The days after that night passes quietly. Or maybe not quietly. School never really knows how to be quiet. Especially not during homecoming week.

The hallways keep filling with cardboard signs and half-painted banners. Student council practically lives outside the auditorium now. Every afternoon ends with somebody yelling that they need more tape, more chairs, more extension cords, more volunteers. Emily spends most of her time walking impossibly fast between classrooms with a clipboard tucked under one arm and three different conversations happening at once.

I end up following her through all of it.

Mostly because she keeps asking.

Mostly because she never really gives me the chance to say no.

"Ev."

I look up from the box I'm carrying.

She points dramatically toward the gym.

"I require your emotional support and your surprisingly competent tape-measuring abilities."

"I don't think those are related."

"They are to me."

Then she's already walking away, fully expecting me to follow.

I do. Because somewhere between hanging banners and untangling fairy lights and carrying folding tables across campus, the hours pass a little easier. I know what she's doing. She thinks I don't.

Every lunch somehow becomes student council lunch. Every afternoon mysteriously requires one more pair of hands. Every free period turns into helping decorate hallways or moving supplies or listening to Emily passionately argue that blue streamers and gold balloons are "an artistic conversation."

She never says she's worried about me. She just keeps finding reasons for me not to be alone. Sometimes I catch her watching me after somebody says my name a little too carefully in the hallway. Or when a conversation nearby drops into that strange silence people have when they recognize you from something they wish they hadn't seen.

The video hasn't disappeared.

People have mostly stopped talking about it. Mostly. High school moves on quickly. There's always another rumor. Another game. Another couple breaking up. Another piece of gossip waiting its turn.

Still...Every now and then somebody mutters something as I walk past. Or looks a second too long.

Emily always hears it before I do. Sometimes all she has to do is look at them. Sometimes she changes the subject so dramatically nobody even remembers what they were talking about. Sometimes she simply hooks her arm through mine and announces she urgently needs me because apparently the entire homecoming dance will collapse if we don't find more zip ties.

Nobody ever argues with her because Emily has this strange way of making kindness look completely ordinary. Like protecting someone isn't a decision. It's just the next thing on her to-do list.

She hasn't brought up Landon once. Not once. Not since the night I called her. She never asks if I'm okay after the breakup. Never asks if I miss him. Never asks if I regret it or if I want to talk about what happened on the hill. She gives me boxes to carry. Paintbrushes to wash. Hallways to decorate. Stupid errands that somehow always take just long enough to get me through another afternoon.

But sometimes...I catch her looking at me. Not when we're laughing. When Landon's name comes up during football practice announcements over the speakers. When somebody points toward the field where varsity is practicing. When he walks into the cafeteria surrounded by teammates. When he passes our table between classes without either of us stopping.

Just for a second.

Emily looks at me with those quiet, worried eyes. Like she's waiting. Waiting for my face to change. Waiting for me to finally fall apart. Waiting for me to tell her how I'm doing.

I wish I knew.

I wish I had something to tell her. Because the truth is... I don't understand any of it either.

I know I stopped loving Landon a long time ago. Or... maybe that's not fair. I stopped loving the version of us we had become. The love itself had been slipping through my fingers for months before either of us found the courage to admit it. By the time we stood on that hill, the relationship wasn't dying.

It was already gone.

So why...Why does every morning still begin with my eyes drifting across the street before I can stop them ? Looking toward the Pierce house. Looking for a boy who isn't there anymore. Not seventeen-year-old Landon.

The eight-year-old one.

The kid who used to grin the second he spotted me through his bedroom window. Who'd come flying out the front door before I even finished crossing the street. Who somehow made an ordinary Tuesday feel like the beginning of an adventure.

Sometimes I catch myself searching for that smile before my brain remembers time doesn't work like that.

Then the porch is just...a porch. And the street between our houses feels a little wider than it used to.

Emily is standing on the second-highest rung of a ladder, frowning at the HOMECOMING banner like it's offended her personally.

"I don't understand," she mutters.

I keep one hand on the ladder.

"That's because you're hanging it upside down."

She slowly looks down at me.

"I'm choosing not to react to that."

"But you did react immediately."

"It's called situational awareness, Ev. Pick a book."

I glance up at the banner.

"It's still crooked."

"It has personality."

"Scoliosis doesn't count."

Emily squints at it for another few seconds before ripping one corner of the tape back off.

"I swear it was straight."

