A train whistle screamed at the sky. As it rolled into town, the thump-thump of its cars rambling over tracks grew loud enough to rival the modest rush of cars over the streets. On either side of the tracks, the town had burst forth with life. The trees had leafed out, shadowing the sidewalks and giving reprieve from the sun. The school year had ended, so kids could run through sprinklers in their yards or walk down to the community pool whenever they wanted. It was finally summer.

Sweat trickled down Nate's back as he stepped out of the car, unfamiliar and unwelcome in the early summer heat. His friend Jared’s car technically had air conditioning, but it just blew tepid air. With Nate’s truck in the shop getting the suspension fixed, they had to settle for driving around with the windows down. Which was not terribly effective in a small town where the speed limit hardly crept above thirty-five and a four-way stop loomed at every cross-section.

But it was a shame to stay cooped up playing video games all day when the cold weather and spring rains had finally given way to nicer days. They would leave that for July and August when the heat became unbearable.

The town’s most popular snowball stand had this year’s grand opening today, so they decided to check it out. Like every other year, the owners freshened up the sandboxes, brought out picnic tables, and planted a bunch of tropical trees with huge leaves that would never be able to survive come winter. A bunch of kids helped paint a mural on the side of the little shed-sized building. They had paint all over their fingers and sticky syrup all over their mouths. Nate shuddered at the sight as they crossed to the window. Jared snickered.

“What do you wanna bet their parents are just going to take them home and hose them off in the yard?” he asked as they walked up to the window.

Nate rolled his eyes and smiled at the girl waiting to take their orders. She looked familiar, but so did a lot of people in a smaller town like his. She had a miniature fan buzzing in one hand and tapped on her little screen with her other as he and Jared rattled off their orders. Then she popped her gum and flipped the screen around so Nate could pay.

He and Jared were beyond squabbling over who was going to pay. They had been friends for long enough now that it went unsaid that if one of them paid this time, the other would pick up the tab next time.

As the girl turned around to start whipping their snow cones, Nate glanced around the tropical sandy beach that the owners had attempted to create.

“They should have a hose somewhere for parents to use on their kids before they have to put them in their cars,” Jared kept rambling. But Nate was not listening because he had spotted Bailey Alexander lying across one of the benches of the picnic tables.

His forearm slung across his eyes, causing his cropped shirt to ride high enough on his torso to reveal the beginnings of a new tattoo across his ribs. He was holding the Styrofoam cup that contained his snow cone on top of his stomach with loose fingers, and his phone lay askew on his chest and neck as though he had dropped it there before covering his eyes.

Jared huffed because Nate was not listening to him and followed his line of sight. Then he straightened and threw a wary glance at the side of Nate’s face. “That’s Bailey.”

“Yeah,” Nate agreed. The girl brought over their snow cones and slid them toward the edge of the window. Nate picked his up without looking away from Bailey’s prone form.

He and Bailey got along about as well as oil and water. Cats and dogs. You name it. Except they never seemed to be able to break free of the gravity of each other’s orbit. Back in high school, there was always something, be it the last parking space in the more convenient lot or the last window seat or a stray ball while playing tennis during P.E. They always managed to find something to fight about, much to the teachers’ and their parents’ chagrin over the years.

Really, their circles should not have overlapped. Their classes hardly overlapped. Bailey had been an AP student, while Nate was nothing of the sort. Nate had been a member of a private boxing club, away from after-school clubs and sports on school grounds. They hadn’t even been dating rivals since Bailey had been out since middle school, and Nate started experimenting only after graduation. But hardly a month went by freshman through senior year that they didn’t end up hollering in each other’s faces.

Not much had changed since they graduated a couple of years ago. Bailey went away for college, so he was only around town for holidays and during the summer, and, again, there was no reason for them to interact ever at all. But they ran into each other constantly, regardless, claws already out. Right back in the school hallway, glaring at each other through the crowd and, if one of them was feeling particularly volatile or irksome, slamming each other into lockers.

