Page 41 of Hidden Nature

“Yeah. You needed sunglasses the minute you opened your eyes in the morning. I always figured we’d get out, I just never pictured where we’d get out to.”

“I thought about California for about five minutes.”

With a nod, Theo gestured with his beer. “Because it’s on the opposite side of the country from Connecticut. I thought about Alaska.”

Nash nearly choked on his pizza. “Get out.”

“I did, for maybe ten minutes. How I’d talk you into heading out there. We’d get a cabin, start a business, live free, right? Then I remembered how it’s dark there like half the time. Snow’s one thing.”

“Let’s open it up, then close it again and put it away. I got an earful yesterday. Well, two. One from each.”

Theo’s brown eyes held all his sympathy with a little guilt tossed in.

“Sorry. I figured that would come once I emailed each of them I wasn’t taking the position at the firm, and was starting a business with you here.”

“No sorry required or wanted.” Nash lifted a slice. “Do I look wounded?”

Theo smiled, shrugged. “You always handled it better than I did.”

“Not always.” He’d just cared less, Nash thought. And cared less sooner than Theo. “But the point is, it’s done now.”

Theo gestured with his slice. “And all your fault, naturally.”

“Mostly mine.”

And he’d let that roll over him. The angry accusations of carelessness, ingratitude, shortsightedness, and his stubborn determination to ruin his brother’s life along with his own.

“I’m ungrateful and recalcitrant.”

“Can you really be recalcitrant once you hit thirty?”

“Apparently.” Nash gestured with his slice in turn. “But you? You’re just feckless.”

Theo’s grin flashed. “According to them, that’s my middle name.”

“And they’re wrong, as usual. You’re your own man, Theo. Smart, capable, open-minded and -hearted. Their unique combination of neglect and unshakable demands layered together with constant disappointment hurt you more than it did me.”

“You were always there to stanch the wounds. It doesn’t hurt anymore, Nash, or not enough to count. Are you going to tell me what you said to them?”

There had been times along the way Nash had held back, held it all in. But, partners now as well as brothers.

“Basically? That we were going to look out for each other, like we always did. He said not to come running to him when we finished screwing up our lives, and I assured him he was the last person either of us would go to, for anything.”

“That’s a fucking fact,” Theo muttered.

“She said she’d washed her hands of us. I suggested she get a towel.”

After Theo’s mouth fell open, a laugh burst out. “You actually said that: ‘Get a towel.’”

“I did, because it’s time to say fuck it. It’s past time we both said fuck it, so that was my fuck it substitute. Then she hung up.”

“He’s giving me three weeks to come to my senses. She was a little more generous with a month.”

“Marking your calendar?” Nash asked him.

“Nope.” Theo took a second slice. “Happy Thanksgiving, Nash.”

Nash took a second slice for himself. “Happy Thanksgiving, Theo.”

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