Rue

Ethan sat twisted sideways on the bus seat, one leg tucked up, his eyes out the window as he watched trees and mountains and cows grazing in the green expanse of fields. I had one eye on him and the other on my phone as I covertly researched autism.

I was pretty sure he actually was autistic, but I’d decided that didn’t really change a whole lot—besides, of course, making me feel like an even bigger asshole for scaring him. And for getting mad at him for not following my directions on the rocks.

But in a strange way, it was comforting. Because if he was autistic, then this was Different, and I didn’t have to be all muddled up inside feeling like I should be the person the world had taught me I had to be. If someone was autistic, you were allowed to be all soft and gentle with them. That didn’t make you weird or a pussy.

That was what I was telling myself, anyway. Whether or not Ethan really needed a soft touch or if that even had anything to do with him being autistic, he seemed to prefer me when I wasn’t being a dickhead. That shouldn’t have been surprising, but I found other guys didn’t like it if you didn’t have enough rough edges.

Maybe being autistic meant you didn’t have to follow all those rules about being a man, and maybe it meant I didn’t have to either, at least when I was around Ethan. Or maybe he just never got the idea in his head that he had to be anything other than himself. I got the impression he wasn’t any less of a loner than I was, but at least he seemed to like his own company. 

I also liked his company. Too damn much, for someone I barely knew. For someone who would be going away soon.

I cleared my throat. “So, where’s home?”

Ethan rattled off a street address without looking away from the window. I laughed. He didn’t.

“Where’s that?”

“Brisbane.”

“Oh,” I said, doing my best to keep the heartbreak out of my voice. “That’s a long drive.”

“Mm,” he agreed. “Took us all day Sunday to get here.”

“How long are you staying?”

“A week. We’re driving back this Sunday.”

I made a vague sound of acknowledgement. I didn’t want him to know how bummed I was that none of this could last. At best, I’d make myself a texting buddy, but there was no way to get to Brisbane and back that wouldn’t cut into my savings more than I could afford.

When I finished high school, I’d had all these plans to save up a bunch of money, find somewhere else to live, and cut my dad out of my life. It hadn’t worked out like that. Saving was a fucking disaster when my dad took most of my money and left me to pay for anything I needed with what I had hidden away, finding somewhere else to live was not happening in the middle of a housing crisis when I had no friends, and I was starting to realise that just walking away from my dad wouldn’t be as easy as I’d thought. For a lot of reasons.

But I didn’t want to think about any of that. All I wanted to do was watch this soft boy with his stormy ocean eyes enjoy the view out of the window.

#

Warrinbar wasn’t much of a city and Warrinbar Zoo wasn’t much of a zoo. There were a bunch of kangaroos you could look at, but we’d also looked at a fair few on the way here through the bus window, some of them dead on the side of the road. There were the other staples as well—emus, cassowaries, dingoes, wombats, crocodiles, koalas. Most of them were asleep, or at least hiding away where we couldn’t gawk at them. Good for them, to be honest.

We stared down at the unmoving body of a crocodile laying half-submerged in murky water. I sure knew how to show a guy a good time. 

Ethan didn’t complain. He also didn’t smile or laugh or have much of anything to say about the sleeping animals.

“Want to see the botanic gardens?” I asked after we’d finished our loop through the measly collection of animals.

He shrugged. “Okay.”

I hadn’t really given the botanic gardens much thought beyond them being a place with plants and Ethan being a guy who liked plants. As soon as we made our way to the end of the stone path and stepped into them, I was reminded that they were fucking lame. If there was anything special about the plants here, I couldn’t tell. It was just trees and grass and a pond and some manicured garden beds. 

We went for a stroll around anyway, and Ethan stopped to read a placard in front of a tree that was kind of big, I guess, but otherwise unremarkable. He looked about as interested in it as he had the sleeping crocodile.

I let out a groan. “Sorry. This fucking sucks.”

Ethan looked at me, head tilted in question.

“I just wanted to take you out, and I thought maybe the zoo would be okay, and I thought, you like plants, so y’know.” I gestured around us. “Plants. But they’re not that good, are they?”

Ethan turned a slow circle as he gazed around us, and by the time he ended up facing me again, his expression was mildly confused. “They seem fine to me?”

“Yeah, but…” I heaved out a sigh and ran a hand through the short strands of my hair. I was being needy. “Nevermind.”

