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Adam shook his head, bending his arm at the elbow a few times. “I just… it sounds like I’m a weakling, but I don’t like blood. My mom? She can look at anything and not flinch. She’s been a cop for like eleven years, so she’s seen a lot. Bad car crashes and death scenes and stuff. But my dad had a weak stomach, she said.”
Brian felt for the kid. “It’s no big deal. Not everyone can do the stuff your mom does.”
“Yeah,” he said thoughtfully. “She says there’s a job for everyone, and that she can’t do half the math stuff I do.”
Brian nodded. “Exactly. So, don’t worry about the blood. It’s no big deal to me.”
“I bet there was a lot….” Adam’s voice trailed away, and his cheeks flushed. Brian knew what he was asking about, and he found he really didn’t mind.
“When I lost my legs? Probably. Luckily, I don’t remember a lot about that particular point in time. But I had someone like your mom there to take care of me.”
“So, what do you remember?”
Brian looked at him. “You sure you want to know?”
Adam took a moment and really seemed to be thinking about the question. “Yes.”
Brian looked down at the resting steak, his hands going still. “I was blown up in a Humvee accident. Pretty much blew my legs off. I’m thankful it knocked me out. By the time I woke up I was in a helicopter on the way to a Forward Operating Base. They triaged me there, then sent me on to Germany. I woke up two weeks later, missing two legs. One above the knee,” he tapped his right thigh, which echoed, “and one below the knee.”
He wiggled his left leg.
“Wow,” Adam breathed. “Do you have phantom pains and all that?”
Brian smirked. “I do. And it hurts when I stub my toe.”
Adam tilted his head, making a funny face. He pushed his glasses up his nose. “Seriously?”
“Yup. My brain expects hurt, so that’s what it transmits.”
“That is so weird…” Adam breathed. “But fascinating.”
“Yeah,” Brian sighed. “I still wake up and roll out of bed, expecting my legs to be there. A couple of times I’ve landed on the floor.”
Adam snorted. “Seriously?”
“Yup.”
Brian portioned out the meat and potatoes and veggies onto plates, then handed one to Adam. “Go sit down.”
Adam did as he was told, digging into the food. Brian watched him for a minute, curious at the direction his life had just gone. Two months ago, he’d been resigned to never seeing the boy and his mother again, though he’d been disappointed. Especially after the kiss on the side of the road. That had come out of nowhere, but it had been amazing. It replayed in his mind nightly. He’d regretted the move to Columbus, then, but it had already been done.
“This is really good,” Adam said, mouth full of steak.
“Thanks,” Brian said, sitting down across from him. He handed Adam a bottle of water, then cracked one open for himself.
The steak was a little over, but still good. Next time he’d watch it better, and hopefully wouldn’t have a neighbor kid distracting him. “So, what are you doing here?”
Adam’s gaze lifted. “What do you mean?”
Brian had seen the guilt, though, in the flash of his hazel eyes behind the lenses of his glasses.
“You knew I was in Columbus. Seems like a pretty massive coincidence that you literally land right next to me, a thousand miles from Wyoming.”
Adam was chewing, chewing, obviously trying to give himself time to come up with a reasonable explanation for why he was there. “I wanted to go to this school,” he said finally, swallowing. “And eventually OSU.”
“But how many schools were you looking at?”
He shrugged negligently. “Three or four, something like that.”
