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The lunch table they’d claimed sophomore year was still theirs junior year, which Fries figured said a lot about either their loyalty or their lack of imagination. Probably both. He dropped his tray down across from Snowball and didn’t say anything, just started eating, because he hadn’t had enough sleep and Snowball’s face was already doing that thing where it looked like he was about to say something insufferable.
He was right.
“Bro, I benched 245 this morning.” Snowball leaned back in his chair like he’d just announced he cured a disease. His arms were crossed over his chest, showing off, because Snowball was physically incapable of sitting like a normal person. “Two. Forty. Five.”
“Good for you,” Fries said, not looking up from his food.
“That’s like, top five in the school.”
“Okay.”
“Maybe top three.”
“Snowball.” Fries finally looked up. “I genuinely do not give a shit.”
Snowball pointed at him. “That’s because you’re weak as hell.”
“I’m at peace with that.”
Pen slid in next to Eraser across the table, both of them arriving in that synchronized way they had, like they shared one brain between them and had figured out how to split it evenly. Eraser’s grown-out buzz was freshly re-dyed, that obnoxious pink that somehow looked good on him, which Fries would never say out loud.
“What are we talking about?” Pen said, stealing one of Fries’ fries without asking.
Fries looked at his tray. Looked at Pen. “Do you want to die.”
“Snowball’s bench press,” Eraser answered, already sounding tired.
“Two-forty-five,” Snowball said again.
Pen made a face. “Cool. So we’re doing this.”
“Two-forty-five is insane,” Snowball repeated. “That’s top three in the school.”’
“Top three,” Pen repeated, looking at Eraser. “He said top three.”
“I heard him,” Eraser said.
“We should give him a certificate or something.”
“Keep it up,” Snowball said, pointing at Pen now, “and I will actually bench press you.”
“Promise?”
Eraser pushed Pen hard. Pen laughed, high and bright, and Eraser was trying not to smile and failing, which was just how they were. Fries had gotten used to it. Mostly. It was still kind of annoying when he was trying to eat.
Blocky arrived last, throwing his backpack under the table and sitting down next to Snowball with the energy of someone who had already been in a fight today and was considering a second one. His jaw was set. He stole Snowball’s water bottle without asking.
“Hey,” Snowball said.
“What.” Blocky drank half of it.
“That’s mine.”
“And?”
Snowball stared at him. Blocky stared back. This was also just how they were. Fries returned to his food.
Woody appeared at the end of the table, tray in hand, looking like he wasn’t sure if he was allowed to sit down even though he’d been sitting at this table for a year and a half. “Is there room?”
“Woody, sit down,” Fries said.
Woody sat down. “Thanks. Sorry.”
“Stop apologizing.”
“Sorry.”
Fries put down his fork.
“I’ll stop,” Woody said quickly.
“Thank you.”
That was the table. That was their whole situation. Six people who probably wouldn’t have found each other if it weren’t for a series of increasingly stupid circumstances, which included but were not limited to: a gym class dodgeball incident, a group project that went badly wrong, and one time Pen and Eraser had gotten detention for something they refused to explain, and Fries and Snowball had gotten detention for completely separate reasons on the same day, and they’d all just sort of… stayed.
Fries still wasn’t totally sure how he felt about it.
***
It was Blocky’s idea to go to the park after school, which meant it was probably going to end in property damage or someone getting hurt, but they went anyway because there was nothing else to do and the weather had finally stopped being disgusting.
Snowball had a football. Of course he did.
“I’m not playing,” Fries said immediately.
“Nobody asked you,” Snowball said.
“Then why are you looking at me?”
“I’m not looking at you.”
“You were literally just looking at me.”
“I was looking past you. At the field.”
Fries turned around. There was a field. He turned back. “Whatever.”
They played anyway, because Blocky threw the ball at Fries’ head and Fries caught it on reflex and then it became a whole thing. It wasn’t really a game. It was more like controlled chaos, which was the only mode their group operated in. Woody kept dropping the ball and apologizing to the ball. Pen kept throwing it directly at Eraser’s face on purpose, which Eraser kept retaliating for by tackling him to the ground, which Pen seemed to find deeply enjoyable in a way that was their business and not Fries’.
