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“Tommy?”
“Yeah?”
“Where’d you put the cups?”
It had been almost a week since school had let out. Tommy and Tubbo embraced their freedom with open arms, relishing in the long, hot days with nothing important to do and no one important to listen to. They had finally finished elementary school, having stuck together since their first day of kindergarten, and they took their reward enthusiastically.
They liked to think back to those days when the world was still fresh and terrifying and their hands were still little. Tommy laughed, sometimes, remembering how Tubbo clung to his mother’s dress the first time they met. The tinier Tommy had stuck out a sticky hand, announced his name, and coaxed the small stranger out from the familiar safety of his caregiver. Tubbo took his hand timidly, yanking it once in a shake, and let Tommy guide him wherever he wanted to go. The two grew closer, and closer still throughout the year, and by their very first summer, they were inseparable.
The same could be said for the years that followed. Eventually, Tubbo came out of his shell, and Tommy grew more patient. At some point along the way, the two traded their initial positions: Tommy’s friendliness was reserved solely for Tubbo, and Tubbo shed his shy demeanor to socialize for the both of them. They never strayed too far from one another, and why would they? Tommy brought out the confidence in Tubbo, and Tubbo made Tommy kind. They silently decided they were made for each other, and with no one else around to disagree, they never had any reason to let go of the other’s hand.
Their summers were always delightful. The two never flourished in the school environment, what with Tommy’s constant need to move and Tubbo’s tendency to zone out whenever something important was being said. In 3rd grade, when Tommy’s older brothers got diagnosed with something called ADHD, the pair had gotten a much-needed test of their own, and their results did more than enough to explain their difficulties in school.
In the summer, there was always something to do, yet it was never anything demanding enough to irritate the two. There were no stale classrooms to sit still in, no need to take pills to pay attention, and most importantly, nothing to separate them from each other. The worst part of every day was the nighttime, when Tubbo had to leave Tommy’s house to get back to his own home. When the boys came home crying about being separated from their friend every night, their parents worked out a deal: Tubbo could sleep over at Tommy’s house as long as he was fed properly and his mother saw him alive and well the next day.
The boys didn’t go home crying again after that day.
Tommy’s house was Tubbo’s favorite place in the world. It was big, much bigger than Tubbo’s home, and every inch of it was covered in some sort of reminder of who inhabited it. Tubbo’s mother liked to keep her house clean and orderly, and while Tubbo preferred its perfect neatness to the mess Tommy’s house sometimes became, he felt as though it never truly belonged to him. There was no evidence he lived there. None of his clothes left out on the back of a chair, no special vases or decorations, no photos hung up on the walls. It was dreary in its order, plain in its cleanliness, and soulless in its purity.
Tommy’s house was covered head to toe in meaning. Everywhere he looked, Tubbo could see some sort of representation of its inhabitants. Wilbur’s guitar left sitting out on the couch, atop which lay a pillow Techno had haphazardly sewn together for Phil, whose slippers lay thrown across the rug, where Tubbo and Tommy now sat fidgeting with the carpet and watching the people on the TV chat about nothing. There was always some sort of noise in Tommy’s house, whether it be the shaky notes of a keyboard echoing out from Wilbur’s room, or the clanging of pots and pans as Phil did the dishes or the annoyed huffs that came from Techno as Tommy beat him at another round of mario kart.
With Tubbo’s almost constant presence, he too had begun marking the place up, with several of his drawings hung up around the house, as well a bowl and cup with his name written in black sharpie on them. Tubbo felt welcome there, comforted by Tommy’s solid weight against him and the playful teasing of his brothers. Phil was a patient, gentle man, and Tubbo felt safe in his home.
Sometimes, when Tubbo lay awake at night in his cot next to Tommy’s bed, he would pretend he was really part of their family.
“I reckon we set up some sorta lemonade stand.”
It was a passing thought, really, just like many other ideas that drifted in and out of Tubbo’s head every minute. He was sitting on the curb next to Tommy, as always, sweat dripping from his forehead onto the asphalt below. It was hot out, but Tubbo knew there was worse to come. That’s when the lemonade stand idea entered his mind. Nothing helped cool the summer heat better than a cold glass of lemonade, and he was terribly thirsty and bored at the moment. He didn’t think Tommy would make a big deal out of it, so he was shocked out of his sweltering stupor when the blond beside him shrieked and stood up.
“Oh my god, Tubbo! You’re a genius!” Tommy yelped. His back ached slightly from the sudden change in position. Tubbo looked up at him with a hand covering his eyes from the brutal sunlight. Tommy gave him a hand and pulled him up to meet his height.
