“I gotta go,” he says in a hurry, but before he can even shut his door, his dad is rambling through the dusty gravel toward my truck with a graying mutt who I recognize as Duke trotting behind him.

“Thanks for the ride,” Tucker says. “I’ll text you later.”

I might be petty, but Mom didn’t raise me rude, so I call past Tucker, “Hi, Mr. Watson.”

Duke dodges past him and walks right up to the open door to investigate me. I reach my hand across the seat for him to sniff and he carefully nudges the top of my hand with his wet nose. Our family dog, Griff, died when I was thirteen and Dad was too heartbroken to let us get a new one. A dog is high on my list of priorities once I’m a fully functioning adult.

Mr. Watson doesn’t even look up at the sound of my voice. I can see him in Tucker. The shoulders and the shape of their lips. The way their noses gather into a square point at the end. In many ways, Mr. Watson looks like a deflated version of Tucker, but with a smattering of sun spots.

“Dad, why aren’t you in bed?” Tucker asks in a stern voice that sounds so foreign coming from him.

“I, uh, lost the s—key to the apartment,” he slurs. Mr. Watson pats down the front of his jeans and his back pockets like the keys might somehow miraculously appear.

He looks so much like Tucker. It almost makes me uncomfortable. Tall and broad, but softer. He’s overdue for a haircut, with curls gathering at the nape of his neck, and his skin is papery and translucent. I bet that before Tucker was as big as he is today, helping his dad into bed was much more of a task than he could easily handle.

I feel suddenly protective of younger Tucker, and I hate myself for being so venomous with him and quick to assume that the whole situation between us was about me entirely.

“You’re that Brewer boy,” he says. “The queer one.”

“That’s me,” I cheerfully admit. I’m plenty used to being the queer one.

“Good for you,” he says, giving me a hearty thumbs-up.

Tucker turns back to me and whispers, “Sorry.”

“Your daddy worked so hard for that business of his.” Mr. Watson shakes a finger in my direction. “Shame you won’t be the one to be taking it over.”