"The perfect novel to snuggle up with.” —Emily Henry, New York Times bestselling author of Beach Read
No one ever said love
would be easy…but did they mention it would be freezing?
Adam Stillwater is in over his head. At least,
that’s what his best friend would say. And his mom. And the guy who runs the
hardware store down the street. But this pinball arcade is the only piece of
his dad that Adam has left, and he’s determined to protect it from
Philadelphia’s newest tech mogul, who wants to turn it into another one of his
cold, lifeless gaming cafés.
Whitney Mitchell doesn’t know how she got here.
Her parents split up. Her boyfriend dumped her. Her friends seem to have
changed overnight. And now she’s spending her senior year running social media
for her dad’s chain of super successful gaming cafés—which mostly consists of
trading insults with that decrepit old pinball arcade across town.
But when a huge snowstorm hits, Adam and Whitney
suddenly find themselves trapped inside the arcade. Cut off from their
families, their worlds, and their responsibilities, the tension between them
seems to melt away, leaving something else in its place. But what happens when
the storm stops?
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CHAPTER 1
Adam
“The playfield is truly the heart of every pinball machine.
All of the player’s goals are right there, splayed out in front of them. And
like life, it’s up to you to find a way to reach them, with the tools you’re
presented. In this case, it’s a ball.”—THE ART AND ZEN OF PINBALL REPAIR BY
JAMES WATTS
The sound of collective screaming and a massive crash shake
my entire workshop, and I almost stab myself with a piping-hot soldering iron.
“Adam!” my mom yells from inside the arcade. If another pack
of junior high kids from the nearby Hillman Academy “accidentally” flip over a
machine trying to get it to tilt, I am going to lose it. I grip the iron, the
cracked brown leather wrapped around the metal handle squeaking a little
against my skin, and shake my head, trying to refocus. Maybe I can finish this
before it’s time to pick up that custom piece—
And another crash rattles the walls. A few parts tumble off
my shelves, tiny intricate pieces of metal and glass, bits of copper wire, all
clinking against my table.
I attempt to catch a few of the electronic pieces, trying
not to burn myself with the iron in my other hand, and then a hammer falls off
the perforated wall of tools in front of me. It collides with a small cardboard
box full of pinball playfield lightbulbs, and I wince at the small crack and
pop sounds.
“Goddammit,” I grumble out. I toss the soldering iron aside
and try to clean up the mess. At least those lightbulbs are like, ten bucks a
dozen on arcade wholesale websites. But pinball machines have a lot of lights.
“Adam!” This time it’s Chris. “Dude, where are you?”
I’m about to bolt from the workshop when I remember Mom is
out there. I reach for the latest read I promised her I’d finish—We Built This
Gritty by Kevin Michaels, a book on launching small businesses by an
entrepreneur here in Philly that one of her colleagues is teaching at the
county college—and immediately yank my hand back. The soldering iron had gone
right in between the pages when I tossed it, and the book is already smoking. I
pull the iron out and set it aside and flap the book around wildly, little wisps
pooling up from inside the bright orange book. I flip it open.
It’s burnt right down the middle. Great. Something tells me
she won’t be able to trade this back in at the campus store.
I glance over at The Beast and give the forever-in-progress
Philadelphia-themed home-brewed pinball machine a pat, the glass still off the
surface, wires and various parts splayed out over the playfield. My well-worn
copy of The Art and Zen of Pinball Repair by James Watts sits smack in the
middle of everything. I’ve still got a way to go before I can try playing Dad’s
unfinished machine again, but if anyone is gonna get me there, it’s Watts. If I
could just get a free chunk of time in between the studying and the arcade and
the—
An array of swears echoes from inside the arcade, snapping
me back.
Right. Chris. Mom. Chaos. Potentially broken and nearly
irreplaceable machines worth thousands of dollars.
I unplug the soldering iron and place it in its little
stand, like a quill pen in an inkwell. I wedge the now-toasty book under my arm
and take a few steps to pick up some speed, to get a little force, and I push
my shoulder against the dark red wooden workshop door. I push, gritting my
teeth. The splintering surface presses into my arm, stinging with the pressure,
until finally, the wood squeals against the frame, shrunken in and wedged
together due to the sharp Philadelphia winter.
