The Sunshine Boy and the Weaver King

Chapter Three

Anthony's only friend at Campton was a guy named Ryan. He wasn't sure exactly what part of Northeast America he was from, but he knew it was somewhere up there. Ryan had told him when he'd first met him at Orientation, but Anthony had forgotten ten minutes later and been too embarrassed to ask again. It was the same thing with his last name, only Anthony had social media for that.

Ryan was the kind of person that said his opinion loudly and without remorse, often followed by flipping off whoever disagreed with him. He liked very few people, and the few people he did like, he acted like a bodyguard for.

Anthony had asked Ryan why he wanted to be his friend, since they were completely different majors and had opposite MBTI types and were incompatible in probably every way at first glance, and Ryan's response was that, when he first saw Anthony at Orientation, he looked so lost and scared that it reminded him of a stray kitten he'd saved when he was little, and it tugged on his heartstrings.

Anthony was too grateful for Ryan's friendship to feel insulted.

Ryan was six foot four, lean, and startlingly handsome in an all-American way. Anyone who looked at him half fell in love, but it didn't bother Anthony because that meant he was practically invisible, just how he liked.

It was happening again at that moment. Ryan was halfway through telling Anthony a story that he swore up and down he'd told Anthony last week but Anthony had forgotten. Ryan had glared at him, smacked his shoulder in mock anger, and started from the beginning.

"— and when I came down the hill," Ryan said, using his arms to illustrate the angle of the hill and where he had been on it, "I did this awesome trick, I mean, you really had to be there—"

A girl sitting two tables away at the deli was staring at Ryan with a dreamy look on her face. Her elbow rested on the table and her hand cupped her chin as she watched and sipped her iced coffee.

"Ryan," Anthony said suddenly.

His friend blinked, lowering his arms. "Yeah?"

"Do you ever think that you owe yourself some things," Anthony said, looking across the table at him.

Ryan was one of the only people he could hold eye contact with for more than three seconds at a time. Maddox was the second, and Anthony's history professor was the third, because he made a lot of puns and didn't take himself seriously.

"Like what?" Ryan asked.

"Like, I don't know," Anthony mumbled, three seconds spent, and looked down at the table to scratch at the leftovers of an old sticker. "Like a life outside of... school and... and stuff."

"Tones, bud," Ryan said, "of course you owe yourself that. Everyone's gotta live their life the way they want to, and I don't know a single goddamn person who dreams of school."

"There's probably someone," Anthony said. "Statistically speaking."

"Well, they're a fucking nerd," Ryan said knowledgeably.

Anthony scratched at the sticker some more. "What do you want to do? With the rest of your life?"

"Dunno." Ryan shrugged. "What about you?"

"I don't know." Anthony frowned. "I used to think that Campton would be enough. I'd graduate and get a job and go for runs at a park both active enough to not be creepy and isolated enough that I wouldn't have to talk to anyone—"

"Tones," Ryan said, in the tone that he was severely disappointed, "what the fuck. You're eighteen. You're not middle-aged with a balding spot and bad knees, okay? You're young and vaguely athletic and you need to get out there."