Title: The Difficult Kind

Author: Rilla

Summary: At 26, Ephram Brown gets a chance he never knew he had. But with chances like these, come risks of the heart.

General ratings/categories: PG-13 for mild-language and poetically disguised sexual situations. Completely CC, down to the littlest Everwoodian. Extreme angst. Romance. Future-fic.

Author's Notes: Thanks to my beta, Amy, who had no choice in the matter and  treated my panicked calls for feedback as diversions in her hectic "real world" day. Props to the "Roswell" fic days for the angst training.

Disclaimer: Of course I don't own it. My bank might, though…they own everything else.

Prologue: For old time's sake

The first cold, sunny day in November found Bright Abbott sitting on top of the last wooden picnic table in the Denver Memorial Hospital courtyard. The others had been replaced sometime in the mid-80's with round, plastic, no-sharp-edge jobs, with individual, round, orange seats floating in midair. They absorbed the chill quicker than the oak planks that currently supported him.

His cell phone was open and poised, ready to make a call he didn't want to make. Bright looked upward to the fifth floor, long-term care wing of the immense facility and counted six windows from the left. She wasn't watching him, thank god. But he felt her eyes, none the less.

I need to tell him, she'd said just that morning. He'd heard the words and wanted to reject the implications. Are you sure? he'd started to ask, but she stopped him, I have to.

So here he was with a phone number he'd scrawled on his hand with a blue Bic after calling 411 and haggling with the east coast operator. He held up his palm, squeezed it into a fist and reopened it. The 6 had folded into something like a bow across his life line. Breathing the numbers as he dialed, "212…"

He'd expected an answering machine. The plan was to call at a time when no one was likely to be home, when everyone would be out earning money and having pizza from carts on street corners. That's what they did in New York, right? The phone hadn't even completed the first ring when he heard a woman pick up and ask, "Hello?"

A long pause. Crap. And it was a woman. Crap crap.

"Hello?" she repeated.

"Umm…I need to speak to Ephram." And then he added, "Brown."

Now a pause on her end.

"Who is this?" Curiosity laced with familiarity. He didn't say anything, too unnerved by this whole task to speak. "Is this…? Bright, is that you?"

Oh wow… "Delia?"

"Oh my God! Bright! It's been…," she searched for an appropriate amount, "…a long time."

He had no idea how he'd guessed it was her. She'd been 12 when he'd last seen Delia Brown. It was at the pool…the last summer he came back to Everwood to work during college. He'd called her 'munchkin' and told her he'd see her at Thanksgiving. He didn't return for almost four years. By then, the Browns were memories in Everwood.

More specifically, he wondered how she'd known it was him. That was seven…eight years ago? "Ya, it's been ages," he agreed, uncomfortable already. "Umm…I thought this was your brother's phone number?"

"Oh, it is," she said quickly. Damn, she sounded like a woman. She had to be 19, at least. "I'm just crashing here for Thanksgiving. Ephram didn't tell me you and he were still in touch."

Swallowing hard, "We aren't, really. I just, I needed to get in touch with him about…something."

"He's down at the university right now. I can take a message."

Not the way he imagined delivering the news. "I…I don't know…I could just call ba…"

"Oh wait!" she said suddenly into the phone. "He just walked in." And before Bright could stop her or think to hang up, Delia was calling her brother's name. Bright hopped to the ground off the picnic table and made a quick side-to-side motion, trying to avoid the encounter like he would a linebacker. "It's Bright Abbott!"

The phone crackled in Bright ear as it was handed off. "Hello?" The voice was still quick and low.

"Ephram…" Trapped by fiber optics.

"Bright?" Disbelieving. And then, "Is everyone ok?"

Ephram was never stupid. Weird, but not stupid. Get it over with.

"It's Amy. She wants to talk to you."

A much longer pause than Bright thought that information warranted.

"Okay. Put her on."

Fuck. "I can't," Bright answered, his free hand raking through his blonde hair and tugging at it in frustration. Eyes squeezed shut. "She's wants to know if you'll come to Colorado. She needs to see you. In person."

"I've got a life here. You can tell her that." His answer was too sharp.

Bright gripped the tiny cell phone more tightly and wondered how to best convey the importance of what he was saying…without coming out and saying it. Which he couldn't do.

"You need to come out to Denver this weekend, dickhead. …Or else I'll kick your ass," he added for old time's sake.