I got out of the shower and got dressed in my distressed jeans and a black "The Wallflowers" t-shirt with faded yellow stars on the front that was at least two sizes too large now. These were my smallest pair of jeans, and I still had to use a belt to keep them up. I could hear Anderly and Hex laughing about something in the living room. I took a deep breath and steeled myself before going out to see them.
"Hey Babe!" Called Anderly, sitting on the couch and leaning on the armrest.
"Hey?" I said back, confused. I grabbed a bottle of water from the barren fridge and leaned against the kitchen cabinets.
Hex was sitting next to her, legs crossed at the knee, wearing silver pumps and an off-the-shoulder black pencil dress with short sleeves that really accentuated the tattoos on his chest and shoulders. His makeup and long, wavy black wig were both styled flawlessly. If I didn't know that Hex was gender-fluid, (but didn't care if I called him "he", "she" or "they" because he was "always some combination of both anyway") I would have been confused; he just looked like an incredibly classy woman who really had no business being in my dingy apartment.
He stopped messing with his phone and looked up at me when I walked into the room. "Yo."
"You look nice." I said, knowing full well how long a getup like that took to achieve.
"Thanks, Babycakes." He fluttered his long lashes at me.
"Why are you so dressed up, anyway?" I asked, secretly praying they weren't planning to drag me kicking and screaming to a nightclub.
"You think this is dressed up? Honey, you should have seen me two hours ago; I was wearing twice as much glitter and wig glue. This is me toned down." Hex laughed at my blank expression. "I had a show earlier, in the City."
"The City" being downtown Denver, almost an hour away by car, and "a show" meaning a drag burlesque show at a prominent gay club in the Five Points area.
"Uhhh.... So. What are you guys doing here?" I asked, taking a sip of water. "You freaked me out with those texts."
"We came to kidnap you, obviously." Said Anderly, standing up and moving over to me. Her outfit was a hoodie from her university, dark purple yoga pants, tennis shoes, and rectangular black glasses. Her curly dark brunette hair was pulled into a high ponytail with a blue scrunchie. Her self-proclaimed "Basic College Bitch" ensemble. She raised an eyebrow at me.
"Cosmo." Uh oh. Using my actual name was never a good sign.
I swallowed and took a step back, but she just took a step forward.
"W-what is it?" I stuttered. She was looking me over, my face, hair, and body. I crossed my arms over myself instinctively. Hex put his phone away in his patent leather bag and looked at me too. Also not a good sign.
"You doing okay?" She asked, frowning. "You don't look so good, and I think you've lost more weight-" She reached out to touch me and I recoiled without thinking, immediately regretting it. Her eyes widened.
"Ah, um, I'm sorry-" I twisted my water bottle until it made a crunching sound. "I just.. I- I didn't mean to-" I stammered, apologetic.
She just held her hands up and smiled. "Woah, hey, it's fine! Don't work yourself up. It was my bad."
"We can tell you aren't okay." Said Hex from the couch, casually, like he was reading from the newspaper. "I'd bet money you've been spiraling alone in your dark room and starving yourself for the past week, too." Anderly shot him a stern look but didn't say anything. Hex wasn't one who walked on eggshells around my feelings when he knew something was seriously wrong.
Fuck, it felt like I had no secrets from these two. I just looked at the floor and bit my chapped lip. It was much harder to lie to their faces, so I didn't.
"...Sorry." I said quietly, tears welling up. I was always about ten seconds away from crying at any given moment these days.
Hex got up and strode over to me, fast, standing directly between Anderly and me. "Cosmo. Look at me." I couldn't. "Look at me." He lifted my chin with both hands and made me.
"Do not fucking say you're sorry." He hissed, his painted eyebrows drawing together, frustrated. I couldn't move; his grip was like a vice.
"You don't have to be alone. We don't want you to suffer in the dark. I hoped you'd come out of it by yourself, but-" He skillfully wiped an errant tear off my face without cutting me with his long nails. I was shaking, but I could not look away from his stormcloud gray eyes no matter how much I wanted to.
I really didn't want to cry anymore, fuck.
"I know you." His voice was intense but quiet, and it scared the shit out of me. "I know how you think. Don't believe for one fucking second that you deserve to shoulder your burdens alone, or that we don't care about you more than anything on this Earth."
Anderly was grabbing his arm, afraid he was hurting me just by the look of terror on my face. He didn't move a muscle, just held me still by only his hands on either side of my jaw and his serious expression. I grabbed his wrists instinctively.
He narrowed his eyes, his voice almost a whisper. "You don't get to decide that we don't love you, and you shouldn't feel guilty for shit that is not and never has been your fault." He paused, burning me with that look, like he wanted to etch the truth into my brain.
His iron grip loosened a bit. "I want you to smile again. I don't want you to change who you are, I just need you to make an effort to share some of your hurt with us. You don't have a monopoly on pain."
I did not expect him to use my own words against me. Words I stopped believing in the second they had come out of my mouth back at the café.
He looked so pissed and so sincere my heart contracted in my chest. Hex had this fucking power to see into my heart that was terrifying. I felt naked, stripped of all the terrible things I told myself my friends had thought about me. It was like he had reached into my chest and ripped my feelings right out, leaving a raw, jagged hole that no amount of lies could ever fill.
My stupid tears overflowed so suddenly I choked on the sob that followed. Anderly looked horrified at the whole scene, but she loosened her death grip on Hex's bicep and relaxed a little.
"Now." Hex said normally, releasing my face. "I'm going to hug you, okay?"
I could barely breathe, let alone think, but I nodded anyway. He pulled me into his arms, hard, and I felt Anderly embrace us both. I almost collapsed, and I was sobbing like a fucking baby, but it felt like I was in the safest place I could ever hope to be.
"Hey." Said Hex after a long while, combing his fingers through my damp hair. "Go get your stuff. We're gonna stay at Anderly's tonight, yeah? That's why we came over. To get you out of here for a while. Okay? Go on."
"Yeah." I said, "Okay."
Anderly had been crying too, silently, and she was wiping her face with her hoodie sleeve as I pulled back to go find a duffel bag.
"God damn it, Hex." She smacked his arm, sniffling loudly. "I thought you were gonna beat him up."
"Sorry." He said, putting his arm around her and squeezing her shoulder. He chuckled soberly. "I knew he was going to say 'I'm sorry'. I was waiting for it." He pulled his long hair over one shoulder and fiddled with it one-handedly. "...When he did, I kind of lost it."
"You think?" She said, indignant. "You are the queen of overdoing it."
Hex suddenly laughed so hard Anderly looked up at him, not realizing what she had said that was so funny.
"Oh Honey," He said, glitter-encrusted eyes twinkling, "What other kind of Queen is there?"
~
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