Tyler didn’t look at me the next day. Or the day after that. The usual jokes stopped, not replaced with kindness exactly, but with distance, like the social math had changed and nobody wanted to be on the wrong side of the equation.
The real shift came Friday at lunch when Tyler approached my table alone, hands shoved into his hoodie pocket, confidence dialed down to something more human. “Your dad was really a Marine?” he asked. “Yeah,” I said.
He nodded slowly. “That was… kinda cool. What he said.” A pause stretched between us.
“I shouldn’t have laughed.”
It wasn’t a perfect apology. But it was real. After he walked away, two other students asked if the seat across from me was taken.
We talked about homework, about a game coming out that weekend, normal things that felt strangely new. Lunch didn’t feel like survival anymore. That night, I told my dad.
He listened quietly, the way he always did. “You didn’t embarrass me,” I said. He gave a small smile.
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