The whole workshop is like that, really, casting a major
contrast to the polished, well-kept-despite-its-years pinball arcade. The
cracked workshop table that is way more rickety than it has any right to be,
tools showing their age with hinges that refuse to move and metal pieces
falling off shrinking wood and weak plastic handles, vintage pinball parts that
maybe still work, a concrete floor with a surface that’s chipping away,
revealing dirt and dust, lightbulbs I don’t even remotely trust. My sad excuse
for a drafting table sits off to the end of the workshop, and I’ve never really
used it, preferring to fuss with plans right on the messy workshop table, next
to all of Dad’s scribbles.
We could clean it up, have this room match the rest of the
arcade. But I love it. It reminds me of him.
The door swings open suddenly and hits the wall inside the
arcade with a loud bang.
And it is absolute chaos here.
A bunch of little kids are rushing outside, and I see a
couple of adults gathering coats and their small children, who are likely about
to join the exodus. The afternoon light that’s pouring in from the wide-open
front door and the large plate-glass windows lining the wall make me wince. The
glare hurts only slightly less than the idea of customers hustling out of here
on a Saturday, easily our best, and only, solid day during the wintertime
off-season. Especially now, at the end of the year, with so few days left
before we close for the New Year holiday.
People don’t come to pinball arcades in the winter. Well.
Maybe they do, but not when your arcade is located near all the tourist stuff
in Old City, all the college students are away on break, and you don’t serve
any alcohol. No tourists, no college kids, no booze, no pinball. It’s a
neighborhood for expensive restaurants and niche boutiques, old-timey candy
shops and artisan pour-over coffee. Not an arcade with a poor excuse for a
snack bar inside that mostly serves soda, chips, and reheated chicken tenders
and fries.
If it wasn’t for the upcoming Old City Winter Festival, I’m
not sure we’d be able to keep the lights on come January. And there’s a
businessman out in West Philadelphia who would very much like to see that
happen, and there’s no way I’m going to let him do that. I’ve eaten way too
many burnt chicken tenders that were “well, these are still kinda good, Adam”
according to my mom, but not good enough for the customers. I’ve paid my dues.
“Mom!” I shout, looking to the back of the arcade. “Chris,
what is—”
But then I see it.
On the other side of the arcade, my mom has her hands on her
hips and is glaring intently at a handful of college guys who are sheepishly
milling about near one of the windows. And Chris is trying to lift up a machine
that’s currently knocked over, the glass that would normally be covering the
playfield shattered across the floor. Another machine is tilted, leaning
against a support beam, and looks okay from here. But judging by the angle and
the amount of force it would have taken to get it off the legs in the first
place, I’m betting we’re going to have some dents on the light box (the back of
the machine that juts up over the area where you actually play, and displays
the score and art).
“What the hell?” I snap, kicking the workshop door closed
and storming across the arcade. My thick black boots squeak loud against the
worn, polished hardwood floor, all the imperfections of the ancient
Philadelphia wooden boards permanently glossed in place. A few more guys, these
ones my age, weave around me, fiddling on their phones and oblivious. Bits of
glass crunch under my feet, and I glance down at a bumper, red and black and
looking like one of those crushed lantern fly bugs that litter the city
sidewalks.
“What happened?” I ask, tossing my burnt book onto the
floor. I nudge the tilted machine upright and then bend down to help Chris, who
is straining to move the machine on the floor. I manage to wedge my fingers
under the side, carefully tapping the metal, trying to avoid any extra glass,
and lift. Chris lets out a groan and I grit my teeth as we push the machine
upright, and it nearly topples back over the other way, but Mom reaches out and
stops it.
“They happened.” Mom nods back at the guys who are standing
about awkwardly. “Any updates there?” She points at one of them, and that’s
when I realize they’re all sort of keeping an eye on one vaguely
familiar-looking dude in the middle, who is fussing with his phone.
