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“Nate?”
“Do you not like being called that?” I knew a few people who preferred not to have their names shortened.
“I don’t know.” He sounded adorably confused. “No one had ever called me that before.”
“Really? Not even friends?”
Nathan shrugged. “I don’t really have friends.”
I took a couple of deep breaths to make sure my voice was steady before I answered. “Well, you have one now.”
His smile was slow to come, but when it did, it lit up his entire being. I loved that I had been able to put that expression on his face, but I also felt another twinge of sadness. I didn’t know anyone who reacted that way to making a new friend.
Especially if that friend was me. I’d met me. Definitely not worth getting that excited over.
A young man with cherry red hair and aggressive acne scars introduced himself as Landon and asked to see our IDs. Once we filled out and signed half a dozen forms, we were given coveralls, gloves, and hard hats with full face shields to change into.
Then Landon led us down the hall to a concrete room filled with furniture, electronics, glasses, plates, and various other fragile items. A stainless-steel table had been pushed against the wall to the left, its surface covered with hammers, mallets, crowbars, baseball bats, and other tools.
A digital timer set for thirty minutes began counting down once the door closed, but Nathan didn’t appear to be in much of a hurry.
“What do I do?”
I smiled at him. “Whatever you want.”
He surveyed the room with obvious hesitancy. “So, I just break stuff?”
“You just break stuff.”
It took him a while to figure out what to grab first, but eventually, he picked up a small red toaster and turned it over in his hands a couple of times. “You’re sure about this?”
His reluctance was kind of cute. “I’m sure, Nate. Just chuck it at the wall or something.”
With both hands, he lobbed it at the closest wall. The appliance bounced back, crashed to the ground, and skidded on its side across the floor, still intact.
“Try again,” I said before he could get discouraged. “Don’t hold back. Here.” I grabbed a tire iron from the table and held it out to him. “Use this.”
“Gage, I don’t—”
“How did it go at the funeral?”
A shadow passed over his face, and he swung the tire iron into a flatscreen television with a satisfying crack.
“How many times was the word ‘estranged’ used?”
Crack.
“How many times were you told not to think?”
Crack. Crack.
“Not to cry?”
Crack. Crack. Crack.
“How many times did the senator remind you that your dad abandoned you?”
The dam finally broke. Tears spilled down his cheeks. Sweat beaded at his temples. A raw, primal scream ripped from his throat as he swung the iron over and over, reducing the television to bits of plastic and wires.
