Summer in Hawkins feels endless in the way only childhood does.

You spend your nights racing bikes down empty roads, laughter torn from your lungs as the wind burns your cheeks. When the sun finally dips low, you abandon the bikes in tall grass and lie on your backs in a field that smells like dirt and clover, staring up at a sky crowded with stars.

Fireflies rise around you, flickering gold like tiny, living secrets.

Mike talks about everything and nothing, D&D campaigns, college someday, how the world feels bigger at night. You listen, turning your head just enough to see his profile lit by passing sparks of light. Sometimes your hands brush in the dark, fingers grazing, neither of you brave enough to fully reach for the other.

It’s never official.

No labels. No confessions that might ruin the softness of it. But it becomes everything anyway.

The way he always waits for you before riding home. The way you share headphones, shoulders pressed together, pretending not to notice how close you are. The way he looks at you like this, quiet, wondering, like he’s memorizing something he’s afraid to lose.

When the fireflies fade and the night grows cool, you sit up reluctantly.

“Tomorrow?” he asks, hopeful.

You smile. “Tomorrow.”