“Just a second,” he grumbles out, and he flicks his head to
the side, his emo black bangs moving out of his eyes. I can’t help but squint
at him, trying to place his face. Half his head is shaved, and he has this sort
of Fall Out Boy look that would be cool, if he and his pals hadn’t clearly
destroyed a pinball machine in my family’s arcade. A splash of anxiety hits me
in the chest as I realize I don’t know what game has been totaled, and I turn
to look at the machine.
Flash Gordon.
I exhale, relieved that it’s not one of the more popular or
rare games in the arcade. But still, it’s a machine from the ’80s. One of the
first games in the industry to use the popular Squawk & Talk soundboard, a
piece of technology that is wildly expensive to replace, since it isn’t made
anymore. That’s the sort of pinball trivia both Chris and my mom tend to shush
when I start rambling too much, telling me “that should be a tweet,” which
translates to “shut up” in the nicest way possible. I’m almost positive that’s
the reason they pushed me to get the arcade on social media—to have a place to
share those musings.
The machine didn’t deserve this, even if that awful movie
maybe did.
I run my hand along the side of the other machine that was
just bumped into, leaning on one of the wooden beams that are scattered
throughout the arcade, you know, holding the building up. It’s the Terminator
2: Judgment Day machine, and thankfully, it looks undamaged. A little dented
along the light box, as I suspected, but the glass and everything else seems fine.
It’s a popular one with the Millennial crowd, and I’m relieved.
“How much is it going to cost to fix?” the familiar guy with
the hair asks. He must catch me staring at him, ’cause his eyes flit over to
mine, irritated, and I look away, focusing back on the machine.
I pluck at some of the glass on the surface, nudging around
some of the broken obstacles on the playfield, and feel a sharp sting in my
hand. I quickly pull away and spot a thin line of red trailing along my palm.
“Adam?”
I glance up, and my mom, Chris, and Emo Hair are all staring
at me expectantly.
“What?” I ask, focusing back down at the machine and then
back at all of them.
“The cost,” my mom presses. “That machine. How much do you
think it’ll cost to fix all of this?” She gestures at the floor and shakes her
head, her mouth a thin line. All that brewing frustration that she’s trying to
bury down. Kids mess with the machines often, and we’ve certainly had a few
hiccups like this before, but I’ve never seen her looking this wildly angry. I didn’t
even think she liked that machine.
“Oh.” I swallow and clear my throat. “I don’t know. It
depends on how bad the damage is?” I scan the playfield and then the side of
the machine, which has a sizable dent in the steel that I can probably hammer
out. But the shattered glass, the pieces, and who knows what’s going on inside
it. I think back to Watts’s The Art and Zen of Pinball Repair, my holy tome,
written by my hero.
“If you think it’s broken, it is. And if you think it’s
going to be cheap to replace, it’s not.”
I stare at the broken glass.
“You know what, how’s a thousand dollars?” the familiar guy
holding the phone asks. He looks around at his dude friends, their faces awash
in expressions that are essentially shrugs, each nodding at him. “Everyone Venmo
me two hundred after this or I’ll kick your asses.”
Some of the guys laugh while the rest break out their
phones.
“Why?” scoffs one of them. “You’re the one with the money.”
Emo Hair snorts out a laugh and shakes his head, and glances
back up from his screen. The fact that all of them are so relaxed about that
much money irks me. The arcade is barely scraping by these days, and it’s no
wonder other businesses have been sniffing around the building this year,
leaving painfully awkward notes and emails for Mom. I’ve seen a few of them,
here and there. The worst ones come under the guise of pretending to be
supportive. Do you need anything? We’re here for you. Just checking in. And
then in the same breath, bringing up property values and plummeting interest in
arcades.
And despite frequent requests to stop mailing us, a local
real estate developer loves sending us physical mail about the benefits of
selling real estate in Old City now, and they’re always addressed to Dad.
Assholes.
“What’s your Venmo?” he asks, looking at my mom and then at
me. My mom and I exchange a look. He huffs. “How about PayPal? Apple Pay?”
