So, he told her everything from top to bottom.
There were a few details he was sure to leave out, but otherwise the real gist of it he laid out onto the table. Tommy H said inappropriate things about the split between him and Nancy. He had been for a while. The first time was in the shower after basketball practice; Tommy H and Billy Hargrove cornered him almost and told him about Johnathan and Nancy ditching school.
At the start it grind his gears, got him a little hotheaded, nothing serious, but they didn't know when to stop and he could only take so much. His knuckles turned white, he worked up a sweat. He refused to be made a fool of.
He wasn't sure why he was being so open, but once he started, he couldn't stop. She didn't judge him, she didn't make him feel like even more of an idiot than he did already. She just sat there and listened.
By the time he hashed out the details of the punches he snuck in, they were laughing and the heat in him dissipated. At most he was a little red at the tips of his ears, but not in his face.
Soon enough, noon came around and Julie took out her lunch.
"You brought food?"
Julie looked over her shoulder to see Steve leant forward on his crossed elbows. They had both forfeited their assignments for a while, only for the time being to go through the motions of Steve's grandiose high school drama.
"It's a ham and cheese bagel I made before I left." She held it up, the saran wrap hanging off.
Steve frowned, feigning nonchalance, but she saw right through it.
"Do you want half?"
"Please."
In no time at all, he was up from his seat and pulling a chair by Julie's table. He faced it backwards, sitting on it so that his front was pressed against the back of the chair. He accepted the half she pulled apart for him as she raised her own to her lips.
"And you can have one corn chip. But just one, I'm not kidding," she warned.
"At this point, I'm grateful either way."
She swallowed her first bite. "You didn't have breakfast?"
"I never go without it. I'm just a pig." He took an obnoxious bite of his own that earned him a faint laugh.
Steve's eyes rolled into the back of his head, moaning deeply.
Julie's eyebrow raised. "Should I give you two a moment alone?"
"This is the best damn bagel I've ever had."
"Maybe culinary school is my calling after all," Julie remarked sarcastically and continued eating.
"What is it really? Dropping the sarcasm and all the jokes aside. What comes after high school for you?" They were both still chomping on the halves of their bagels that slowly became quarters, chatting in between bites.
"College like everyone else."
"Not necessarily everyone else, but sure," Steve mumbles. "What are you studying?"
Her eyes widen slightly. "What is this? Twenty questions?"
"I'm just making conversation. Getting to know you with all this time we seem to have."
"Borrowed time more like. We're supposed to be writing our letters about self-reflection and growth," she says, mocking Principal Mueller shamelessly.
"I still don't get any of that kumbaya nonsense. How can we be truthful and not be honest? It makes no sense," Steve propped the last of his half into his mouth and rested his forearms on the top wooden rail of the chair.
"Actually, it makes perfect sense, because truthfulness and honesty are two separate things."
"How?" he asks with a mouthful of bread.
"It's like what Principal Mueller said about not wanting something grounded in fact. Truth is a matter of being factual and saying things as they are. Honesty is different. It's not about being factual; it's just being true to yourself. No one has to understand honesty as long as you're saying what you mean, you know?" She took another bite.
"Yeah, I think I do." He turned her words over in his head a little. "Have you started writing your letter?"
"No, I'm just in the planning stage."
"Planning stage? Right. Yeah. No, I was going to do that too, I just wanted to make sure that I wasn't the only one."
"D'you write the date in long form or short?"
"Long..." Steve narrowed his eyes. "Why?"
"It's clearly all you've done." She propped the last bite in her mouth, much smaller in size than Steve's had been.
"Because I didn't totally understand the objective."
"It's pretty self-explanatory," she dusted off her hands. "You're just apologising for your actions and bullshitting the rest." Then she balled the saran wrap and put it to one side.
"So you're not going to talk about future plans and where you see yourself ten years along the line?"
She frowned thoughtfully, "I mean, you could." But the more she thought it over, the more intrigued she became, murmuring, "It's not that bad of a start actually," to herself more than Steve.
She got up from her seat and made her way past him and across the aisle.
Steve's eyes followed her. "What are you doing?"
She picked up his sheets of paper as well as his pen and made her way back over with a slight smile. "Planning your letter"—she planted herself back down—"with all this time we seem to have."
Steve rolled his eyes at his words recited back to him and most of all the smugness in her smile. She went straight to writing two lines below where he'd already written his full name on the left and the date on the right. As far as he could make out, it said 'Future plans' with a colon afterwards.
"Your handwriting is atrocious," he scolds. "It looks like hieroglyphics or Russian. Seriously, is that even English?"
"Bad handwriting is just another sign of smarts. Kafka's is infamous for its illegibility."
Steve's face contorted, "Who?" only making Julie roll her eyes.
"Doesn't matter. Where do you see yourself in ten years?"
"The Bahamas, filthy rich with two Maybachs and Phoebe Cates."
"Phoebe Cates?" Julie's eyebrows pushed together. "Seriously?"
"Have you seen Fast Times?"
She put her pen to the page, bullet-pointing. "I'm just going to write down somewhere nice... successful... and with someone pretty." Then she smiled up at him. "I'm sure your future self would appreciate that."
"My future self would appreciate Phoebe Cates' smokin' hot body under a Bahamian sun."
"You know, when you strip back the sleaziness of that sentence, it's almost poetic."
"It's because I'm channelling twenty-first century me," Steve insisted passionately. "No one knows the guy better than I do. I should know! He's only an older, significantly more attractive version of myself."
"You think you're going to become attractive?"
"Get more attractive," he corrected her scepticism. "Not become. Which I know sounds impossible, because, come on," he gestures to himself, "look at me, but I noticed the other day that my looks only get better with age."
"And knuckle-sandwiches, I'm sure."
"Don't you have your own letter to write?" Steve snatched back his work at that. "I have an introductory sentence idea for you, wanna hear it?"
"Not particularly," she pursed her lips.
"Dear older and hopefully less self-righteous me, I hope you don't have cancer after hotboxing all those years in high school."
Julie laughed under her breath with a wide smile. Steve hadn't intended to make her laugh, but he smiled at the sight in the same way he had done every other time.
Once she composed herself she asked, "Do you know what you're going to write, smartass?"
"I have a couple ideas."
Julie held out her pen towards him again, "Then you should get to work," and they held their gaze as Steve took it from her. She waited for Steve to break it, but he only smirked at her in the same way she had been smirking slyly at him.
It lasted for one... two... and then three more seconds, before Steve stood up from the chair he put back and returned to his own.
Once he was sat, he was smiling to himself, a small yet present smile as he stared at the back of Julie's head, her hair french-braided onto her back. And had she turned around, he would have seen that she was very much so smiling, too.