"It wasn't."

She points a finger at me without looking away from the banner.

"I liked you better when you agreed with me."

Then she sighs dramatically, sticking the tape back on.

"Why does decorating always look so easy in Pinterest pictures?"

"They're frauds."

Someone walks past carrying an armful of balloons.

Emily plucks one clean out of the pile without breaking eye contact with the banner.

"Tax."

The freshman blinks. "What?"

"Student council tax."

"You can't just..."

"I already did."

He looks at me for help.

I shrug.

"Don't look at me. She's been unsupervised for three days."

"...Okay," he says eventually, sounding like he's accepted this is just how student council works, and wanders off with one less balloon than he started with.

Emily ties the string around the corner of the banner that's drooping the most. The balloon floats upward, tugging gently until the fabric lifts with it.

I take a step back.

The banner is still crooked. It just looks like somebody handed a deeply depressed child a balloon and told him to smile for the family photo.

Just... optimistically crooked now.

Emily folds her arms.

"See?"

I stare at it.

"That looks like its emotional support animal."

She nods once.

"Exactly."

"It's still losing the battle."

"Healing isn't linear, Evan."

I chuckle shaking my head. Across the gym, somebody is testing the speakers again. Music crackles for a second before cutting out. Student council members weave around each other carrying folding chairs, boxes of programs and balloons that refuse to stay where they're told.

The whole place smells faintly of fresh paint and floor polish.

I crouch beside another box, digging through rolls of ribbon until I find the blue Emily wanted.

A couple of girls from yearbook are sitting cross-legged a few feet away, tying ribbons around little gift bags for tonight.

I don't mean to listen.

I just...

hear them.

"...No, because you missed lunch yesterday."

"What happened?"

"Some assholes were picking on Landon."

"The video guy?"

"Yeah."

Tape catches on my thumb. I pretend to be very interested in untangling it.

"They kept making comments at him."

"What comments?"

"I don't know... stupid stuff."

"'So are you checking us out now?'"

"'Guess we gotta be careful in the gym.'"

The other girl wrinkles her nose.

"Ew."

"I know."

A pause.

"Then Jake just stood up."

My hands stop moving.

"What'd he do?"

"'He was basically like, if that's how it works, then I guess you should all be worried about me too.'"

"No way."

"'I'm bi. I like guys too. Congratulations. You still look like pieces of shit to me.'"

The girl bursts out laughing.

"Shut up."

"I'm serious."

"Oh my God."

"And everyone just..."

She snaps her fingers.

"...went quiet."

"The whole cafeteria?"

"The whole cafeteria."

Another beat.

"That's actually kind of hot."

"I KNOW."

"I never thought I'd say this about Jake, but you know..."

The girls dissolve into quiet laughter, one of them fanning herself dramatically with a folded paper bag before groaning because she'd somehow tied the ribbon around her own fingers instead of the gift bag.

I don't realize I've stopped moving until I hear my name.

"Ev."

Emily's voice isn't loud. It doesn't need to be.

I look up.

She's standing a few feet away, one hand resting against the ladder she'd been climbing a minute ago. She isn't looking at the tape tangled between my fingers. She's looking at me. Then, almost absently, her eyes drift toward the two girls still talking across the gym before returning to mine again.

She doesn't ask if I'm okay. She doesn't have to. For a second I almost think she will.

Instead I force my attention back to the tape, carefully peeling one strip away from another that doesn't need nearly as much concentration as I'm pretending it does.

"I think..." My voice comes out quieter than I expect. "I think we're running low on boxes."

Emily glances automatically toward the pile stacked against the wall.

"We're definitely not."

"Council room then."

"Ev..."

But I've already set the tape down.

"I'll be back."

She lets me go. She sometimes does these days. Maybe because she knows sometimes giving someone an escape route is its own kind of kindness.

The hallway is quiet. I like hallways between classes. They feelike places nobody belonge to for very long.

I wonder if people are hallways. Places other people passed through. Places that remembered footsteps long after everyone had gone home.

Jake.

I smile without meaning to. I can see him doing it. Standing up. Shrugging like it isn't the bravest thing he'd ever done.

"I'm bi."

Just like that. As though it is no different from saying he liked football. Or coffee. Or working out. Or Whatever the hell he likes.

I wonder what that felt like. To tell the truth without feeling afraid of it. Part of me is relieved. More relieved than I probably have any right to be. Someone is there for Landon. Someone is looking out for him.

