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“High praise.” Nate lifted his glass. “We should toast.”

“To what?”

“You pick.”

Leo considered. They could toast to the death of televisions. To Marvin’s eventual destruction. To the many views their videos were getting.

All good options.

But Leo arrived somewhere else in the end.

“To us,” he said.

Nate held his glass a little higher and looked at Leo across the lantern light, straight at him.

“To us,” he said, and drank.

Leo bent his head over his glass and breathed in.

The wine sat in his nose like a memory with no picture attached. Leo breathed it in until he was sure he could have named the year, if he’d ever known anything about wine.

Maybe he had. It seemed possible tonight.

Across the table, Nate set his glass down and reached into the grass again. This time he came up with a wooden crate, which he placed on the corner of the table. Inside stood a row of little jars.

Leo eyed them. “What is that?”

“A little game I thought you might enjoy.” Nate picked a jar, unscrewed the lid, and shook something green into his palm. “Close your eyes.”

“Why?”

“That’s the game. I crush some of these herbs between my fingers, and you try to identify them by smell. You like plants, don’t you?”

“That’s not a game. That’s a test.”

“So you’re backing down?”

“Never.” Leo sat up straighter and closed his eyes.

He would not be bested.

There was a small dry sound—leaves breaking—and then Nate’s hand must have come across the table, because the smell arrived all at once, sharp and bright and completely familiar.

“Mint,” Leo said. “You start me with mint? That’s too easy.”

“Warming you up.”

“Insulting me, more like. The fox could have told you that’s mint. Give me the next one.”

A pause. The lid of another jar. Leo kept his eyes shut and listened to Nate’s fingers working, and then the second smell came, resin and pine and a roast that wanted making.

“Rosemary.”

“Correct.”

“Obviously. Give me a real one.”

“How are these not real?”