“You know,” Jared poked his snowball with his plastic spoon as Nate stared the blissfully unaware Bailey down, “we aren’t in high school anymore.”

“Doesn’t make him any less annoying,” Nate groused. “I mean, look at the way he’s sprawled across the picnic table.”

He took up an entire side, with his long legs stretched out and bare belly on display, the hint of a new tattoo too small for Nate to tell what it was. Two girls sat on the other side of the table, vaguely familiar from school. They were bent over, peering at something on one of their phones.

“That has nothing to do with you. It’s not like you wanted to go sit at that table anyway,” Jared pointed out. He shoved a spoonful of ice into his mouth and lifted his eyebrows in a challenge. Nate looked around the area and frowned.

“Well, there is nowhere else to sit.” With that, he marched toward Bailey. Jared cursed under his breath and tagged along.

“Hey,” Nate’s shadow fell across Bailey’s figure, “You know other people might want to be able to sit down.”

The two friends, Megan and a second girl, whose name was Ashley or Alicia or something along those lines, glanced up with twin frowns. When they saw Nate, they rolled their eyes and looked back down at the phone.

Bailey lifted his arm just enough to glare at whoever dared to disturb him. As soon as he saw Nate, his eyes widened a fraction. Then he dropped his hand to the edge of the table to pull himself up, never breaking eye contact despite the way he had to squint against the sun. His feet dropped to the ground on either side of the bench so that he was now straddling it.  

“Plenty of room.” He patted the wood between his legs and smirked up at Nate.

Jared sidled up beside them and waved to the two girls. “Hey, Meg. Hey, Amy.”

“Hey, Jared!” They smiled brightly at him.

Nate scowled. “Why don’t you make some room for other people if you’re done with your snow cone, asshole.”

“I’m not done.” Bailey pouted into his cup petulantly. All that was left inside was the melted blue liquid from what used to be his snow cone. He stirred it with his plastic spoon.

“You’re done,” Nate said. He plucked the cup from Bailey’s hand and, ignoring his yelp of protest, turned it upside down to dump the remaining liquid into the grass. Bailey watched with shock and irritation.

“Really?” Jared groaned.

Nate could hear the lecture in his head, every tone and pitch of Jared’s voice crystal clear. Why was he always spoiling for a fight with Bailey? They had not seen each other for over six months, and the first thing Nate did was dump his snow cone out. Was it going to be like this all summer? The town probably could not handle another round of Bailey and Nate shoving their yearly quota of altercations into a single summer like last year. It had been a miracle neither of them were arrested.

The two girls were now staring at Nate with twin expressions of deep offense. If Bailey had been the one gunning for a fight instead of Nate, the snow cone would have ended up on top of Nate’s head. Yet, somehow people always thought he was the more aggressive one, just because he was larger and had a resting bitch face, while Bailey looked like sunshine personified. But the little shit started fights just as often as Nate did, perhaps even more so.

Nate shoved the empty cup back into Bailey’s hand. Bailey stared at it for a moment, then looked up at Nate. “You wanna go?”

“Don’t embarrass yourself, toothpick.” Nate threw out the old nickname despite Bailey bulking up over his past year away at college. His shoulders had broadened, and his arms were gently sculpted. His legs looked good, too, the annoying little bastard. He took Nate’s words as the goad that they were and swung his leg over the bench to stand.

Nate set his snow cone on the table just in time before Bailey fisted the front of his shirt and tried to grapple him. They tumbled to the ground in a flail of limbs and elbows while trying to wrap their arms around each other’s necks or get a jab at each other’s kidneys.

Bailey managed to break out of the pin Nate was trying to wrestle him into. He could put that new weight to work and roll Nate over before getting trapped beneath him. Unfortunately, Nate used his momentum to keep them rolling through the grass.