Landon had told me he was okay.

He'd smiled when he said it too, sitting beneath that old oak tree while the sun disappeared behind the town. He'd told me most people were just curious. That the ones who tried turning it into something ugly usually got shut down before they got very far. He hadn't sounded bitter. If anything, he'd sounded... lighter.

Like carrying the truth out in the open hurt less than carrying it alone.

And yet every time I hear another story...another joke...another reminder that people are talking about him because of something that should've belonged only to him...

I can't stop thinking that none of this was supposed to happen this way. He deserved to choose his own moment. He deserved better than having it stolen from him.

It's the kind of guilt that doesn't stay where you leave it. It follows me into empty hallways. Into classrooms. Yesterday it followed me all the way to work. Into forgotten orders. Into coffee I poured into the wrong mugs. Into a pie I nearly dropped because I was too busy staring through the diner window instead of paying attention to what was in my hands.

Mrs. Pierce noticed, of course. She always notices.

She didn't say anything while the dinner rush was still going. She just quietly took the tray from my hands when I nearly mixed up another table's order, told one of the waitresses to cover the last twenty minutes of my shift, then brushed a hand gently over my shoulder as she passed.

"Come walk me to my car, sweetheart."

She was balancing two slices of apple pie in a paper box she'd packed before I even had the chance to tell her I wasn't hungry.

"Lily likes this one," she'd said simply, pressing it into my hands.

We stood beside her car for a while without saying very much.

The diner buzzed quietly behind us. Somebody laughed near the counter. The OPEN sign reflected in the rain puddles scattered across the parking lot.

I knew what this was about. And I was right when she had finally looked over at me with that same expression she'd worn ever since I was little. Half mother. Half something gentler.

"I've been trying to figure out what to say to you all week."

I looked down at the pie box.

"You don't have to say anything."

"I know."

She smiled.

"But I think maybe I want to."

The silence that followed wasn't uncomfortable. Mrs. Pierce had always been good at silences. She never seemed in a hurry to fill them.

"I loved watching you boys grow up."

Her voice carried the softness of someone remembering a hundred ordinary afternoons.

"You know, there was a time I couldn't make grilled cheese without one of you wandering into my kitchen five minutes later."

A small laugh escaped her.

"Usually covered in grass stains."

Despite myself, I smiled.

"It was mostly Landon."

"Oh, sweetheart."

She nudged my shoulder gently.

"It was absolutely both of you."

Her smile lingered for a moment before fading into something quieter.

"I think..." she said slowly, looking toward the diner windows where someone was wiping down a table inside, "I think I've known for a while."

I frowned.

"Known what?"

"That you were reaching the end."

The words should've hurt. Instead they settled somewhere inside me with the strange weight of recognition.

"I kept hoping I'd be wrong," she admitted. "I loved the way you loved each other."

She paused, folding her arms against the evening chill.

"But loving someone and growing beside them aren't always the same thing."

Her eyes stayed on windows.

"I said almost those exact words to his father once."

That made me look at her. She smiled sadly.

"I loved Landon's father. I loved him when I married him. I still loved him when I left."

A breeze stirred through the parking lot, lifting the loose strands of her hair.

"I just realised one day that I was spending more time missing who we used to be than loving who we had become."

She looked back at me then.

"There isn't a villain in every ending, Evan."

I don't know why that made my throat hurt. Maybe because it sounded true. Or maybe because I suddenly thought about being eight years old. Running across the street without knocking. Landon already waiting on his porch. As if he'd known I was coming.

"Sometimes..." Her voice softened even further. "Sometimes two people simply grow in different directions while trying their very hardest not to."

The student council room is exactly as chaotic as I remembered. Boxes are stacked against every wall, half-open and spilling streamers, rolls of tape, plastic tablecloths, paintbrushes, extension cords. Somebody has labelled everything with bright neon sticky notes, which would've been helpful if anyone had actually put the right things inside the right boxes.

I crouch in front of one anyway. Lift the lid. Stare. There are pom-poms. Three packets of zip ties. A bag of balloons. I close it again. Open another.

I don't even know what I'm looking for anymore. I think I just needed somewhere to stand that wasn't inside the gym. Somewhere nobody was watching my face.

The room is quiet except for the muffled music leaking through the walls from the gymnasium.

My hands move absent-mindedly through another box. Blue ribbon. Poster paint. Scissors. Nothing I came here for. Whatever that was.

