Would you love me less?

Buck can't pretend he doesn't know what his sister is doing. Ever since he's been old enough so that her friends wouldn't roll their eyes at his presence, she's been taking him to her friends' parties, sports events, and bowling outings. Buck secretly thinks that she does that because she doesn't like Doug's friends very much but he knows better than to mention it at the dinner table.

Ever since Ali broke up with him, she's been especially insufferable though and Buck is very much seeing a pattern there. She's even been barging into his room and asking if he's ok about twice as often as before.

And it's not like Buck can't comprehend why she'd do it because he knows he's been less cheerful these past few weeks. And ok, he gets how it's easy to think that is because he's still sad about their breakup. And at first it was.

But Maddie, with all her good intentions, had been trying to recruit his friends just as much as her own to cheer him up, and Buck thought that was great. Better his own friends than Doug's that none of them liked.

But Hen was busy with band rehearsals and her new girlfriend, Chimney had an archery tournament coming up and his scheduled pen and paper meetings and Bobby had his cooking classes and his figure skating lessons and his hockey training and... whatever else Bobby did in his free time, Buck did not pretend to be able to keep up. So that left him with Eddie who, he had to admit, he's probably been closest to out of their whole group ever since he moved to the city.

And yeah, spending so much time with Eddie made him get over Ali sooner than anticipated but it also made him fall for the boy who was quickly becoming his best friend. Which then had him facing a wholly new set of problems and he was again sad, just now for different reasons.

A crush on your best friend is not exactly something you tell your sister about, especially one that meddles enough as it is already.

So he lets Maddie think that he's still hung up on Ali. But this is way worse. Because if there's one thing Buck learned as Buck 1.0 it's that you don't hook up with your friends. And Eddie is not just any friend. He's his best friend. And Buck knows that platonic heartbreak can be just as bad as romantic and if he lost Eddie... he'd go through both. No, thank you.

No one can ever know about his crush.

"Are you going to Veronica's party on Saturday?" Eddie's taking up his fork to dig into his potatoes.

"Who's Veronica?" Chimney asks curiously.

"One of Maddie's friends." Buck looks at his own lunch scornfully. He feels Chimney moving on the canteen chair next to him, all of which stand too close for anyone to be comfortable and he knows where he's looking. "Stop ogling my sister from afar, it's weird."

Chimney turns his eyes back to their table, where Hen and Bobby are pointedly looking at him. Buck has given it up already and rests his eyes on Eddie instead, whose thoughts are very clearly somewhere else today.

"If you'd bring me to one of those parties you get invited to, I wouldn't have to do it from afar. I could do it from up close."

"Or," Buck rolls his eyes "you could just ask her out. Maybe she'd finally dump that loser Doug."

Hen lets out an amused huff. "I really don't understand if you want Chimney to date your sister or not."

"I don't" Buck moves his head to glare at her, lifting his fork to point at Chimney "but he's a better option than Doug."

"You think everyone's better than Doug," Hen points out and Buck has to signify defeat.

"Touché."

He eats a few bites before continuing: "I don't get invited anyway. Maddie just brings me along cause she thinks I'm lonely."