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Stewy sees him at a hotel bar. From afar, Kendall blends in quite well. Everybody who’s anybody is in a suit and huddled in a corner in Wall Street on a Friday night, either drinking or taking cocaine, or both. At any given time, Stewy would think Kendall’s doing both, but at his current state languid, there’s definitely no cocaine. He’s sitting on a stool, a bottle of beer in hand as he rests his head on the bar. He looks quite pathetic and Stewy wants to take his head in his hands, wipe the grime off his face. That bar can’t be sanitary.
He checks his watch. It’s 7 PM. November 2nd. Kendall is getting married next week.
Stewy had gotten the invitation card two months ago. He remembers it quite well — an assistant dropped it off his desk along with several other unassuming letters. Stewy had rolled his eyes. Nobody fucking sends physical mail anymore, and his email address was embossed on his countless business cards. You are cordially invited to , his eyes had skipped over the words, Kendall & Rava .
And oh, what a day that was. Calling Kendall to tell him congratulations for his upcoming wedding was like taking a gun, shooting himself on the foot, then walking it off down the stairs. Stewy wouldn’t wish it on his worst enemy.
There’s a lot of reasons why Stewy shouldn’t be walking up to Kendall and shaking him off his drunken stupor. He’s a grown man. He’s going to be fine. The worst thing that could happen to him is get robbed of a couple hundred dollars from his pocket. They’re exes. He’s supposed to hate Kendall, or at least be indifferent.
Indifference. Sandi had taught him that it was the key to success. It’s like playing poker , he’d said over a glass of bourbon, you got winning cards, losing cards, doesn’t matter. You always have to look— indifferent. However that worked, Stewy still had no idea, but he knew better than to question the man who undoubtedly shaped him into the upcoming tycoon asshole who’s going to sweep New York City off of their money.
The facts: Kendall Roy is his ex-boyfriend of four years, last talked to two years ago. The last time they’d seen each other was six months back.
The self-hatred crawls at the back of Stewy’s throat and he tastes it on his tongue — it settles on his molars and turns his throat sour. He breathes in. Breathes out. Restart. Get a fucking grip.
“Ken.” He says when he walks up to the bar, shaking the man lightly, less to drag him out from whatever stupor it is he’s drunk himself into and more to take his interest off of the peanut he’s currently bouncing up and down at the bar top like a ping pong.
Kendall takes a few seconds to lift his head up from the bartop. He blinks slowly, tiredly, undoubtedly drunk, then grins. “Stewy.” He greets. It’s warm and a stark juxtaposition to how he looks right now. “Long time, no see.”
Stewy looks at him closer, this time. He’s wearing glasses — the kind of thick frame he wears only at night and in the privacy of his own home. His slacks are folded at the bottom, and his cream-colored dress shirt is positively wrinkled to a point where Stewy itches for an ironing board. Still, he manages to keep his hands where they are. What he doesn’t manage, is to keep his mouth from doing more damage that has already been dealt to Kendall.
“And whose fault was that?” He says, and it sounds witty, at least to his own ears. He’s sure it sounds venomous to Kendall.
For a moment, Kendall lifts his head up, and grins. Like Stewy’s just landed a really funny punchline. “Fuck, I missed you.” He chuckles, takes the peanut between his fingers and pinches the shell so it splits into two, before tossing what’s inside into his mouth.
Again, a health hazard. Stewy winces.
“Order you a drink?” Kendall says, straightening up this time and patting the stool beside him as an offer.
“Depends.” Stewy approaches carefully, like a weary animal getting lured into a trap. A trap that he knows there’s no escaping. “Are you buying?”
“Sure. I own the place.” He grins. “Go crazy.”
“You don’t own the place.” Stewy notes, narrowing his eyes. “You’re a shareholder.”
“— Almost majority shareholder.” Kendall corrects, this time with a small smile that has Stewy’s hands going clammy.
“That’s not a thing.” He says, impressed that he keeps his voice even even as he orders his drink. An old fashioned. He’s not looking, but he knows Kendall is watching him.
“You were always better than me at memorizing business jargon.” Kendall says, and the topic has gone dangerously close to a territory that reminisces their time together, apart, and together again— a territory that Stewy has avoided like the plague since they’d broken up. “Remember when we were getting our MBAs?”
“Yeah?”
“I copied from you.” He continues offhandedly, and Stewy laughs. It sounds about right.
