“Brave?” Devin raised an eyebrow.
Aiden: tell him congratulations and that if he doesn’t call mom soon he’ll rugrat it when he gets back
Aiden: *regret, that was autocorrect, I know how to spell regret
I laughed, showing Devin the message.
“He’s right. I’ll call her on the way back, umm. If that’s okay?”
“Obviously. That way I can say hi, too.”
“She loves you,” Devin said. “She’s gonna be so excited when I bring you to lunch on Sunday.” He hesitated, looking up at me. “You are… coming to lunch on Sunday, right?”
“I come every other week,” I said. “You’re stuck with that, too.”
Devin’s eyes glittered as he sipped his cider again. “I can think of way worse things to be stuck with.”
“Can we see that medal again?” Julie asked.
Devin laughed as he passed it over to her.
It was right that he was the center of attention tonight, even if he was hiding in the corner. Hedeservedthis.
“Gold isn’t really my color anyway,” he said as Julie turned it over in her hands.
“This has good energy,” she replied.
I wasn’t about to argue with that. If Julie said it had good energy, it had good energy.
“Think I could take a look?” another voice asked from behind me.
Brad.
Devin wriggled in his seat, shuffling a little closer to me, and I braced myself for confrontation.
“Sure,” Devin said cautiously.
Julie handed it over, but not without fixing Brad with a look that would’ve made me worry she was thinking about the worst possible curse she could inflict on me.
“I wanted to congratulate you,” he said.
“You’re suddenly some kind of gracious loser?” Chris asked between mouthfuls of fries.
Brad’s face darkened as he set the medal back down on the table.
“He’s trying to be,” Devin said. “Right, Brad?”
Losing a friend was hard for Devin, but he’d admitted to me earlier that he knew now that Brad was never his friend. Not really. The people sitting around this table were hisrealfriends.
“Right,” he said. “Devin, I…”
The whole table was looking at Brad now, waiting to hear what he had to say.
“You were kind to me once,” Devin said. “I was planning to remember you like that.”
And never see you again, he didn’t add, but he’d told me that, too. That he didn’t plan on seeing Brad again.
He hadn’t planned on seeing him here, but there were only so many places to eat within sensible travelling distance of the cabin park.
