28. Roommate-aversary
Roommate-aversary
People were due to show up for the party soon, and Theo was going insane for several competing reasons. First, Dae was far too dreamy in a simple jeans and dark blue button-up shirt combo, and Theo wanted to undo every one of those buttons with his mouth.
Second, he and Dae had been weird all week, which was an expected result after kissing and then deciding not to kiss anymore, but it still sucked.
They were polite and careful around each other, not teasing, not touching, and barely even staying in the same room.
It was torture, and Theo had no idea how to fix it.
Third, Dae was baking yakgwa, a sweet Korean pastry that had taken most of his concentration for the entire day, and it smelled so delicious, Theo’s stomach almost clawed its way out of his throat to get a taste.
Jordan had the same idea, reaching for it on the kitchen counter, but Dae swatted her hand away. “It’s still cooling.”
She pouted. “You said five minutes.”
“Yes, thirty seconds ago.” He didn’t pull his attention from the platter he was carefully arranging.
The recipe book he had propped against the back of the stove was the best birthday present Theo had ever pulled off.
A full precious Saturday was spent secretly shuttling off to Hamilton to meet with Dae’s parents and grandparents to pick up their hand-written recipes, which he laminated and bound together.
He even had Dae’s grandma use her fancy calligraphy brush to write their surname in the Korean alphabet on the cover.
Dae rolled his sleeves up to his elbows to continue his task, and Theo nearly fainted.
Jordan snapped her fingers in his face. “Hey. Why are you being weird today?”
“Me?” His cheeks were so warm, they felt infected. “I’m not weird. The world is weird, I’m just living in it.”
She narrowed her eyes, casting a glance back at Dae, who was pointedly ignoring them both. “Here,” she said, still skeptically studying him while shoving a bowl of chips into his hands. “Put these on Céline’s table.”
He ate a chip on the way. “Hmm, dill pickle.”
Dae tsked. “If you ruin your tastebuds on chips before trying my yakgwa, you don’t get any.”
Jordan had shown up mid-afternoon to ‘set up’, which consisted of putting twinkly lights on the balcony and select areas of the living room, putting out various snacks, and commandeering the kitchen table as an alcohol station, all of which had taken a measly hour.
Then she just sat at the counter watching Dae bake as Theo changed his mind about his outfit six times.
She wandered into his room with more twinkle-lights and shook her head at his latest clashing outfit attempt. “What was wrong with the first one?”
He shrugged. The first outfit had been fine; blue chinos with a charcoal grey shirt that flirted with being tight. But for some deeply mysterious reason, he wanted to be extra dazzling tonight.
He heaved a sigh and went back to the original outfit, ruffling his hair to windswept levels. Jordan was halfway through putting up the lights when he finally decided to step away from the damn mirror. She’d carefully avoided any space that had a picture or sticker, which was quite the task.
“You know,” she said, raising herself on her tip-toes to tape a string of lights directly above the collage he’d made of their first year of university, “I was going to do a whole picture-shrine thing to celebrate your friendship, but then I remembered you already have one.”
Theo spun on her. “Why is the tone judgy?”
She laughed, turning on the lights and gasping at her handiwork. “No judgement. It’s just the right amount of creepy.”
It was possible Theo had gotten a bit carried away through the years with the same polaroid camera his aunt had given him, constantly adding photos to his collage, which now spread over the remaining three walls that weren’t covered in stickers.
“And it works with the theme of the evening,” she said, “so I can’t be mad at it. You’re still cool with letting people in here, right?”
“Uhm hmm.” Dae’s room had too many clues outing him as Bob Is Not Your Neighbour, but Theo’s would be open for anyone who wanted quieter conversations.
“Hey.” She nudged him with her elbow. “You okay?”
He wanted to tell her, but he also needed to figure out his feelings before anyone else started weighing in and pushing him one way or the other.
What if she thought he was too reckless with people’s hearts to even consider taking that leap with Dae?
Or worse: What if she encouraged it and pushed him into doing something he wasn’t equipped to handle?
So, instead of burdening her with his crisis, he just nodded, and though her face implied that she didn’t fully buy it, she let it go.
Theo’s mom and aunt showed up first, handing him a magnum of red wine and a box of donuts. “Jesus Christ, what is that smell?”
