“Yeah, I’m okay, I’m just—” Caleb pauses, which gives me a second to push away the thought of Friday and refocus on him. He looks twitchy and sad and the latte curdles in my stomach in anticipation of what he’s going to say next.

“The dance went really bad last night.” He exhales, not looking at me.

Oh. This is about the dance. Not about me. That makes sense.

All right, so I may have been spiraling there for a second. Time to get back on track, Adam. You want Caleb as a friend? Be a friend.

“What happened?” I ask gently, giving my best “I’m listening very attentively” face, though I’m not entirely sure I want to hear the answer. If this is about Caitlin, I might genuinely throw up my latte. But even that thought crossing my mind churns my stomach—I don’t want to be the weird, jealous guy who’s pining after his friend and blaming Caitlin for simply existing. I’m psyching myself up in my head, convincing myself that, no matter what, I’m going to be there for Caleb because I care about him regardless of any other feelings I might have, and I’ve gotten completely sidetracked in my own social anxiety maze so that I practically get whiplash when Caleb speaks.

“I tried to punch Henry in the face.” The words come out in a rush and Caleb winces as he says it. I choke on my drink—narrowly avoiding a full-on spit take—and before I can think about what I should say, I blurt—

“What? What the fuck, why?”

Caleb smiles, which is the last reaction I expected.

“What?” I’m suspicious, thinking he’s pranking me and is just so bad at hiding it, but then he turns to look at me.

“I’ve never heard you swear before,” he says, grinning. “It just caught me off guard, that’s all.”

“Oh.” I deflate. “Well, yeah, you’ve been a bad influence on me. Clearly.” I let myself make eye contact with him and my stomach swoops. His eyes are soft and fond and I want to crawl under this bench and freeze to death. My face doesn’t get the memo, though, and I’m starting to smile in return so I hide it behind my cup as I ask him again what happened.

“He was being a dick,” Caleb declares, like that’s enough. It is for me, but probably not for Principal Stevens.

“Henry’s always a dick,” I agree.

“Yeah, but he was being particularly dickish last night,” Caleb grumbles.

“How so?”