The evening air smelled different on the other side of Indiana, a bit fresher but a bit thicker, crisp breaths in his nose but a familiar burden on his shoulders. Finn switched on the low-pitched turn signal in his dad's old hatchback as he turned onto Dylan's street. He had driven the same route a million and one times in high school, but Dylan had left the porch light on for him anyway.
It had been three years since he set foot in Northwest Ohio, and honestly, there were times when he thought he would never be back in Toledo again. He still talked to Dylan and Liam, his closest friends from high school, but Finn could recognize that he hadn't been the greatest friend lately.
It wasn't that he didn't want to come home. He just didn't know how to.
The phone buzzed in the center console, and Finn reached for it without looking down, pressing the green button to answer the call. He didn't need to look to know who it was.
"Hey."
"Hey," Dylan's voice came through the phone, crackling a bit with unreliable cell phone signal. "I just got home from work. I got held up trying to teach some dumbass how to pack dishes without breaking them. I swear to God, Finn -- like, seriously, why would someone apply to work at a glass distribution center if they can't fucking work with glass?"
Finn snorted out a laugh. "Maybe they thought it was a painting job, like they could decorate the dishes with little flowers and ladybugs. You know, like an amateur ceramics class."
"Dumbass," Dylan repeated, going from angry to amused in record time. "Anyway. How far are you?"
"On your street. Be there in thirty seconds."
"Great. See you in thirty seconds."
The call dropped without another word. Finn smiled. Dylan had never been one for goodbyes.
Dylan's family moved from Ireland when they were going into middle school. By seventh and eighth grade, most people had already formed their exclusive groups of friends, completely unwilling to accept any new applications. But Finn thought his accent was the coolest thing, "like, ever!" so Dylan graciously agreed to teach him Irish slang in exchange for Finn teaching him to speak like an American and showing him around town.
It was totally a fair trade. Finn learned words like "coddin'" and "flute" and "mate" and "eejit." It took a bit of persuasion, but after a few weeks, he finally convinced his best friend, Liam, that Dylan was alright. For a long time after that, the three of them were inseparable -- until Liam and Dylan fell into an inexplicable feud during their second year of college.
And until Finn left for good.
So maybe it wasn't a fair trade. Not for everyone. Sure, they exchanged slang lessons, but Finn got a best friend, too. A lifelong best friend. Dylan always had his back even when Finn was too caught up in himself to have his.
He slowed, then stopped in front of Dylan's house, parking on the street. The engine shut off, and Finn was plunged into silence. Eerie, suffocating silence taunted him. He unbuckled his seatbelt and climbed out of the driver's seat before he could lose his nerve, running both hands down his thighs to smooth out his wrinkled pants.
The slam of the car door made him jump, and he exhaled sharply. "Jesus," he muttered to himself as he rounded the car. "Get a hold of yourself." He headed up Dylan's blacktop driveway with a furrowed brow and tense shoulders; he fell into autopilot, heading straight for the front door.
The guilt hit him all at once as he came to a stop in front of the porch, staring up at a life that he had no place in anymore.
The front door swung open, pouring yellow light onto the pitch-black porch. Dylan was different. Not taller or broader or older, even. He was just different, standing with a newfound confidence, a security in himself and his place in the world. He still had the same square figure and the same bright blue eyes, but he carried them differently. Better.
"Finn." He still looked at him the same way, still said his name with the same thick accent. It was so out of place in their little piece of middle-of-nowhere USA, but Finn felt an unfamiliar sense of relief crash through his tense shoulders.
Even in his new, sparkly-adult life, Dylan made room for him. He always made room.
"Dylan," Finn echoed finally, biting the bullet and starting to climb up toward the door. There was a hint of a smile in his voice, but not a trace of one on his face.
"Hey, babes," Dylan greeted him. The sympathy in his friend's voice made Finn want to hurl himself straight back down the porch steps.
"Hey." The strap on his large duffel bag slipped off of his shoulder, and he heaved it back into place. "You alright?"
The Irish boy nodded. "How are you doing?"
"Fine." It felt like a stereotypical lie, the most cliche deflection. Anyone who took a peek into his life would be able to tell that "fine" shouldn't even be in his vocabulary. "Fine" was a word in a completely different dictionary.
He really was fine, though. Kind of, sort of. If anything, Finn wasn't fine about the fact that he was fine.
Thankfully, Dylan didn't push him. Instead, the Irish boy took another step out onto the dimly-lit porch, propping the door open with his heel as he opened his arms and offered Finn a familiar, lopsided grin.
"Come here, stupid. It's been a while."
Finn smiled wearily, but he let his friend wrap him up in a hug. It was awkward with his small duffel bag bumping up against their sides, but it was good. It was something.
Dylan pulled back first, patting his arm. "Come in. First sleepover we've had since high school!"
