"Annie's?" It's Jay who texts the group the Sunday evening you all get back to campus, and it's Jay who suggests the place with the best malts in the city. But it's not Jay who you're waiting on.
Your phone chimes with a flurry of responses. (Yes and yes and yes. Well, more or less.)
Lacy's reply (despite her once saying how much she hates it when other people do it) is a series of exclamation points. Though Jay is probably down the hall in his own room, you can see his grin at having caused Lacy to abandon her principles, even if it's just for one text.
Your phone chirps with a message from Clair, just between the two of you. "Are you going?"
"If you are."
Her response comes only a moment later. "See you soon."
A lopsided smile overtakes your face, and your cheeks start to hurt from it. That's okay, though, because the blooming feeling in your chest is uncontainable. It would hurt more to trap it, to constrict your absolute giddiness. So you scramble for your jacket and purse, aware that each action draws you closer to her.
"So Clair's coming?" Lacy asks, flipping her hair out from the collar of her coat.
You roll your eyes. "Ha. Funny, Lacy." But there's no menace in your voice, and Lacy smirks.
"That's what I thought."
You grace her with another eye roll, so she throws her arm around your shoulder, and hip-checks you. The two of you bounce off one another, and that's how you meander outside; your arm snaked around her waist, hers around your shoulder with the intermittent jostling and laughing.
It's an unsaid agreement, but you all end up meeting in front of Centen. You and Lacy first, Sam and Jay straggling behind (jostling and shoving each other off the curb), Nick loping in from Pio, and finally (finally) Clair comes out the front doors.
"So, who missed me?"
You catch Lacy's eye roll and stifle a snort of laughter.
"I'm serious, guys," Sam continues, "Clair? M.?" He wags his eyebrows. "Lacy?"
"I did," Nick says, and Jay claps him on the back.
"That makes one. I thought you'd do better." Jay peels a dollar out of his wallet and hands it to Sam, who winks at Nick.
"Should've told me it was a bet! I would've maybe even helped you out, Jay," Lacy says.
"No you wouldn't've. You would've done the same thing, just to be contrary." Clair leaps into the crosswalk, barely avoiding an overly aggressive biker. (Sam flips him off, but he's already cycled past, so you're pretty sure he doesn't notice.)
"Big words, Clair." Lacy sticks out her tongue but doesn't dispute it.
The banter falls lightly on you, a thin mist or the first snowfall. Though there were plenty of jokes over Thanksgiving, it felt nothing like this. This feels so much more real, and you're more present, throwing jabs of your own at the guys and at Lacy. You and Clair defend each other from their jests, parrying with ones of your own.
Annie's is a decent walk from your dorms, being that it's situated on the outskirts of campus. (Really, it's in Dinkytown, but so close to campus that the line doesn't much matter. It's a long walk either way.) The whole way is filled with the giddiness of togetherness. It's gorgeous, you decide, and you wish your life could be this. An endless walk under streetlamps, surrounded in the pleasure of being reunited.
By the time you get there, the lot of you have been complaining loudly about your empty stomachs. Though it's an easy stroll, maybe it's better that it comes to an end. Especially if that end is burgers and malts and fries.
Annie's has been around for as long as you can remember. Tyler talks about it from his stint here, and your dad talks about it from even further in the past. It's a relic, a monument. The sign blazes against the sky, and you all stomp inside, up the flight of steps, and finally into the diner.
Like all of life's greatest places, it's beauty is from use. (You've always liked the kitchen at home because someone always seems to be there, putting a kettle on or peering in the refrigerator for something. Life comes from it. Or your car. Wrappers a testimony to long drives out to the lake, dings on the doors from close calls with other cars.) That's how Annie's is. The hardwood floors are scratched to a fine sheen, booths dipped in the middle where many people have sat. The lights slightly caked with dust that'll never come down. Used and perfect.
You only admire it for a minute because there are more pressing concerns. Namely, your growling stomach.
Then everyone busies themselves in claiming territory over a table, in scraping chairs closer to one another based on who is splitting food (and whose company you enjoy most, though no one says it outright.)
You and Clair are crushed together, her elbow digging into your side. When Sam rolls his shoulders, Clair is pressed even closer to you.
"Sam!" Lacy yelps.
"What?" His crooked smile gives him away.
"You're crushing everyone."
His smile widens. "That's because I'm a big, strong man."