Liana floated to the counter like a cartoon and Dae motioned to the platter of yakgwa with a shy grin. “I made dessert.”
“Ohmygod…” Liana moaned through her first bite. “Please bake this for the café.”
His mom shook her head, trying not to laugh as her sister took another dramatic bite. “We’re staying long enough to put a dent in this bottle, and then we’re leaving you youths to party parent-free, as is the custom. Now, I’ll have what she’s having.”
Dae was clearly trying to hide how proud he was about the euphoric sounds coming out of them.
In fact, everyone who arrived was beckoned to the kitchen by the smell.
Dae lapped it up as much as he could, accepting compliments, hugs, and high-fives, until it all became too much, and he disappeared into his room for a while.
The apartment was crammed with an interesting mix of people.
His mom and aunt had already left, so not everyone he loved was within these walls, but it was close.
Jordan, Caleb, and Avery were cuddled on his bed having an animated chat with old music club members, and judging by the consistency of Jordan’s dismissive waves, they were likely gushing over the album.
Min had brought a university friend who had an obvious crush on Dae (fair enough), a few people from Dae’s latest translation project were hovering in the kitchen, making conversation with people from Theo’s agency, and a raucous group they’d met in a queer intramural sports league were joking around in the living room.
Theo loved the point of a party where one voice was barely indistinguishable from another and everyone was simply contributing to the sound of joy.
Jason laughed beside him. “You’re doing that thing again.”
“Thing?”
He looked handsome, his hair trimmed short and his outfit hugging all the right places. “Yeah, that thing where you marvel at your friends with this dopey grin like you’re about to cry.”
Theo put on a show of sniffing and shaking his voice. “I’m not crying!”
The truth was, moments like this did hit him straight in the chest. There’d been a period in his life when he’d thought he’d never have a community, but here they were, and it was nothing short of magic.
“Theo!” Jordan waved, getting on her knees on the bed to beckon him as if he weren’t a few feet away. Then she flopped back down, impressively not spilling her drink as she gestured at the walls. “Everyone wants to know the story behind the shrine.”
Jason let out a bark of a laugh. “Finally, someone is calling it what it is.”
Theo followed Jason into his room, standing in front of the wall of pictures. “It’s not a shrine; it’s a collage.”
One of the girls shuffled on the bed to make room for Jason and he sat, giving Theo a teasing grin. “Sure, a collage that takes up almost three walls of a grown man’s room.”
“Wait.” The girl beside Jason, who Theo vaguely remembered as a violinist with an amazing laugh, actually held up her hand like she was in class. “So, you didn’t put this up just for the party? Like, as a tribute to you and Dae?”
“What? No.” That would’ve been absurd behaviour. Besides, it wasn’t just him and Dae up there. The pictures included everyone. “This is a tribute to my life.”
He studied it to be able to show receipts but found his throat dry at the realization that…yeah, it was mostly Dae.
Jordan, Jason, Caleb and Avery, his mom and aunt—everyone was up there. But it was like they were supporting characters in the Dae and Theo show. He’d never noticed that before.
The others continued chatting, but Theo couldn’t concentrate on the flow of conversation. His attention kept getting pulled to the pictures.
Him and Dae at the CN Tower, the day Theo had made him pretend to be a tourist. Theo pumping his fist in the air as Dae piggybacked him up a hill. Dae laughing at Theo and Min wearing dumb hats, screaming obscenities at the top of the Hamilton mountain.
He didn’t have any pictures of his childhood or high school.
According to his picture-walls, his life began in his first year of university, when he was reunited with Dae.
Board game nights, study parties, birthdays, hanging out on the grass in The Circle with the guys, Dae with his notebook, his face intense with concentration, the Golden Girls, Ninja Turtles, and Super Mario costumes, Dae and Theo at his aunt’s café opening, moving day, the Princess Bride group picture, a close-up of Dae in his cheap curly wig, a picture of Theo’s screen during one of their video chats when he was in Korea, Dae’s hair messy and his face puffy.
In almost every picture that wasn’t posed, either Dae was looking at Theo, or Theo was looking at Dae.
Holy…fucking…shit. Dae was the gravity in the centre of Theo’s life. From the beginning.