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Langa was never one to comment on Reki’s strange habits. That didn’t mean he didn’t notice them, though. You’d have to try pretty hard not to, and Langa might be unobservant, but even he wasn’t that dense.
Close to the beginning of their friendship, when Langa and Reki had just begun their routine of eating lunch on the school roof, Langa began to notice a trend. Even when he wasn’t trying to explain a cool skating trick or answer Langa’s many questions about the intricacies of simpler ones, Reki tended to fidget with his Tech Deck. A lot.
More than once had Langa been sitting, silently eating his fries off of Reki’s skateboard when he felt the pressure of four tiny wheels on his thigh.
The first time it happened, Langa had looked at the tiny skateboard, then up to his friend’s face, blank confusion written on his features. Reki’s answering smile had been almost blindingly bright. Then, he did something with his fingers to make the skateboard jump off Langa’s knee and onto the rough asphalt of the roof, making a little happy noise when he landed it.
Langa disregarded this as something Reki was doing to pass the time during lunch. But then, it happened again. And again. And the next thing Langa knew, it became a routine for Reki to whip out his Tech Deck when Langa was distracted and do tricks off of his various limbs.
Langa suspected Reki only continued to do it because he wasn’t ever told to stop. Langa never thought it was annoying, per say, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t still strange for him to spend the majority of his lunches finishing homework while his best friend did ollies on his forearms.
It was because of this little ritual that Langa began to notice how touchy Reki was. Normally, Langa wouldn’t think twice about it when Reki slung an arm over his shoulder, or clapped an affectionate hand against his back. Or that one time when he tugged on Langa’s cheeks and told him he needed to talk more if he wanted to pass a job interview.
He never really noticed, but over time, Langa began to realize that this sort of physical contact wasn’t really common in Japan.
All his life, Langa had been closest to his dad. His dad taught him how to snowboard. His dad would be the last to leave his room after tucking him in at night. His dad swung him around in the air with glee and blew raspberries on his frozen cheeks when Langa landed his first snowboarding trick without face planting into the snow.
As such, he hadn’t noticed how his mom tended to stray from overt physical affection. She would always grumble out protests when her husband would kiss her in front of their son (even if she didn’t try very hard to stop him), and she wouldn’t get too touchy feely with either of them in public either.
Langa always just chalked this up to his mother being uncomfortable with PDA. He understood completely. After seeing couples getting a little too friendly in the halls at school one too many times, Langa could sympathize. It was only after moving to Okinawa that Langa realized that aversion to public affection wasn’t a Nanako Hasegawa thing, it was a Japanese culture thing.
It took Miya wrinkling his nose when Reki draped himself over Langa to look at something in front of them, and Joe chuckling awkwardly to himself while Cherry averted his eyes with a soft, disapproving click of his tongue as Reki flopped over Langa’s lap after patching himself up from a bad fall, before Langa put two and two together.
So it was Reki that was the anomaly.
After this, all of Reki’s weird behavior began to show itself more obviously to Langa’s previously oblivious brain. Like how he would chew on the drawstrings of his hoodie, or doodle in the margins of his notebook (and Langa’s, when he wasn’t looking), or how he would tap out random repetitive rhythms on any surface he could find.
Reki also tended to adopt certain motions or phrases that he would repeat. He went through an entire weeklong phase where he would shoot finger guns at people before exiting a room, as well as a couple days where he would only say “no you” in response to anything that made the slightest bit of sense.
Before he knew it, Langa became sort of an expert on Reki’s behavior. Strange, considering Langa could be very clueless when it came to most other things. Reki had to explain it to him three different ways before Langa believed him that a girl in their class had a crush on him.
Yet, it didn’t take too long for Langa to catch on to the fact that Reki had been humming the same phrases of a song over and over again since they’d met up that morning. Langa only really caught on when they had hopped off their skateboards at the front of the school, and the noise of their wheels against pavement was cut off, but he suspected he had been humming the entire time.
“Reki?” he asked suddenly.
Reki turned to look at Langa, an easy smile on his face as they walked up the stairs to their classroom. “What’s up, Langa?”
“What song is that?”
