“So then,” my dad says, wiping away tears of laughter, “We’re standing there outside the petting zoo, all ready for a nice day out, and the gates are padlocked. They had closed up for a private function without a word to anyone. Unprofessional, I would have told them, but no one was even there. We were just faced with a shut gate and a sign that said sorry, we’re closed, you and your children can fuck right off.”

“It didn’t say that, you terrible liar!” my mom chimes in, from where she’s standing at the counter chopping tomatoes.

“It basically said that,” my dad tells Aiden, who is slumped in his chair with his hands pressed over his mouth, shaking his head with his eyes full of laughter. “So this one is all of four years old-” he pokes me in the ribs - “And he decides he’ll be petting the animals no matter what. He slithers right through the gates before I can grab him! We’re all reaching through the bars, trying to get him, and he just marches away. You should’ve seen Mary’s face.”

“I was perfectly calm,” my mom insists, tossing the tomatoes into a bowl.

“She was damn near about to faint. Now here I am, a grown man, hopping a gate to break into a petting zoo, to rescue my child before he disappears into some other kid’s birthday party forever. I caught up to him halfway to the animals. He didn’t make it easy getting him back, he threw a hell of a fit. I handed him over the fence to Mary like we were doing a jailbreak.”

“That part is true,” laughs my mom, pausing with a bottle of olive oil tipped over her cooking bowl. “And then that man showed up and yelled at us!”

“Oh, yes, the minute I got back over the fence the manager showed up to tell us that we were banned from the petting zoo for breaking in. He said he saw Jamie do it. Of course I told him we had no idea what he was talking about, and that no child of mine would behave so badly.”

“Right, of course not,” Aiden says, grinning widely.

“So this man goes back to the office, and comes out with this.” My dad slides the printed photograph across the table to Aiden, who picks it up. “Caught in the act!”

Aiden’s mouth drops open in delight. He turns to show me the photo. It’s pretty much as I remember it: a still from the petting zoo security camera, of a four-year-old me happily strolling away from the gate towards the petting area. You can clearly see both of my parents in the background, my mom with her hands clasped over her mouth and my dad reaching in vain through the bars of the gates, trying to grab me by the shirt.

“Oh my fucking god,” Aiden says, smiling so widely that I think his face might break.

“I couldn’t do much but laugh by this point,” my dad says, chuckling. “But Jamie was outraged. He not only disagreed about our being banned, he wanted to be let in right then. What did he tell that man, Mary?”

They both say it together: “I want to see the penguins!”

All three of them start laughing, and I groan deeply, snatching the printout from Aiden’s hand.

“Poor little lamb thought there were penguins at the petting zoo,” my mom says affectionately, sending an air-kiss in my direction.

“Clearly the day was going to be disappointing whether we got into the zoo or not,” I mutter, reaching to hand my dad back the printout, but Aiden steals it out of my hand.

“No way, I’m not done with this yet,” he says, grinning widely. “In fact…”

“No, no, no!” I press my hands over my eyes as Aiden snaps a picture of the printout with his phone. “Why did I ever bring you here?”

“I’m so glad you did,” my mom says, rinsing off her hands in the kitchen sink. She dries them on the bright green dish towel, smiling at Aiden. “What a nice lad you are, Aiden. Don’t you agree, Marcus?”

“Oh, I think he’s terrible,” my dad answers at once, slinging his arm around Aiden’s broad shoulders. “Why have you never brought him over before, James?”

“Alright, we’re gonna go - be somewhere else for a bit!” I get to my feet and pull Aiden with me, rescuing him from my dad’s embrace.

“Dinner soon!” my mom reminds us, as we head towards the stairs. I release Aiden’s hand when we’re clear of the kitchen, and lead him up to the second floor.

“Where are we going?” he asks, tucking his phone back into his pocket.

“For a Mary and Marcus break.”

“I don’t need a Mary and Marcus break.”

“It’s not for you, it’s for me!” I pause outside of my bedroom door; I guess this is the only place to go, now that I brought us up here. We should have gone to the garden or the family room or something. I didn’t plan ahead. I ease open the door to my childhood/high school bedroom, and Aiden follows me inside.

