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Chris says he’s bringing a guy back and for a moment Dustin is really unreasonably excited. Chris never brings guys back to meet them. Apparently he thinks Dustin will scare them off.
“Not like that,” Chris says.
“Oh.” That’s disappointing. “Okay. So like what?”
“I think he needs to meet some people. Non-investment people. He seems really…”
“If you’re going to finish that sentence with socially awkward, solitary, or not getting any, then we’ve already filled our quota. You made your bed on that one when you started hanging out with the CompSci crowd.”
“And I’ve been regretting it every day since,” Chris deadpans. “But no, none of those. He’s friendly, he’s a really good guy. Just… formal.”
“Formal. Like suits.”
“He does wear suits,” Chris says, “but not what I meant. Like he needs to loosen up a little.”
“I’m very loose.”
“Exactly.” Chris makes that sound like an insult, but Dustin chooses not to take it that way. If Chris didn’t like Dustin, why would he be introducing him to his new friend?
When Eduardo gets there, Dustin’s still not totally sure that this isn’t about Chris having a thing for the guy. Because Eduardo is tall and good looking and when he opens his mouth he’s got a bit of an accent going on.
Dustin yells towards the other room, “Mark, come out of there, you asshole, we have company.”
“Fuck off.”
“Do not make me come in there and drag you out by your hair, Zuckerberg, because you know I’ll do it.”
“Unless company brought beer, I have more important things to do.”
Dustin looks at Eduardo, who is mutely holding out a six-pack. Dustin shouts, “Company brought imported beer.”
“Okay,” Mark calls. “Give me a minute.”
Dustin nods back at Eduardo. “He’ll be like another fifteen minutes, by the time he saves and backs-up and gets distracted with one more line of code. He’s not really great at switching off.”
Eduardo’s eyes are slightly wide and he doesn’t look like he knows what to say. Dustin will admit that Mark can be hard to take on first meeting but Dustin is charming and hilarious. And not intimidating at all, so this is an unusual reaction.
Dustin reassures him, “No, hey, it’s fine. Mark and I cohabit - we’re allowed to insult each other mercilessly. It’s how he knows I care.”
“Oh,” Eduardo says. He ducks his head.
Dustin grins. Oh my God, Chris has brought home a stray. This may be the most adorable thing that has ever happened. Dustin kind of wants to go over there and pinch Chris’s cheeks and tell him that he’s too good. He doesn’t, because Chris would probably hit him.
Mark appears. “Hey.”
“You weren’t busy at all,” Dustin accuses him. “You were just holding out for beer.”
“Yes.”
Dustin punches his shoulder. “Asshole.”
“So you said. Beer?”
Dustin points. “This is Eduardo. Ask him nicely.”
“Hey, Eduardo. I’m Mark. Beer?”
Dustin can actually feel Chris rolling his eyes from all the way across the room. Eduardo, inexplicably, grins and holds out a beer. “Hi.”
Dustin is not drunk enough to say, ‘This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship,’ but he totally thinks it. And his thought is validated about half an hour later when Eduardo is a little looser on the beer and Chris gets him talking about variations in oil futures. Which shouldn’t be interesting but Eduardo is clearly excited about the topic, and then he starts talking about dealing in things that don’t tangibly exist. Mark stops staring at the label of his beer.
“Huh,” Mark says.
Eduardo stops talking right away. “Sorry, I was rambling.”
“No you weren’t,” Mark says, that curiously definite way he has. “You were making a lot of sense, actually.”
Eduardo looks down and his cheeks pink. He glances up at Mark through his eyelashes, pleased. This is when Dustin decides that Eduardo should be his new wingman. The two of them together are going to be awesome. That’s another thing he can’t say right now – they’ve only just met and it might look a little weird to be staking his claim so suddenly.
So he waits a whole three weeks, because Eduardo still hasn’t loosened up very much at all and Dustin’s not sure what the problem is. Even Mark likes Eduardo, which puts their new best friend in a vanishing small group.
Eduardo just seems so tense, all of the time, like he can’t wind down, even when it’s just them. And, okay, this is Harvard so it’s not like anxious over-achievers are thin on the ground, but Eduardo is doing great in class and everyone loves him because he’s so fucking nice and Dustin just wishes he knew what the right words would be here.
Eduardo turns up that day with an econ textbook. “Sorry. Hey. Can I- is it okay if I study here for a while? My roommate’s having really obnoxiously loud sex with his girlfriend.”
Dustin smirks and Chris drags him away from the door to let Eduardo in. “You don’t need to ask, Eduardo, but come in.”
