Chapter Text
“What time’s your date again? Six?”
“It was supposed to be,” you say, tilting your head to hold the phone between your ear and your shoulder.
The other end of the line is silent for a moment, aside from a dull crackling and the assorted sounds of traffic—his turn signal ticking, the faint rush of tires on concrete.
And then his dubious response: “Supposed to be?”
You exhale slowly, studying the recently-dried lacquer on your fingernails. “Yeah. It’s off.”
“He canceled on you?”
There’s a harsh edge to his voice; it’s the serrated, clipped tone of a protective older brother. Not that you know much of older brothers, as an only child. But he’s always been the closest thing you’ve had to one. Mostly stern; sometimes teasing, sometimes soft—but always defensive of you, always watchful.
“Yup,” you say. “Over text, too.”
“You’re joking.”
“It wouldn’t be a very funny joke, Aki,” you say, spotting a chip in the polish on your middle fingernail. “I’m sitting here in my date outfit like a made-up fool. Woe is me.”
“I’m sorry.” The edge in his voice is already gone, softened with sympathy.
“It’s fine. It would’ve only been the third date, so I’m not devastated over it.”
“Still.”
“Don’t worry about it,” you say, picking at the chip in the polish until it peels. “I didn’t even really like the guy.”
“Funny,” he says drily. “Neither did I.”
The petty irritation in his voice is so novel that it makes you laugh out loud. “You didn’t even know him.”
“Did I have to?”
You snort. “What are you up to, anyway? Driving somewhere?”
“I just picked up some beer from the store. I was heading to that party that the guys from the shop invited me to, but—”
“But?”
There’s a pause, and then: “But I’m taking the exit.”
“What? Why?”
“Because I’m on my way to your place.”
You scoff. “Don’t miss your thing. Stop worrying about me. I’m fine, really.”
“They’re not gonna miss me,” he says. That tone’s familiar, unbudging; his mind is made up. “I wasn’t planning on staying long anyway.”
You tap your fingers on your thigh, watching the chipped nail polish glare up at you woefully, as if disappointed that it was put on for a date who didn’t show up.
But mistakes can be covered, flaws remedied. You can paint over that chip, make it perfect. Or he could, like he’s done many times before, taking your outstretched hand in his just as soon as you’d ask (Can you paint them for me, Aki?): eyes focused, brows knit, brushing the polish carefully over your fingernails and leaving them perfect.
There’s no problem he can’t solve.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure,” he says. “I’m about ten minutes out.”
“Okay. See you.”
Ten minutes, and then you’ll see the sleek-white of his slammed coupe on your street. You wonder how many times he’s done this routine before: pulling up, stepping out, waiting patiently for you. A tall form leaned back against a low car, exhaling smoke. Tapping ash from a cigarette, eyes tracking you when you come out—straight-faced, until you’re up close; and then the chill in his expression thaws.
Just like always.
It’s all familiar, everything about him. Especially his tendency to turn around when he doesn’t have to, because he always prioritizes you, always drops everything for you; and you don’t ever have to ask. You don’t have to say a single thing, because a near-lifetime of friendship means he can read you like a book. He knows when I’m fine means I need someone.
But not anyone. Just the person who always shows up.
For a moment, you wonder why, if it’s all so familiar, there’s a sudden, unfamiliar twisting feeling in your chest. But you resume your part of the routine—throwing your bag over your shoulder, swiping your keys from the table, making your way to the front door—before you have the time to stop and think about what that feeling might mean.
There’s no reason you should feel any different. It’s all familiar; it’s all the same, and this is just like any other time.
/ / / / /
It’s different this time.
This time, you’re already outside when he pulls up: sitting out in the warm summer air, on the little bench by your house that’s been there since you were kids, with your legs crossed and your skin bathed in sunlight. The sunset’s still a while off, but for now the sun’s cast everything in gold as it begins its slow descent, peeking over your shoulder like a halo fallen off its owner.
An angel in a sundress.
A fleeting thought, unsolicited. He shakes it off.
It’s a pretty dress you’re in. Flowy at the bottom, floral-printed. It’s flattering—the waist tight, the chest tight, the neckline a little low, maybe. Not that he should be noticing any of that, or where it cuts off.
(High on the thigh, bare skin in the golden sunlight—he barely allows himself a glimpse.)
Aki tears his eyes away, easing to a stop a couple inches from the curb.