Reki startled, as if he hadn’t realized what he was doing. One of his hands came up to rub the back of his neck sheepishly. “Oh, that? I dunno,” he confessed. “I have no clue where I heard it, or what the lyrics are, since they’re in English, but it’s been stuck in my head all day.”
Langa frowned, but didn’t ask about it any further. If Reki said he didn’t know what the song was, then there was no reason to push it. He’d probably forget about it soon enough, anyway.
Reki stopped humming it after that—to Langa’s slight disappointment—but that didn’t last for very long. The two of them were cleaning up the displays in Dope Sketch during their shift when Langa heard the familiar notes of that fateful song. He turned around and was met with the sight of Reki swaying slowly as he rehung t-shirts.
Langa didn’t comment on the return of the earworm, instead choosing to silently enjoy Reki’s off-key singing and strained high notes. He may not be the most musically gifted, but Langa really couldn’t care less. He wasn’t sure Reki had done anything that he hadn’t enjoyed before
---
After that day, Langa didn’t hear too much of his friend’s mysterious English song aside from catching him humming a couple bars of it in passing.
Eventually, the only thing occupying Langa and Reki’s mind was Adam, and Reki’s upcoming beef against him.
By the time the chaos of Reki’s injured arm and subsequent loss, coupled with newfound worry at the prospect of Langa’s own beef with Adam blew over, both boys seemed to have forgotten about the song all together. They were all too excited about their trip to Miyakojima to think about much else.
On the boat ride to their exciting vacation spot, Langa watched with carefully disguised amusement as Cherry and Joe bickered while the two girls on either side Joe looked on, slightly frightened. Understandable, when those two really went at it, it was . . . quite the sight to behold.
Shadow leaned on the railing next to Langa. He seemed to be zoning out as he watched the waves slap against the side of the boat. Miya had pulled his Switch out of nowhere and was playing some kind of adventure game on it.
“I’m going to run inside and take a leak.” Reki slapped one of his hands against Langa’s bare shoulder in farewell.
“Did we really need to know the details, kid?” Shadow grumbled, even as the faraway look in his eyes stayed the same.
“Well, old man, you said it yourself,” Miya retorted, “you are babysitting us. It would be a shame if someone got lost because they wandered off without you knowing their location.”
“I am not old, you brat!” Shadow roared, but Langa tuned out the rest of his angry rant about how he was “only 24, which isn’t old at all, you damn middle schooler.”
Miya didn’t seem like he was paying attention either.
It was only around thirty seconds after Shadow had finished with a huff and stormed off to see if they had any drinks inside the boat, that Langa noticed Miya was quietly singing to himself. It took him even longer for Langa to realize that the “doo”s and “da”s that Miya was uttering had the same tune to them as the song Reki was humming what felt like eons ago.
Langa pushed himself off the boat railing with more force than was probably necessary, startling Miya into fumbling his game. He quietly cursed, and Langa could hear what sounded like his character taking damage.
“What song is that?” Langa frantically asked, as if he had been poisoned and Miya let it slip that he knew the antidote.
Miya wrinkled his nose, but didn’t spare his blue-haired friend more than a second glance before going back to his game. “I dunno. I heard it on the internet somewhere. I think it’s called . . . When He—something with an S, I have no idea—Me.”
“When He something with an S Me,” Langa muttered under his breath, pulling out his phone to look it up. They were close enough to Miyakojima that Langa had a couple bars of service. He typed in “when he s” into the search bar, and tapped on the second auto filled search. It led him to a page of results that were headed with the information for a song called “When He Sees Me.”
Langa’s heart leapt with excitement. The preview of the YouTube video that accompanied the song looked like something Reki might like. There were quite a few colors and some lady in a waitress outfit holding a slice of pie in one hand. “Waitress” was written at the bottom in a font that reminded Langa of the neon “open” signs in shop windows.
“Explains the outfit,” he muttered to himself.
Langa clicked on the YouTube video link so he could listen to the song, but at that moment Reki reemerged from the ship’s interior. Langa turned his phone off and slid it into his backpack. That could wait until later. Hopefully Miya had been correct about the song’s title. This whole situation was beginning to seriously bother him. Maybe if he had more of an internet presence, he could’ve figured it out already, Langa thought to himself, but the boat was already beginning to dock at the shore, and he quickly became distracted with getting his luggage back on solid ground.
