“He can be as old as you want, but they’re so gonna end up humping.”
“That’s my mom, fuckface!” Noah punched him on the shoulder.
“They’re always meeting forcoffee.”
“Don’t saycoffee,” Noah imitated his friend’s mocking tone. “You make it sound dirty.”
“That was the intention.”
“Shut up!”
“Yeah, shut up, dipshit.” Kaj threw a cold, bland french fry at him.
“Hey!” he protested.
“That would be cool, though,” Val said. “If they were together, you’d be brothers.”
“Oh.” Kaj stopped, his arm suspended in the air, halfway to throwing more food at Theo. “I didn’t think about it that way.”
“Do you ever?” Theo asked.
“What?”
“Think.”
“I’m gonna kick your ass.”
Kaj went around the campfire and jumped over Theo, punching his side playfully as they cackled like maniacs on the ground. Val and Noah shook their heads, laughing at them.
Last year, he’d have never imagined this could be his life. But it was. And he cherished every bit.
The next few weeks flew by uneventfully. They finished school, and Val and Theo left with their families for two weeks to go on vacation, while Kaj and Noah simply hung out around town.
They spent most of their time talking about anything and everything, reading comics, running the RC cars, scuba diving, and burying each other in the sand, making offensive forms where their crotches were. Though, this only happened when Nikolaj or Trine drove them to the beach. They still weren’t allowed to go alone, despite it being only twenty minutes away by bike.
It was fun to be around Kaj, just the two of them. Noah liked Val and Theo as much, but the connection he had with Kaj was different. He’d never known so much about another person or had sleepovers before. But maybe it was all in his head, and he only felt that way because Kaj had saved him countless times.
It was unquestionable that there was something in his friend’s steady chaos that made Noah feel safe, like calmness was still possible after a storm. And apparently, he was the same to him.
Kaj rarely opened up when they were all together. Maybe he talked to Val or Theo privately and Noah didn’t know, but the thing was, he never had issues sharing whatever was on his mind with him.
Like that Thursday afternoon Nikolaj took them to the beach. He was on the phone a few meters away from them as the sun set on the horizon, tenderness radiating from him. His gaze sparkled with a different light, and he smiled like Noah had never seen him smile.
Kaj rolled his eyes. “He’s talking to hisnew girlfriend,” he said, chewing the last bit of his sandwich. The bitter tone didn’t go unnoticed.
“Oh.”
“I wish it had been your mom, like Theo joked about.”
“You don’t like her?” Noah tilted his head, looking at his friend as he randomly drew circles in the sand with his finger.
“I don’t know her. But... what if he marries her?”
“What if he did?”
“He told me she has a son older than me. I don’t want to share our space with anyone.”
“You were willing to share with me.”
