Somewhere Only We Know - 35. Three Days

The news came on a Tuesday, in the narrow hallway between the second and third floors, where the paint peeled in long curls and the stairwell always smelled faintly of damp.

Kitt had just finished his morning shift at Javier’s. His hair was still damp from the steam of the kitchen, his fingertips wrinkled from dishwater, his shoulders aching in that dull, familiar way. The landlord had been in a mood downstairs, shouting at someone about noise and late payments. Kitt had taken the stairs two at a time just to get away from it, thinking only about a shower and maybe a nap before he had to think about anything else.

He didn’t make it to his door.

Mateo sat on the steps between their floors, elbows on his knees, a folded piece of paper crushed in one hand. He looked up when Kitt’s footsteps echoed, dark eyes unreadable for once.

“Hey,” Kitt said, automatically smiling. “You look like you lost a fight with a printer.”

Mateo held up the paper and waved it. “Ticket.”

Kitt frowned. “Ticket?”

“Bus.” Mateo’s mouth tugged at one corner, like he was trying to decide whether to make it a grin or not. “To Florida.”

The word hit Kitt harder than he expected. Florida. It had always been this vague, someday thing. A dream Mateo talked about with easy bravado—sun, beaches, boys, a bigger life than the one this crumbling building could hold.

He’d believed it. He just hadn’t believed it was about to happen.

“When?” Kitt asked, throat suddenly dry.

“Three days,” Mateo said quietly. “Friday morning.”

Kitt’s hand tightened around the strap of his bag. “That’s… soon.”

“I know.” Mateo let out a breath and tried on a smirk that didn’t quite fit. “Don’t look at me like I’m dying. I’m not. I’m doing what I said I’d do, remember? Get out before this place eats me alive.”

“I know,” Kitt murmured. He did. He’d always known Mateo wasn’t going to be here forever. He just hadn’t realized how much space the other boy took up in his life until he imagined that space empty.

He sat down beside him on the steps. The concrete was cool through his jeans. A draft crept up the stairwell, rattling the rusted rail.

“Do you have everything ready?” Kitt asked.

Mateo shrugged. “More or less. I have a place to crash for a couple weeks. Friend of a friend. I’ve got savings. Not a lot, but enough to keep me alive until I find something solid. And I already talked to Javier.” His mouth twisted. “He pretended to be mad, but then he told me if I starved I’d better not come back as a ghost.”

Kitt huffed a shaky laugh. “That sounds like him.”

“I haven’t told Tom and Leah yet,” Mateo added. “Gonna do that tonight. Thought I should tell you first.”

A warmth pushed through the ache in Kitt’s chest. “Thank you.”

“Obviously.” Mateo nudged his shoulder. “You’re my favorite disaster.”

Kitt swallowed, staring at the steps below. He had a free afternoon for once—no youth center shift, no errands, nothing but the yawning, familiar tiredness and the binder waiting on Tom’s table. The GED portal still hovered in the back of his mind, that awful word pending taunting him every time he checked.

He was waiting for his future and losing part of his present at the same time.

“What do you want to do today?” Mateo asked, as if reading his thoughts. “You’re off this afternoon, right?”

Kitt nodded. “Yeah. Youth center doesn’t need me today.”

“Good,” Mateo said decisively. “Then you’re mine. No kids, no dishes, no Tom making you write essays, no landlord breathing down your neck. Just… us. One of our last afternoons as tragic roommates, almost.”

Kitt tried to smile. It came out thin. “What did you have in mind?”

“Food,” Mateo said immediately. “Real food. Not leftovers and pity tacos. And then we’re going to sit somewhere that doesn’t smell like bleach and talk about your genius test until you stop flinching every time someone says ‘result.’”

Kitt’s heart thudded. “It’s just… showing ‘reviewed’ now,” he admitted quietly. “I borrowed Julio’s phone and checked this morning.”

“Reviewed is good,” Mateo said. “Reviewed means they’re about to tell you you’re a nerd.”

“What if they don’t?”

Mateo turned to face him fully, his expression unusually serious. “Kitt. You passed.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do,” Mateo insisted. “You’ve been studying your ass off. You’re smart. And I swear, if that system doesn’t recognize that, I will personally hack into whatever bureaucratic hell they keep those scores and change them myself.”

Kitt laughed, a small, startled sound. “You can’t hack.”

“Not with that attitude.”

Kitt shook his head, smiling more honestly now. “Okay. Food.”

