Daryl arrived in jeans and a gray hoodie, the gold chain still at his throat, the bodybuilder frame somehow smaller without the towel's theatrical vulnerability. He looked like a man who had not slept. He looked like a man who knew he deserved not to sleep.
They did not shake hands.
"Say what you came to say," Jamal told him.
Daryl sat on the opposite end of the bench. "I love her."
Jamal laughed that broken laugh again. "That's your opening?"
"It's the truth. It started wrong. It stayed wrong for a long time because we both knew what it would do to you. But I'm not going to sit here and tell you it was just loneliness and convenience. I fell in love with your mother. And I hate myself for how that sentence sounds out loud, but I won't lie to you on top of everything else."
Jamal's hands curled into fists on his thighs. He forced them open. "You ate at our table. You slept on our couch after homecoming games. My dad taught you how to change a tire in our driveway. You were supposed to be my brother."
"I know."
"You don't get to know. Knowing is what people say when they want credit for remorse without paying the full price." Jamal turned to face him fully. The hazel-green eyes had gone flat. "You will stay away from me. You will not text. You will not show up at Rhea's. If my mother chooses to keep seeing you, that is a conversation between her and God and whoever else she answers to. But you and I — whatever we were — that's done."
Daryl's jaw worked. His dark-brown eyes were wet. "Jamal—"