Dad stands quickly. “We’re family, son. End of discussion.”

I’d created the chaos that brought me here and as easy as that, they offered me the calm to face reality again.

* * *

Jake’s car is parked out front when Sydney drops me back at the house. He’s standing at my door, back turned, hand raised as he knocks.

“What’s up?” I ask, getting out of the car and hobbling up to him.

He lifts the giant plate of food in his hand. “My mom wanted me to drop this off.” Then he sighs. “And I guess I just miss my friend. I’ve tried to give you time, like you said. But I don’t know. I guess the worry won out and now I’m here, offering you food I bought at the diner to make it look like my mom made it just so I had an excuse to see you.”

Without a word, I walk past him and open the front door, leaving it open as an invitation.

He stores the food in the fridge, along with the many others and sits in the living room with me.

“Lucy gave Cameron a black eye,” he says, and I make a sound similar to a laugh but I can’t be sure because it’s been that fucking long.

“How?”

“Story goes she read a book—”

“It’s always a fucking book.”

“Right? So she read a book and told Cameron he needed to be more assertive and dominating. He said he wouldn’t do it. She kept asking him to. And one night they were screwing and he told her, and I quote, ‘to take it like the filthy whore she is’. So yeah. Black eye.”

I make that weird sound again, only this time, my shoulders shake with it. “They’re fucking crazy.”

“Yep,” he says, and I glance over at him sitting on the couch opposite me, gazing up at the ceiling.

For a moment, I see the fifteen-year-old kid I met, the one who took in the new kid at school and quickly became my best friend, the only one who could read my actions when my words had failed me. “You ever feel stuck, Jake?” I ask, pushing away the memory from when I asked Riley the exact same question.

He lowers his gaze to mine. “What do you mean?”

“Like, sometimes I look out my window and see the world spinning around me, like time hasn’t stopped and a life hasn’t ended. I see people smiling, laughing, and I wonder how it is they can function and I’m just… stuck. I felt it when I came home on medical and I felt it after Dave died and I feel it now and I don’t know why.”

“Because you experienced near death twice and actual death once?” he says simply, sitting up higher in his chair. “I mean, when you think about it, time is just that… time. It’s what life is made of. So time stops when a life ends.”

Nothing in the entire world, besides Riley, has ever made more sense than Jake sitting in my living room right at this very moment.

He adds, “But that doesn’t mean you don’t fight to make time move again. If you want Dave’s clock to keep ticking, find a way to make it happen.”

“Like a legacy?”

Jake shrugs. “I did a little research… into your friend.”

“You did?”

“He has three little brothers, right? They’d be missing him something fierce.”

“Yeah, they would be.”

“So.”

“So?” I ask.

“So reach out to them if you think it’ll help them. I’m almost positive it’ll help you.”

“What? You think I should write them a letter or something?”

He smiles and sits up higher. “Well you see, Grandpa Banks, there’s this little thing called email. You can access it on something called the Internet.”

Yeah. That weird sound is definitely a laugh. “I don’t have a computer. It was Riley’s.”

Now it’s Jake’s turn to laugh. “Well you see, Grandpa Banks—” He dodges the cushion I throw at his head. “—there’s this little thing called the Smartphone which has previously explained Internet.”

“Fuck you.”

We both pull out our phones at the same time. “So what do I do?” I ask.

“Well, this is tough. Riley ever get you to set up Facebook?”

I shake my head.

“Twitter?”

Another shake.

“Instagram?”

“Nope.”

“Tumblr?”

“Now you’re just making shit up.”

He laughs again. “Swear it.” He taps his phone and moves to sit next to me. “Let’s start with the basics, Grandpa.”

“Enough with the grandpa bullshit.”

“Pops?”

“No.”

“Gam?”

“No!”

“Fine. Gramps it is.”

I look over his shoulder and watch him pull up an app. “Dave O’Brien, right?”

“Yep.”

He types in: “Dave O’Brien USMC.”

He’s the first picture that pops up in the results. But it’s not just him. It’s us. We’re standing next to each other, our smiles wide, head to toe in our combat uniform. I remember him getting Leroy to take the picture but I never actually saw it.

My chest tightens as I focus on his face, on his smile, and I remember the exact words he said after the picture was taken. “This one’s going right in the Banks spank bank.”

“You okay?” Jake asks.

No. “Yeah.”

“His profile’s set to private, but we can see his friends.” He types in “O’Brien” in another search window and boom. Two of his brothers are listed.

“Mikey—he’s the oldest. I mean now he is…”

Jake nods, tapping more buttons and then hands me his phone. “You can write him a message but I have to go pick up my sister from the movies so if it’s going to take you eighty years, Gramps, I’d rather you do a voice message.”

“I can do voice messages?”

He nods. “Hold down that mic.”

I do what he says. “Hey… uh… Mike. It’s Dylan Banks. I’m using my friend’s account. I don’t have one. I was just seeing… um… checking up on you… I guess…”

Jake takes the phone from me, his thumbs flying across the screen and hitting send then switching it off and pocketing it all before I even realize I’m no longer holding the phone.

“I gave him your number and told him to text you. I gotta jet.”

“How is Julie, anyway?”

He sighs, long and loud. “She’s dating.”

“What?” I ask, surprised.

He nods. “Yep. She’s fourteen now.”

“Shut up.”

He keeps nodding. “I keep a bat in the back seat so the kid knows I’m not fucking around.”

“So you don’t like him?”

He scoffs. “I fucking hate him. He’s a cocky little punk. Thinks he’s God’s gift to women.”

“So she’s dating Logan?”

His face drops. “That shit’s not funny, man.”

“If the shoe fits…”

“I’m going to fucking kill him,” he says, rushing to the front door. I follow after him, laughing under my breath.