His question hit me entirely out of the blue. Happy about what exactly? Being snowbound in an airport? Accidentally bumping into him, opening a part of my past I’d rather keep hidden behind locked doors? The itching under my skin that now constantly reminds me that my friends might think of me as a terrible person? What a stupid question. I can’t tell him I am not happy, whether it is true or not.

“I’m happy I got to see my grandparents for Christmas.”

“That’s not what I mean.” Conor narrowed his eyes, which made him appear more worried, if that was even possible. “More like, in general.”

Droplets of condensation water on my glass formed into one significant drop and ran over my hand. But that could only distract me from Conor’s efforts to look into my soul for a second. My Cola was already half empty, but I kept drinking as if I would never have another one again.

“I don’t know how to answer that.”

“Well,” he kept staring, “for example, I am happy I ran into you today.”

So you didn’t answer your own question in the way you just told me you meant it. It would have been better if I had said that, but my foolish mouth uttered a hushed “Why?”

Why would anybody be happy about running into my angry ass? Why would he?

His ambiguous face harbored a sad smile for a short moment before he replied, “No reason.”

I waited for him to move the conversation forward, but he did nothing of the sort. After about a minute, Conor leaned his elbows on the table to support his head. His eyes didn’t move. Only the corners of his mouth twitched vaguely. So we are back to being weird already?

”Do I have something on my face?” I drew an imaginary circle with my hand in front of my head, laughing insecurely. Conor gawked as if he was studying me. Just like a taciturn criminal is analyzed by a detective. Perhaps I should have just left. But that would give him the satisfaction of having broken me. I won't be the one forced to the ground.

I felt as if I was under attack. Wait a minute. What if he is not trying to freak me out but to recreate one of our most empty-headed yet fondest games? Is this an invitation to a staring contest? Like we held them so often in fifth grade? I had to test my thesis. So I put my elbows on the table to support my head and fixed my eyes on him.

And since he didn’t move a muscle, I knew I was right. But why would he start a staring contest out of nothing? Does this mean that… Ugh, who cares? I’m not losing this!

Our faces were quite close now, and I noticed his breath on my skin intensifying the longer we sat there this way. That’s good. It means he should be affected by my breath too. This is the heavy artillery I need now. I exhaled as hard as I could, trying to tickle his face, but Conor still didn’t move a muscle. Fuck. He is way better at it now than five years ago. We kept our eyes locked on each other as we both knew that the first person who would take their eyes away or laugh would lose. Conor counter-attacked by also breathing heavily.

The air leaving his lung flew right into my nose as I breathed in, reminding me of our sleepovers at my place when we were younger. (We shared my twin bed as we were still small enough, and he always stole my part of the duvet, so I had to snuggle in closer to him to avoid freezing to death.) For a second, the corners of my mouth wanted to wince into a smile, but I forced them to stay put. I can’t lose because of a memory like this. Stay focused!

“Here we go, gentleman.”

The what’s-his-name-waiter was back, balancing two gigantic plates on his right arm. The Burgers, fries, and coleslaw salad couldn’t wait to be demolished by us. But Conor wasn’t impressed by him, and my pride compelled me to stare too.

“Okay, what is happening here? Could you please make some space on the table?”

I felt sorry for Joshua, being caught in the middle of our whatever that was. For some reason, Conor stuck out his tongue a bit, wiggling its tip between his lips. This was killer. I couldn’t hold it any longer and burst out in laughter. What a brilliant way to end the game!

Before the service dude called security, I leaned back, making room for the dishes. Conor also moved his arms away from the table with a triumphant grin.

“Thank you.” Joshua rolled his eyes and threw the plates in front of us before running away with an annoyed “Enjoy.”

Conor inspected the food by turning his plate like a DJ scratching a vinyl record. “Looks delicious!”

“Hell yeah.” We both dug in. Like two lions starving in the desert for days, now at long last able to hunt down a zebra. I bit into the biggest crinkle-cut fry I had ever encountered, savoring the salty dough-like texture dissolving on my tongue.

As I watched Conor enjoying his fries, I thought about how this silly contest made me feel as happy as I wasn’t in quite a while. Was that his goal? I mean, I wish we both could go back to how it was. It’s not like I haven’t missed Conor in the last few years. We spent almost our entire elementary and middle school time together. Every day we said “Hello” to one another when the school bus picked us up in the morning and almost clung to each other until his or my parents brought us back home after training. He spent quite a lot of weekends at our house because his parents had to work. And… I knew so much stuff about him that probably no one else knew. (He likes peanut butter sandwiches, but only without jam. He couldn’t swim until he was ten. He can’t sleep if there isn’t some sort of night light on.) I haven’t had that with anyone else since he left. And it's not like I wanted our friendship to end, not like that. It just… happened.