Eduardo crashes on the couch and hides behind his book. Mark brings his laptop out there a while later, and they study in mostly peaceable silence.
Dustin remembers to tell them, “I think Cheri Saunders was checking me out at that bar last night.”
Chris laughs but it’s Eduardo who says, half-aware, “Yeah? Was this in the parallel universe where’s she’s not dating Mike Alexander, or the one where you’re secretly Leonardo DiCaprio and have also managed to string together three words in a row in front of her?”
Dustin honest-to-God falls off his chair. Chris can’t stop giggling and even Mark grins. Eduardo covers his mouth and Dustin can just about make out his frantic apologies.
Chris draws a little line in the air. “Saverin: one, Moskovitz: zero. Would you like to rebut?”
Dustin looks at Eduardo, who still appears pretty horrified in himself, and manages, “Yeah? Well… your hair is poofy.”
Eduardo un-tenses, moving his hand away from his mouth so Dustin can see the beginnings of a smile.
Mark says, “Hmm… glancing blow, no touch. Care to try again?”
“Great,” Dustin says. “Now Mark is making fun of me with fencing metaphors. This is a new low. I hope you’re happy with yourself, Eduardo.”
Eduardo’s smile gets a little wider and he slides down in the seat. “Pretty happy, yeah.”
* * *
They’re all supposed to be going out tonight. Chris has just handed in the project he’s been working on for a month and a half, and they planned weeks ago that they would all go out together to celebrate when he was done. But Eduardo’s practically been out cold with the flu all week, so Chris wasn’t really expecting him to show.
Eduardo knocks and walks straight in, the way he always does. He collapses onto the couch without even saying hi, which is less usual.
Chris leans over to look at him. “Are you okay?”
“I got a B on my test.”
“You were running a temperature of probably a hundred and three when you took it. That’s still fairly impressive.”
“I wanted an A.”
“I know you did but you’re not… you’re not well, Eduardo. You know that, right?”
“I should be-.”
“You should be in bed,” Chris says.
“It was your thing this morning, we said we’d go out and celebrate.”
“It’s okay.”
Eduardo says, against all logic and appearances, “I’m fine.”
Chris leans over to press the back of his hand against Eduardo’s forehead. He says, “You’re really not. Look, it doesn’t matter. You come out with us all the time, no one’s going to hold it against you that you’re sick tonight.”
“I said I would go. It’s just a cold, it’s nothing.”
Chris ignores him, calling into the other room, “Dustin? Eduardo can’t make it tonight, he’s still sick.”
“Wardo!” Dustin cries in mock-betrayal. “You’re abandoning me in my time of need? You’re my wingman, you know that. You’re really going to leave me out there with Chris and Mark? Okay, wow.”
He’s made it out to them, and stares at Eduardo. “What?” Eduardo asks. He coughs.
“You look like crap,” Dustin says frankly.
“Thanks, man,” Eduardo shoots back, with a trace of his usual humour.
Dustin makes a face at him and looks at Chris. “You want to go out another night?”
Chris nods, “Sure, yeah. I’m tired anyway, I was up all night finishing the paper.”
Eduardo protests, “Don’t stay in just because I-.”
“Mark!” Dustin shouts. “We’re gonna stay in tonight, Eduardo’s dying.”
Mark says, “Okay.”
“Not that this makes any difference to your plans to get dressed up, of course.”
Mark pokes his head out of the room. “What?”
“Exactly.”
Eduardo says, “You guys should still go out.”
Mark blinks at him. “We can go out any time.”
“Yeah, but-.”
“We said we were all going out together,” Chris says. “If you can’t go, that’s not together. We’ll go out next week or something. Now, are you going back to bed, or do you want to hang out here?”
“I should really go and study.”
Chris stares at him. “How many times do you need to be told you’re sick before you believe me?”
Eduardo glares mulishly at him, and then coughs some more. He says, “I got a B in my test.”
There are days when Chris really wishes he could throttle whoever did this to Eduardo. He says, patiently, “Which, under the circumstances, was the absolute best you could do.”
“You’re saying I can’t do better than that?”
Mark interrupts. “While running a temperature, having spent most of the previous six hours throwing up, no. You did the best you could, and anyone who has met you at all knows that you always do, so anyone who wants more than that is an idiot.” For Mark, that qualifies as supportive – Chris is quite impressed.
“My professor…” Eduardo says, weak, and they know it’s not his professor, and he knows they know it’s not his professor, but they won’t talk about it. Eduardo tries to stand up, holding onto the arm of the chair.
