#checks notes.

not because he's particularly loud about it (though he is loud, you'll learn this later); no, you almost drop the squeegee because he pushes through the door at 4:47 pm on a thursday, thirteen minutes before close, wearing a jacket that's approximately four sizes too big for him and carrying a folder so stuffed with papers that it's held shut with not one but three rubber bands, and he looks around the shop with the expression of a man who has just found water in a desert.

“hi,” he says, to no one in particular, to the whole room, even if it’s just the two of you in there, “this is a print shop, yes?”

you set the squeegee down on the workbench, carefully, and turn to face him. the overhead fluorescents catch the ink stains on your forearms and he doesn't even glance at them, because he's looking at your face like you're the most important person he's spoken to all week. maybe all month. it's a little unnerving, but it’s also a little flattering. you don't know what to do with it yet so you file it away somewhere in the back of your brain, under things to think about later when you're not covered in printing ink.

“screen printing, mostly,” you say, “we do some digital transfer but the bulk of it is screen. you got a project?”

he exhales, relieved, “yes. okay. yes,” he comes to the counter, drops the folder on it with a thud, and starts wrestling with the rubber bands. “i have a band. not— i mean, i'm not in the band, i do their merch. i design stuff, i've been printing it myself but it looks —” he pauses, tilting his head, searching for the word, “bad. it looks bad. like, someone-made-this-in-his-dorm-room-at-2AM-bad.”

“was that someone you?”

“yes,” he says, very solemnly, “that someone was me.”

you almost smile. you manage not to. (barely.)

he gets the folder open and fans out a collection of printed designs on scrap pieces of fabric across your counter. some of them are clearly heat-transfer, where the ink sits on top of the fabric like a decal instead of sinking into it, and a few of them have the telltale ghost of a peel-edge. they're not terrible, actually. the designs themselves have something going on, this sort of loose, hand-done quality that feels intentional even when it isn't, and it’s the kind of aesthetic that college garage bands with slightly too much personality tend to gravitate toward.

you pick one up. it's a t-shirt graphic, band name in a font that looks like it was sketched out by hand, a rough little drawing of what appears to be five stick figures in various poses with their respective musical instruments.

“rookie '25?” you read.

“that’s us,” he leans on the counter, and it takes you a moment to realize he's watching you look at the designs the same way you'd watch someone read something you wrote, as if bracing for impact, “it's kind of a joke, right, we're all third years, and we’re not even in the class of ‘25 but– listen, i just do the— the visual stuff. which i'm clearly very good at," he adds, gesturing at the heat-transfer catastrophes spread across your counter.

“these aren't that bad,” you say, because you mean it and because you've seen genuinely bad— you once had a client bring in a file that was literally just a jpeg someone had screenshotted off google images, and you could tell the search was helmet png because it had the grey and white checkerboard background behind it, and asked you to screen print it without the background. this is not that. “the designs are actually good. it's just the execution.”

something shifts in his expression. “yeah?”

“screen printing will make them look completely different. it deposits the ink into the fabric instead of on top of it, so you get that—” you gesture vaguely at yourself, at the shop, at the concept of good printing in general, “— quality feel. more like actual band merch.”

“more like we didn't make it in a dorm room at 2 AM.”

“exactly.”

he grins. it's a good grin, takes up his whole face, eyes crinkling unabashedly, “okay,” he says, “tell me what i need to do.”

what he needs to do, as it turns out, is come back. a lot.

this is not unusual in itself;  screen printing isn't a one-visit process, especially for someone learning it for himself from the ground up. there's the initial consultation, then the file prep, then the film positives, then the screen burning, then the press check, and somewhere in the middle of all of that there's usually a lot of back-and-forth about colorways and fabrics and how many shirts they actually need. regular clients come in regularly. this is normal.

what is slightly less normal is that franco colapinto, merch guy for rookie '25, appears to have gotten the impression that he needs to test a new design approximately every two weeks.

you notice it somewhere around the fourth visit. you're at the light table, cleaning up for the day, when he comes in with that same overstuffed folder and the expression of a man with a mission, and he spreads three new sketches across your counter and says, “so i was thinking… what if we did a long sleeve this time, but with a different colorway? like, the same base design but we switch the ink colors?”

you look at the sketches. they're good, and it’s because they're always good, “a different colorway is basically a separate run,” you tell him, flipping through the pages, “you'd be paying per color per screen, so if you're doing two colorways of the same design you're essentially doubling your screen costs.”

he nods very seriously, “right, okay, so if we… what if we just did a sample first? just one or two shirts to see how it looks?”