Also unfortunately, the sandbox stopped their progression across the lawn when Bailey smacked his knee into it. He yelped, pulling a face like the impact had numbed his nerves, but then was right back at it, trying to get on top again.

“Hey!” A female voice cut above the rest of the commotion that had broken out when they started fighting. Bailey and Nate froze, fists buried in each other’s shirts above their heaving chests. They turned to look at the girl running the snowball stand.

“Stop that!” She hollered, waving her phone around. “I will call the cops on you, Bailey. I don’t care! There are kids here!”

They glanced at the group of kids, who were mostly ignoring them and continuing to have fun making a big old mess with the paint. The adults looked on with a mixture of excitement and disappointment, depending on their age.

Bailey flattened his hand on Nate’s chest and shoved. “Get the hell off.”

Nate let go and reared back onto his knees. As Bailey sat up, his bunched shirt fell back down over his torso, but not before Nate glimpsed the new tattoo in its entirety. It was the linework for a dragon of some kind. Bailey scowled at Nate and brushed the grass clippings off his shorts as he pushed all the way up to his feet. Nate stood as well.

Before they could say anything to each other or descend into violence again, Jared swooped in and shoved Nate’s abandoned snow cone into his hands. “That’s melting! You should eat it!”

Then he beamed a smile at Bailey. “Hey, Bailey! Glad to see you’re home for the summer. I didn’t know you and Sarah knew each other.”

Jared jerked his thumb at the snowball stand girl, who, apparently, everybody knew except Nate. She was still glaring at them from the shadowy depths of the window as she took someone else’s order.

Bailey snorted, “She’s my stepsister.”

“Oh wow! I didn’t know that,” Jared laughed nervously. He grabbed Nate’s sleeve to tug him away toward the little exit through the knee-high white picket fence surrounding the picnic tables and sandboxes. “See you around, Bailey!”

Nate let himself be tugged, jamming his spoon angrily into his ice. It had melted enough to be slightly sloshy, just how he liked it. As they crossed the gravel parking lot towards Jared’s hell car, Nate asked him, “How do you know Bailey’s stepsister?”

“Ahaha,” Jared rubbed the back of his neck and glanced at Nate through the corner of his eyes, “You remember when I said I met that girl at the bar the other night?”

Nate skidded to a stop, the gravel scraping beneath his sneakers. He whipped his head around to glance over his shoulder, squinting at the girl again. “Dude, I would have guessed that she was still in high school.”

“No,” Jared chuckled, “She’s older than us, man.”

“Why didn’t you guys act like you knew each other?” Nate grinned. “Was it that bad?”

Jared made an aghast face. “It was out of this world.” Then he shrugged. “She didn’t act like she knew me, so I didn’t want to embarrass her or anything. Disappointing, though, because she was hella freaky.”

Nate shook his head when Jared trailed off into a low, appreciative whistle. He was spared the details when Jared glanced wistfully back at the snowball stand, and his eyes widened. Nate looked back and caught sight of Bailey marching toward them. He was holding something up to his face so he could read it as he walked, not looking where his feet were going, as dexterous as ever.

“Did you tell the DMV to use your mug shot, Nate?” Bailey wondered out loud when he got close enough. “Because this is one fucking ugly picture.”

He looked between what he was holding in his hand and Nate. A few painful seconds passed before Nate realized it was his wallet that Bailey was casually tossing around and his ID that he was looking at. Nate’s hand slapped against his thigh, only to find his pocket flat and empty.

“Give it back,” he growled, stalking forward. Bailey laughed, eyes twinkling as he danced away a few steps. Nate tossed his snow cone aside and barreled after him.

Just like that, they were back at it, trying to wrestle one another into headlocks and dragging themselves down to their knees and sides on the gravel. Which hurt like hell, but Nate’s entire focus was zeroed in on getting that wallet back and wiping that infuriating smirk off Bailey’s face.

“Are you kidding me!” He could vaguely hear Sarah hollering in the background.