Angel had never hung out with someone like he did with Jeremiah. Granted, he was starting to refresh all those feelings from his younger teenage years, but hanging out with him was different than hanging out with Venus. Venus was compassionate and strong willed like his teammate, but they didn't share too much in common. Jeremiah liked almost everything he did.

          It was nice to talk to someone about track and field. To exchange Spanglish in and out. Not be the only brown kid on the team. Eat mangonadas in the middle of a grass football field after practice.

          "Do you remember much of graduation?" Jeremiah said.

          "Lil bit. It was hot and long, anticlimactic. Only thing that made it worth it was seeing Garrett show up with a black eye"

          He grinned arrogantly, "I'm asking 'cause...you wanna know how he got it?" The cheekiness in his tone made Angel squirm.

          "Always assumed his dickhead attitude finally clipped his wings...how?"

          "Well, you know I did football back then too, and one unlucky day for him...he was talkin' shit. I didn't want no smoke, it was the last few days of school and I didn't want to miss the ceremony over a douchebag, but he was full of shit that day. Four years of him fucking with you...I was itchin' to make him eat concrete. Y'know a parting gift, a graduation present. He was saying all this..."

          He didn't add anything to his incomplete sentence. Leaving it undone and Angel wasn't keen enough to ask why. Jeremiah shook his head irritated, "Never mind. When you tackle someone you don't throw yourself head on, you sweep them by their legs quick and low" He chuckled, "Garrett didn't know that. So he charges at me and I..."

          He gave Angel a dark look, scarily humored by what he did, "...give him some humble pie"

          Angel let himself laugh, "A year n' some later and just now graduation feels way more satisfying"

          "He was so jealous, man"

          "Of what?"

          He raised a brow like it was obvious. "You. Who else?" Jeremiah veered his head towards him, "Eres chingon, Ángel. Amazing."

          "Enough to always have something to say to me, spit in my track shoes, steal my socks so I'd have to run without them, throw elbows, shove me into any hard bruising object, call me a dumbass, make me feel bad about myself at any chance...? Puedo seguir...?"

          "Garrett was a jealous pendejo con la cabeza llena de mierda. Some of the others just used their jealousy to follow along with him"

          The thought wouldn't leave his mind. He punched Garrett Montgomery a few days before graduation because of him. It made him muse on the idea that maybe that wasn't the first time he'd done something like that for him. He knew Jeremiah defended him and always had in front of him but never with so much aggression to fight someone else.

          Jeremiah was almost completely finished with his mangonada. All was left was mostly chamoy, lime and small swirls of melted mango at the bottom.

          "No, wait. Try this" Angel stopped the other, who took the top off and was about to drink what was left with his mouth, "Use the stick"

          "You can't scoop with the stick"

          Angel let out a quiet laugh at him and it caused Jeremiah to smile at the sound of it.

          "No, the sticks a straw right? A straw covered in tamarindo. Drink through the straw"

          "Ohhh. Shit. I'm slow. I've never done that. I don't really eat these often" Jeremiah tried it and made a face at the sour and spicy combo, "That's smart"

          "I don't either. I don't like chamoy too much but it's not the same without it"

          "The chamoy is the best part though"

          "The stick is the best. When you pull it out and it has mango on it? Best part, no argument"

          Jeremiah agreed with a grin. He set down the plastic cup done scraping the edges and left the plastic spoon emptily inside. He found it in himself to prod the other now that it was just the two of them. "...'ey, did you mean it when you said we're cool now? Friends?"

          Angel laid on the real field of grass a few yards from the football field to see the flat pale grayness that was the sky. The mood changed to something else, he couldn't tell what, but suddenly he was shy again.

          "Y-yeah. Of course. I haven't figured out how to read people, I'm not good at it, so I said shit without thinking earlier. I was sure you barely saw me as a friend"

          "I thought you just didn't like me. Like you saw me as another Garrett Montgomery just because guys like him didn't have a problem with me"

          "I didn't want to drag you down. Do you not remember what happened, uh, that one meet? The one where he called me and you a...?"

          Jeremiah pretended to not remember but he knew precisely what memory he was talking about. It was just after a successful, outdoor home meet. The team was cooling off and Angel, just a few feet away from everyone, was sitting on the floor with his back on the bottom bleacher of their football field.

          The water hoses with the hot sun beating over them made the water too warm for satisfaction. So Jeremiah came over with an extra ice cold water bottle to hand to him from his cooler. Except he didn't approach him where Angel could see him but plotted to come up from behind and stick the cold water bottle at his neck. He wanted to see that neutral reaction morph into surprise and when he did, he gleefully stuck himself behind him where Angel would be right between his legs.

          Jeremiah had the habit of forgetting they weren't the only ones there together. So he was completely unprepared when one second he was blissfully talking to Angel, his left hand on his shoulder, his right in his wet hair and then the next Garrett's cracking a joke about the possibility of him being a fag. In front of everyone, in front of Angel.

          It was like getting a cold water bottle to the neck, unsettling and a shock...but not something to mull over.

          "Garrett's a lil' bitch. Even to this day. I could care less what a lil' bitch has to say about me. Guys like him try to attack character and make insults when they know they've lost in what matters to them. If that bothered me I wouldn't be trying to get you to like me now"

          Angel did like him once. Just not in the way he'd want him to. He took a bite of his tamarindo stick and chewed it, "I do. I never didn't like you. I wasn't sure we was friends then but..." He fidgeted with the stick swirling the melted leftovers at the bottom, "We are now"