I lean back against the shelves and close my eyes for a second.

Yesterday, I hadn't meant to cry either.

One second I was standing beside Mrs. Pierce's car with a paper bag full of leftover pie balanced in my hands.

The next...

I was trying to stop tears from reaching my chin. Mrs. Pierce hadn't looked surprised. She hadn't rushed to fill the silence. She'd simply stepped forward and wrapped her arms around me.

I'd heard myself whisper into her shoulder, my voice breaking somewhere in the middle.

"I just...I didn't think it'd ever end."

Her hand had moved slowly across my back. The same slow circles she'd been drawing there ever since I was little.

"I know, sweetheart."

Her voice had been so gentle it almost hurt.

"You never do."

"I really thought..." I'd laughed once through the tears, though it hadn't sounded anything like laughter. "I really thought we were forever."

"I know."

That was all. She didn't tell me I was seventeen.nShe didn't tell me first loves weren't always forever. She didn't tell me everything happened for a reason or that one day I'd understand.

She just...held me.

And somehow that hurt less than all the words people kept trying to find.nI think...I think a part of me had been mourning her too.

Not like she'd ever given me a reason to. But maybe because I'd convinced myself she belonged to the version of life I'd just lost. That loving Landon had somehow been the price of being loved by his family.

It seems ridiculous now. Mrs. Pierce had found me long before she'd ever found out I was going to be in love with her son. Before there had been bike rides. Before there had been secrets. Before Landon and I had known enough about ourselves to call whatever existed between us love.

She'd found a seven-year-old boy crying behind a car because he thought if he stayed hidden long enough, maybe the shouting inside his house would stop. She'd crouched down beside him without asking whose child he was. Without asking why. I only remember scooting over. Making room.

Funny. Some people spend years deciding whether to let you into their lives.

Mrs. Pierce had decided in less than a minute.

And somewhere between birthday cakes, scraped knees, late-night diner fries, forgotten homework, Christmas mornings, and all the ordinary afternoons in between...she'd never really let me go.

Not because I was Landon's boyfriend. because I was Evan.

I let the thought settle somewhere inside me before looking down. A crumpled flyer had worked its way beneath my shoe.

I bent just enough to slide it free.

JOIN MUSIC CLUB

RIDGEWOOD HIGH MUSIC CLUB

OPEN MIC FUNDRAISER

Friday, October 17

7:00 PM

Auditorium

All proceeds support new instruments and travel costs.

Want to perform?

Sign-ups outside the music room by Wednesday.

Questions?

See Ms. Miller in Room 214.

I stared at the page for a long time. The edges were bent where somebody had stepped on it before me. There was a tiny coffee stain in one corner.

I remembered when I'd carried stacks of these around myself.

Standing outside the cafeteria with Courtney, convincing other freshmen that no, you didn't have to sing to join. Somebody always needed people to run lights. Somebody always needed another guitarist. Somebody always needed another pair of hands.

I loved that room.

It was loud in all the right ways. People tuning guitars. Someone missing the same piano note over and over. Arguments about whether Fleetwood Mac counted as classic rock.

It had felt...

"You gonna leave it there all day?"

I turn.

Aiden is sitting backwards in one of the chairs near the table, his arms folded across the backrest, his chin resting on them.

He looks from me...

to the flyer...

then back again.

I blink.

"When did you get here?"

"A minute ago."

"And you've been staring at me?"

"You were staring at a flyer for a solid two minutes."

"I was thinking."

"You looked broken."

"I usually do."

"...Fair."

I look back down at the crumpled paper.

"What are you doing in here anyway?"

Aiden frowns thoughtfully, looking around the room as though he's forgotten.

"...Excellent question."

I glance at his very empty hands.

"Shouldn't the vice president be... vice president-ing?"

"I delegated."

"To who?"

He points vaguely toward the room.

"People."

"You don't know who, do you?"

"I have faith."

"In?"

"They'll figure it out."

He sounds oddly proud of that.

"They're gonna make you carry tables."

"I know."

I snort and Aiden looks far too pleased with himself. He reaches over and nudges the empty chair beside him with the toe of his shoe.

"C'mere."

I don't know why I listenm

Maybe because I always seemed to lately.

The chair squeak softly as I pull it out, turning it sideways before dropping into it. Instead of sitting properly, I lean forward until my forehead rests against the cool laminate table.

