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"Do you still have an apartment there?" I asked, curious about the rest of his life.
"I sublet it for six months. I'm not sure if I'll go back there, stay here, or go somewhere else."
"I'm sure your friends miss you."
He shrugged. "My friends have their own lives."
"Are they mostly artists?"
"Some are. Some aren't. It's not a requirement."
I suspected he wasn't the kind of man who needed a lot of people in his life. He could probably be on his own and be perfectly happy. "Tell me something about yourself that has nothing to do with our parents, Kade. I know you got started in art early. What else did you do? Were you a sports guy? Were you good in school?"
"I played pick-up basketball in the park growing up, but that was about it for sports. As for school, I was more of a troublemaker than a student. I found school completely irrelevant to my life. My mom was struggling with two jobs and very little money. She didn't have time or energy to push me to do well academically, although she did try. But I didn't see how most of the subjects I had to learn were going to help me."
"I bet you were good in art."
"Spent most of my days drawing instead of taking notes," he admitted. "What about you? Was it always music?"
"Yes. It was the one thing I was good at."
"I'm sure you were good at more than one thing."
"Not really. I was an okay student. I didn't care that much about my grades. I never did extra credit, while Dani always did anything she could do to get extra points. She was a serious overachiever. If there was something to win, she won it."
"Did you like to compete, too?"
"No. I didn't need to win, and I didn't want to fail, so it was easier to just stay in the middle."
"Except when it came to music."
"Except then," I agreed. "That's where I excelled."
"We both knew early on what mattered to us. That's not a bad thing. We didn't waste our time on subjects or activities that didn't matter to us."
I thought about that. "I didn't go after music the way you went after art, though. I always played, but I never really believed music could be my career. I couldn't think that big or that far in the future. I'd get anxious when I tried. I was afraid to want too much, because I knew how bad it would feel if I didn't get it. I think some of that insecurity goes back to losing my mom at an early age. But maybe that's not true, because Dani didn't become insecure, she actually grew in confidence. She had ambition and drive, and I was happy to follow her. I let her take over my life."
"And then you got mad about it," he said, a perceptive light in his eyes.
"I did. But it was my fault. I gave her the control." I paused. "That's not exactly true. I didn't have to give her control because she always had it. Our relationship started before we were born, and she was born first, which made her the oldest. She never let me forget that."
"By a few minutes, I'm guessing."
"Those few minutes were all it took," I said with a smile. I finished my last bite and wiped my mouth. "Thanks for dinner. I should pay you."
"You can buy the next one."
I liked the idea of another dinner. I liked the idea of spending more time with Kade. But at the same time, I felt like we were coming perilously close to the edge of a cliff, and future time was not guaranteed.
"You just lost your smile," Kade said, his gaze turning speculative.
"Just thinking how impossible it is to make future plans when the future seems very unpredictable."
"Well, I've always thought too much planning is a bad idea anyway, even when it's not life and death. Sometimes, you just have to make choices as they come and roll with the consequences."
"I'm getting pretty banged up from all the rolling. So are you," I couldn't help pointing out. "You have a nasty bruise on your face."
"Doesn't it just make me look hot?" he teased.
