Maybe

Duncan was scraping chewing gum off a booth in a corner of the restaurant when I got there, his face scrunched up into a mixture of disgust and frustration. He made this face a lot while we were working, mostly at people while they were coming in, ordering, or going out—which added up to most of the time, leading almost all of the other employees to believe that he hated his job. And that wasn’t true. The two of us had gotten jobs there so that we could work together, and it had been like that for two years, since the summer between our sophomore and junior year. He hadn’t complained once. Ish. His explanation of that face was that he didn’t sleep enough, but that was crap. He, president of the GSA and consistently average student, was not a people person. I figured I was the only one who knew that, as his best friend, and sometimes it seemed as though he didn’t even understand this about himself.

We had been best friends since seventh grade, when he had transferred to St. Pete’s from another private school in our area. I felt bad for him, initially, because none of the guys in our class really liked him and our teacher sometimes gave him one of those looks that she gave people when they were making no sense. He was kind of chubby, too, which meant that he was a target for bullying from the older students, though he didn’t really seem to notice. Actually, he hardly seemed to notice anything at all; our teacher caught him spacing out in the middle of class a few times, just staring into space with this weird look on his face. St. Pete’s ran from kindergarten up until eighth, so he lurked in the background of my education for the next three years, only halfway there.

Our history was mixed. He told me, once, that he had been afraid of me in the beginning, thinking that I was some sort of devil worshiping vampire that preyed upon quiet boys like him. I told him he was an idiot, which he was (and always would be), but didn’t mention that I had pitied him. Things like that ruined guy’s opinions of themselves, and Duncan didn’t have much of an opinion to begin with. He was always beating himself up.

That summer was going to be the climax of our friendship. We had always been just friends, because he was more interested in guys than girls; he had told me that with a sincere tone of voice, like he had been thinking that I would be heartbroken and that I would storm out crying. I hadn’t done either. But yes, that summer—the summer before we went to college, the summer before we grew up for good—was going to be the end of an era, six whole years of being each other’s one best friend. We hadn’t ever needed anyone else, sticking it out through bad boyfriends (on both parts) and everything else that went along with high school. Drama was necessary for Duncan’s existence, but only about people that we never associated with.

The football players and the cheerleaders were prime example. We barely even knew their names, but we knew that Danika St. James, the blonde with an attitude problem, had slept her way through the defensive line of the soccer team sophomore year. And Mikey Parsons had anger management issues, which he worked off by tackling beefy guys on the football field. Pretty much everyone knew those things, though, but Duncan had somehow managed to grab hold of a few things that made even my jaw drop. The kid that had transferred into our class just a year before may or may not have been a heroin addict. And the captain of the chess club, Anthony Hopkins? Last summer, while he was supposed to be attending that youth leadership conference, he was actually at a mental hospital in New York, recovering from the incessant bullying he had been exposed to during his time at school.

So when I walked in that morning and there he was, scraping gum with a sour expression, I wasn’t surprised. At all. This was Duncan Oliver, gossip and waiter extraordinaire, who loved his job but hated it at the same time. “Morning, Dunc,” I said, and gave him a smile.

“Don’t ‘morning, Dunc,’ me,” he muttered and stood up, wiping his hands off on his pants. “It’s too early to be on my hands and knees dealing with the messes that people leave behind. Ugh. I wish people had manners as good as mine—you either swallow or spit the gum, know what I mean? Spitting and sticking it not acceptable.”

I rolled my eyes. “You do know how stupid you sound right now, right?”

“You obviously don’t understand, but I guess that’s alright.” He walked past me and into the kitchen. I followed, watching as he leaned up against the counter. His hands left big, white steam marks on the cool metal counter, and he hissed in annoyance. “I hate June. It’s always so rainy. Why is it that, as soon as you get out of school, the weather is just crap but while you’re still in school it’s gorgeous every single day?”

I opened my mouth to say something, but decided against it. There was no use disagreeing. “I think we’re the only people in our class that are actually awake right now. Seriously. Even my mom thinks I’m nuts for waking up this early to serve impatient people pancakes.”

“Impatient people pancakes,” Duncan repeated and gave me a quick once over. “That was poetic. But I agree. God, it’s early. I feel like it should be September, not June…or, like, we’re freshman in high school instead of freshman in college. Next year is going to suck without you, you know.”

He had this way of turning normal conversations into something sappy and sentimental, which I was not ready for just yet. I had even managed to avoid the tears at graduation, probably one of the only people that had dry eyes through the entire ceremony. At the end of the summer—either the middle of the end of August—I could handle crying. And I definitely would, but only because I had to leave Duncan and my dog behind. I wouldn’t miss anyone but them.