Ethan considered me for a long moment, then tipped his head toward the lake. “Come on.”

I followed along, dragging my feet only slightly, trying not to look like I was feeling as sorry for myself as I was. He pointed me to the ground and I sat, lake behind me. He pulled out his phone and I watched, making no effort to smile or pose, as he framed me in the shot.

He took the picture and nodded his satisfaction, holding it out for me to see. “Look. You don’t look like a serial killer in this one.”

I didn’t, but I did look grumpy.

“You said I looked like a domestic abuser in the other one.”

“Right. I guess now I understand why you didn’t like that.”

“Who would?”

He shrugged and took another picture.

“Why are you taking pictures of me?”

“For your dating profile.”

“You gonna give me a review, too? ‘Cheap, kinda boring, terrible taste in trees.’”

His eyes flicked up from his phone screen. “Is this a date?”

I could feel my face going red. Fuck. 

“No, I just meant, you know,” I said, floundering, and then weakly and unconvincingly added, “I was joking.”

He nodded and returned his attention to his phone, seeming to take that at face value.

“I just meant that if this was my attempt at taking someone out for a fun time, maybe I’m not cut out for dating,” I continued, more confident now that he wasn’t staring into my soul and very flushed face. “Do you want to go somewhere else? Do something else?”

Ethan glanced up. “Lunch?”

I allowed myself a hint of a smile. “Yeah, I could go for lunch.”

The outside eating area sat under a strange canopy of great, sprawling branches that seemed to spread out and out more than any tree ought to, roots as thick as tree trunks reaching down from them to provide support. I left Ethan to read the placard while I ducked into the toilets.

I pissed quickly in a stall, then did my pants up, sat down on the toilet, and turned my backpack over so that I could get to the small hole I’d cut in the bottom seam. It led into a pocket I’d hollowed out in the cardboard padding that served as the backpack’s base. The tips of my fingers closed around plastic as I wriggled them in and came out pinching a twenty. That’d do it. Since this wasn’t a date, Ethan could pay for his own lunch.

I didn’t mind the excuse to roleplay as not completely broke and eat a proper meal for once. I had all the rice and beans I could choke down, but I’d been reaching a point where food had startled occupying way too many of my thoughts.

And then I came out of the toilets and Ethan was fucking gone. Not waiting outside. Not gawking at the tree. I ducked back in to check if maybe he’d needed to take a piss as well, but the stalls were empty.

Well, fuck. Obviously this whole adventure hadn’t been as fun as I’d hoped, but I really had thought he’d at least see it through. Was I really so bad that he’d felt the need to run as soon as my back was turned?

Maybe I was after I’d accidentally kinda implied this might be something like a date. He hadn’t really reacted to that, but then he didn’t really react to anything other than me nearly falling off a cliff. 

And was it strange that, beneath all the guilt, that was a happy memory? It was probably more than a little sad to be so starved of love that someone freaking the fuck out because they thought you were about to die was touching.

I sat down at a random picnic table and buried my face in my arms, unable to summon the will to do anything but mope. What did I have to be for someone in my life to actually want me? More of a man? Less of… something?

I should have been less of a dick to Brit. Maybe if I hadn’t spent all that time leading her on, we could have actually been proper friends. Our whole grade had been waiting for me to ask her out, and I’d left her to explain on her own why things hadn’t ended up the way everyone had expected. And she didn’t even actually know why. Now I couldn’t even call up the one person I actually used to talk to and tell her how fucking lonely I was.

Though I didn’t really know how much that would’ve fixed. During my bus time autism reading, I’d learnt about masking. I wasn’t convinced Ethan really masked all that much, but I felt like it was all I did. Pretended to be a version of myself that wasn’t real. Sure, it wasn't neurodivergence I was hiding, but I was never my authentic self.

Except maybe with Ethan. Probably. The scary thing was that I genuinely didn’t know. At this point, I’d kept the real me tucked away for so long that he was a stranger to me. I wasn’t sure I was anything beyond a collection of things I was sure I wasn’t. Mostly I meant that in a principled kind of way, all the things I was determined not to be, but on a day like this it was hard not to add to the list more cynically: I wasn’t fun. I wasn’t interesting. I wasn’t worth keeping.

No, wait.

That last one was nothing new.