By the time he’s put the car in park and rolled the windows down—engine idling, radio low—you’re right there, resting your arms on the edge of the driver’s side window as you lean through it. You bring the summer heat in with you, coming so close he can smell the perfume on your throat. A new scent, he thinks, but the same old proximity. You’ve never had much of a sense of personal space with him, and he’s never complained.
He doesn’t mind when you lean so far over into the body of his car that the neckline of your pretty dress falls open. But he keeps his eyes up.
But even looking at your face feels indulgent, somehow. You weren’t lying when you said you were done up; you took time and care, and now you’re looking down at him through heavy lashes, your lips (shiny with gloss) curving up into a smile.
He wonders what state of mind someone would have to be in to cancel on you.
“Are you the Lyft I ordered?” you grin.
“You think you’re funny, don’t you?”
“One of us has to be the comedic relief.”
He studies your expression. You’re smiling, but then again, you’re always smiling. You’re good at faking it, but he’s attentive enough to tell the difference.
“How’s the comedic relief holding up?” he asks. “You alright?”
You let out a weary, dramatic sigh. “I told you, I’m fine.”
“Did he reschedule?”
“No.” There’s a but, but then you trail off.
“I see.”
“Don’t look at me like that. It’s not a big deal. People cancel dates sometimes.”
“What kind of people? Assholes?”
There’s a moment of heavy silence, and then you let your smile relax.
“To tell you the truth,” you say earnestly, “I’m better now that you’re here. So thanks for coming.”
You’ve got your hand in the car, some of his hair twirled around your finger. Pesky—you’re always messing with his hair when he has it down.
“You don’t have to thank me,” he says, twisting the key to shut off the ignition. “I wanted to come.”
By the time he reaches for the handle and pushes the door open, you’ve disentangled your hand from his hair and stepped back. He steps out into the space, stands up; and then he’s the one looking down at you. He was always so much taller than you, even when you were kids. That’s probably when he picked up the habit of slouching and leaning around you so he wouldn’t tower over you so much.
On instinct, he rests his side against the car.
“So what do you want to do?” he asks. “Go somewhere? Or stay here? I still have that twelve pack in the back seat if you want to hang out inside.”
You chew your lip. “Sure. We can stay in, if that’s easier.”
Maybe if he didn’t know you so well he wouldn’t have noticed the almost-imperceptible fall of your expression. He knows it’s not that you mind staying in; you’re both content to do nothing in particular—cook, drink, talk, smoke (every type of nothing that doesn’t feel like nothing when it’s done with the right person)—at your place or his, until one of you gets tired and falls asleep on the other’s couch.
But then he takes another look at you, at how dolled up you got to go out, and he’s kicking himself for suggesting the opposite.
“Actually,” he corrects, “why don’t we go somewhere?”
“That sounds nice,” you smile.
He signals to the passenger side with a tilt of his head, and then he’s guiding you over. Your voice is eager, your expression bright. That’s better, he thinks, opening the passenger door for you.
You’re already settling into the passenger seat by the time he realizes it’s as far back as it is. He must have left it all the way back on its track after cleaning the car, forgetting to slide it forward to its usual spot. (Your spot—that’s how he thinks of it, since you’re usually the one sitting there.)
He rests a hand on the top frame of the car and ducks his head in, leaning over you to press his fingers to the little button on the side of the seat that moves it on its track.
“Sorry,” he says. “I meant to move it forward for you.”
There’s a high electronic whir as the seat inches forward, and Aki means to look up at you. But as he raises his gaze—from the button on the side of the seat, to where you’re sitting, with your leg resting just a few inches from his hand—his eyes catch on your thigh for a second.
Before he can think about what he’s doing, he’s letting his vision linger. He’s pausing with his eyes right where your dress has ridden up, high, leaving the skin of your upper thigh bare.
God, he thinks suddenly. That dress.
He tears his eyes away from your thigh, forces them up to meet yours instead. And he stalls there for a moment—frozen, with his finger on the button, looking at your face as he thinks about your dress and all the bare skin just beneath it.
He thinks—Who’d you put that pretty dress on for?
Someone who’d appreciate you in it?
Someone who’d show you off? Buy you all the pretty dresses you want?
“I could’ve moved the seat myself.” You’re laughing—oblivious to that glance, fortunately, and to all the thoughts that (out of nowhere) are running wild in his head. “I know how to press a button.”