The silence that settles between us isn't awkward.

It rarely is anymore.

Aiden rests his cheek on his folded arms, looking sideways at me for a moment before reaching over and quietly plucking a tiny gold paper star from the sleeve of my hoodie.

"You've been decorated."

I cracked one eye open.

"...Occupational hazard."

"So I've heard."

He flicks the paper star into the nearest box.bI let my eyes close again. We don't talk much these days.bNot really. It's strange. I probably spend more time with Aiden than anyone else now. There's always something Emily needs from the supply closet. Some errand that somehow requires two people. Another trip to the store because somebody forgot batteries. Or tape. Or poster paint.

Emily swears she makes the lists.nAiden swears she loses them on purpose. I'm beginning to think they're both right.

Somehow...it's always the two of us. Walking across campus. Loading boxes into the back of his truck. Standing in checkout lines arguing over whether anyone actually needs three hundred zip ties.

He hasn't mentioned that night in Emily's garden. Not once. Neither have I. I don't know what that night was supposed to mean. Maybe it wasn't supposed to mean anything. Maybe two people can tell each other the worst parts of themselves beneath a sky full of stars and simply...carry on.

I don't know. I don't think I have room to know.bNot yet.

Not after that hilll. Not while home still sounds the way it does. Not while school still looks at me a second too long. Not while I'm still trying to remember what it feels like to wake up without immediately listening for shouting.

If Aiden is just being kind...I don't want to misunderstand it. And if it's something more...I don't know if I have anything left to give it. Some days I barely have enough of myself to make it to dinner.

But...it's nice. Being around him.bHe never asks me to be in a better mood. Never tries to cheer me up. Never fills the quiet because he thinks quiet means something's wrong.

We just...exist beside each other. For hours sometimes. Doing whatever Emily has convinced us needs doing. Or not doing it. And somehow that's enough.

Ever since he looked at me that night and said he'd be there...he has. Not in some big ways.

In ordinary ones.

Texting me that his grandma had accidentally cooked enough pasta to feed a small country. So on our way there, he picks Lily up from home because "we are aready driving past anyway."

Claiming Grandma needed help choosing between two poetry books. Insisting he required another victim for Mario Kart because apparently humiliating grandpa had become boring.

Every excuse different. Every destination exactly the same. His grandparents' house.

Sometimes I read. Sometimes I help Lily with homework. Sometimes I fall asleep on their couch without meaning to. Sometimes I just sit on the back porch while Grandpa waters tomatoes and grandma sings off-key through an open window of her bakery.

Nobody asks me to explain myself. Nobody asks me to smile. Nobody asks me to be okay.

And maybe the kindest thing Aiden has ever done...is never admitting out loud what we both already know. None of those excuses were ever really about pasta. Or poetry. Or video games. They were about giving Lily and me somewhere else to be until the lights came on in our own house.

He never says it. I never thank him for it. But every afternoon, when he pulls away from our street instead of stopping outside my house...

I let him.

I feel something brush lightly through my hair. At first I don't move.

Then I realize...

Aiden's fingers.

I open my eyes. His head is still resting on his folded arm on the back of the chair, turned toward me. He isn't really looking at me. Not the way people usually do. More like... he's absentmindedly noticing me.

His fingers catch on something near my temple before pulling away with a tiny gold paper star pinched between them.

"Hm."

He flicks it into the nearest box. Apparently there'd been more than one. A second later he reaches over again, this time brushing another little piece of glitter from my shoulder with the back of his hand.

"You're shedding decorations."

I glance down at my hoodie.

"I've become part of the gym."

The corner of his mouth lifts. Then, almost without thinking, he smooths down one stubborn strand of hair that had fallen back across my forehead.

The gesture is so casual it takes me a second to realize he'd done it at all.

"You going home yet?"

His voice stays quiet. Like neither of us wants to disturb the stillness that's settled between us.

I shrug.

"I don't know."

He nods like that's enough of an answer. It usually is.

The room settles back into its familiar quiet. Outside the narrow windows, the afternoon has started slipping toward evening. The sun hangs lower than it did an hour ago now, spilling warm strips of light across the floor until they reach the legs of our chairs. One of them catches Aiden where he's leaning against the backrest, turning the loose strands of his hair almost gold for a second before they fall back into shadow.

He squints toward the window, then looks back at me.

"You coming to the game tonight?"

I think about the question.