“I knew the wording on your dissertation introduction felt familiar.”
“Wish we could go back to that.” Kendall smiles, sadly, before giving a small friendly pat at Stewy’s thigh. It lasts for less than a second according to a clock, but for Stewy it feels like forever.
The moment is broken when his drink is served by the bartender. He says thank you, and tells him to bill it under Kendall’s tab.
“So, why are you here?” Stewy queries, eyes scanning the people all over the hotel bar, before he catches the eye of a loan shark he’d borrowed from what feels like a decade ago. He sends a friendly smile, just in case. “Aside from being… an almost majority shareholder, that is.”
“A guy can’t check into his hotel?”
“I just think it’s special when he’s doing it while drunk, and especially if he has a penthouse… three, four blocks away.”
“I’m not drunk, man.” Kendall scoffs and folds up his already wrinkled sleeves. Stewy sips at his drink. It tastes awful. He can’t tell if it’s the ice, or the sour mood he’s in that’s changing his appreciation for good alcohol. “I’m just…”
“Piling depressants over another, I know.” Stewy notes, and doesn’t miss the glint from the ring on Kendall’s left pinky finger— the significance and the weight of it settles in his chest. “You know, most people get into anti depressants.”
“Been there, done that.” Kendall cringes and dips his pointer finger at his glass and swirls the spherical ice around. Stewy swallows down whatever lecture he has for bacteria and viruses. “I was nineteen when I got my first fluoxetine prescription. Great for my brain, bad for Kendall Junior. You know a girl accused me of having performance issues?”
“I remember.” He half-sighs half-chuckles, because he would rather not.
“I never let you down did I?”
Stewy’s lips curl into a smile, barely suppressing his mirth. His cheeks heat up as he takes another sip of the old fashioned. “Regarding sex, or generally?”
“Can I get the answer to both, or is that asking for too much?”
“Yeah, uh.” Stewy pauses. “The sex was good.”
“Ouch.” Kendall scoffs. “When people say the sex was ‘good’, it’s rarely ever good.”
Stewy rolls his eyes. Kendall and his penchant for pessimism and cutting into sentences. “I’m not kidding, Ken. It really was good.”
Kendall blinks, looks disappointed at the lack of praise.
“Mind-blowing.” Stewy offers. Still unimpressed. “The best I ever had.” He says, then Kendall smiles. A full-toothed grin.
“There we go. Was that so hard to say?”
Smug little shit. Stewy ought to wipe that grin off his face. “Generally, though? You were a pretty shit boyfriend.” He continues, and the jab lands where it’s directed to and does the job; it shifts Ken’s face into something more stoic. “Like that time you left me on my birthday, broke up with me when Logan suspected, called your relationship with me a phase…”
Kendall purses his lips and downs what’s left of his drink. “Uh-huh.”
“Made me drink on finals week.” Stewy recalls.
“Right.”
“You let me down more times than I can count. I can go on all night, really.”
“No thanks, I got the gist of it.” Kendall waves him off with a huff. “How are you?” Is the latest of his long line of inquiry to Stewy and he slumps over into the bar ever so slightly.
“How am I?”
“Yeah.”
“Fine. Okay.” A default answer to a default question. It’s an automatic response at this point.
Kendall seems to notice this, because the next thing he says is, “Fine, okay? What, did wall-street suck the colorful vocabulary out of you?”
“The fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“Aha. See.” He snorts before he can stop himself, and Stewy rolls his eyes.
“I’m doing fucking great, Ken.”
“Yeah, I heard.” Kendall’s smile evolves from mildly amused to a shit-eating grin. It looks a lot like Roman’s face when he’s dealt with a good hand of cards. “Billionaire bachelors under thirty. Number one on the list: Stewy Hosseini.”
Stewy groans, chuckling along. “Believe it or not, I didn’t pay for that cover story.”
“I know. You were the only good-looking guy on that list.”
“Oh?”
“The rest looked copy-pasted.” He continues, still grinning like the cat caught the canary.
“Thanks, man.” is all Stewy can come up with, well aware of the blush creeping up his neck. There’s a pause, before he asks what’s really been bugging him for the entire night: “What happened to you?”
“I went through training in Singapore. It was so hot that my balls were sweating.”
He winces. “For six months?”
“It was the worst six months of my life. And not just because of the climate.”
