Free Burn by Sean Doolittle

a psychologist on some A.M. talk-radio program use a phrase that wound up sticking in his aching brain.
    He'd been in the car at the time, trancing to the whine of tires on asphalt, the bone-white reach of highway in his high beams. This was several hours past the desolate beauty of the Nebraska Sandhills, the scrubby dunes and stubby derricks of northeastern Colorado behind him, Denver's pale glow low in the sky ahead, Los Angeles still two sunsets away. His broken ribs had yet to heal, and the stiletto ache still spiked his breath. The deep gashes at his eye and mouth and jaw still seeped hot, watery red fluid between the butterfly strips holding them closed.
    Family of choice.
That was the phrase the radio therapist had used. Forget the old saying about not being able to choose your family the therapist had been telling the caller on the line; when it comes down to it, all families are bound by choice, not genetic code. Most of us happen to choose our blood relatives, or at least choose not to choose otherwise. Some of us choose to mix and match until some other combination works. Some of us even choose to sever all ties and start fresh, embracing our people where we find them. But we always choose.
    It had been a notion Andrew couldn't help but ponder as he chewed his way through the miles. He found himself imagining the many possible ways things might have turned out differently if he and Larry had started out as brothers in the traditional sense of the term. If nothing else, being blood siblings almost certainly would have prevented the specific disagreement that had done them in.
    It seemed silly, looking back at more than a decade in the rearview mirror.
    The irony? Caroline—seventeen going on thirty back then—had already broken it off with Larry herself by the time Andrew had discovered through the grapevine that the two of them had been carrying on.
    Of course Andrew hadn't known this the day he found Larry at their regular spot outside Warek's. Larry, because he was Larry, hadn't volunteered the information.
    He'd simply given Andrew a canary-feather smirk, admitted, yeah, he'd been meaning to come clean about a couple things. Should have said something sooner about what had been going on between him and Caroline, never really planned it in the first place, but still. Wasn'tright, keeping it quiet. It really had been bugging him. What could he say?
    You can say so long, Casanova, Andrew had informed him. Because there's no way you're going out with my cousin. A: She's just a kid. B: She's going to college, not staying around this neighborhood. C: What's the matter with you?
    He still remembered the way Larry had looked at him. Surprised. Slightly amused.
    He'd said:
    First of all, Caroline's no kid. Second of all, you'd think it'd set a guy at ease, seeing family with his oldest pal instead of some punk he didn't even know. Three, mind your own fucking business.
    Andrew mentioned something about the problem being that his oldest pal happened to
be
a punk.
    The conversation basically went off the rails from there.
    Andrew hadn't intended for things to go loud with Larry right there on the sidewalk outside Warek's at three o'clock in the afternoon. He probably should have known better. So much for hindsight.
    Once it was on, it was on. They'd made a mess of the place: clumsy, bullish, unstoppable. At one point, Andrew managed to find himself on the doling end of a headlock—but he was no match for Larry in a fair fight, and the tables had been about to turn. He remembered being flat on his back against a sewer grate, about to lose his hold. When Larry had begun to find leverage against the curb with his boots, Andrew had known he was through.
    That was when he'd remembered the lighter in his jacket pocket…
    … and so went up, in a sudden sizzle and a briefstink of singed hair and skin, a friendship that went all the way back to the days when they'd still been grade school paperboys, delivering envelopes for