The house was exactly what Finn would have expected. It struck the difficult balance between sophisticated adult and proud Irish frat boy, a sturdy shoe rack in the entryway and an Irish flag hanging over the empty beer bottles on the counter. Even the living room was very Dylan-esque: the couch looked new but well-worn, and the room was comfortably cluttered.
"I like the decor changes," he commented as he beelined for the couch, stepping over the back and curling up in the corner like he had always done. "Very you."
Dylan moved around the counter, grabbing them each a beer from the fridge. "Well, I was a bit surprised when my parents decided to move out of the Midwest and leave me in this one, but I've lived my whole life on hand-me-downs, so it's fitting."
Dylan's parents were professional chefs. They had run a fancy restaurant downtown for as long as Finn could remember, but last year, they had both taken jobs at high-end spots in New York.
"Did they even offer it to Greg?" Greg, Dylan's brother, was three years ahead of them in school. He had a high-paying consulting job in New York City now, probably just down the street from Dylan's parents, and he could also probably buy half of downtown Toledo on one year's salary.
"No, no. Probably not. There's no chance he's leaving his fancy apartment, not even for a chance to redecorate his childhood home. And besides, he loves showing Ma and Dad around the city."
There was a bitterness in Dylan's tone that Finn recognized immediately: the subtle disapproval of someone abandoning his family. He tried not to take it personally.
"Anyway. Like you want to know about Greg's social life. Did you have dinner already?"
"Yeah," Finn lied. "Got something at the airport."
Dylan made a face. "Airport food is not sufficient. Absolutely nasty, that food is. Although, I once had a breakfast sandwich from one of those trashy coffee places -- probably Dunkin' Donuts, but don't quote me -- and it was the best thing ever."
Any discomfort was forgotten, erased by their easy banter. "Ever?" Finn teased.
"Ever. It was a bagel with cheese and egg and sausage . . . don't give me that look, Finn --"
"That's, like, every breakfast sandwich," he laughed. "Ever."
"It was perfectly toasted! Warm but not too crunchy, and . . . I don't even know, maybe I was just really hungry. Moral of the story is I want to go to Dunkin' Donuts again someday."
"After all this time in Ohio, I figured you'd come to the Tim-Hortons dark side."
The snarky comment earned him a laugh. Dylan had always laughed louder than anyone else they knew, the sort of ha-ha-ha-ha-ha that sounded exactly the way it was written. Finn couldn't help but smile.
"You're telling me you haven't been back to Dunkin' Donuts since then?" He scrunched his nose in confusion as Dylan finally managed to stop laughing. "There's one on Central, isn't there?"
The Irish boy shrugged. "I don't know. Either way, I wouldn't betray my boy Timmy like that."
"Oh my god, I hate you."
"Yeah, I know." Dylan was grinning, but the words hung in the air between them like a neon sign. A nonverbal acknowledgement of the fact that they hadn't seen each other since Dylan happened to be in Chicago last spring and forced Finn out of hiding for a cup of coffee.
Their relationship had been unquestionably strange over the past few years, strained by distance and Finn's unpredictable bursts of privacy. He couldn't explain why he sometimes went months without reaching out to his friends at home; he didn't know why he ignored calls and holed up in his apartment and hid from it all: his past, and even more terrifying, his future. Sometimes, Finn could only handle the present, crippled by an inexplicable fear of anyone knowing him at all.
But Dylan understood. Dylan had always understood what even Finn himself couldn't. They were still best friends; maybe the best of friends are the ones that don't speak for months and pick up right where they left off.
"2019 hasn't really been your year, huh?" Dylan commented, breaking the silence.
Finn shrugged. "Not the best one yet. Still got six months to turn that around, though."
"You fucking optimist."
He earned a smile from Finn, and that was all that mattered.
"So. What are you going to do all summer?" He plopped down on the couch, too, passing Finn one of the beers. "I was surprised that you decided to stay so long."
Finn shrugged off the pointed comment, accepting the beer but not opening it. "I got a summer job at the high school," he explained. "SAT tutoring. It's good pay, and it's only four months. It buys me some time to figure stuff out, too."
"That's true. Is there a lot you have to do while you're here?"
"Yeah, I've got to go through my dad's stuff. He always wanted to clean out the house, so I was really hoping I wouldn't have to do all of it alone. But here I am."
His friend just nodded. Finn changed the subject immediately, before any unwanted questions started to surface, and he stumbled straight into even deeper waters.
"I should try to see Liam soon." Dylan visibly tensed, and Finn deadpanned. "Oh my god. Oh my god, please, please don't tell me that you two still haven't worked things out. I thought you were on speaking terms, at least?!"
Dylan cleared his throat. "If 'speaking terms' means that we see each other at the grocery store and don't get in a fist fight, then, sure. We're on speaking terms."
"That's definitely not what it means."
"He's a douchebag, and I want nothing to do with him. What's wrong with that?"
"What's wrong is that there are about fifty people in this city and you're going to run into him for the rest of our natural lives! You can't avoid him forever."
