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Been a long time.

We laughed as we drove. The road stretched out in front of us, silence punctuated with green fireflies floating overhead. The music carried on quietly in the background, just audible over the steady rumble of the car. I tried to remember the last time we'd spoken so frankly but nothing came to mind. It was a simple realization. We'd never really spoken before. So many similar and even shared experiences that we had never tried to connect over. So many opportunities for bonding squandered. We were entirely different people yet somehow almost exactly the same. "So, five or six months, right?" I asked. "How serious are you and Kara?" He paused for a moment. "What do you mean, serious?" I kept my eyes on the road. The streetlights whipped past like slow motion strobe flashes. "What do you think I mean, serious?" I could see him turn to look at me in my peripheral vision. "I mean," he said. His voice suddenly had gravity. "We've held hands before." I took a moment to process what he had said. I turned to meet his gaze. The red light filled the cabin. "Oh," I said. "You are very young." He smirked. A familiar smirk. I'd seen that smirk before. On an older face. In a mirror. "That was a joke." He said. I turned away, pressing down on the accelerator. "Damn it, David." I said.

Maybe not just almost the same.

I lingered in the doorway for a moment, trying to discern what the commotion was about. "Did you even eat today?" She asked. Her voice was stern, hostile. "Yes." He sighed. "What did you eat?" He paused and stared at her. "I had a sandwich." "When?" Her questions weren't slow enough to ride on the coattails of his responses. "Earlier." "Earlier when?" He was quiet. It was an awful lie. Skills take practice and time, I suppose. "The only thing you had today," she said. "Was a glass of chocolate milk. That is unacceptable." Surreptitiously, I pulled a glass from the cabinet. She continued to lecture him on the merits of nutrition as I opened the fridge and pulled the carton out.

"What's going on?" I interrupted with a certain measure of disinterest.

She turned to me as I poured myself a glass of chocolate milk. "This hard-headed boy won't listen to me. All he had today was chocolate milk. He didn't eat anything and he's trying to lie about it. He just won't listen." I returned the carton to the fridge and she returned her attention to my brother. "That's why you're so skinny. Because you don't eat. You're going to get sick if you don't eat food and just drink chocolate milk all day." She turned around and raised her hands to me in frustration. I shrugged with insouciance and sipped my glass of chocolate milk. She paused for a moment before retreating from the kitchen. She called out to my father. "Do you know what your sons had to eat today?"

And, for a moment, we shared a good smirk.

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