“you already have samples from last time.”

“those were for a different design.”

“you have a lot of designs for a band with—” you glance up, “— what did you say, two hundred instagram followers?”

the corner of his mouth curve up, “two hundred and twelve, actually. we're growing.”

“right,” you look back at the sketches, because looking at the sketches is safer than looking at whatever is happening at the corner of his mouth. “i can do a sample run. it'll be a smaller setup fee since we've already got your base screens. send me the files and i'll work up a quote.”

“great,” he says, and you can hear the smile in it even when you're not looking, “i'll have them to you by friday.”

he does. he also leaves, on the back of the spec sheet, a small drawing of what appears to be a cartoon version of both of you at the light table, with a little speech bubble from cartoon franco that says this girl is very smart and knows everything about printing. underneath it, in different ink, as if he had scribbled it on a while later: also she should tell me if she wants coffee sometime.

you put it in the second drawer of the workbench, under a stack of order forms.

you don't throw it away.

the notes become a thing.

you don't know exactly when they become a thing, only that at some point you start leaving space in your own scribbled order notes— margin space, white space at the bottom of a spec sheet— because he always fills it in. it starts with his cartoon of the both of you at the light table and escalates, in the same way that things escalate when you're not paying careful enough attention, into something that occupies more and more of your brain at inconvenient hours.

he leaves a little sketch of a squeegee with a face on it. you draw a tiny ink well next to it with an arrow and write stop drawing on my work papers. he writes back never!!! with three exclamation points and a small star. he asks, via scrap paper, whether you prefer screen printing to digital and you write back a surprisingly long answer about the tactile quality of it, about how there's something you like about a process that's physical and a little unpredictable and leaves room for happy accidents.

the next time he comes in he looks at you over the counter with an expression you can't fully parse and says, “you wrote a lot.”

“you asked,” you say with a shrug of your shoulder.

“i did,” he agrees. and then, as though he is saying a universal truth: “i liked reading it.”

you think about that for three days.

the thing is— and you are aware this is a thing, you're not oblivious, you have eyes and a functioning nervous system— franco colapinto is very attractive and very aware that he's very attractive which should be annoying but he is so endearing in a way that is circles back to being less annoying, if that makes any sense.

he flirts with you the way some people breathe: constantly, easily, and apparently wwithout any effort. and the thing about that, the thing you keep bumping into when you turn it over in your mind at night, is that it doesn't feel like a performance. he flirts with the girl at the coffee cart across the street, sure (you've seen it, he got a free muffin out of it once) but when he leans on your counter and asks you questions about riso printing (which, you tell him, you’re learning to do despite working mostly with textiles), with his chin in his hand and his eyes on your face like there's nothing more interesting happening anywhere on earth, something about it feels different. it feels more… deliberate? if that’s the word. it’s like he's choosing it.

you're probably projecting. you are, statistically speaking, a person who has been wrong about things before.

still.

still.

INTERLUDE. elsewhere, a gig set up.

the venue is, as it has always been every first and third tuesday of the month for the past two years, at yuki's, a bar that holds one hundred people on a good night and smells like sticky floors and old cigarettes, the latter evident in the yellow-stained walls underneath the peeling wallpaper. isack is doing a soundcheck that has gone on fourteen minutes longer than necessary. ollie is tuning his guitar for what is, by her count, the fifth time, kimi tapping impatiently on his keyboard waiting for him to finish. gabriel and jack are arguing pleasantly about something involving a tambourine that no one asked for.

she is holding a clipboard and a cold brew and looking at the box of samples plopped on top of what is supposedly the merch table, and she is, quietly, losing her mind.