Dustin pushes him back down. “It’s okay, I’ll be you today, you can be Mark.” When Eduardo looks confused, he elaborates, “I’ll be mom. You can sit there and look pathetic until people bring you stuff.”
Mark makes an aggrieved noise.
Dustin laughs. “Oh come on. Frankly I’m surprised you didn’t starve this week, without Eduardo making sure you ate.”
Eduardo looks at Mark, clearly worried, and Dustin pats his shoulder. “It’s okay, Wardo, we looked after him. No one’s going to starve or die of flu on our watch. Well, on Chris’s watch.” He turns to Chris. “Seriously, are you sure he doesn’t need a doctor? He looks awful.”
Eduardo mumbles, “It was worse before.”
“That’s a terrifying thought,” Dustin says.
Chris says, “Okay, Eduardo, you stay there. Dustin, do we have tea or anything?”
“We have coffee or Red Bull. Oh, hey, I bet the girls down the hall have tea. They love Wardo.”
“Okay, go and ask them, please.”
While Dustin does that, Chris finds a blanket his mom had sent with him to the frozen wilds of Cambridge. He throws it over Eduardo, who smiles hazily at him. Eduardo says, “I really should…”
“If you try to go and study one more time, I’m going to throttle you,” Chris warns.
“You wouldn’t,” Eduardo says, “you’re the nice one.”
Mark looks up. “Wardo, you’re the nice one.”
Eduardo stares at him. Chris grins and says, “See? I’m the sensible one.”
Dustin gets back with the tea, and Eduardo manages to drink half the cup before Dustin has to make a grab for it again. Eduardo has fallen asleep. Mark climbs off the couch and Chris and Dustin between them pull Eduardo so he’s lying down. They sit on the floor in front and play X-Box. Eduardo wakes up every now and again and tries to apologise, but they’re good at diverting those by now. Chris thinks that this has actually turned out to be one of their better evenings.
* * *
Mark will admit that he didn’t start in the best of moods. He’s spent the morning in what was laughably called a study session, trying to produce a piece of group work that doesn’t look like he learned C yesterday. Someone had decided to have the thing in one of the coffee houses near campus, which had no power outlets they would let him use, and so he’d wasted most of the battery on his laptop waiting for other people to decide if using tick boxes rather than radio would introduce too much complexity to the data set. (It wouldn’t, but the others didn’t understand that Mark could write something to filter the information in less time than it took to have the debate). So he gets back to Kirkland with about twenty minutes left of battery, most of which he uses up standing outside at the steps waiting for someone to come by with a key. His own card is either inside his room or on the lawns somewhere. God knows where Chris and Dustin are, but neither of them answers his call.
When Mark finally gets into the room, he plugs the dying laptop back into the wall. He’s right in the middle of something which is going to make the class project look like Pong. (That’s a little unfair. Mark appreciates the place Pong holds in computing history.) The nearest socket is just a little too far away from the couch, so the power cord stretches a few inches above the carpet. Which is why Eduardo, crossing behind the couch, trips over it. Mark catches the laptop before it falls off his knees, but the screen goes dark with the cut to the electric. He loses maybe fifteen minutes solid work and it’s enough that he shouts over Eduardo’s apology.
Mark will maintain afterwards that he’s not completely sure what he said. He knows he started with, “What the fuck are you even doing in here, it’s like you don’t have your own room.” Mark has a healthy range of insults and he knows he tends to be most articulate when he’s angry. It’s easier to find the right words for anger, easier than friendliness or apology. There’s not much he could have said to Eduardo though. There aren’t so many things he doesn’t like about Eduardo. He thinks he finishes on, “You have no idea what the hell I do, so don’t act like you understand.”
That was around the point Eduardo left.
Chris had come back a little before then, and when Dustin gets in, Chris tells him what happened. Then they both come and sit on Mark’s bed and stare at him. “What?” Mark asks, when he’s reached a break in redoing the coding Eduardo lost for him.
“Eduardo.”
“He should know by now to be careful around the wires.”
Chris scoffs and Dustin says, “Okay, but still.”
“What?”
“Go and talk to him.” Chris says.
“Excuse me?”
“He was upset.”
“Okay. And? He’ll get over it.”
“He thinks you’re mad at him.”
“I am mad at him. I lost work. If I had destroyed a significant amount of his work, he would be mad too.”
Dustin hums at this. “I don’t think so.”
“Fine,” Mark says. “Normal people would.”
