Reality And Us

Chapter Forty Two

Nick was looking around himself, standing at the bus station waiting for Zane to arrive. They had agreed to meet up there because it was a pretty clear place to meet up, and he didn't know the way to the place they wanted to go to.

It was a pretty nice day, but it was gradually getting darker. The boy had spent time with his family earlier, that had been fun. They had watched a cool movie together - some post-apocalypse story surrounding rag dolls - and eaten cupcakes. They had talked a bit and it had been nice, plus, he had gotten quite some money this year.

Sadly he hadn't been able to convince them singing 'happy birthday' was definitely too much.

Anyway, he had packed two of the cupcakes so he could share with Zane. Because, why not?

He was quite happy waiting for his friend. It didn't concern him much that the boy was late, no, he was too busy silently humming a soft tune, grinning because he knew he'd spent time with him.

Zane was about fifteen minutes late, arriving he immediately began to apologize, "Sorry, I swear I tried to leave early, but my Mom -"

"No problem.", the younger boy answered, smiling at his friend.

Who just stood there quite confused now, because he didn't remember the boy to be that okay with people being late. But he decided not to comment on it, just in case the other would end up being bothered by his late arrival. It made him oddly satisfied to see his friend not getting mad over this.

"How was your day?", Zane asked curiously, because Nick just seemed a little too happy.

"It was nice. Watched a nice movie with my parents. Wanna start going to wherever you wanted to go?"

Zane nodded, wherever he wanted to go sounded funny. He just wanted to get some ice cream. And to do so, he started walking, and Nick followed him.

It didn't take long until they arrived at the place - it wasn't very big, but that made it cozy. The door was made out of glass with a wooden frame, the walls inside were brightly painted in intense shades of different colors, there were pillows so colorful, with patterns that made you feel as if you were in some sort of zoo, and multiple abstract paintings were hung up. It all was a little much on the eye, too many different things to look at.

It was a little too much for Nick, but still bearable, and since Zane liked it. . . Yeah, this was okay.

He followed his friend, who was walking towards a table in the back. It wasn't very easy to spot at first, mainly because there was already so much going on visually in that room, but also because something he suspected to be decoration, a few black bars going from the ground to the ceiling, was making it more difficult to see if you weren't looking directly at it.

"It's pretty here, isn't it?"

Nick raised both of his eyebrows, "It's a lot. Seriously, a lot. But I guess?"

Zane didn't answer that, just shook his head and chuckled, he had expected a response similar to this. But to him it was still pretty.

"My parents really love this place, we'd go here sometimes, mostly to celebrate when the school year was finally over.", he began telling as he sat down, "And we'd always sit here, at this table. It's nice. I used to go here with Noemi sometimes, too."

Nick watched him interested, having sat down, too, his bag now next to him. He liked hearing the other tell him about his life, about what he used to do, because that got him always so happy.

"Why don't you anymore?"

The older boy pulled a wry face, "That'd be weird. This place here kind of felt like ours when we were together, and we used to spend ages in here talking about the future and other stuff. . .", he trailed off.