“Okay,” Nate gestured toward the bank parking lot while pulling out his phone to shoot a quick apology text to Jared. To his surprise, Bailey walked right up to his truck without any more direction than Nate’s vague arm waving in the correct direction.  Or perhaps that wasn’t so surprising.

He probably recognized the truck because he saw it at the shop a few days ago. Regardless, the idea that Bailey knew what truck he drove made something warm and familiar settle into Nate’s chest. He frowned at himself as he watched Bailey haul himself into the passenger seat.

His chest had no business coming down with funny twinges and feelings just because he was helping Bailey out of a shitty situation. The universe had just shaken them together so that they were temporarily emulsified, but they would separate back out once the strangeness of this night wore off. He was probably the last person Bailey wanted to be rescued by.

He had to be seriously freaked to agree to let Nate take him home. Tear tracks streaked down his cheeks, and his arms still hugged his body as he leaned miserably against the door. He had enough pep in him, though, to glance at Nate out of the corner of his eye and say, “I cannot fucking believe I just got into your truck. Is this how I am going to die?”

“Fuck off.” Nate rolled his eyes but quickly jammed his keys into the ignition and began to pull out of the spot in case Bailey took him literally and tried to get out. “I just saved your ass from that prick. I’m not going to kill you.”

Thankfully, Bailey reached over his shoulder for the seatbelt and buckled in. Then he stared at Nate. They rolled to a stop at the parking lot exit, and Nate looked both ways, catching Bailey still staring. His eyes were shadowed, dark, and serious. He had trapped his bottom lip between his teeth and was worrying at it.

Nate sniffed and pulled out onto the road. “What?”

Bailey shrugged. “Thank you.”

“No problem.” Nate shifted one hand to the top of the steering wheel and rubbed the edge of his jaw with his other.

It would be ludicrous to say he did not like watching someone hurt Bailey. Not after they’d spent nearly the last decade pummeling each other into the dirt. But Tanner had been dragging Bailey to his car like he was going to kidnap him or some shit. A chill ran up his spine just remembering it—worse now because of all the shit Tanner said.

“You looked seriously scared,” Nate added. “Nobody should be treated like that.”

Bailey just blinked at him. They had never really talked to each other like this. When they were civil to one another, it was when forced to be, like the other day at the car shop or when they once had to work on a history project together. The teacher had taken it upon herself to patch up their relationship. Bailey did a lot of staring then, too, like a cop in an interrogation room, using silence as a technique.

That was highly effective against Nate. He had rambled all kinds of stupid shit back then until Bailey finally sighed, took charge, and did most of the work for the project. He was smarter like that.

And it worked now. Nate scratched the back of his head and puffed out a frustrated breath. “Look, I know because we don’t get along that you think I’m, like…shitty or whatever, but…”

“I don’t think that,” Bailey interjected into the silence as he ran out of words for a thought his brain had not even fully completed yet.

“Oh,” Nate breathed. “Cool.”

“Like, do I think that you’re an asshole sometimes?” Bailey continued. “Yeah, sure. But I don’t think you’re shitty. Used to make me mad when people would try to get all sympathetic about when you picked on me in school and tried to make it about, like, homophobia or something.” Bailey scoffed, lips twisted into a curl of distain. “Not like you were beating Kevin Park up too or anything, you know. Stop trying to make it into something its not.”

Bailey’s rambling was much more coherent than Nate’s. He remained silent, partially because it was pleasant to listen to him talk but also out of shock that Bailey had gone around feeling indignant on his behalf.

“You defended me against people calling me a homophobe?” he asked.

Bailey rolled his eyes. “Of course, because you aren’t.”

Such a simple statement, but it ricocheted through Nate’s chest. There was no way he’d know. Nate hadn’t come out about experimenting around to anyone except Jared. And, well, the couple of guys he messed around with. It was feasible tat maybe one of them knew Bailey and also knew about his and Nate’s history and then thought it might be interesting to bring it up. And, really, that wouldn’t be a problem. But it still made Nate’s heart hammer.

“How’d you know I’m not?” he asked, like an idiot, because everything about this night was throwing him off. Even with his eyes trained on the road, he could see Bailey eye him strangely.

“You told that guy off in middle school when he was being a dick about my liking guys,” Bailey said, matter-of-fact as if this should be at the forefront of Nate’s mind as well. “So, I guess that gave me the impression that you weren’t? Am I wrong?”

“No!” Nate hurried to stop wherever that train of thought might be headed, then cleared his throat and said with less volume and more conviction, “No. I just…”

Nate vaguely remembered something of the sort happening when they were younger. Some prick thought it would be cute to make Bailey’s life hell around the time that he came out, knocking books out of his hands in the halls, calling him names, and whatnot. Then, one time, when he was terrorizing Bailey at the urinals in the bathroom, he put a hand on the back of Bailey’s head and smacked his nose into the wall. Nate had arrived just in time to see that and paid him the favor right back.  

“Damn,” he chuckled. “I’d forgotten about that. You spat blood in my face when I tried to see if you were okay and told me to mind my own business.”

