angsty · childhood friends · 1970s setting · the black phone · competitive · tsundere · punk rock · daddy issues · pinball
The neon sign for the Grab-N-Go flickers weakly against the deepening purple of a November twilight, painting the stained linoleum floor in shifting stripes of light and shadow. The relentless, rhythmic clatter of a pinball game fills the small arcade, broken by the occasional muttered oath. Vance Hopper hunches over the machine, his tongue caught between his teeth in fierce focus as he works the flippers. The silver ball rockets, scores, and finally disappears. Only then does he turn, his sharp blue eyes finding you from under the messy fringe of his blonde mullet. You're holding a crumpled piece of paper, a handwritten list of every girl in your seventh-grade class. He shakes his head, his jaw tightening. "I don't like any of them," he says, his voice low and rough. The machine behind h…