…
Seriously, President of the Good Boys? Could that be any lamer sounding?
“You can’t tell the difference between good and bad anymore,” he bemoaned, stroking a hand over my face sadly.
“One crime, that’s hardly a life of crime.”
“You’re also a pie thief,” he reminded me.
“Two crimes,” I admitted. Plus, all the ones Zach talked me into over the years.
“Too many,” he said sagely.
Oh my god. “Except this one wasn’t a crime—"
“We should turn ourselves in, Luke." He got out of the car, like he was going to turn himself into the closed restaurant in front of us.
“Ryan,” I started, getting out of the car and following him. “Wereallydidn’t do anything wrong. There weren’t even chickens in the coop. No one used that thing in forever.” And he didn’t even use it commercially, but his wife liked raising chickens. “Mr. Jones has been saying he’s going to tear it down for years.”
Except now he had arthritis and a bad hip and other old people problems that I politely nodded about whenever he told me. He didn’t want to hire people for something he could have done himself once.
Ryan made a hysterical noise. “You talked to him?” His hands flailed around wildly. “Luke, we’re implicated!”
Oh my god. I explained everything to Ryan.
Mr. Jones was really good friends with my grandpa. Grandpa recently told us that there were people who wanted to rent his friend’s land, but the old coop had to go first. Somebody just needed to get the ball rolling. Maybe the Jones’s could use the money to could move into assisted living, and other people could help keep an eye on Mrs. J as she had dementia.
Dad had actually talked about going over and just knocking the old chicken coop down in the middle of the night. Except Dad had trouble staying awake past 11. Which was how I got the idea when Ryan wanted to do something illicit.
Ryan was quiet as he processed what I told him.
I sighed, leaning up against the diner. The red of the neon illuminated ‘closed’ sign glowed faintly, giving off a dim light. This wasn’t so bad. Just me, Ryan, and the stars, no one else around. The faint hum of the sign the only sound besides our breathing.
After dating a loudmouth for so long, I’d learned to appreciate the quiet when I could. I looked up at the stars.
The stars were, like, our thing. I guess we couldn’t call the stars and claim them for our own. They were vast and always there at night whether you could see them or not. They were around before us and they’d around long after us, their light illuminating the darkness for new idiots with their new idiot boyfriends.
The stars weren’t ours.
Even if it felt like they were.
This might be too cheesy even for me and Ryan, but he was like my star. A guiding light but with more sarcasm. And his personality was so big and bright. No matter how dark it got, he still shined. Something like that.
Ryan paced around, occasionally opening his mouth to speak, and then shaking his head and resuming his movement. He made squawking noises every now and then, kind of like a chicken.
Forget whatever BS about the stars I was trying to come up with. I just, I really loved him a lot.
We had to be our own separate people. We couldn’t just go and get so lost in each other. But it felt like who I was kept changing. Pretty great that no matter who I became, I still fit with Ryan. That just as we had to be separate, we also had to have time together. And as some parts of me changed and took up less time, it wasn’t bad. Getting more time with him.
I enjoyed this moment for as long as I could.
The silence was nice while it lasted.
* * *
Ryan
MY ENITRE LIFE IS A LIE.