“You know, Ken, I never really understood.” Stewy shifts the conversation towards uncharted domains, because he figures he might never get the chance to confront Kendall ever again. Stewy notes how his hands imperceptibly tighten around the glass, knuckles whitening ever so slightly.
“What?”
“Why you keep doing… this.”
“The alcohol?”
“Business. I know you hate it.”
“Fuck off.” Kendall’s tone shifts from curious to defensive with a roll of his eye. He straightens up in his seat and trains his eyes on the TV, a clear tactic to avoid Stewy’s stare.
“No, hear me out Ken.” He starts, already mindful that Kendall’s about five seconds away from pulling out a self-justifying speech. “You’ve always been brilliant, Ken. So, so fucking smart. People outside will say all of this is because of your dad, because of nepotism, because it was handed to you, but I think all you’ve achieved isn’t because of your father. It’s despite of him. And I bet if it weren’t for him you’d do something entirely different and be great at that too.” Stewy pauses, imagines a world where they never met at 1 PM BM002 Basic Economics. “STEM, maybe.”
Kendall sucks at his teeth, and shakes his head. “M-m. English.”
Stewy hums. “See. There we go. English major Kendall Roy.”
“Imagine that.” Kendall huffs. “Dad would fucking flip any of his children got into media.”
“Kind of ironic, isn’t it? How Waystar is about media. Journalism. The likes. And you’re discouraged to study it.”
Kendall smiles, and looks at something far away, as if lost in a memory. Stewy grabs at one of the peanuts on the bowl in front of Kendall. “I keep thinking of when Romey wanted to get into filmmaking.” He says, then, and Stewy fails to keep in a chuckle.
“Romey?”
“Fuck off.” He rolls his eyes, and it’s anything but out of malice. “Yes. Roman. He wanted to be a filmmaker. He got into Columbia University. He was, like, seventeen. Real angsty kid.”
“I remember teenage Roman.” Stewy muses. “Long hair, skateboard, cigarettes? Logan must’ve fucking hated him.”
“He was too busy saying no to whatever he wanted to even pay attention.”
Stewy grimaces. “Thank god my old man died.”
“Lucky man.” Kendall grins. “Anyway. Teenaged Roman drove from New York to Massachusetts. Came knocking at my door— I had a girl at my dorm. He comes in, guns blazing, makes her leave, and cries on my bed.”
“I can’t imagine him doing that.” Stewy says, impressed at how even his voice is. He remembers that girl quite well. The familiar feeling of jealousy comes at him in waves, but they’re faint. It’s less of that same prickling sensation, but more of an indistinct memory.
If Kendall notices Stewy’s sudden trip down to memory lane, he doesn’t mention it. “He was a sweet kid.”
“So were you.”
“Thanks, man.” A willingly defeated, uneven smile forms on Kendall’s lips. “But you know, I don’t hate it. The business. I don’t understand why people think you have to be passionate about the things you do. I think you just have to have a reason why you do it.”
“And that reason is… your dad?” He supplies.
“Well, the money doesn’t hurt.” Stewy laughs, and Kendall continues. “It’s an amalgamation of things, you know. Uhm… family obligation, money, dad… mostly legacy.”
“Legacy.”
“I don’t want to die knowing I let Waystar remain the way it is now.”
“What, a conservative right-wing propaganda factory?” Stewy comments, although the words are too kind. Kendall nods, and opens a new pack of roasted peanuts that the bartender offers them.
“What about you, Stewy? Why are you still in business?”
“You mean aside from my shining plaque of Billionaire Bachelors under Thirty? ” Stewy raises his eyebrow. “You know the usual. It pays well. I like the prestige. I like that I can buy Italian leather shoes for ten grand without blinking. I like the bars. The taste of aged whiskey. The food. Beluga caviar is to die for, man. And I like private jets. Lamborghinis. I know I sound like an asshole right now, but I think I just like being rich.”
“See. There you go. A reason. It doesn’t always have to be passion or genuine love that drives one person to enjoy a job.” Kendall muses. He clinks Stewy’s now empty glass with a flick of his fingernail. “Need a refill?”
Stewy stares at the grandfather clock at the far end of the bar. 7:30PM. An ESPN rerun of a game plays on the TV. “Please.”
