***

“So.” Zoey grinned and bumped into his shoulder.

Matty pretended to be absorbed by something on his phone.

“So,” Zoey insisted.

Matty growled under his breath. “In the animal kingdom, this should be a signal to butt off, Zoey.”

“Thanks for the translation. Now, tell me everything.”

“Everything in the history of humankind?”

“I’ll settle for what happened last night between you and Rusty.”

“Nothing happened. I mean, why would you even assume that something happened? I wasn’t at the party--” Matty began to babble.

“I was the one who told him where to look for you, so save it,” Zoey interrupted him promptly.

“Traitor,” Matty muttered.

“I’ll settle for fairy godmother, Cinderel.”

“Why did you tell him where my room is?” Matty groaned and finally abandoned his phone. “And why are you always in my room? No wonder you aren’t getting laid. You only hang out with the one dude who’s not interested.”

Zoey’s eyes sparkled. “Do you mean everyone else is interested? Aww, that’s such a nice thing for you to say. Forget about why I’m not getting laid. Let’s talk about how you’re working on that.”

“On you not getting laid?” Matty said airily.

Zoey slapped his shoulder. “Spit it. Now. Last night, unbeknownst to the vast Sunny Hill student body, Rusty Parker abandoned a party in search of his tutor. No one but me knows this. Not even Xpress.”

“I know. Rusty knows. Stop pretending to be special,” Matty teased his best friend.

Zoey grinned. “Which means that he found you. What did you two do all night?” She gasped and covered her mouth with both hands. “Don’t tell me that you did it!”

“Seriously?” Matty gave her a disappointed look. “Is that how well you know me?”

“Well, according to how well I know you, this would be a very boring story. Such as you sent Rusty on his way instead of dragging him into your lair and doing unspeakable things to him.”

“Yeah, like tucking him in bed and reading him a bedtime story,” Matty said matter-of-factly.

Zoey searched his face for signs that he was pulling her leg, and then searched again. Then, she punched him in the shoulder hard enough to hurt. “Get out of here! Is that what happened? For real?”

“I kid you not.” Matty sighed and looked out the window, recalling the events of the night before in all too vivid colors. “He came in here, asked me why I was sweaty, supposed I was jerking off, then supposed I was jerking off to A Kingdom To Plunder, then decided to take a nap, and then made me read to him until we both fell asleep.” At the end of that tirade, Matty took a deep breath. “And that’s the whole boring truth. I woke up alone, before you get any other strange ideas in your head.”

Zoey was conspicuously silent. Matty had to look at her eventually and witness her slack jaw and wide eyes. “How long are you going to keep that face?” he asked.

Zoey’s face metamorphosed into a large grin. “My romantically inadequate friend, it’s a lot better than I expected. But why were you sweaty? Were you jerking off to A Kingdom To Plunder?”

“Not you too, Zoey. No, I was sweaty because earlier Rusty chased me down--” He clamped his mouth shut.

“He chased you down?!”

He covered his ears. “Louder, Zoey. They didn’t hear you on the top floor.”

“Why did he chase you? What happened? O. M. G., this is so good, and why, oh why, don’t I have any popcorn with me?”

Well, it was all right to admit to everything, no matter how weird or humiliating, in front of friends. “I tried on the cat suit, and Rusty almost caught me. I was outside, running on the walls.” He gestured with his hand as if it was the most common occurrence for him to put on costumes, go outside, and do parkour on the campus walls.

“You didn’t tell me the suit came. Where is it?” Zoey didn’t wait for an answer and began to search the room.

Matty didn’t stop her, but didn’t help her, either. She eventually came back with the bundled suit and even found the cat ear band under the bed. She held them and stared at him in shocked pleasure. “Put them on. I have to see you.”

“This suit almost got me into trouble,” Matty argued. “It’s a stupid idea. No, it’s insane.”

“Why?” Zoey asked with a stricken face. “Oh, don’t tell me he’s into some other cosplay. This kind of thing is expensive.”

“No,” Matty said quietly. “That might just be one thing Xpress got right. He wanted to touch my tail. So I ran.”

“Yeah, the most logical thing to do,” Zoey said with irony. “But, wait,” she added, “that’s not a bad thing. Yeap, you did the right thing, Matty. Rusty gets bored easily. You need to keep his interest high. So, not giving in too easily is the way.” She nodded, satisfied with her conclusion. “Wait, he doesn’t know you’re the cat boy, right?”

“No. It was a really close call. Why do you think the cat ears were under the bed?”

Zoey pursed her lips and munched them for a while. “This is amazing, totally awesome. Long foreplays are the best, especially with a guy who gets handed every piece of tail in the land on a silver platter, the moment he snaps his fingers.”

“Are you telling me to play hard to get?” Matty asked.

Zoey plopped herself down on the bed, the latex costume still in her arms. “Yeah, totally. You need to lure him, seduce him, make him yours, until he cannot live without you!”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. So, Rusty’s interest in cat boys is real. That’s a fact,” he admitted. “But what if there are other cat boys that decide to, you know, not play hard to get?”

“Yeah, the world is full of cat boys, especially here at Sunny Hill. I tripped over one in the library, and I had fur in my coffee at the coffee shop on the corner,” Zoey commented while pretending to sip from an invisible cup with one hand. “Well, I’m not going to go against your wishes. You might as well put on the cat suit, happen into Rusty’s path once more, and let him touch you everywhere.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” Matty protested. “The embarrassment would kill me on the spot.”