Snowball was, objectively, good at football. Fries would not be saying that out loud either. He was fast, and he had a decent arm, and he kept making this face every time he completed a throw like he’d just won the Super Bowl, which was the most Snowball thing possible.
“Stop doing that,” Fries said, after the fourth time.
“Doing what.” Snowball jogged back toward him.
“That face.”
“What face?”
“The face you make. After you throw. Like you’re expecting a trophy.”
Snowball looked at him. “That’s just my face.”
“It’s an annoying face.”
“Your face is annoying.”
“Incredible comeback,” Fries said. “Really. That was stunning.”
Snowball grabbed the ball out of his hands. “You’re so irritating, you know that?”
“Yeah, I’ve been told.”
“By who.”
“By everyone. Including you. Multiple times.”
“Because it’s true multiple times.”
Fries shrugged. He genuinely did not have the energy to be more bothered by Snowball than he already was, which was a moderate amount, which was his baseline. It had been his baseline since approximately three weeks into knowing him, when he’d realized that Snowball was going to be like this forever and there was no amount of arguing that was going to change it.
“You’re not even a little bothered,” Snowball said, and he sounded almost offended by it.
“No.”
“That bothers me.”
“I know.”
Snowball stared at him for a second, and then Blocky yelled something from across the field and they both turned, and the moment was over.
***
The gas station on Fifth was theirs the same way the lunch table was theirs, which was to say nobody had officially claimed it but everyone knew. They went there after the park because Pen wanted a slushie and when Pen wanted something he generally got it because he was the most persuasive person any of them knew, in a way that was almost annoying except it usually worked in their favor.
The guy behind the counter was Tennis Ball, and he’d stopped questioning why the same six people came in three times a week. He just nodded at them now, big eyes tracking them with that dopey attentiveness he had, the kind that made Snowball call him a golden retriever once and Blocky say that was an insult to golden retrievers.
“If you get the blue one,” Eraser was saying to Pen, “your mouth is going to be blue for like two hours.”
“I know,” Pen said happily.
“And then you’re going to want to kiss me.”
“Also yes.”
“And I’m not kissing a smurf.”
“You kissed me last Thursday when I had the blue one.”
“I was weak last Thursday.”
Pen got the blue one. Fries got a coffee because he was tired and also because it was three in the afternoon and he was already dreading the homework waiting for him at home. Snowball got a Gatorade, because of course he did, because Snowball treated his body like a temple and his personality like a disaster zone.
Blocky was looking at the snack wall with the stare of someone defusing a bomb. Woody was next to him, offering quiet suggestions that Blocky was ignoring.
“Woody,” Blocky said.
“Yeah?”
“If you say ‘those ones look good’ one more time I’m going to lose my mind.”
“Sorry. Those ones look good.”
Blocky turned to look at him.
“I mean those ones look bad,” Woody said. “Those ones look terrible. I hate those ones.”
Blocky grabbed the chips Woody had been pointing at, paid for them, and walked out. Woody followed, looking pleased with himself.
Outside, they sat on the curb and the little concrete wall by the parking lot, which was their usual arrangement. Pen was already half a slushie in and his mouth was turning blue. Eraser kept looking at it with this expression that was trying to be annoyed and not quite getting there.
“Okay,” Pen said, slurping obnoxiously loud on purpose, “I need everyone’s opinion on something.”
“No,” Fries said.
“I haven’t said it yet.”
“I already don’t want to be involved.”
“It’s hypothetical.”
“Even worse.”
Pen ignored him, which was his right. “If you had to kiss someone at this table, not your boyfriend,” he added, gesturing at Eraser, “who would it be.”
Silence.
“I’m going to go home,” Blocky said.
“You’re not going anywhere, sit down. This is important.”
“This is not important,” Fries said.
“It’s a social experiment.”
“It’s you being weird.”
“Woody, you go first,” Pen said.
Woody looked like he wanted to disappear. “Um.”
“Woody.”
“I don’t know. Blocky, maybe? He seems like he’d be. You know. Calm about it.”
Everyone looked at Blocky.
“I’m not calm about it,” Blocky said. “I don’t want to be anyone’s hypothetical.”
“Too late,” Pen said. “You do it.”
“I’m not doing this.” Blocky huffed.