Unfortunately, these distractions became a regular thing; the beach, their crappy inn situation, the strange Japanese toilet in said inn. Langa would shudder just thinking about it. Then, after the whole debacle with the weird smelly mud ghosts the night before their departure, Langa was too tired and too busy trying not to breathe in through his nose to remember the song he still had yet to listen to.
Finally, by the time Langa had gotten home, called out a greeting to his mom, dumped his bag in his room, flopped down on his bed, and opened his phone, he remembered.
“Oh,” Langa breathed as the default phone background he had never bothered to change slid up to the YouTube link, still open from that day on the boat.
Langa sat back up and reached towards his dresser for his earbuds. The shower he had been planning to take could wait; he’d been putting this off for long enough.
Langa scooted up so that his back rested against his headboard and pulled his skateboard up from the floor so he could do some minor cleaning while he listened. His board had collected sand in what seemed like every single tiny crevice, and Langa refused to let it stay like that. He was going to keep his board in top condition for as long as he possibly could. Reki had made it for him. It was the least he could do.
The song started out with some staccato piano chords before a woman’s voice came in. Her singing voice had what Langa knew was called a “southern twang” to it. He realized pretty soon after that this song was from a Broadway musical. Langa didn’t choose to listen to many musical theater soundtracks, but he had heard enough about them from catching snippets of his classmate’s conversations, as well as going to a couple of his old school’s productions. Langa didn’t hate the song so far, but it wasn’t exactly something he could see himself listening to.
Langa didn’t try to listen too closely to the lyrics, since he didn’t recognize the part Reki had been singing yet, but he tuned back in very quickly when he heard ...or eat Oreos, but eat the cookie before the cream. He snickered to himself and thought back to one day at lunch when his mom had thrown a couple Oreos into his bento, which Reki caught sight of immediately. Langa had passed one to his interested-looking friend, who took one bite of it before recoiling spectacularly.
“This is so sweet! How can you eat this?”
Langa remembered taking Reki’s cookie from him and quietly separating it, then handing Reki back the cookie half without the filling still attached.
“There, try eating it like this. It might not be as sweet now.”
Reki had looked suspicious before taking a small, cautious bite of it. He enjoyed it much more after that. Ever since then, when Langa brought Oreos with him to lunch, he would always take them apart and hand Reki the bare cookie side. Langa would then make his own Double Stuf Oreos by putting his leftover frosting and cookies together. Reki would give him a strange look before shoving his share of cookies into his mouth all at once. Langa thought he might be a little hypocritical in his disgust.
Suddenly, Langa realized that the song had reached the chorus, and he finally recognized the melody. However, it seemed slightly off to him, like this wasn’t quite what Reki had been singing, but it was close. There were just a couple notes out of place.
Well, Langa reasoned, it’s not likely that Reki is hitting all the notes correctly anyway.
Still, he knew it wasn’t it yet.
Langa frowned as he twisted his cleaning rag against a spot where the sand was reluctant to come out of.
What happens then?
If when he knows me, he’s only disappointed?
What if I give myself away, to only get it given back?
Langa paused. Strange. Maybe he needed to give this song more credit. These lyrics were . . . interesting.
So, I’m just fine, inside my shell-shaped mind
This way I get the best view
So that when he sees me, I want him to
Langa shook his head and went back to scrubbing down his skateboard. This song was making him feel strange. He wished it would go faster so that he could hear the section he had gotten to this point for.
Langa chuckled when the lady singing the song shouted He could be colorblind, but shut his mouth fairly quickly after that when the song got to the next few lines:
Or even worse he could be very nice, have lovely eyes
Langa couldn’t stop himself from thinking of Reki’s eyes. How their light brown color looked so nice with his vibrant red hair, and how they seemed to glow amber in the sunlight and sparkled when he smiled.
What if when he sees me
I like him and he knows it?
Langa’s hand came up, almost of its own accord, and clutched the fabric of his sleeveless button-down, right over his pounding heart. What was happening to him?
What if he opens up a door
And I can’t close it?
Langa didn’t even register that this had been the part he had been listening for this whole time. Unbidden, memories of his time spent with Reki, the closest friend he had ever had, flashed across his brain like the ViewMaster he owned as a kid.
