The Tortoise and His Sunrise | ✓

14. Arcade

This was a complete nightmare.

I should've been enjoying the time I had with my best friends, especially because it had been so long since we'd met in person, but the only thing I could focus on was the awful, unspoken tension between Nolan and me.

After that night during which I'd dropped his hand in front of Esther, we hadn't held hands in public since. We still met like we usually did, but the number of times we'd made any form of non-platonic physical contact in public had been cut down to a grand total of zero.

Nolan had stopped initiating physical contact whenever we were outside, and I was too conscious to make any myself.

We hadn't talked about it. Then again, what was there to say? It wasn't like anything would change.

"Good job!" Melissa cheered as Nolan pulled out the stuffed koala from the prize chute. "Whoa, you did it in two tries!"

He gave it to me with both hands. "Here."

"Thanks, Nolan," I said, hugging it to my chest. "I love it."

Nolan's smile looked unnaturally big. "No problem."

Normally, I would be snuggled up into his side, or under his arm as he operated the controls to catch the toy. We always did everything while cuddled up together, or at least while leaning against each other. Having to stand stiffly behind him until he nabbed it made me even more tense than I already was.

We were only standing about three feet away from each other, but the distance between us seemed insurmountable.

At the claw machine beside ours, Cody straightened up from the controls he had been hunched over. Ashley was clutching onto a stuffed giraffe he had gotten her not long ago.

"Okay," he said. "I'm out of tokens."

"I still have some. Let's play something else," she suggested.

I looked around at the arcade we were in. The crowd of people surrounding us were a fairly even mix of teenagers and adults. Music blared from every game machine in the background, blending into a chaotic but upbeat noise that rang in my ears.

Interestingly, of all people, Ashley was the one who'd dragged us in here—not Melissa or Derek. We had just been strolling through the mall to kill time before our dinner all-you-can-eat buffet reservation at the restaurant down the street, talking and catching up, when an arcade we were passing by caught her eye.

"Can we go in for a bit?" she had asked.

"Since when did you like arcades?" Melissa had asked, obviously taken aback by the request.

"Since now," Ashley had replied. "It's been so long since I've been in one."

She had gone to a claw machine right away, asking Cody to help her to catch a giraffe plushie she wanted, which he'd won after at least seven tries.

Melissa swung around the medium-sized teddy bear Derek had won her by its fluffy leg. "What should we do next?"

Derek slung an arm over her shoulders. "What do you guys want to do next?"

I shrugged.

"Anything's fine," Nolan answered.

Melissa peered at Nolan and me. "Are you two okay?"

"Are you bored?" Derek asked. "You've been kind of quiet since we met up."

I couldn't deny that my attitude had been less than enthusiastic when Derek encouraged Nolan to try catching something with the claw machine. When Nolan asked if there was something in particular I wanted, I'd just pointed to the first thing I saw inside.