“Joshy Fredericks?” I asked.
“Joshy Fredericks,” she replied. “I wonder how he’s doing.”
“He went to juvie for attempting to shoplift a five-thousand-dollar necklace from a mall jewelry store,” Abe said, his mouth full of toast.
“Hey, that’s my breakfast!” I said.
“You drank all the coffee.”
“I’m making more,” I said, scooping whole beans into the grinder, fitting the cap in place, and turning it on.
“What even makes toast so good?” Em mused, leaning back against the counter. She held a piece in her hand and turned it over. “It’s just bread. Hot bread.”
“Hot Bread would be an excellent name for a band,” Abe pointed out.
“A five-thousand-dollar necklace. I don’t buy it. Mall jewelry stores don’t stock shit like that,” Em said.
I dumped the ground coffee beans into the French press and poured boiling water from the electric kettle over them. “Some of them do. The nicer ones.”
“Let me get dressed. I can come, right? Or is this a girlthing? Whatever, I’m coming.”
Abe went back upstairs, and Em and I ate toast standing up, not bothering with butter or jam, even though I’d put both on the counter already.
“So how was New York?” Em asked, trying not to sound that interested but pretty much failing.
“Do you mean ‘how was Sam?’”
“Oh, did he... I totally forgot. Did he go with you?”
“You’re funny. Yes, he went with me, and we had a really good time.”
“Like... areallygood time?”
“If you’re asking whether we made out at the top of the Freedom Tower, the answer is no.”
“Bummer. That would have been romantic.”
“Nobody in the world likes making out as much as you do, I swear.”
“Well, it’s nice. It’s not my fault you’ve taken a vow of celibacy or whatever.”
“I haven’t taken a vow of anything. There’s just nobody at our school I can see myself making out with at the top of a tower. Or anywhere.”
“That’s fair. We do have some slim pickings.”
“I always figured I’d get to college and have more options.”
“But now you see a light at the end of the tunnel... And the light’s name is Sam....”
“I didn’t say that either.”
“Okay, whatever. But you had fun?”
“I had a lot of fun, yeah. He’s easy to be around. It’s like you, in guy form, with less snarky comments.”
“Huh. And he lives in Mystic, right?”
“Yeah.”