“So hard to get it is,” Zoey said with satisfaction. “Rusty’s going to go nuts. That’s how you catch a guy like him. During your tutoring sessions, you can still treat him like he’s only your tutored pupil, although, now that I think about it, you two crossed a line by sleeping together.” She scrunched up her face in thought.

“Trust me, that wasn’t crossing the line since nothing happened last night.” Matty sighed. “I didn’t tell you what happened on Friday.”

“What happened on Friday?” Zoey’s eyes grew wide again. “You know what? I’ll turn around and you can change into your cat boy suit while you tell me all about it.”

This was the price of having a confidante, right? “Well, there is no easy way to say this. I kissed him. Hey, don’t turn now!”

Zoey fidgeted in her place, but obeyed. “What the hell, Matty? And you didn’t say a thing? Tell me everything that happened, and not in the history of humankind.”

“He challenged me because he gets bored so easily, just as you noticed. When he provoked me by saying that I don’t know how to kiss, well, I showed him.”

Zoey bounced up and down, giggling. “O. M. G., this is so good. How did he react?”

“I didn’t have time to process everything. Jonathan came into the room. He saw everything.”

“Ah, damn, I wouldn’t have pegged Jonathan Hamilton for a cockblocker.”

“He apologized. He just wanted to treat us to some juice and didn’t expect to find me half naked, stuffing my tongue down Rusty’s throat,” Matty explained.

“You were half naked?” This time, Zoey truly turned.

Good thing he was already zipping up. The cat suit was so glued to his body that it didn’t allow for anything but the skimpiest underwear to be worn underneath. Since he didn’t have such a thing, he was all naked underneath. “It was a very strange and complicated situation. You know, he didn’t bring up the kiss last night. That means that he wants both of us to forget that it happened. And it was just a dare, anyway,” Matty continued and looked down.

“Matty, you look damn fine in this suit,” Zoey commented. “Give me a full three-sixty. Put on the cat ears, and stop assuming things. Where’s the wig?”

“That’s the one thing I didn’t unpack,” Matty said.

“It doesn’t matter. I like what I see. Now crouch.”

Matty shrugged and obeyed.

“Good, good,” Zoey continued her appraisal. “Now, lift one paw like you want to scratch. Give me a meow.”

“Oh, fuck off, Zoey.” Matty got to his feet.

The reprimand flew over Zoey’s head like an invisible annoying bug. His friend was all a grin, ear to ear, and she seemed very pleased with how he looked. That made him feel good, to have someone else’s opinion on the matter. Still, he shouldn’t get ahead of himself. Catching Rusty Parker, as Zoey put it, was no easy feat. And maybe, the fact that somewhere inside, he maybe was a scaredy cat, helped. So far, it had worked to get him to take certain steps with Rusty…

Argh, what was he thinking? Rusty hadn’t mentioned the kiss, and why would he? He got kisses from so many people, well, mostly girls, presumably, and again, Matty’s kiss must have been annoying, or worse, nothing special. Something forgettable.

“Hey, Matty, hey,” Zoey called for him.

“You don’t have to yell,” he scolded her.

“I do. You were so lost in your own head that you didn’t hear me. What were you thinking about?”

He could call the whole thing off. He could pack the costume, put it at the bottom of the closet, and pretend that nothing ever happened. And then, continue his tutoring with Rusty for a bit, so that he wouldn’t seem suspicious and then tell the guy that he needed to focus on his own studies and couldn’t afford the wasted time.

“Zoey,” he said slowly, “am I nuts for wanting Rusty Parker, of all people?”

Zoey shook her head and offered one of her motherly looks. “No. We want who we want, I guess. And you, my friend,” she said, perking up, “have the golden opportunity to see how far you can get with your crush. Not many people have this kind of luck, you know? Also, you make your own luck. Look at you, wearing a cat boy suit, and kissing Rusty. Told you, I’m awfully proud of you,” she added in a fake strange accent.

Matty sat on the bed and took Zoey by the shoulders. “I’m not the sentimental kind, but damn, sometimes you make me want to kiss you, Zoey.”

“Eww.” She pushed him away playfully. “Go kiss Rusty. I bet he wants an encore.”

“He didn’t mention it, you know? What does that mean? Oh, fuck, I sound like one of those ditzy heroines in all the romance novels, right?”

“You sound like you,” Zoey said and patted his shoulder. “I’m not just saying that, although I’m mooching off your notes on a regular basis, and you know that I get perks for hanging out with you.”

“Yeah, you’re a total user,” Matty said with a snort. “But enough about my silly cat boy adventures. How was the party?”

“Eh, you know,” Zoey said and shrugged.

“No, I don’t. That’s why I’m asking,” Matty insisted. Whenever he got close to the topic of who Zoey was crushing on at the moment, he either got evasive replies or something outrageous. Now, Zoey was evasive. That was code for ‘serious’.

“I drank some weird stuff. I fell asleep on a sofa. I didn’t molest anyone.”

“Kudos for your restraint,” Matty said, knowing it wouldn’t do any good to apply too much pressure. He would just poke her gently now and then, until she spilled the beans. Despite her apparently reckless exterior, underneath it all, Zoey was one of the most complex human beings he had had the chance to know.

“Eh, I try,” she said brightly. “Let’s go for a cup of coffee. Wait, don’t you want to change first?”

Matty looked down at his body and shook his head. He was getting a bit too comfortable playing the cat boy.

***