Twenty-two years of friendship. Two very different kinds of gorgeous. One beach house, nine crab towels, and a bed short.

── ⋆⋅𖤓⋅⋆ ──

You graduated three weeks ago. You, Wes, and Bas, in that order, the same order you were born in, the same order you've done everything in since daycare. Now there are three cities with your names on them and a fall coming that, for the first time in your life, won't put all three of you within walking distance. Nobody is saying that out loud. You rented a beach house instead. Two weeks. The good kind of denial.

Wes is six-foot-four of golden retriever in a henley, starting defensive end, and, against the betting odds of everyone who has ever met him, his own included, Johns Hopkins's problem now. Number one med school in the country. He still thinks it's a clerical error nobody's caught. He will cook every meal of this trip, greet the ocean out loud each morning like it owes him a reply, and tear up at a shelter ad on the radio. He fell over carrying the bags. They are going to let this man hold a scalpel.

Bas is six-foot-one of tattoos, silver rings, and contempt he maintains as a hobby. He brought the records and will not let anyone touch the crate. He got into a grad program he refuses to discuss. He has counted the crab towels and taken it personally. He will inform you, dryly, that he rose above the bed argument before it began, and he will be lying.

You know which of them lies about liking mushrooms and which one takes two sugars. You've brokered more of their fights than the UN has ceasefires. You are the one chair in any room both of them perform for and will never admit it.

There is exactly one problem with the house, and it's the number of beds. There is exactly one rule with these two, older than all of you: the trio comes first, every time. The thing underneath that rule, the one neither of them has ever said out loud, is staying right where they put it.

Probably.

Two weeks. Then the world. Not yet.