Free First Comes Love by Katie Kacvinsky

how hard he attempts to control it, resembles something close to shag carpeting. It’s one of his best features. I kill the engine and spring out of the car. He blinks heavily and informs me I have way too much energy this early in the morning.
    “Where are the pictures?” I demand. He looks down at his empty hands.
    “You were serious about that?” he asks. I press a stubborn hand against my hip to assure him I was.
    I push his shoulder to steer him back toward the house. I follow him downstairs and he turns the hallway corner and flips on his bedroom light. He tells me after Amanda died, he packed away every photo he had of her and shoved them in his closet, where they’ve yet to be touched. He opens his closet and searches deep in the back for his box of memorabilia.
    I look around his room. It smells clean, as if it’s recently been vacuumed. His bed’s in the corner and a dark blue comforter is kicked to the side. The pillows are tossed in disarray, and the sheets are untucked and balled up like he’s a restless sleeper, or maybe he doesn’t sleep at all. A few clothes litter the carpet. There are two guitars in one corner with stacks of CDs piled around them. A few sports jerseys and concert posters are tacked on the walls.
    His bookshelf catches my eye because it isn’t crammed with books—it’s cluttered with rows of trophies, plaques, and medals. Gray walks over to me with a tinge of embarrassment.
    “It’s like my own personal shrine,” he admits. We look at the shiny gold figurines perched on top of miniature wood and marble columns. Tiny heroes. Golden moments. There has to be a hundred of them. I read some of the awards, a few for MVP, some for batting, but most of them are for pitching.
    “I didn’t realize it meant so much to you,” I say.
    “Maybe it’s time to pack them up,” he says, his voice hard. “I need to move on from high school.”
    I know there’s more to it than that. They’re memories of his best times, his glory years. They’re also a reminder of the dreams he’s giving up.
    “They don’t make trophies for the right reasons,” I say. I tell him they should award people for owning the greatest sock collection, or giving the best hugs, or being the nicest guy. Gray frowns and informs me no guy would ever want to win an award for being nice.
    He sets a brown shoe box down on the bed and I pull off the lid. I wince at the picture sitting on top. It’s a black-and-white headshot of Amanda, with a piece of yarn threaded through a hole punched at the top. He tells me his cousins wore her picture around their neck at her funeral. Amanda looks a lot like Gray, same dark hair, but hers was straight and long. Same wide, entrancing smile.
    It’s hard for me to look at her eyes. There’s so much life inside them. I pick up a second picture of Amanda with a piece of yarn threaded through it and hand it to Gray.
    “These are perfect,” I say, and pull the yarn over my head. He stares down at the picture and his eyes fog over for a second. I place a photo around his neck before he can argue, and he sighs like he can’t believe he’s going through with this. He grabs an envelope of pictures from the box and I take his free hand.
    ***
    We begin the journey at Tommy’s Café
and order their famous biscuits and gravy. We each offer Amanda a bite. Neither of us is a huge coffee drinker, but Amanda was, so in her honor we both slam two cups of liquid crack. Gray’s so jittery, he can’t stop his feet from tapping, and I attempt to play the drum solo of “Wipeout” on the table with my silverware until the waitstaff’s annoyed stares give us the hint that we’re completely obnoxious.
    I sit in the booth next to Gray and he walks me through every photo. He shows me pictures from Christmas, when they used to have huge family get-togethers and everyone had to write and perform an original play. He shows me the picture of the winning year—when he, Amanda, and their two cousins