Beth shrugs in a ‘just trying to help’ kind of way and takes her turn, scoring a strike. Summer comes back and perches on the edge of the seat, just as careful as Stiles not to touch, although she’s casual and easy with the other two. She does nudge him conspiratorially, though, this time, and points to the scoreboard.
“You can change people’s names on the board here,” she whispers, and does just that, changing everyone’s but hers. She just makes Stiles’ his last name, but puts something goofy for the other two, some kind of inside joke obviously known only to the three of them. It’s pretty clear they’re very close, but Summer somehow still seems a little on the outside.
“I thought you were going to bring some of your friends?”
Stiles can sympathize with feeling a little on the outside of people. He watches Summer’s face for a second before his mouth quirks up, and he leans forward to change his name on the board from ‘Stilinski’ to ‘Batman’. That gets a decisive nod before he looks back at the girl sitting next to him. His expression is soft and contemplative. “Yeah, well—you didn’t really seem like you wanted me to bring anyone, and since I was kind of crashing your party already…”
His shoulders lift, then drop, hands folded between his knees. “I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable. Besides I don’t really have friends, I’ve basically got—Scott. And that’s more or less it.”
Of course that’s more or less not true, but Stiles’ vision has always been a little clouded when looking at himself, as much now as ever, with his shoulders bearing the weight of the nogitsune’s actions.
Summer pinches her lips together before she speaks, looking at him in a way that’s much more direct than any other time. “You can’t crash a party I invited you to. That’s not how it works. You might be new, but you aren’t unwelcome, and you don’t make me uncomfortable.”
Which is a blatant lie, but also absolute truth: he doesn’t make her uncomfortable the way he means it — bringing his friends wouldn’t have made her uncomfortable, or any of them; he makes her uncomfortable by existing, with his unconscious defense of her problematic social virtue and general geekiness and long-limbed attractiveness. She hates that she can’t /not/ see that, now.
She looks back at the keypad, and says, very quietly, “Did you /want/ this to be a date? With someone you’d only just met?”