My parents haven’t touched or changed a thing since I moved out all that time ago, which is amazing, given that this house is so small and any extra space is at a premium. It’s a snug cottage on the Eastern edge of Ketterbridge. The property is large - the backyard stretches out far enough that the dog can run absolutely wild, and my mom lovingly maintains a sprawling vegetable garden - but the house itself takes up little space.

My mom’s decorating does nothing to make it seem bigger. She’s not exactly what you would call a minimalist. Every available surface is stuffed with chachkies and potted plants and the products of my grade-school art classes. The walls are a smorgasbord of art and photographs and mirrors, some passed down through our family for a long time, some thrifted by my mom at Goodwill. There are photos of my immediate family, and ones with all of my cousins and aunts and uncles, and ones of family members dead for so long that even my mom doesn’t quite remember who they were. She doesn’t acquire things with a plan for where she’ll put them, or how they’ll go with everything else - she just collects things that she likes, and then keeps them everywhere. A blue velvet armchair, an oversized wicker basket, a series of French art prints from the 50s, a figurine of a mermaid with carefully painted turquoise scales. There’s no specific style she adheres to, so the whole look - to me, at least - just means home.

I’ve inherited a lot from my mom, her eclectic brand of styling included. There’s no inch of bare space on my old bedroom walls. There are posters everywhere: The Flaming Lips above my desk, next to a blown-up photo of Franz Ferdinand jamming on stage during one of their early American tours. A faded X-Files poster by my bed, a Broken Social Scene one next to that.

I was an experience to be around in high school.

My shelves still have a lot of books, with the exception of the favorites I took when I moved out. My little bed is still cozily made up - my mom keeps it that way all the time. My childhood teddy bear Francis is propped up against the pillows. My dresser is covered in framed photos, old toys, sun-bleached tickets or postcards that mean something to me. Most of the photos are me and Kasey, but I also have some with my mom and dad, whose voices drift up through the old wooden floors.

Aiden stands in the middle of it all, turning slowly, his blue eyes traveling over every surface.

“Well,” he says, “I think I finally understand why you’re so offended by my one backpack.”

I laugh in spite of myself, and cross to sit on my bed as Aiden drifts over to my desk. He looks at everything so intensely, like he’s building a detailed 3D model in his head. He turns around and finds me on my bed.

“So this was high school you, huh?”

“You knew high school me,” I remind him.

“Not really, though.” His blue eyes grow a little darker, icier around his pupils. I’ve known him long enough to recognize it now. It means: briefly sad. His gaze always returns to normal quickly, like he knows I can read this tiny detail about him.

“I guess I didn’t really know you, either,” I answer.

Aiden glances away, staring out of the window over my bed.

“Nice view. Your room is different than I imagined it, but I like it.”

I don’t know when in his life Aiden ever took a moment to imagine what my high school bedroom might look like. He still hasn’t even been to my apartment.

“Well, I’m glad you like it.” I close my eyes, enjoying the quiet after my clamorous parents. Birds chirp softly outside, and my window is cracked open, letting in a gentle, warm breeze. After a moment I feel the bed depress, and open my eyes to find that Aiden has sat down next to me, only a few inches of bedspread separating us. He takes off his hat and lays flat on his back, closing his eyes and breathing out a sigh.

I hesitate, then lay down next to him, my feet still on the rug beneath my bed. We lay there quietly for a moment, and I have to wonder when I started tolerating - no, appreciating the occasional minute of calm and silence. It’s something Aiden has changed about me.

I open my eyes and find him looking at me, his head tilted towards mine on the comforter.

“Your parents are so chill, like you said.” His voice is a low rumble that I can feel in my chest. “They both remind me of you, in different ways. You look a lot like your mom.”

“Not that much,” I protest.

“Yes. This.” He reaches over and taps my nose. My heart lifts, helium-light. “This.” His finger hovers over my lips, but he doesn’t touch them. “This.” He takes a strand of my red hair between his fingers and gives it a little tug. I swat his hand away, and he laughs. “You don’t look too much like your dad, though.”

“He’s my stepdad, technically. My biological father split with my mom when I was too little to remember.”

“Oh.” Aiden’s eyes and voice grow softer. “Sorry, I didn’t -”

“Don’t be sorry. Marcus is the best dad I could have ever asked for. My mom doesn’t talk much about my biological father, but I know he wasn’t a great guy. She likes to collect things, you may have noticed. She told me once that he used to throw her stuff away when he was mad at her.”

Aiden frowns deeply.