They went to a bakery two blocks over, the one with the cracked front window and the owner who always gave Mateo an extra pastry “for your pretty eyes.” They split a croissant sandwich and a cinnamon roll at a sticky table by the window, sunlight slanting over the worn linoleum. Mateo talked about Florida with his hands—how he wanted to see the ocean properly, not just on dusty TV screens in the common room, how he wanted to sweat and not freeze, how he wanted to bartend somewhere that didn’t smell like spilled beer and regret.

“You’re going to be amazing,” Kitt said softly.

“You’re going to be more,” Mateo replied. “Northbridge is waiting for you, whether you believe it or not.”

Kitt stared at the crumbs on his plate. “I miss him.”

“I know,” Mateo said.

“I wonder what he’s doing right now.”

“Being stupidly good at football?” Mateo guessed. “Making sad eyes at your nonexistent contact name in his phone? Walking around that lake you keep talking about like a tragic romance lead?”

Kitt bit back a smile. It was too easy to picture Matt doing exactly that—walking the worn path beside their lake, shoulders broad under his jacket, cheeks pink from the cold, thinking too much and never saying half of it out loud.

Missing him hurt. But it wasn’t the empty, jagged hurt of before. Now it was threaded with something else.

Hope.

“I want him to be happy,” Kitt murmured. “Even if… even if it takes me a little longer to get there.”

“He’ll wait,” Mateo said simply. “He already has.”

They walked back to the apartment building in the thinning afternoon light. The sky had that washed-out winter look, pale blue turning softly gray at the edges. Their breath puffed out in small clouds.

On the second floor landing, Kitt hesitated.

“Come upstairs,” Mateo said. “I have something I want to do before I go.”

Kitt followed him to the third floor. Mateo’s room was messier than usual—an open duffel bag on the bed, half-folded clothes spilling out, a stack of club flyers crumpled on the floor like evidence of another life he was about to leave behind.

Kitt’s chest squeezed. “You started packing.”

“Yeah.” Mateo kicked a sneaker out of the way. “If I wait till the last minute I’ll pretend I’m staying.”

“Would that be so bad?” The question slipped out before Kitt could stop it.

Mateo’s smile was soft and a little sad. “Yeah,” he said. “For me, it would. I need to go. I’ve stayed stuck before. Not again.”

Kitt nodded slowly. He understood that more than he wished he did.

Mateo took a breath, then turned toward him, shoulders rolling back like he was bracing himself. “Okay. Before I go,” he said, “I have one request.”

“What?” Kitt asked warily.

“You have to let me kiss you on the cheek.”

Kitt blinked. “…What?”

Mateo lifted both hands, palms up. “Relax. I just—before I leave, I want a proper goodbye. I promise I won’t fall devastatingly in love with you and destroy our friendship in the last seventy-two hours. I have a bus ticket. I have a plan. I just want one tiny moment. Deal?”

Kitt stared at him, heart tight and tangled. Mateo was… Mateo. Charming and chaotic and infuriating and kind. He had seen Kitt at his lowest. Pulled him out of panic attacks. Made him laugh when he thought he might never feel anything good again. He was leaving, and Kitt hated it, and wanted everything for him anyway.

“Okay,” Kitt said quietly. “Deal.”

He stepped closer.

Mateo’s joking bravado cracked a little at the edges. His eyes flicked to Kitt’s.

Kitt didn’t wait.

He leaned in and kissed Mateo’s cheek first.

It wasn’t romantic. It wasn’t a question. It was a thank you—pressed gently to warm skin, held there for a moment longer than strictly necessary, his hand coming up to rest briefly on Mateo’s shoulder.

“Thank you,” Kitt whispered, barely audible.

When he pulled back, Mateo’s lashes fluttered once. Then the familiar smirk returned, but his gaze shone a little too bright.

“Damn,” he said, forcing lightness into his tone. “You’re going to make Florida feel jealous.”

Kitt laughed, eyes stinging. “You better text me when you get there. I mean, text Tom first. I’ll buy a cheap phone later.”

“Obviously. I’m going to blow up Tom’s phone with photos too. He’s going to hate it.”

“He’ll pretend to,” Kitt said. “He’ll secretly love it.”

They stood there for another moment, just looking at each other. Then Mateo clapped his hands once and turned away, going back to the chaos of his half-packed life.

“Go,” he said over his shoulder. “Tom’s probably waiting to torture you with practice essays.”

Kitt rolled his eyes. “You’re very rude to the man saving my future.”

“And yet he still feeds me. Miracles never cease.”

