“Julio! Lee! Stacey!” I come up and give each of them a half-hug and handshake. “Haven’t heard a peep from any of you. How’s it going? You ditchin’ me for the summer or something?”
Julio shrugs. “Nah. Just been hanging with G-Man a lot, since he got me a job at the movies. We share a lot of shifts.”
He got him a job? “Oh. He said there was an open position, but when I went—” I blow it off. “Anyway, no biggie. What’s Benji up to? I haven’t heard from that punk since graduation.”
“Well, usually he’s with me at G-Man’s. What’s going on with you, Hoyt? Why aren’t you answering Benji’s texts?”
I give him a look. “Huh?”
“Benji said he invited you over a couple times, but you didn’t reply.” Julio squints at me. “You calling him a liar or something?”
“No. I—” Is he being serious? I haven’t gotten a single text or call from any of them. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s the signal. I get, like, no damned reception out on Gary’s farm.”
Lee lifts his eyebrows in surprise. “So it’s true?”
Julio gasps. “Dude, I thought that shit was made up! Are you seriously a farmer now??”
The way Julio asks the question makes Lee and Stacey bust out laughing. “Sorry, sorry,” says Lee, recovering. “I just can’t picture you in overalls and big rubber boots.” Stacey snorts mid-laugh and says, “I can,” which causes the pair of them to double over again.
I just watch them laugh it up for a bit, shaking my head. “Hey, you guys might think it’s funny, but farm life’s no joke. It’s some of the hardest work I’ve ever done.”
Lee wipes tears from his eyes. “That’s hilarious, dude …”
Julio shakes his head. “Man … Aren’t you still tryin’ to get into UT? Or has that train sailed?”
“It’s either ‘has that ship sailed’ or ‘has that train left …’ Never mind,” I say, cutting myself off. I’m so not in the mood to be poked at by my friends when all they’ve done is ignore me all summer. “I’m saving up for UT. My ass hasn’t given up yet. You know how I am: determined. Fuck Fairview Community, know what I mean?”
“Yeah,” says Julio, still annoyingly amused. “Fuck Fairview.”
“Besides, money’s pretty good on the farm,” I point out. “Hell, by August, I can have enough saved up to—”
“If we don’t go now, we’ll be late for the movie,” Stacey points out suddenly, coming up to Julio’s side. She winces at me. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to cut you off, but we’re kinda late.”
I nod, then stuff my hands in my pockets. “Sure, no problem.”
Julio slaps me on the back. “It was nice seeing you, Nowak. I’m just … still tryin’ to picture you as a farmer.” That sends Lee and Stacey into a laughing fit again. “No, no, seriously,” Julio insists to the others, but that only makes him start laughing.
The sound of their laughter. The tears in their eyes.
Anger swells up inside of me in an instant. I swat Julio’s hand straight off my shoulder like a fly. “All of you can just fuck off.”
The laughter dies. Julio squints at me, lifting his hands. “Hey, hey, calm down …”
I don’t know what’s come over me. I’m mad. “Y’all are a bunch of assholes, y’know that?”
“Dude, we’re just playin’.”
“Benji says he’s been trying to get ahold of me? Really? That’s bullshit. Y’all have been ghosting me all damned summer so far.”
“Ghosting you?” Julio snorts. “What are we? Lovers? No one’s ghosting you, man.” He glances at Lee, laughter in his eyes, then smirks. “Except maybe your little boyfriend Toby, who’s probably having more fun on the beach than any of us.”
Something snaps red-hot in my brain.
I grab hold of Julio’s shirt and slam him against the brick wall of T&S’s with a grunt.
Stacey lets out a gasp and steps back.
Lee’s eyes nearly fall out of his head as he shouts, “Whoa!”
Julio just stares me down, entirely unaffected by my action.
Before having a second to marvel at how I was able to budge the block of muscle that is Julio in the first place, I get right up in his face and scowl. “Got somethin’ you want to say to me, Julio?”
Calm and collected, he stares right back into my eyes like he can see straight through me. “I don’t know. You tell me, big man.”
My eyes have become two fiery stones, fresh from the volcano that just erupted inside of me by his words.
Julio is the one in front of whom Toby yelled at me, spilling our secret unintentionally—the kiss in the bathroom, our private moment, our everything. It was at a get-together at G-Man’s, and I spent the rest of that night denying it, laughing off Toby’s words, while Julio kept shooting me suspicious glances from across the room, like he was trying to figure me out.