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The industrial sized baking tray was stripped to the bone in no time, so Arlo wasn’t the only Canadian with a weakness for them.

Bren had heard more than a few snatches of conversation about Dustin “going gay” for grad, but there was less malice in the words than he thought there might have been. Whether it was the effects of alcohol or the fact that Dustin was the kind of guy that it was hard for most people to hate, Bren didn’t know. But he was happy for him either way.

“Okay!” Arlo said, wrapping his arms around Bren’s neck now. “I’m ready to go on our walk!”

The odds of this being some kind of karmic justice for the night he’d stayed over at the McCarthy’s last year increased as Arlo’s legs wobbled. Bren had to hold him up.

“Hey, Yu!” Bren said when the familiar black fringe bobbed through the crowd.

“Hey, lovebirds.” He was steady on his feet, even if his words were less polished than usual.

“Look after this for a minute, will you?”

Arlo, who had apparently missed the exchange, let out a slurred whoop and was transferred into Yu’s arms by gravity alone.

“Bren,” Arlo sang. “It’s Yu! I love you, Yu,” he said, and giggled. “You Yu.”

“Hey, man,” Yu said, grunting under the weight of Arlo’s affection. “How much have you had?”

“A lot!”

“Five minutes, yeah?” Bren said. “Just don’t let Dustin near him with shots while I’m gone.”

He took off before Yu agreed and jogged back to the tent they’d pitched under a clump of trees twenty yards away. They weren’t the only ones in the area, but he was able to rule out the other tent-shaped shadows in the darkness by the sounds coming from inside.

He found what he was looking for right away. The sober version of Arlo had insisted on bringing along a travel-sized cooler full of sports drinks and high calorie snacks so they “didn’t get too sloppy.” He was so used to Arlo looking after him with stuff like this that it hadn’t occurred to Bren that someone should have been looking out for Arlo.

His hand brushed against the cream envelope as he pulled open his bookbag to grab the bottle of mouthwash he’d brought for the morning. He’d thought maybe the time to open it would have been after everyone had gone to bed for the night. He and Arlo could curl up with their mutual drunkenness in their tent to read it.

Maybe once the lad sobered up, Bren could meet him in the half-drunk middle and give it a shot.

“Where the fuck is Arlo?” Bren asked when he went back to the party.

Yu was snapping pictures as he panned the lens around the field. He shrugged. “Uh, I dunno, but A.J. went to go look for Nat. He said he wanted a family photo.”

“Gonna be hard for you to take that after I fuckin’ murder you, like,” Bren said, swatting Yu’s hand when he pointed the camera in his face.

“Calm down, man. He’s right over there,” Yu said, nodding at Arlo who had—inexplicably—found Dustin again instead of Nat. “Have a drink.”

The only thing jiggling was Dustin’s hairy gut as the two of them stood, arm in arm, singing some strained rendition of Brencavity The Mystery Cat, which meant he had a couple minutes before either of them could get up to anything else. Plenty of time to go track down Nat for that picture.

Two years ago, Bren would have said it was mad to be at a party, listening to The Cranberries in one ear while there was perfectly good music five minutes down the road—even if that music was about apple bottom jeans. But that Bren hadn’t known Arlo Jonathan Walker, and what a dumbass that Bren had been. His lad closed his eyes as he shifted on the makeshift hoodie-pillow. The world must have been spinning again. When it passed, he propped himself up against the tree they were sheltered under and fixed Bren with a watery smile.

“Thank you for taking care of me.”

It took Bren only a couple weeks of knowing Arlo to come to understand that expressing thanks was deeply important to him. From little things like letting him borrow a pencil in maths, to big things like when his boyfriend swallowed his pride and signed up for the musical, there were few events he didn’t think warranted thanks.

Bren brushed most of them off, but he thought he’d earned the gratitude this time.

“I definitely owe you, the amount you take care of me.”

He’d lost the war of getting some food into Arlo before he got too drunk. The combination of being a lightweight, his graduation goggles, and having a hard time saying no to his friends had been too much for the lad.

He’d hurled once, about two minutes into their walk, but after that Bren had been able to convince him to have most of a Powerade and however much of the three handfuls of trail mix had made it into his mouth instead of the ground. As long as he kept it down, Bren could redeem himself.

Arlo straightened up so his back was leaning against the tree now, and he frowned.

“You don’t owe me anything, Bren. I love you.”