What happens then?
If when he holds me
My heart is set in motion
Reki, throwing his arm over Langa’s shoulder when he’s proud of him. Reki, laughing so hard he leans against Langa’s side. Reki, jokingly clutching onto him at the beach in imitation of the girls crowding around Joe. Reki, leaping out to hug him and tell him he was amazing after his beef with Miya. Reki, helping him up every time he messed up on his skateboard and was left with his ass on the pavement. His encouraging smiles afterwards, and reassurances that Langa would get it eventually, he just had to keep trying.
I’m not prepared for that
I’m scared of breaking open
Langa wondered if he should turn off the song. His skateboard had slid, forgotten, onto his bed, and his hand was still fisted over his chest, wrinkling the fabric it was clutching. He let it play; there wasn’t much left. How much more harm could it do?
But still I can’t help from hoping
To find someone to talk to
Who likes the way I am
Someone who when he sees me
Wants to again
The song closed off with a few more of those piano chords and a final, quivering note from the violins.
Langa sat in silence afterwards, white noise buzzing in his brain like a TV that’s lost its signal. Never in his life did he think he could resonate with a song as much as he just did. But, why? Why this song? This song that was about, if he wasn’t mistaken, falling in love. Sure, it was also about the fear and uncertainty that came with meeting someone new who you could potentially end up dating, but there was no mistaking how that ending chorus made him feel. Langa felt seen. Like someone had looked into his brain and written down everything he was thinking and turned it into . . . this.
Langa didn’t remember feeling this much since his dad died. Except for when he was skateboarding. And when he was with Reki. Langa had assumed that the bubbling, swelling happiness he experienced when he was with his best friend were . . . just because of that. He’d never had a best friend before; wasn’t this what it was supposed to feel like?
No, a small voice piped up in Langa’s head. You know what this is. You feel like this because when you’re with Reki, you’re with someone you—
Langa ripped his earbuds out of his ears and took a few shaky breaths. He couldn’t do this to himself. Reki was his friend. His best friend. He couldn’t do anything to lose that. No way. He wasn’t going to screw up the best thing that had happened to him.
The best thing that had happened to him.
Langa chose to ignore the implications of that thought as he grabbed a change of clothes and headed for the shower
---
Time passed quickly after that. It seemed like almost right after they all arrived back at Okinawa, the brief respite they’d had away from everything was gone like a shadow in the presence of the sun.
Langa’s mind was so filled with the possibility of skating against Adam again in the tournament he’d announced, that there wasn’t much room for anything else. He’d ended up having to ask Reki for the notes they’d taken in class for the day more than once. (Which wasn’t the best choice, because not only did Reki have the messiest handwriting ever, but he doodled in almost every bit of available space in his notebook. Not the best for Langa, who still had problems with the Japanese writing system.)
If Langa hadn’t been so preoccupied, he probably would’ve noticed how Reki’s behavior had changed as well. His best friend had been a lot quieter, and was spacing out more than usual. He even had—on multiple occasions—forgotten to stop and wait for Langa on their walk to and from school. Langa had attributed this to him being sleep deprived from staying up late to build a new deck, which Reki had grinned and agreed to, one of his familiar smiles in place. If Langa had been paying closer attention, he would’ve realized that the smile, while seemingly genuine, didn’t even come close to reaching Reki’s eyes.
However, Langa was too busy weighing the pros and cons of entering Adam’s upcoming tournament, and ultimately decided to submit his application. He knew he had made that promise to never skate against Adam again, but Reki would understand, right? As a fellow skater, he would agree with Langa that it was exhilarating to go up against a good opponent, even if that opponent was Adam.
When Langa relayed his thoughts to Reki that night, the rain soaking down the back of his shirt and plastering his hair to his forehead, he hadn’t been expecting Reki to say what he ended up saying.
Langa could tell something was off when he ran up to meet his best friend after waiting for him in front of his house, and saw that Reki was half-turned away. He looked like he had been about to leave. Langa ignored the warning bells ringing in his head when Reki didn’t even respond to his “Welcome home”, and told him about wanting to enter Adam’s tournament. Reki didn’t even look at him.
