***
HADLEY WAITS ON the curb with a pair of binoculars in his right hand and a phone in his left. It's been five minutes since he's arrived at five PM sharp, and there's no David in sight. The binoculars, for some reason, get warmer in his hand by the second, and Hadley's sure it's not because of his own body heat.
Though he's not complaining. The cold is damn near unbearable. He regrets not wearing gloves; he can't feel the fingers in his left hand.
He glances at his phone. Six minutes now, and still no David. He puts the phone in his pocket and starts warming both his hands by rubbing the binoculars between them. He lets out a sigh of contentment when he gets warmth back into his hands.
Seven minutes. No David.
A woman passes by him and she glances at him, then at his hands, and Hadley's sure she's smiling when she looks away.
Eight minutes. Someone snatches the binoculars out of his hands and he's about to snatch it back when he sees who's grabbed it.
It's David.
"Oh my god, I missed you so much!" he coos to the binoculars, holding it with hand. His other hand carries two boxes of pizza. "I was practically blind without you!" And David, to Hadley's utter disgust, kisses the pair of binoculars.
"Uh," says Hadley, trying to tear his eyes away from David's passionate love for a pair of binoculars. "Hi."
"Oh, hey there," says David, mid-kiss. "Didn't see you there."
"What took you so long?"
"Long?" David squints. "It only took me eight minutes and—" he pushes the pizza boxes towards Hadley— "I had to get these. Help me out here."
Hadley takes one of the pizza boxes. "Pizza? For me?"
"Don't flatter yourself. It's for my friends."
David leads him into the alley, and Hadley can't quite shake off the feeling of anticipation that clutches at his stomach. If David's like this, like some rambunctious preteen forced into the body of someone nearing adulthood, what must his friends be like?
David turns the handle of the door to the hideout, and declares, with great fanfare, "I got pizza!"
He steps inside. Hadley follows, feeling like he's stepped into a pit of vipers, and as soon as he's past the threshold, he is painfully, acutely aware of how white he is.
Of the two girls and three boys gathered before Hadley's eyes, not a single one of them is white. The neon lights from before are gone, replaced with normal lighting. Hadley wishes for the god awful neon lights back. There's nothing to hide the way everyone in the room is staring at him.
One of the boys—some pudgy East Asian kid with an unbelievable amount of gel in his hair—leans out of his seat to look at Hadley.
"Dave," he says, squinting at Hadley, "who is this white boy you've dragged into poor old Molly?"
"Be nice, Benji," says David, gesturing with pizza boxes. "He's my meal ticket."
"Nice to meet you, meal ticket," says Benji, leaning back in his seat and Hadley isn't quite looking at him because there is a girl—a really, really, heart-breakingly pretty girl—sitting right next to Benji.
Hadley doesn't know how long he keeps looking at her, staying rooted to the spot. But he does know that she's probably one of the most beautiful girls he's ever seen. She looks like she's been carved out of bronze—near damn perfect. She's a dream made real.
