He had taken his time in coming home, primarily because he’d actually managed to make friends at school, but also because the idea of facing Harwich never settled quite right with him. In fact, he felt pinned down by his life altering mistake every moment he spent at home. It was bad enough that everyone in town knew his dirty little secret, even worse still that his own parents were privy to his wrongdoings. One of the only things that made him want to be in Massachusetts was Otto, and in some sense he felt guilty that he couldn’t be around all the time. Having his own secret revealed was terrible, but he felt much worse about Otto’s coming to the surface. It wasn’t something that spoke to Otto’s character or cast him in a negative light, but it was something the other boy clearly didn’t want getting out and Hudson often found himself worrying about how Otto was holding up. Now that he had graduated, Hudson was anxious to hear of Otto’s plans for how to proceed. Secretly, he hoped for college, preferably one in New York or somewhere in the surrounding area, but he knew that leaving home would be hard for Otto. No matter his decision, Hudson wanted to be supportive.
Hudson entered the coffee shop he and Otto had deemed their favourite in town and scoped out the place to see if Otto had arrived first. He had, his hands already grasping a coffee cup. Hudson smiled fondly to himself before sitting across from Otto. “You didn’t wait for me,” he teased.
School breaks had never suited Otto well; he would throw himself into whatever work he could get, keep his hands and his mind busy at home with any little projects he could find for himself, and at the end of it all, he would still wind up feeling feeling restless. Anxious. Useless. Now, after graduation, the summer stretched out endless before him, something like dread was starting to settle deep in his chest. It wasn’t like him-- it wasn’t like what he knew of himself to be anything less than decisive. It was even less like him, though, to do anything without thinking deeply and thoroughly about it beforehand. Suddenly, there were too many factors, too many things to think about-- not possible, he would’ve insisted a year ago-- that it somehow felt better to try not to think about them at all.
Otto still didn’t know what he expected from Hudson (much less what he wanted), but there was something.... normal, maybe? There was something normal and pleasant and somehow comforting about Hudson’s presence in his life. He didn’t think it only had to do with the shared experience of having their most painful secrets broadcast rudely and abruptly to the rest of the world-- though, yeah, there was something not-quite-nice about being able to commiserate. Or at least knowing that they both understood something that not a lot of other people could. Really, it was probably just Hudson himself-- warm, awkward, sort of brilliant?-- that made all the buzzing in Otto’s head go a little quieter.
Coffee also did that, though. He didn’t have the shame to feel guilty, half-smiling as Hudson slid into the seat across from him at the Best Coffee Shop (tm) in Harwich. “I was hoping I could finish this off,” Otto said, “and then when you got here I could pretend like I was just getting my first cup.” He took a pause to take another sip. “Hi, though, anyway.”
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