Page 54 of Heartbeat

“I gotta go. I have practice,” Ethan said. “It was nice meeting you though.”

“You too, Ethan.”

“So, Thomas? Seven o’clock?” Ethan turned to me.

“Seven,” I repeated, nodding and earning an attempted wink.

I watched as he walked away.

“You’re swimming again?” Jonas asked, sounding insulted.

“What? No!” I assured him. “He’s just a friend.”

“I see.”

I shook my head, trying to unscramble all these thoughts to have some sort of conversation. It made no sense to me, seeing Jonas at Grant. It seemed so foreign for some odd reason.

“Jonas, what are you—”

“—doing here? Well, I think it’s pretty obvious. I’m ambushing you.”

“I—”

“Summer mentioned how she saw you at The Den last week. She said you seemed fine,” he added, air-quoting the last word.

“Y-yeah, we bumped—”

“I told her she was mistaken,” he interrupted me again. “I mean, she had to be. I said, ‘Summer, you’re nuts. He can’t be fine. If he were fine, I’d know. He’d tell me. I am his best friend, after all.’”

“Jonas—”

“But she said that’s how you looked, so I just had to see for myself, I suppose.” He tilted his head and gave me the once-over suspiciously. “She was right.” He looked somewhat annoyed.

“Listen—”

“I don’t know what I thought I’d find, but this?” he said, raising his voice.

He was really very fucking annoyed.

“I mean, I get here, and you’re chatting with some swimmer dude, looking all happy and answering to ‘Thomas’ now?” He was moving on to angry rather fast. “What the fuck, Tommy?!”

“Jonas—”

This time, it wasn’t Jonas who interrupted me.

“Thomas, can I talk to you for a sec?”

“Not now, Dean,” I said, possibly a bit angry myself.

“Sure,” he said awkwardly, and as he walked away, “No problem.”

Or maybe it was the fact that Jonas looked like he could take him that had scared him off; I didn’t really care.

“Another friend?”

“He’s my bully, sort of.”

“What?” He was fuming now.

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