“I needed some way to pay Wil back for those popsicles he got us. Remember?” Tommy said, dragging Tubbo along with him down the street back to his house.
“I wasn’t even thinking about the money, honestly. Just wanted something to do,” Tubbo mumbled.
“You gotta think big picture, big man. Who doesn’t want lemonade? Like, ever?”
“Surely they’ll want it more than ever with this heat.”
“Exactly!”
The pair talked as they made their way to Tommy’s house. They agreed they needed lemonade, of course, and a constant supply of it. That, and somewhere to sell it. Tubbo suggested they build a stand, and when Tommy pointed out that neither of them knew how to build anything, Tubbo clarified Phil would be the one doing it, much to Tommy’s relief.
The house’s freezing air conditioning was a divine gift to the boys. They soaked in the chilly air for a minute or two before veering off towards the kitchen, where Phil was busy preparing lunch.
“Dad, can you build us a lemonade stand?” asked Tommy eagerly.
Phil raised his eyebrows as he sliced up a tomato for the sandwiches.
“Starting a business already? Aren’t you like, ten?” Phil teased and turned to throw out the leafy part of the tomato.
“Eleven, actually. Look, Tubbo, he’s going all loopy already,” Tommy said, jabbing at Tubbo’s side. Tubbo, focused on the stand, got back to the topic at hand.
“Please, Phil? We can pay you back for your time once we really get started. Promise.” Tubbo pulled his best puppy eyes.
“I don’t know.. Where are you getting your lemons?” Phil asked.
The boys hadn’t thought about that part yet. Tommy intervened before Tubbo could come up with any sort of plan.
“You can get ‘em for us at first, then we can pay you back later, like Tubbo said,” the blond boy offered.
Phil hummed for a minute, drawing in suspense, then shrugged and agreed.
“Yeah, why not. I’ll get started on the stand when I finish up with lunch, alright? You boys sit in here til I’m done, don’t want you dying of heatstroke or anything,” Phil said, dismissing them.
Tommy and Tubbo turned to each other gleefully and high-fived.
Phil was never much of a carpenter, but he tried his best to make the stand as livable as possible. Along with the standard table section and large panel in front, he added a roof large enough to hide the boys from the sun. He built enough space to put all sorts of pitchers and coins and whatever other items the boys collected along the way. Phil made sure to rid the wood of any splinters that could harm the kids and pulled out an old yellow-and-white tablecloth from beneath the kitchen sink. He expected the boys to get tired of sitting around all day almost immediately, and he made peace with the fact that all this spare time had probably gone to waste building a stand that would last at most a week. The process was fun regardless, and Phil looked forward to the day the boys would pull the old structure out of the garage in their teens and look back on it with nostalgia.
Phil was also expecting the boys to be a bit disappointed with his work, so he was pleasantly surprised to see how much they absolutely adored it.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you! Oh my god, this is so sick,” Tommy shouted, hugging Phil tightly before running towards the stand. Tubbo followed close behind, quickly thanking Phil with a wide grin. The boys investigated every inch of the stand, planning out where they would put everything, and just as Phil ensured, there was plenty of space.
“This is wonderful, but we oughta decorate it, right?” Tubbo suggested after the pair had properly admired the stand.
An hour later, the stand was covered head to toe in chalk. Tubbo took most of the artistic control, drawing vines curling around the stall’s poles with detailed flowers poking out here and there. On the bottom of the stall, he drew a garden landscape, the flowers seeming to grow up from where they put the structure on the grass next to the sidewalk. He even drew a few bumblebees on the stall, some resting on the chalk flowers while others flew around them. Tommy, of course, made his own additions, including a messy drawing of a dinosaur in the corner which he promptly named Dave.
Tubbo scrawled the word “Lemonade” in yellow chalk on the broad top of the stand, and though he wrote more than half of the letters wrong, he smiled at his work.
The boys swelled with pride when Phil had them stand for a picture. When it was done developing, Phil put it up on the fridge right next to a picture Tubbo had drawn of him and Tommy in the 1st grade. He smiled at it fondly and grabbed a bag of lemons he had bought earlier, along with a large glass pitcher filled with water, a bag of sugar, and enough plastic cups to last the rest of the day.
The boys thanked Phil again when he instructed them on how to make the lemonade just right and left them to return inside with a wave.
Tommy and Tubbo turned to each other with smiles plastered across their boyish faces, clinked their near-overflowing plastic cups together, and drank their first lemonades of the summer.