The Promise of Amazing by Robin Constantine

away.
    “Don’t mess with me, Mike. I’m not in the mood.”
    I raised the beer to her before taking a sip and watching her walk away.
    Eben sat bug-eyed across the table. “Mike?”
    “It’s the name on my ID.”
    “I get that, but I just witnessed you transform into a completely different person than you were back at the Camelot. It’s like the air around you changed,” he said, fanning his hand around.
    “C’mon,” I said.
    “So tell me this,” he said, leaning across the table. “Why should I be in your corner and not, say, the tool in the Timbos?”
    I almost snotted my beer. “What do you mean?”
    “Mike. Grayson. Whatever your name is, it’s plain to see you’re into Wren. You were heartbroken back—”
    “Whoa, dude, I don’t get heartbroken.”
    “Well, dude , you sure played the part back at the Camelot. And I’m right with you. Maddie means well, has been trying to hook Wren up since her jackwad of a boyfriend dumped her at the beach over the summer—but Wren’s not into it.”
    “Someone dumped Wren . . . at the beach?” I sat up straight, intrigued. “Continue.”
    “Then today . . . there’s something different about her. I didn’t put two and two together until the end of the night, after I egged her on to go with Maddie, and she told me she wanted to hang with us. Or more correctly . . . you.”
    Hope bubbled in my chest. “She said that?”
    “Yes, but not so fast—I’m not sure you’re worthy of her either.”
    “Gee, thanks.”
    “You appear out of nowhere. Mysterious, hair-flinging boy giving all his attention to my pretty little hothouse wallflower. My Spidey sense is up to begin with, and now this . . . Mike .”
    “Hothouse wallflower?”
    “Wren is all kinds of awesome; she just doesn’t know it. Being dumped really did a number on her pride. So she thinks it’s easier to hide out at the Camelot every weekend and call it work instead of putting herself out there. I want to make sure you’re not just playing her. Why are you interested?”
    A question I’d tossed around myself. Eben seemed like the kind of person who might understand or who would at leastlisten, and considering my friends were scarce these days, I had nothing to lose.
    “You know that saying, ‘One door closes, another door opens’?”
    “My bullshit meter is off the charts,” he said, taking a long sip from his beer.
    “Okay, Eben, I’m a total screwup. Got kicked out of school last year; my friends are gone. Any future I thought I had is on hold at the moment, and in walks Wren. . . .”
    “And?”
    “And I want to know her.”
    “Know her how?”
    Knowing Wren in every sense of the word had crossed my mind, but it wasn’t the first thing. And that was something I hadn’t experienced since, like, never. I dug the way I felt around her. I could be myself, but a new-and-improved version.
    “She’s . . . sweet. Smart. I feel good around her, like it’s okay to be myself. And I think she’s the kind of person who is, you know, naturally good. Not because it’s right or anything, just because that’s who she is, like a moral compass. I want her in my life, and if that’s just as friends, well, okay. I’m down for that.”
    “Well, I was hoping for something sexier than a moral compass, but okay. I like you for her,” he said, clinking his beer against mine. “But I smell an iota of bullshit and . . .”
    “And I leave the Camelot.”
    “Glad we understand each other,” he said.
    The waitress came back with our pizza and set it down on the stand between us. My stomach growled, but something else Eben had said bothered me. He took a plate, doled out a slice, and handed it to me.
    “Dude, do I really fling my hair?”
    Three beers and four slices later, I left Leaning Tower buzzing with something that felt like good cheer. The Chrysler was safe on a side street for the night, and I walked the ten blocks home, trying to stuff down thoughts of Wren and Caleb.