“Still,” Chris says, “Go and talk to him. It’s been three hours, and he hasn’t come back.”
“Why is this my problem?”
“Aside from the fact that you completely overreacted in your usual appalling way? You’re going to be over being mad at him tomorrow.”
Mark tilts his head back. “Probably.”
“I don’t think he knows that.”
Mark stops typing. “What?”
The two of them take this as a sign, and lean forward. “This is Wardo,” Dustin says. “He’s not always the most… he takes things to heart.”
“People fight,” Mark says. “I can’t help it if he thinks we should all live in fantasy-land.”
“No,” Chris says, “but you can go over there and tell him that you’re not done being his friend because the two of you had an argument. Which, by the way, doesn’t really count as an argument, being as how he didn’t say anything back.”
Eduardo had been pretty quiet, the whole time. Mark’s not really used to that. Normally when he shouts at someone, they shout back. They’re not always as inventive with the name-calling, but ‘insensitive asshole’ tends to be a popular theme. He doesn’t remember Eduardo saying anything.
Chris says, “I don’t care if you’re still mad, you can tell him you’re still mad, if you really can’t just deal and get over it. But go tell him that you’ll be done being mad in the morning, because I don’t think he gets that. He doesn’t get those kinds of things.”
Eduardo is one of the most unguarded people Mark has ever met. Mark’s not really sure how that is, because although Eduardo is a person to whom the adjective ‘insensitive’ has probably never been applied, he’s still good at articulating his feelings. Eduardo would not understand yelling things you didn’t entirely mean, just because you were angry. Apparently Eduardo assumes the people in his life always mean the crap they say. Which is usually convenient, because Mark has problems reading people and Eduardo’s open book of a face is useful that way. Mark also has occasional issues with articulation himself, but he still doesn’t know where Eduardo would have got the idea that Mark hated him. Mark’s pretty sure that even angry, he wouldn’t have said anything like that.
Mark gets up. “Fine. I’ll go and talk to him.”
He walks over to Eduardo’s building, and convinces someone to let him up to the door. He guesses they know he’s Eduardo’s friend.
Mark knocks, and nobody answers, but he can hear noises in there. Typical, he’s been forced to come over here to make up against his will and Eduardo’s just going to ignore him.
“Wardo.” Mark knocks again. “Wardo, open the fucking door, Chris wants to know if you’re coming back for pizza.”
There’s a fumbling thud and the door opens. Eduardo half-opens the door, holding onto the frame and- shit, his eyes are red. Now, there are lots of possible reasons for that – maybe he’s been in here getting stoned – but the skin around them is puffy and he’s been chewing on his lip again. He’s not crying now but he was obviously doing it some time in the four hours since Mark saw him last.
Mark is, he thinks, fairly normal among North American males his age in not knowing what the fuck to do with a crying person. He has a mother and sisters and he’s seen all of them crying and it’s never been something he was able to fix.
Wardo asks, “Mark?” with this weird shaky voice like maybe Mark just used pizza as a way to get him to open the door and now he’s going to yell some more. And okay, Mark is feeling more than a little manipulated because there’s no way he can maintain his perfectly justified anger in the face of Eduardo actually taking it seriously. He can’t even be annoyed at the manipulation because Chris was right and it’s possible that in this one way Eduardo is even less functional than Mark.
So, “Pizza?” he asks again.
“I thought you were still mad at me.”
“Wardo, that was like four hours ago now. It’s done. Are you coming over or not?” Mark feels like maybe he hit that a little hard, like Wardo’s going to hear Chris underneath it. But Mark pats Eduardo’s elbow as a quick accompaniment and Eduardo just nods.
“Sure,” Eduardo says. “Let me- let me get my jacket.”
“Cool. Dustin says he’s picked the movie. Which either means he’s got that new horror film he kept talking about, or he’s going to try and convince us that porn is a communal activity again. Chris might actually punch him this time. That could be interesting. Wardo?”
Eduardo had stopped, jacket still partway on, to listen to Mark. He says, conversationally, “No one called me that before you.”
“Okay. Do you want me to stop?”
He shakes his head. “No. It’s fine.”
“Okay,” Mark says again. “So are you coming?”
Eduardo pulls his jacket on and grabs his keys. He follows after Mark, the way he always does, a pace back and to one side.
Mark says, “Wardo,” again, just to test it. He thinks that maybe no one called Eduardo anything else before, and he’s not sure what to do with that information.
Eduardo smiles and says, “I’m coming, I swear.”
