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ACCORDING TO FATE, this is the year Milo Piers will have death on his hands.
Of course, he doesn't know this, and it's probably best that he doesn't. Not now, anyway.
As of this moment, he celebrates the commencement of another summer with his best friend Anais Ferrand in the second booth from the back of the 'Best Diner in Town!', a relatively underwhelming statement considering it's the only diner in the small-town of Dawson County.
The retro décor—neon signs and a jukebox that crackles the same 50's music that's always so terrible it's good—saturates Milo with nostalgia for a time beyond his seventeen years of existence. And he loves every piece of it.
Milo knows that Anais feels it too, that warm buzz from being in a place full of life and atmosphere. Across the table, she beams at him with near-perfect teeth, save for one cautiously rebellious incisor.
"We made it, Mi," she says wistfully, "We actually made it."
Milo grins back, leaning into the worn vinyl booth, taking in the warm colours and sounds of the diner. A waking dream.
"One more year," he says, "and then freedom."
"I'll drink to that."
As they toast with their milkshake glasses and drink like sailors knocking back a bad whisky, Milo wishes he could pause this moment. Or at least slow it considerably. He would make a deal with Chronos, the Greek god of time, in a heartbeat if he had the chance.
Milo's always been a stickler for the past, which could explain why he's so drawn the diner and its vintage charms, or why he spent last night reading up about the wrath of the Erinyes goddesses in lieu of sleep. Or maybe, in the words of Anais, he's just "a huge sentimental geek." Either way, he doesn't want this night to end. Not soon, anyway. In this diner, in this moment, he feels invincible, which he hasn't felt often after verging on the knife's edge of death barely a year ago.
Time feels slow, flexible. Like these moments are theirs to mould.
"Okay, enough celebrating–" Anais says, drawing Milo from his thoughts, wiping her mouth with the sleeve of her ambitiously yellow windbreaker, "Real talk now. We need a game plan."
"Game plan?" Milo repeats, feeling time slip back into regular speed once more, "What happened to just going with the flow? Being spontaneous?"
"Spontaneity is a time waster. If we want to maximise our time for the Greatest Summer Of Our Lives before college, we gotta at least have a list." Milo rolls his eyes but smiles despite himself. If there was one thing Anais loves more than explaining the difference between diffusion and osmosis, it was making lists.
"Wait, let me guess," he says jokingly, "this is the point where you get out a long-ass list and say 'here's one I prepared earlier'?"
Looking thoroughly pleased with herself, Anais pulls out a crumpled piece of paper from her pocket with a flourish and smooths it out on the table between them. "Here's one I prepared earlier."
The list is long; two pages joined together with that colourful Japanese tape. But it's also a reminder. This is what they've waited for—time.
"I was thinking," Anais continues, pointing to the top of the list, "we start with the traditions. Tonight's the diner, but soon; rooftop stargazing."
"Sounds idyllic," Milo says, "unless of course it's overcast and we end up staring at clouds like last year."
Milo knows he's cynical. But he feels it's somewhat his duty to balance out Anais' endless capacity to be the physical embodiment of sunshine by assuming the role of a pessimistic moon, like their own strange binary solar system.
"Thanks, buddy, I appreciate the realism," she retorts before swiping the cherry from Milo's drink and popping it into her mouth.
"Hey!" he chides, swatting her hand away.
"You don' eafen like cherries!" she exclaims incoherently between chewing, fending off Milo's hand by swatting back.
"That doesn't change the fact that I paid for it—"
They pause at the sudden interruption of voices cutting above the crooning jukebox and low conversation of the diner. Anais narrows her eyes at the space just behind Milo. Following her daggered glare, Milo turns in his seat.
When the group enters through the diner's swinging doors, Milo's see this: conversations of privileged male youth, buoyant with their arrogance, competing with each other's pride. A battle amongst princes who all wear the same crown.
They are the unmistakable breed of Iverson boys. The kind that gets offered to the gods at birth and returns to earth with skin hewn from marble and cheekbones carved like blades. The kind that enjoys traipsing in packs around town at seven p.m. on a Thursday for the sole purpose of reminding their mortal counterparts of their own godliness.
There aren't many of them, Milo observes as the group pours through the diner's double doors, but their presence—and the overwhelming scent of five different varieties of expensive cologne—instantly crowds the room.
"You know," Anais says, voice dripping with sarcasm, "I was just thinking that this place was lacking some toxic masculinity."
Milo looks away from the pack but feels inexplicably watched. Wolves staring down their prey. Milo wonders absently if owning a yacht or wearing an expensive watch that isn't frayed or was constantly falling minutes behind would grant him a symmetrical face and immaculately styled hair. Eventually, he reaches the conclusion that in the world of the upper-class, beauty and money are not mutually exclusive.
Milo's about to discuss this phenomenon with Anais when his head starts to ache, a sharp pang that starts in his right temple.
