Darius waved him off. "I believe your intentions are true. Perhaps they are the same but a hard life makes them greedy. They will either only see me for my money or be jealous of it. And at the best, we will have nothing in common."

"Can you blame them?" Gabriel muttered quietly, more to himself than to him. Or maybe partly to him. Once again, money proved to be the root of division among humankind. "And the wealthier ones, then. Surely there must be some with similar interests?"

Darius frowned, wondering if he should go. He sighed and folded his arms. "If I did, I'd be hanging around them. The closest I had I guess was someone who was also a friend to my deceased friend. But.. that is out of the question. But why are you trying to push me to have a friend? You are like my parents with women. I just want to move beyond these feeling. If no one wants to be my friend, I don't want to be theirs. It's just annoying to push the issue."

"I thought it might help you push beyond the grief..." Gabriel said.

Darius frowned and looked away. "Well it just reminds me that I'm alone. My family doesn't like me and the few times I've tried to make friends it doesn't work out. The only person who does like me is my sister, but she's got too much going on I can't bother her.'

"And your friend, who was murdered... what made him different? Why did he like you?"

Why, Gabriel began to wonder.

Darius was quiet for a moment. "I followed his lead. I didn't judge him enough. Whatever crazy plan he had, he knew I'd be there if he invited me."

Gabriel frowned. He didn't have a lot of friends, so maybe he didn't know a lot about friendship, but that didn't sound like friendship to him. "Like what?"

Darius shrugged. "He liked to cause mischief. We once broke into what I thought was an abandoned house, I think he did too. It wasn't." He was not about to say more. He had no idea if those people told someone or not so he didn't want to point out himself. "We left very quickly." After that idiot shot at one of them and took a leak. The memory almost had him smile, those were such wild days.

"You liked that?" He tried not to sound judgmental, but it was hard.