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“I had a really weird dream last night,” Stan says, scribbling something on his cast. The pen scrapes over a rough spot of plaster.
“Yeah?”
They’re sitting on the edge of Stark’s Pond, not doing anything but skipping the occasional rock. It was always gonna come to this, one way or another.
“Yeah. It was, I don’t know.” He takes a sip of his beer. “I don’t know, dude, it was weird . We were sitting on some stairs by a river? And I had this nosebleed that just wouldn’t stop, you know? Like, it covered my entire shirt.”
“Wild,” Kyle says and chucks a pebble in the pond.
“What’s up with you?”
“Nothing.”
“Sure? Want a beer?”
Kyle shakes his head. Sighs. “No, it’s… I don’t think I’ve fully grasped that this is it. This is basically our last real summer here and it’s already almost over. I didn’t expect it to feel this anticlimactic. We’re all moving on but-”
“ You’re moving on.” Stan cracks open another bottle and flicks the cap into Stark’s Pond. Behind the mountains the sky’s starting to paint itself red.
“You’ll get your scholarship back, okay?” Kyle says, looking over at Stan. “It’ll be like we planned, just a little later. I’ll kick out my new roommate the second you show up, promise.” He tosses another rock into the water.
“You don’t know that. Maybe my arm doesn’t heal right and then what? What the fuck was it all for? Like, great, I’m gonna lose everything just because some construction worker sucked at laying bricks?” Stan scoffs, taking another sip. “And what did I do to deserve-”
“Stop! Oh my god, Stan, stop acting like every single thing that’s wrong with you is someone else’s fault! It’s not! You were wasted when you slipped off that roof! And it's not my fucking fault you can’t get your shit together,” he says, trailing off at the end.
“Alright, yeah. Sure. I mean, if you don’t give two shits about leaving me here you can just say so.”
“This is Cartman Burger all over again.”
“That’s… not fair.”
“How? How is it not fair?”
“I was going through some-”
“You’re always going through some shit.”
“I- fuck you for bringing that up. I was a fucking child, dude-”
“Really? Well guess what, I was too. What the hell was I supposed to do?”
“Could’ve cared more.”
*
As he’s walking down the street, Stan’s backpack clinks with the sound of cheap liqueur. Just like back in high school, only not at all. A bad homage. It's not that he's not excited for Tolkien's party, it just feels like this chapter of his life is nearing its end. They all graduated and most of his friends have actual plans for their futures - Stan’s just hanging on to Kyle and hoping for the best.
But it's whatever, right? You gotta roll with the punches, live in the moment. So he blocks out tomorrow to focus on tonight. And tonight feels like boxed wine and kisses and carving initials into trees - with the pocket knife Stan’s dad got him as a joint Christmas-birthday gift. And even though there's two months between his birthday and Christmas, it’ll be a good night all the same.
*
Kyle gets up, grabs Stan’s bottle out of his hand and throws it into Stark’s Pond. “I’ve still got a suitcase I need to pack.”
“Kyle- No, Kyle, wait. Please ." The words come out torn (as in gashed: as in helpless). Stan thinks that maybe sometimes love is just another word for proximity. "I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to-”
“You never do.”
*
“Man, I’m gonna miss this,” Stan sighs, looking up at the sky.
They’re stargazing on Tolkien’s roof and neither of them remembers how they even got there. Maybe Kyle said something about the new James Webb photos. Maybe all the noise got a little too much for Stan. Maybe they climbed up to get away. It's a blur.
“Do you think the Universe has nerve endings?”
“What?” Kyle turns to Stan.
“I don’t know. You know when you pinch one part of your body and you also kinda feel it somewhere, like, completely unrelated?”
“Uh, sure, I guess?”
“Yeah. I think- Listen, I think if the universe has nerve endings, we’re connected like that. Does that make sense?”
Now, lying on their sides, facing each other, it’s hard for Kyle to make out anything. Stan’s a silhouette framed in flashing lights, once blue then purple then pink – probably all the goddamn shrimp colors, by the looks of it. He makes a mental note to ask Tolkien where to buy good LEDs. They’re gonna need some for their dorm- But not now, no, that’s later. No, now he’s searching the dark for Stan’s eyes and like a punctured jugular vein he says,
“Can I kiss you?”