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I rolled my eyes at him, forcing a laugh out of him until he held his hands up. “Okay, okay. He made some personal comments. But really, is that the only reason?” Bennett asked.
“He touches you,” I said, feeling my jaw tighten. “I don’t like it.”
The minute the words were out of my mouth, I wanted to take them back, especially when Bennett’s eyes went wide, and he opened his lips to respond.
“Why the kids?” I quickly said before he could say anything.
“What?”
“What got you into working with these kids?”
I watched as he leaned forward for a bit and studied the ground in front of him. He picked up a small stick and began drawing little patterns in the dirt. It was a typical Bennett move. Whenever the focus was put back on him or he had to talk about himself, he would start playing with whatever inanimate object was around. If he couldn’t find something to self-soothe himself with, he’d play with his fingers in some way, whether it was tapping them together in a kind of pattern or using them to toy with his hair or another part of his body. The habit had never bothered me when we were kids, but I was surprised he still did it as an adult. I figured it was a coping mechanism brought on by stress.
“Not really sure,” Bennett said. “One of my friends in college was part of the Big Brothers Big Sisters program so I got to meet the kid he was mentoring. The kid was real quiet and withdrawn with everyone else, but sometimes I’d see him talking to my roommate while he was helping the kid with his homework or playing video games with him and the kid just… lit up. My friend said the program was always looking for more participants, so I signed up.”
“Where did you end up going to college?” I asked.
“Harvard,” he said quietly, almost like he was reluctant to tell me. Maybe it was a reminder of how very different our stations in life were.
“Did you get one… a little brother, I mean?”
Bennett nodded. He’d started drawing an infinity symbol in the dirt. “His name was Colin. He was twelve. He lived in Boston with his mom; his dad had died a few years earlier in Iraq.” Bennett’s eyes lifted to meet mine. “A soldier.”
I nodded in understanding.
“Colin hadn’t wanted to be in the program— his mom had signed him up when his teachers had commented that his grades had started slipping after his dad died. He’d already been to therapy, but he was still struggling and pulled away from the kids who used to be his friends. He didn’t really have anyone besides his mom, so she thought the program would help.”
“That must have been tough,” I said.
Bennett was quiet for a long time and then his gaze shifted to mine again. “He reminded me of you.”
I stiffened at that.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t say that to upset you, Xander,” Bennett began, but I shook my head to stop him.
“No, it’s okay,” I said. “What happened with Colin?”
“It took me a long time to get through to him, and there were a lot of times where I wanted to give up. But I kept remembering that he’d lost everything… that he was… lost. It was a year before I finally found something that helped us connect.”
“What was it?”
“Legos.”
“What?” I asked in surprise.
Bennett smiled. “Legos. He was obsessed with them. Well, not just Legos, but anything he could use to build things.”
I laughed at that and wondered how the hell Bennett had managed to figure that out. But he continued before I could ask.
“Anyway, once I had that connection with him, he started talking more. He was a really bright kid, but losing his dad… he’d understood that he was gone, but he hadn’t accepted it.”
I ignored the tension that began running through me as Bennett’s story started to hit too close to home. I could tell Bennett knew how his words were affecting me, because he’d stopped playing with the stick and his attention was focused solely on me.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “Do you want me to stop?”
I shook my head. “No, tell me what happened to him.”
“I spent years being his big brother, even after he was too old for the program. I was in my final year of graduate school when he graduated from high school. Guess what I gave him for his graduation present.”
Bennett’s smile did crazy things to my insides and my earlier tension drained away. “What?” I asked.
“A trip to Legoland in California.”
I laughed and shook my head. “God, I’ve missed you, Bennett,” I said softly. I realized my mistake when I heard Bennett let out the tiniest of whimpers. I should have said I’d missed his antics, but in truth, that was just a part of it. My brain had clearly decided this was going to be one of those situations where I was going to say exactly what was on my mind… just like my comment about Aiden touching Bennett so damn much and me not liking it.
