Chapter 23
Lizette threw herself at Emmett the moment he walked through the apartment door, her hugging, screaming excitement wringing all thought of the missing woman from his mind.
“What?” he said as the dogs yapped and scratched at their legs. “What’s happening?”
“I got the money! He said yes!”
“What money? Who?”
She released him and flopped back over the arm of the couch with an ill-boding crack. “Fuck, I think I broke the couch.” She laughed.
“What’re you talking about?”
She pulled herself up. “You remember that venture capitalist guy I met with?”
“The investor from Miami?”
“I followed up with him the other day, told him about my idea of expanding GORDITA into menswear, and apparently he loved it. I just got off the phone with him and he’s in!”
“You mean—”
“I’m going full-time, bitch!”
“Holy shit! Lizette!” They hugged again. “We need to celebrate!”
“Let’s a throw a party!”
Emmett could think of nothing worse: people in his private space, forced mingling, a huge mess to clean up after. But Lizette had worked so hard. She deserved this. “Okay. Wait, tonight?”
“Nothing big, a fiestecita. A fiestecita GORDITA. Oh come on, we have to!”
“All right. Sure. Just—”
“What?”
“No surprise guests, okay?”
“Stop. As if I’d ambush you like that. A fun night, that’s all I want.”
Lizette, you fucking liar, Emmett thought seven hours later as he opened the door onto a smiling Aaron, showered and dressed and clutching a bottle of wine as if ready for a romantic date.
“Jesus,” Aaron said, almost startled, scanning Emmett up and down. “You look—”
Emmett could barely hear over the Chicano rap blasting behind him, the loud slurring voices of Lizette’s friends and cousins.
They filled the small apartment with their drunken Spanglish and some of the most unabashedly X-rated dancing Emmett had ever seen on a Tuesday.
He missed the end of Aaron’s pronouncement, but the way he was looking at Emmett suggested approval of the kind to which he was unaccustomed even from the most ardent of his online admirers.
He could practically see the hot-face emojis in Aaron’s eyes; it lit a fire in Emmett’s cheeks.
“So glad you could make it. Come in.”
He’d barely crossed the threshold before—
“Aaron!” Margarita sloshed from Lizette’s cup as she wrestled him into a loose-armed hug. “You made it!”
“Wouldn’t miss it. Congrats again. This is for you.”
“So fucking sweet,” she said, taking the bottle. Then to Emmett: “Isn’t he so fucking sweet?
“Uh-oh,” she added, seeing Emmett’s expression and slinging an arm over Aaron’s shoulder to whisper, “He’s mad because I wasn’t supposed to invite you.”
“You weren’t?” A surprising flicker of vulnerability, perhaps a worry that he’d misinterpreted the invite as more than it was.
“Shut up,” Emmett snapped at Lizette.
Before she could respond, Armando grappled onto her from behind. “Come dance, baby. This is our song.” Pulling her back toward the patch of living room carpet serving as a makeshift dance floor.
Emmett met Aaron’s eyes and looked away. “Sorry about that.”
“No worries.”
“It’s not like I didn’t want you here. I just didn’t think you’d be interested on a school night. Not a school night but a—”
“I’m interested.” Aaron’s crooked smile brought Emmett up short.
“Uh—can I get you a drink?”
“Beer if you’ve got it.”
Emmett nodded and slunk away into the kitchen. He exhaled into the open fridge, atingle with nervous energy and crawling dread. His mind was telling him to play it cool, and the scars on his heart, to stay above it. Don’t read into it. Don’t get your hopes up. You already know how this ends.
Aaron was eating chips and salsa when Emmett found him. He took the bottle and said, “Thanks. What’re you drinking?”
Emmett eyed his Malibu and Diet Coke with embarrassment. “Tito’s.”
“Well, cheers.” They clinked. Emmett drank deeply, partly to loosen his nerves, but equally, in vehement need of its sugars.
They stepped aside to let one of Lizette’s cousins grab food. “Cool place,” Aaron said, looking around.
“It’s a shithole, but it’s home.”
“No, I like it. So close to the beach?”
“What part of town are you in again?”
“Hillcrest.”
“Right. Commute must be nice.”
Aaron nodded, studying the carpet. Emmett anticipated what was coming and wished he’d kept his mouth shut.
“Hey, sorry again about the museum job,” Aaron said. “Shitty how it all worked out. I feel like such a jerk.”
“Totally fine.”
Emmett was about to mention his promotion at the store, but before he could get the words out, Aaron continued, “Maybe it’s for the best. At least now we can do this without it being weird.”
“This?”
“Hang out.”
“Why would that be weird?”
Aaron smiled and shrugged. Showing none of his cards.
Bastard.
