“Don’t get him started,” Maggie mutters. “He loved mads.”
“So did you. Sue me.”
“It was a good time,” I admit. “But I’ve got to be honest, I kinda hated the music. The plays were always better.” And not just because I played Cal’s love interest in one of them. We had a very progressive high school.
“I don’t disagree,” Cal tells me. I’m surprised he’d admit that out loud. He used to love the singing. I always kind of struggled, but there were times we sat together at the piano and he helped me learn the music.
“What, uh, which one was your favorite? Which show, I mean?” Noah asks. He’s trying to be polite and I love him for it. He keeps shifting in his chair, though, and his napkin’s fallen to the ground about three times in the last thirty seconds. He’s also on his second cola. Cal grins again, wickedly.
“Oh, that’d have to be The Blood of the Stones. Easily. The stage combat alone was incredible, but the special effects we pulled off… Plus, it was easily our best performance. It was our second-to-last show in high school.”
“Oh, yeah, no, it was easily our best,” Maggie adds, nodding fervently. Before she has the chance to elaborate, the waiter comes back and takes our orders. The restaurant is still bustling around us, so if it’s been a while, I haven’t even noticed. I order the baked four-cheese spirali and hope that it tastes like mac and cheese and doesn’t have those nasty-ass bread crumbs on top of it. Once everyone else places their orders, another waiter comes around with a round of drinks and a new basket of bread, which I tear into ravenously, heaping a pile of butter on top of it, and then finally Maggie gets to continue speaking. “Cal was the dashing rogue and Lee was the helpless prince and I was the badass princess… The vibes… Immaculate. We were the most iconic quad there’s ever been.”
“Quad?” Noah asks.
“Yeah, there was another guy who was ‘fighting over’ Lee, too. In the play. Not in real life. His name was Mike. He was a cool guy. Fit the part really well, but we never really meshed with him.”
“Yeah,” Cal frowns. “I don’t know why. He was really nice.”
“We probably just scared him off, us being us,” I add, grinning. Cal looks up and makes eye contact, then grins back. Maggie hits him in the arm.
“I’m not scary. Must’ve been you two,” Maggie replies, joining our grinning triangle. Noah is not grinning.
“Nah, it was Cal. All that star power,” I say. He shakes his head.
“No, it was definitely all of the sexual tension between us. Who wants to be the third member of a love triangle when the other two are gonna end up together?” He winks at the end, and I feel a burst of warmth in my chest.
“Yeah, I mean, we had good chemistry, but no one could beat me and Mags on stage.”
“Yeah, we played an actual married couple. You didn’t even end up with him in the show you had chemistry with him in!” Maggie says. Cal shrugs and takes another drink of his water. Once he puts it back down, his smile is as radiant as ever.
“We’re gay, though. So it wasn’t real when it was with you. I don’t know, I’m just saying, there could be something there and it would make the performance that much better…”
“That is so not how acting works, mister acting major,” Maggie tells him. Her lips are bright red and in deep contrast with her pale skin and blonde curls. Her hair is darker than Cal’s, a more brown color that waves down her head, while his is a thick yellow that floats mid air. He almost looks like one of the popular kids in a high school-based TV show, although he wasn’t exactly popular outside of the theatre sphere, and we aren’t in high school anymore. “Also, I’m definitely gay, too! A table full of queer peeps.”
Cal immediately looks at Noah, who’s looking off into space until he sees Cal’s eyes on him. He shifts in his chair again and sits up.
Dammit, Maggie.
After I called her the other day to talk to her about how anxious I was to talk with Noah and we had to go, we ended up talking later in the day. And I told her about Noah. About everything he said. She must have just assumed that he was cool with people knowing, since I was talking about it so casually. But last I checked, he doesn’t even know what’s going on with him, and he sure as hell would never call himself queer.
“Oh, you’re queer? Cool,” Cal says. His voice is gentler than I was expecting. It’s not a question he’s asking, either. It’s an invitation. Noah, to my surprise, doesn’t shake his head or get uncomfortable. He leans forward and chomps down a bite of his food before leaning back and shrugging. His posture is heavy and his shoulders are rolled back. Masculine but casual. From this angle, he looks absolutely huge. I mean, he does have nice biceps. Like, always. Am I having a gay crisis in the middle of an italian restaurant? No.
