“It’d still beat the food at Steerfield.”

I whip my menu down. “Oh my God, right? Like we pay how much to that school every year and they’re still serving us cheap-ass hot dogs that are the wrong color and pizza that tastes like wax.”

“Or chicken sandwiches where there’s no breast, just two chicken strips.”

“Disgraceful.”

We’re both laughing, and I have to say, I like this version of us where we’re friends. To think that a week ago I couldn’t have imagined even having a meal with him.

“God, it was mortifying,” Wyatt says, finishing a story about how his first official performance with his guitar happened when he was thirteen and his grandmother volunteered him to play at her retirement center. “All these old people just staring at me, most of them asleep. I have a theory that one of them was dead and no one knew.”

“Please tell me you’re joking.”

“That’s the thing, I have no idea. He was just passed out in his seat, slumped over! I wanted to tell a nurse they should check on him.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I didn’t know! I didn’t want this old man yelling at me for ruining his nap!”

We both laugh, picking more at our food. I ordered a burger, mostly for the fries. Wyatt got his steak with a baked potato on the side.

“How did you even start playing the guitar anyway?” I ask him.

Wyatt chews quickly, covering his mouth awkwardly with his hand. “The answer is going to make me sound like a dork.”

“Wyatt, I’ve got news for you,” I say. “I already think that you’re a dork. But that’s fine. Dorks are cute.”

His cheeks go red. “I, um …” He’s doing that thing where he’s laughing to waste as much time as he can.

“Well?”

“It was One Direction,” he mutters.

“I’m sorry.” I lean in, knowing exactly what he said. I just want him to admit it again. “What was that?”

“One Direction, okay? They were performing at some award show and Niall pulled out his guitar and … it made me feel things.”

“If you’re admitting to me that Niall Horan was eight-year-old Wyatt’s gay awakening, I might leave this table right now.”

Wyatt bites at his bottom lip. “Then I guess I’ll see you back at the room. And I was seven, for your information.”

“Oh my God!”

“He wasn’t … it wasn’t my gay-wakening or whatever you want to call it. But looking back, things start to add up.”

“Like?”

“Like me picking up the guitar because I thought girls would scream at me like they were screaming at Niall or Harry.”

Girls?

“I was always more partial to Harry than the rest,” I interject.

Wyatt plays with his food for a bit. “But my moms thought it would be a good outlet for me, so they let me sign up for lessons at the community center in town.”

“So did it help you get girls?”