Page 16 of The Getaway List
Tom stares down at my knee. “Probably not.” He looks up at me then with a sudden sincerity and says, “But I’m not worried. I know you’ll figure it out.”
I’m not so sure about that, but it means a lot coming from Tom just the same. “Well, if the future psych major says so, who am I to doubt it?” I quip.
Tom clearly recognizes the deflection and mostly lets me get away with it. Which is to say, he doesn’t press any further, but says, “Hey, I just—things must have been nuts for you and I’m—just really glad that even through all that you always made sure we stayed in touch.”
It’s sweet that he thinks he has to say this to me. As if there were ever a moment that I might have doubted the depth of our friendship, even in the times he’s been distant in it. That’s the thing about us—we didn’t just decide on each other all those years ago. We decided on each other forever. It’s the only decision I’ve never once doubted and never will.
“Thomas Whitz, you beautiful doofus,” I tell him. “There’s no universe that could keep you from me.”
The corners of Tom’s lips quirk, his eyes watering just enough to bring out the hazel in them. “Not even with a time stone and access to infinite realities?”
This much I know for a fact: “We’d still be best friends in every damn one.”
Tom’s eyes dart down to the grass for a moment, one that makes my stomach lurch, afraid I’ve said the wrong thing. But then he hoists himself up to his feet and offers me his hand and says, “Damn right.”
I take his hand and feel it in its full force again: TomandRiley, RileyandTom. Two parts built to make one whole. Even if we don’t fit the same way we did before, I can feel the easy way we’re shifting to make a new one. I only wish I was staying long enough to know what it might look like before it has to change shape again.
Chapter Five
Being in the Milkshake Club is kind of like being in the passenger seat of Barbie’s bright pink convertible going a hundred miles an hour—everything is glittering and pink and loud and, true to its namesake, full of ice cream. The place isn’t fully packed yet since the Walking JED is only opening, but when Tom and I arrive all scrubbed up and showered from the afternoon of deliveries, the stage is mostly set up for the night, save for the instruments that probably should be sound-checked by now.
There’s a click-flash that makes both of us blink in surprise. Mariella lifts a squinted eye from the very fancy-looking camera she has looped around her neck.
“Ugh. I’m not great with indoor lighting yet. Also you two are so fucking tall I probably need to stand on one of those stools to get your faces. Also hi,” she says, leaning in and attempting to hug me with one arm and Tom with the other, which can’t be easy on her calves.
“Hey,” I say, and I’m about to ask where she got her very cute glittery crop top when I am sneak-attack hugged from the side by what appears to be a very breathless, sweaty Jesse.
“Hi, shit, this is a small city but it’s also huge? I just got so lost.”
Mariella takes a step back, taking in Jesse with his floppy “you already know I can play guitar” hair and his ripped T-shirt collar and various tattoos. “This city’s on a grid, my friend.”
Jesse nods in agreement, but says, “But east looks the same as west and sometimes trains can just become different trains? I mean good for them, I support their choice, but a little warning might’ve been nice. Tom!” Jesse abruptly throws an arm around Tom, then pulls back to jostle him at the shoulders. “He lives!”
Jesse’s aggressive brand of enthusiasm stuns a laugh out of Tom, and I watch him slide so easily into his old, composed self that it feels uncannily like I’m two Rileys at once—the one just before Tom left, when being around him and Jesse and our other friends was just a regular Saturday night, and the one I am right now, mystified that it’s happening at all.
“Hold up,” says Mariella, putting the lens back on her camera. “Tom has not one but two cool friends? You’ve been holding out on me. Mariella, by the way.”
“I’m Jesse. And I’m also very, very late.” He leans in and grabs my face between his hands, planting a sloppy, exaggerated kiss on my cheek, and says, “Fuck, am I happy to see you guys. Save me some ice cream if the rest of the Walking JED doesn’t kill me—I was supposed to help set up the drum kit and that stage sure is looking empty of it.”
Tom glances between my cheek and Jesse’s mouth for a split second before snapping into gear, following to help Jesse and catch up with Eddie and Dai. Before they’re even fully out of earshot Mariella turns to me and says, “Who is that gangly person and how many Taylor Swift tattoos did I just count on him?”
“That’s between Jesse and his small closet’s worth of Swiftie merch. And he’s an old friend of ours from school. Well, technically my ex, too,” I add, not entirely sure why. My cheeks are still warm from where Jesse pressed his hands into them, stirring up an old feeling.
“You dated that smoke show of a human?”
“When we were, like, babies,” I say, stepping into the line for the milkshake bar. I already know Tom’s order: vanilla ice cream with every single topping they have. “We mostly just held hands.”
In fact, I’m not sure if it counts as “dating” at all. Dating with training wheels, maybe. By the time I met Jesse in fifth grade I was well out of my Not Talking to Anyone Ever era, having absorbed some of Tom’s confidence by friendship osmosis. So Jesse and I were pretty tight by that murky summer before high school when Tom moved away. We started hanging out more often mostly because there was a giant Tom-shaped hole in our days that needed filling, but by September it became more than that. We were seeing some Marvel movie and he reached over and grabbed my hand and I squeezed his back, and we grinned at each other like it was a joke. Except we didn’t let go even as we were walking out of the mall, like we were doing some kind of bit, half joking and half not. The half joke went on until we started doing it more often—in the halls at school, on the way to the skate park—until everyone else just started saying we were dating, and so somehow, gradually, we were.
We were fifteen, so our “dates” mostly consisted of Taco Bell runs and Netflix marathons and doing homework after school. We kissed a few times, shyly, sitting on the rickety swing set in his backyard and after the homecoming dance. The end of the relationship was as accidental and unremarkable as the beginning—my mom started overscheduling me, Jesse’s band started booking real gigs, and we went back to our old easy friendship without ever discussing it. Or at least, went back to it the best we could with schedules as laughably crammed as ours.
“What’s in the water in that town of yours?” Mariella asks, glancing appreciatively at Tom and the members of the Walking JED setting up the stage and back at me. “Because considering the quality of all the imports we’re getting from them this weekend I might need to try it.”
We step up to order our milkshakes then, Mariella opting for an impressive combo of just about every fruity, gummy thing under the sun and me opting for a chocolate malt with chocolate whip.
I scoop up mine and Tom’s, trying both of ours for good measure, and ask, “So how do you know Tom?”
“We were in the same comp-sci class. Tom needed help with a project or else he may never have deigned to speak with me.”
