Maybe so. 

"I have never in my life," he says, "been able to stop Chris from doing something he wanted to do. Even when he was two years old and wanted to climb higher than me in the tree."

He nods again and hugs Ron. He's been told that he's good at hugs; the theory is somewhat different when he's hugging someone larger than he is but the result turns out all right. 

"I am not much of a God person but I have to figure that God loves Chris at least as much as I do and if I wanted Chris to do something that made him miserable for his whole entire life I would be a shitty fucking brother."

"...I wish I'd had that line of logic around five years ago," he says, very quietly, and pulls Ron closer. 

"It is one I end up using on the religious kids."

"You're really good at the thing you do. Thank you." 

"Competence is a Parker family trait! I think by this point I'm doing quite well, given that I started as a half-Hawaiian Jew who did not know what Veggie Tales is."

"You are. I've never seen Raine as happy as she was when she was here.

...but what I really meant was, thank you for the time I got to have with Lev." 

"You have it bad."

"Yeah. I do." 

"Good luck. --I guess you can tell Chris I love him, and of course I want to hear from him, and maybe the bit about God not wanting him to be miserable."

He nods seriously. "I will. — I should find Asher. Thank you." 

Asher is pacing furiously en pointe while playing Cookie Clicker.

"Hello," he says, exactly as loudly as it'll take to be heard. 

He looks up and puts his phone down. "How is Raine doing?"

"She misses you. She stopped eating for a week and started again when Christine threatened her with something — Lev decided to be straight and the two of them are doing, something, but I don't think it's dating — she did get Christine to stop calling her Alexander, she's going by Ghost at camp. And she sent a bracelet to her sister with instructions to send it to you." 

He pulls up his sleeve. The bracelet's on his wrist.

"A week is a bit long to go without eating but fuck Christine-- why do adults keep meddling in people's diets like that-- I'm glad she has a name that isn't that bad."

"Yeah. The not eating was objectively pretty concerning but she came out of that meeting looking like she was going to cry. She does seem to like the name, though — she's making more of an effort in group, I assume because of whatever Christine threatened her with." 

"I mean, I've known people who went a week without eating and they were fine? You don't want to do it too often."

"...okay, but you know ballerinas." 

"So? Raine exercises less than they do."

"...Asher, ballerinas kind of famously are prone to eating disorders." 

"I guess? But the girls I know could eat if they wanted to, they just wanted to be thin enough to make principal dancer."

"...yes. That's called an eating disorder." 

"Not every time you diet to achieve a goal is an eating disorder!"