“Snowball?”
Snowball had been quiet, which was unusual enough that Fries had noticed it. He was looking at his Gatorade. “I don’t know,” he said. “Fries, probably.”
Another silence, different from the first one.
“What,” Fries said.
“It’s hypothetical,” Snowball said, with a shrug that was working very hard to seem casual. “You’ve got a good face. Whatever.”
“I’ve got a good face??”
“Don’t make it weird.”
“You made it weird.”
“Pen made it weird. I just answered the question.”
Pen looked like Christmas had come early. Eraser put a hand on his arm, presumably to stop him from saying whatever he was about to say, which was probably the right call.
“Okay,” Fries said, and drank his coffee, and decided that was the end of that.
It wasn’t the end of that.
***
The thing about Snowball was that he was, underneath the arrogance and the constant need to be the best at everything and the way he talked about his own biceps like they were a separate entity with their own achievements, not actually that bad. Fries had come to this conclusion reluctantly, over a long period of time, and he kept it to himself because acknowledging it felt like losing something.
But he noticed things. Like how Snowball always made sure Woody got a turn when they were playing anything, without making it obvious. Like how he’d shown up to Blocky’s thing last month without being asked and hadn’t said a word about it. Like how he argued with Fries constantly and specifically, which was different from how he argued with everyone else, which was just loud and blunt and over quickly. With Fries it was like he was paying attention.
Fries didn’t know what to do with any of that, so he mostly just filed it away and kept being irritated by him, which was easier.
They had AP History together, which was its own kind of punishment, because it was the only subject Snowball was actually good at and had opinions about, and sharing a class with someone who had opinions was Fries’ least favorite thing.
“You’re wrong about the Monroe Doctrine,” Snowball said, dropping into the seat next to him like he owned it. They didn’t sit next to each other on purpose. It had just happened and then kept happening, and at some point neither of them bothered to question it.
“I didn’t say anything yet,” Fries said.
“You were going to.”
“I was going to ask if you did the reading.”
“I did the reading. You were still going to be wrong about the Monroe Doctrine.”
Fries looked at him. “How do you know what I think about the Monroe Doctrine??”
“Because you argued with Mr. Four about it last week.”
“I didn’t argue with him.”
“You told him his interpretation was ‘convenient for people who don’t want to think too hard.’ In front of everyone.”
“That’s not arguing. That’s a critique.”
“He gave you a look.”
“He gives everyone looks. That’s his thing.”
Snowball was smiling, which was different from his usual expression, which was more like a smirk. The smile was less calculated. Fries looked away from it.
“Did you actually do the reading?” he said.
“Yes. Did you?”
“Most of it.”
“Which parts did you skip?”
“The parts that were redundant.”
“So half of it.”
“The redundant half, yes.”
Snowball laughed, short and genuine, and then seemed to remember himself and stopped. Fries opened his notebook and pretended to be very interested in what he’d written last class, which was not very interesting.
Class was fine. It was usually fine. Four was one of those teachers who was actually good at his job but presented it in a way that made it hard to admit, so nobody did. Fries took notes. Snowball took notes and also kept making these small sounds when he disagreed with something, not quite words, just like a low exhale or a quiet scoff, and Fries could hear every one of them.
“You’re doing the thing,” Fries said, without looking up.
“What thing.”
“The noise thing. When you disagree.”
“I don’t do a noise thing.”
“You just did it twice.”
“I was breathing.”
“You were.. editorializing.”
Snowball looked at him. “Ok, dictionary, I don’t even know what that means.”
“It means stop making sounds at the lecture.”
“You’re so annoying,” Snowball said, but he was almost smiling again.
“You keep saying that.”
“Because it keeps being true.”
After class, walking out, Snowball said, “You free Saturday?”
Fries slowed down slightly. “Why.”
“Blocky wants to do something. I don’t know. He texted me. I’m just asking if you’re free.”
“Probably.”
“Okay.”
“What’s the thing?”
“I don’t know. He said ‘come over’ and then sent like eight random emojis. I stopped trying to interpret it.”
Fries considered this. “Yeah, okay. I’m free.”
“Cool.” Snowball shifted his bag on his shoulder. “Don’t be late. You’re always late.”
“I’m not always late.”
