more like Trent Crimmgefail

“Uh, yeah, of course,” Buck says, standing aside to let Harry come in and slip off his shoes. “Not that it’s not always great to see you, but—”

“Why am I here?”

“Kinda, yeah.”

Harry slumps down on the couch. “My mom is pissed at me, and May is pissed at me, so. Wanted to get out of their apartments.”

Buck moves around in the kitchen, hanging up his apron and filling a water glass for Harry. “Why are they pissed at you?”

“Because I dropped out of school.”

“Whoa,” Buck says, almost fumbling the glass.“You dropped out?”

“Not you, too,” Harry groans. “Are you gonna lecture me now about how it’s the biggest mistake ever?”

Honestly, Buck wants to, a little bit. But Buck looks at Harry on the couch, how his sweater sleeves covers his palms. And he remembers what it’s like to be eighteen and scared and angry at the world and underneath all that, just plain lonely. So—

“Nah,” Buck says. “Would be kinda hypocritical of me, since I dropped out of college at nineteen, so.”

“Exactly,” Harry says forcefully. “And you turned out fine!”

“Took me a while to get here, though,” Buck says honestly, handing Harry the water and sitting down in the armchair adjacent to the couch. “Though I don’t know if college would’ve made me turn out any better.”

Harry takes a sip of his water. “That’s what I keep trying to tell them,” he says. “Like, college just isn’t for everyone. It’s a scam anyway, with the student loans. Might as well just start working so I can support myself.”

Buck chews the inside of his cheek. “I,” he starts and then stops. “I’ve told you that when I was a little older than you, I drove cross-country for a few years working odd jobs, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Harry says. “Maybe I’ll do something like that.”

“I mean, I can’t stop you. But if you do, I want you to have a good reason for doing it. Because I don’t think I did.”

“Seeing the world, making some money? Those seem like good reasons.”

Buck shakes his head. “No. I mean, those things happened to me along the way, but they weren’t the real reason I was driving.”

Harry tucks his feet up on the couch and wraps his arms around his knees, and it makes him look so young Buck wants to cry. “What was?”

“I was lonely,” Buck says honestly. “I was angry, and my parents—they weren’t the best parents. I told myself I was seeing the world, but really I was just running away and hoping I’d end up finding myself running to something. And I landed here eventually, sure, but it took like, seven years. And I spent a lot of that time being really, really lonely. And sleeping in my car, hoping I didn’t get robbed in the night, or freeze to death, or seeing if I had enough cash to scrape together for a motel room in the middle of winter. Which sounds kind of adventurous, but honestly, it fucking sucked a lot of the time. So if you’re leaving school to go do the ‘I’m standing on my own two feet’ thing, you can do that. But it should be because you want to do it, not because you’re running away from something. Especially not from people who do care about you.”

“I don’t think my mom cares about me that much,” Harry says. There’s a wobble in his voice. “Ever since Bobby died, all she does is work. She doesn’t—she didn’t even notice I’d dropped out.”

Buck relocates, settling himself on the couch next to Harry and wrapping an arm around him. Harry pushes his face into Buck’s shoulder; Buck can feel his arm getting wet.

“I know she does care about you,” Buck says. “Even if she’s not always good at showing it. So I’m not saying not to be mad at her. I think you’re allowed to be mad at her. I think there’s just a lot of pain in your family right now and it’s going all over the place. But if she wants to show up for you, maybe you should give her a chance. And if she continues to—” Buck closes his eyes and is struck with the memory of a missing baby box, of his mother shrieking What did you want us to do, “—to not be there how you need her, you’re allowed to go off and do your own thing. But if she is trying to reach out now. Maybe give her a chance.”

Harry sniffles. “Everything sucks so bad,” he says plaintively.

Buck laughs a little and swipes at his own eyes. “Yeah, it really fucking does. Do you want a sugar cookie?”

“Okay,” Harry says, and Buck gets up to grab them both cookies.

Harry frowns at the Mirabel in his hand. “Is this Abraham Lincoln?”