fern's fresh start

Still, he doesn't notice your approach, as measured as it is. The night is silent, the swing of his bat whooshing so clearly that you know the sound from the fence would've carried, and yet he remains trained on the imaginary pitcher with the imaginary ball. As he prepares to swing again, you recall the few times your father took you to baseball games, the chant used to disrupt or cheer on the batters (it's been so long, you forget, though you're hoping for the former). Maybe you remember because you just watched Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

Either way, the words come, the cadence a little clumsy from having gone unspoken in a decade, but it's enough to make him start, jolting in surprise before he turns.

"What the hell? Couldn't just say hi?" There's a ghost of a smile playing on his lips that turns material when he looks you up and down and, like always, you warm where his gaze lands.

"You didn't hear me coming?"

He clicks his tongue against his teeth. "I was just..."

"Losing to an invisible pitcher?"

"Shut up." He draws out the vowels with a roll of his eyes. "Was just lost in thought before you scared the shit outta me."

"Oh? Is that what the Great Iwaizumi looks like when he's scared? I'll have to remember this; I'm sure I won't get another opportunity to see such a sight." You beam at him, your chest feeling warm at his half-scowl, muddied by his reluctant grin.

In the months since you've known him, you've known two things about him: that he never turns you down when you ask to hang out, and that his smile always follows yours.

"Yeah, yeah. Better take a picture. It won't happen again."

Not a second is wasted as you pull out your phone and swipe open the camera. "You have any plans over the break?"

The flash of the camera burns your retinas, startling in the shroud of night. Your skin starts buzzing when he comes to stand at your side, leaning in to look at the picture. He's a little washed out from the flash, but he's grinning in that way he only ever seems to do for you.

Your heart hiccups.

"Nothing 'til New Years. My parents are going to fly out for the first couple days. Why? Wanna do something together?"

Time stills for half a second when he turns to look at you, his smile still shaping his lips, an excited gleam in his eyes. If you were an artist, this would be a moment that you would capture on a canvas in the days to come. Such a thought bumps against your ribs, settling in your gut, a lit match being tossed onto kindling, setting you alight.

"Something? Let's do everything together."

His eyes crinkle as his cheeks lift and, oh, that's beautiful, too. "Everything? That might take longer than the next two and a half weeks, but sure."

You want to turn his words into a promise, something for the two of you beyond the steady friendship that's kept you afloat during the tenuous fall quarter, but you'll take them for what they are now.