Genuine question: How would one feel if someone told you that they liked how you wrecked them in bed, drunk and uncontrollable? I know, I know, it seems too specific of a question, but hear me out. I am without words. If there was one word that would define my emotions right now, it’s fucking confusion. No more, no less. Especially that his words specifically not directed towards me, but rather towards the deed that we did. His actual words were “I like what we did back there at the hotel,” so why am I feeling jittery all of a sudden . . . I could not sit in one corner and do nothing, rather I wanted to, like, wreck something. I don’t know. Roxie on the side noticed that I was counting sheep in my head to reconstitute my mental bullshit from thinking too much, probably whatever’s on her mind is definitely not the one I am currently thinking about.

Usually, when this kind of hiccup happens in my life, I tend to go to the rooftop and breathe some fresh air. Imagine you’re having trouble breathing because the one who told you some random bomb-dropping confession is right beside you, sipping their matcha coffee in peace. Our professor at the time was discussing something from his computer when I excused myself and told the old man in front that I wanted to take a breather outside. Not that the professor cared, but he did not even bat an eye to my pleas. I just walked myself out of the air-vacuumed room and onto the coveted rooftop three floors of sweat and tiredness later. I sucked a huge gulp of air and sighed in relief.

The rooftop was freshly cleaned, something that I find surprise in for reasons even I do not know. I was met with two empty benches in the middle of the rooftop and an open area that, for someone who’d tried to jump up on a rooftop once, is too accessible for their risky life-ending decisions. (Don’t ask why I tried. It’s too embarrassing of a reason to tell. Looking back now, I would’ve laughed it off.) Everything was cream and maroon, and I slumped over the concrete walls that divide the rooftop from the perimeter of the building whose nearest ground is 12 feet below me.

For someone as experienced as me when it comes to sex and other horny matters, I find this emotion a bit of an oddball, especially since I could just take Kaizer’s confession at face value and forget that everything had happened so that we could move on to another mundane chapter of our lives, but . . . there was something that stops me from doing so. If I was a character in some random shitty novel right now, I thought, I would have committed murder right now for killing the author that bore my existence on a piece of paper, or the letters of a typewriter. I’m pretty sure he’d hear my thoughts, and if he did, this is a visual fuck-you sign that you change my character map right now, and stat. I’ll bet you ten dollars of my allowance that Kaizer would come running towards me and ask me what was wrong. That’s how random the events of my life are right now. Instead, I have felt a sudden and quick vibration around a certain spot on my waist. Ah, my phone. Who’s texting me this time of the day? I slipped my hand toward the pocket on my left side and pulled out a black phone before looking at a Portfolio text message notification. For some reason, it was Gale’s message that caused the vibration. I dare not open it as I am still feeling guilty about the fact that I just shoved my sword into a random hole all while I should have been shoving my hole into his rod. Still, that “Gale sent you a message” notification is still out of the blue as if it tries to shift my thoughts from one shit to another.

I placed the phone back in the pocket where I first took it and took another bout of heavy breathing before looking at the skies above that turned blue after a tempest’s flurry. I smiled bitterly and shouted, “Fuck this life!” before stepping back a few steps in case someone called for Suicide Prevention to come and get me out of this safe haven. I then sat on the bench that I previously saw and stretched my muscles for a bit. In my head, I had it all played out: I’d talk to Kaizer that I did not like what happened between us, that I was sorry about that steamy night at the hotel, and that we should not meet each other ever again, for my sanity and all. Yes, that should work, Art. It must work. There’s no fucking way it won’t work.

Why won’t it work, if anything?

I took the final gulp of air and breathed my all before ambling three floors down, back to my classroom. The professor was in the middle of his discussion (read: life story) when he looked at me at the exact moment my foot stepped on the doorway, as though there was a life line that is hidden, and that I stepped on the trap. I quietly reasoned out that I took some grumpy nature’s call and that I had a hard time giving her the golden eggs. Not that the professor would think of anything, but I kinda saw in his eyes that my words were not on par with his expectations. Regardless, I went back to my seat, beside our dear antagonist, el hombre llamado Kaizer. In front of me is an unopened cup of matcha coffee, again with a note and, surprisingly, a key. The key felt like a hotel key or something. The Kaizer-ish blue sticky note says only ten words: “Saturday. You may come or not, but here’s the address,” before spilling out one hell of an address, a place somewhere in borderline Saskatchewan-Alberta. Lloydminster, if I’m not mistaken. I looked at him and he just mouthed something.

And no, that’s not a hotel. Don’t worry.

I shrugged. I looked up Lloydminster in my phone, and guess what? 155 miles from Saint-Louise. Why would Kaizer even invite me on a place far from here? But, I mean, that’s Kaizer we’re talking about. I guess the coveted plan of outright rejecting him would be made in a faraway place, not that I expected it would be somewhere here on the campus lest we wanted to garner a lot of attraction here.

I looked at my phone and browsed through Gale’s message that I did not open a while ago. It wasn’t a long message, rather he just invited me to a, well, date. Dinner. At a restaurant. On Saturday. Holy crap, never did I feel my cheeks warm and puffy all of a sudden. In fact, it was too warm that Kaizer beside me peeked at my phone and looked at me with no expression. What is this idiot up to now?

“Mind your own business, bitch,” I interjected.

“Language, Mr. Seymour.” I swiftly glimpse to the direction of the voice and found out our professor was right beside me. I meekly bowed and wished that I should’ve jumped from the building the moment I was given the chance to do so. I heard the students chuckle that even I chuckled by my own mistake. I apologized immediately to the professor, and they proceeded to their discussion, sans the random aisle-ambling.

