He opens the door to a little cafe and we grab a booth by the window. He groans as he puts both our backpacks in the seat next to him.

“Shit-my bag-I totally forgot, I’m sorry...”

He smiles and looks over the menu.

“It’s fine. Wouldn’t have let you carry it anyway.”

I grin.

A waitress comes up and I order a cappuccino, Ollie mulls over the teas for far too long before settling on a blood orange breakfast brew. For some reason, I couldn’t really focus on the menu.

Weird.

As soon as she’s gone, he turns to me.

“Ryan, can you please go to the bathroom and make sure?”

I roll my eyes.

“Ollie I’m fine.”

Greengreengreen

He squints.

“I’m serious.”

“Fine.”

We talk for awhile and drink our coffee, and by the time we leave it’s ten o’clock.

Outside the door, Ollie turns to face me.

“What do you want to do?”

“Me? Well...”

I think for a minute. He’d convinced me to skip school altogether after calling the school and explaining what happened. They totally didn’t buy his story, so he told the secretary that his mother would be emailing her a note.

I want to go to the movies, or like, fucking base jumping or something, but I remember the English paper that’s due tomorrow.

“Well, have you written your definition essay?”

He groans.

“Have you?”

“What do you think, Ryan…” Ollie grumbles, and rests his head on his chin.

A smile blooms across my lips.

God, he’s adorable when he does that.

Waitaminutewhatthefuckwasthatthought

“Mrs. Kennington is going to kill you if you submit another paper late.”

“Fine. But can we do something afterward?”

“Totally.”

We walk back to his house, my backpack over my shoulder and his in his hand. I’d refused to let him carry mine any farther. We take the long way through the park, then walk the high line back. The key refuses to unlock the door for a few minutes until it finally clicks, and Ollie clomps rather dejectedly up the staircase to his room, then plops down on his bed with his laptop.

 I take my iPad out of my backpack and sit at his desk. We had to choose a word, any word in the English lexicon and define it as elaborately as possible, dissecting the word and its roots. I’d chosen petrichor, the smell of rain. My favourite scent in the world. It’s actually caused by an oil found in rocks that seeps out a bit when it rains, paired with the natural earthy smell of the wet ground. Ollie chose the word anatidaephobia, which is the fear that somewhere in the world, there is a duck watching you. Yeah, I didn’t know that was a thing either. We work for about twenty minutes, after which I get up wordlessly to make some tea. I put the water on and pull out my phone while it heats up. 

My friend Ari’s snapchat story shows her on vacation, partying at some lavish house. She comes from a family of means, to say the least. Along with her mother and half of her father’s assets, modesty was out of the picture. I roll my eyes and shut the phone off as the kettle whistles, and I grab a few pinches of loose leaf tea, dropping it in the strainer and pouring the water through it and into the pot. I set my watch for a five-minute timer and look up to see Ollie’s head poking out from the top of the stairway.