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It takes all of two weeks for Henry to stop feeling intimidated by Gabe Goodman.
Natalie has been telling him not to worry about him since Henry first met him in the middle of dropping Natalie off at home—he’d been working up the courage to kiss her goodbye when Gabe had appeared behind them, a teasing eye raised as he asked, “So, do you plan on opening the door anytime soon or should I take the window?”
“Ignore him,” Natalie had huffed, though Henry had known that his porch kiss dreams were dashed for the evening. He’d have grumbled internally about that if he hadn’t gone stiff with the realization that he was meeting his girlfriend’s older brother for the first time—at least, the first time he was meeting Gabe in context of being Natalie’s boyfriend. They’d briefly been in the same gym class last year while football was in off-season, but if Henry had ever spoken to Gabe, it had only been to ask him to pass a ball back to his side of the room.
Henry remembers staring at Gabe and lamenting that of course Natalie’s brother had to be on the football team. Henry had never been much of a sports guy, but he’d heard enough school gossip to know that Gabe Goodman was a good player, which likely meant that he could toss Henry around like a ragdoll if he wanted—not that Henry was ever planning on giving him a reason to do that. He’d actually rather die than give Gabe a reason to be a protective older brother.
Regardless, the first time Henry met Gabe, he was sufficiently nervous about it. He’s not exactly over that trepidation, but it’s certainly lessened after hearing Gabe bang on her bedroom door, yelling, “Natalie! He sent me a heart emoji!”
“A heart emoji?” Henry echoes. Gabe knocks again, louder.
Natalie pinches the bridge of her nose and rises from her chair. She throws open the door, deadpanning, “You have got to be kidding me.”
Gabe shoves his phone in her face, and while Henry can’t make out the words on screen, he does catch a glimpse of a red heart emoji at the bottom. “What do I do?” Gabe sputters.
Natalie replies, “What do you think you should do?”
“If I knew that, I wouldn’t be standing here!”
“Why do you think I know what to do?” she exclaims.
Gabe throws his hands up. “Because you have a boyfriend?”
Henry can’t help wondering aloud, “Why don’t you just send one back?” This, apparently, causes Gabe to notice him for the first time in the conversation because the other boy freezes like he’s just seen a ghost.
“Oh shit, sorry Henry, I didn’t realize you were here,” he says, a sheepish edge to his voice. Natalie slants him an unamused look.
“Too busy pining to check the family group chat where I said he’d be over for dinner, huh,” she says.
Gabe huffs, “I came here for help, not judgment,” he says.
“You came to your little sister for dating advice—you were only ever going to get judgment.”
“Rude.” Gabe shakes his head, then looks at Henry again. “Isn’t a heart emoji back, uh, a little bold? What if he thinks I like him or something?”
Henry blinks at him, wondering if he’s been misinterpreting this whole situation because it’s pretty simple, isn’t it? He asks, “Do you not?”
Whatever remaining intimidation factor Gabe might have had over Henry dissipates as he watches Gabe’s cheeks redden. Natalie snorts.
“I mean…” Gabe trails off.
Gleefully, Natalie says, “He’s pathetically in love with the guy.”
“I am not pathetic—”
“Okay,” Henry interrupts, guessing that the siblings aren’t going to stop bickering anytime soon, “so then what’s the problem with sending a heart emoji back?”
Gabe makes a sound like he’s drowning. “Well, uh, we’re not actually dating?” he replies.
Henry shrugs. “Why don’t you ask him out then?”
He can just barely make out Natalie’s howl of laughter behind Gabe’s frantic yell. “That is not an option!” His eyes are wide and panicked, not unlike the look his little cousins give him when he walks in on them planning a prank on their other cousins.
Henry holds up his hands in surrender, chuckling, “I got it.”
Gabe seems to be about to continue spiraling when Natalie makes an interested sound, pointing at Gabe’s still-outstretched phone and sing-songing, “He’s texting.”
“He’s texting,” Gabe repeats, eyes somehow widening more at the sight of the gray text bubble buffering. “He’s texting—why is he texting if I haven’t responded?”
“Because you left him on read after he sent a heart emoji,” Natalie replies.
Gabe makes a wounded noise. “Fuck.” He stares at his phone, thumbs hovering over his screen. “What do I say?”
“Literally anything,” Natalie says, shaking her head. “Just text him before he writes a long apology for sending an emoji and you get all mopey about never getting another one again.”
“I don’t want him to apologize,” Gabe says desperately.
“So, text him!” Natalie exclaims.
“But, what—”
If Henry’s being honest, he thought sibling fights like this were made-up for teen movies. He realizes that he was apparently mistaken when he watches Natalie lunge for her brother’s phone, making him scream and try to twist out of the way. Somewhere in the fray two things happen: one, Natalie succeeds in getting a hand on Gabe’s phone, somehow swatting it to the center of the room, and two—
The telltale noise of an outgoing call on speaker phone rings out, making everyone in the room freeze. Through the speaker, a confused voice speaks, “Gabe?”
Gabe, with all of the grace of a baby deer, bolts out the door.
“Oh my fucking god,” Natalie mutters. “Gabriel Goodman, get your ass back here!” she yells, charging after him.
Henry would take a moment to revel in his girlfriend being a force of nature if he hadn’t just been left alone on the phone with a boy he’s never met in his life. “Uh,” he says dumbly, trying to decide what the least awkward way to explain this is. Admittedly, tact has never been Henry’s strong suit, so what comes out of his mouth is this: “Sorry, I don’t know what’s wrong with Gabe. He’s busy.”
He doesn’t need to see Gabe’s not-boyfriend to know the look on his face is baffled as he responds, “Oh. Uh, is he okay?”
Henry can hear the siblings bickering in the living room downstairs.
“It’s your phone!”
“It’s your fault!”
“It wouldn’t have to be if you weren’t—”
Suffice to say, ‘okay’ is not the word he’d use to describe Gabe right now. The amount of yelling, at least, tells Henry that he’s alive, though.
“He and Natalie are, uh, fighting about something,” he says. “Sibling stuff, I guess.”
Gabe’s not-boyfriend makes a noise that Henry can’t decipher. “Ah,” he says after a moment. “I’m… basically an only child but I can imagine that.”
Henry doesn’t know how one can be ‘basically’ an only child, but he’s not going to question it.
“Oh me too. They sound like they’re tearing each other’s throats out.” Henry pauses, listening again to the distant fighting. “I think Natalie’s winning so I guess I’m not too worried,” he chuckles, before it occurs to him that Gabe’s not-boyfriend would probably prefer Gabe winning.
He opens his mouth to assure him that they both sound mostly fine when Not-Boyfriend asks, “Sorry, who is this?”
Oh. Henry might’ve been doing this backwards.
“I’m Henry—Natalie’s boyfriend,” he introduces himself, shrugging even though the other boy can’t see.
Gabe’s not-boyfriend replies in kind, except he stumbles over calling himself Gabe’s friend. Henry tries not to audibly laugh; he’s not sure he succeeds.
“Sorry,” Henry says. “It’s, uh, been a weird day. I didn’t even realize Gabe was home until they started fighting.”
There’s a breathy laugh from the other line before Not-Boyfriend says, “Sounds about right. Gabe just kinda shows up sometimes. It’s—well, I think it’s nice.” There’s an undeniable fondness that curls around the end of his sentence that makes Henry wish he’d actually convinced Gabe to send that emoji back.
Another, louder part of him also wishes Gabe would come back for his phone right about now. Unfortunately, he still hears shrieking downstairs.
“Why did that pillow actually hurt?”
Henry winces sympathetically.
“Hey,” Not-Boyfriend says after a moment, “while you’re here, can I ask you a question?”
Henry hums in response. “Shoot.”
“How did you, uh, make things official with Natalie?”
Normally, Henry likes to think he’s a quick thinker; Natalie might be the genius of the relationship, but Henry’s the one who can answer questions with only a beat to think, and not say, ‘he has rabies.’ Now, though, Henry freezes—not because Not-Boyfriend has asked a particularly difficult question, but because of the sheer anxiety he can hear pouring through the phone, and the context of the moments leading up to this phone call.
Henry understands why Natalie always texts him about wanting to lock Gabe and his not-boyfriend in a closet together until they figure themselves out. He thinks he’s not going to discourage her next time.
“Sorry,” Not-Boyfriend says after a beat passes. “We don’t really know each other—”
Henry makes a dismissive noise. “No, it’s fine,” he rushes to assure him. “It’s just—I just asked, I guess? We were hanging out at my place and I just thought, ‘fuck it’ and said I loved her.”
“That’s it?” Not-Boyfriend sputters.
“Yeah?” Henry laughs. “The worst part to me was the nervousness of wanting to confess, so I figured it was easier just to rip the bandaid off, y’know?”