“I mean…we could take a check?” My mom shrugs, wincing. One
of the bros groans like this has somehow physically wounded him, and before I
can say anything, my mom snaps a finger at the guy. “Hey, you five are the ones
who broke this machine. If I want you to go get that thousand dollars in a
burlap sack full of coins at the bank down the road, you’ll get it.”
“Sorry, ma’am,” one of them mutters.
“Just Venmo it to me,” Chris says, pulling out his phone.
“I’ll hit the bank when I run out to pick up sidewalk salt for the snow, and
get it taken care of, Mrs. Stillwater.” He glances at my mom and shakes his
head at me. I know that look. He’s about to force another freaking app on me,
and I don’t think I’ll be able to talk about pinball on Venmo. It was bad
enough when he tricked me into joining Pinterest, convincing me it was a
pinball thing.
He steps over to the pack of guys, and they’re all looking
at one another and their phones and his, and I really shouldn’t be surprised
that he knows how to handle this. Him and his apps. I wish he’d just run the
social media for the arcade, but he says it wouldn’t sound “genuine” or
something. If typos make someone sound genuine, I am very genuine.
A year behind me at Central, a junior, Chris has this whole
Adam Driver look about him. Same sharp cheekbones and bits of facial hair, only
a little shorter and with thin square glasses, and as geeky as you can get
without actually being in a Star Wars movie. My best friend since I was eight,
and our only employee in the off-season, as everyone is either a college
student heading home for the break or a fellow local high schooler who has no
interest in working over the winter.
He nods at the guys, looking at his phone.
“All right, I got it,” he says and then turns to us. The
bros stand there for a beat.
“You can leave,” my mom snaps and points toward the door.
“Right, right,” the familiar guy says and gestures for the
rest of his pack to follow. They amble out of the shop, their feet crunching
the glass on the floor in a way that makes me feel like it’s on purpose. I take
a step forward, but Chris reaches his arm out, his hand pressing against my
chest.
I glance up at him, and he just shakes his head.
I huff and bend down to sift through the glass and pieces of
machine, while my mom disappears into the back office. There are some bumpers
on the ground, and a few small white flags, little targets meant to be knocked
down for bonus plays, are scattered about like baby teeth. The glass, though,
that really bothers me. A good sheet of playfield glass can go for a little
over a hundred dollars, and while I know that’s not technically a lot of money
in the grand scheme of things…we don’t have that much to spare these days.
Jorge over at NextFab, the makerspace that Chris practically
lives in when he isn’t here, has been great at helping me replace some parts,
as well as teaching me how to build some of my own, which is way more helpful
than YouTube tutorials. But a whole sheet of glass? Bumpers with intricate
circuitry and copper coils? That’s not something easily 3D printed, especially
when he keeps doing it for free. And I don’t know how much of that I can manage
in my workshop. Or afford, for that matter.
I look around the dirty playfield for the remaining flags
but…dammit, they are nowhere to be found. At least the back glass, the lit-up
artwork on the back of the machine, isn’t damaged. Flash is still there,
looking dead ahead at me, alongside Dale and the…ugh, wildly racist Ming the
Merciless.
Hmm.
Maybe the machine did deserve this.
Chris squats down next to me.
“Want me to grab the broom?” he asks, picking at a broken
bumper.
I look back to my hand. The line in my palm is ugly but
clean. I flex my hand a little, and the cut widens, and I see just how far up
and down my hand it goes. I wonder if I’ll need stitches or if it’ll scar.
“Sure.” I clear my throat and both of us stand up. I glance
toward the arcade’s exit, the place now empty, as Chris walks over to the snack
bar. “Must be nice,” I say, “being able to drop that much money without
thinking about it.”
“Yeah, well, not like his dad isn’t good for it.”
“His dad?” I ask, peering over. Chris is behind the bar,
some paper towels already scattered out in front of him, a broom in one hand.
Heat lamps keeping fries and onion rings warm tint his face a reddish orange
for a moment before he ducks back out.