For years I would've answered without thinking. Of course. Friday nights meant football. Not because I cared who won. I couldn't even tell you half the rules. I went because Landon played. Because watching him run onto that field somehow made sitting on cold metal bleachers worth it. Because cheering for him had felt as natural as breathing.

But now...Do I actually want to go?

The thought surprises me. Because...I never realized it was a question.

I can do whatever I want now.

The realization lands strangely. Light and heavy. Both at once.

What do I want to do?

I honestly don't know. I turn my head a little.

"What about you?"

He lets out a quiet breath.

"I'm vice president."

"So that's a yes."

"I don't think Emily would let me escape if I tried."

I smile.

"Probably not."

Silence settles again.

Lily had been talking about some animated movie all week. Apparently everyone in her class had already seen it except her. She'd spent three breakfasts telling me the entire plot based only on playground rumours and a trailer she'd watched twice.

Maybe...Maybe I'd take her tonight instead. The football game would happen with or without me. Lily only got one first time.

"I think..." I rub my thumb against the edge of the table. "I think she wants to see that movie."

Aiden looks at me. He already knows what I'm talking about so he just nods.

"So that's a no?"

"I guess."

He doesn't answer straight away. He just watches me for a second. Not expectantly. More like he's turning something over quietly in his head.

Then...

"What about tomorrow?"

"The dance?"

He nods.

"You coming?"

I don't answer.

Because...

I genuinely don't know.

Freshman year, Emily had refused to let either of us stay home. She'd shown up at Mrs. Pierce's front door already dressed, tickets in hand, announced that we were "absolutely not spending Homecoming playing video games like two emotionally constipated old men," then dragged us to the dance before either of us could come up with an excuse.

I don't remember much about it. Mostly Emily disappearing every few songs because she somehow knew everyone in the room. Landon stealing cookies from the refreshments table.

The three of us laughing so hard we got asked to stop sitting on the floor in the hallway.

Sophomore year had been different. Some senior had asked Emily to go with him. She'd spent two weeks pretending she didn't care, then another week pretending she hadn't spent two weeks pretending.

Landon and I had teased her mercilessly. She'd threatened to leave both of us stranded at school.

Mrs. Pierce had been out of town that weekend. Her sister had gotten sick, and she'd driven three hours away the night before.

So after dinner, Landon and I ended up back at his house instead. Neither of us really wanted to go to the dance without Emily.

Or maybe...without somewhere to hide behind her. We found an old six-pack in the back of Mrs. Pierce's garage fridge that she'd probably forgotten existed.

Neither of us liked beer. We drank it anyway. Mostly because sixteen-year-old boys seemed convinced they were supposed to. Landon took one sip, made the most offended face I'd ever seen, and looked at the bottle like it had personally betrayed him.

"This tastes like somebody carbonated disappointment."

I laughed so hard I nearly dropped mine.

"I think that's... actually the flavour."

"I want a refund."

"You didn't even pay for it."

"I still want it."

We gave up after half a bottle each.bOrdered pizza instead. At some point music started playing through the old speaker in the living room. I don't even remember who turned it on.

One song blurred into another until Landon stood up in the middle of the room and held out his hand with an exaggerated bow.

"Since we're missing Homecoming..."

His grin spread across his face.

"...I guess we'll just have to make our own."

I rolled my eyes.

"You're an idiot."

"I've accepted that."

He wiggled his fingers impatiently.

"C'mon."

"There are literally no girls here."

"I wasn't asking them. I am asking my boyfriend."

I laughed again. Then took his hand. We spent the next ten minutes making complete fools of ourselves. Terrible dancing. Awful singing. Spinning each other around until we both crashed into the couch because Landon insisted he knew how to ballroom dance after watching exactly one YouTube video.

That was last homecoming. What about this year?

Before I can find an answer, Aiden reaches into the pocket of his hoodie. He doesn't make a big thing of it. Just pulls out a folded ticket and slides it across the table until it comes to rest beside my hand.

I look down at it.

RIDGEWOOD HOMECOMING

He shrugs one shoulder.

"I had some extras."

I glance back up.

"If you decide you want to come."

There wasn't any question or expectations...just an open door. For some reason I don't pick it up.

Neither does he.

Outside, the whistle blows again somewhere across the football field. Aiden looks out toward the window for a second before resting his chin back on his folded arms.

Quietly, almost like he's talking to the sunlight instead of me, he says,

"I think it'd be nice."