"I've done pretty well so far," Dylan replied, and Finn got another pang of everything he had missed out on during his time away. "Besides, there are more than fifty people."
He snorted. "Yeah, I'm still not too convinced of that. Eighteen years in this shithole, and I think I ran into Mrs. Anderson more times at the grocery store than I actually saw her at school."
Dylan laughed, shrugging noncommittally. "You learn to love that, though, don't you? Like, I now know that my boss buys a pint of ice cream almost every night. We make eye contact in the line, and then we never speak of it."
"That sounds extremely awkward."
"That's what I mean. You learn to love the awkward." Dylan patted his shoulder. "Give it a few days, mate, and you'll remember the simple pleasures of being all up in everyone's business."
"Well, um. I've actually been in town since Monday," Finn confessed. "The funeral . . . well, if you can even call it a funeral."
"I didn't even know it was happening," Dylan said. There wasn't a hint of malice in his voice, not even a trace of "why didn't you invite me, your supposed best friend?" Dylan had long accepted that Finn was independent -- in many ways, just like his father.
"You knew my dad. Private," he responded vaguely. "It was pretty fucking depressing, honestly. Went out by myself and watched them bury him . . . uh, you know. Next to my mom."
"Jesus," his friend muttered, shaking his head in disbelief. He raised his voice to an audible level, keeping his tone gentle. "You could've told me. I would've come with you."
"I know," Finn acknowledged. "Yeah, I know."
But he didn't know. Not really. Dylan knew that -- he knew Finn. As hard as Finn tried to shut him out, Dylan knew him better than he had ever known anyone in his life.
"You seem to be doing alright," he observed, his tone a bit cautious.
"Yeah, I am." Finn picked absentmindedly at the thin quilt thrown over the back of the couch, twisting the frayed material between his fingers. "I'm alright."
He still didn't know how to tell Dylan that being alright felt completely, completely wrong.
"So," he changed the subject quickly. The heat of his friend's concerned gaze prickled over his skin, analyzing his every move. He released the blanket, smoothing out the wrinkles with a flat palm. "What are we going to do tonight? Cards? Movie?"
"Hmm. Movie? A card game sounds a bit too intense -- and would involve drinking, which is not a good idea right now."
"So you say. The night is young."
"We'll get drunk at the end of the week. Promise."
Finn scrunched his nose to hide his growing smile. "We need four for a good game . . . so I'm going to invite Liam."
"I won't hesitate to key your car, mate."
"This isn't a Carrie Underwood song."
"It will be when you make me talk to that asshole and I make you drive around with my name engraved on your car. Do you prefer the full signature 'Dylan James O'Connor or just 'Dylan'? I can do initials, too, just a classic "D.O.' How's that sound? Fair trade?"
Finn laughed, rolling his eyes. "You wouldn't dare. Now pick a movie, please."
He settled back against the couch cushions, tucking his feet underneath him and pulling a blanket into his lap. The living room went quiet for a short minute -- but things were never really quiet in suburban Ohio. Crickets sang their way in through the open windows, like they would rather die than not be heard by the whole wide world. Finn could almost imagine their creepy little faces pressed up against the screen.
"You're even more indecisive than me," he finally commented.
"Just you wait. I'm looking for something."
"It's Netflix, Dyl, not a fucking treasure hunt. Why don't you just search it?"
"I'm not fighting with that stupid little keyboard! I have it saved, I promise." Dylan scrolled past a few more pages of his saved movies until he found exactly what he was looking for: Safe Haven.
Finn dropped his head against the back of the couch, groaning. "Oh, fuck you. You just want to see me cry, don't you?"
"You wound me," Dylan joked, clutching dramatically at his chest. His tone stayed playful as he added, "I never want to see you cry."
It felt serious, though. Even the happy moments had suddenly become sad, Finn noticed, now that his entire world was wrapped up in a thin veil of death. He kept his eyes glued to the screen and sucked his bottom lip between his teeth, terrified by the sudden threat of it trembling. Dylan didn't seem to notice, luckily, distracted as the opening scenes rolled.
"It's almost like old times, isn't it?" he said, nudging Finn's shoulder with his own. They both had the same memories playing on repeat in their minds: late nights holed up in this very room, with Dylan's parents banging around in the kitchen. Movie soundtracks punctuated by the clangs of pots and pans, and the home-cooked comfort that Finn could never get enough of. He came to Dylan's house to see Dylan, of course, but he also came to Dylan's house to see family.
And Dylan knew it. Dylan knew him inside and out, backward and forward. It was a blessing and a curse for their friendship to stay the same even after so much time apart. They had fallen into the same childish banter that they had always shared, but it was different. There was an undertone of regret on both of their parts that Finn hadn't quite shaken yet.
"Yeah." He didn't quite know how to express what he was feeling, so he vaguely agreed, "Yeah, almost." The words were small and inconsequential, swept up and swallowed whole by the Ohio summer breeze that snuck in through the open windows.