“Well, yeah?” He shrugs, walking over. He places the paper
towels in my hands and nods at the cut. “Apply pressure.” He starts sweeping,
moving bits of glass and broken parts into a small pile. “I swear, one more
incident like this, and that is what’s gonna make me finally try to get a job
at the makerspace. Or a coffee shop…” He looks up at me as I stare at him.
“What? You know I can’t work in here forever, bro.”
“What do you mean what? I know that part.” I laugh. “Who is
his dad? You’re just gonna leave the story hanging there?”
He nearly drops the broom but reaches out to grab the
handle.
“Are you serious?” he scoffs. I shrug and he shakes his
head. “Adam, that was Nick. That’s why I thought you were so mad, looking like
you were about to charge after him and his goons.” I shrug again. “Jesus, Adam.
Nick Mitchell.”
The stress on that last name.
Mitchell.
It sends a shock through my entire system, and I turn to
look at the exit, as though he and his friends might still be there. I tighten
my hand into a fist, and the pain from the cut sears through my palm, lighting
me up through my forearm. And I swear, for a moment I can feel it in my head,
bouncing around like a pinball against bumpers.
Nick Mitchell.
Whitney Mitchell’s brother.
And also the oldest son of the man trying to buy my father’s
arcade from my mother, with plans to make it into another one of his eSports
cafés. He’s been poking around all year, like a vulture circling over something
that might just die any minute. But this place still has a little life in it. A
little fight in it.
And dammit, so do I.
Did he even recognize me? Did he know this was our arcade?
Back when me and Whitney were supposedly friends, before high school changed
everything, I don’t think I ever saw him come around. But I saw him all the
time at school and before her dad’s career took off, when we’d play at
Whitney’s old house in South Philly. And when we were kids, everyone had their
birthday parties here at the pinball arcade. With so many mutual friends and
the like, he had to have been in here at some point. Until they forgot about
us, like the entire building was just one giant toy that fell behind a dresser.
“All right, well, I can tell you know who he is now,” Chris
says, walking back toward the snack bar. He grabs some more paper towels and
thrusts them at me, nodding at my hand. I look down, and the paper wad is an
awful dark red, soaked through from my rage. “Go take a seat. I’m gonna get the
first-aid kit out of your workshop.”
“What about Flash Gordon?” I ask, glancing back at the
messed-up machine.
“It’s a problematic racist relic. Who cares? Come on.” He
laughs, reaching out and grabbing my shoulder. “Besides, if you want some
replacement bits, I’m heading to the makerspace tomorrow—we can rummage for
parts. Go grab a seat.” He nods at the snack bar and walks off. I turn around
and pull my phone out, snapping photos of the broken pinball machine. The
scratched-up metal exterior, the dented places around the playfield. I bend
down and snap pictures of some of the crunched glass still on the floor, the
broken parts scattered in a neat pile thanks to Chris. I even take a few photos
of the dented Terminator 2: Judgment Day machine.
I stroll over to the arcade’s snack spot, Dad’s last great
idea for the place, and sit down. The chairs aren’t exactly the pinnacle of
comfort, and the hard wood digs into my back, but it’s what my family could
afford when we first put this spot in here. It’s still passably cozy enough
that local writers will drop in to play a few games, drink our bad coffee or
nurse a soda, and spend the day staring at a blank screen while scrolling
through Twitter instead of writing.
I sigh and glance up at the wooden shelving that looms over
the café corner, a shabby-chic display that Chris’s parents helped build. Tons
of Mason jars, full of coffee beans and loose-leaf tea, illuminated by strings
of white Christmas twinkle lights, sit on nearly every shelf. Decor meant for
hip college students and artsy creatives in West Philly, pulled from a
Pinterest board someplace and made real. I think it looks pretty, but if Gordon
Ramsay made an episode about our arcade’s little food corner, it would just be
a twenty-eight-minute scream.
Chris walks around the side, a little first-aid kit in hand,
and gestures for me to give him my hand. I hold it out and he glances back at
the Flash Gordon machine.
“Real shame,” he says, wistfully looking at the shattered
game.