“You were late to Pen’s thing.”
“That was one time.”
“You were late to the park last week.”
“I had homework.”
“You were late to Eraser’s birthday.”
“I was twenty minutes late.”
“It’s still late. Twenty minutes is a lot of time, Fries. What were you even doing??” He raised an eyebrow.
“I got there before Blocky. That counts for something.”
“Blocky doesn’t count. Blocky operates on a different time system.” Snowball stopped at the fork in the hallway where they usually split off. “Saturday. Don’t be late.”
“You’re not my dad,” Fries said.
“Thank god,” Snowball said, and went left.
Fries went right and spent approximately too long thinking about the Monroe Doctrine and nothing else.
***
Saturday was Blocky’s basement, which was large and finished and contained a couch that had probably survived longer than the stupid Monroe Doctrine. Blocky had a TV down there that was bigger than it had any right to be, and a mini fridge, and a general atmosphere of low-level chaos that felt comfortable in the way familiar places did.
Fries was not late. He was actually there before Snowball, which he noted and planned to bring up
Pen and Eraser were already on the couch, in the specific arrangement they had where Eraser took up most of the space and Pen was folded into the corner next to him, legs over Eraser’s lap. Pen’s mouth was not blue today. Progress.
“Fries,” Pen said.
“Hey.”
“You’re early.”
“I’m on time.”
“For you that’s early.”
Fries sat in the chair. Blocky was in the kitchen getting something, Woody was sitting on the floor because Woody always sat on the floor, and Snowball arrived four minutes later, which Fries clocked.
“You’re late,” he said.
Snowball looked at him. “I’m four minutes late.”
“You told me not to be late.”
“I told you not to be late because you’re always late. I’m allowed to be four minutes late.”
“That’s a double standard.”
“That’s a privilege. I’ve earned it.”
“By WHAT metric?”
“By the metric of being me.”
Pen, from the couch: “I love when they do this.”
“Shut up,” both of them said, at the same time, and then looked at each other, and Snowball sat down on the other end of the couch looking like he was personally offended by the coincidence.
Blocky came back with a bag of chips and a look on his face that meant he had a plan, which was always either good or very bad. He sat on the floor next to Woody, which was a Blocky thing, and opened the chips.
“Okay,” he said. “We’re doing truth or dare.”
“We’re in high school,” Fries said.
“Yeah. And?”
“We’re not twelve. This is embarrassing.”
“Twelve year olds can’t handle the real truth or dare. We can.” Blocky looked around the room. “Unless someone’s scared.”
“I’m not scared,” Snowball said immediately, because Snowball could not let a challenge go unanswered, it was a medical condition.
“Nobody’s scared,” Eraser said. “Let’s just do it.”
Fries looked at the ceiling. “Fine.”
It started relatively normal, by their standards. Pen got dared to text his older brother something embarrassing and did it without hesitation, which was somehow both impressive and deeply concerning. Woody got a truth and admitted he still slept with a stuffed animal, and everyone agreed that was fine and Blocky threatened anyone who made fun of him, which was unexpectedly sweet coming from Blocky. Eraser got dared to let Pen pick his outfit for a week and agreed with the energy of someone who had already accepted their fate.
Then Blocky looked at Snowball with that specific expression he had when he was about to cause problems.
“Snowball. Truth or dare.”
“Dare,” Snowball said, because of course.
“I dare you to sit next to Fries for the rest of the game.”
Everyone looked at Blocky. Blocky ate a chip.
“That’s not a dare,” Snowball said.
“It is if it makes you uncomfortable.”
“It doesn’t make me uncomfortable.”
“Then do it.”
A pause. Snowball got up from the couch and sat in the remaining space of the chair Fries was in, which was not a large chair. There was not a lot of room. Fries shifted and Snowball shifted and they were still very close together.
“Happy?” Snowball said to Blocky.
“Thrilled,” Blocky said.
Pen looked like he was going to combust. Eraser was holding his hand over his mouth.
“Fries,” Blocky said. “Truth or dare.”
“Truth,” Fries said, because he had some self-preservation instinct.
“Do you think Snowball is attractive.”
Fries stared at him. “What the hell, Blocky?”
“That’s not a truth.”
“It’s a truth about how I feel about you right now.”