He’s still reeling from that glimpse, barely even processing that he’s moved the seat forward more than enough; he’s brought you right up close without moving an inch himself, and now you’re face to face, and he’s looking you dead in the eyes, but his mind is still on that dress. That dress on you, and that smile on your face (familiar and comfortable, but isn’t it somehow a little different?), and that perfume filling his head—dizzying.
You cock your head to the side, still laughing. “It’s kind of nice, though. I don’t mind being taken care of.”
Taken care of…?
For a split second, something’s flashing through his head that absolutely shouldn’t be—his hands on your waist, on your hips; laying you down, pushing your dress up. Kneeling between your legs, with your thighs on his shoulders, and his fingers grazing over your skin. Taking care of you, treating you right, with your fingers tugging at his hair, and his tongue on your—
“Aki?” Your eyes are wide. “Hello? Are you alive? Are you astral projecting because I’m boring you to death?”
He pulls back the same second he snaps out of his daze, thinking, What the hell am I doing?
“Sorry,” he says quickly, “I was thinking about—”
Things I shouldn’t have, looking at places I shouldn’t have, and I have no idea why.
“—some parts for the car that I have to replace.”
He shuts the door.
“You know, I think it’s nice that you always open doors for me. It’s like the dying art of the gentleman,” you say, peering up at him.
Gentleman?
He has to suppress a wince. Hands on the frame, he thinks: If I were a gentleman, I wouldn’t have been looking at you like that.
He says: “Opening doors is the bare minimum.”
“Well. At least chivalry isn’t dead for one guy in this godforsaken town.”
And what about the rest of them? The guys who do next to nothing and call it enough, the ones who don’t even think to do the bare minimum for you—why even give them the time of day?
But that’s not any of his business, is it? Just like it’s not his business what you look like underneath your dress. He crossed a line, looking at you the way he did. He shouldn’t have been imagining any of that.
Just like he shouldn’t be sighing your name right now. And when you look up at him (eyebrows raised, expectant), he shouldn’t be saying with so much emotion, “You look really nice. I hope you know that.”
You smile. “Do you think so?”
“Yeah.”
Of course I do, he thinks. I always do. But he doesn’t say it, because he knows he shouldn’t.
What he should be doing is shaking off that momentary lapse in judgment. Those fantasies—where are they even coming from? That’s never been the nature of your relationship. And it never will be, because you don’t see him that way.
The worst thing about it all is that he knows exactly how you see him. Like family. And even knowing that, even after stepping into that role for years, he still had that filth on his mind.
Pervert, he thinks, stepping back from the window. Get your head straight.
“Thanks, Aki.”
“Yeah.”
He scrubs the remnants of those thoughts from his head as he rounds the car, crushing the feeling before he can say or think anything else that he shouldn’t. And by the time he slides into the driver’s seat, puts the key into the ignition, and hears the engine come to life, he’s back to normal.
Back to treating this as he should; that was just a little slip, and this time is the same as any other.
Back to normal, he promises himself.
“Where are we going?” you ask, fiddling with the volume and the AC until everything’s exactly how you want it.
“Where do you want to go?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Me neither,” he says, pulling away from the curb. “But we’ll figure it out on the way.”
Just like always.
/ / / / /
It’s cold in the car.
It smells like mint, smells like him: the menthol of the vapor leaving his mouth, the same smell that lingers on his clothes and in the AC vents carried out on the cool air as he drives—one hand on the wheel, the other on the gearshift, with the Juul caught between his fingers.
The metal of the vape is the same black as the ink on the fingers holding it.
Little tattoos. Some meaningful, some not; all so familiar to you that you could draw them from memory. You know the tattoo on the back of his hand—lifted, bringing the vape to his mouth—like the back of your own.
He breathes in, out; the menthol intensifies, vapor hanging in the air before it dissipates. Faster than the cigarettes he used to smoke, but still the scent lingers, until everything smells cold.
Like cough drops, you think. It smells like cough drops, and the smoke from his old cigarettes, and the leather seats that smoke still hides in. And beneath all of that, the leather cleaner he always uses to keep his car spotless.
“Still no cigarettes?”
He looks over, quizzical. “You’re the one who wanted me to quit.”
“I do. But vaping doesn’t count as quitting.”
“I’ll get there,” he says. “I promise.”