“Mind your own business, bitch,” Kaizer copied before wheezing like a kettle boiling water. Great, what a way to ruin my mood. I shrugged and doodled random scribbled at the back of my notebook. I did a couple doodle of my signature clumsily inked out a dozen of times before checking my phone again for any messages by my Galatea—Gale. Nada. Not even a call. I took the matcha coffee Kaizer placed in front of me and sipped it half-empty. I also took the key that he gave me and told him, “Let’s see” before drifting off to unconsciousness.

I never got to see Gale in the whole time I managed to run back and across the rest room where we first met. Not that I was expected we could meet again at school, but bitterness ran across my face as I wished so. Once again, I was in the rest room, urinating. After I zipped my pants close, I pulled out my phone and texted Gale in Portfolio.

Hey, Gale, are you busy rn? Wanna meet up with you badly, haha.

I slapped the phone against my face as I cringe myself over some texting a soon-to-be boyfriend of mine. Cheeks flustered, I burned brightly like a sun in a surge of happiness, which kinda ended quite abruptly as I looked at the door and saw Kaizer sighing out loud.

“Great, what a way to ruin my mood,” I muttered beneath my breath as I stomped my way out of the room. The buzzing sound of the fluorescent lights did not help lighten my mood at all. Kaizer unfortunately was in the way, and he used his arm to stop me from my tracks.

“Are you really that not happy to see me?” the four-eyed bitch asked.

“Why is that even a question?” I looked at his face only to see, to my surprise, a genuine expression of what seems to be a feeling of hurt in his eyes. Like, why? “You wanted to hear it from my mouth? Okay, then. No, I am not happy to see you and your existence at all, Kaizer Licht Woodsworth. I am not happy seeing your damn face even if you’ve taken all the blessings of Adonis, because one, you reminded me of how I am fuckingly irritated by you being a jerk in my high school, and two, you look like a smug asking for another round of sex like you are right now!”

Kaizer just chuckled at my what could’ve been the most hurtful remark I have mustered to say to him. Does he have any emotions or is he just a psychopath? Either way I stepped back, scared. He opened his mouth but shut it before he closed the door behind him. Now I am literally anxious about what he’s about to do. What, punch me in the face with that heavy hand of his just because? Instead, he just sighed.

“Look, Arthur Reyes Seymour.” I shot my head toward his direction at the mention of my full name. How dare he? “If I wanted to wreck your insides, I would’ve listed the address at a motel and not a cemetery. Have you even thought about that before spouting shit?”

I pulled out a folded note in my pocket and read the address again: Lloydminster Cemetery, Cemetery Rd, Lloydminster. I looked at him again and he just mouthed “See?”

“That doesn’t help, either.”

“I want us to visit my father’s remains. You tell me if there’s any ominous shit on that request.”

I could not open my mouth to retort after what he just said. Not that I couldn’t, but Kaizer literally just dropped his shields off and made a face I could only perceive as sadness.

“I—I . . . I am sorry.” I gently pushed Kaizer’s arm that is blocking the way. “I am sorry that you lost your father, but I don’t think I could come with you.”

Kaizer immediately pressed his body weight against the door frame before pointing at his lips. “Then kiss me.” I was literally taken aback by Kaizer’s words that I opened my mouth in shock.

“Look, Kaizer, I will not say any bad shit about you having fetish with pegging, but kissing you? Give me a break, you straight jerk!”

“Well, I’m sorry if my ‘fetish’ scares you, but who in the fucking province of Alberta says I’m straight?” Then he gestured with his left hand something like a telephone, but it wasn’t just some telephone. It was a versa sign. I looked at him, my forehead wrinkled, my eyes squinting at his direction.

“I don’t think I could believe you, even if I saw you on a gay bar, even if Amadeo told me you moan my name when you . . . wait.” I took a step closer to him as I saw him blushing like crazy.  I placed my hands against the door frame, juxtaposed against him. “You . . . you just moaned someone’s name when you’re fucking somebody else? Are you really that horny?”

He broke from the door frame and went into a urinal to pee. “Amadeo just looks like you, what can I do with those three years?” He looked at me, straight into my lips. I was weirded out by what is currently going on that I exited the rest room and went straight into the classroom. It was almost time for the end of my class for today, and I still have no choice but to go straight to the shop and do my waiter job.

At the back of my mind, I could quit the job and cite sexual harassment against that four-eyed charcoal-head. But also, I needed the cash since I don’t want to be a parent’s burden now that I’m in my fucking twenties. And there’s no way I’d go and work in a bar, lest another Amadeo go and lick my fingers like a dick. Plus, let’s say I would work where Gale would be working, then it wouldn’t help me drooling in the counter while looking at his oily naked body.

I am genuinely asking right now, who the fuck authored my story? If anything, everything doesn’t make sense to my fully packed peanut brain. Right now, I could even think that one plus one is three and it would still be correct.

Kaizer went back to the room, sweaty for I don’t know what reason, and I do not want to know what reason it was. Even if I have a bit of an idea about what Kaizer got himself into, I still wouldn’t dare to speak about it.

“The offer still stands, Arthur. Just saying.” Kaizer held on to his sling bag and ambled away, probably to his good ol’ shop. Either you come with me to my father’s cemetery or kiss the hell out of me. I’d rather die.

Defeated, I took out my satchel and followed the man to his shop. Dang, if only Gale was here.