E I G H T

DEXTER'S NEVER BEEN needed in the kitchen before. Hadley's parents usually keep him outside to man the counter and, as Hadley kind put it, "charm the pants off every customer."

Monday morning, however, he shows up to work and is surprised when Hadley tells her they'll be closing up early so they can work on the big yema order that came last week. A rich couple wanted to use their candies as giveaways for their wedding. They ordered more than the shop usually took on, but Tita and Tiro talked it over and somehow decided to accept it in exchange for half a day's sales in the shop.

Dexter's hardly seen Hadley all morning as he mans the counter. It's a hectic one. A bus filled with tourists leaving the town that day had come to look around the shop. There were children everywhere, and with no one to help him manage all the customers, Dexter had to stay sharp and not let the growing line of people waiting for him to ring them up pressure him too much.

He's exhausted by the time Hadley comes out from the kitchen, but the steady trickle of customers had finally let up by then. The mouth-watering smell of the cooking yema tickles his nose, the aroma wafting out the kitchen as soon as Hadley steps out of it.

"We're closing up after grabbing some lunch," Hadley says. "Mom and Dad says they're not hungry yet, so let me just grab my wallet and we can go ahead."

"Are you sure they're not hungry?" he asks her. Then, with a suggestive smile, adds, "You know you don't have to lie just so you can have me all to yourself."

"Oh. Right. Because I'd totally let my parents starve just so I can spend time alone with you." She rolls her eyes and shakes her head dismissively. "Wait here."

She walks into the stockroom, which, Dexter learned when he started working here, isn't really a stockroom so much as it's a room where they can hang out during their breaks and stash their stuff when they're working.

Hadley comes back with her wallet and phone in hand. She sets them on the counter first before quickly tying her hair in a ponytail. He grabs where they're hanging on the wall behind them and walks over to the door, flipping the Sorry, we're closed sign over before turning back to Hadley.

"Just so you know," she says as she slips out the counter, "we'll be needing your help inside when we come back, so you better make the most of this break. God knows we'll badly need one later."

"It sounds exciting, to be honest," he admits. "It makes me feel like you're letting me in on a secret family recipe."

She snorts. "Trust me. There's hardly anything exciting about it."

They make sure to lock up before leaving, Dexter holding onto the keys in his pockets. They walk under the harsh glare of the afternoon sun, both of them squinting as they step out of the shop's awning.

Dexter didn't bring Adrian's bike today. He had a gig last night, which means that he wasn't even home yet when Dexter left this morning.

"I think I may be craving for something salty and unhealthy," Hadley tells him.

"Parker's it is, then."

It's only a short walk from the shop. Everything is, actually, this close to the beach. The whole street is a complete tourist trap, so the two of them are grateful when they find that their favorite booth at Parker's is still available.

The place is alive with its usual lunch crowd. A handful of locals dot the place, but most of people milling around inside are tourists. You can always tell the difference between them, with most tourists looking all ready to head to the beach right after eating—if they haven't already gone there.

They wave hi to some of their former classmates sitting a few tables away from them and smiles when Finn rushes to their booth to take their order.

"Hey, there, you two," he says by way of greeting, leaning his hip against Dexter's seat. "Congratulations on finally getting out of that shithole called high school."

Finn plays the bass in Seismic Fuse, which means that Dexter's also grown close to him over the years. He's friends with all of Adrian's bandmates. They treat him like the long-lost sixth member of the band, though they've yet to convince him to play with them in an actual gig.

There's really no need for Finn to get their order. He already knows what they're getting because he's waited on them for so many times now.

Like Adrian, Finn had chosen music over college. That, and his family can't afford to send him to one. He had been waiting tables here ever since he was old enough to work. Dexter thinks he could do better—his grades were decent and he could have easily gotten sufficient financial aid to help him—but Finn seems to be content with his life for now.

"I feel so old," Finn tells them. "I feel like only yesterday you were, like, five feet tall." He ruffles Dexter's hair.

He tries to duck out of his reach, fending off Finn's hand with his arm. "I'm a lot taller now."

"Hadley used to be taller than you, though."

"Only by half an inch," he protests, unable to keep himself from scowling. "I was a late bloomer."

"Still, I can't believe you're off to college soon, little buddy."

"I'm not little, so stop calling me—"

"And that," Finn cuts him off with a good-natured smile, "is my cue to leave you two alone and get back to work." He reaches over to give Dexter's hair another ruffle before deftly maneuvering past the crowded tables, off to tend to the other customers.

Dexter's hand absently flies up to his hair to fix it. When he turns to Hadley, he isn't surprised to find her giving him an amused smile.

He sends her a wary look. "What?"

"Nothing," she says, propping her face up with the back of her hand, elbow planted on the table between them. "It just never fails to amuse me when I see you acting around your brother's friends. It's like you're suddenly a lot younger."

Dexter opens his mouth to deny this, but Hadley raises her eyebrows, as though she's daring him to object, and the retort dies on his lips. He shuts his mouth and turns away with a slight frown.

It makes Hadley laugh.

He loves it when Hadley laughs.

