Hi.
“Hey Pricey.” Wyatt slid into the seat next to him. “What are you doing on Thursday?”
“Playing a hockey game?”
“Iknow. Before that, I mean.”
“Uh.” Ryan glanced at his phone again.Hi. “I don’t know yet.”
“Come to the center with me. We’re going to play floor hockey. Just for an hour or two in the afternoon, like after school. We’ll be out of there way before we have to be at the arena.”
Ryan could hear Colleen screaming in his head.Say yes!He could picture his therapist’s approving smile. “Sure. All right.”
“Awesome! I’ll pick you up around one. You’re going to love these kids.”
Ryandidlike kids. He still wasn’t sure why any kids would want to spend time withhim, but he was certainly willing to help out a good cause any way he could.
Wyatt gave him a friendly arm punch and left. Ryan turned his attention back to his phone. He noticed that Fabian’s message had been sent hours ago. Oh god, he probably thought Ryan was ignoring him.
Finally, Ryan wrote backHi.
He waited a minute. When there was no reply, Ryan went back to his original plan of looking up barbershops in the Village. If he was going to hang out with kids, the least he could do was make himself look slightly less terrifying.
Talking to Vanessa and sending Ryan a text had cleared Fabian’s mind enough that he was able to devote himself to music for the rest of the day, and well into the evening. He resented the way his friends would accuse him of going into hermit mode when he was working on his music sometimes, but it was definitely common for him to lose many hours when he was in the zone.
This time, when he finally snapped out of it, Fabian’s stomach was growling angrily. He picked up his phone and was surprised to see that it was nearly nine o’clock at night. There was no reply from Ryan.
He cooked up some tortellini and jarred marinara sauce for his dinner. His eyes kept darting to his phone, waiting for a reply. None came.
It wasn’t until midnight, when Fabian settled onto his bed with big plans to scroll Instagram for a while, that he saw the reply from Ryan.
Hi.
It had been sent over an hour ago. Oops.
Fabian: Hi!
Okay, so he wasn’t exactly advancing the plot, but he just needed to make an actual connection. He finally got one a moment later when Ryan wrote,Sorry. Had my phone off all day. Then a game at night.
Game. Right. That’s the sort of thing Fabian could have looked up.
Fabian: Did you win?
Ryan: No.
Fabian: Next time.
Ryan: Yup.
Fabian waited for dots to appear, but it seemed that Ryan was done talking. So Fabian wrote,I keep thinking about last night.
He cringed. Was that maybetoohonest?
But Ryan wrote back,Me too.
Fabian exhaled. Thank god.I don’t like how we left things.
Ryan: Me neither.
