He nods to that and he looks out, away. He can bare himself this way, share these things, but he needs a little distance. His practical side knows it isn’t as effective, that there’s something to looking at someone when you say things like this. But his heart is too full and heavy and hot even thinking about it now to venture it.

“There aren’t many things that are just… true. There’s always exceptions. Always factors. Always… possibilities. And most of the time? That’s? A great thing. But. There was someone who. It was. An impossibility that he would turn on me. That he’d ever be disloyal. And in the moment where he did, I almost felt.

“Broken. Like the world was moving forward but I? I was stuck in place. Unwilling to move on. Being torn apart by the force. Because what I was seeing? Couldn’t be true. It couldn’t be reality. I didn’t want it to be reality. Because no matter how rough things got, no matter how dire. Dangerous. No matter what we were asked to do? We’d always done it together. And I didn’t even know how to… be different from that.”

His shoulders buck just the once before he swallows and reaches for a piece of fruit again.

“Surprises like that are a sonofabitch. I’m sorry.”