“franco,” she says, in the tone she has developed specifically for the moments when someone is about to hear something they won't enjoy. franco is arranging the samples by colorway, which she would find endearing if she were not doing math in her head. “how many samples do we have?”

“like, seven different runs,” he says, not looking up, “i'm still deciding on the hoodie colorway.”

“we have two hundred instagram followers.”

“two hundred and twenty-two,” he corrects, “gabi got us some new ones after his guess the song video.”

“franco. who do you think is buying all of this merch?”

he finally looks up,  “we're building inventory,” he tries, “for when we blow up.”

she stares at him. she has known franco for two and a half years and she has, in that time, developed a specific kind of patience for him that she would describe as hard won, “franco. the samples alone… how much have you spent?”

he gives her a number that makes her close her eyes, count to ten.

“that is our entire merch budget for the semester,” she says, very calmly, once she’s reached ten.

“it's an investment,” he reasons. then, because he is franco and franco cannot help himself: “and maybe you should buy a shirt or something. i noticed you've been wearing isack's hoodie for three gigs in a row, so maybe focus your energy—”

“finish that sentence,” she says, pointing a finger at him, “and i will put you in charge of social media again.”

franco closes his mouth. they both know what happened last time he was in charge of the social media.

she turns back to her clipboard, goes through the pre-show checklist they always do. she will deal with the samples later. she will also deal with whatever is happening with franco and his obsession with samples, because she has managed this band for almost three years and she is not stupid, and investment is not a word that explains seven runs of samples for a band with two hundred and twenty-two instagram followers.

the thing cracks on a thursday, which feels appropriate, somehow, since the whole thing started on a thursday and it's going to unravel on one, too. narrative symmetry, in a way.

franco comes in at the usual time, unusual in that he's carrying not just the folder but also two coffees, and he sets one on the counter in front of you with the ease of someone who has been doing this for months, which he has not, except that he's been leaving coffee? on scrap paper for months so perhaps it feels like the same thing to him. “i got you oat milk,” he says. “because you mentioned —”

“i mentioned it in a note,” you say, “two months ago.”

“i have a good memory.” he opens the folder. “okay, so i was thinking… new idea, what if we did a hoodie with a print on the sleeve instead of the chest? kind of more architectural, you know, less expected —”

“franco.” you say.

he looks up.

“how many of these are you actually going to sell?”

something in his expression does a quick, almost imperceptible thing. a flicker, there and gone, “what do you mean?”

“i mean—” you gesture at the folder, at the counter, at the general accumulated evidence of seven sample runs and three colorway tests and one inexplicable tote bag order, “you have two hundred followers. you've got samples in every fabric we carry, you've got color tests for designs,— i even printed tote bags!— and now you’re telling me you want to test out a new design. so i guess i'm asking — what are these for? like, genuinely man, what's the plan here?”

there is a pause. it's the longest pause franco colapinto has ever produced in your presence, which is saying something because he is, as a baseline, a person who reflexively fills silences. he looks at the folder. he looks at the coffee.

then, he looks at you.

“okay,” he says, slowly.

“okay?” you echo.

“don't— okay, don't make it weird.”

“i'm not making it weird, i asked a normal —”

“the tote bags were because you mentioned offhand that you'd never actually gotten to do a run of totes and you wanted to see how the registration came out on a smaller surface area.” he says it fast, like pulling off a bandage, and he continues, “the sleeve print is because you said once that you thought chest prints were overdone. the second colorway was because you said you liked— well, you said colors that shouldn't work together sometimes work together, and i wanted to see which ones you'd pick.” he stops. he looks, for the first time since you've known him, almost uncertain, “i wasn't really thinking about the followers, or the budget, i was thinking about… i just wanted to come in. and have a reason to come in. and you always know what to do with the designs so i just kept—” he picks up his coffee, puts it back down. “i know that's stupid.”

you look at him for a long moment.

“franco.”

“yeah?”

“do you know how much ink costs per liter?”

he blinks. “i — what?”