Lacy snorts up half her drink. "Yes, it's your big, strong man shoulders that are the problem."
"Glad you see it my way."
Clair turns to you, a curtain of her hair blocking them from view. Tilting a menu towards you, she asks, "What kind of malt do you want?"
Your eyes scan the flavors, but before you've got a chance to answer, she says, "Mint is the worst." Clair draws out the words, eyes lighting up. "How about strawberry and honey?"
For a moment, you think about arguing. You think about declining, about getting your own ice cream. The pause is stretched too long, though, so you don't.
"Fine." But you can hear the tone of your voice: the 'fine' that means anything but.
Clair grins. "How about peanut butter?"
You're grateful, but not really for the malt. Grateful that she can read you, grateful that you don't need to explain yourself. (There isn't even anything wrong with strawberry and honey, just that, for some childish reason, you don't want it, and it would put a stain on this night. You don't have to explain something that petty.)
So when the waitress comes back, Clair orders the peanut butter malt, and the night is not marred.
(Malts split between all of you, except for Sam and Jay, who each order their own. Sam later groans that he's so full he's going to die, loosens his belt a notch and happily polishes off the rest of his ice cream. When he belches, Lacy stabs him in the ribs with her fingers and he threatens to barf.)
You grin as she nudges him, and Clair mimics your smile. Her eyes glitter, and when she arches an eyebrow, she telegraphs another message. She tilts her chin up, jutting it towards an open back door.
(A blast of cool air drifts into the room. In the summer, the door leads to the deck so college kids can eat in the sunshine. It's been closed off for the winter, but you can see a pair of employees leaning against the railing out there, smoking.)
You wink at Clair, who scoots out of her chair and lets you pass. The rest of the group glances towards the pair of you for a moment, before going back to their conversation. Neither of you bother to excuse yourself as you grab your coats and make your way out back.
A thin line is tramped in the snow to where the waitresses are blowing out clouds of blue smoke. The deck is draped in snow, but Clair picks her way through it (off the beaten path), down the railing from the other girls. Both of you lean against the railing, despite the ice and snowdrifts, to see the city glow in the dusk. It's intimate, you think. The pair of you on a forbidden roof.
"How was break?" Clair asks.
(That word. You shiver.) "Long."
"It was only a few days." She laughs, her hair gleaming gold in the street lights.
While that's true, it didn't seem like it. But you don't say that. So much goes unsaid between the two of you, but you can read her. The way her constellation of freckles orbit her cheeks when she laughs. Her dancing eyes or knitted brows.
She leans her head on your shoulder. "I know what you mean, though. I missed you guys. I missed you."
The way your stomach drops, it feels as though you missed a step, that your foot slipped through empty air.
"You should've come with. You'd like Tyler." You glance out towards downtown, where the biggest buildings gleam against the black horizon. "Well, for the most part."
"Winter break?"
(Break break break) "Deal."
She stretches out a pale hand, pinky raised, and you hook yours with hers. Her eyes take up the whole sky, brighter than the moon. Everything is dim against those eyes. (The buildings and streetlights and frosting snow and the night. Black and blank compared with her eyes.)
You almost tell her that—
"Hey." You swivel to see Lacy outlined in the doorframe. She's swung open the door, using it as leverage for her upper half, keeping her feet safely tucked behind the threshold and out of the snow. "You guys coming?"
Clair tosses her hair over her shoulder, smiling. "Yeah, we'll just be a minute."
But it isn't a minute. Truthfully, you don't know how long the two of you are out there before you're finally ushered inside by an employee. And when you tromp downstairs and outside, no one is waiting for you.
(Though a twinge of guilt eats at you, you like it better this way. Clair and you and the icy sky, and making your way back to her room and you sprawling out on her futon until class the next morning.)
Later, you find out that night they stole a massive banner with the university logo from the construction site outside of Tate, an event which Sam refuses to call anything other than "The Heist."
Jay and Sam apparently took it back to their room, but they snuck into Pio early the next morning and pinned it over Nick's door, effectively trapping him and his hungover roommates for twenty minutes as they figured out how to pull it down from the inside.
You weren't there for that, though, and don't hear about it for a few weeks.
That's okay. You're relieved that they aren't angry at your disappearing act. Because it's an act you perfect, an act that's close to magic. Maybe not quite magic, maybe just smoke and mirrors.
But though the act itself isn't, the result is.
Clair and you. A spell, a breath of magic.