“Yeah.” I nod. “I took a bunch of photos to post—”
Pssssssst!
There’s the sound of spraying, and I scream, yanking my hand
away. I glare at him, and he’s sporting the widest grin I’ve ever seen, a
bottle of spray-on rubbing alcohol in his hand.
“Argh!” I groan. “Why!”
“Kidding, fuck that game.” He laughs.
“You could have told me you were going to do that!” I shout.
He tilts his head a little at me. “Fine, you’re right—I would have made a scene
over it.”
“Everything okay?” Mom’s in the doorway to the office,
peeking out.
“Yeah, Mrs. Stillwater,” Chris says.
My mom scowls at the two of us before breaking into a little
smile, but that expression disappears as her line of sight moves toward the
broken pinball machine. She closes the door, and I look back at the exit to the
arcade again. I feel like with every setback this place has had this year, it
gets us one step closer to my mom putting the pinball machines in storage for
good and selling the place to Mr. Mitchell. And two damaged machines, one of
which is basically destroyed, isn’t going to help.
“And I’m gonna need you to stop it,” Chris says, reaching
out and grabbing my hand, slapping a large Band-Aid on my palm. I wince and
suck air through my teeth, and he just gives me a look. He pulls out some of
that gauze-wrap stuff and starts to bandage up the big Band-Aid, keeping it
pressed to my palm. “That guy isn’t worth it, that machine isn’t worth it, and
that family definitely isn’t worth getting all riled up over.”
“He had to have known this was my place,” I grumble.
“Whitney probably sent him here. If not her, then definitely her father.”
“Oh, come on,” Chris scoffs. “I’m not her biggest fan
either, and I know you two don’t get along, but she isn’t some nefarious
supervillain. And her dad isn’t going to send henchmen here. When was the last
time you and her even talked, outside of snarky social media posts? You like
pinball, she likes playing Fortnite and Overwatch. Not exactly a blood feud.”
“I’m not even sure she’s into the video games at her dad’s
places or whatever,” I grumble. At least, she wasn’t into video games when we
were kids, always so irritated when we’d retreat inside to get in games of
Halo. “Besides, you don’t understand.” I shake my head, trying to chase away
the memories of that summer before high school and those first days wandering
the halls at Central. Her and her new friends, leaning against their lockers,
matching jean jackets and bright lip gloss. She was like an entirely new
person, and the way she laughed with them when I walked over to say hi…
“Anyway.” I clear my throat. “I wouldn’t put it past her.”
“You need to spend more time worrying about the people who
are there for you and less about those who aren’t,” he says, fastening the
gauze together with two little metal clips. “Maybe go on a date with someone or
something.”
“How do you even know how to do this?” I lift my hand up,
flexing my fingers, ignoring the dating question. “There’s no time for that,
between the arcade and school. If I kiss a girl by the end of my senior year,
it’ll be a miracle.”
“Please, my dads are carpenters and you know how I spend my
free time,” he says. “It’s best to be prepared in case someone loses a finger
at home or in the shop or at the makerspace.”
I laugh and again find myself looking toward the door. I let
out a long exhale through my nose.
“You think we’re going to get anyone else in here today?”
Chris asks. “It’s just, you know, maybe I could duck out early to go work on
stuff?” There’s this beat of silence that doesn’t need to be filled, and I
sigh.
“I think we both know the answer there, right?” With the
snowstorm we all know is coming, the brutally cold gusts of wind, and the fact
that business slows to a crawl right before the Old City Winter Festival,
there’s not much to even say.
I lean back in my chair a little, the sharp pain of the wood
digging into my back weirdly comforting, distracting me from my hand and
thoughts of Nick and Whitney and that whole terrible family.
“Do you need to talk?” Chris asks, and I glance back at him.
“I mean, I can hang a bit longer if you need me.” He digs around in his pocket
and pulls out a little candy bag and waves it at me, the plastic crinkling.
Swedish Fish. Not the regular kind either; the tropical sort, with orange,
pink, purple, and off-white fish in the mix. He shakes it until one drops out
onto his hand, and he holds it up between his fingers. “I grabbed a bag at the
CVS before I came over here, for my dads. Didn’t realize we’d have to use it,
though.”