Langa tried to apologize for breaking his promise, but when Reki shouted at him not to, Langa recoiled. He felt a strange, swooping sense of dread take hold of him, but didn’t get time to consider it before Reki was continuing.
“It just means that you’re gonna break the promise with me, right?” Reki was finally looking at him, but Langa wasn’t feeling that happy thud his heart would perform every other time they made eye contact. It felt like the rain had seeped in through small cracks all over his body, filling him with cold despair. Reki’s eyes were on him, but they were angry, a mask for the hurt and betrayal behind it, and Langa could see right through.
“Do you know just how much I . . .” Reki trailed off, and the mask fell away for a second, laying bare a new, raw emotion that Langa had never seen displayed on his face before. Maybe it was because he’d only ever witnessed Reki in a state of elation, and occasionally boredom during their classes, but Langa had gotten so used to him as he was that these new, intense feelings and expressions were hitting him like a truck. It felt like someone had reached rough hands down his throat and into his heart, clawing at his insides and constricting his windpipe.
The rain was running down so hard it was getting difficult to see, and it made Reki’s wrist slippery when Langa grabbed it to prevent him from walking away. He had been so dazed by Reki’s mouth—the same one that always grinned at him for seemingly just existing—morphing from being downturned in anger, his teeth clenched, to parted and scared. Scared. Langa wanted to knock himself out cold and never wake up again. Reki was worried for his safety when he inevitably went up against Adam in the tournament. Langa, shamefully, couldn’t remember whether Reki had ever expressed this sentiment before, but the realization still felt like a punch to the gut. He really was an idiot.
Langa was such an idiot, in fact, that when he’d grabbed onto Reki, mostly without thinking, he blurted “Reki! I wanna go up against Adam!”
Stupid, stupid, stupid. Langa’s mouth clearly hadn’t caught up with his most recent revelation, and he paid the price for it.
Reki ripped his arm out of Langa’s tight hold, and no longer looking at Langa, shouted, “With someone dangerous like that?”
Langa, once again not thinking before he spoke, blurted “But he’s an amazing skater. You’d understand as a skater, too, right? Skating together with someone amazing like that gets you excited!” Langa knew he was grasping at straws here. He had planned to use this as a way to get a possibly hesitant Reki on board with his plans to challenge the single most skilled, yet dangerous skater either of them had ever met. But Reki was a lot more than “hesitant”, and Langa knew that what he said would make the same impact as a person attempting to push the Eiffel Tower over by pure, raw strength.
When Langa realized Reki was looking at him, his final words nearly faltered on their way out of his mouth. That frightened concern was back, and it was more clear than it had been all night. What the hell had he done?
“Excited?” Reki repeated in a half-laugh, his voice wavering as his pupils shrank and the corner of his mouth twitched up. Langa swallowed.
“I . . . don’t get excited!” Reki said gravely.
Langa’s eyebrows bowed and he gasped when Reki looked up at him. He was smiling, but it didn’t feel right. It wasn’t that incredulous half-smile he’d been giving before, and it certainly wasn’t anywhere close to his usual sunny grins. This had to be the worst expression Reki had worn tonight. So far, Langa had thought every expression was the worst, but the anger, the fear, the concern, and now this? Langa had never felt more helpless to an outcome. It seemed like all the control he had was slipping through his fingers, like trying to hold the pouring rainwater in his cupped hands. No matter how hard he tried to press them together to contain it, it always trickled away until there was nothing left to hold.
“How can you be acting like it’s all fun and stuff?” Reki asked, and he looked much older than Langa had ever seen him. It hurt him to think what could have possibly driven his friend to this point. Reki was the one who’d shown him how fun skateboarding could be. How could he not guess what was going on in Langa’s head?
“I don’t get it at all!”
Langa felt like he had been punched. A strong urge to cry was swelling in him like a slowly filling water balloon, and it was only going to take another minute before it finally burst.
“You and Adam are nothing like me. Nothing like me.”
Reki was looking away again, and Langa couldn’t understand what he was saying. He breathed out a small “Huh?” because there was no way that this was how Reki truly felt.
“Do whatever you like. You crazy geniuses can skate with each other as much as you want.”
