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He looked down at the floor. He wouldn’t – or couldn’t – look at me as he started.

“Everything that happened two months ago… I handled that really badly.”

I swallowed, hard. “Well… I could have handled it better, too… I guess…”

He straightened up and looked me in the eye. “No, you handled it fine. You drew a line in the sand and you refused to take less than you deserved. I admired you for that.”

I wondered if he knew where my advice had come from, but I decided now wasn’t the time to ask.

What I did ask was what I’d been dying to know all that time:

“Why didn’t you call me?”

He looked away and began to pace slowly, methodically. I saw him wince, and realized his broken ribs must still be hurting him.

“I asked myself that a lot, too,” he said. “I guess I’m just not very good with relationships. My father, my mother… we weren’t the kind of family that…”

His words petered out, the idea left hanging in the air. He stopped walking and looked me straight in the eye.

“No, that’s bullshit.”