That night was the Saturday before Thanksgiving and Nick and Mandy were making out against a lamppost near the skate park. Again. Nick’s disgust at public displays of affection evaporated when he started dating Mandy. Maybe, like most of us, he was simply a hypocrite, changing his mind the moment the girl being kissed was his.

Nick, Mandy, and I were neighbors—our three houses making up the end of the cul-de-sac—11415, 11400, 11420: Mandy, Nick, Owen. The three of us were considered a set since that summer when we all moved in, back before our houses even had grass. We played together, started school together, got into trouble together and then out of it. But that year, our senior year, right before school started, Nick asked Mandy to go out with him. She’d accepted, of course, with an apology to me.

Why she thought I needed one was beyond me. Maybe she knew she’d won. Mandy and I were more rivals than friends: each vying for Nick’s attentions. The neighbors talked of us in one breath as ‘the kids at the end’, even though we all had siblings, but the reason we were always together was that neither Mandy nor I were willing to let the other play with Nick alone.

I won that battle ever week. Nick’s parents allowed me to spend Saturday night at their house if I went to church with them on Sunday. But when Nick started dating her, Mandy won the war.

I got lots of sympathy from my other friends. Some thought I wanted Mandy for myself. A few thought I was in love with Nick. And most thought I was lonely now that the trio and become a duet. I couldn’t fault any of these guesses; I did spend most of my free time watching the pair.

But the truth was, I hated the public affection of my best friend and my rival because I could never do the same.

I liked Nick. He was a great friend, but his family was serious in their faith. They lived their beliefs every day. Those beliefs included the idea that ‘a man lying with another man as he might lie with a woman’ was as bad as murder. I knew that if I ever got a boyfriend, I would lose him.

What a choice to make.

“They are only doing that to bug you,” Cole said over my shoulder. “They don’t even need to be here. Mandy has the car.”

Mandy did have her mother’s car. She was supposed to be watching Jack, her brother. I glanced towards where I’d last seen him, under the picnic shelter up the hill, but he was gone.

“They aren’t thinking of anything but themselves.” I said. “Where’s Jack?

Cole sat beside me on the edge of the skatepark. “When I got here, he was wandering towards the senior center.”

Oh, boy. She would be in so much trouble. “He’s long gone then,” I said. “Should we tell her?”

“No,” said Cole, sticking his tongue between his teeth with glee, the way he does when he has a particularly demonic thought. “It’s her job to watch Jack. She’s been snogging Nick for two months. She should know by now that Jack hates that.”

She should indeed.

I bit my lip to hide my smile. I knew how much trouble she would get in for losing her twelve year old brother. Her parents couldn’t even call him. Mandy was the one with the cell, tucked neatly in her purse. And she was the one who convinced her parents that Jack wasn’t responsible enough for a phone of his own, because, I’ve always thought, she wanted oldest child privileges. That argument was just about to bite her in the butt.

“You’re not going to tell her? I thought….” Cole finished the sentence in very uncharacteristic ambiguity. I couldn't let him misinterpret my feelings.

“Do you know how I got here today?” I asked. Cole shook his head; he’d arrived only minutes before. “Mandy has the car and she drove her brother, but she says that even though she’s had her license for more than six months her parents don’t want her to take more than one friend. So she took Nick. I had to skate here alone. Three miles. In the rain.”

Cole threw Mandy a dirty look. “That bites.”

“And I was supposed to spend the night at Nick’s playing Halo 3.”

“Instead he brought you here to watch him play tonsil tennis with his girlfriend.”

“And,” I said, tossing my duffle bag onto Cole’s lap and thinking that I should have left it at Nick’s. “Since they got here so much faster than me, they stopped to eat first.”

Cole shook his head. The dark strands of his hair twinkled in the streetlights. Again he said exactly what I was thinking. “Why do you hang with them anyway?”

I looked their way again and shook my head. “I don’t know.”

“Let’s eat,” he says, getting up and hefting my bag machine gun style down his back. “Nick can find you later.”

I followed him over to the sidewalk where we got on our boards and went thump thumping away. At the cross walk, he ask, “The arches?”

“No.” I shook my head. “That’s Nick’s favorite. Where do you like to eat?”

“Carl’s.”

Two blocks later we crossed into Haggan’s parking lot, just as the rain began again in earnest. I hadn’t been inside Carl’s before, so I let Cole order for me on the punch in order machine.

We sat in one of the booths. Cole put my bag beside him. He grinned that roguish grin that made my stomach feel like it was full of lead—molten lead that heated me from the inside out.

When our food came he dumped his fries onto the tray, so I did as well. But as I ate, I found I wasn’t hungry. At least not for food.

While we talked of school, homework, movies, and games, I watched his changing expressions. How often did I really see Cole’s face? He was always at my shoulder, saying the words I never dared speak, while I watched Nick and Mandy. I watched them since we met as they ran, played, and got into trouble, which with a few notorious exceptions I managed to stay out of myself. My mother said I was the red haired angel of the bunch.

But I wasn’t really.

How could I be angel if I was hoping that Mandy’s family would move away? When I wished she had never been born? When dreamed she would just disappeared?

But when I met Cole, he vocalized my inner thoughts and taught me I wasn’t alone. And that knowledge helped me keep my mouth shut on all those malicious things I wanted to say.

He is my dark wing angel—like the devil on my shoulder—my other half.

I lost my war with Mandy over Nick, maybe because I’d lost my will to fight it.

“Cole,” I said, when he looked down at the tray, uncharacteristically bashful. “Invite me over for the night.”

