At Fern’s, a classic diner if there ever was one, we pile into a corner booth with its familiar green-vinyl seats cracking in places. Ren and I slide in next to each other, and because we’re all crammed in, I can feel every small shift of his body, his forearm against mine when we both reach for our waters, the thigh of his jeans when Thad moves on his other side to grab sugar for his coffee or when Leo leans across us to talk to Dev. At one point, Ren stretches his arm along the back of the booth, his fingers lightly tapping the part right above my shoulder, and I have to work hard not to relax into it.
“Ready to go over the plan for today?” Leo asks.
Sasha doesn’t respond. Her sunglasses are on, and she looks something of a strung-out Kennedy as she sips her coffee, all dark hair and stained lips, a crisp white button-down casually listing off one shoulder.
“Don’t ask about aplanfor at least another hour,” Thad says.
“You knew today was about wedding setup.” Sasha seems to come alive again, but there isn’t much conviction behind it. “No one forced the pink shots on you.”
“Pleasestop saying pink shots,” Thad says.
“See, when the pink shots taste like that, you try not to take so many of them,” I say. A loud thump rattles the salt and pepper shakers. “Sorry, Thad.” His head is in his hands, elbows on the table.
When the server comes by, redirecting everyone’s attention, the hand Ren has stretched behind me just falls against my shoulder. It’s innocuous enough that nobody would notice unless they were looking closely. Under the table, our legs press tighter together and the conversation fades to a dull buzz and—
Someone clears their throat, shocking me back into the present. I swivel my head toward the source of the noise. Stevie is staring at me. When our eyes lock, she starts shoving fries into her mouth one by one like a ravenous hamster, making the whole thing scary. I reach forward and pick up my coffee, Ren’s hand flat against the back of the booth again.
On the way out, Stevie grabs my arm, dragging me back under the awning in front of the restaurant and tucking us in next to a newspaper rack.
“Do you want to tell me where you and Ren went last night?” she asks. “Or why you were holding hands this morning?”
Thad and Leo are at the candy dispensers that sit at the opposite end of the patio, holding cupped palms underneath as Thad puts a quarter in and a rush of years-old Chiclets falls out.
“I don’t know, Stevie.” I glance toward where Ren is leaned against a building post near the vending machines,sunglasses on and hands shoved in the pockets of his faded blue jeans as he listens to Dev animatedly tell a story, the cool shape of him sending a pleasant flutter through me even from a distance.
“Joni,”Stevie says.
I look back at her. “It just happened while we were asleep,” I say, which is still technically the truth.
“You’re lying to me.” She sinks her weight onto one foot, fixing me with a small pout. “I just can’t figure out why.”
“It’s nothing, Stevie,” I assure her, then offer another small kernel of the truth as penance for lying to her at all. “We talked last night.”
“About what?”
“About being friends again,” I say. We did have that conversation, just not last night.
She squints at me, half because of the blinding sun streaming down and half because she’s trying to figure something out, I know.
At that moment, Thad lets out a shout, startling a group of passersby who jump back into the street.
“Look!” he calls, rushing toward us and raising something iridescent above his head. “Look what Leo just got!”
“No fucking way,” Stevie says as Ren and Dev stride over, all of us gathering around while Thad holds out his prize triumphantly.
“You did not get Fratty Chicken,” I say.
“I thought it was a myth,” Stevie says. “False advertising to make us keep putting quarters into that stupid machine.”
Thad holds between us a sparkling sticker on which is emblazoned, inexplicably, a chicken on a surfboard, wearing a backward hat, sunglasses, and clutching what we have long assumed to be a six pack of PBR under one wing, though the illustration is fuzzy. Fratty Chicken, as we named him, is a storied figure in town, imposed on the side of the vending machine next to the candy dispensers with all of the other sticker options: ice cream cones and cats and the occasional cowboy hat–wearing dolphin.But no chicken sticker has ever come out of the machine. Until now.
“There’s no way that’s just been in there all these years,” Ren says.
Leo, always wanting to be helpful, runs back over to the machine, digging into his pocket for more quarters.
We were just kids when we first tried for Fratty Chicken. Fern’s for breakfast was tradition on the last Saturday of the trip, all of us piling into cars and driving into town, the parents at one table and us kids at another. Stevie would insist on sitting between me and Ren, claiming that we whispered too much when we were next to each other, and because he would play tic-tac-toe with her on a napkin, letting her win every time.
We’d finish our food quickly, our parents lingering over coffee and the view of the harbor, and we’d pool all our change for the vending machine. When we realized no one ever got Fratty Chicken, it became our exclusive goal, never with any luck. Ren and I would grow tired of trying, and he would buy Skittles from one of the candy machines and the two of us would sit with our legs stretched out, him pouring the candy into his hand for us to negotiate over the best colors, while Sasha and Thad continued at the machine, Stevie watchful between them. I still find stickers floating around sometimes, as bookmarks or tucked into coat pockets. I have a popsicle sticker that’s lost its shimmer on an old water bottle.