“Oh, God, no,” I whine. “If you’re gonna do that to me, just
leave.”
Whenever Chris’s parents want to talk about “big feelings,”
they break out these Swedish Fish candies. Have something important to say? Out
comes the candy. It’s usually something critical that might make someone feel
upset, but it’s the way you’re feeling, so it’s good to get it all out. Then
pair it with something that makes you feel good while you’re hearing something
that might make you feel bad.
It was a tradition Chris first told me about when we were
really little, and one that’s been ongoing. I’m not quite sure why Swedish Fish
are the candy of choice, but I’m guessing it’s because you can buy them in bulk
at the South Philadelphia IKEA. He’s since introduced it to me and all our
friends. Tell someone how you feel, let them eat the candy, and take in all
those thoughts and emotions. Or, give someone the opportunity to say how
they’re feeling, and take it all in. Simple enough. And while we don’t practice
it at home, my mom often likes to say, “Do you need a fish?” when she thinks I
have something I need to talk about.
I hate it so much.
“I hate this so much,” I grumble and pluck the fish from
between his fingers.
“Listen,” he says, reaching out and closing my good hand
around the candy. “You’re upset. You’re thinking about Whitney and the
Mitchells. Nick and the boys. Both of those sound like terrible West
Philadelphia indie rock bands. And you’re thinking about maybe going on Twitter
and saying something snippy on social media. That what those pictures are for?
Yeah?”
“N-no.” I barely stammer the word out. “It’s for…insurance.”
He gives me a look.
“You’re the worst.” I glower at him.
“Nothing good ever comes out of these little fights you have
with Whitney online.” He presses, pointing at me. “All you do is get all the
stores in the neighborhood riled up, dunking on one another. As if you get
points for dunking on people online.”
“You’re the one who taught me how to use social media.”
“Don’t give me the whole ‘I learned it from watching you’
thing. Resist the urge to go online. It’s a waste of your energy,” he says,
nodding at me. “Save your online presence for posting your pinball puns and
facts. Now, eat your candy.”
“No.” I glare at him.
“Fine, fine.” He smiles, shaking his head, and pulls out his
phone. “I’m gonna head off to NextFab. You behave.”
“Ugh, can’t you just work on your weird woodworking coffee
things in the workshop?” I groan and gesture toward the red door on the other
side of the arcade. “Then you could just be here all the time.”
He laughs and then sighs. “What are you going to do here
without me?” he asks.
“Hmph,” I huff. “Probably have a meltdown on the regular.”
He reaches over and taps the screen of my phone, and my eyes
flit up to him. “Don’t do it, and you’ll be fine,” he says and then bends over
to grab his backpack. It’s this beaten-up leather thing that looks straight out
of an old movie. I half expect to see it filled with vintage books tied
together in beige string, but I know it’s just full of woodworking tools, and
depending on the day, some glassblowing stuff. It’s not lost on me that my best
friend spends all his time creating beautiful new things out of nothing, while
I stress over repairing machines older than I am every single day.
He walks out of the snack bar and toward the door but stops
and turns around.
“And hey, if you need to talk—” he throws something, and I
reach out to catch whatever it is that is flapping its way toward me; the
plastic bag of Swedish Fish makes a loud crinkling sound as I grab it out of
the air “—text me. But I’m gonna want pictures of you eating your candy. It’s
important that you trust the process.”
He’s out the front door, and I’m alone in the arcade with
his candy and my phone.
Excerpted from You Can Go Your Own Way by Eric Smith, © 2021 by Eric Smith, used with permission from Inkyard Press/HarperCollins.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
ERIC SMITH is an author and literary agent from
Elizabeth, New Jersey. When he isn't working on other people's books, sometimes
he tries to write his own. He enjoys pop-punk, video games, and crying during
every movie. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife and best friend, Nena, and
their son, Langston. WWW.ERICSMITHROCKS.COM
Social Links:
Website | Twitter | Instagram | Goodreads
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