Hugh took another sip of the drink and smiled encouragement at the notion of an adult book. He'd purchased the second one in the series after he'd finished the first. While he'd never traditionally been someone to just read novels, preferring to either focus on plays that he felt he should be familiar with from a professional standpoint, or to watch films, he'd found himself picking up books a little bit more recently, maybe Hannah's fault at first, but Theo's stories had been genuinely enjoyable and he'd enjoyed reading them. "Would you write the same genre of story, or something different?"
He considered his own menu and nodded. "Yes, I do." He paused. "Ezra's the oldest, and I have an older sister as well. Ezra and I - our relationship is ..." He sighed lightly. "Ezra is the perfect son, and he's never let me forget it. But he hasn't insulted me on Instagram since I rejoined, so I'm counting it as a win," he said lightly.
He put the menu down as Theodore spoke, having already decided on the herbed chicken anyway, and listened. They weren't comparable, not really, and it was probably foolishness to think they could even come close, even if there had been the end to a five year not relationship with Em at the same time as the film and the trial. It had felt like his world had turned upside down, collapsing in on itself, and nothing he'd counted on throughout his twenties had been there for him to grasp. He'd smoked too much, drank too much, hid from the world, tried to turn himself into something completely different, grasped for a relationship that had likely been a really bad idea from the beginning. Every single thing had been an attempt to try to get away from what had shifted out from under him, and he could see that more clearly now. Or he thought he could. The worst part of all of it, really, was that he sometimes barely felt that he could trust his perception of anything.
"Maybe the point isn't to be the same selves we were," he said softly, not wanting to say how familiar it all felt because Theo was right, it wasn't the same and he didn't want to pretend it was but he also felt increasingly the old self he had been might not be something he'd ever find again. "Does it bother you much?" He nodded briefly in the direction of Theodore's leg. He hadn't known how Jamie had died, and it had to be bad enough to live with that, but to live with a physical daily reminder of that accident… Hugh could only feel empathy for Theodore.