When Gabe headed back out into the living room, both of the girls were in the kitchen and Sophie was lifting a tray out of the oven.

“You hungry, Gabe?” Sophie asked. “We made a classic Sunday roast.”

“It’s not Sunday,” Gabe pointed out.

Bee started gathering up plates and cutlery. “In this household, we like to skirt the law in small ways but never quite break it so that the cops are always on our tail but can never nail us for anything.”

Sophie nodded her agreement. “Sometimes I eat an entire party sized packet of corn chips on my own when I’m not even having a party.”

“Oooh,” Bee said. “Well, sometimes in the shower I use Trist’s body wash even though it says ‘for men’ on the bottle. I’m not a man. I’m not even a boy!”

“I’m about to carve this chicken with a steak knife,” Sophie added. “Just watch me.”

Gabe had made his way into the kitchen by now, and Bee held out a plate to him with a fork and a steak knife of his own on it. “Do you want to join us in our degeneracy, Gabe?”

Gabe shrugged and accepted the plate. “Well, when in Rome…”

“Ha! But you’re not in Rome!”

“That’s the spirit!” Sophie said. “Come get some food.”

When they all had their dinner and had sat down in the living room, Alice turned the TV off. “So, Gabe, I feel like we don’t know one another very well. What’s your favourite sport?”

“Uhh… Minecraft?” Gabe offered. “Yeah, definitely Minecraft.”

“Now hold on,” Sophie said. “We’re all about skirting the fine line of legality in this household, but I am pretty sure Minecraft is not a sport.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry Gabe, but I think she’s right,” Bee agreed.

Gabe nodded as he chewed and swallowed a mouthful of chicken. “Yes, you would think that Minecraft is not a sport, but you can find articles about it in the sports news sections of some websites. So either Minecraft is a sport or those sports reporting professionals are wrong about what a sport is, and I wouldn’t dare malign them like that.”

Bee pressed her lips together in thought and tapped her chin with her knuckles. “Is it… an esport, perhaps?”

“Maybe,” Sophie said. “Minecraft is many things. It might possibly be an esport.”

“Good work, Gabe,” Bee said. “That’s exactly the kind of fine line of legality we like to walk here in this household.”

“I guess I don’t need to ask what your favourite video game is, then,” Alice said.

“Oh, no, I don’t play Minecraft,” Gabe said. “I would, but I don’t have anyone to play it with and it seems like it would be way more fun with friends. My favourite video game is FreeCell.”

“Huh.” Sophie stabbed a potato with her fork. “FreeCell? Really?”

“Well, I mean, I’m pretty sure I’ve technically sunk more hours into it than any other game.”

“Hm, okay,” Sophie said. “Favourite animal?”

“Probably dogs.”

“Huh,” Sophie said. “I expected some smartass answer like humans or something.”

“That would be a damn lie. Humans aren’t anyone’s favourite animal.”

“Hey, I’m a human!”

“Well, some humans are good. But collectively… eh. I’ve met way more dogs that I liked. And way more who liked me, frankly.”

“Yeah, dogs are great.” Sophie tossed Sadie a piece of carrot and she gobbled it down gratefully.

“Don’t feed her while we’re eating,” Alice said.

“That rule only exists to keep her in her place,” Sophie said. “But she’s better than us. We all know it. She deserved that carrot more than I did. She appreciated it more than I would have. I like a lot of things, but not one of them brings me as much joy as that dog just got from that piece of carrot.”

“Oh, God, I’m going to have an existential crisis,” Bee said.

“Listen, it’s fine,” Sophie said. “I envy her, but it’s a good thing. If I could access that kind of pure, uncut pleasure from eating anything and everything, I’d just get incredibly fat, achieve nothing, and die young.”

Bee sighed. “That’s the dream.”

Alice silently picked up the remote and turned the TV back on.

#

Trist returned home an hour later, made brief eye contact with Gabe, then continued on past them towards his room.

Gabe followed him and then hesitated in the doorway. “Can we talk?”

Trist sent him a tired look and then pulled his shirt off over his head. “Don’t you think we’ve talked enough for one day? Hell, for one lifetime.”

Gabe aimed his eyes slightly to the side of Trist. “Please, Trist.”

“I’m not stopping you.”

This wasn’t going the way Gabe had hoped, but it would have to do. “There’s something you don’t like about me. Or at least didn’t, but I don’t know… I kind of get the feeling that it's still there.”

Trist’s pants dropped to the ground and he kicked them in the direction of the hamper. “There really isn’t.”

Gabe pressed his lips together in an annoyed line and aimed his eyes a little further from Trist’s body. He could still see enough out of the corner of his eye for it to be a distraction, though. He wondered if Trist was doing it on purpose. “Trist, I saw the way you looked at me that first night and then just walked away without saying anything. That was something.”

“Uh huh,” Trist said as he pulled on a clean pair of shorts. “So why are we having this conversation? What are you hoping to get out of this?”

Gabe looked at Trist properly now, though he kept his eyes fixed on his face. “I want you to tell me what your problem with me is.”

“And then what? What are you going to do with that information?”

