Chapter Twenty-Two
“I’m really glad you decided to order pizza instead of cooking,” Riley said between bites, happy noises escaping him as he chewed. “Not that there’s anything wrong with your cooking, but…”
“I know what you mean. I couldn’t have eaten anything else tonight. There’s something comforting about being able to feel your arteries harden while you eat.”
Riley chuckled, which made Brent smile. He was starting to feel as though he was recovering from all the crap that had happened over the past week, and Riley was mostly responsible for that.
“There is,” Riley agreed after a moment. “The company helps.”
“You’re not gonna say your body is a temple?” Brent asked.
“I think that’s elevating it above what it needs to be. My body gets me around and lets me experience the world in the few short years I get to be a conscious human being for. It’s a gift, and I’m enjoying it to the fullest.”
“That… sounds way better than a temple.”
“I’m very smart,” Riley said, without a hint of irony in his tone.
Rileywassmart, though. It had been strange to be reminded he’d never actually been to college. Not that college made you smart, and not that people who didn’t go weren’t perfectly capable of being intelligent and well-rounded.
It just struck Brent that up until his parents died, he’d lived his life on a very traditional path. In a way, he was lucky things had changed. He might have been bored out of his skull by now if they hadn’t.
Not that it was agoodthing, losing his parents when he was twenty-two, but maybe it wasn’t an entirely bad thing.
Riley would have said it justwas,and there was no point making moral judgements about random events. No matter how big or important they seemed.
“You are very smart,” Brent agreed. “I’m glad you’re here.”
“Me too.” Riley leaned back on the couch. Brent had put a movie on before the pizza had come, but they’d both been ignoring it the whole time. It was just background noise. “This reminds me of when we were kids.”
“That was kinda the idea,” Brent said. “We haven’t gotten to do this in a really long time, y’know? And you told me to follow my heart, and my heart sayshang out with Riley more.”
“Oh,” Riley said softly. “Well… I like the way your heart thinks.”
“I just… I was thinking about what you said a lot on the way home, and about how I didn’t ask for everything that happened, and… I don’t resent it, you’re right, but there are things I regret. I regret the way our friendship changed when I suddenly had a kid to look after.”
“I didn’t mind,” Riley said. “Helping out, I mean.”
“No, I know, and you were always there, and you always helped me make sure Emily had what she needed, and you dragged me out of bed when it all seemed too hard and forced me to get on my feet again, but… we never really got to be young together. We got to be kids, sure, but then there’s this huge gap and now we’re grownups.Realgrownups.”
“You might be,” Riley said. “Personally, I live in a van and I don’t have a real job, so…”
“You’re easily one of the hardest-working people I know,” Brent pointed out. Riley never had any one job, but he was always doing a million things, even though he didn’t really need to. His inheritance had been enough, with some careful management, to keep him going for a long time if he’d wanted it to be.
And apparently some of that management had paid off, and Riley suddenly had more money than he had use for.
Brent was happy to hear that. If he couldn’t give anything else, a nudge toward financial security was something worthwhile.
Accountancy might have been a boring job, but people always thanked him when they suddenly got to stop worrying about money. It sucked that money was such a big cause of anxiety for so many people, but Brent liked being able to help them out.
“Don’t say it so loud, you’ll ruin my image,” Riley said. “I actually haven’t taken this long off in years. But I’m not inclined to rush back to work just yet.”
“You’ve been doing stuff the entire time. None of this has been a break for you. You’ve spent it looking after me.”
Brent wished that just once, he could look after Riley instead of the other way around. Riley wasalwayslooking after him. He appreciated it, but he wished he could return the favor.
“I enjoy looking after you,” Riley said, grabbing another slice of pizza. “You’re very rewarding to look after, and it makes me happy to know you’re alive and well.”
“I like knowing you’re alive and well, too,” Brent said.