“I’ve only known your mom for like three hours, and yet that makes me so fucking mad,” he mutters.

“I know. It’s one of the only things she ever told me about him, but it was enough.”

“Marcus seems much better than that.”

“He is. When he asked my mom to marry him, she told him he had to prove his love. She told him he had to get her name tattooed on his ass.”

“What?” Aiden lets out a startled laugh. “Did he do it?”

“They’re married, aren’t they?”

“Oh, my god. That’s love right there.”

“Isn’t it?”

We both laugh until we drift comfortably back into silence. Aiden looks up at the ceiling.

“My aunt raised me,” he says, unprompted.

“Ms. Callahan? Really?” I find myself startled. “I didn’t know that.”

“Mhm. I lived with my mom, and she - moved away.”

“You didn’t want to go with her?” I can’t help but ask. “I mean, you don’t even like Ketterbridge, right?”

Aiden thinks over his words before he answers. I watch the way the muscle in his jaw shifts, with no small amount of affection. He doesn’t always say what he’s thinking, but I’m getting very good at the language of his face. Sometimes he looks at me and whatever is going on is too complicated for me to read. But sometimes, like now, I can understand easily. He’s trying to decide how much he wants to say, and there’s no point in rushing him. I just wait until he’s ready to speak.

“There were a lot of reasons I couldn’t go with her.”

“Is that why you left? To go find her?”

Another stretch of silence.

“No,” he says, finally. “That was me trying to outrun my problems before I realized that I was the problem. Not Ketterbridge, or anyone else.” He tilts his head to face me again. “For the record, I don’t hate Ketterbridge. I definitely used to, but not anymore. When I first came back I just felt guilty all the time. Everything here just reminded me of who I used to be. I don’t feel like that anymore.”

“What fixed it?” I ask, genuinely curious.

“Well - you.” He smiles at me, and my heart stutters.

“Me?”

“Yeah. You were part of my old life, but you gave me a chance to try and fix things. I had lost some of my resolve, coming back. You reminded me it was possible, and - look what came of it. I know this is weird to say, because we’ve only been hanging out for like, half a summer, but you’re probably my best friend. Definitely, actually. I don’t even know why I said probably.” He shakes his head, his brown hair shifting against my comforter. “Say something so I know I’m not being -” He cuts off, biting his lip.

“You’re not,” I insist, at once. “Not at all.”

Aiden swallows, then lets out a little laugh.

“All I’m trying to say is, I can’t bring myself to hate Ketterbridge this time.”

We’re just laying there looking at each other, and the insanity of the situation abruptly hits me. How many times did I sit crying, in this very room, on this very bed, because of Aiden? I never in my life imagined that one day he and I would be on this bed together, sharing intimate pieces of our personal history, our heads tipped towards one another, him telling me I’m his best friend. In our mid-twenties, no less. I wish I could go back in time and tell my sixteen-year-old self. He’d never believe me, not for one second. I doubt Aiden ever thought he’d be here, either.

Aiden seems to be thinking along the same lines, or maybe he can tell what I’m thinking, because we both burst into laughter. He reaches over and messes up my hair with his fingers, by now a familiar gesture. One I really like. I roll onto my side to face him.

“Hey,” I begin, and stop at once. Aiden hears it, too: footsteps on the stairs. We both sit upright, just before my dad steps up to the open door of my room. He’s got a joint in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other.

“Boys,” he says, waving smoke away from his face. “Mrs. Keane sent me to inform you that dinner will be ready shortly, and that we’ll be eating at the outside table. Would anyone like a hit before we convene?”

“Oh my god, dad. We’re coming!”

“Train’s leaving!” he says, turning and drifting back towards the stairs.

“What is that even supposed to mean?” I call after him, but he’s already gone, leaving a trail of smoke in his wake. I turn back to Aiden, half-hoping he wants to skip dinner and stay up here, but he’s already getting to his feet.

“Let’s go, right?” he says, stretching his arms over his head. “I’m hungry, aren’t you?”

Honestly, impossible to say. My stomach is in thousands of tiny, happy knots, and my brain is just one giant billboard with the words YOU’RE DEFINITELY MY BEST FRIEND printed in giant letters.

“How’s your mom’s cooking?” Aiden asks, as we step out into the hallway.

“Oh,” I answer. “Oh, just you wait.”