“Oh? That’s curious.”
“He’s almost always taking that role,” Adam said. “I worry that he’s doing it for me.”
“Well, you like him that way.”
“I like him all ways.”
“You didn’t used to,” Grant said.
Adam sighed and swirled his ice some more. “Do you think this is my fault?”
“Are you even sure something is wrong?” Grant asked. “You know switching isn’t a tit for tat thing. Adam, I swear you and he have talked about this before, haven’t you?”
“Right. We have.” He set down his glass and pulled at his hair, getting more frustrated as the conversation went on. “It just feels imbalanced to me and I don’t want to fuck it up again. It has to be balanced.”
“I feel like you’re looking for trouble.” Grant leaned back and stretched his legs, crossing them at the ankle. “And I feel like you should have this conversation with him, not me.”
“I want to get it straight in my head first,” he grumbled.
“Then talk it out, friend. I’m all ears.”
“I’m just concerned that he’s holding back because he doesn’t want to scare me off again,” Adam said. “We talked about it at the very beginning and it was a worry of his.”
“Was it a worry of yours?”
Adam snorted. “Of course I was worried I would spook myself and ruin it.”
“Have you?”
“Not yet,” he said.
“Then what are you worrying will happen that’ll do it again?”
“I’m not,” he protested. “I think Cooper is the one who’s worried it will happen again.”
Grant widened his eyes, his exasperation clear on his face. “You’re as ridiculous as your son.”
“What about Wyatt?” he asked, reflexively looking over his shoulder toward their joined back yards. He was met with a memory from another life, years before, when they’d sat at Grant’s table and had similar discussions while an eighteen year-old Wyatt lurked around Adam’s house.
Now, it was the same house and Wyatt was there, but was it still his house? His name was on the deed, of course, but the most important parts of his life were tucked onto shelves and in drawers at Cooper’s house. Different and new, and Wyatt was living out of a suitcase in a bedroom that had always been his, in a house that had never been home.
“He makes problems where there are none,” Grant said. “He’s brimming with worry.”
“He wasn’t that way before.”
“Life is shit, Adam.” Grant shrugged. “It changes people. Look at how different you are now from how you were the first time around with Cooper.”
“I was young and stubborn then,” he said.
“Now you’re old and stubborn.”
“Old and worried.”
“All of the above,” Grant corrected.
“Will you keep an eye on Wyatt?” he asked, scrunching his nose. “I know he’s an adult, but I worry about him and I’m not sure he wants to talk to me about Mike. You and Wyatt had started to get close before, right? Could you do it again?”
“Wyatt and I aren’t the same people we were before,” Grant said.
