I'll Be Right Beside You

The tension was almost unbearable between the two of us in the apartment all day. Jordan hardly spoke to me – understandably – but even when Cam got back it didn’t get any better. We sat in the living room in silence watching TV after supper, everyone keeping to themselves rather than starting another argument.

Jordan’s phone rang, and after the second one I looked to him before realizing he had no idea it was his phone.

“Uh, Jord? You gonna answer your phone? Or is it a survey number?” I asked, so he wouldn’t have to feel embarrassed for not knowing it was his. He finally grabbed it, and after fumbling with it managed to connect the call.

“Hello?” the apartment was quiet as he listened to the person on the other end. He walked over to the living room and handed the phone to me before sitting in the chair. It was Marc calling, so I put his cell on speakerphone and set it on the coffee table.

“Hey Marc, you’re on speaker,” I said, and heard him sigh. I soon heard Mike babbling away, and realized Marc was probably stressed as hell right now.

“Hey – I was hoping you’d be there. Cam?”

“Hi Marc,” she answered, and after a moment Marc sighed. We could hear the TV turn on in the background and Mike let out a happy shriek before my brother walked from his living room to probably the kitchen where he could watch his son while being able to hear the conversation.

“So, is everything all right? I went to turn on the game last night and you weren’t playing Jay; they wouldn’t say a damn word about it either,” he sighed, sounding ten years older than he was.

“Yeah, I just came back up to Pittsburgh is all; mom and dad get here tomorrow,” I explained.

“So Jord, you’re okay? Nothing serious or scary happened that you didn’t bother to phone about?” he asked, and Jordan’s death grip on his knees got worse. He was doing that all of the time; holding onto something tightly to try and eliminate the shake.

“Yeah, I’m the same,” was his short reply, and then there was silence. None of us wanted to talk about the episodes of arguments yesterday, not when Marc was probably freaking out already.

“How’re things in New York?” I finally asked, hoping to move the conversation along.

“Awful. We’re playing like shit, some flu bug is going around and Lindsay caught it; I’ve been looking after Mike while she’s getting better because we don’t want him to catch it. And now half the guys on the team have it so I’m probably gonna get it too…” he worried, sounding a lot like our dad.
“Marc, relax; if you’re stressed out like this it’s going to make you more likely to catch it,” Cam’s voice was soft and reassuring as she spoke to him, and we heard him let out a long breath.

“It’s just, with everything that’s going on the last thing we need is for me and Linds to both get sick and need someone to look after Mike. Or God forbid he gets this flu, because he’s already had some troubles with almost pneumonia,” he admitted, shocking all of us. As far as I’d known Mike was completely healthy.

“Pneumonia? Isn’t that…?”

“Yeah, really scary for someone as young as him,” no wonder Marc was on his last frayed nerve.

“But he’s okay now, right?” I pushed, and Jordan just sat there looking confused. He probably had no idea Mike was his nephew, and that was painful.

“As far as we know, yeah,”

“Jordan?” he looked up when Cam spoke to him. “Mike is Marc and Lindsay’s little guy; he’s almost eight months old,”

“Marc has a kid?” he asked, and I nodded.

“Eric’s got two – he and Tanya got married,” I added, and he nodded slowly as he tried to take it all in. “Parker’s four, and Levi’s two.”

“Wow…” was all that he could say, and Marc tried to redirect the conversation to something a little safer for Jordan. That was a lot for him to take in.

“I can’t believe…” he shook his head before dropping his head to his hands.

“It’s okay Jord,” I assured him, but I knew that the fact it was me saying it meant that he wouldn’t take it to heart. Marc said goodbye about five minutes later, because Lindsay was getting up, and we returned to the earlier awkward silence in the living room.

“I can’t believe… how can I not remember something that big?” he whispered, and I could see the pained look on Cam’s face.

“It’s not your fault Jordan,”

“They’re my nephews, how can I not remember my nephews?” he asked, his voice whisper soft before he was nearly pulling on his hair.

“Because you took a hell of a hit on the head. Anybody else in your position would be in the same boat Jord; it’s not like you could’ve done anything differently,” I insisted, and he shrugged.