“Answer the question.”
Fries was aware of Snowball next to him, very still, waiting. He could feel it. He took a breath. “Objectively, sure. He’s not ugly. That’s all I’m saying.”
“Objectively,” Snowball repeated, and his voice had something in it that Fries couldn’t fully read.
“Don’t read into it,” Fries said.
“I’m not reading into anything.”
“You’re doing the face.”
“I’m not doing a face.”
“You’re literally doing a face right now.”
“Can we move on,” Eraser said, with the voice of someone who was both entertained and trying to manage the situation. “Woody. Truth or dare.”
The game continued. Fries was very aware of the warmth next to him, which was Snowball, who was not moving away, who had apparently decided that this was fine and normal. Fries decided it was also fine and normal and looked at the TV and not at Snowball.
Later, Blocky put something on the TV and the game dissolved into everyone just existing in the same space, which was also fine. Woody fell asleep on the floor, which happened every time. Pen and Eraser were murmuring something to each other, quiet enough that it was theirs. Blocky was on his phone.
Snowball said, quietly, not looking at him: “Objectively.”
“Don’t,” Fries said.
“I’m just saying. Objectively.”
“Snowball.”
“You said it.”
“I know I said it.”
“So.”
Fries turned to look at him, which was a mistake because they were still in the same chair and it put them close. Snowball was looking back at him with that expression that wasn’t quite a smirk and wasn’t quite the genuine smile and was something in between that Fries didn’t have a name for yet.
“So nothing,” Fries said. “It was a dare. Drop it.”
“It was a truth.”
“Whatever. Drop it.”
Snowball held his gaze for a moment longer than necessary, and then looked back at the TV. “Sure.”
Fries looked back at the TV too.
Neither of them moved to take up more space in the chair. Neither of them moved away.
***
The following Wednesday, Fries was at his locker when Snowball appeared next to him, which was not unusual because their lockers were near each other, but the expression on Snowball’s face was slightly different from usual. Less smug. More like he was thinking about something and hadn’t finished thinking about it yet.
“What??” Fries said.
“Nothing. I’m at my locker.”
“You’re looking at me.”
“I’m looking in your general direction.”
Fries got his book and shut the locker. “Did you.. need something?”
“No.” A pause. “Maybe.”
“Snowball.”
“There’s this thing on Friday. At the rec center. They’re doing open gym late and Blocky wants to go and I figured I’d ask if you wanted to come.”
Fries looked at him. “You could have texted me that.”
“I know.”
“You have my number.”
“I know.”
“So why are you telling me in person?”
Snowball looked, briefly, like he was going to say something, and then his jaw set in that way it did when he was deciding not to. “I don’t know. I was here. You were here. Forget it, I’ll text you.”
“I’ll come,” Fries said.
Snowball stopped. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. Open gym sounds fine.”
“Cool.” The smug look was back, but softer somehow, which Fries was going to stop analyzing. “Don’t be late.”
“I swear to god.”
Snowball was already walking away, and Fries could see from the back of his neck that he was smiling, which was annoying and also fine and also something Fries was going to think about for the rest of the day against his will.
***
Open gym was, predictably, Blocky trying to start a pickup game, Pen and Eraser doing their own thing on the side court, Woody attempting to learn to dribble, and Snowball taking it too seriously.
Fries played. He was decent, not exceptional, and he didn’t care enough to be exceptional, which Snowball found personally offensive.
“You’re not even trying,” Snowball said, after Fries passed up a clear shot.
“I’m trying the right amount,” Fries said.
“The right amount is more than this.”
“For you, maybe.”
“For anyone who wants to win.”
“I don’t particularly want to win.”
Snowball stopped dead. They were in the middle of a play and Blocky yelled “what the fuck are you two doing” from across the court but Snowball was looking at Fries like he’d said something in another language. “You don’t want to win.”
“Not especially.”
“Why are you here then.”
Fries shrugged. “You asked me to come.”
Something shifted in Snowball’s expression. Fries watched it happen and didn’t say anything, just waited.
“I asked you to come so we could play,” Snowball said finally.
“And I’m playing.”
“At like sixty percent.”
“Sixty percent is fine.”
“It’s not fine.”