Langa watched, his feet frozen to the rain-soaked ground beneath him as Reki turned and walked away. His heart, which he hadn’t noticed up until this point, was stuttering in his chest in a strange panic. He felt a desperate need to try and stop Reki again, but he didn’t want to find out what might happen if he did. Maybe Reki would actually punch him.
Langa thought for a second that he would do anything to just have Reki look him in the eyes again, but now he was unsure. If Reki was going to look at him like that . . . Langa wasn’t sure he would be able to keep himself from crumbling to nothing, right there on the darkened concrete.
“I can’t keep up. You and I aren’t . . . a good match anymore.”
This must be what heartbreak is supposed to feel like.
“Reki,” Langa called after him weakly, but he knew that it would do nothing.
Langa’s vision swam, and he couldn’t tell if it was from the rain weighing down his eyelashes, or if the water gathering under his chin wasn’t made up through the sole effort of the clouds in the sky. Langa’s heart was beating, just like it always did around Reki, but it was stilted; broken. Too intense when it shouldn’t have been, and traveling around to hammer in places that didn’t feel nice. His throat clenched once again and Langa fought a sniffle.
He didn’t even bother to wipe the damp hair back from his face before he turned in a daze and walked back to his house. Langa couldn’t even remember if he’d seen Reki go into his house, or wander off somewhere else. Did it matter though? It wasn’t like he was wanted. Reki had said that they weren’t a good match anymore, and Langa had just started to enjoy the feeling of having a real friendship. Then Reki had stomped it out like a cigarette butt.
Langa knew it wasn’t Reki’s fault. If anyone, it had been him snuffing out their bond before it had even begun to burn.
Or spread into a wildfire of something more . . .
That voice inside Langa’s head was back. The one that was too honest. He couldn’t be bothered to listen to it right now. Langa stepped in through his front door to an empty house, once again. His mom must be working late.
Thank god, Langa thought as he peeled off his soaked socks and trod upstairs to change into something dry.
If Langa thought too hard about how this was going to change things between him and Reki, his breath started coming in shorter, but how could Langa not think about it? He had been so scared about screwing up his friendship with Reki over a stupid little crush, but then he went and did it anyway over something he had thought so inconsequential.
Langa made the mistake of glancing at that photo of him and his parents that his mom had kept in plain sight ever since they’d moved.
His eyes immediately flicked over to his dad’s grinning face, one eye closed in a wink. It hurt to look at. It hadn’t for a while. (Ever since you met Reki, the voice said.) But now it did. And that was the tipping point. That was the final drop of water that caused the balloon to pop, and once the balloon that contained the water was no longer there, it flooded out, and it didn’t seem to want to stop.
Langa wasn’t a fan of the rain. It used to cut off any hope of snowboarding because it would signal it was too warm for snow, and it meant that he couldn’t skateboard unless he wanted to hydroplane his way into a hospital bed. But now all he could think about was Reki’s wet hair flopping down to cover his eyes. His beautiful, beautiful eyes, tainted with sadness for which he was the cause.
You and Adam are nothing like me.
You and I aren’t . . . a good match anymore.
. . . a good match anymore.
Langa cried until he’d fallen into a fitful, exhausted rest. And, not too far away, Reki did the same.
---
Reki slammed his fist into his pillow as the hot tears he had thought dried up minutes ago came back. Why was he crying over Langa? He should be angry, he should be cursing Langa’s name to the high heavens, but Reki sank back into his lumpy pillow; defeated.
The dust cloud his “friends” were leaving him in was choking him. Reki had thought his bond with Langa, at least, was stronger than this.
Sure, Langa, Adam—hell, all the rest of them, too—were on a different level than he was, but why did their friendship need to rely on that? Reki had never thought himself to be the jealous type, but now here he was, wallowing in sadness and anger. Anger at Langa, anger at Adam, at S, at himself. How had he never noticed before? How long had it been since he’d added a drop of skill to his pool? The stagnant waters had been sitting for so long that Reki hadn’t even noticed the algae creeping along the edges until they’d begun to poison the water.
Reki rolled over and buried his head into his pillow and sort of hoped it would smother him in revenge for his abuse.