You can’t complain; you know that promise is as good as gold, because Aki doesn’t make promises he can’t keep. And for you, promises come easy. All you have to do is ask. Sometimes you don’t even have to ask; sometimes you just mention something once, offhandedly—When are you gonna quit that shit, Aki? Smoking that much is awful for you—and you find that that’s all it takes for him to kick a habit of years.
He’d ditched the smokes for an alternative the next day.
Less harmful, he’d said. Just for now. Until I can get off nicotine completely.
The vape smells better, at least. The menthol smells good, actually: clean, fresh; but if you’re honest, you never really minded the smell of the cigarettes. Maybe because they were his.
“I was thinking,” he says, glancing over, “we can get food if you’re hungry. There’s the hotpot place you like, or the pizza place on 9th. Or we could grab stuff from the convenience store and eat at the park. Watch the sun go down. Maybe catch a late show afterward. You’ve been wanting to see that heist flick, right? Your call…”
You think on it, looking out through the windshield. The tint’s dark, probably too dark, but through it you can see the evening sun (a half-hour from setting, now) suspended above the horizon, bleeding pink into the sky and clouds surrounding it.
He gives you time with your options, drives in comfortable silence, taking hits off the vape. The menthol thickens in the air around you, that familiar smell growing stronger. More present. It’s comfortable, just like his presence beside you. It’s exactly what you need.
He has a knack for figuring out what you need. The magic touch to make it all better.
You’re glad he turned around. As much as it hurt to be canceled on, there could be no better remedy. Really, it’s hard to imagine that the date could have beaten this. You’re almost glad that your date never turned up, because you’d rather be here than anywhere. You’d rather be with the one person who always shows up. Reliable, consistent—safe.
It’s safe here, just like home. Eighty on the freeway but you’re anchored. They’re always comfortable, these aimless drives, accompanied by aimless conversations that last even after the moon is high. You could stay here forever—let him drive until the sun sets, then rises, then do it all over again, and you’d still be content.
“Can we just drive for a while?”
Whatever you want to do, wherever you want to go, he always says. Even if it’s nowhere at all.
He says it this time, too, obligingly, predictably: “Whatever you want.”
You’re on a long stretch of freeway, driving in the direction of the sun, when it starts to set. It sinks slowly, turning the pink sky orange and then red and then purple. There’s a lapse in the conversation, but it’s comfortable—spent watching buildings fly by, listening to the music and the flare of the exhaust.
The menthol cooling your head, the AC cooling your skin: it’s a chill as familiar as the drive. From suburban back roads to the city, through endless mazes of buildings, coasting down exits; even when the route becomes unfamiliar (further and further out of traversed neighborhoods, into places where the scenery is brand new) it all feels the same.
He drives with one hand on the wheel and the other switching gears between puffs of menthol vapor. His head back on the headrest, his attention on the road, except to glance at you when you talk. Even in the sunset’s final moments—when the sky is at its most radiant, its gradients most saturated—if his pale eyes leave the road, it’s only to look at you.
Another glance your way. Your eyes lock for a split second—his on yours in the dying light; the sun past set now, the last of the colors in the sky fading to indigo—before he looks away, turning his head to switch lanes. The tattoo on his neck peeks out from under his hair, ink warping with the movement as he checks his blind spot, and your mouth goes dry.
There’s that feeling again, the twisting sensation in your chest that you don’t quite understand.
You avert your gaze, looking for something else. A distraction. Anything to look at that’s not him.
Your eyes settle on the dashboard, then catch the gas indicator. At the beginning of the drive, the tank had been full; now the needle is just a little above the halfway point. You wonder how much he’s spent on gas because of you. Not just today, but over all the years he’s been driving you around.
Would the alternative have been any cheaper? If you’d taken him up on one of his earlier offers—to grab food, to catch a movie—how much would he have spent on you then? Because he always pays; he never lets you spend a dime when you’re with him, no matter how insistent you are.
There’s another pang in your chest, a knot forming in the pit of your stomach. So much for distracting yourself.
Because now you’re thinking about all the things he could be doing: drinking with friends, blowing off steam; he could be doing anything he wants, but instead he’s here. Driving you for hours, doing whatever you want. He’s covering for someone who fell short. A guy he never even met. But that doesn’t matter, because Aki always picks up the pieces; no matter who breaks you, he’s the one who puts you back together.
