“Okay,” David says, sitting down on the blanket, and watches, a little wide-eyed, as Jake produces a variety of fruit, crusty bread, shredded chicken, a vegetable platter, hummus, a box of chocolates, and a bottle of sparkling wine, along with two champagne flutes he carefully unwraps from tissue paper.

“That’s a lot of food,” David says.

“I figured we could pick and choose,” Jake says. “Plus it’s all pretty healthy. I mean. Maybe not the chocolate, but you’ve got to have one ‘bad for you’ thing. That’s picnic rules.”

David wasn’t aware picnics had rules, but then, Jake clearly has more experience with picnics than David does.

“I knew I forgot something,” Jake says. “Can you — plates and like, forks?”

“Sure,” David says, going into his kitchen to retrieve them, along with knives, which Jake also forgot.

“Nice,” Jake says, before popping the cork of the sparkling wine.

“It’s one in the afternoon,” David protests when Jake starts filling the flutes.

“You just need a little for a toast,” Jake says, and pours barely more than a sip’s worth into David’s flute before handing it over.

“What are we toasting?” David asks.

“To new beginnings?” Jake says. “Or trying again, or — something like that.”

“To new beginnings,” David says, and smiles down at the blanket when Jake gently clinks their glasses together.

David’s not used to drinking champagne — and it is champagne, not simply sparkling wine, he studied the bottle when Jake took a bathroom break, feeling sort of ridiculous when he started wondering if there was significance to that choice — and the minimal amount he’s sipped seems to have gone to his head, left him feeling a little giddy.

Fundamentally this is something they’ve done before, done over and over, and yet he doesn’t feel that way. It’s just talking, really, they’re just talking over a meal, the same thing they’d done dozens of times at Jake’s sublet, though it’s different, and not just because they’re sitting on the floor, David careful with every bite, trying not to drip hummus on his comforter, which he’s pretty sure is dry clean only. David has a throw blanket he probably should have used instead, but at this point it’s silly to ask to swap. If he has to dry clean it, he has to dry clean it. It’s fine.

After they finish eating most of the food — there really is a lot — Jake clears some to the side and his head ends up in David’s lap. David’s not entirely sure how it got there, but he doesn’t think he minds, finds himself toying with Jake’s hair without his own permission.

“That feels nice,” Jake says, eyes half-lidded, and David pauses, feeling caught, but then — Jake’s obviously not complaining. The opposite. After a moment, he runs his fingers through Jake’s hair again.