Byron hadn’t been wearing a jacket, and Tristan wasn’t either, but Tristan seemed to immediately feel the cold.

More pronounced by the cold was his reaction to seeing Ray. He looked away.

“If you want to talk, I know it’s hard, but we’re there. If you want to write a letter, we will gladly read it. I miss you.”

“Mama doesn’t,” Tristan said, still not making eye contact.

“Mama has complicated feelings. I think complicated feelings are forigvable, aren’t they?”

Tristan’s hands kept going to his dyed hair, trying to fix something that didn’t need fixing.

The hair and its brilliant pink was just an extension of Ray’s feelings toward Tristan as a whole. There had been a time he fully understood his boy, lasting well beyond the point that a parent normally had a firm grip on their children. Then he had seen how excited young Tristan was to see certain characters on his favorite show, the internet searches—

Madre de dios, the internet searches.

He’d understood Tristan less fully then, but he’d made efforts. He’d reconciled. The divide had really started at the hair, it was strange and it was wholly Tristan.

What he’d done to his brother… it was the same. Strange and wholly of Tristan, understandable without being relatable. And it had seemingly put their boy forever out of reach.

“You’re being good to your brother?”

“For once, I might be,” Tristan said, avoiding eye contact. “But I don’t trust my own opinion on the matter. You’d have to ask him.”

“You’re being good to yourself?”

“Trying.”

“This girl that Byron likes, is she good?”

“I’m not sure he likes her. But she’s good.”

“And these brainy boys you like—”

“Dios mio,” Tristan said, smiling for the first time. “Byron knew he was throwing me under the fucking bus with that line—”

“Language,” Ray said, stern. He reached his hand up, and tapped fingers against Tristan’s cheek in the lightest possible version of a slap. He kept his fingers there for a moment, then dropped them to the back of Tristan’s neck, holding firm.

Tristan made eye contact for the first time.

“I miss my sons. Reach out. Make the effort. It would mean the world to her.”

“She might say she doesn’t want to see me.”

“She might. Twenty years with her, and I don’t know for sure, myself. But you got yourself into this. Having to brave this is the price you pay. Just know you don’t need to wonder with me. Byron says he forgives you? I can manage it.”

Tristan nodded, looking away again.

“Call.”

“After all of this. I have to focus on things, and technically, I have to go—”

“After. Don’t break our hearts,” Ray said, giving his son a shake, by way of the grip on the back of his neck.

“After,” Tristan said.