I vaguely saw it.  He didn’t look good.  He didn’t take care of himself.  He was pale in a way that gave the impression he didn’t leave his house much.  But it was in there somewhere, that boy who’d been just one in a long line of the vicious kids that had singled me out for abuse as a child.

My lip curled in disdain.  “Did you ever outgrow your habit of punching girls half your size?” I asked him.  “In the face,” I added for good measure.

He actually answered the question, talking to his toes. “Y-y-yes,” he stuttered.

And dammit that almost made me feel sorry for him.  I had a soft spot for stutters.

“I always wanted to say I’m sorry for that, but they switched you to the other class after that, and Dante told me if I ever got within five feet of you for any reason that he’d pound me into next year.”

That I believed.

“But I’ll say it now.  I have no excuse for myself.  I’m very, very sorry.  I know how it was for you.  I know it wasn’t easy.  I didn’t have any friends myself, and I was a weakling and a coward.  I don’t even know why, but I was trying to fit in and picking on you seemed to be the thing to do.”

That I also believed.

“Like I said, I have no excuse.  To this day I’m ashamed of myself for it.”

I didn’t know what to think of his apology.  I wasn’t used to them.  I just felt strange.  Conflicted.  Did he expect to be forgiven for a few short sentences of remorse many years after the fact, sincere or not?  Would I be crazy for holding on to a grudge for all these years, or a complete doormat for accepting his decades late apology?

I decided (begrudgingly) that a late apology was better than none at all.  He was far from the worst of the goons I’d had to deal with back then.  At least he’d left me alone after one offense.

And I had kicked him in the balls really, really hard.

“Apology accepted,” I told him quietly, if begrudgingly.  I wasn’t used to forgiving people.  It was a muscle I’d never had to use before.

I couldn’t say it felt particularly pleasant to work it out for the first time.

Still, I was rather proud of myself.  I’d made it through one confrontation that had gone kind of well, all things considered.

But then Dante.

He appeared just as I was about to move on with a feeling of accomplishment.

He stepped up beside me, wrapped a proprietary arm around my waist, and leaned down, down, down to short, terrified Tommy.

“What did I tell you, Tommy?” his voice was quiet and menacing.  “That looks closer than five fucking feet to me.”

Tommy stammered out an apology and took off.

I was sitting somewhere between exasperated and annoyed as I shrugged out of Dante’s hold and turned to look at him.  “I had that under control,” I told him.  “He’d just apologized and then you scared the crap out of him.”

He was completely unrepentant as he shrugged his broad shoulders.  “You are talking to the wrong guy if you think you’re ever going to get me to feel sorry for any of the punk kids that terrorized you.”

Well, now.  How could I get mad at him for that?

CHAPTER

TWENTY-SEVEN

“You can’t buy love, but you can pay heavily for it.”

~Henny Youngman

PRESENT

As much as it was torture to see Dante, it was always sort of inevitable.  A fact of life.  At some point we’d find each other, clash again, and run away, trailing blood in our wake.

But Nate was different.  I hadn’t seen him in years, and in my mind I’d never thought I’d have to face him again.

Also, he’d never wronged me.  There was nothing I could pin on him aside from my own guilt at how I’d treated him.

I didn’t know what to expect.  But if I’d had to guess, him walking up and enfolding me in a big tight hug would have been far from the first thing I’d have come up with.  And that’s exactly what he did.

I was returning to the theatre room after a trip to the restroom when I ran into him.

I didn’t know what to say to him.  I didn’t know what to do.

“It’s been too long,” he murmured into my ear.

Still recovering from the shock of him, I was only just then returning his embrace.

“How are you?” I asked him softly.

“Not too bad,” he said in that almost delicate voice of his that hadn’t changed a bit.  It was a voice made for reciting poetry, soothing and lyrical.

We pulled back and looked at each other.  I smiled tremulously at him.  It really was nice to see him, particularly nice since he didn’t seem to hate my guts like he probably should have.

He looked close to the same.  His angular face was handsome, his features symmetrical.  He’d always been a skinny kid and he’d grown into a slender but graceful man.  He was tall but not towering at just under six feet.

His blond hair was longer.  He wore it in a kind of artfully messy way where it fell into his face, but it looked like that was the design of it.

I brushed one silky strand behind his ear.

“I don’t even know how you do it, but somehow you’re more beautiful than ever,” he proclaimed with his sweet smile, touching my cheek.  He had a way of saying things with such vulnerable sincerity that you couldn’t help but be moved.

How had I ever thought that this sweet soul should be relegated to the role of casualty?  Why had I thought that was okay?