He loves the way her lips would linger on that wide grin long after her laughter fades. He loves the sound of it: how it's never too loud or pretentious. It's like she's keeping a secret behind the sparkle in her eye, and Dexter's in on whatever secret that is.

He loves making her laugh. Loved it from the first time he'd successfully done so—two years ago between the shelves of their high school library. The two of them got paired up to work on a History assignment.

Their first few encounters had been brief. Polite, but not quite friendly. The only time Hadley opened her mouth to speak was when she said something that concerned the assignment. It threw him off a little because he was used to people easily warming up to him.

It was when they'd met in the library to do the research they needed that he'd actually managed to make her laugh. It wasn't that he was trying, not really. He was just talking to her like how he'd usually talk to other people, and somehow it worked, and she laughed, and by the time it was time to go home, he found himself with three heavy leather bound books to read and a crush on the quiet girl in class to deal with.

They've come a long way from that, and though they'd only really just known each other for two years now, Dexter always felt like they'd been friends longer than that.

She was just such a big part of his life that he can't imagine her not being in it anymore, and the thought of going to college without her bothers him a lot more than it should.

"Finn's right, though," he finds himself telling her. "It seems like only yesterday we were struggling with Physics and hoping high school comes to an end."

"You were struggling with Physics," she corrects him.

"As my best friend, you are bound by contract to let all my struggles become yours."

"That's a pretty shitty contract," she says. "It's like you're licensed to drag me down with you. There should be, like, a provision specifying I can cop out of whatever struggle you're facing to save myself in case something really bad happens."

"Wow, Had. I'm really feeling the love here."

Hadley laughs—again—and Dexter has to struggle to keep himself from smiling at the sound of it. She leans over the table and extends a hand. Her fingers skim over his skin, light and warmer than he'd expected, as she rests her hands on his face.

"Oh, honey, there's no need to sulk."

"Well, you just told me you'd leave me to fend for myself if things ever become too difficult."

"Didn't you know?" Hadley says. "That way, if you ever hit rock bottom, I'd be in a place where I can easily pull you out of there."

Despite himself, Dexter smiles.

Hadley starts to say something, but she's quickly cut off by the Dexter's message alert tone. He pulls it out of his pocket and smiles when he sees the message. It's Andy. She just dropped by the shop and she was asking why they were closed so early.

He types in a quick reply—i know you must miss me but don't despair—and puts it back in his pocket after hitting send.

When he looks up, Hadley's giving him a knowing look.

"Andy?"

He simply smiles.

* * * * *

"I'm telling you," Dexter says, pushing the door to Sweet Tooth open and almost unconsciously holding it out for Hadley, "this League of Legends stuff is exciting, and if you'd only let me teach you, you'd think so too."

Hadley suppresses the urge to let out a breath. It's a conversation they've had a thousand times before, but despite her steady refusals whenever he begs for her to join him for a game or two, Dexter just seems so adamant on trying to make her reconsider.

They step into the shop and Hadley makes sure to lock the door behind them. They'll be spending the rest of the afternoon in the kitchen and there won't be anyone to actually watch over the shop for the day.

"I've said this before," Hadley tells him now, "but since you never seem to remember, the game is pointless. I'd much rather spend my time being productive."

"See, you wouldn't think it's pointless if you actually try it."

"Which I won't," she reiterates, and before he can reply with something equally stubborn as his past replies had been, she leads them straight towards the kitchen and opens the door. "There's an extra apron in the stock room."

"We're not done yet," he tells her, but she doesn't reply, so he finally heads to the other door.

Her mom and dad look exactly like how she'd left them earlier: her mom busy stirring the yema cooking over the stove and her father wrapping those they've finished cooking this morning, shaping them up now that they're cool enough to touch.

"Dexter and I brought you some takeout," Hadley says. "You guys go eat while we take things from here for a while."

She doesn't miss the look of uncertainty passing between her parents. She rolls her eyes, grabbing the apron hanging on one of the hooks behind the door.

"You haven't had anything all morning," Hadley says. "Go. Dexter and I got this."

As if on cue, he comes into the room with a bright smile on his face. He's already wearing the light blue apron with the little duck prints, and when everyone turns to him, he says, "This makes me feel like I'm part of the family."

Hadley's mouth quirks up. The childish print suits him well. It's something she'd sewn back in middle school for a class back in middle school and Taylor immediately claimed it for himself. Just because.

He abandoned them today, though—something her mother isn't so happy about—and Hadley's relieved they have Dexter to help out.

"We won't take too long," her mom finally says, gesturing for Hadley to continue stirring the mixture cooking in the very, very large cooking pot holding the custard mixture. She turns to her husband and says, "Tara?"

"Just a sec," he says, stepping away from the table to make his way to the sink.

Hadley isn't kidding when she told Dexter making candies isn't as fun as he thinks it would be. Honestly, she doesn't know why her parents took such a big order. Their kitchen isn't big enough to handle large orders, and they barely have enough manpower to accomplish the task.

It's not entirely impossible, but she's not looking forward to the soreness she'll feel for the next few days. Dexter might not know it, but she knows for a fact that stirring is a lot harder than it seems.