While Kendall ushers for the bartender and asks him for more drinks, Stewy checks his phone. No new important emails, one text message from Sandy’s assistant, and a calendar reminder for 8:00PM that reminds him to sleep early because he has to get up at 3 AM tomorrow. Some business over in Mexico. Stewy’s learned long ago not to ask questions when unnecessary.
He looks up to see that Kendall has now acquired a quarter-full bottle of rye whiskey, and is pouring it into two new glasses with fresh ice. Stewy offers him a small smile and proceeds to drink. The sooner they finish, the better.
“How’d you meet Rava?” Stewy wants to slap himself on the mouth. He doesn’t know what exactly motivated him to ask that, when all he’s been trying to do the entire night is to avoid any topics regarding the forthcoming wedding.
“I met her at one of those political parties Shiv went to.” Kendall starts, and it’s two seconds too late for Stewy to stage an elaborate fake call to get out of this conversation. “I think it was George’s senatorial win. I was bored out of my mind, I just wanted out of there because I couldn’t give less of a fuck about these fucking people. Then all of a sudden, I saw her. You should’ve seen her. If you had, maybe you’d have stolen her from me. She was so… beautiful that night. She was debating some guy, some fucking prick from the oppositioning party, and talked about nuclear energy.”
“What does she do?”
“Environmental lawyer. Got her law degree at Stanford.”
Stewy whistles, doesn’t even bother to hide how he’s impressed. “She’s way out of your league.”
“Way, way out. I think I just got lucky. What about you?”
“What about me?”
“You can’t tell me Stewy the bachelor Hosseini doesn’t have stories to tell? No, uhm, sordid details?”
Stewy sighs, calling to mind all his romantic encounters for the past two years. A few stand out, a few he’d rather just forget. “Do you remember Diana?”
“Diana… Diana…” Kendall’s face scrunches up in recollection. He sets down his glass carefully, looks at it for a moment, then bursts out into a laughing fit. “Oh wait. Oh, this is too good. No fucking way.” He manages in between heaves, leaving Stewy confused with warm cheeks.
“What?”
“Diana,” Kendall repeats. “The hot TA?”
“Now COO of Twitter.” Stewy grins.
“Everybody and their mother slept with Diana.”
“Everybody and their mother slept with me too and I didn’t hear you complaining.” Stewy rolls his eyes. “Diana and I met at this tech convention thing. I don’t remember much other than I took her back to my room.”
Kendall nods, like he’s proud. He pats Stewy on the back with an ardent, “That’s my boy.”
“We went out for three months after that.”
“What happened?”
“She told me I had to figure my shit out.” Stewy pauses and fiddles with a napkin. “I was a mess, back then.”
“If it’s any consolation, I was too.”
“Uh-huh.” Stewy responds, unconvinced. Kendall had met Rava shortly after their falling out, if he’s doing the math in his head right – and he generally does.
A pause. Kendall tops off their glasses one last time, the bottle now empty. Stewy declares he’s off to the restroom. He splashes his face on the sink and formulates an escape plan. Kendall would understand if he wanted to finish the night earlier. When Stewy reemerges, Kendall has a new kind of smile on his face – Ms. Lauryn Hill is now playing on the speakers. Every single word that Stewy’s been rehearsing from his trip to the restroom evaporates into thin air, and he settles right back into his chair.
“Do you have anything to do tomorrow?” Kendall asks.
“Mexico City.”
“Cool.”
“What about you? I hope you don’t have a meeting planned.”
“Just a whole day of following Frank around.”
“Frank Vernon? The man’s a fossil.”
“Aren’t you Sandy Furness’ protégé?”
“Don’t talk shit about Sandy, I’m so serious.”
“Fine, fine.” Kendall puts his hands up in a mock surrender. Stewy checks the grandfather clock again. It’s late, and they’ve finished half a bottle of 120 proof alcohol.
“Get up.” Stewy says, then, choosing to finally put his foot down.
“What?”
He moves up from his stool, and lends Kendall a hand. From this view, with a regal smile on his face, he looks a decade younger. It reminds Stewy of missed classes and midnight espresso runs and stacks upon stacks of studying material he and Kendall had perused through for their entire degree. “You should go home.”
“I’m checked in.” He takes the offered hand, shifts his weight off the seat until he’s standing. He doesn’t let go.
Stewy thinks he doesn’t want him to.
“What floor?”
“Twenty-seventh.”
“That’s a little low.”
“It’s free. I’m not robbing my hotel of its own money by getting a more expensive room, are you crazy?”
