Bite Me, Royce Taslim

26

THE AUDIENCE AROUND US EXPLODES IN ENTHUSIASTIC CRIES ANDwolf whistles. It’s a peck on the cheek, but the way they were going on, you’d think he’d just pulled a rom-com move and got down on one knee and proposed using a bottle cap for a ring or whatever.

Although, for a friendly peck, it had lingered a beat, two beats longer than appropriate…and it landed closer to my lips than I’d like.

When he pulls back, I distractedly rub at the spot and glance toward Royce, wondering what he’d seen from his vantage point. If the kiss looked as innocuous as it had been, from Royce’s elevated angle.

Royce is frozen on the side of the stage, his face twisted as he stares at Vern and me, and I realize it’s exactly as I feared—the kiss looked more than platonic. An unfamiliar anxiety overcomes me, even as I tell myself it doesn’t matter, Royce and I are just friends and could never be more.

Evans, who’s on the sidelines, clears his throat, and says, “Ray, Royce, whatever you are called now, stop rubbernecking like a pervert, and, Vern, stop necking and get a room with your girlie. Goddamn teenagers,” he says to laughter.

Girlie.Anger surges through me: Evans had seen me a couple of times before, once at the briefing earlier today, but he’d already forgotten me or chosen to dismiss me as just a girl.

Royce comes to the center of stage, nonplussed. He speaks. The mike makes a serious of alarming beeps, then stops working. He’s flustered now. The assistant calls for a new mike and Evans calls a time-out. Royce heads backstage and the audience starts murmuring.

“You shouldn’t have done that, Vern,” I say. “What were you trying to prove? It totally looked like you were kissing me to Royce.”

“And that’s exactly what I was going for,” Vern says in a conspiratorial tone. “I’m trying to help you and Royce realize you guys have feelings for each other. It’s just a peck on the cheek, you know how Europeans sometime kiss in greeting. Sorry if my methods aren’t traditional.”

“That’s not why it bothered me,” I say, my voice strained from trying to keep it low. The kiss itself wasn’t the issue, but the intention, and the feelings it invoked in me, jumbled and confused, was. “Just—just don’t do anything like that again, even if you wanted to ‘help’…I—I want my first kiss to be special.”

The air between us chills noticeably.

“Okay, got it,” Vern says coolly. “Loud and clear.”

“Don’t take it the wrong way—”

“I need the washroom and a beer,” Vern cuts me off. “Need anything?”

“N-no thanks.”

He nods, avoiding my eyes. “If I don’t see you before, good luck.” Then he disappears.

No, you should have said “Break a leg!”Everyone knows that! On top of that, he knows I’m superstitious. But before I can fret further, Hettie, one of the visiting comics from Singapore who I’d met a couple of times, turns around and pokes my arm. “What was that all about?” she whispers, grinning. “Are you and Vern a Thing?”

“No,” I say. “That was just a joke.” My thoughts had scattered to four corners of my hitherto perfectly mapped world.

“Sure,” Hettie says, grinning. She whispers to her friends. I realize that a lot of the other comics are whispering and glancing my way. I sink down in my seat, my emotions all over the place.

Onstage, Royce finally gets a mike. I wonder if the various interruptions would throw him off as they had in the past. It’s a sign of how far we’d come that I’m not wishing the worst on him.

Until he speaks.

He gestures at me. “Is this a competition or junior camp?” he says. “I mean, I know this is a teen competition—”

He lifts an eyebrow. The audience laughs. I stare at Royce through smarting eyes, my stomach clenched as though I’d been sucker-punched.

“I come from money,” Royce says, giving the audience a confident grin. Money’s great…” He pauses, frowns, the audience hanging on every word, waiting for the twist. “That’s it. That’s the punch line.”

The joke shouldn’t land as well as it does in this crowd, but Royce somehow pulls it off. Because they believe in the truth of his words, and Royce is playing into the stereotype with everything he’s got.

“I’m single and on the apps. My friends tell me I need to be relatable, so for my hobbies I put things like hiking, reading, traveling, instead of running through my money vault naked. What—doesn’t everyone have a vault? Where will you stay when the apocalypse comes? And more importantly—where do you hide the gold bars from the tax men?”

Under the cover of a fake cough, he says, audibly, “One-MDB.”

The audience, mostly Malaysians, shrieks-laughs. Even if the scandal is no longer in vogue with other comedians—Hasan Minhaj did a great bit on this in 2019—we will probably never get over it. We laugh because we can do nothing else.

“I’ve been going on some dates.…”

He launches into a modified bodyguard/bogeyman bit he did at our charity gala, and then joke after joke in the same vein, growing more and more confident with every laugh he gets. He’s killing it—and it’s all thanks to me.

Royce finishes to thunderous applause as people chant, “Royce! Royce!” and he saunters off the stage, smooth as you wish. Royce, who thought that $10,000 US was a nice “bonus” to have. Royce, who won Student Athlete of the Year when he wasn’t enthusiastic or didn’t even care that much about sports. Royce, who never needed to worry about anything. People like him always win. Always. Why should I make it easy for him?

Vern returns with a beer. I hand him my phone so he could record me for my socials and walk up on to the stage, almost shaking with self-righteous anger.

“Wow, new persona much, Royce? Couldn’t hack the pretend-poor-boy persona anymore, so you’re reverting to type?” I taunt before I can stop myself. The words are gushing out me in a torrent. “Man, I guess being rich really can’t buy you a personality. But I guess you wouldn’t know what a personality is even if it hit you.”

As soon as the words leave me, I know I’ve made a mistake, and a sick feeling churns in my belly as I meet Royce’s shocked gaze. The crowd titters nervously, unsure if this was part of the act. But Vern whoops and cheers, the tension in the air breaks a little, and I grin in reaction, until my eyes catch a face in the audience I never expected to see.

Oh my God.

My heart nosedives into the pit of my stomach: It’s Stanley.