“I don’t know. Maybe if I know I can figure out some way to sort out this hostility you have towards me.”

“Right. Okay.” Trist twisted the shirt he was holding, but he didn’t put it on. “There is one thing I dislike about you. Do you know what it is?”

“If I knew I wouldn’t be asking.”

“It’s that you come in here and say hey, you know how you’ve been a total asshole to me since the moment you laid eyes on me, for absolutely no apparent reason? And then you don’t follow that up with, well, fuck you for that. No, you want to know what you can do to fix it. Stop putting up with other people’s shit, Gabe.”

“Fine, that’s what you want? Fuck you, Trist.” Gabe turned around and left the room.

Gabe didn’t want to go back to the living room, especially since the others had probably overheard some of that, so he went to take a shower instead. Standing under the spray of the water, he could half convince himself he wasn’t crying.

Fucking Trist. Gabe had wanted so badly for him to be good and kind and better than this, but every time Gabe started to get his hopes up, Trist had to go and ruin it.

But maybe that was Gabe’s fault. Maybe he was just projecting the things he wanted onto Trist and ignoring every time Trist tried to show him who he really was.

He just so badly wanted the boy who spent his time befriending a duck and took care of him when he was hurt. The guy who left work without hesitation to come to help him and who listened to him and seemed to really care.

And he wanted him in ways he definitely couldn’t ever have. Maybe Trist sensed that. Maybe that was why he pushed back so hard.

But still, fuck him. He knew he was being an asshole. Why did he need Gabe to confront him about it in order to stop? It was just more macho bullshit, just another way to blame him for being a victim.

Gabe dried and dressed and marched back to the bedroom. If Trist wanted a piece of Gabe’s mind, fine. He could have it.

Trist was laying on the top bunk with his sketchpad out. He turned his head to look at Gabe as he entered the room and raised his eyebrows at the determined look on Gabe’s face.

“Fuck you for real,” Gabe said.

Trist rolled onto his side and propped his chin up on his fist. “Ready to stand up for yourself?”

“No. Fuck you for that. I shouldn’t have to.”

“True.”

“Why does it make any difference if I do or don’t? Are you a dick to me because I’m not tough enough and that makes you angry? You know what you’re doing and you know it’s wrong, but somehow it’s my fault for not standing up to you? You’re just like my dad.”

Trist just watched Gabe for a long moment. “Hm. Okay. See, I think you entirely misunderstood what I was saying, but you still ended up getting my point.”

“And what was your point?”

“My point is that my bullshit isn’t something you caused and it isn’t something you can fix. Getting angry at me probably won’t change anything, but hey, it’s where that anger belongs.”

Gabe let out a long sigh. “Who are you?”

Trist’s eyebrows pulled together. “Huh?”

“You have moments when you’re so caring and then you go back to acting like you hate me again and I don’t know what’s real and what you’re putting on for… I don’t know. Whatever reason. Maybe you really do hate me and you’re just a kind person.”

“Do I seem like a kind person?”

“Sometimes. That’s what I’m saying. Sometimes you are.”

“And that’s what you want from me? To be that soft, caring person all the time?”

“Well, I don’t know. It was nice.”

Trist sat up and looked down at Gabe. “It was weird.”

And maybe he wasn’t wrong. If anyone else had insisted on following him around and sitting super close to him so that they could keep holding a bag of frozen peas against his arm, he would have thought it was strange. The only reason he’d accepted it so readily was because he’d wanted Trist close to him. 

Gabe shrugged.

Trist sighed and looked away. “Maybe, in a way, it was what you needed just then. Or you were just grateful I wasn’t being an asshole for a minute. But let’s face it, it was weird enough when you were at your most vulnerable, and if I kept acting like that tomorrow, or a week from now, it wouldn’t be good. It would be creepy.”

“Well, okay. Don’t you have some sort of in between mode? From what the girls have said, it sounds like you can normally just hang out with them and be nice.”

“You’re not the girls.”

“Sure, but like… there was a while today when we just hung out and fed Peter peas and bonded over the lack of biological mothers in our lives, and I thought it was nice.”

Trist smiled and oh, God, he really didn’t do that a whole lot and it completely transformed his face and brought it to life in ways that were doing things to Gabe’s heart and stomach. “Yeah, Gabe. It was nice.”

“Good.” Gabe swallowed. He felt nervous all of a sudden. “Well. Maybe we could do that again some time.”

Trist twirled his pencil between his fingers and lay back down. “If you really care that much, sure.”

“Cool. Great.” Gabe wasn’t sure what to do with his hands besides sweat intensely. They sure were doing that. Though it didn’t really matter what he did with them anymore, because Trist was no longer looking at him. “Well, I guess I’m going to bed then.”

“Do you want the light off?”

“No,” Gabe said as he climbed into the bed below Trist. “Keep drawing. I like the scritchy sound.”

“Weird, but okay.”

Gabe lay down on his back, something he was determined to never again take for granted. “You’re weird but okay.”

Trist let out a quiet huff of laughter from the bunk above. “Goodnight, Gabe.”

“Goodnight.”