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muscles chiseling at his face makes me uncomfortable. Why are his muscles doing that? Maybe phrase that differently.

I like that it's in present tense.

Gonna be honest, I got pretty drawn in to the story, the details are nice and the ending is strong. I didn't mind that it was in second person, sometimes that can be jarring. I think the dialogue is pretty organic for the most part, which is hard to pull off.

A little tweaking with diction and phrasing and you've got a first rate story.

best,

There're a couple critiques I'd like to give, before delving into the parts I liked about this piece. I guess I'll start off with those so that I can end this review off in a good note.

First off, I didn't particularly like the way you continued to use the whole "you say"/"I say" thing. You said and I said works smoothly in my opinion. Also, how you consistently continued to add "you say"/"I say" before and after most of the dialogue was, in some places, a little unnecessary. If you explain who says what at the beginning of these small chunks of dialogue, usually common sense can tell the reader who's saying what after that.

There was also a part in here at the very beginning that, as I continued to read on, continued to bother me more and more as I realized that this was a brother/sister relationship.

I love watching you drive. You pay such close attention to the road, jaw tensed and eyes barely flicking across the gently curving landscape. You’re carved like a Greek god when you drive; I could watch the way your muscles chisel away at your face for hours.

In particular I guess, the second sentence. It sort of puts off incest in a way. x( I say this because my first read, I took this as an admiration of a lover, not so much a beloved family member. Maybe if you toned it down a bit to make it sound more brotherly instead of so forward and affectionately. The first sentence is fine. The second, a little too bleh for my taste, since I'd never - ever - view my own brother in that way.

I will say this though, the way you mapped out this whole short story was very nicely done and cleanly explained. In particular, the way you unfolded the issue with why the brother and sister are now so distant, and why he was kicked out, and why his life is crappy in comparison to before times. By unleashing the fact after writing through all of this, you inserted a more intense factor to it all. You beefed the story up a certain level to where it is respectively good. I liked that a lot.

Also, how you made it such a clear issue how homosexuality is an issue with their parents. It gives it a hopeless level of sorrow. Because who wants to be so rejected by their parents for just simply being who they are?

You had a great way of bringing in a realistic air to this. The imagery of the two in a car, driving. The mood was so softly muted. Sort of somber in a way. A perfect setting for the type of story you wanted to make this. Your imagery was splendid. I could appreciate your descriptiveness. It was both metaphoric and ruggedly poetic

As for the way you built and unfolded the memory of when the brother sort of truly exposed the fact that he had an attraction to boys, that was a little downplayed. But in such a modest and true-to-the-heart way. I couldn't argue with the way you chose to reveal that piece of memory. Nice work I think, keeping things simple in that respect.

Your ending was well done. Nothing remotely cliche about it. It gives the reader the slight opportunity to actually think and use their mind to delve deeper into what your view of the meaning of the story was. To the point: Overall, I liked this a lot. A spotted a few little grammar nitpicks, that I chose to ignore in my review, because I'm sure if you went back and read through once more you'd surely be able find and fix them yourself.

Great luck with future writing, and I hope my review was in some way helpful to you. (: