“Do you enjoy this? It’s so...sloppy.” His nose wrinkles in disgust.

“You have no problem exchanging saliva with a number of girls in the public eye but somehow getting sauce on your fingers is offensive?”

“Different standards, I suppose.”

“And what’s that supposed to mean?” I demand.

I’m waiting for him to say something terribly offensive and cold-hearted. In the few hours we’ve spent together, he’s been almost too nice, and I’ve let my mental suit of armor drop.

He pauses, watching me tap my fingers on the table before he speaks. “You know what’s interesting about you, Reed? When people point out your insecurities, you face them head on. But when people challenge something that you can’t immediately rationalize, you don’t take it well.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” I admit.

I’ve never had someone study me. Or at least, no one has ever admitted it to my face.

“For example, if I tell you that you’re a control freak who is in need of a new hairstylist, you take it in stride. I’m not sure if it’s because you’ve heard these things so many times in your life or if it’s because they’re insults that you understand at a basic level, but if I tell you that our standards are different, you’re bound to hound me for hours until you’ve picked apart the argument. And the worst part is that it’s not even to prove me wrong or right, it’s because you genuinely want to understand why I’m saying what I am and what the basis of it is.”

It’s not even the words, which are completely accurate, that floor me; it’s how easily they’re said. Like he came to the conclusion long ago during his own psychoanalyzing of me, and that surprises me.

Dylan Archer has paid attention to me long enough to get to the root of who I am as a person and the way my mind works.

I doubt James, who I’ve known since birth, could articulate that.

I mull that realization over as I fish out a hair tie from my pocket. I’m still a bit too stunned to respond, so I set to work taming it into a messy ponytail on the top of my head, buying myself some time.

“You look ridiculous like that,” he says once I’ve tamed the curls.

I roll my eyes. “Consider it payback that you have to look at it.”

“Payback for what? An accurate statement about the way your mind works? I can’t imagine what the payback would be if I wronged you in some way.”

“Black eye. Fourth grade. Remember?”

He rolls his eyes at me, but he’s all smiles with the server, who returns it as she drops off the baskets of wings, french fries, rolls, and veggie sticks for us. I try to explain the merits of both blue cheese and ranch to Dylan, but he simply pushes the ramekins of both over to my side of the table.

“No cutlery I’m assuming?” He says it with a frown, but I sense the underlying eagerness to try one of the beautifully fried and fatty wings that are coated with their famous lemon pepper seasoning.

He can deny it all he wants, but I can see his fingers itching to try one.

“Just go for it, Dylan,” I encourage him.

Our conversation as we eat is limited, but he does comment on the taste of each seasoning and the way they’re prepared before he picks at the sides.

I eventually persuade him to taste the fries with various dipping sauces.

I find humor in the contrast between him within this setting, hands coated in sauce, and the way he handled a knife and fork in the dining room in front of his mother.

“What do you think your parents would say if they could see you right now?” I ask him.

He pats the corners of his mouth with the napkin, just like his mother does, before he answers me. “They’d probably be too mortified to even acknowledge me as their son.”

I laugh. “Probably.”

“Either that or my father would drag me out of here by the neck of my shirt,” he adds.

This one line confirms my suspicion about how he has been treated at home his entire life.

Roughly.

Even when my parents have been upset or angry, I’ve never truly felt anything but safe and loved in my house, and it hurts somewhere deep inside me that Dylan hasn’t had that same experience.

“Your dad is…”

“A total dick, yeah,” he says bitterly. “I know.”

The server clears off our messy table and slyly drops the check toward Dylan’s side of the table.

I reach for it, but I’m not fast enough. Dylan insists on paying, dismissing my protest with one glare.

My mom texts me again. We’re going to bed!!!!!! Early meetings in the morning!! Don’t stay out too late!!!

It’s already nine o’clock, which is half an hour past the curfew they set for me on school nights when I started my freshman year of high school. I guess they either forgot, don’t care, or are preoccupied.

Okay. Will be home soon!

As soon as I say it, though, I realize I’m not ready to be home just yet.

Even though I’ll pay for it by being tired when my alarm goes off in the morning, when Dylan and I walk to my car, I inform him that it’s now time for dessert.

“More food?” Dylan says, surprised.

“Well, I guess it’s not food, but it’s more like sugar, chocolate, and fat reprocessed into things that are, in fact, edible.”

“Do you eat like this every night?”

I laugh. “Sometimes.”

I drive us five minutes down the road to a gas station that’s busy even for a Thursday evening. This seems to surprise Dylan more than the crowd at the wing place.

“What could we possibly be eating here?”

“Well, it depends,” I say. “What’s on your Mount Rushmore of candy?”

“Mount Rushmore?” Dylan repeats as I turn off the car. “Is there something problematic and tied with slavery about candy?”

“Oh.” I never considered that. “I was just asking you to name your top four candies. It’s a stupid thing that James and I always say when picking our favorite things. Like ‘Who’s on your Mount Rushmore of singers?’ and things like that.”

Thankfully, he rolls right past the mention of James.

“I don’t really eat candy,” he admits. “I mean, I have before, of course, but I can’t say I make it enough of a regular habit to put them on a national monument.”

This checks out with what I know about him, so I don’t make fun of him for it.

I can’t remember the last time I went a day without dessert. My parents have just as big of a sweet tooth as I do, which is why we have an entire shelf of bars and bags of candy in the cabinet. We even make it a point to try all the seasonal treats in the bakery section of the grocery store.

The chocolates I had in the Archer library were so rich that it was actually a good thing they were so tiny. I probably couldn’t have eaten more than two, which is practically considered a sin in my house.

Rich people's food is so boring.

“Come on, we’re going to raid the store,” I tell him.

Dylan has the upper hand so often that it’s actually kind of wonderful to drive this entire thing forward for once.

I’m bouncing with excitement to break him in, and I don’t even think twice as I loop my arm through his as we walk up toward the entrance.