“And I’m not just using you as an excuse to get out of my life. Jesus. I almost wish I was.” Carver found himself humming with nervous energy and yanked up some grass, tearing it out at the root. “That would be easier. Then I wouldn’t give a shit what you think about anything.”
Scott laughed.
“Remember we didn’t just meet on Thursday. You know that, I know that.”
“I do know that.”
“You made me happy,” Carver said, swallowing. “When we were kids. You made shit feel real.”
Scott cleared his throat and said, “We’re a long way out from that.”
“But I’m telling you this ‘cause I never said it at the time.”
“I knew. I felt it.”
“But I need you to know I knew. I didn’t just stuff it all down. I was there, I was feeling it. I missed you, when —” He broke off and cleared his own throat. “Like, when I got to Duke. I missed being able to talk to you.”
Scott nodded. Carver thought his eyes might be glowing with tears, but it was hard to tell in the scraps of ambient light they were seeing by. “It’s good to hear,” he said quietly.
Carver felt a stab of affection for him, and immense guilt along with it. “And I’ve been wanting to apologize for, uh —when we broke up, when I said you’d fail out there, or whatever it was.”
Scott took a moment to absorb this, like he hadn’t expected it. “That’s okay,” he said, and cleared his throat again.
“No, it was shitty. I was just trying to get at you.”
“Hey, it’s fine. I said — I basically said the same thing to you.”
“Yeah,” Carver said with a rueful smile. “But you were right about me, weren’t you? I’m the one who wasted almost twenty years of my life.”
Scott hit him with a level stare. “Knock that shit off,” he said, his voice hard.
Carver laughed in surprise, feeling a horny thrill. “Knock what off?”
“This self-deprecating flagellating shit. You didn’t waste anything, you can’t think about it like that. Knock it off, I’m serious.”
“Okay,” Carver said obediently, smiling in a more genuine way now, his face and chest warm.
Scott squinted at him. “Okay?”
“Yeah, okay.”
“Like, if it’s an order I’m giving you, you’ll actually do it?”
Carver shrugged. “I’ll try, at least.”
“Okay. Then consider it an order.”
“I will.”
Scott diverted his gaze, looking out at the water with a complicated expression on his face. He didn’t like telling people what to do any more than he liked being told what to do, Carver knew this, but he also knew that he wasn’t trying to submit out of blind obedience. The order was a kind one. He trusted Scott’s reasons for giving it.
“I didn’t really think you would fail,” Carver said. “But I’ll admit that I didn’t like the idea of you making it big without me.”
Scott smiled. “I had the same fear.”
“You worried about making it big?”
“No, I worried about you making it big and never thinking about me again. And then as far as I could tell, that was exactly what happened.”