“But it doesn’t make sense Jared! Why can’t I remember my nephews, or being drafted, or moving to Pittsburgh, or anything else from the past how many years, but I can remember Cam? Why do I remember the one thing that I don’t have anymore?” he demanded, and Cam had to retreat to her room. I knew she’d be in tears or nearly in tears, and let out a long breath. I knew it was hard on Jordan too, but he had to understand that he was hurting her by bringing this up. It wasn’t like she’d chosen for him to remember her.

“Jordan,”

“Don’t!”

“No – listen to me!” I pushed, and he went silent, looking at the floor. “Do you know why she’s getting short with us? Or why she needs to leave and see her other friends? It’s because this is hard on her too Jordan. She hates seeing you like this, she hates seeing us fighting, and she hates feeling like she’s hurting you. Every time you bring that up? It eats away at her. Even though there’s nothing either of you could have done to change it. Do you wanna know something?”

Jordan nodded, keeping his eyes on the floor while I spoke to him, as if he were a little kid in trouble.

“Last year in like January Eric caught the two of you together when Tanya and the boys were up with him to visit. Nobody else in our family knew she was a girl – she had been pretending to be a boy so she could play in the NHL – and when he caught you together you told him you were gay. You actually let our brother believe you were gay to protect her. None of us could believe it after the fact; that was one of the last things any of us would have thought you’d ever done, and things just escalated when she came out to visit during the summer,” I shook my head, remembering just how painful that mess had been. “Point is Jordan, is all of that almost broke the two of you up. She got sick, she was a mess, all because you and Eric were fighting. She thought she was splitting the two of you apart, and she didn’t want to do that to you Jordan. Do you remember any of that?”

“No… not a bit,” he shook his head, sniffling slightly.

“It was awful; both of you were a total mess. And you didn’t break up – obviously – but Cam kept insisting that you should because Eric was family and that was more important. Even just the thought that she was hurting you was enough to make her completely break down. You took her out to your house instead of staying at mom and dad’s with the rest of us to try and protect her, and I know you never wanted her to feel like that again. You’ve always tried to protect her Jordan, and I get it, I do. So while I know it’s hard, we’ve got to protect her from feeling like that now. Because the two of us acting like this and constantly arguing? It’s going to do the same thing to her as the whole Eric mess did, and she doesn’t need to deal with all of that when she’s as stressed out as she is,”

“I didn’t think of it like that,” was his quiet response. I sat there without saying anything, wondering if he was going to add on to his statement or not. I had no way to read him anymore; this wasn’t the Jordan I’d grown up with and known all my life. He was unpredictable and in a way it unnerved me that I couldn’t protect his feelings the way I would have been able to before.

“It’s okay Jordan – I didn’t really think of it that way until this morning either. Whatever you two talked about got her really worked up and then I was acting weird around her and that was the last straw for her so she needed some girl time with her friends,” I shrugged, hoping that he knew we were on the same playing field with this, that I didn’t think I was any better than him for bringing this to his attention.

“She got worked up because she told me I wasn’t talking like myself,” he told me, and then shrugged. “But I can’t talk like my old self when I don’t know who that person is anymore, you know? And because I told her she should be with you, or at least give you a chance.”

Wow. Talk about completely coming out of left-field with that one.

“You what?”

“Come on Jared; it’s beyond obvious you like her,” he raised an eyebrow, daring me to contradict him. I kept my mouth shut, knowing that if I denied it I’d be lying to him. “And you just coming out with that? As much as I hate to admit it you just proved me right. You get all of that stuff Jared; the stuff that I didn’t understand, the shit I’m bad at, it all comes easy to you. You can take care of her and she deserves somebody who can do that.”

“But you did that too Jordan,” I argued quietly. It just… felt wrong, somehow even for him to be saying this.

“I did, but I also hurt her Jared. I don’t know if we can move past that, I mean, especially when I don’t even know what happened,” he shrugged, looking more defeated than I’ve ever seen him in his entire life.

“Shit… Jordan I don’t think I could ever ask her. Not when I know you two are meant to be together. As much as I think I like her, I can’t… I can’t do that,” it felt like I was condemning myself to something, but I knew it was the right thing to do.

Jordan shrugged. “Your call then, can’t say I feel bad about it, but you know,”

“I know,”