Reki was tired of being compared to Langa. Tired of being belittled to “that redhead who’s always with Snow”, or, as Shadow had put it; “the one that’s not Langa.” Sure, he hadn’t yet made much of a name for himself when Langa had arrived, but it felt like even if he managed to accomplish everything Langa had in the meager time he’d been skateboarding, no one would give him a second glance. It didn’t matter, because Langa had done it first. What was Reki if not a worse, warped reflection of him?
Reki was the one who had given him his wings, but Langa had been the one to fly to nigh unreachable heights. Meanwhile, Reki was grounded, left only with the few feathers Langa had left behind as he took off.
Reki had expected to feel a sick, twisted sense of satisfaction by acting cold to Langa in school. When he’d dismissed Langa’s news of making it past the tournament’s qualifiers, a small jolt of triumphant glee shot through his nerve endings, but then Langa’s reflection in the window came into focus. Reki saw his pinched, downtrodden face, and all positive emotions flooded out of him like water from a leaky bottle.
Thus began the internal war within Reki. It started with Langa, then that guy on the news. The shoemaker, or whatever, talking about wanting to support the track athletes, regardless of whether or not he could participate. Then Joe decided to interrupt Reki’s thinking time to tell him, “Reki . . . Don’t ever end up by yourself.”
Don’t ever end up by yourself.
Yeah, a fat load of good that’s gonna do him when he’s already gotten so far behind that alone is the only thing he ever could be.
---
Langa pushed around the food on his plate, completely oblivious to the panic his mom was driving herself into as he worked up the nerve to say what she wanted to say.
Langa didn’t have any friends other than Reki, and very well couldn’t confide how he was feeling to Miya. Or Cherry. Definitely not Shadow, since the guy couldn’t even figure out his own problems. (Seriously, Langa had no idea what got him so freaked out around his manager. Well, he may have a little bit of one, but there was no way it could be that.)
“I kinda screwed up,” Langa finally got out. It was in his usual deadpan way of speaking, but somehow, even more lifeless than usual. He couldn’t find it in him to look away from his plate. “And I’m being avoided.”
His mom sighed knowingly. She seemed to be less nervous now.
Their conversation went on, and Langa eased into it until his mom said, “I think it’s best if you were honest with your feelings.”
“‘Honest,’” Langa repeated. Somehow, that seemed like the obvious answer, but hadn’t that been what had gotten them into this mess in the first place?
“You like that person, right?”
Langa’s whole body spasmed and he recoiled, a shocked “Huh?” squeezing out of him. Was his mom a psychic or something?
“Well . . . yeah,” he conceded. She really could read him like an open book sometimes. No use in denying it.
The conversation about Langa’s emotions was going on a bit too long for his liking, and he was briefly reminded of Reki. He somehow had a much easier time being honest about what he was feeling than Langa ever had. How is that possible?
“You have to act on it if you really care about her!” Langa’s mom finished with a wink and a chipper thumbs up.
Okay, maybe Langa was wrong about that whole “reading him like a book” thing. Guess he really was that good at hiding his emotions. He’d even convinced his mom that . . .
“‘Her’?” Langa asked. It had left him easily in his state of shock, and the two of them just stared at each other from across the dinner table.
“Huh?”
“Huh?”
Langa wanted to slam his head onto the wood. This was going to be the longest, most uncomfortable dinner he’s ever had, huh? Serves him right for accidentally coming out to his mom.
---
Reki’s heart would not quiet in his chest. It wasn’t raining, but it felt like a storm was raging throughout his entire being. So many things raced through his head as his wheels roared against the pavement. How could he have been so blinded by jealousy to forget why he even enjoyed skateboarding in the first place?
Reki barely even noticed as he was nearly hit by another car the second time that night; the truck’s horn honking angrily behind him as he sped on. He needed to apologize to Langa for being such a terrible friend—but how?
His heart thudded, and maybe it was because his excitement for skating had been reignited—possibly even more than it had ever been in the first place. Or maybe it was because the top of one of the skatepark’s quarter pipes came into view, and Reki watched as Langa launched himself off it and into the air.
Reki’s entire face widened, and he nearly called Langa’s name, but he thought better of it. Well, it could also be because the sight of Langa soaring like gravity meant nothing took all the breath from his lungs.
He was so distracted that when his board thudded over a rock in the path, he nearly ate concrete.
