“Seriously, man, what the fuck is up with you?” Brooker asked, leaning closer, elbows on the table.
I turned to Christenson on my right and asked, “Do I really need to explain it in front of him?”
“Well.” Christenson paused, looking up to the ceiling as he thought. “You don’t have to. But he might flirt with Kodi harder or more often because he doesn’t know what’s going on.”
“That’s true. She’s cute and …” Brooker paused to pull out his phone, he tapped at it a few times before a mischievous smile spread across his face. “And she’s following me on Insta.”
“Oh shit,” Gallagher murmured, leaning in to Brooker to see. “Is her profile public?”
“Yup,” Brooker said after another tap of his phone. Then he held it up to me, wiggling it back and forth. “You wanna see?”
Without thinking, I reached out for his phone. But of course, Brooker pulled away before I could grab it.
“Nuh-uh. You gotta tell us where you know Kodi from.”
“And why you’ve been acting so …” Christenson started to say before Fuller cut in.
“Dick-ish.”
“Unprofessional,” Christenson finished, rolling his eyes at Fuller. On the other side of the kid, Jimenez gave him a nudge for me.
“Don’t be a dick to your elders.”
“Ah, don’t go calling us elders,” Gallagher, who was the same age as me, argued.
“Stop losing focus,” Brooker said, waving an arm at the others while not breaking eye contact with me.
“Fine. I knew her when we were kids. Now let me see,” I grumbled and leaned forward to get the phone, but Brooker went back, leaning on Gallagher.
“You told us that already. Kids like child or kids like teenager? Are you just some jaded ex? What’s the context of this whole thing?” He turned away from me, waving his phone at Sosa. “Pass it down.”
“Seriously?”
“That is taking things a little far,” Christenson said as Sosa took the phone and passed it on to Alvarez, who passed it to Ricci, and so on.
“If you’re gonna be dicks, then —”
“Um, is now a bad time to get your drink order?” a waitress interrupted.
“Sorry,” I mumbled to her and we all took a break from our childish antics to place our orders. But as soon as she was gone, Brooker slapped at my arm.
“Spill.”
“Can everyone stop hitting each other,” Christenson said with a sigh and was immediately smacked in the arms by myself and Fuller.
“We were kid-kids. We were in, like, third grade.”
“How old is that?” Sosa asked Brooker.
“Imma be honest, I have no clue. It’s your third year in school, like …” Brooker paused to reach for his pocket. “Shit. Taylor, look up how old you are in third grade.”
Taylor raised an eyebrow, holding up Brooker’s phone. He set it down and pushed it towards him. “Do it yourself. I don’t wanna be in the middle of this.”
“Fucker,” Brooker mumbled, reaching over to grab his phone and search for the age, which everyone was apparently on the edge of their seats to find out. “Eight or nine,” Brooker finally said, repeating the answer in Spanish for the others.
“Dude, we know the fucking numbers,” Alvarez said, kicking at Brooker under the table.
“Well, it’s also some of the few words I know. So I was trying to be helpful.”
