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"There!" Shane exclaimed as he pointed through the windshield, his voice carrying the quiet certainty of someone who already knew exactly where to look. It still amazed him how quickly he could find Joshua in a crowd.
Every afternoon the front gates released what looked, for a few moments, like partially organised chaos. Hundreds of teenagers spilled onto the footpaths all of them in near-identical teen dress and backpacks hanging from one shoulder despite a lifetime of parental insistence that they use both straps. Conversations overlapped one another until they became a single indistinct hum, punctuated by bursts of laughter and the occasional shout from someone who had spotted a friend halfway across the courtyard.
To anyone else it was simply a sea of teenagers but to Shane, Joshua had always stood out.
Perhaps every parent believed that about their child. Perhaps there was something instinctive buried deep inside us that recognised the person we loved before our conscious mind had even begun to search. Whatever it was, Shane had never needed more than a few seconds.
"There he is."
Joshua emerged through the school gates, his backpack slung carelessly over one shoulder, the afternoon sun reflecting off the dark waves that refused every attempt at discipline. Shane knew with absolute certainty that his son had left the house with his hair brushed. He also knew it hadn't looked that way for at least the last four hours.
Those waves had always won.
Joshua had inherited almost all of his appearance from Shane.
The same dark colouring.
The same thoughtful deep brown eyes that often looked as though they were considering three different conversations before speaking aloud.
The same jaw that had only really begun to appear over the last eighteen months, transforming a boyish face into one that hinted at the man he would eventually become.
At sixteen, he'd reached that awkward and astonishing stage where strangers had started assuming he was older than he really was. He had shot upwards over the previous two years, all long limbs and oversized clothing at first, before finally growing into himself. Now he stood a little over six feet, broad shoulders filling out naturally without ever looking imposing from his years spent in swimming pools before school, climbing walls on weekends and playing hockey through winter building him into lean strength rather than bulk.
Joshua wasn't interested in looking athletic.
He simply loved moving.
Swimming because the silence beneath the water settled his mind in ways nothing else quite managed.
Climbing because every route felt like solving a puzzle.
Hockey because there was something deeply satisfying about being one small part of a team that trusted one another completely.
He had the body of an athlete with none of the personality of a jock and Shane had always loved that. There wasn't a trace of arrogance in the boy. He'd never chased popularity. Never seemed interested in establishing himself at the top of whatever invisible social ladder governed sixteen-year-olds and yet people seemed to orbit him anyway with friends drifting towards him in classrooms and teachers remembering him. Younger students smiled when they passed him in the corridors.
It had puzzled Shane once.
It didn't anymore.
Joshua looked like Shane.
But almost everything that made people stay, that belonged to Ilya.
He listened with complete attention, as though whoever was speaking deserved every second of it.
He remembered names after hearing them once.
He noticed when someone was quieter than usual.
He laughed easily.
Never politely.
Never because someone expected him to.
His laughter arrived without hesitation and invited everyone around him to join in.
Even the way he moved through conversations belonged to Ilya.
Joshua talked with his hands whenever he became excited, completely unaware he was doing it. He leaned forward instinctively whenever someone was telling him something important, shrinking the distance between them as though physical closeness somehow made people feel safer.
Shane couldn't count the number of times he'd watched Ilya do the exact same thing.
Children, he'd discovered somewhere along the way, inherited much more than genes.
They inherited ordinary Tuesday evenings, long car rides, family dinners and bedtime stories. Thousands upon thousands of tiny moments so insignificant they disappeared almost as soon as they happened until one day you looked at your child and realised they smiled exactly like the person they'd spent sixteen years loving.
Shane smiled to himself.
He doubted Joshua had any idea just how much of Ilya lived inside him.
"I swear," Shane murmured, almost to himself, "every year he looks a little more like me and a little more like you."
Beside him, Ilya finally looked up from his phone.
"I sincerely hope he got your ability to remember where you parked."
Shane snorted.
"He definitely didn't get that from either of us."
"No," Ilya admitted. "That's fair."
They watched in comfortable silence.
Joshua had almost reached the gates.
Then another boy fell effortlessly into step beside him.
Neither teenager noticed the black SUV parked across the road.
The blonde boy said something.
Joshua's face lit up and not the polite smile he offered teachers or the amused grin reserved for terrible jokes.
A genuine laugh escaped him, warm enough that Shane could almost hear it through the closed windows. His head tipped back, hair bouncing with the movement before he answered with both hands, gesturing animatedly as though the story required more space than words alone could provide.
Ilya went very still.
Shane noticed because, after so many years together, after meeting in the confusion of late adolescence, spending the better part of a decade falling together and apart again before finally admitting they were done pretending life made sense without the other, Shane had become unusually good at recognising every version of Ilya's silence.
This one meant he was thinking.
The blonde boy reached out.
His fingers brushed lightly against Joshua's sleeve, stopping him from disappearing into the crowd.
Joshua stopped immediately.
He didn't seem impatient.
Didn't glance towards the unseen car.
He simply stayed where he was, smiling as the conversation continued, giving the other boy exactly what he gave everyone when they had something to say. His full attention.
"...Shane."
"Hm?"
"I think that boy is flirting with our son."
Shane didn't answer straight away. Instead, he watched Joshua nod at something the blonde boy was saying. Watched him smile again. Watched the other teenager's shoulders visibly relax beneath that smile. Then Shane looked sideways.
"You came to that conclusion awfully quickly."
"I have eyes."
"He could be asking about homework."
"No sixteen-year-old has ever looked that pleased discussing homework."
Joshua laughed again.
The blonde boy laughed with him.
Then, after a moment's hesitation, the boy reached into his pocket and produced a small folded piece of paper. He held it out.
Joshua accepted it.
Carefully. Almost gently.
Ilya's seatbelt clicked free.
Before Shane had fully realised what was happening, Ilya's hand was already on the door handle.
"Oh," Shane said, catching his wrist before the door could open, "absolutely not."
"I'm just going to introduce myself."
"You're going to interrogate a child."
"I am going to establish his intentions."
"His intentions?" Shane repeated, trying, and then failing not to laugh.
"He's sixteen."
"So is Joshua."
"Exactly!"
Ilya looked genuinely offended that Shane couldn't see the distinction.
"Shane, some random teenage boy has just handed our son something."
"A piece of paper, Ilya."
"A phone number."
"We don't know that."
"We absolutely know that."
"No," Shane corrected gently. "You know that."
"I was sixteen once."
"So was I."
"You were oblivious."
Shane barked out a laugh. "I was not."
"You thought I was making fun of you."
"It was confusing. And I thought you were trouble."
"Mhhh, I can imagine that. You thought it was different for me?"
"It was… a lot." Shane's amusement faded into something softer. Because there it was. The truth hiding underneath every frantic word. Ilya wasn't looking at two boys standing outside a high school. He was looking back through twenty years. Seeing himself at sixteen. Unsure. Hopeful. Wondering whether reaching out and touching someone's sleeve was impossibly brave or catastrophically stupid.
Wondering whether handing over a phone number was confidence...
...or simply giving someone the opportunity to reject you.
Shane tightened his fingers gently around Ilya's wrist.
"You remember too much," he said quietly.
Ilya didn't answer. Because he did.
And that, Shane suspected, was precisely the problem.