And yet for an hour he didn’t leave Emmett’s side except to pee and get more drinks. (Emmett bore the switch to vodka with self-loathing aplomb.) They talked, and laughed, and eased into companionable drunkenness.
Maybe more than companionable. Emmett felt the seams of his insecurity coming apart, allowing bits of his authentic self to show through—his humor, his light, his innate musicality, his body swaying to the beat of Lizette’s ass-shaking playlist—while Aaron reciprocated in his own way, communicating his affection with hints of trenchant humor and a blessing of little touches.
A brush of their hands, a squeeze of Emmett’s shoulder as they laughed.
Each one a surprise, a titillation, prompting a tickle of desire.
Emmett hungered, but not for food. Not even for sex.
He craved Aaron like he’d never craved a person before, and it scared him.
Then suddenly Aaron was stumbling away from him, Lizette dragging him back by the arm. “Come dance! Emmett, come on!”
“What do you say?” Aaron said, inviting Emmett to join.
He shook his head. His feet remained planted.
It was etched into the part of his brain that governed self-preservation: to dance was to make his body visible, and to make it visible was to make himself vulnerable.
Hank’s voice rose from the depths of his psyche to condemn him: That’s what happens when you don’t listen, sport.
I only wanted what was best for you. For your health.
When he was thinner, none of that would bother him anymore.
When he was thinner, he would flirt and dance and live.
He watched on from a safe distance as Lizette’s cousin Oscar—a thin-limbed twink with gold hoop earrings, who barely ever looked at, let alone spoke to, Emmett, as if to ward off unwanted advances—danced backward up to Aaron, nestled against his crotch.
Emmett sensed an instant tension between them.
Aaron leaned in to whisper in Oscar’s ear.
A landslide of emotion unleashed inside Emmett.
He was twenty-three again, in the Gaslamp Quarter, watching Chris and the guy Emmett was crushing on make fun of his boobs.
He was seventeen again, at prom, dancing with Lizette and imagining she was Jake Butler, the only other out gay guy in the school, who hadn’t asked him.
He was eight years old again, sobbing into his pillow because Hank caught him snacking and called him a fat fuck, and even though Emmett’s belly was full, he was so terribly, terribly Hungry.
Alcohol simply wasn’t enough to make this bearable. He went to the dining table and loaded up a plate—chips, guac, heaps of Lizette’s homemade enchiladas. Not as much as he wanted, but there’d be plenty left over after everyone went home.
He glanced up, unconsciously checking whether anyone had clocked him, and noted Aaron and Oscar’s absence. They seemed to have disappeared—together.
Emmett wouldn’t let himself get upset. I told you not to get your hopes up. I told you this would happen. Still the void inside him gaped, frayed and tender at the edges.
Skirting the throng of dancers, he carried his plate back to his bedroom.
The bathroom door opened as he passed. “Hey, your lock’s broke,” someone said. Emmett paused, disoriented. It was Oscar, alone.
“Sorry,” Emmett replied and shunted off, confused.
He pushed open the door at the end of the hall and stopped before the totally surreal sight of Aaron standing in his bedroom.
He turned, caught off guard himself but smiling. “Hey.”
Emmett thrust the plate of food onto the dresser, as if intending it only as decoration. “I thought you’d left.”
“Sorry. I went looking for you, but I… got distracted.” He rotated, taking in the Detective Pikachu poster on the wall, the stuffed Sobble cozied up on the bed.
“Yeah, sorry. It’s a bit juvenile.”
“No, it’s cool. Pokémon Yellow was my jam back in the day.”
Emmett smiled. “Old-school.”
Aaron inched toward him as he studied the room. “So what’s your type?”
“Sorry?”
“Fire, grass? Hopefully not ghost. I don’t think my heart could take it.”
He doesn’t mean that. “Water. You?”
“Pika, pika. Gotta be electric.”
They were practically nose to nose now, close enough to touch. Aaron would have to be the one to do it. But he wouldn’t. Guys like Aaron didn’t go for guys like him.
Even after guys like you lose ninety-five pounds?
He was thinner, wasn’t he? Emmett had forgotten. And yet remembering didn’t make this feel realer. He just couldn’t wrap his head around being desired.
“Electric type, huh?” he said. “Guess that means you’re my weakness.”
“You know,” Aaron said, closing the gap between them, “I kinda like the sound of that.”
His snaggletooth bumped Emmett’s incisors with a little click as they kissed.
It seemed to carry a trace of electricity, a pleasant shock running to the back of his mouth and down his spine into his stomach: a yellow ball of electric current, lighting him up from the inside out, bright and hot and throwing off sparks.
His arm hairs stood up. His penis flushed. Every inch of him crackled.
Aaron used his Thunderbolt.
It was super-effective.