The car slows, rolling to a stop.
In the dark, just the two of you stalled at this stoplight, in a quiet neighborhood on a quiet night (so quiet that you could be the last two people on earth), you look up from the indicator and at his profile. Black eyelashes heavy around pale blue irises, black hair tucked behind his ear; his face basked in the red cast by the stoplight, the same color as the stud shining in his ear—
You suppress a shiver.
He must have caught the movement. With his hand darting out to the AC dial, he asks, “Are you cold? Your dress is…”
His eyes flit down to your thighs for a fraction of a second, where goosebumps are forming.
He trails off, his face going suddenly and uncharacteristically pale as you stammer, “No, I just—”
It’s not the cold your skin is reacting to. That, you’re accustomed to—his chill is biting, AC and menthol and cigarettes. He’s always liked cool air to wick the summer sweat off skin, often sticky from hours spent together in the heat. Hot to cold reminds you of years ago, lakeside days in heatwaves: your heads dipping under the surface of the water at the same time, bodies submerged.
“—Leave it,” you say. “I like it.”
It feels good. It feels like you.
The red cast on his face flicks green with the change of the stoplight. He looks forward, foot on the gas, hands back in place—ink on his wrists, on his hands; he shifts gears, stirring a dormant memory of a quiet night much like this one.
A memory of tattooed fingers brushing over yours in a dark, empty parking lot.
Aki, can you teach me how to drive stick?
How long ago was that, now? It’s been a few years since that night, at least.
But he was as obliging back then as he is now. It must’ve been past midnight, that night when you’d asked him to teach you. But of course he’d said yes—and that’s how you wound up in the empty parking lot of the old theater all those years ago.
You remember: he started by giving you a demonstration. Still sitting in the front seat, his movements were easy. Familiar and confident from years of practice, but still slow enough to be comprehensible to someone inexperienced.
Clutch. First gear. Second. Alright?
He gave you thorough explanations with his hand on the shifter. You remember his hands under the dim yellow of the parking lot lights: the veins over his knuckles, the slate of the ring on the middle finger of his right hand.
(That little ring: a half-joke of a gift you gave to him forever ago. Like friendship bracelets, but better, you’d said. He still wears it to this day, a perfect match for the half-joke you still wear on your own hand.)
You remember the flicker of the street light overhead, and above that, the moon full and bright in a deep indigo sky.
You remember that, after the full demonstration—after you had already switched seats so you were in his and he was in yours, and you were behind the wheel with your hand on the gearshift—you laughed, I think I already forgot everything.
It could be that he heard the tremor in your voice, or maybe he just knew that you needed reassurance the same way he always seems to know what you need without having to ask.
I’m right here. Don’t be nervous. Do you want me to show you what to do?
Please.
You remember his hand closing over yours on the gearshift: light enough to be respectful, warm enough for you to recall the sensation years after the fact. But don’t you remember it all? The heat of his skin in the chill of the car, the smell of him when he leaned closer: mint on his breath, cigarette smoke lingering on his shirt, mingling with the scent of his detergent.
Every patient instruction.
Foot on the clutch.
Every affirmation.
Good. You’re fine.
His hand tightening over yours on the gearshift. Black ink spidering over his skin, moonlit.
Move it like this.
Guiding your hand, left, right.
Put the car in neutral.
Like this?
Perfect.
Letting his hand linger for as long as you needed it: helping you shift into first gear, and even afterward.
There you go. You’re doing so well, you’ve got it.
Just a memory. But it’s so tangible—the feeling so raw, every sensation somehow so fresh after all those years—that it sends your heart racing.
You don’t understand.
Back then you hadn’t felt a thing. Why would you have? It was all so comfortable, familiar. There was nothing out of the ordinary about a light touch; he was a friend, practically family—why would it stir any emotion in you? There’s years worth of that in your memory: his hand brushing against yours, a graze here, arms brushing there, impersonal.
But thinking back on those memories, they feel suddenly different. Tinted in a new color, their details sharpened. Every touch from the past, once impersonal, now seems charged. The way his hands would linger—not the touch of a friend, not the touch of a brother, but something else.
Something yearning.
It’s not just the touches that suddenly stick out in your memory. It’s the fact that whenever you needed something, you’d go to him on instinct. Because you knew he’d do whatever you needed, and do it right, no questions asked.
