A/N- I'm having some writer's block issues, but I'm trying. Let me know what you think, it motivates me to continue.


It got uncomfortable as we stood inside. Kyle looked around my house, seemingly trying to memorize every inch. He had so many different emotions going across his face, I couldn't keep track. He let out a short, awkward laugh. "It, uh. It looks the same," he said, his voice sad.

"Yeah, no one's big on change in this family," I replied. It got quiet again, and I wondered if that was the wrong thing to say. "Come on, there's beer in the kitchen."

He followed me into the kitchen carefully, as though a creak in the floorboard might shatter the windows. It seemed like he was walking into the house of a casual acquaintance. Like a place where you've never been, and you have no idea if you're supposed to take your shoes off or not. Maybe that's what this felt like to him. Maybe his house would feel like that to me, too.

When we got to the kitchen, though, he sat down in the same stool by the counter he always used to sit. For the most part throughout our friendship, we'd had habits and patterns that we'd always follow. This was one of them. Whenever we were in the kitchen at my house, he's sit right there. It felt strange, because it kind of felt normal.

I pulled two beers out of the fridge, and I noticed my hands were shaking. I decided to ignore it and just opened the beers and handed one to Kyle. Then I took two really long gulps of mine, hoping it might calm me down. He seemed to have the same idea.

He examined the beer in his hand. "Do you remember the first time we got drunk?" he asked, a small smile on his face.

I let out a small chuckle. "When we were going to spike the punch at the school dance in ninth grade?"

He nodded. "But then we drank everything in the flask before we could without realizing it."

"That was a fun night," I said, smiling.

He laughed. "You puked all night."

I shrugged. "Still fun."

"Yeah, you didn't have to carry your drunk ass home," he replied, smirking.

I raised my eyebrows. "Dude, you were way drunker than me."

"Whatever you want to believe," he said.

I smiled and laughed a little too openly before I caught myself. This felt too normal. I closed my eyes and let the pause drag on too long. I couldn't just act like nothing happened. "Where have you been, man?" I said quietly.

He looked at the ground and shrugged, then he began crossing and uncrossing his fingers again. "I went all the way to California. I had a bunch of money saved up, started renting a place, working at a book store. I got my GED. I ended up getting a scholarship to UC Berkeley, graduated in three years. My life hasn't been all that interesting."

I stared at him. I don't know what I expected. My fingers and face started to feel hot, and I started getting really mad. I figured that if he was alive, he was living this beautiful, amazing life. I thought he might be traveling, backpacking, something. Maybe train hopping, living out of his car. All the things I daydreamed about when I wanted to run away.

I was pissed that he'd been living an ordinary life. I thought that if he'd been living an incredible life, that kind of excused never speaking to me. But he wasn't distracted by traveling and meeting people all over the country. No, he was doing the exact fucking thing I'd been doing for the past four years. He was just going to school and working, like everyone else. Fucking asshole.

"Why'd you run away then?" I asked, maybe a little sharply.

He rubbed the back of his neck. "I didn't run away-" he started.

"You left suddenly and didn't tell anyone where you were going. What would you call that?"

I could tell Kyle didn't want to talk about this. He wanted to just pretend nothing had happened, act like he'd done nothing wrong. But fuck that.

"I found him," he said, and I was so surprised and confused by the answer that I didn't reply for a few moments.

"What?" I asked.

"Eric. That night," he said. "I found him."

There was a pause and I said nothing, hoping he'd continue.

"I got a text from him, telling me to meet him at the school. By the time I got there, he was dead, and I just found him with his wrists slashed open. It was horrible."

My patience and understanding for him plummeted. "The entire class found him later," I replied, my tone angry. "The entire class saw him like that. But no one else ran away and left town."

He sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. "It was an impulse decision, okay? I just left. I didn't think it through."

"That's an understatement." I could hear how bitter and whiny I sounded. Fuck, I sounded so pathetic.

Kyle looked at me, his expression getting more and more hopeless. "Come on, Stan. I'm here, aren't I?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I know." I pinched the bridge of my nose and sighed. This was exhausting. "Do you know how fucking hard it is to stay mad at you?"

He smiled, and it didn't quite reach his eyes. "I'd say I'm sorry about that, but I'm really not."

I laughed a little. "Yeah, you wouldn't be, would you? Douchebag."

He shrugged, and his smile grew. "Maybe."

"Oh, no, not maybe. You are definitely a douchebag," I replied, trying to sound angry and failing. There was laughter in my voice that was obvious.

"Well, that's just not very nice at all," he said back, feigning annoyance in his voice. He grinned like an idiot.

I punched him in the arm. I intended to do it a little harder, but it hadn't worked.

He looked at me with this smile that was so genuinely happy, it would've cheered anyone up. What an asshole. "I really missed you, dude," he said. And then any shred of anger I'd been holding onto fell apart.

"I missed you, too."