"I'm glad you had someone like that," Hugh said, his mind sort of turning over if he had anyone that had so influenced the course of his life. There was the slightly older high school boy who had been his first kiss, in some ways his first foray into romance, but Hugh didn't feel that he'd drastically shifted who he was. The closest was Em, who had definitely shown him that something steady could still be spontaneous, and sexy, and something he might want. She'd been the first person he'd ever committed to in any way, and even if that hadn't turned out, it definitely had shifted something inside him that he couldn't put back.
"It'd be like starting over," Hugh suggested. "Only with the awkwardness of knowing that once you were close enough that you're asking questions that you would have at one times known." There were worse reasons to be awkward, maybe, but he could sympathize with that. "I don't think most of my high school friends, or elementary school friends, I would have anything in common with at this point. There were a few other theatre kids and we remained - close isn't the right word, but in contact - up through the film anyway. I don't think I felt so much an outcast at school - at least not in that group - as I did at home, but when you find that place where you feel like you matter, or things feel right? That felt pretty important when I was younger."