Still Thinking About It

The thing about being the quiet one in a group of three is that you see everything. You see too much.

I saw Kade steal Milo's last fry before Milo noticed it was gone. I saw Milo's hand resting on the table, palm up, like an invitation nobody asked for. I saw the waitress clock our booth and decide we weren't worth checking on again.

Penny's Diner on a Friday night. Our booth. The vinyl cracking under my thighs, the overhead lights a shade of yellow that made everyone look slightly feverish. I'd been coming here since freshman year, always with them, always in this exact configuration: Kade against the window, me in the middle, Milo on the outside where he could flag down refills because he was the only one of us with manners.

"I'm throwing a thing," Kade said.

Milo didn't look up from his phone. "You're always throwing a thing."

"This one's different. The warehouse. Full setup. Lights, sound, the whole cathedral of bad decisions."

"We have midterms next week."

"And after midterms, we'll have more midterms, and then finals, and then college applications, and then death. Your point?"

I pulled my sketchbook closer and started sketching Kade without thinking about it. He had the kind of face that made angles interesting. High cheekbone, the faded violet at his temples where the dye was growing out, that chain around his neck catching light from the window.

I'd drawn him before. I'd drawn both of them before. It was just practice.

"Senna." Milo's voice, warm and even. "You're the tiebreaker."

I looked up. Both of them watching me. Kade with that grin that was half dare, half plea. Milo with his responsible-adult face that he hadn't earned yet.

"When's the party?"

"Saturday." Kade leaned forward. "Starts at ten. Gets good at midnight. Gets legendary around two."

"We have to study," Milo said, but he was already smiling.

"We can study Sunday." I capped my pen. "We'll be hungover Sunday, but we can study."

Kade pumped his fist. Milo sighed the sigh of someone who wanted to be convinced. The waitress finally came by with the check and Kade reached for it at the same time I did.

His hand brushed mine. Just knuckles. Just contact. Nothing.

I didn't pull away.

I should have pulled away.

"I got it." He held up the check with his other hand, the one not touching mine. "Saints don't let friends pay for bad coffee."

"Saints?" Milo raised an eyebrow.

"That's the theme. Neon Saints. I'm painting it on the water tower."

"You're going to fall off a water tower."

"Then I'll die famous."

They argued about it the whole way to the car. I walked between them, my sketchbook under my arm, his knuckles still a phantom on my skin.

In the backseat of Milo's Civic, Kade stretched out and put his boots on my lap. I shoved them off. He put them back. Standard operating procedure.

"Play the playlist," he said.

Milo plugged in his phone and the car filled with our songs. Not his songs or mine. Ours. Three years of tracks added in no particular order, the only rule being that the person who added it had to defend it.

Kade added everything fast and loud. Milo added everything warm and soft. I added the ones that made you feel like driving at night with the windows down, the kind of songs where the bridge hits and you forget you're a person with problems.

The song playing was mine. "Harvest Moon" by Neil Young. Kade had fought its inclusion for six months before admitting it was "tolerable."

He was humming it now. Quietly, so Milo wouldn't hear from the driver's seat.

I heard.

Milo dropped Kade off first. Always did. Kade's place was closer, and it meant Milo drove me the rest of the way home, which meant five extra minutes of him and me in a car with comfortable silence and the playlist winding down.

Tonight he was quiet. Hands at ten and two. Thinking about something.

"You okay?"

He glanced over. "Yeah. Just... thinking about Saturday."

"The party or the midterms?"

A pause. "The party."

He pulled up to my house. The porch light was on. My mom was still awake, which meant she'd want to know where I'd been, which meant I'd say Penny's, which was true, which was all she needed.

"Night, Sen."

I stopped. My hand on the door handle. He never called me Sen. That was Kade's thing.

"Night, Milo."

I got out. He waited until I was inside before driving away. He always waited.

Upstairs, I dropped my bag and opened my sketchbook. The diner. The two of them. The angle I'd drawn Kade from, which was the angle I saw him from when I was trying not to look directly at him.

The page before it: Milo in profile, laughing at something off-frame. I'd drawn the laugh lines. I'd drawn the way his collar sat against his neck.

Page before that: the three of us. I didn't remember drawing it. Three figures at a diner table, light falling on them from above, the one in the middle reaching in both directions.

I closed the book.

Saturday was going to be fine.