When her parents leave her and Dexter alone in the kitchen, she starts giving him instructions so that he can continue where her dad left off. It's not the most difficult task, and she knows he won't screw it up without much supervision, but the stirring is a completely different matter altogether.

If you didn't stir it the right way, you'll be risking clumps forming in the mixture, and then you have to make sure you don't overcook it—else the consistency will be all wrong and the candies will turn out too chewy.

It's a tedious task, but Hadley can't really complain. God knows how long her mother and father had been doing this now. She doesn't have half the patience that they do, but that's why she plans to take up a business course. It would be her way of helping the shop. She plans to let Sweet Tooth grow and expand over the years because she knows just how much her parents love it.

"Had?"

"Yeah?" she asks, looking over her shoulder to look at Dexter.

"Will you hate me if I eat one of these right now?"

"Just one?"

"Just one," he promises, but they both know he's bound to make negotiations about this later. He pops one into his mouth, letting out a moan of pleasure just like he always does whenever he gets to sample their candies.

It makes Hadley smile to herself as she turns back to the stove.

"This is why I love being friends with you," he tells her.

"You love being friends with my parents. We'll go bankrupt because they spoil you too much. It's why I never should have introduced you to them."

"You didn't want to," he says abruptly. Hadley stops stirring for a second. There's a change in his tone, one that lulls the quiet of the kitchen, and it makes her feel like she can hear the pounding of her blood against her ears. "We used to fight a lot about it."

Hadley swallows, not sure what to say to this. She forces herself to keep stirring, else she'd ruin the whole batch and it'll all go to waste.

The silence falls over them like a blanket, amplifying the words so that they hang in the air around them, dangling like a sad story told twice over—and the evil witch that ruined everything was none other than Hadley herself.

It only took a few weeks after they'd started going out before the fights began to break out. Neither of them really took notice at first. They brushed over every argument, smoothed out what they could and leaving the creases they couldn't. Over time, the fighting grew worse, and this was one of the recurring themes.

She still remembers the last argument they had before they eventually broke up.

The two of them were supposed to go to their favorite ice cream shop down the boardwalk. They'd agreed that she'll wait for him in the shop and then they can walk the rest of the way together.

Her parents knew, vaguely, that she was seeing someone. Taylor made sure to tease her about him every night over dinner. Hadley, in turn, told them about the stack of magazines she once found under his bed. (Both matters were simply breezed over by their parents, who merely exchanged amused glances with each other.)

She'd told Dexter to give her a text once he's outside the shop, but he hadn't. He strode into the shop in his usual manner, catching her eyes and flashing her the grin he always seemed to reserve just for her.

And maybe she would have smiled back and not make such a big deal out of it if her parents hadn't been there, but they were, and Dexter had taken the opportunity to introduce himself to them.

Hadley was pulling him out the shop faster than any of them could react.

She'd felt overwhelmed with anger, and anxiety, and fear, and confusion, and she'd felt herself give out as she finally stopped dragging him by the elbow, stopping in front of the souvenir shop along the block.

"I told you to text me," she said, letting go of him as she stepped into his line of vision.

"What's the big deal?"

"You know how I feel about you meeting my parents."

A flash of hurt briefly passed over his face, but it was quickly replaced by a hardened jaw and a resolute gaze. He took a step back from her, shaking his head as he reached up to run his hands through his hair. "I can't keep doing this with you, Had."

The words made her pause, her heart skipping a beat at the implications of this statement. She tried to swallow past the lump in her throat, scrambling for the right words to say to diffuse this bomb before it obliterates them, but all she could do was look at Dexter.

"One second, I feel like you want me in your life, and the next, I'm convinced you can't wait to kick me out of it."

"I don't want you out of my life," Hadley said.

"Well, you sure as hell don't want me in it either."

There was a helpless look on his face, his confusion painted in the crease between his brows and the way his eyes held hers. It was a sight that made Hadley want to run the opposite direction, erase the image of him looking at her with those tired eyes and keep herself locked up in a world where the guilt wouldn't find a way to plague her.

She'd seen this face way too many times—and she was the one who always brought it out.

"It's not that I don't," she finally told him, but it was a lie worn thin, and both of them knew this because no matter how many times she'd tried to deny it, he was right.

She couldn't let him in.

She didn't want to.

Dexter didn't call her out on it though. Instead, he looked at her for a long time, his eyes searching hers for answers she didn't have. Hadley was almost sure that the bomb was going to set off right then, right there, and they'll be flung away from each other with shrapnel bits sinking into both their hearts.

But he surprised her by letting out a breath and dropping his gaze, the tension in his shoulders fading away as his shoulders slumped in exhaustion.

"I'm sorry," he breathed, diffusing the bomb with just those two words. "You were right. I should have just texted."

And it was this that truly broke Hadley's heart.

It was this—hearing him apologize to her, his sincerity seeping into every word, his tired eyes writing silent poems of this little war between them.

It was this—knowing he would take the brunt of the fall alone if it meant he'd keep the two of them from unravelling.

It was this—seeing him sweep his hurt aside and readily take the blame for everything that's going wrong when really the only thing that was wrong was her.

It was this that kept them together all this time.

And it was this that made Hadley realize she needed to break them apart.