“Snowball.” Fries looked at him steadily. “Not everything has to be a hundred percent. Some things can just be fine.”
Blocky threw the ball at both of them and they split apart and the game resumed, but Fries caught Snowball looking at him twice more before the hour was up, in that same not-quite-figured-out way, and both times Snowball looked away first.
After, they were sitting on the bleachers while Pen and Eraser finished their game. Blocky and Woody had gone to get water. It was just them, which happened sometimes, and it was usually fine in a low-key tense way that Fries had gotten used to.
“The sixty percent thing,” Snowball said.
“What about it.”
“Is that how you are about everything?”
Fries thought about it. “Pretty much.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
“It sounds exhausting to you because you operate at like a hundred and twenty percent on everything.”
“That’s how you get results.”
“That’s how you get burned out.”
Snowball was quiet for a moment. “I’m not burned out.”
“I didn’t say you were. I said that’s how you get there.”
“You think I’m going to burn out.”
“I think you’ve already been close a couple times and you didn’t notice because you don’t slow down enough to notice.”
Snowball looked at him. It was a longer look than usual, less guarded. “When.”
“Last semester. Before midterms. You were showing up to everything looking like you hadn’t slept and you were still talking about your bench press like everything was fine.”
“Everything was fine.”
“Snowball.”
“It was.”
“You snapped at Woody three times in one week. You never snap at Woody.”
A pause. “I apologized for that.”
“I know. I’m just saying. I noticed.”
Snowball was quiet. Outside, Pen scored something and made a noise about it, and Eraser groaned. Normal sounds. The gym smelled like rubber and old wood.
“Why didn’t you say anything?” Snowball said.
“Because you wouldn’t have listened.”
“I might have.”
“You wouldn’t have,” Fries said, not unkindly. “You would have told me you were fine and then benched two-forty to prove it.”
Snowball made a sound that was almost a laugh. “Probably.”
“Definitely.”
“Okay, definitely.” He leaned back on the bleacher, elbows on the row behind him. “You pay attention.”
“I pay attention to things that are in front of me.”
“I’m in front of you a lot.”
“You’re hard to miss,” Fries said. “You make sure of that.”
Snowball looked at him sideways. “Is that a compliment?”
“It’s an observation.”
“It sounded like a compliment.”
“Don’t flatter yourself.”
“I always flatter myself. It’s one of my best qualities.”
“It’s one of your qualities,” Fries repeated.
Snowball smiled, the real one, brief and unguarded. Fries looked at the court.
***
The thing that happened, happened on a Thursday, which felt like the wrong day for things to happen. Thursdays were supposed to be uneventful. Thursdays were a holding pattern between the middle of the week and the end of it.
They were walking back from the gas station, just the two of them because everyone else had scattered, Pen and Eraser in one direction and Blocky and Woody in another, and it was the kind of evening that was almost cold but not quite, the sky doing something orange and purple that Fries would not be describing out loud.
Snowball had been talking about something, a coach who’d said something to him at practice that he disagreed with, and Fries had been listening in the way he did, not saying much, occasionally inserting a word or two. It was a comfortable enough walk. It had been a comfortable enough evening. Fries was not thinking about anything in particular.
Then Snowball stopped walking.
Fries took two more steps before he noticed and turned around. “What?”
“Nothing.” Snowball was looking at him with that expression again, the one that had been showing up more, the one Fries still didn’t have a name for.
“You stopped walking.”
“I know.”
“Why.”
“I’m thinking.”
“Think while walking,” Fries said. “It’s more efficient.”
“I think better when I’m still.”
“That’s the most you thing you’ve ever said.” Fries took a step back toward him. “What are you thinking about?”
“You said I was hard to miss,” Snowball said.
Fries waited.
“At the gym. You said I was hard to miss.”
“I remember saying it.”
“I keep thinking about it.”
“It wasn’t a deep statement.”
“I know that.” Snowball’s jaw was doing the set thing, but it was different from the stubborn version. More like he was holding something in place. “I keep thinking about the park too. When Pen asked that question.”
“Snowball.”
“And the chair.”
“Snowball.”
“And the fact that you come to things when I ask you specifically, even though you’d probably come anyway if Blocky asked.”
Fries looked at him. “You don’t know that.”