It’s the years worth of him obliging you.
Can you help me move some boxes? Can you help me paint my room? Can you help me put this new dresser together?
It’s the years worth of him doing everything you asked, and so much more.
Can you show me how to change my oil?
He’d shown you how to check the oil in your car, and how to change it, but you never really had to put that knowledge to use. He’d do every oil change for you, return your car washed and waxed.
Your car—that’s another matter entirely.
The parking lot lessons lasted a few months, until you were comfortable driving stick. And then, on one random morning several months after that (sun peeking through the blinds, birds chirping), you’d woken up to a text from him.
Are you up yet, youngin?
Barely.
Sleepyhead. Come outside.
He was sitting on the hood of an unfamiliar car, with a cigarette tucked behind his ear and his hands in his pockets.
The car was souped-up. Shiny new paint job, mods like his own, a model similar to cars he’d flipped in the past—it rang his style, was clearly his own project.
You asked: Is this your new baby? You fixed it up?
Yeah. What do you think of it?
It was almost cute. Sitting on shiny, clean rims. Compact, sporty, made to burn rubber—the type of car that looked fun to drive.
You always liked Aki’s cars, but you loved that one immediately. There was something special about it. From the interior (spick and span, recently reupholstered) to the exterior (spotless, not a flaw in the paint), it had been treated with extra care. You wondered how much time he’d put into making sure everything was perfect. It must have taken him forever.
It’s amazing. I love it. The color especially.
Your favorite color.
It wasn’t a question, but you answered anyway.
Yeah. You skimmed a finger over the paint (smooth to the touch, glossy), still peering into the windows.
There was a jingling sound from his direction. You stopped ogling the car to look his way, and you were confused to see his arm extended, held out to you with a key ring dangling from his fingers. (His hands were still stained with oil, scraped up at the knuckles, nicked in places—he’d been working hard.)
It’s yours.
You were frozen in place, incredulous. What?
Now that you can drive stick, you can drive this.
You fixed this up for me? you asked shakily, taking the keys. How do I even repay you for this?
You don’t. He plucked the cigarette from behind his ear, slotted it between his lips. It’s a gift.
You’ve lost your mind, old man.
A half-smile around the cigarette. Then his lighter was out, the flame jumping to ignite the smoke as he rounded the car, his hand up to shield it from the wind.
You were still glued to the pavement on the other side.
Well? He rested his arms on top of the car from the passenger side, looking over it. Let’s go for a ride. See how you like it.
How many hours did he put into your car? How much time, how much money did it take to gut the insides, replace the old parts, do all of those mods?
His blood, sweat, and tears. And you’d thought it all friendly? Impersonal? That twist in your chest, that pit in your stomach—after all of that, and for all those years, you never felt it?
Until now.
Now, beyond the passenger window of his car, the city is quiet. You coast past apartment complexes shrouded in darkness, little windows (yellow-lit from within) dotting the night. You don’t think you’ve been in this area before. Nothing around looks familiar; you must be really far out. Even after fixing up that car for you, he still drives you anywhere you want to go in his own.
“Why do you do all of this for me?” you blurt.
Aki glances over with a look of confusion, and for some reason you’re thinking again about the parking lot. About how you’d feel this time. If his hands were on you again—if he were running his inked fingers down your skin, murmuring, There you go, you’re doing so well—how would you feel this time?
“What do you mean, why?” he asks.
“You don’t have to do all of this. Bailing on the party to drive me around. Being here whenever I need anything. My car. You do so much for me, and you never get anything in return.”
“In return?” he asks skeptically. “I don’t know how these guys have been treating you, but not everything is an exchange. Some people will do things for you just because they care about you.”
There’s that wrenching in your chest again—but stronger, this time. This time, it becomes a swell.
“I don’t do things expecting something back,” he says. “And I’m not here out of obligation. I’m here with you because I want to be.”
Larger and larger that swell grows, until you feel it bloom, like petals opening in your ribcage. Maybe that feeling was always there. Dormant for years, but—like a night-blooming flower awaiting the moonlight—fated to open at the right time.
Finally, you understand what that feeling is. You let yourself accept it. You resolve to do something about it—
“That’s what friendship is, right?” he murmurs.
—if, after all these years of friendship, he’ll let you.
If he feels something more than friendship, too.
“Aki,” you say, “can we drive out to the lake?”