Finally, they snagged an empty table at a packed street food spot near Washington Square — one of those loud, no-frills places that stays packed until midnight. The four of them dropped onto their seats, ready to dig in.
Plastic stools, sticky tabletops, and harsh overhead lighting formed the most honest kind of dinner backdrop.
"Yo, can we get a case of cold beer over here!" Marcus called out the second he sat down, loud enough to turn a few heads.
Back in Georgia, no party was worth showing up to without beer.
A case of bottles arrived quickly, sweating in the summer heat the moment they hit the table. Marcus cracked one open — foam hissed up and spilled over the rim — and sloshed the pale golden liquid into four plastic cups. The kind of cheap, cold beer that somehow tastes better than anything when you're eighteen and the whole world still feels wide open.
Before the food even arrived, a bowl of bar nuts and a plate of edamame had already taken down half the case between them.
The conversation caught fire fast. Ethan and Marcus did most of the talking — bouncing from high school horror stories to world history, from geopolitics to big dreams, to the kind of girls they were into. Turned out their taste lined up almost perfectly: both of them went for the cool, quietly bookish type.
Things got progressively more unhinged from there. "How to actually talk to art school girls" somehow spiraled into "thirty-six strategies for taking over the White House" and a completely unhinged breakdown of Washington D.C.'s theoretical security vulnerabilities. They were cracking each other up so hard they could barely breathe.
Derek talked less, but he was fully in it — the perfect listener, chiming in at just the right moments, laughing at the right parts, and raising his cup with zero hesitation. "Yo — Ethan, Marcus, let's go!" He had that easy, dependable energy Ethan remembered well. In their past life, Derek had settled into a steady career after graduation and never once flaked on their friendship, right up until the end.
Kevin, on the other hand, spent most of the night with his face buried in his phone. Instagram, Twitter, gaming forums — his thumb never stopped scrolling. Every now and then, when someone called his name directly, he'd glance up, tap his cup against theirs with zero enthusiasm, take a sip, and disappear back into his screen.
It was like the four of them hanging out had nothing to do with him.
Exactly like last time, Ethan thought.
Then Kevin set his phone down, as if something had just occurred to him. With the practiced air of someone dropping a headline, he leaned back and said, "Yo, did any of you notice that black Audi parked outside our dorm?"
"Uh, obviously," Marcus said, spearing a piece of grilled chicken off the skewer. "Brand new, blacked out, sitting in a sea of beat-up cars and bikes. Hard to miss."
Kevin smiled like he was about to reveal something. "You know how much that thing costs?"
Derek, who didn't follow cars much, leaned in anyway. "How much?"
Marcus squinted. "What, like fifty grand?"
Kevin shook his head slowly, clearly enjoying himself. "Nah, man. That's not the base model. I looked it up — it's the top-trim S line quattro, just released this year. Matrix headlights, Bang & Olufsen sound system." He paused for effect, glancing around the table. "Out the door? At least sixty-five. Probably more with the options."
Derek let out a low whistle. "Damn. My parents' house back in Ohio didn't cost that much more."
"Parked outside our dorm," Marcus said, shaking his head slowly. "Has to be someone from our building." He picked up his cup, eyes going distant with that particular blend of envy and fire that Ethan knew all too well. "Alright, I've decided. One of my goals before graduation — I'm buying something like that with my own money. Not my parents' money. Mine. Pull up to campus in something like that? That's the move."
Ethan looked at the familiar gleam in Marcus's eyes and nearly choked on his beer. Man, same flag, different life. He could already picture it: Marcus convinced he'd make a killing in the stock market junior year, losing half his savings, surviving the last semester on instant noodles.
Kevin gave a bored shrug. "I mean, it's fine. I'll just tell my dad when I'm a senior or whenever I start interning. It's not that crazy expensive."
The table went quiet for exactly two seconds.
Marcus and Derek exchanged a quick look, said nothing, and smoothly changed the subject.
Ethan took a bite and smiled to himself. Still him. Still exactly him.
He picked up his cup, swirling the cheap beer, and looked at Marcus and Derek with a grin that was equal parts teasing and genuine. "Alright — to the dream. To Marcus's Audi and Derek's mystery girl from the Upper East Side."
"To the dream!"
"Let's go!"
They clinked cups and knocked back the cold beer. It cut right through the summer heat.
Marcus wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and turned to Ethan with tipsy curiosity. "Okay but hold on — you never said yours. What's your goal? Post-graduation, are you pulling up in something better than a sixty-five thousand dollar Audi? Porsche? Maserati? What are we working with?"
Ethan shook his head, picked up a fresh skewer hot off the grill, and said in the same flat tone you'd use to comment on the weather, "Nothing that far out. My goal right now? Study enough to stay enrolled, enjoy the next four years, eat good food, and have a good time."
Kevin actually looked up from his phone for that one. There was a flicker of genuine surprise in his eyes — like he'd misheard.
Marcus and Derek stared at him for a beat.
Then all three of them groaned in unison:
"Bro. —"
The reaction of men who had just witnessed the most aggressively unbothered life philosophy of the year. Ethan just laughed, bit into his skewer, and let them have it.
They drank until past ten, spilling out of the restaurant with that warm, loose feeling of a good night well spent. They drifted back through the buzzing food scene around Washington Square, past the late-night carts and clusters of students still out, and onto the quieter paths of campus.
Ethan had picked up the check.
The moment they stepped through the campus gates, Marcus and Derek were already digging into their wallets. "Bro, what was the total — split it three ways, let's go—"
Kevin didn't seem to hear it. He drifted toward the nearest lamppost, head down, phone out, fingers flying.
Ethan reached over and physically stopped Marcus from pulling out his cash, then waved Derek off. "Don't worry about it. First dinner's on me — welcome to Room 208, officially."
He genuinely didn't care about splitting a bar tab with Marcus and Derek. The friendship they'd built across a lifetime — and somehow found again in this one — was worth more than any dinner check.
As for Kevin? Ethan knew better. Asking Kevin to split the bill had maybe a ten percent chance of resulting in actual money, and a ninety percent chance of getting: "Oh yeah for sure, just Venmo me your handle and I'll send my share—" followed by absolutely nothing.
Some battles weren't worth the effort.
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