“I think I do.”
“You’re very confident for someone who’s currently standing in the middle of a sidewalk having a moment.”
“I’m not having a moment.”
“You’re definitely having a moment.”
“I’m stating observations,” Snowball said, and he stepped forward, closing the distance between them to something that was less than casual. “Like you do.”
Fries did not step back. He was aware that he should probably say something, something deflecting and dry that would reset the temperature of this situation, but he was looking at Snowball’s face and the expression on it was fully unguarded now, no smirk, no performance, just Snowball looking at him like he was paying attention.
Snowball’s face was fully unguarded now. No smirk, no performance, no calculated ease. Just Snowball, looking at him like he was paying attention, which was the thing Fries had noticed and filed away and refused to examine for longer than he wanted to admit.
“Don’t,” Fries said.
“I’m not doing anything.”
“You’re about to.”
“I’m standing here.”
“Snowball.”
“Fries.” He said it the same way he said everything, like he’d already decided. “I’m just standing here.”
Fries looked at him for another moment. The street was empty. The sky was still doing the orange and purple thing he wasn’t going to describe. He had run out of objections, not because there weren’t any left, but because none of them were the real thing, and he was tired of pretending they were.
He didn’t close the distance. He didn’t move at all. But he stopped moving away from it, which was different, and Snowball noticed, because Snowball paid attention to him specifically, and that was the thing Fries kept coming back to no matter how many times he tried not to.
Snowball kissed him like it was something he’d decided and was committing to, which was exactly how Snowball did everything. Fries stood there for one second - just one - where he didn’t do anything, where it was just Snowball and the fact of it and the cold air and everything Fries had been not-thinking about for months. Then he kissed him back. Because he’d been paying attention for a long time, and he’d filed away a lot of things, and this was where they’d been going, and he was done pretending otherwise. It lasted a few seconds. It was not soft. It was also not nothing.
When they separated, Snowball looked at him with an expression that was edging back toward smug, which Fries had expected and was prepared for.
“Okay,” Fries said.
Snowball waited.
“That happened,” Fries said.
“Yeah.”
“Okay.” He turned and started walking.
Snowball fell into step beside him after a second. Neither of them said anything. Snowball started talking about the coach again after a while, like he needed something to do with his mouth that wasn’t that, and Fries listened and didn’t say anything about the fact that he could still feel it, which was annoying, and was not going to be examined tonight or possibly ever.
***
The next day at lunch, Pen took one look at both of them and pointed.
“Something happened.”
“Nothing happened,” Fries said, sitting down.
“Something happened,” Pen said again, to Eraser.
“Something happened,” Eraser confirmed, looking between them.
“Nothing happened,” Snowball said, sitting down across from Fries in his usual spot.
“You’re sitting differently,” Pen said.
“I’m sitting exactly the same.”
“You’re sitting like something happened.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Fries said.
“It makes complete sense. Eraser, doesn’t it make complete sense?”
“Complete sense,” Eraser said.
Blocky sat down, looked at the table, looked at Pen’s face, and said “oh no” very quietly.
“What?” Woody said, sitting down.
“Pen has information.”
“I have a theory,” Pen corrected. “And I’m about eighty percent confident in it.”
“What’s the theory,” Woody asked.
“Don’t,” Fries said.
“Fries and Snowball,” Pen said.
Woody’s eyes went wide. “Oh.”
“Nothing happened,” Fries and Snowball said, at the exact same time.
Pen looked between them. The fact that they’d agreed, for once, immediately, seemed to interest him more than if they’d contradicted each other. He narrowed his eyes.
“That’s suspicious,” Pen said.
“That’s us agreeing with you,” Fries said. “Which you usually want.”
“I want you to agree with me about things that are true.”
“Nothing happened.”
“Nothing happened,” Snowball said again, and ate his food, and did not look at Fries, which was itself a thing, because Snowball always looked at Fries.
Pen opened his mouth. Eraser put a hand on his arm. “Leave it,” Eraser said, quietly enough that it was just for Pen, except they were all sitting right there.
Pen left it, barely, in the way that meant he was filing it away for later and everyone knew it.
