“Tanner.” Closer now. A hand on my shoulder, warm and solid. “Hey. You with me?”
Seth. Right. Seth lived here. We shared this apartment. He’d gone to class this morning, came back around noon to grab lunch, and had said something about film review later.
What time was it now?
“I need you to look at me.”
I managed to turn my head. Seth was crouched beside my chair, one hand still on my shoulder, the other hovering near my face like he wanted to touch but wasn’t sure if he should. His eyes were worried.
“There you are,” he said, and his voice was so gentle it hurt. “You scared me. I’ve been calling your name for five minutes.”
“Sorry.” My voice came out rough. “I was just— I got distracted.”
“Tanner.” He squeezed my shoulder. “You’re freezing. And you’re crying.”
I reached up and touched my cheek. It came away wet, and I stared at my fingers as if they belonged to someone else.
Seth’s jaw tightened. He stood, pulling me up with him, and I went without resisting because the alternative was staying in that chair, and I couldn’t do that anymore.
“Come on,” he said, steering me toward the couch. “Sit.”
I sat. He disappeared into the kitchen. I heard cabinet doors opening, the clink of mugs, and the microwave starting. When he came back, he had two mugs in his hands and a blanket tucked under one arm.
He handed me a mug and draped the blanket over my shoulders. The mug was warm. I looked down at it—hot chocolate, the fancy kind with whipped cream piled high, rainbow sprinkles scattered on top, a drizzle of caramel sauce.
The grief I’d been holding back pressed against my lungs.
“You remembered,” I said.
“Of course I remembered.” Seth settled on the couch beside me, close enough that our thighs pressed together. “You told me about it when we moved in. Your dad used to make it for you.”
He had. Every time I’d had a bad day, every time the kids at school were cruel, every time I came home crying about something I couldn’t fix. Dad would pull out the good mugs and make hot chocolate with all the fixings. We’d sit at the kitchen table, and he’d let me talk or not talk, whatever I needed.
That was before. Before the mood swings. Before the forgetting. Before he stopped recognizing what I needed and started seeing me as a threat.
“There’s schnapps in the cabinet,” Seth said. “If you want it.”
I did. I didn’t. I took a sip of the hot chocolate instead and let the sweetness coat my tongue.
Seth let the silence stay. He didn’t ask what happened or what I’d been doing or why I’d checked out so completely. He just sat there, solid and warm beside me, one hand resting on my knee over the blanket.
We stayed like that until I’d finished half the mug and my hands had stopped shaking.
“I read an article,” I said. “About CTE. New research on brain tissue analysis. I thought it would be good in case there was anything I needed to add to my capstone project.”
Seth’s hand tightened on my knee. “Okay.”
“The correlation between career length and severity is worse than I thought. Worse than the last study I read. Every year increases the risk by—” I stopped. Shook my head. “It doesn’t matter. The numbers don’t change anything.”
“They matter to you.”
“They shouldn’t. Dad’s gone. Knowing more about what killed him doesn’t bring him back.”
“No,” Seth agreed. “But it might help you save someone else.”
I looked at him. He was studying me the way I imagined he studied game film—patient, intent, like if he just looked longenough he’d find the pattern that made everything make sense. Like I was worth that kind of attention.
“I can’t save anyone,” I said, and my voice cracked on the last word. “My padding modifications are incremental at best. Six percent reduction in force distribution doesn’t mean anything if the cumulative damage is inevitable. Six percent doesn’t stop the disease. It doesn’t reverse the damage. It doesn’t bring back the fathers who forgot their sons’ names.”
