Free You and Me and Him by Kris Dinnison

apologize, but then she sets her mouth in a tight little line. “Isn’t that what my friends and I are to you and Nash? Background noise? You don’t know anything more about me or my life than I do about you and yours.”
    I start pushing at the skin around my cuticles, then rip off a hangnail on my thumb. It starts to ooze blood, so I put it in my mouth and suck on it, tasting the sour tang. Kayla’s still waiting for an answer. “Okay,” I say, taking the thumb out of my mouth. “Fair enough. Things have changed for both of us since elementary school.”
    She stares into her coffee like it’s some kind of crystal ball. “But we did have some fun back then, didn’t we?”
    “We did,” I say. “At least I did.”
    “I did too. Sometimes I feel like those last couple years of grade school were as good as life gets. Before things got . . . complicated.”
    “But we’re not eleven anymore. It can’t all be about Barbies and board games.”
    “I know. But when we ended up in a couple classes this year, I remembered . . . Well, I thought maybe we could, you know, be friends. Again.” She picks at a flaw in the glaze of her cup.
    Sitting there, I remember what it was like to be Kayla’s friend, remember what it was like before things like perfect teeth and plus-size jeans mattered. She laughed at my jokes. She listened.
    “So,” I say. “Where do you see this relationship going?”
    She laughs.
    “Too soon?”
    “Too soon,” she says. “No agenda. Let’s talk, and if we bond, we’ll go from there. If there’s no bonding, we’ve at least removed a little bit of the background noise.”
    So we talk. For about an hour: the basics, what Nash would call first-date material. I’m surprised she had a horseback-riding phase in middle school, although I remember that she used to have a collection of those Breyer Horses (me too).
    She’s surprised I watch documentaries and hate strawberry ice cream (her favorite). We are still going strong when I plead homework and have to go home.
    “Thanks for this,” Kayla says, and I think she means it.
    “Thank you,” I say. “I’m a little low on female interaction in my life.”
    “Yeah, it seems like most of your friends are guys, but I wasn’t sure.”
    “Yep. Mostly guys. And I keep adding to the club.”
    “Some girls would love to be surrounded by guys all the time.” Kayla fidgets with her cup, turning it in circles. “I noticed you were getting pretty tight with Tom.”
    “I’ve only known him a little over a week, but he’s a decent addition to the Cedar Ridge universe, I think.”
    “We had fun last night,” Kayla says. “There were a bunch of us for dinner, but everyone else had homework, so it was just me and Tom for the movie.”
    That almost sounds like a real date. I don’t really want to know if Tom’s the kind of guy who would rather hang out with Kayla and her friends than Nash and me.
    “I got pretty nervous on the way home,” she says. “He’s kind of adorable.”
    “Yep, pretty cute,” I say, smiling.
    “And I thought I was good at flirting? Tom is a master.”
    “I’ve noticed he has some pretty potent skills in that area.” I think about the hike and the drive home afterward. I think about Tom’s low laugh and the electric current when he touched my hand in the car. But then I think of Nash, and I remember who I’m talking to. “I don’t mean he was flirting with me. It seems like he’s like that with everyone. He and I are just friends. Obviously.”
    “Why ‘obviously’?”
    Irritation tightens the skin around my eyes. She has to know that Tom plus Maggie does not compute.
    “That’s how it is. Me being who I am, him being who he is.”
    Kayla looks at me, waiting.
    “Well, anyway, he’s nice. And he’s new. You should get to know him better.”
    “That’s the plan,” she says.
    “Sure,” I say. “He’s going to need more friends than just Nash and me.” Did I just encourage one of the most