“Owen, spend the night with me.” His face pinked a bit; I smiled inside. “But it’s my sister’s closing night. We are going to see the play again.”

I sat up straighter. “I want to come. I haven’t seen it.”

“OK.” He looked at his phone. “We have to meet my mom in a half an hour under the overhang at Freddy’s.”

We got up and I dumped our tray. “I wonder,” Cole said, “if Nick has noticed you’re gone yet.”

“I wonder,” I said. “If Mandy knows Jack is missing.”

We laughed and I lead Cole the back way, past the lake, to Freddy’s, so Nick wouldn’t see me if he was looking in Mc D’s. Since I’d met Nick, I let him have his way in everything, keeping my feelings and needs to myself. I cared too much of what he thought and not enough about my other friends. Or my own happiness. Tonight I would think of Cole.

The rain had stopped for the most part and the ground glittered in the streetlights. The night was cold despite the humidity and we went inside Freddy's to keep warm. In the electronic section, we found Jack.

“Clean get away?” asked Cole.

“Yeah,” said Jack, looking towards his friends. “I want to stay at Hunter’s.”

“You should call your parents,” I said. Everyone stared at me. “You know, so they don’t worry.”

“But they’ll make me come home.”

“No,” I said. “They don’t know you left the park. Use my phone. They won’t ask where you are.”

Cole’s grin showed his tongue and I felt as proud as any gold medal winner. “Imagine,” Cole said, “Mandy, looking for you everywhere. She’s late coming home. Your parents glare at her. She says she couldn’t find you. They say you called hours ago. Why didn’t she know where you were? What had she been doing? Wasn’t she supposed to be watching you?”

Cole tugged my bag over his shoulder and I pulled out my phone. When Jack reluctantly took it, Cole added, “If you use Owen’s phone, where will your family think you are?”

“At the park?” asked Hunter.

Jack shook his head and took the phone. “Mom will expect Mandy to be with Nick and Nick to be with Owen. But she might ask to talk to her.”

“If she does,” I said, my head filling with plans. “Let me speak to her.”

“Or,” said Cole, “tell her Mandy’s tongue is too busy to talk right now.”

We laughed and went outside to make the call. A parking lot sounds more like a park next to a busy road than the inside of a store does. Jack’s mother agreed without asking to speak to Mandy. Then Hunter called his parents to come get them. I called my mother as we waited for our ride. She was watching a movie and sounded distracted. I told her, “I’m not with Nick. I’m going to stay with another friend. We'll be in a theater, so I’m turning off my phone.”

Her thanks for the info was fairly vague. I wasn’t sure she even knew who she was talking to.

Cole frowned. “Didn’t say who I was.”

“No,” I said, my red devil rearing its head. “I don’t want my mother to tell Nick. His parents bought a school phonebook. I don’t want to talk to Nick tonight. I don’t even want to think about him.”

“What do you want to think about?”

“You.”

Cole blushed and my body warmed despite the cold air. My first real flirt was not rebuffed.

Our ride came a moment later. Cole opened the minivan’s sliding door and gestured to the middle seat. He followed me in and sat beside me. “I usually to sit in the back, but I steal Estelle’s seat whenever I can.”

His mother laughed. “There is no way the two of you would fit in the back seat.”

Cole nodded. “Not enough leg room.”

As his mother drove, she and Cole gave me a synopsis of A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream. When we walked into the auditorium, I pulled out my wallet, but Cole’s mom shook her head and paid without comment like Cole had at Carl’s. She offered to buy us drinks and cookies, but I told her I was stuffed.

We sat just to the right of the center seats on the second row before the extra deep row of the theater where a techie was fiddling with a video camera. I noticed Cole’s mother watching me. When he got up to get an extra program, I turned to her and said, “I’m Owen McCulley. Did Cole tell you I was spending the night?”

She smiled back at me. “I know who you are. You have English with Estelle and Calculus with Nicolas. He talks about you all the time.”

I was spared coming up with a reply when Cole sat down between us again.

The play was funny, especially the tiny actress who played Hermia during the scene where she calls her best friend a painted maypole.

Puck was funny, too. But as we talked over the play on our way to Cole’s, he said that he liked the other Puck better. The Puck I watched played him as a spirit only kept in check by Oberon’s power, but the Puck from the other cast played him as a being who only obeyed Oberon because Puck he found it fun. If it ceased to be or if Puck found something more interesting, he would leave in a minute.

I wasn’t sure. I wished I’d seen them both to compare. But I liked this Puck and this play.

Cole’s mother dropped us off and then went back to take Estelle and her friends to the cast party once they stuck the set.

“Fun?” Cole asked as he led me to his room. “More fun than Halo 3?”

I grunted. “That play was way more fun than watching Nick throw fits when he dies.” He grinned and dumped my bag on the floor, but I’m not done yet. “Being with you is much better.”

He looks me in the eye and sinks onto his bed. I stand before him and lean down. He doesn’t pull away when my lips touch his. He wraps his arms around my neck and pulls me on top of him. Several minutes and one layer of clothing later, we come up for air. Cole scoots around on his bed until his head is on one of his pillows. “Have you done this with Mandy? Or Nick?”

I shake my head and line myself up next to him. “Kisses are too special to share with someone who is only a best friend.”

He grins again, that one with his tongue and I realize it isn’t my gut that is hot, but something lower down. I don’t get a chance to enjoy his beautiful face because his fingers find their way into my pants.

Sex was better than I’d imagined. Cole even had lube and condoms in his drawer. In case, he said, I came over.

I fell asleep, exhausted, with Cole in my arms.