When they get over to Mark’s room, Dustin opens the door and beams at them. “Oh, thank God, you guys made up.”
Eduardo slips past him into the room. “Yeah, I’m forgiven.”
“I didn’t say-,” Mark begins, and stops, because Eduardo’s face has gone weird again. Mark pinches the bridge of his nose. Things were so much easier when he wasn’t trying so hard not to hurt feelings. No one else he knows expects so much of him. “It was an accident,” Mark says. “I didn’t need to go through the whole process of… I got pissed off, it’s over now. It didn’t mean anything. Wardo, pretty much all of the people who volunteer to be around me for more than four straight hours – who are not also related to me by blood – are in this room right now. Even if I wanted to be mad at you, it’s not really in my interest. I know I’m not known for emotional depth, but I am actually capable of being mad at you without hating you.” He exhales.
Eduardo leans his head forward, looking at Mark. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Okay I believe you. Let’s order the pizza.”
“Already done,” Chris says. He’s staring at Mark so either that was the right thing to say to Eduardo, and Chris is surprised Mark knew that, or it was entirely the wrong thing, and Chris is horrified. Chris says, “You always order the same thing.”
Mark shrugs. “I know what I like. Wardo, sit down.” Mark sits on the corner seat of the couch, stretching the cable across again. He bounces it up and down, to demonstrate to Eduardo where it is.
Eduardo comes around the other way, and sits by Mark. “I’ll just sit here and not move, okay?”
“Fine by me,” Mark says.
Eduardo grins, and bumps Mark’s shoulder with his own.
* * *
Eduardo is never really sure how Mark’s memory works. There are some things where Mark knows that he’s said it once, and thinks there’s no point in wasting time saying it again. Like, you’re my friend, or I like you, and Eduardo notes those points as they fly past him, even if he doesn’t know why at the moment. The next time Mark says those things will be to the lawyers, not to Eduardo, who should have already known.
But then there are the other times, earlier, between that first fight and the last one. It doesn’t happen every time, but sometimes after they argue, Eduardo will hear his cell phone beep at 3am: Just so you know, we’ll be over this tomorrow morning. Mark.
Then it’s next year, and Facebook happens, and the depositions, and suddenly the way they occasionally stopped speaking for a whole four hours seems like nothing. This time, there is no message at 3am. Mark doesn’t lie.
* * *
Eduardo walks around the perimeter of the Facebook offices three times before he manages to get through the doors. He’s probably imagining the weird hush – there can’t be enough people working here now that were here the last time.
He calls, not loud enough, “Mark?”
Mark is there across the floor, not facing Eduardo, and wired in, but he still turns. Maybe he notices the silence too.
And Mark is still so smart, still quicker than anyone else Eduardo has ever known because he only looks surprised for a second. Mark stands up. He looks at Eduardo’s expression, searching for clues.
The last time they had spoken had been formal, across the deposition table. Mark loses the first syllable again somewhere across the room. Eduardo’s not sure what’s showing on his face, what makes Mark forget himself and ask, “Wardo, what is it?”
Eduardo doesn’t know any more. He just needed to be here – booked a flight and came straight out, not thinking of anything past getting to the door. He had needed to be here; everything else is blank. Eduardo waits for Mark to reach him, standing there still until Mark is right in front of him. Mark touches Eduardo’s arm, always his approximation of physical reassurance. Eduardo takes one step forward, surprised still when Mark’s hands end up on his shoulders, rubbing anxious circles. “Hey,” Mark says, “what is it? What’s wrong?”
“My father…” Eduardo says, and that’s enough.
Mark mutters, “Fuck,” right against Eduardo’s ear, and pulls him closer. “It’s okay,” he says, “it’s okay. You’re here now. Everything’ll be fine.” He keeps his hands on Eduardo’s back, stumbling through what should be platitudes but mean something from Mark, who doesn’t make that kind of effort for just anyone. Mark raises his voice to say, “Everyone else can get back to work.” Then he’s with Eduardo again, touching his neck and saying, “Wardo, you’re freezing.”
“Yeah, I was waiting outside for a while. I didn’t know whether I should come in.”
There’s a noise beside him. Dustin says, “That’s because you can be an idiot sometimes.” He pulls Eduardo into a crushing hug. “It’s good to see you.”
Eduardo shrugs. “I didn’t know where else to go.”
Dustin frowns at him. “Here. You should always come here.” As though it’s obvious, as though it hasn’t been three years and the last time Eduardo was in these offices he swore he would never be back.
