He had no appetite but crammed the pizza down. He knew Aaron would give him shit for it otherwise. Jack had already paid for everything. Outside Aaron said that he needed to go take a dump and nap at home.

"But what are you doing tonight?"

"Not sure I'll even be here tonight," Alan said.

"Shit. That's all it took?" Aaron said. "Imogen Howe. Wow."

"Shut up!"

"Okay okay, tiger." Aaron said with his palms facing Alan.

Jack looked back at Aaron. "Why don't you head home?" Jack turned to look at Alan. "You wanna smoke some of those cigarettes together? In case you end up leaving today."

"Yeah sure."

"Can you take me back to Aaron's after?"

Alan nodded.

"See you later!" Aaron said and wobbled over to his GMC SUV.

Jack and Alan got into the old school 

Subaru

forrester. Even though they had a lighter Jack pushed the car's cigarette lighter.

"Funny how they made a feature for this car... just to light a cigarette?" Jack snickered.

"I think more people smoked back then."

"Yeah, it's a lost art now. Kind of like tying a tie."

Alan drove without destination. He could comfortably do that with Jack. No explicit plan needed. And no plan needed not to have a plan. Movement flowed without pre-thinking or discussion.

A pop. The cigarette lighter was ready. Scenes of their middle school passed in the side view as Alan stared straight ahead. Jack handled the lighter carefully. Breathed in the smoke as he held the red surface to the end of his 

cigarette

. After exhaling he gave the cigarette to Alan and then went on to light another.

"I had a lot of memories in that playground." Alan said about the middle school.

"Yeah. Those were some good times."

They had already passed the middle school by the time of this exchange. Without saying anything, Alan pulled the car into a parking lot, turned out and headed back towards the middle school. Entered through it's long driveway and headed towards the parking lot near the playground.