Kitt left the room with a strange tightness in his chest—grief and gratitude knotted together. Three days. That was all they had left in the same city.

He went downstairs, grabbed his worn jacket, and headed to Tom’s.

The walk to Maple Street felt sharper than usual, every breath cold enough to sting. The sky had deepened into a thin silver, clouds thickening at the edges. Kitt shoved his hands into his pockets and tried not to think about what the building would feel like without Mateo’s music blaring faintly through the ceiling.

Tom opened the door before he could knock twice. “You look like someone told you the world is ending,” he said gently.

“Mateo’s bus is in three days,” Kitt said.

Tom’s expression softened into something sad and fond. “Ah.”

They sat at the table with the binder between them. They made tea. Harbour curled up by Kitt’s feet. They reviewed practice questions for a bit, but Kitt’s focus was shot. The words swam. Numbers slipped. His pencil hovered uselessly above the page.

Tom watched him for a while, then closed the binder.

“Okay,” Tom murmured. “Today might not be a heavy practice day.”

Kitt rubbed his eyes. “I’m sorry. I thought I could—”

“You don’t need to apologize,” Tom said. “You took the test already. You did the hard part. Right now, the waiting is going to be the hardest.”

Kitt stared at the table. “It says ‘reviewed’ now.”

Tom’s mouth twitched. “That’s good.”

“What if I failed?” The words came out barely above a whisper. “What if I’m not as smart as everyone thinks I am?”

Tom leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table, his gaze steady. “Kitt. I have read your writing. I have watched you work through math you haven’t seen in months. I have watched you analyze texts like it’s breathing. You did not fail.”

“You can’t know that.”

“I can,” Tom said simply. “Because you’re not the kind of person who lets himself fail without clawing forward anyway. And the GED doesn’t care how scared you were when you walked into that room. It cares what you know. And you know plenty.”

Kitt’s eyes burned. He blinked quickly until the heat backed off. “I just… I want it. I want Northbridge. I want a… real future.”

Tom smiled softly. “You’re allowed to want good things.”

Kitt exhaled slowly, chest loosening a little. “Do you think Matt is getting any news yet?”

“About his scholarship?” Tom shrugged. “Probably soon.”

Kitt pictured him then—helmet under one arm, cheeks flushed from the cold, standing under stadium lights while some Northbridge person shook his hand. The thought made something warm unfurl beneath the ache.

“I hope he gets it,” Kitt said.

“He’s worked hard,” Tom replied. “Just like you.”

They talked a while longer. Tom explained again what the GED scores would look like, how each subject had its own scale, how passing didn’t mean barely scraping by. He pointed out where, once he had the results, they could sit together and map out application deadlines, essays, fees, all the next steps.

“You won’t be doing it alone,” Tom said. “Not any of it.”

When Kitt finally left, the sky had gone dark. Streetlights glowed in pools on the wet pavement. He walked slowly back to his building, head down, breath puffing in the cold.

He thought of Mateo’s bus ticket.
He thought of his parents’ faces in the parking lot.
He thought of Matt’s hands on his jaw, Matt’s voice whispering I love you at the lake.

The world felt like it was shifting under his feet, and for once, it wasn’t just the ground falling away.

It was moving forward.

. . .

Matt’s week tilted on its axis on Thursday.

School dragged more than usual. Teachers talked at the front of classrooms, but their voices blurred together. Plays and formations jostled with essay prompts and scholarship rumor in his skull. He drifted through hallways with his backpack hanging off one shoulder, nodding when people congratulated him on the last game, barely registering the words.

In the locker room after practice, Coach Harding’s voice cut through the noise.

“Everest. Office.”

Matt’s stomach dropped. He followed Coach down the hall, cleats clacking on tile, sweat cooling under his pads. Coach closed the door behind them and gestured toward a chair.

There was a stack of mail on the desk. One envelope sat on top—slightly thicker, cream-colored, stamped with a logo Matt recognized in an instant.

Northbridge.

His heart stopped, then kicked hard.

Coach watched his face. “You’ve earned this conversation,” he said. “Open it.”

Matt’s fingers shook as he picked up the envelope. He sliced it open carefully along the top, hands clumsy, breath trapped in his chest. The paper inside made a small, dignified sound as he unfolded it.

He read the first line.

Then the second.

Then the bolded sentence in the middle.

His vision didn’t blur. His eyes didn’t sting. He didn’t cry. Instead, something hot and wild and electric blew through his chest all at once.