A moment of silence passes. Henry’s about to wonder if the call disconnected when Not-Boyfriend says, “Oh. You make it sound so easy.”
“I don’t think it’s ever easy,” Henry replies, shaking his head. “But the planet’s poisoned, there’s war everywhere, global warming’s gonna kill all the polar bears in the next century—when you think about all that, doesn’t confessing seem a lot easier to deal with?”
“Guess you’re right,” Not-Boyfriend says. “Doesn’t stop it from feeling like the scariest thing in the world when he’s talking to me, though.”
Henry hums in acknowledgment. “I get that,” he says, “but I’d still just say to go for it.”
“Right,” Not-Boyfriend says. “You’re probably right. Just need to—”
“Look what I caught!” Natalie announces, storming back into the room, Gabe in tow. It’s comical, really, how she manages to seem like she’s forcefully dragging her brother around despite him being nearly half a foot taller than her.
Gabe yanks his hand away from her as they reach the doorway, muttering, “You’re talking like I’m a fish.”
“You’re worse than a fish; those have spines,” she parries easily. “If I were going to call you an animal, it’d be an invertebrate.”
“Okay, well you’d be one too because we’re siblings,” Gabe huffs. Natalie shoots him a glare.
Henry snorts. “Don’t worry Natalie, I’d love you if you were a worm,” he jokes. The look she gives him in response is a beautiful blend of annoyed and endeared that makes him grin.
“And that’s my cue to leave,” Gabe says, wrinkling his nose. “Can I get my phone back? Promise I won’t freak out again about the emoji stuff.”
Henry holds out the phone to him before thinking to warn Gabe, “Oh, the call’s still—”
“He absolutely will freak out about the emojis the minute you leave, Henry,” Natalie says with a wave of her hand. “Don’t believe for a second that he’s changed.”
Gabe huffs, fiddling with the edge of his phone case as he says, “Yeah, yeah. You try getting stuck in the friend zone and see how put together you are.”
Henry sucks in a breath, realizing Gabe still hasn’t looked too closely at his screen. “Uh—”
“You can’t say you’re stuck in the friend zone when he’s got your profile picture set to that blurry picture of you at the dance with your tie wrapped around your wrist like a scrunchie,” Natalie huffs.
Gabe argues, “That was, like, a month ago because we were all nervous about being able to go to the dance because of Mom’s thing. He might’ve changed it by now.”
Before Natalie can call him out on that being a weak excuse, Not-Boyfriend’s voice rings out between them:
“I haven’t.”
Henry had been expecting a pin-drop silence of realization following Not-Boyfriend’s interjection; what he gets instead is a sharp yelp as Gabe fumbles his phone again and Natalie darts in front of the door to block him from running.
“You’re still here?” Gabe sputters, switching the call off speaker and holding the phone up to his ear. His cheeks are red but Henry will give him the benefit of the doubt and assume some of that is residual from his fight with Natalie. “Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry.” He tries to glare at Natalie but she only rolls her eyes at him.
“You’ll be fine,” she hisses to him, shooing him toward the door.
Henry thinks he sees him mouth back, “Traitor,” as she shuts the door in his face.
The minute he’s gone, Natalie flops backward on her bed, groaning. Henry snickers and asks, “Think they’re gonna confess?”
“I think they exist to drive me insane, actually,” she says.
He laughs. “It’s pretty bad,” he agrees. “He asked me for advice on asking Gabe out, actually.”
“Oh?” Natalie rolls over so that she’s propped up on her elbow, staring down at him. “What did you say?”
“To just go for it.”
Natalie snorts. “Easier said than done.”
Henry shrugs. “Better done than thought,” he replies, moving to sit next to her on the bed. “After all, I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t confessed to you that night.”
She laughs, shifting so that she’s sitting upright. “I’m lucky you did, then,” she says, settling a hand around his shoulders.
Henry thinks he’s the luckier one to have found a girl like her. He kisses her instead of wasting time on words because he knows she’ll get the point, regardless. In the end, he thinks, that’s what this relationship stuff all boils down to—trust, and knowing how to show it.
Somewhere outside, Gabe and his not-boyfriend are fumbling to get to that same point. Henry thinks about the mirth in their voices in talking about each other and shrugs; they’ll figure it out, he thinks.
“Hey,” Natalie says, squeezing his shoulder. “Eyes on me.”
Henry quietly wishes them good luck, then throws himself back into the moment that matters most to him—this one.