Brougham watched me speak with a serious expression, nodding the whole time and not tearing his eyes away from me for even a moment. I hadn’t talked about that day in forever. I hadn’t thought about it in forever. But it was weirdly freeing to tell him about it now.

The questions only got more intense from there. Some things we agreed on, like the definition of friendship. Others, our answers looked very different, like how love and affection looked in our lives (for me, it was the sun everything else revolved around; for Brougham, it was a goal, something he felt might change the way his whole life looked if he had as much of it as he would like to).

The question about relationships with our mothers made the room feel heavy and uncomfortable. Brougham hesitated, so I went first. “I love my mom,” I said. “I think our relationship’s starting to change for the better, lately. We’ve been talking more. It was hard for a while, because she’s always so busy, and I know it’s because she has to juggle everything without much input from Dad, but having her ignore me for work hurt more than when Dad does it. Maybe that’s not fair, I dunno. But she’s the one I live with most of the time, so it was her I wanted more support from. And on the flip side, I guess it’s her that I’m closer with in general for the same reason.”

Brougham glanced outside at Ray and Brooke. “I’m worried I’m going to become mine, and I won’t notice it happening. I keep thinking about how I got drunk after prom, and I didn’t do it to have fun or be social, I did it because I was angry, and I didn’t wanna be. And that scares me.”

Brooke and Ray had moved onto the next question, but I felt like we might need to skip it. Brougham and I needed to linger here for a minute. “Look, I’m not an expert,” I said. “But I think you’re being really hard on yourself. You’re scared of it because you’ve seen how bad it can get. But you’re also really aware of yourself, and you have the ability to reflect, and to change your choices when you don’t like how it went last time. You might be more at risk of issues with it because of genetics, but it’s not a sentence, you know? You still have control over how your life will go from here.”

Brougham looked up at me through his lashes. “You reckon?”