“ink.” you fold your arms, “do you know what the setup cost is for a new screen? the exposure time, the emulsion, the cleanup? every sample run we do, that's time and materials an —” you stop, because he's starting to look genuinely stricken, like a kicked puppy, which was not actually the goal here, “i'm not — i'm not mad. i'm not. i just need you to understand that this isn't a zero-cost thing, the samples. it's not like i'm doing your samples for fun.”

“i know.” he says, quietly. “i know, i should have— i wasn't thinking about that, i was only thinking about—” he makes a vague gesture that encompasses, apparently, you, “i'm sorry. genuinely. that was really inconsiderate.”

the thing is, he means it. and you can tell he means it, because it’s evident in the way his whole posture changes, losing the easy lean that's become so familiar to you, going a little more careful.

franco colapinto doing sincere is, you're learning in real time, a different frequency than franco colapinto doing charming. both of them hit you somewhere in the sternum.

“okay,” you say.

“okay?” it’s his turn now to repeat it.

“i said i wasn’t mad.”

“right.” he nods. then, after a beat: “but you're something.”

“i'm… something,” you agree, “i'm—” you stop. you pick up the coffee he brought you, the oat milk one, the one he remembered from a note you wrote two months ago. “i'm going to tell you how much each run actually costs. because if you're going to keep doing this you should know what it costs.”

he goes very still, eyes wide, “keep doing this?”

“i'm not saying go order ten more sample runs.” you warn him as you open the order book, flip to a fresh page. “i'm just saying, if you have an actual project, come in. and if you want to see how sleeve prints register, we can talk about that too. but we're going to write it down and you're going to look at the numbers.”

“you're still going to let me come in,” he says, slowly, like he's checking.

“franco.”

“sorry, sorry— yes. yes, numbers. i will look at all the numbers.” he's smiling now, and it's different from the grin he walked in with that first thursday, it’s softer, maybe. more like something he's not quite trying to perform, “can i also— just to be clear— can i still leave notes?”

you look down at the order book. you think about the second drawer of the workbench, which now contains approximately eleven pieces of scrap paper with varying degrees of cartoons and questions and one very earnest you seem like someone who is really good at most things and i would like to know what the other things are.

"yeah," you say. "you can still leave notes."

he exhales. reaches into the folder, pulls out the sleeve print sketch — the one that is, objectively, a better design than anything on the first visit, because he's been getting better, you've been watching him get better, which is its own kind of problem you haven't looked at directly yet. "okay," he says. "so. tell me about the numbers."

you tell him about the numbers. he writes some of them down on the back of the spec sheet and draws an exclamation point next to the ones that surprise him. at 5:03, thirteen minutes after the shop was supposed to close, he's still at the counter and you're still talking, and the overhead fluorescents are doing that late-evening thing where they get a little warmer, or maybe that's just the way you're choosing to see it.

“hey,” he says, eventually, when the conversation has wound down to a natural pause, “the coffee thing. the notes.”

“yeah?”

“i know i went about it in a way that was—” he makes a face — “a lot. and not very practical. and slightly expensive.”

“slightly,” you repeat, slowly, not quite believing him.

“okay… maybe very expensive. like, i put my own personal money towards it. but i meant it, the curiosity. i wasn't just coming in to waste your time—” he stops, tries again, “i wanted an excuse because i wanted to talk to you. but also i actually wanted to talk to you. does that make sense?”

it makes, unfortunately, a tremendous amount of sense.

“it makes sense.” you say.

“okay.” he gathers the folder, snaps the rubber bands back around it. “so if i asked you to get actual coffee— not a sample run, not a design excuse, just coffee— would that also make sense?”

you think about thursdays and talking to him for so long you close up forty-five minutes after you’re supposed to. you think about eleven scrap papers in a drawer. you think about a cartoon version of franco at the light table with a speech bubble saying this girl is very smart and knows everything about printing, which you still haven't thrown away and at this point probably won't.

“yeah,” you say. “that would also make sense.”

he smiles, fully. “thursday?” he asks.

“next thursday.” you say.

he leaves a sketch on the counter when he goes, and on the back of it, in the margin, is a small drawing of two coffee cups and a star.

you put it in the drawer with the rest of them.