I sat in the passenger seat while Tyler was in the driver’s seat. The car drove us down 6th street towards school. Ambient music played softly in the background as we both didn’t talk to one another. I looked up at the skyscrapers, I turned left to look over Perishing Square at my apartment building. The car slowed to stop at a stoplight behind a few other cars. Cars started to go across the intersection.

I finally decided to talk after an hour of silence, “Do you wanna talk about it?” I asked.

“About what?” Tyler talked back.

“What we said last night. It seems like we should.”

Tyler sighed, “What is there to talk about?” He asked, “We said everything the other didn’t know already.”

“Yeah, but… It helps to just say stuff to each other, even if we both know it… I don’t know… It validates it or something.”

The car silently adjusted the AC down a bit because the skyscrapers’ shade.

“…I just… I don’t understand how we got here.” Tyler started.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Like, how did we not end up liking someone else.”

I inhaled very slowly while thinking about my answer, and sighed. “We’re closer to each other, we know each other better.” I said.

We got stopped at another light.

“Do you think that it’s wrong?” Tyler asked. “I mean… We *are half brothers.”

I couldn’t think of a way to respond. “I… I don’t know. I said. I turned sideways in my seat to face him.

Tyler turned towards me in the same way. “Do you, wanna, you know.” He said whilst motioning his right pointer finger between our faces.

I sighed. Again. “Sure.” I shook my head.

What followed was the most awkward two seconds in history. First, I leaned in, and then he leaned in, but in a weirdly wrong way, then we quickly moved back and then both did the same thing, but both leaned the opposite directions. We moved back to where we were before and laughed as we looked into each other. We leaned in at a normal pace, but one that seemed slow to us and then stopped short of kissing.

Neither of us could do it. We sat there for seconds breathing each others’ breath. He breathed out, I breathed in, then out when he breathed in.

We became increasingly uncomfortable we fidgeted, and wondered why we couldn’t kiss eachother.

Tyler pulled back, and I did closely after.

“Well,” Tyler said, “At least we know how far we are.”

The car started to move again.