No Hard Feelings

eight

The place is alive with its usual lunch crowd. A handful of locals dot the place, but most of people milling around inside are tourists. You can always tell the difference between them, with most tourists looking all ready to head to the beach right after eating—if they haven't already gone there.

They wave hi to some of their former classmates sitting a few tables away from them and smiles when Finn rushes to their booth to take their order.

"Hey, there, you two," he says by way of greeting, leaning his hip against Dexter's seat. "Congratulations on finally getting out of that shithole called high school."

Finn plays the bass in Seismic Fuse, which means that Dexter's also grown close to him over the years. He's friends with all of Adrian's bandmates. They treat him like the long-lost sixth member of the band, though they've yet to convince him to play with them in an actual gig.

There's really no need for Finn to get their order. He already knows what they're getting because he's waited on them for so many times now.

Like Adrian, Finn had chosen music over college. That, and his family can't afford to send him to one. He had been waiting tables here ever since he was old enough to work. Dexter thinks he could do better—his grades were decent and he could have easily gotten sufficient financial aid to help him—but Finn seems to be content with his life for now.

"I feel so old," Finn tells them. "I feel like only yesterday you were, like, five feet tall." He ruffles Dexter's hair.

He tries to duck out of his reach, fending off Finn's hand with his arm. "I'm a lot taller now."

"Hadley used to be taller than you, though."

"Only by half an inch," he protests, unable to keep himself from scowling. "I was a late bloomer."

"Still, I can't believe you're off to college soon, little buddy."

"I'm not little, so stop calling me—"

"And that," Finn cuts him off with a good-natured smile, "is my cue to leave you two alone and get back to work." He reaches over to give Dexter's hair another ruffle before deftly maneuvering past the crowded tables, off to tend to the other customers.

Dexter's hand absently flies up to his hair to fix it. When he turns to Hadley, he isn't surprised to find her giving him an amused smile.

He sends her a wary look. "What?"

"Nothing," she says, propping her face up with the back of her hand, elbow planted on the table between them. "It just never fails to amuse me when I see you acting around your brother's friends. It's like you're suddenly a lot younger."

Dexter opens his mouth to deny this, but Hadley raises her eyebrows, as though she's daring him to object, and the retort dies on his lips. He shuts his mouth and turns away with a slight frown.

It makes Hadley laugh.

He loves it when Hadley laughs.

He loves the way her lips would linger on that wide grin long after her laughter fades. He loves the sound of it: how it's never too loud or pretentious. It's like she's keeping a secret behind the sparkle in her eye, and Dexter's in on whatever secret that is.

He loves making her laugh. Loved it from the first time he'd successfully done so—two years ago between the shelves of their high school library. The two of them got paired up to work on a History assignment.

Their first few encounters had been brief. Polite, but not quite friendly. The only time Hadley opened her mouth to speak was when she said something that concerned the assignment. It threw him off a little because he was used to people easily warming up to him.