4. Coffee and Pancakes
COFFEE AND PANCAKES
As indecisive as Oscar could be at times, jeans had never been much of an issue before. Even as a teenager, he’d always known which clothes he liked and which he didn’t. It wasn’t that hard. Some clothes looked good, others looked bad, and others made him want to choke on his own vomit.
Oscar no longer owned any of those clothes. He’d left them new and unworn in the closet his mother had wished he’d occupy his entire life.
But wow, had it been difficult to pick an outfit. He’d changed three times, swapping jeans and T-shirts, tugging at his overgrown hair, tying and untying bracelets from around his wrist.
The blue jeans he now wore fit okay and didn’t look like trying-too-hard, nor did the Nirvana T-shirt he’d convinced himself to wear because it was the only thing he owned with a spot of yellow on it.
Oscar glanced at his phone, willing his bouncing leg to still, the water in his glass untouched since the waitress had brought it after he’d insisted, for the second time, that he was waiting for somebody else.
But Oscar had been waiting for nearly half an hour, and there hadn’t been a peep from Aaron all morning.
He could have texted, could have confirmed, could have asked.
But Oscar didn’t want that. The thought of phrasing a question that opened the door for Aaron to cancel filled him with dread, so Oscar had instead resolved to risk being stood up.
At least he’d be at the coffee house, where he could get a double stack of pancakes and drown himself in syrup.
Luke SkyRacer: How’s your date going? :P
Spikey: I swear I’ll never tell you anything else.
Spikey: He’s not here yet. Maybe he changed his mind.
Luke SkyRacer: He’s the one who asked you out. Be patient.
Spikey: No.
As Lucas’s next reprimanding message pinged in, Oscar spied a dash of green darting past the glass window. His mouth went dry, heart clenching like it was being pressed in a fist, palms going sweaty.
Not as sweaty as Aaron’s face when he appeared alongside the booth.
Fuck, he was gorgeous. Better than Oscar remembered. His face was flushed, wet short bangs feathering his brow, plastered to his skin. He wore glasses, like his avatar, but they were a different shape, and he was wearing green.
“Running from the law?” Oscar asked.
As though this was a time to be funny. As though he wasn’t about to implode from sheer attraction.
Suddenly aware that he was still sitting like an idiot while Aaron stood in the aisle between their table and the next, Oscar stood, bumping his hip into the edge of the table and biting back a curse as the future bruise traced itself out beneath his jeans.
“Hi.”
“Hi,” Aaron said.
Well, now what? They didn’t know each other well enough to hug, Oscar supposed, and shaking Aaron’s hand would be too formal. So why the fuck had he stood? He gestured at the leather seat opposite his.
“Sit,” he said, dropping back down.
Sit, he’d said. Like he was the CEO of the coffee house.
Aaron shuffled in, still breathless, although reasonably paler than he’d been a second before.
His nose was dotted with freckles. To Oscar they seemed like the stars, although Aaron was far too close to be the sky, close enough that Oscar could touch him if he wanted to.
Oscar wanted to.
But he was a wuss. So he wouldn’t. Instead, Oscar pushed his glass of water Aaron’s way.
“I haven’t touched it yet,” he said.
Aaron nodded, lifting it to his lips and drinking it all at once. His gulps echoed as the water went down his throat, and when he put the glass down, his lips were wet. Pink and wet and beautiful.
“Thanks,” Aaron replied, heaving out a calm breath.
“It’s not roofied or anything,” Oscar said. For some reason.
“I guess we’ll find out.” Aaron’s lips twitched, and the tension broke. “God, I thought you’d have left.”
“I think you have me confused. This is the church of Oscar, although I suppose that does make me…hmm…” Something lit up behind Aaron’s eyes. “And leave? Because you were fifteen minutes late?” Oscar leaned back into the seat, letting out a puff of air. “Wow, you’re traumatized.”
“Indeed, I am.” Aaron reached for the laminated menu, tracing a line with his finger.
He had freckles on his fingers, too. Oscar wanted to learn their patterns, to trace them like the connect-the-dots coloring books Papa used to get him and Lina.
“I thought I’d be more late. The bus went by a little too early, and I decided to walk. ”
“You have to get a bus to come here?” Oscar asked.
“It’s only fifteen minutes. But it takes far longer on foot.
And I kind of forgot. Like…I haven’t been to this place before, but I looked on the map, and I kind of knew where I had to stop.
