Born Losers

July

The Garden of Eat'n had become, begrudgingly, a neutral place for them to hang out. August flatly refused to step foot back into the Dairy Queen, and Beck couldn't stand the cars that piled into the Sonic, with clutches of overexcited teenagers hanging out of every window.

The Garden of Eat'n had shit coffee, but the pie was okay. So they met for a piece of apple à la mode, minus Quinn.

Beck had scooped all of the ice cream off of his before he realized August was sitting with his fork hanging loosely in the air, his eyes clouded over. With a frown, Beck pushed down on August's fork, then pushed again when it continued to hover.

"August," he said, and August made a little hmm sound.

"Remember when you trapped Wynton under a laundry basket and then ran the vacuum next to it for 30 minutes, and after he escaped he would do nothing but sit on top of my mom's armoire and hiss at anyone who walked by for the rest of the summer?"

August's eyes weren't completely clear, but his laugh sounded mostly normal.

"My finest work," he said.

"That's what you look like right now."

"Oh, give it up," August was annoyed. "I haven't been neutered, thank you very much."

"Dude, why don't you just give up and call her? Y'all have done this too many times. I'm sick of it."

"And you don't even want to date her this time."

"I'm not joking."

"Me either. It's over. For good."

Beck looked at his cousin, August's tired eyes and the way his smile only reached its halfway point before it withered like a dead plant on a vine.

"That's what you say every time," Beck said unconvincingly.

"No," August was insistent. "I'm serious."

"Uh-huh."

"Knock it off!"

"I give it three months."

"I don't care."

Beck looked closer, looked at the hand that was tapping a rhythm against the table, looked at the band-aid that was strategically placed on August's wrist.

Then he realized that August had had a band-aid on that exact spot on his wrist every day for almost three months, realized that he had seen his cousin in nothing but long-sleeved Henley shirts since April.

"You're really serious, aren't you?"

"Yeah," August said. "All the other times? I always knew we'd get back together. But this time it's like-" he sighed. "You know in The Wizard of Oz the part where Dorothy gets to Oz and the whole thing turns Technicolor?"

"Those Munchkins were creepy."

"Yeah, super creepy. But it's like she was a part of this whole world that was Technicolor and way above my head, and then she came here and was trapped on the farm where twelve-year old girls can feed the pigs and die in the process because there's no quality control, and where was I going with this?"

Beck shrugged.

"I guess," August said, and his voice was threaded through with a hurt so blade-thin and sharp that it almost disappeared beneath the clatter from the table next to them, "that what I was trying to say in all of that is that she's in another world and I don't think she's coming back. And that's fine. I'll be fine."

Beck took a drink of his coffee and immediately regretted it. Coughing, he reached for his napkin and wiped his tongue, then looked at August with his eyes watering.

"Which one of us are you trying to convince?" he asked.