to stay?” he asks, half a minute or so after we’ve stopped, as the engine cools. “I mean, you can go if you want. I’ll see you at my place for your training, but…”

“Nah,” I reply, squeezing his hand. “I’ll stay.”

“Because, you know, you don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

“I want to.”

The lights are on upstairs in my parents’ room, which faces the street. Mom’s car is still gone. I’m sure Isobel has been blowing up my phone, but she can wait.

Right now, and it sounds so cheesy that it makes me sick, there’s only Blake and me. And that feels like how it should be.

“You don’t find this weird?” I suddenly ask, still resting my head against the window.

“Should I?”

“I mean, I have your brother’s liver. That… Doesn’t that make us, in some weird way, related?”

I can tell he’s thinking, letting the words roll over him.

“I don’t think so. I think, as my dad says, it makes you part of the family, but not exactly family. You aren’t Dave… And I miss him.” Blake pauses and closes his eyes.

“The zoo was his favorite place. Always was. Every birthday we would go there, even when he was in college. He still wanted to visit the zoo. So when I thought about where to take you, the zoo just came to mind first.” He opens his eyes and glances sideways at me.

“I think…I didn’t take enough of my brother’s advice. Who does, really? We think we have so much time with the people we care for. But I admired him, you know? He had a lot of good ideas, and despite how easily things came to him, he never took that for granted. Dave was a good person, the best version of Mom and Dad. I…never told him, but I wanted to be like him. Not because he got Mom and Dad’s love or anything, but because he was the type of person you look up to. The one person you want to emulate.

“And I miss him,” he says, almost a whisper. “I really freakin’ miss him.”

I don’t think I’ve ever seen Blake show as much emotion as he does in that one simple sentence. I don’t think, deep down, that I thought he had…that much depth. But looking at him, seeing him actually try to fight tears as his eyes turn glossy? It softens any previous thoughts I had about him.

Blake, deep down, is suffering like anyone who has lost of a loved one would. No matter how strong a facade he puts up.