Fries ate his lunch. Snowball ate his lunch. At some point Blocky said something about the weekend and the conversation moved, and Fries let it move, and didn’t look at Snowball, and was aware the whole time that Snowball was not looking at him either, which was new, and was its own kind of thing that he was not going to examine at a lunch table with five other people watching.
“I hate every single one of you,” Fries said, to nobody in particular.
“No you don’t,” Pen said.
“Most of you.”
“That’s fair,” Eraser said.
***
Nothing changed, exactly. Everything changed, slightly. Those two things were both true and Fries didn’t see a reason to examine them too hard.
Snowball was still Snowball. He still talked about his bench press unprompted. He still made that face after a good throw. He still argued about history class and walked too close and showed up to things like he owned them. He was still, objectively, the most confident person Fries had ever met, in a way that was sometimes genuinely impressive and sometimes deeply exhausting and was always, always, specifically directed at Fries in a way that felt like being paid attention to.
Fries was still Fries. He still didn’t care about winning. He still got coffee at three in the afternoon. He still told Snowball when he was being an idiot, which was regularly, and Snowball still didn’t fully listen, which was fine, because Fries said it anyway and that was the point.
Pen and Eraser were insufferable about it, which was expected. Blocky pretended not to care and then asked Fries once, quietly, if it was good, and Fries said yeah, and Blocky nodded and that was the whole conversation. Woody said he was happy for them and meant it in that simple, genuine way Woody had, and Fries told him thanks, and meant it back.
It was, by most metrics, fine. It was fine in the way that Fries meant when he said fine, which was not dismissive. It was the kind of fine that was actually good, the kind that didn’t need to announce itself.
Snowball, predictably, announced it anyway. He mentioned it to the table four separate times in the first week in ways that were technically not announcements but were absolutely announcements, things like “Fries and I were talking about this” and “ask Fries, he was there” with this specific energy that made Blocky put his head in his hands once. Every time, Fries looked at him with the flattest possible expression and Snowball looked back like he’d won something, and Pen watched the whole exchange like it was his favorite show.
“You like him,” Pen said to Fries, one afternoon when it was just the two of them waiting for the others.
“I’m aware,” Fries said.
“Like, actually like him.”
“Pen.”
“I’m just saying. You’ve got a good face when you look at him.”
Fries looked at him. “I will actually end you. Don’t test me.”
“You won’t,” Pen said serenely, and sipped his slushie, which was red today. Progress.
Fries looked away. Outside the window of the gas station, Snowball was coming down the street with Blocky, gesturing at something, talking, taking up space in the way he always did. Fries watched him for a second. Just a second.
“Don’t say anything,” he said.
“I wasn’t going to say anything,” Pen said.
“You were going to say something.”
“I was going to say that it’s nice. That’s all.” A pause. “Also that I told you so.”
“There it is.”
“I’ve been telling you so for like three months.”
“You’ve been implying it for three months.”
“Same thing.”
Snowball came through the door, saw Fries, and pointed at him. “You’re early.”
“I’m on time,” Fries said.
“For you that’s early.”
“That’s what I said,” Pen said.
“Because it’s true,” Snowball said, and dropped down next to Fries in the booth, close enough that their shoulders touched, and grabbed one of Fries’ fries off the tray without asking.
Fries looked at his tray. Looked at Snowball. “Do you want to die?”
“Nope,” Snowball said, eating the fry.
Fries looked at the ceiling. Pen was smiling into his slushie. Blocky sat down across from them and looked at the two of them and then at Pen and then back at his phone, unmoved.
It was a Tuesday. It was fine. It was, specifically, the kind of fine that Fries had meant all along.
He stole Snowball’s Gatorade.
Snowball looked at his bottle. Looked at Fries. “Are you serious?”
“Yep.”
“That’s mine.”
“And?” Fries said, and drank it.
Snowball stared at him for a long second, and then something in his face settled into that real smile, the one he didn’t always let out, and he shook his head and looked away.
“You’re literally the worst person I know,” he said.
“You keep saying that,” Fries said.
“Because it keeps being true.”
Outside, the afternoon was doing its thing. Inside, it was loud and familiar and theirs. Fries finished the Gatorade and put the bottle back on Snowball’s side of the table, and Snowball’s knee pressed against his under the table and stayed there, and neither of them said a word about it.
That was fine too.