Warren and I ended up taking Bruno for a walk that lasted about two hours. We spoke about all sorts of things. He let me speak to him about Kirby as much as I wanted and I nearly spoke his ears off. He didn't mind though. Not once did he interrupt me or tell me I was talking too much. And when I went off on a tangent, he didn't try to bring me back to what I was initially talking about. 

Somewhere along the way, we walked past a woman with a doberman. It wouldn't stop barking at us. The sound was so unbearable I couldn't help but place my hands over my ears. Warren picked his pace up at that so we could get away from there as quick as we could. When the coast was clear, he turned to me for a brief moment, "You can't handle noise?" I shook my head. 

"Devin couldn't either," he commented. When he noticed the look of confusion on my face, he added, "My brother."

"We had these special headphones for him. They got rid of all the unnecessary noise around him. He wouldn't leave the house without them."

"I had headphones too," I recalled. "My grandma said I shouldn't grow too dependent on them and made me take them off."

"Isn't that difficult for you?"

"Very difficult."

He hummed to himself for a few seconds before clearing his throat, "Are you free tomorrow?"

I nodded.

"When will you be going back?"

"Next week. For work. You?"

"I'll be spending five more days here. I'm thinking about taking Bruno with me."

"Won't your aunt miss her?"

"My aunt doesn't really like dogs. She was forced to take care of Bruno after my parents died."

Before I could stop myself, I blurted out, "How did they die?"

I felt his body tense up before he let out a shaky sigh, his breath resembling smoke in the winter air. 

"Died at the hands of law enforcement," he confessed through gritted teeth. "For a crime they didn't commit." The recollection seemed to bring him a great deal of pain. He was looking straight ahead but his jaw was tensed. I remembered an incident my father had told me about. I remembered how Aunt Delancey's husband had actually died due to police brutality a few years before my mother had gotten pregnant. He was originally acquitted for attempted harassment when it was found that the claim made was false. A day later, he was dead. Nothing ever happened to the officers responsible. 

There is hatred all around us. Just in different colours. 

There is jealousy. There is disgust. There is rejection. There is aggression. There is violence. I am hated for my autism. I am hated for the colour of my skin. If I were to come to the conclusion that I wanted to take care of a boy with strings attached, would I be hated for that too?

"How did you find out that you like boys?"

The tension in the air seemed to ease away as he let out an amused chuckle. I watched as his dimple popped up underneath the sun's usual bright rays of light now made dull by the freezing air that surrounded us. "I don't know. I wish I had some coming-of-age movie kind of moment. I just figured it out when I found out one day that I wanted to kiss dudes."

I've always wanted to "kiss dudes". But I was told that I was to be ashamed for thinking of boys in this way.

"How come you're curious all of a sudden?"

"I think I might want to kiss dudes too," I said. "But I'm not sure. Dad says that people like that are mentally ill."

He sighed, "Why do people have to make other people feel ashamed about things they can't control?"

I don't know why but I had a feeling he wasn't just talking about boys kissing boys or girls kissing girls. I had a feeling that this might be related to his brother as well. Every time he was talking about something that had even the slightest bit of correlation with his brother, he would bite the inside of his cheek and dig his nails into his palms. I noticed fingernail-shaped scars on the inside of his palm. This could be a habit of his. 

I was aware he had had a painful childhood but I was upset because I couldn't do anything about it. I hadn't had too tough of a childhood despite having autism. I hadn't lost both my parents. I didn't have a sibling to lose. Still, I wanted to be able to empathize with him so I'd know exactly how to console him. 

I felt selfish for feeling this way but I wished for a second that I'd had a difficult upbringing so he wouldn't feel alone.