But now that he was in front of me again, sticking his fork into the coleslaw salad, I couldn’t hold back a smile. Perhaps this is an opportunity to work things out? To show him that I wish he would visit me too? 

“You know, it may not seem like it to you… but I’m also happy we met again.”

Conor kept chewing on his salad and blessed me with a smile of his own. Maybe, we can’t just travel back in time or have an everyday life again thanks to living on opposite coasts. But we could use this night as if there wasn’t another morning approaching.

—

“So, when does your flight take off?”

“8:20 am,” he replied.

“So we both have to stay here the whole night.” I leaned toward him and lowered my voice to ensure no one could hear what I was about to ask Conor. “Wanna make things more interesting?”

Conor's eyes told me he was extremely interested. He leaned toward me and said in the same silent voice, “Why are we whispering?”

There wasn’t exactly a reason for that. It felt like the thing to do because that’s how we talked as kids whenever we didn’t want one of the grownups to overhear our plans. I guess he’s right. No parents anywhere near us. I cleared my throat and leaned on the backrest of the bench.

“How about we make some game out of this night? We could take turns and decide on fun things we could do and then… do them.”

“Like what?” He took a sip of his Coke before moving the fat-dripping burger to his mouth.

“For example, let’s say… I suggest we change our plates. We then do that without thinking further about it.”

Conor raised his eyebrow, “does that mean I have to do anything you suggest and the other way around? And you can’t decide anything until I do?”

“Exactly.”

“So… like a dare or dare, but everything affects us both?”

“Yup.”

“I’m in.”

We shook hands to seal the deal.

“So, you suggested we change dishes. Let’s do that, and then it is my turn.” He took three massive bites out of his burger, so only a tiny bit was left, and threw it back on his plate, quickly exchanging them. His eyes sparkled as he clenched his lips to hide how amused he was by his trickery.

“That wasn’t an actual suggestion—”

“Too late!”

I stared at his measly leftovers. I only bit into my burger once! Conor snickered and put the burger from my old plate, now his, back on his former dish, now mine.

“I can’t be so cruel as to let you stay hungry all night.”

“No, you played that game just like it was meant to be played!”

I grabbed my old burger and held it toward Conor. He glared at me and, instead of taking it, just took a bite out of the burger while it was still in my hand. Shocked, as his teeth also tried to bite off parts of my fingers, I flinched back, letting the burger go. And while about half of it hung out of Conor’s mouth, the other half flew through the air and landed right in between our plates.

Our table looked like a battlefield. We both made a face as if we had just trashed the whole restaurant. We tried to hold back our laughter as much as possible so Joshua wouldn’t notice the mess we had just made. It was especially challengingfor Conor, as he still had to chew. He tried his best but, of course, choked on the burger. I handed him his Coke, and he drank some of it, but it didn’t help. He was gagging harder. I got up and walked over, striking him on the back with all my might. That worked. He panted.

“Woah, shit,” he gasped. “Who would have thought it would be that easy to get you to hit… on me.”

Okay, Conor. The game is on. Keep the gay jokes coming. I’ll show you that I don’t have a problem with that.

“No problem, I can hit you even more if that turns you on,” I replied.

“I’m good, thanks.”

I let myself fall back into my seat. “You all right?”

Conor nodded and washed down whatever was left in his gullet with a big sip of his Cola. Of course, our ruckus attracted the waiter, and as soon as Joshua saw our table, he rolled his eyes.

“Everyone still alive?”

“Barely,” Conor laughed, ashamed. “Can we order one more burger, please?”

Joshua nodded and left us with a face as long as a fiddle, probably already cursing inwardly that he would have to clean up this mess once we left.

“Have you always been that crazy?” I asked Conor, and we smiled at each other. For a moment, it felt as if nothing had ever happened between us. As if we had just traveled two years back in time. Everything was just so easy.

I pulled a couple of napkins out of the old dispenser and grabbed the remains of the burger so that Joshua wouldn’t hate us forever.

“It’s my turn to decide on something to do now, isn’t it?” Conor asked, also grabbing some napkins to wipe the table.

“Let me just hit the restroom real quick,” I said and stood up. But Conor's sudden glare raised the hairs on my neck. He has to be up to something.

“What is it?”

“What about we go together, and… compare how big we have gotten?”