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Troy’s face lost color and Gavin rushed to continue, “Kidding! Sorry, dude. Just kidding.”
“Which you swore you’d never do.”
“To be fair, you kind of left yourself wide open for it.”
Troy looked out at the sunset again for a long moment and then back at Gavin. His face was resolute, set in stone. “Okay. It’s fine. Whatever it is, it’s fine, we’ll deal with it. You’re not in this alone. We’re all in it with you.” He took a deep breath and then went on, his voice weighed down by the gravity of the situation. “So, what’s the prognosis? You don’t need to protect me. I can take it.”
“Oh, shit, Troy. No. It’s nothing like that. It’s small. It’s slow-growing. I’ve probably had it my whole life. Recently, it started affecting my eyesight just enough that I can’t get in the air, but it doesn’t affect my day to day. The doctor’s pretty sure that’s all it will ever be.”
Troy stared at him for what felt like forever, his face completely blank. Gavin didn’t know if he was processing the information, or thinking of how to respond, or what.
Finally, in measured and even tones, he said, “You couldn’t have led with that part, asshole?”
Gavin’s heart dropped into his gut, thinking of the exchange suddenly from Troy’s point of view. Damn. He was going to have to do a lot better when he had the rest of these conversations. “Sorry.” That was the simplest, yet also the truest, thing he could think of to say.
“What I don’t understand is why you didn’t feel like you could tell any of us about this.”
Crap. “Well. Yeah. That’s actually not strictly true.”
“Oh, of course.” Troy’s voice was brittle. “Of course you told Gen. I could tell she knew more than she was letting on.”
“No.” Gavin shook his head. “Not Gen. Mila.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“No.”
“She’s a kid! She can’t handle this.”
“Well, she has been.”
Troy dropped his head into his hands. “God, Gav. I don’t know what to say. I think I need some time to wrap my head around this.”
Gavin’s voicemail notification chimed and he remembered that he’d put his phone on “do not disturb” mode while he’d been out with Mila and never changed it back. He looked at the screen and saw that the message was from Gen.
Looking back up at Troy, he said, “Well, take all the time you need, bro. I think I’m going to be heading out right now to have a very similar conversation to the one that we just had.”
Troy smiled wryly. “Make sure you lead with the ‘not a big deal’ part rather than the ‘tumor in the brain’ part.”
Gavin nodded as he rose and headed for the door. “Good tip.”