“Yeah, I think so. I mean, I’m not totally sure. Lee and I kinda… Um…” He looks over at me. I don’t give him any kind of expression back. Maybe that’s wrong of me. But it isn’t really any one else’s business, right? “Sorry. Uh, yeah. I’ve never been with a guy before, but I think I might be bi.” Cal nods a little bit, his Adam’s apple bobbing and his head moving a but more harshly than most other people’s when they nod. Cal’s just like that, though. He’s a little more animated than most people, and I love him for it.
“You and ‘Lee’ what?”
“Nothing. Lee and I don’t do anything,” he snaps.
“Hey, Liam, speaking of not doing anything, are we still going to Michigan for your birthday?” Maggie chimes in, breaking the air between the boys. They were locked onto each other, each analyzing the other closely. Why? I couldn’t say. Probably just trying to take the other’s measure. Sigh. Boys. Honestly, with the intensity of their stares that I caught, I feel like there’d be Jaws music if we had a soundtrack on right now. Why don’t we have a soundtrack?
“Right! Yes? You said you still have the same spring break as me, right?” I reply. She shakes her head.
“No, you doof, that’s Cal.”
Cal breaks away from Noah to turn and face me with a brightness in his eyes that wasn’t there just a second ago.
“Right! I’ve got the same spring break. When are we leaving again, Marshmallow?”
“Saturday the twentieth so we can both get home first and get packed on Friday and then I can come pick you up and we hit the road bright and late in the day.”
“I forgot that you don’t get up before noon,” he mutters.
“You want me to be a bitch? I need my sleep.”
“Maybe I do, ever thought of that?” He juts his chin out at me in challenge. A tingle runs down my elbows. Noah coughs across the table.
“You won’t like me when I’m angry…” I turn to Maggie. “Anyways, you’re still good to be there for the actual weeked of my birthday, right?”
“Yeah! Just as long as no spiders get into the bathroom again. I think I’d die then and there of fright. Cannot do that again,” she replies.
“Don’t worry, Mom made sure we had an exterminator comb through every single inch of the place after the first time. She’s not exactly big into spiders either.”
“Do we have plans? Is it just gonna be the three of us vibing?” Cal asks.
“I mean, I assume so. It’s not like Mom and Dad are gonna bother to show up. They never do. Why would that change now? And I haven’t… Invited anyone else…” My eyes drift to Noah, who’s watching me closely but silently. His eyes are sunken and it looks like he’s tired. His mouth is flat and expressionless. “Oh, hey Noey. Spring Break. Do you wanna come with Cal and I? Or even just visit the weekend of my birthday? I could ask my parents to buy you a plane ticket and you could ride back home with us. Or if you’re free to ride with us, you could totally do that, too. I’ll bring you back home with me. Or, if you’re gonna go home to see your family instead, that’s totally cool and I completely understand.”
“I’m good,” he says, then stands up and leans back in a stretch. “Don’t want to interrupt your best friend time.” Cal raises an eyebrow, then his lip furrows into an absolutely precious frown.
“What? No way, dude, you’re totally welcome with us! We’ll let you in on all of the inside jokes and all of that stuff. It’ll be fun. It’ll be great.” He’s being genuine, I think. There’s something clipped about his tone, but it still seems like he’d actually be willing to have Noah there with us. Which is interesting to me, because he never, ever lets people intrude on our buddy time. Sometimes not even Maggie, and she’s our other best friend!
“I have to go to the bathroom,” Noah replies, not looking at Cal whatsoever. He walks away from the table, leaving Maggie glaring at Cal and Cal frowning at me.
“Way to go, Prince Charming,” Maggie mutters.
“What does that mean?”
“It means you scared the poor guy off. You had to go and get territorial again.”
“I’m not territorial! I didn’t get territorial. I was being serious, he’d totally be welcome with us. He seems nice. I’d like to get to know him. You picked a cute one, Marshmallow.” Cal winks, though the feeling on his lips isn’t matching with his eyes. My face immediately bursts with heat.
“Uh, Noah and I... aren’t… There’s nothing going on there. He’s just my roommate,” I stammer, wondering why I just said that when they both clearly know me well enough to have figured out the truth and secretly already realizing why that’s what my mouth decided to spit out. “I’m gonna go check on him, okay?”
They both nod at me, though Maggie nods with more hesitation. She wants to draw something out of me. She has questions. That’s fine. I just… I don’t want Noah to be mad at me.
