Page 115 of Lighting the Lamp
“And yet, I’m still winning.” Darius sips his soda with the smugness of a cartoon villain.
“Are you hearing this?” Kyle swivels toward Michele, eyes wide in mock betrayal. “Are you really going to let your best friend get absolutely annihilated by a Gen Z hockey gremlin?”
“Darius is delightful.” Michele doesn’t even hesitate.
“What the hell, Michele? Some bestie you are.” Kyle pouts, scanning the room for someone to come to his rescue.
“You texted medelulu is the solulubecause I said I had homework.”
“I was encouraging you!”
Ramona leans in, eyes sparkling. “I told you he’d spiral the second you met in person.”
“I’m not spiraling,” Kyle insists. “I’m reevaluating my entire friendship with Michele. She promised me you were a potato in real life. You betrayed me.”
“Oh my God.” I laugh so hard my stomach hurts. “You are so dramatic.”
“I’m an artist of the soul.” Kyle places a hand on his chest like he’s starring in a telenovela.
“More like a chaos goblin,” Darius mutters.
“Arthritis goblin,” Cole adds with a smirk.
“May he rest in vibes,” Ramona murmurs, raising her drink in solemn tribute.
Michele pats Kyle’s cheek. “Okay, okay, you monsters. Leave my sunshiny dumbass of a bestie alone.”
“I’m not dumb,” Kyle mutters.
“No,” she says sweetly. “Just aggressively confident about things you’re wrong about.”
I’m grinning so hard my eyes water. The air is bright with noise and teasing and the kind of love that wraps itself around insults like a bow, but then the sound blurs just a little. The way it does when your brain drifts somewhere else.
I glance toward the tunnel again, wondering what Beau is doing. Would he respond if I just sent a quick text telling him good luck or a stupid emoji like we’ve done for years? The muscle-flex emoji. The fire emoji. The otter emoji, for reasons neither of us will ever explain. A part of me dies inside, thinking of going back to the way things were. I reach into my pocket, my fingers brushing against my phone, but I don’t grab it.
The noise around me keeps going. Kyle rants about FIFA physics, Michele argues that golden retrievers have more emotional range than he does, and Darius is roasting him with surgical precision, but I feel like I’m floating above it all.
“You’re doing that thing,” Cole murmurs under his breath.
“What thing?” I ask, even though I already know.
“The thing where you go quiet and look like you’re about to either cry or start rearranging your whole life.”
“I’m fine.” I exhale a soft, guilty laugh.
“You’re not,” he says gently, bumping my shoulder. “Which is okay. He’s probably nervous about the game. You should go check on him.”
“I don’t want to bother him before the game,” I mumble, even though my legs already want to move.
“You’re not bothering him because you’re you.” Cole turns fully toward me now, voice low but firm. “He needs you. You need him. You both need to stop pretending.”
That hits harder than I expect, like a truth that slips past all my defenses and lodges itself somewhere deep in my chest where it’s already raw and waiting to be acknowledged. I feel it echo, settling into the quiet corners I’ve been trying to ignore.
I am pretending I’m not waiting for Beau to come find me. Pretending it doesn’t matter that he hasn’t. Pretending I’m not unraveling a little more with every minute that ticks by and every laugh that doesn’t quite reach my bones. The fact that Cole says it out loud—so plainly, like it’s the simplest truth in the world—makes it impossible for me to keep pretending.
I blink fast, like I can force the tears to behave, to stay tucked neatly behind my lashes. I chew the inside of my cheek to keep it together, to hold the emotion in place long enough to survive the moment.
“Everything okay?” Michele’s voice cuts through the noise.