“Full athletic scholarship,” he read aloud, voice low. “Conditional on maintaining GPA…”

He trailed off and laughed. It burst out of him half-disbelieving, half-triumphant.

Coach clapped a heavy hand on his shoulder. “You earned it,” he said gruffly. “I’m proud of you, son.”

Matt swallowed, nodding. A grin split his face, huge and unstoppable.

Northbridge.
It was real.
He was going.

He walked home instead of getting a ride. He needed the air. Needed his feet on the pavement. Needed to feel the distance between the school and his house and the lake and everything he was about to leave in less than a year.

He cut across toward the lake almost without thinking. The path was damp and muddy, the water a flat silver under the deepening evening. He made his way to their dock, boards creaking under his weight, and sat at the edge, legs hanging over.

He looked out at the water and let himself say it out loud.

“I got it,” he shouted. “Kitt! I got it!”

The wind skated over the surface of the lake. Somewhere far away, a dog barked. He imagined Kitt sitting by his own stretch of water, or at some cracked kitchen table, or on a bus, or in a warm, noisy room with people who cared about him.

He pulled out his phone, opened the notes app, and typed:

I got the scholarship. I’m going to Northbridge. I want you there with me.

He stared at the words, thumb hovering over the send icon that didn’t lead anywhere. Kitt had no phone. No number. No direct line except the thin, careful thread between them now.

He saved the note and locked his screen.

“I’ll wait for you,” he whispered to the quiet lake. “As long as it takes.”

. . .

The next day, in Riverbend, the GED portal finally changed.

Kitt stood alone in the youth center office, the hum of the ancient computer filling the small room. The kids were already gone for the day. Leah was restocking art supplies in the next room, humming under her breath. Outside, the sky leaned toward dusk.

He’d logged in again, hands sweaty, fully expecting to see the same mocking word: reviewed.

Instead, there it was.

A new link.

View scores.

His mouth went dry. “Tom?” he called, voice thin.

Tom stepped into the doorway a moment later, wiping his hands on a towel. “What’s up?”

Kitt stepped aside. “It changed.”

Tom’s gaze flicked to the screen. He smiled. “Then let’s look.”

“I’m scared,” Kitt whispered.

“I know,” Tom said. “Click it anyway.”

Kitt’s finger hovered over the mouse. He clicked.

The page loaded slowly, as if on purpose. Then the table appeared, lines and boxes and numbers arranged in quiet rows.

Reasoning Through Language Arts:
Math:
Science:
Social Studies:

Each score sat there, solid and undeniable. Above them, one word.

Pass.

Kitt stared. His vision tunneled. For a second, the world narrowed to just that one word. Relief crashed into him so hard his knees wobbled.

Tom’s hand found his shoulder, steady and warm.

“You didn’t just pass,” Tom murmured. “These are excellent scores, Kitt.”

Kitt’s eyes stung. A single tear spilled over before he could stop it, tracking down his cheek hot and fast. He didn’t sob. Didn’t fall apart. Just stood there, chest tight, the edges of his fear finally, finally loosening.

“I did it,” he breathed. “Tom… I did it.”

“You did,” Tom said softly. “You earned this.”

Kitt wiped at his face, laughing under his breath. “I didn’t think—I mean, I hoped, but I… I really did it.”

“You did,” Tom repeated. “Now you can apply. Northbridge is real.”

Northbridge.

Matt.

A future.

“I want to tell him,” Kitt said quietly.

Tom’s eyes softened. “You should.”

Kitt nodded, swallowing. “Not yet. Not today. But soon.”

“Soon is good,” Tom said. “You have time. For once in your life, you have time.”

Kitt looked at the screen one more time, memorizing the numbers, the word, the proof that he wasn’t just a runaway scraping by. He was a student again. A graduate. Someone who had a ticket to somewhere better.

He logged out, closed the browser carefully, as if the act itself was precious. Then he turned toward Tom and, without thinking too hard about it, wrapped his arms around him.

Tom stiffened in surprise for a fraction of a second, then hugged him back firmly, chin resting briefly on Kitt’s hair.

“I’m proud of you,” Tom said into the quiet room.

Kitt smiled against his shoulder, heart full and aching.

Somewhere far away, under a different sky, Matt walked home from practice with a letter in his pocket, humming with the knowledge that his dream school wanted him.

They didn’t know it yet, not fully, not in a way either of them could touch.

But their futures had just shifted into the same direction.

And for the first time, the path between them didn’t feel impossible.

It just felt… close.