When Reki finally pulled into the skatepark, he abandoned his board by the entrance and sprinted into the park’s familiar surroundings. He hadn’t been there a couple weeks, but it felt like it might as well have been lifetimes. The familiar sound of the concrete scraping the soles of his shoes was like how it felt coming home after a long vacation. So, so familiar.
Reki was about to shout Langa’s name, but then he saw his friend standing at the railing just beyond the funbox in the middle of the park, overlooking the water. A light breeze rustled the leaves in the nearby trees, as well as Langa’s soft blue hair. Somewhere in his brain, Reki had a strong urge to run his fingers through it, but he didn’t want to dwell on that right now. Instead, he quietly approached behind Langa, intending to make his presence known when he wasn’t so awkwardly far away.
However, Reki froze in his tracks when he heard Langa humming something under his breath. He immediately recognized it as that one song he had stuck in his head a while ago. The one he never bothered to find the name of, or even the correct lyrics.
He watched, transfixed as Langa suddenly groaned in frustration and ran a hand through his hair, then down the side of his face.
Reki sucked in a breath when Langa turned around and came face to face with Reki standing there, watching him.
“Reki,” Langa whispered, and even though his mouth was still slightly turned down as it always was, Reki could see the surprise and relief in his eyes.
“Langa,” Reki echoed sheepishly. “I, uh.”
Langa blinked, and a particularly strong gust of wind blew his hair back and off his forehead, and Reki’s mind went blank like a freshly cleaned whiteboard.
Reki threw his head back and let out something undignified and very close to a full-on wail of despair. “I had something I wanted to say, but it’s all gone now!” he lamented. “The only thing I can think about is y— That dang song. I’m always no good when it counts.”
Langa smiled and hopped on his (well, technically it was Reki’s) skateboard and pushed off towards the other quarter pipe.
“Let’s skate,” he called over his shoulder. “Together.”
And Reki had never been more eager to oblige.
Langa watched Reki practically radiate happiness as they did tricks together. His hand felt over his heart as it beat as wild as a drum during the climax of a song.
This feeling, Langa thought. It really was what I thought.
Langa, too distracted in his own realization, was deaf to Reki’s shouts of warning, and blind to how fast they were approaching each other head on until they collided and Langa had unintentionally tackled Reki to the ground.
“Why didn’t you dodge?” Reki moaned, his limbs throbbing where they smacked the concrete.
They laid there, groaning, and Reki felt Langa shaking on his chest. He was laughing, and oh God were his laughs cute. They started out as quiet snorts, but they got louder, and he was flushed with happiness, and Reki was ducking forward, and what was he doing?
Reki jerked back violently, but the damage had been done. Langa had seen, and he wasn’t laughing anymore.
Reki cringed and looked up from where his eyes had fixated on the open front of Langa’s button down, which revealed the collar of the shirt underneath. Langa was staring at him, mouth parted in shock. Reki wanted to skate away on his board and never return.
“Reki,” Langa said for the second time that night. This time, it was full of questions, as well as that same disbelief.
Reki looked away again and squirmed uncomfortably under Langa and his frighteningly intense gaze. He had no idea what came over him then.
“Reki, look at me.”
It took a Herculean effort, but Reki finally met Langa’s beautiful blue eyes again and held the contact.
Langa whispered so quietly that Reki almost missed it, “C-Can I kiss you?”
If Reki had the time or amount of spare, undead brain cells to mentally compute what was happening, he would have pushed Langa off of him so he could have a moment to contemplate. But he had just been in a not-so-stellar place that he had gotten into because of his own actions, and he wasn’t about to screw himself again by doubting what he clearly wanted.
So he took Langa’s face in both of his hands and kissed him soundly on the lips.
“That’s one way to say yes,” Langa murmured when they parted, his eyes glazed over.
“Sing me that song again,” Reki blurted. He hadn’t meant to sound so demanding, but Reki had been doing a lot of things he didn’t mean to lately. What was one more?
Langa laughed, and this time, Reki joined in.
To the both of them, skating was pretty much their whole world; the thing they found happiness in. But as Langa pulled Reki into another kiss that was more smiling than actual contact, he thought that he could spend infinity right there in that moment.