It takes me a minute to actually be able to make it there, since I have to do all sorts of fancy footwork to keep from accidentally knocking any wriggling noodles to the floor on the way or breaking any ornate dishes while waiters of all genders furiously march on past me to fulfill orders. Honestly? Good for them. They’re doing their best and I’m proud of them.
The bathroom has doors with cute little signs on them that do their best to break away from the traditional person and person-with-a-cape binary. They say “Signore” with a little pair of heels drawn beneath it and “Signori” with a pair of those ugly black men shoes with the weird little heel things. Loafers? Is that what they’re called? Anyways, what’s next in unnecessary gendering?
I push into the one with the “men’s shoes” because I flunked out of my freshman year Italian class and can’t tell which is which otherwise. That’s a lie. I never took an Italian class.
Noah’s inside, and thankfully no one else is. The room has this bizarre, rosy wallpaper and it’s hypnotic, in a way, but also some kind of haunting. It’s creeping up the wall and I’m not sure I like it. The room feels small, and that’s only compounded on by the big boy in front of me, hunched over the sink with the water running, and even more so by the mirror he’s in front of that stretches from the top of the ceiling to the edge of the countertops where the sink basins sit. The edges of the mirror are a dotted gold.
Noah adjusts his posture and looks over at me. His expression is unreadable and he’s standing tall. Taller than me. As always. But this time, he’s not just looming over me, because I’m standing tall, too. Well, as tall as I can, anyway.
“Noah, what’s the deal, dude?”
“Since when am I ‘dude’?”
“Since… forever…? Am I supposed to call you something else?”
“No, it’s… Sorry. I just feel weird.”
“Talk to me. I get that you feel awkward, I’m sorry.”
“I don’t feel awkward! Your friends are really nice. Maggie is just about the sweetest human being I’ve ever met and Cal seems really cool. He knows a lot of stuff. I respect the hell out of that.”
“So, what’s the problem?”
“It’s dumb.”
“Are you jealous of Cal because he’s coming with me to Michigan? You’re welcome to come with. I’m sorry I didn’t invite you sooner. I know it isn’t really a lot of notice, just a couple of weeks, but there’s a lot of space there, there’s a room you could crash on, my parents always cover food, and it’d be nice to have you there for my birthday.”
“I’m not jealous of Cal. That’s not… it.”
“Then what is it? I’m your best friend, right? And the guy you have wet dreams about, or whatever. If you ever want this to go anywhere, we should be able to communicate.”
“I’m jealous of them. And the way you all know each other, I guess? And yeah, I’m kind of jealous of Cal. Because he just knows you so well. I thought I knew you, and here you are, bringing up things I’ve never heard of but wish I had. Dammit--” He buries his face in his hands, then tugs down to let it all spring back. “--This sounds dramatic. I’m older than you, I’m bigger than you. I’m supposed to be more mature. And yet you make me feel like a little kid. Like a jealous little kid. You’re the first person who has ever wanted to know me, it feels like. Everyone else always wanted to know my volleyball skill, or my dad, or the twins, or my looks, or something other than me. Except you. I was thinking about this the other day--I think that’s why I like you so much. You actually want to know me, and it’s amazing. You ask questions, you care about me in a way that I don’t think anyone else ever has. And I thought I knew a lot about you, too. But then two people come along and they know absolutely everything about you. They know all of your stories--they’ve been there for most of them! And I can’t help but feeling sort of lonely, knowing not only that I don’t have anyone like that, but I also don’t have you like that. At least not the way I think I do.”
“What about the frat guys? Sofia?”
“They don’t… Not like you do.”
“So… why be jealous? Why not just join in and learn? You could always make those stories with us.”
“Because I could never compete with that. I’m sitting here, watching you flirt with your childhood crush, and I can’t stop thinking about how much I wish it were me. I’m sitting there, marinating in the feeling of rejection, but knowing that I care about you enough to respect your boundaries and not say anything to upset you or bring it up again. Because I do care about you that much, Lee. You deserve the world, and if Cal makes you happy, go for it! I just… Know I’m gonna get a little bit hurt on the way.”
He finishes talking with a bit of a pant, and then splashes some water on his face. It looks tired. He looks tired.
“Come to Michigan with us,” I say. But he’s already walking out the door.
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