“Then c’mon. Share an elevator, for old times sake.” He says, and drops his hand. The kindest thing either of them can do at that moment is to let go. Still, the loss of contact makes the air around them feel a little colder.
Stewy lets Kendall lead the way – he presses the button for the 27th, Stewy for the 41st. The elevator creates such a space where there’s no sign of other people, auditory and visual, and it makes him feel like they’re the only people in the world. It’s an unwelcome feeling and he feels relieved when the elevators slow as they ascend and it dings open. It’s Kendall’s floor.
Except he doesn’t get out.
The elevator doors close once again with an ominous hum and Stewy has to clear his throat before speaking. “You missed your floor.”
“I know.”
“Ken–”
“Relax. I won’t do anything with you.” He manages, the resonance weak. “I just wanted to catch up. Talk. Have a cigarette, I don’t know.” Stewy shakes his head in amusement, knowing full well that he doesn’t have the ability in him to say no. “For old times sake.” Kendall says again, eyes hopeful, and the elevator doors open. 41st.
“Come on, then.”
“Welcome to the presidential suite.” Stewy announces as he swings open the door and reveals his hotel room. It’s about as ostentatious as one room in NYC can look, and Kendall makes himself home immediately by jumping into a couch and sinking into it. Suddenly, the reality of it registers in Stewy’s head and it’s like a slap to the face. He is sharing a hotel room with his ex-boyfriend.
“Let’s not make it weird.” Kendall says after an awkward pause, and he chuckles to lighten the mood a little when he notices Stewy’s distant demeanor. “Man, relax, I’m not going to jump you.”
“It’s not that.”
“Then what is it?”
“It’s just… fucking weird.” Stewy’s eyes wander around the room, doing his best to avoid catching Kendall’s gaze. “We haven’t talked for two years.”
“That doesn’t mean we can’t still be friends, right?” His voice is small and so full of insecurity that it drips off it, thick like molasses. Stewy just looks at him, silent. He doesn’t quite know what to say.
“A friendship implies continuity.”
“I’m trying to continue it now.”
He sighs. “That’s not how it works.” A minute or two passes and nothing much happens other than Kendall’s knees bouncing up and down. “How’s Rava?” Stewy changes the subject with a clear lack of subtlety, and thankfully Kendall doesn’t do much other than smile.
“I sent you an invitation, right?”
Stewy nods. “You sign a prenup?”
“Of course.”
“You love her?”
“I do.”
“Good.” He sits down right next to the small space Kendall’s left for him on the couch. Kendall’s scent overwhelms him – it’s all peated whiskey and cigarette smoke and old spice. It’s the kind of smell that had comforted him once, and now haunts Stewy these days.
“Not like I loved you.” Kendall manages a smile, but it’s as wispy as a comedian giving up on a punchline halfway through their delivery.
“Ken.” Stewy warns, because he really didn’t plan for any of this happening tonight. Or any other night.
“Stewy, listen.” He continues, clearly unaware of the boundaries he’s crossing. The hostile structures that Stewy had spent years building up, Kendall spends two minutes tearing down. “You were… what we had was… something.”
“Something.”
“You know I’m not good with words. So let me try them out now.” Stewy doesn’t want to hear them, but Kendall Roy rarely employs his eloquence to express his feelings. So at that moment, he allows it – Kendall’s vulnerability, his words, his heart. “What we had was something special. You were my first love, and I think I’ll always love you. Years ago, I’d thought, I wish this wasn’t the world we lived in. In another one, maybe we could’ve been together. Married, with two adopted kids, living in a house with a white-picket fence. Even now, I can’t help but think… what if?”
“You know I wasn’t asking for marriage. I wasn’t… I didn’t need any of that. I just wanted you. Us.” Kendall visibly deflates, and Stewy doesn’t resist the urge to put his hand on his thigh. He thumbs the fabric there, draws circles small enough to be comforting. “We’ve been through this.”
“I know.”
“We couldn’t have continued it without risking everything.” Stewy says, a direct quote from Kendall two years ago. He says it without pause or hesitation, because it’s haunted him for endless nights before, the words etched into his brain indefinitely.
“I’ve said.”
“Kendall.”
“I’m fine.” He waves Stewy off with an almost imperceptible sniff. “Do you have a cigarette?”
They head to the room’s balcony. Stewy hands him a pack – half-empty – and holds up a lighter for him.