He hears Chris then, supposes all three of them work close together in this office. Chris says, “Eduardo.” He hugs Eduardo around the shoulders. “Hi.”
“Hi.”
The three of them know him too well, the way no one else does. They look at each other and then Dustin, remembering the rest of the office, calls out, “Okay, kids, family emergency. Daddies are going to go and have a little chat, try not to burn the place down.”
Someone near them tells Dustin, “You know you’re not actually…”
Dustin makes an indignant noise. He draws a circle in the air above them. “Excuse me? Facebook dot com slash press slash founderbios.” He hovers his hand over each of their heads in turn. “Founder, co-founder, co-founder, co-founder. We brought you into this world, kiddo, and we can take you out of it. We pay your allowance.”
Chris coughs. “Disturbing childbirth metaphors aside, Mark is actually the only one who-.”
“Oh, like Mark would have any idea who any of these people are if we didn’t tell him. He thinks they all just turned up by magic one day to do his bidding.”
Eduardo laughs, and he knows the sound is not quite right, because Mark’s hand is on his arm again, and it tightens. Eduardo is a step behind Mark, to one side. He touches his head to Mark’s shoulder, certain just this once that Mark will let him. He breathes out.
Chris looks at them and says, “Okay, let’s go and sit down somewhere quiet.”
They start walking, somewhere, and Eduardo follows but says, “I don’t think I… do we have to talk about it?”
Dustin shakes his head easily. “No. We’ll order pizza, watch a movie.”
“You guys probably have work to do.”
Mark stares blankly at him. “Wardo. It’s been three years. We’ll make time.” It’s been three years since Mark said something nice about him that wasn’t phrased in the past tense. That does go both ways.
Eduardo nods. “Thank you.”
Mark shrugs. “It’s late anyway, most people are going to start heading home in an hour or two.” He pauses. “Are you sure you don’t want to…? You don’t look great.”
“I’m fine,” Eduardo says. Which is a lie, and they know is a lie, but sometimes what they do for each other is pretend. He doesn’t want to talk about it right now.
Dustin opens the door. “Behold the cave of wonders.”
It’s a TV room, with shelves of movies. There’s a games console down there on the floor, and a pile of controllers. Eduardo says, “Amazing you guys get any work done at all.”
Chris smiles. “Dustin doesn’t.”
“Hey! Just because I have the high score on most of the games doesn’t mean I don’t do my job. I’m just incredibly multi-talented.” He grins, and shoves Chris in the arm. “And also you really suck at anything requiring hand to eye coordination.”
“But conveniently my written and verbal skills extend to the correct spelling of the word coordination, seeing as how I have to proofread every statement we let you send out to our investors.”
Eduardo lets the noise wash over him, taking a walk around the room. He looks at the shelves. “What’s with all the Pixar films?” He turns to Mark. “I thought you and Steve Jobs weren’t friendly? Though I was never really sure what that was about.”
Dustin laughs. “Mark wants a nemesis.”
“And he picked Steve Jobs?”
“If it’s any consolation,” Chris says, “I don’t think Steve Jobs has noticed.”
“Fuck all of you,” Mark says mildly. “Wardo, come sit down.”
Eduardo sits beside Mark on the couch, while Chris orders the pizza. “The usual?” Chris asks, covering the phone with his hand.
“Sure.”
Dustin sits at the foot of the couch, fiddling with the settings on the screen. He tips his head back to look at Eduardo. “I’m glad you’re here, Wardo. I mean not the… but it’s good that you’re here.”
Eduardo ducks his head, looking at his hands in his lap. “Yeah. I didn’t know where else to-.”
Mark cuts in, “I’m sure there were lots of other places you could have gone. You have plenty of friends, Eduardo.”
“Yes,” he says. “But not like-.”
“No.” Mark nods, once, and that’s the end of it. Not like this. Not where he could still go, after three years of silence, and have it be okay.
Chris drags a beanbag over beside the couch, sitting with Dustin. Dustin pushes play, and the little lamp bounces across the screen. Eduardo closes his eyes. Mark says, quietly, “You’re here now. It’s going to be okay.”
Eduardo guesses he really must look bad, if Mark is repeating himself. Eduardo says, “I should have sent you a message.”
“Sorry?”
“To say the… ‘Just so you know, we’ll get over this’. I mean, it wasn’t tomorrow morning but it is… right?”
Mark nods, reassuring in his certainty. Mark says, “You’re here now,” as though it’s the only part that matters. As though, more than that, the three of them have tried to tell Eduardo that before. Maybe he believes them now.