I didn’t consider that I’m very physically unfit or that there’s an uphill segment on the route.
” Aaron ran a hand through his hair. It was shorter than it had been at the clinic.
“And I didn’t text you because I didn’t want to waste time. ”
“I don’t have any other plans. You could have texted. I’d have waited.” Oscar shrugged. If he knew Aaron better, if he had the guts, he’d reach out and cover his hand. He wanted to do it anyway, but his gutless body disagreed, threatening him with vomit and doom. “You didn’t have to run here.”
“It’s fine. I’ll know for next time.” Aaron’s words landed in Oscar’s chest like an arrow, bursting the chrysalis that encased his heart and sending it aflutter. “Pancakes?”
“Yeah. What are you drinking?” Oscar asked.
“Coffee, of course.” Aaron’s mouth split into a grin and suddenly all the lights in the coffee house seemed dim and the sun outside second-rate.
“Why of course?” Oscar arched an eyebrow.
“You’ll find out.” Aaron’s eyes crinkled. “Coffee and I…we’re practically an old married couple. Soulmates, if you will.”
“I didn’t know you were spoken for. Damn, now I feel like a third wheel.” Oscar wished he wasn’t so awkward, his stomach clenching. What if Aaron thought he was weird and decided running back would be more pleasant than sitting in this booth with him?
“We’re open.”
Aaron’s smile deepened, and Oscar’s stomach allowed him reprieve. He opened his mouth to say something else, but stopped as the waitress flitted to their side, eager to finally take their order.
“We’ll have two pancake stacks,” Oscar said. “And coffee.”
“A whole pot,” Aaron added. “And syrup.”
“Yes,” Oscar replied, meeting his bright eyes across the table. The fucking sky. Maybe his favorite color wasn’t green after all. “A whole lot of syrup.”
The sidewalk was bathed in the amber light of the older streetlamps still thriving in this part of town.
Oscar liked old things that survived, aged things, not-dead things.
The sky had gone pitch black, and the stars were invisible from inside the coffee house, the moon shedding silver from a corner out of Oscar’s field of view.
Aaron slid his fork into the large slice of carrot cake the waitress had just brought him. Oscar sipped hot chocolate, unable to eat anything else. Pancakes had turned into a dinner of hot steak sandwiches with potato chips on the side, and now Aaron was having dessert.
“Are you sure you should be drinking that?” Oscar frowned at the dregs scraping the bottom of the third pot of coffee they’d finished.
Well, Aaron had. Oscar had only had one cup.
Anymore and he’d be swaying to the bathroom to throw up.
It had always been strange—the love-hate relationship between him and coffee.
“I’m accustomed.” Aaron waved a dismissive hand and shoved a forkful of cake into his mouth.
His cheeks blew up as he chewed, chipmunk-like, cute.
In the last few hours, watching him eat, Oscar had suddenly been struck by the epiphany to end all epiphanies.
He’d never much understood as a child why aunts and grandmas liked to pinch and prod cheeks like they were sampling meat at the market.
But if Oscar could guarantee that Aaron wouldn’t fly from him like a kite in a blizzard, he’d have pressed into that freckled skin several times over their pancake-sandwich-dinner-lunch. Or was it lunch-dinner?
“You didn’t have glasses on at the clinic. New prescription?” Oscar asked.
Aaron shook his head, chewing and making waves with his hand as though trying to speed up the process.
“Don’t go choking now. All that money on the nurse only to croak the moment you’re out of the house.”
Aaron sputtered out a laugh, projecting crumbs of carrot cake across the table. His cheeks went scarlet, bleeding shame. Oscar wanted to trail his lips across them, to brush the heat away with his thumbs. To touch him in any way humanly possible.
“Thanks for that, Spike.”
The familiar name shook Oscar to the core, reminding him of that moment standing underneath pale yellow lights about to cross a threshold that would change his life forever.
He’d been compelled then to share with him that secret joy, the name he’d said to himself over and over in his bed at night, covers high over his head, pretending everybody knew he was a boy and not just Papa.
“No. I’ve had glasses since forever. It’s not a heavy prescription, though. I don’t have to wear them all the time, but signs and text are blurry when I don’t, so I’d much rather.”
“Really didn’t want to see your boobs one last time, huh?” Oscar’s mouth twisted to the side.
“Do you have a boob humor fetish?” Aaron rolled his eyes and took another bite of cake.
“Beats the crippling fear of having them.” Oscar shrugged, eyes sliding away.