“What happened after her? Diana.” Kendall inquires once again.
“I went to France for a business trip and met this guy – Mateo.”
“Ah. Is he gay or, uh, european?”
“He’s both.” Stewy laughs, and takes the opportunity to light his own stick. He watches the smoke fade away into the cold air. “That lasted for half a year, but the long distance got too hard. It was my first time dating a man after you.”
“Exercising bisexuality, good for you.”
“I think we both got tired of flying in and out of the country to see each other.”
“It’s bad for the environment, you know. Frequent travel.”
It sounds like something sensible and grounded and Stewy can already tell how Kendall’s heard of it. “Rava tell you that?”
“Yes, actually.” Kendall shakes his head. “Along with two more dissertations on how cryptocurrency is equivalent to razing forests to the ground.”
“How morbid.” He sighs, then quickly remembers how Kendall has quite a chunk of money invested in it. “How’d she react when you told her about your Bitcoin?”
“I sold them after I read the summaries.” He winces with an exaggerated drag of his cigarette. “About two million dollars worth of it.”
Stewy’s laugh comes out sounding a little strangled, and he chalks it up to the smoke filling his lungs. Not at the rotten thing he tried to stop from weaving through his ribcage and climbing up his throat. And god, he once tried – over the nights Kendall had come over with a box of takeout and fresh coffee beans he’d take into Stewy’s dorm room because he didn’t have a coffee maker. Over the hours they’d spent pretending to read their study materials when all that time they were really just stealing glances at each other. Each moment with Kendall had felt like that: a stolen, illicit thing. And at each moment, he’d failed to even try and stop it. “You must really be in love with her, then.”
Kendall smiles wider, and Stewy thinks – yeah. He likes seeing Kendall like this.
“Are you coming to the wedding?”
“Is attendance mandatory?”
“It is if you want to deal with Waystar again.”
“Yes, I’m coming.” Stewy smiles, finishes his cigarette with a last puff, puts it light off by smashing it into the balcony’s railing. It’s either masochism or genuine personal development that propels him to say, “I’m rooting for you two. She sounds like a really wonderful person.”
“She knows about you.” He says, and it piques Stewy’s interest almost instantaneously.
“Oh?”
Kendall leans against the railing and stares down below. Stewy tries to quell down the unsettling feeling in his stomach at the sight of Kendall looking into death’s face itself. “She’s the only one who knows about us. I half-expected her to break up with me, half-hoped she’d do it out of repulsion, but she didn’t. She took my face in her hands and told me that she loved me. I knew it, then.”
“She’s in love. So are you.”
There’s a pregnant pause. Kendall takes longer to lift his cigarette to his lips, takes longer to let the smoke out. Stewy notices the way his left hand digs its fingernails to the fingertips where he knows it’s calloused from hours of trying to learn guitar in college. “So tell me, Stewy.” Kendall sighs, heavy and dark. “Why don’t I want to get married?”
Stewy stares at him, his brook of words all dried up. “I don’t know.”
“I’m still in love with you.”
“You can’t be in love with two people.”
“Well, I am.”
“You shouldn’t be.”
Kendall shifts - turns back around and tosses the butt to a corner somewhere. With his hands stuffed in the pockets of his slacks, he clears his throat. “I should get going.”
Stewy has to show him out, but everything in his being is telling him not to. Everything in him is saying, make him stay, be selfish for once , but he manages to brush it off, and bob his head into a nod.
The image of Kendall standing on his doorway flashes an ephemeral memory into Stewy’s brain. Momentarily, he forgets what he’s there to do in the first place, and if not for the new lines under Kendall’s eyes – a brand of age, and change, and something else entirely – he’d have kissed him senseless right then and there.
“Uhm.” Kendall clears his throat. The door itself is staring at Stewy, just begging to be closed, and he finds himself unfitted to do so. “I’ll see you around.”
“Yes.” He says, and hugs Kendall.
Stewy remembers the first time they’d hugged. It was 2 am on a weeknight, and they’d spent the entirety of it buried in textbooks and endless numbers. They were sharing one can of red bull between them, and somewhere midway through their notes, Kendall leans against Stewy. He’d fallen asleep on his shoulder, and his hands had involuntarily wrapped around Stewy’s torso.
It felt like an entirety ago, and it might as well have been.
“I’ll see you at the wedding.”