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A small pile of fingernail shards formed beside Aaron’s water glass, accumulating until he no longer had any available bits to rip from his fingertips. His sister Carley watched him out of the corner of her eye but held her tongue. She could never understand. She was an actor. An attention magnet. A born performer, oozing charisma. So was Steven, their youngest brother, though he hadn’t pursued acting professionally but channeled his thespian instincts into his real estate brokerage firm. Aaron was the yin to all that familial yang, the introvert, the stutterer, the tongue-tied, jittery loner more comfortable with his books and computer games and data science than in the spotlight. And here he was, at Steven’s big day, surrounded by all his brother’s boisterous and socially grace
