“Do you remember when we first met?”

“I sure do,” Todd was excited! “Cooper and Kyle were beating me up, but then you came by. I bet they didn’t know what to do when you knocked Kyle off his feet. He was always beating people up, but that was the first time he’d ever been!”

“You were a lot smaller than them, and I don’t like seeing people getting bullied,” he remembered that day a little differently.

“I know you don’t,” Todd sounded like he was willing to put in a pitch for him.

That kind of gushing always made him uncomfortable, “they weren’t bullying you, were they?”

“But they were,” he was quick to shake his head. It caught his eye.

“I gotta confess something to you,” his right fist punched his left palm. “I’d transferred schools because my mom got sick. Hospital sick, and it freaked me out. My brother and my mom were all I had. So I ran away, at least during school. I needed somewhere where I could freak out.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I needed someplace that didn’t matter where I could be selfish. I didn’t stick up for you that day. I was just looking for a fight. And I didn’t stop to think about what that would do to someone else. I’m sorry about that.”