Allister snickers mid-sip and catches the falling water in his hand. “I was in the middle of a sip, you bitch.” He yanks a napkin from its dispenser and wipes away his sparkle of saliva and ice water. “I want my Kool-Aid in a wineglass, or else.”

“Or else you’ll lay everybody the fuck out.” I’m laughing through the words.

“Period. Every last one.”

And then we’re laughing together until our food arrives—not the fried chicken, as it would turn out. Something with bacon and a sweet jelly sauce that Allister calls “delightful!”

He orders me a milkshake, and I twirl it around until it loses its texture. “If you don’t drink that, it’ll drink you.”

So I take the straw out, leave it on a napkin, and chug the whole thing, then slam down the cup.

“Did that bring you joy?” he asks.

I feel about five pounds heavier. “A lot, actually.”

This is a really bad time to be noticing more things to love about him, like his left eyebrow, with the faint bald line through it that communicates a world of emotion I’ve yet to discover.

The bill comes. Allister pays and leaves Kenny a ten-dollar tip.

I have one question when we burst from the doors. “Do you get an allowance?”

“I steal my parents’ money.” He taps his pockets, I guess to make sure everything is all there.

“And they’re okay with you stealing from them?”

“Does it matter?” he says with the friendliest smile I could imagine. “You were paid for, right?”

The sidewalks are aglow from neon restaurant signs and string lights. It’s almost too quaint to be true. It takes everything in me not to press my body into his. I feel like the farther we walk, the closer our pinkies get to locking, and if I had it my way, I’d just hold his hand and nobody would stare at us at all, because we’d exist in our own universe.

The sidewalks here are so traversable. It would be a nice place to live together, if it came to that.

“I like the way you talk,” I tell him, and to myself, “I’m still learning how to do that.”

He swings around a streetlamp, shouts, “Yes!” to the night, as if for no other reason but to shout, to use his voice and his body. And I agree that we should do that more often.

He lands back in step with me. “So, tell me . . . What was the reason you left me hanging when I first told you?”

“I guess it was hard to believe someone like you could like someone like me.”

He balks at me and stops, like what I said was ridiculous. “Wait a minute. You’re an amazing guy, Jake—stop it.”