Bailey tossed his head back and laughed, full-bellied and unrestrained. Time stopped. Nate’s knuckles turned white as his fingers curled tightly around the steering wheel. He forced his eyes to stay on the road instead of straying to the magnetic sight of Bailey’s laughter.  

“I did do that, didn’t I!” Bailey sighed, with a smile still plastered on his face. “Is that why we started bickering so much?”

Bickering, he called it.

Nate shrugged. “Honestly, I can’t remember why.”

But now that the memory had swum to the surface of his mind, becoming more and more clear, he wondered if it might have been when things began to go sour between them.

They lapsed into silence. Nate took a turn, wondering vaguely at the fact that Bailey had not given him directions nor asked where the hell he was going. If he had been paying attention at all, he would have noticed that Nate was not headed toward his mom’s house but to the strip malls on the edge of town proper. A tiny voice in the back of Nate’s mind pointed out that this might be because he felt safe enough in this truck to forget to pay attention to every little turn they took despite his earlier teasing.

“This is weird,” Bailey said. “Just talking to you is…weird.”

“Yeah,” Nate agreed. Nevertheless, he was selfish and wanted to spend more time in this strange alternate universe where Bailey and he got along. Where Bailey felt safe with him, and Nate felt like he had some kind of right to take care of him. He did not want to take him straight home.

But he finally noticed. “Where are we going?”

Not a demand to know why Nate was not taking him directly home, just innocent curiosity about where they were going instead. Fuck. Nate did not even know what he was feeling anymore.

He did not answer because they were already arriving. Bailey’s eyes widened as they turned into the 24/7 Diner and eased into a parking space. There was a little drive-through window on the side of the building, but it closed at 10 pm on weekends, so Nate had to go inside.

“I’ll be right back.” He unbuckled his seatbelt and popped open the door. Bailey furrowed his brow. Before he could protest, Nate ordered, “Stay right there.”

He glanced over his shoulder as he crossed to the Diner’s entrance. Bailey had obediently remained in the passenger seat, barely visible behind the reflection of the Diner’s neon sign splashed across the windshield.

Nate figured the last thing Bailey wanted was to go into a brightly lit place, which – although not crowded – had a good number of employees and midnight diners to ogle at his tear-stained face. It was a small town, too, and half of the people inside were at least familiar to both of them, if not known by name.

Nate did not need any rumors flying around about him showing up at the diner in the middle of the night with his archnemesis looking like he just had a breakdown.

“Mary, can I get two coffees?” Nate asked as he approached the counter. The woman behind it narrowed her eyes at him and pursed her lips.

“No, ‘Hello, Mary?’ or ‘How are you doing tonight, Mary?’” she asked pointedly.

Nate smiled cheekily and leaned against the glass display case of baked goods. “Hello, Mary. How are you doing on this fine Friday night?”

“I’m a work, so what do you expect?” She flapped her hand dismissively.

Nate put his chin in his palm and raised his brows. “This is why I don’t ask you how you are. You always say the same thing.”

“Well, I know your mama taught you better manners.” Mary put her hands on her hips and tapped on the screen in front of her. “Two coffees?”

“Yep.” Nate glanced around the diner. A group of people around his age, either in high school or college, were gathered at a table, falling against each other and laughing.

“Two coffees,” Mary repeated with emphasis. “You got somebody out in your truck to take home tonight? Afraid you won’t be interesting enough to keep them awake?”

“Mary,” Nate chided lowly, fighting off a grin.

She rolled her eyes. “I’m stuck here at work. Let me live vicariously a little.”

Nate shook his head and tried his hardest not to turn and look over his shoulder to check on Bailey. “Just taking a friend home from the bar.”

The word ‘friend’ felt strange as it fell from his lips in connection with Bailey. But it was a believable excuse. Nate did tend to be the mom-friend. He ended up being DD more often than not, giving people that he did not even know a ride home from the bar if they were too drunk to drive or giving the bartenders a hard time, and that sort of thing.

But calling Bailey a friend was another peculiar detail that made him feel like he was in an episode of the Twilight Zone.

Mary reached across the counter and patted his cheek, “Your mama did teach you well, didn’t she? Who’s in that truck is nobody’s business but your own. Two coffees coming right up.”

It was a good call not to bring Bailey inside because Mary would have gone straight to either one or both of their moms to tattle about seeing them together. It would have started a whole thing. Their moms were the type of good friends who dreamed of marrying their children together, namely Bailey and Nate’s younger sister, Karlie. Dreams of them being childhood sweethearts were nipped in the bud when Bailey came out, but they always hoped that Bailey and Nate would be best friends.

And while Nate wasn’t technically out to anyone, he knew his parents strongly suspected but were giving him the space to figure himself out. If his mom found out he was hanging around Bailey in an amicable way, it would start a conversation. One that he—not knowing exactly how he felt about Bailey right about now—was not prepared to have.

As he thought about that, he gazed down into the case of baked goods, eyes straying over the tiramisu, black forest cake, and various pastries. There was a red velvet cake with only one slice cut out, meaning it was fresh. When Mary returned, and Nate asked for a slice, she gave him an infuriatingly knowing look.