Knowing You by Maureen Child

hand across his jaw, fingering the two days’ growth of whiskers. “Your key’s at my place. Haven’t been there in a couple of days.”
    â€œWhere’ve you been?” Paul glanced at the coffeepot while it bubbled and hissed, as if mentally hurrying it along.
    â€œI asked you first,” Nick said with a forced smile, not really wanting to talk about the last couple of days yet. “So who were you with tonight? Judging by the way you’re dressed, you weren’t out with that writer. Was it the astronaut?”
    â€œNo,” Paul said tightly. He didn’t want to talk about his old girlfriends. Didn’t want to stroll down memory lane with Nick. “It was … nobody.”
    Nobody. Hell, Nick thought, he’d been stocking his life with nobodies for two years. At least Paul’s nobodies had class. Women with brains as well as bodies.Someone you could actually talk to without being bored into a stupor. “Been there, done that.”
    â€œRight.” Paul changed the subject abruptly while he poured out coffee for each of them. “So what’re you doing here anyway?”
    â€œThat’s the million-dollar question.”
    â€œWhat’s the answer?” Paul asked, carrying two cups of coffee to the table. “Still black?”
    â€œYeah.” Nick took the cup from his brother and curled his fingers through the wide handle. He stared at the steam lifting from the cup and twisting into the air as if he could see his future in the swirling mists. “I haven’t changed that much.”
    Paul shook his head and took the seat opposite Nick, stretching his legs out and crossing his feet at the ankles. “The last month or so, Nick, you’ve changed plenty.”
    â€œThat’s ’cause I’m screwed.”
    â€œYeah, I’ve noticed. So has everyone else in the family.”
    Nick winced at the direct hit.
    â€œJust say it, will ya?”
    â€œThat’s the trouble. Haven’t been able to say it. Not to you. Or Mama. Hell,” he muttered thickly, “not even to myself.” Nick lifted the cup and noted with some small amount of pleasure that his hands weren’t shaking anymore. One good thing, anyway. Taking a sip, he let the hot liquid slide down his throat and hit his empty stomach like a blessing. Warmth spread through his system, chasing away the cold he’d been carrying with him since that last day at his orthopedist’s office. “I’m through.”
    â€œWith what?”
    Nick lifted his gaze to Paul’s and forced himself to say the words he’d been trying to forget for weeks. “I’m finished with football. My career’s over.” He took a breath and said the rest of it. “My knee’s fucked. The doctor said one more good hit and if I’m lucky, I’m looking at a cane for the rest of my life. Not lucky, and I’m popping wheelies in hospital hallways.”
    God. The words were hanging in the air like some black banner of death. He could practically see them. Feel them, wrapping around him like a shroud or something. Everything he’d worked for. Everything he’d been shooting for since high school was now done. Taken from him because he’d gone one way and his knee’d gone the other.
    Paul winced. “Jesus, Nick.”
    â€œYeah, I know.” Nick stared into his cup again as if trying to see beyond the surface of the coffee and into his own murky life.
    Paul slammed his coffee cup down onto the table hard enough to slosh some of the dark brew onto the wooden surface. “That’s why you’ve been drinking half the state dry for the last month?”
    â€œSeemed like a plan at the time,” he muttered, noticing that he wasn’t really getting the sympathy he’d expected from his own damn twin.
    â€œBullshit.”
    Nick’s gaze snapped up to his brother’s. “What?”
    â€œI said