Chapter 9 #2
I follow the nod of his head toward the couch and sit at one end of it, sinking into it endlessly, like falling into a deep pit. Mouse Rat should write a song about it
He looks over at me and laughs. “Yeah, that spot is missing some springs,” he says. “You might want to scooch over a couple feet.”
I take his suggestion and find that, yes, the seat is a bit firmer over here. But the couch is still so deep that I can’t sit with my feet on the floor and reach the backrest at the same time. So I slide back in my seat and tuck my legs up, crossing them in front of me.
The TV blinks to life and low-res title art fills the screen, accompanied by familiar plunking music. “Oh my god,” I say as nostalgia swells in my chest.
“It’s cool, right?” Damien comes over to take a seat next to me on the couch, nearly tripping over the cord from the controller as he does. He tucks his legs up as well, one knee bent up with his arm resting over it.
“Very,” I reply, smiling as I glance over at him. He smiles back and for a second this all feels very weird. It feels weird that it feels…normal. As if this is just a thing we do now.
“All right, kiddos,” Malcolm says when he exits the bedroom, clapping his hands together as he stands next to the TV.
He’s wearing a flouncy white shirt that makes me think of a pirate, and I wonder yet again if he’s in costume.
“I am off to get an emergency haircut because I have a date with Evan tonight—”
“So you’ve said,” Damien says unenthusiastically.
“Behave yourselves while I’m gone,” Malcolm adds. “And don’t fuck on the couch because this is a communal space—”
“Okay, byyyye.” Damien quickly gets to his feet and pushes Malcolm out of the room and down the hall. I can see Malcolm say something else to Damien, but it’s too faint for me to hear, and then they are both out of sight.
Damien reappears a moment later. I can’t tell if he’s as thoroughly embarrassed as I am or if he’s just annoyed. “Ignore him,” he says again, taking his seat on the couch.
“He kind of reminds me of Pal,” I say offhand. “That’s definitely the sort of thing they would say.”
He snorts. “I met them for all of five seconds and I can tell.”
“So, like, are all your roommates gay, then?” I immediately realize that might sound like a rude question, so I quickly add, “Basically everyone I know is queer, I’m not saying—I mean, it’s cool with me.”
He eyes me curiously for a second, like he doesn’t know what I’m talking about, but then it seems to dawn on him, and he laughs. “Evan is short for Evangeline,” he says. “Malcolm is, like, the token straight friend. He’s just…like that.”
“Right. Okay.” I nod and then frown. “So if he’s the token straight friend, does that mean you’re…not?”
“Uh, not as such, no.”
“Oh. Okay.” I look towards the TV for another moment and then back at him. “But you do have a girlfriend, right?”
Now it’s his turn to frown in confusion. “What are you talking about?”
“That woman in the shop with you the other day! She bought a pen and—”
“Dude, that’s my sister!” He lets out a horrified laugh. “Oh my god.”
“Sorry!” I laugh as well. “I just thought—Well, I don’t know what I thought, because now that I’m thinking about it, you did just seem to annoy each other—”
“She was visiting from out of town, and she loves pens and stuff, so I told her I saw a store she might like, and she dragged me along,” he explains. “And I don’t have a girlfriend. Or—anyone. Not that I’m—What I mean is, I—I’m just me.”
“Does that mean you’re—” I hesitate to ask, because it’s so personal, but there’s a swell of hope in my chest that maybe if he’s just him it means he’s somewhere on the ace spectrum with me.
“Bi, yeah,” he says, which was not what I was expecting him to say.
“Oh.”
“But don’t—I mean, not that you would, but maybe don’t mention it online?” he adds quickly. “I like to keep my life pretty private—”
“I swear, I would never,” I assure him. I know what it can be like to out yourself on a public platform—I did it myself a few years ago, and I kind of wish I hadn’t.
Not because people have been terrible—they mostly haven’t—but because now that I’m questioning…
everything, I don’t know if I lied to them or not.
“Yeah, I know. Sorry,” he says with a small laugh. “I trust you.”
Holy heck, I think we’re definitely friends.
I turn my attention back to the TV and the controller in my hand so I can start playing and stop geeking out over the fact that I made a new friend.
A friend who doesn’t have a girlfriend.
A friend whose jokes and insights—and infuriating little smiles at the edge of the screen—in his streams made me question everything in the first place.
“The first thing I’m going to do,” I say as I load up a new game of Super Mario 64, trying to focus on the excitement of it instead, “is find a place to go swimming because I love that Mario can breathe through his feet.”
“You find joy in the strangest of things,” he says, almost wistfully.
I smile but don’t look over at him. “Thank you.”