Ethan

On Thursday morning, I dodged another of my dad’s socialisation attempts and headed out to the supermarket on my own. He offered to drive me, but I knew he had more exciting things to do with his time. I think he was always a little paranoid when I started going places and doing things. I was usually a man of routine, but sometimes the spirit would take me and I’d be gone. When I was little, that usually meant doing my very best to get lost in the wilderness. As an adult, it mostly meant getting on a random bus and getting off wherever looked interesting—and then maybe realising I didn’t know how to get home again later, after I’d done a bit of wandering.

Today it meant grocery shopping, which was pretty safe and predictable by anyone’s standards. I’d promised Rue a salad, but after seeing him without a shirt on, I’d decided he needed biscuits as well.

Chocolate chip biscuits were my go-to Gift For Women, which so far had just been whoever my dad was dating when Christmas or a birthday rolled around. Almost everybody wanted homemade baked goods and being a teenage boy who baked never failed to impress even though all it required was following a series of simple instructions. And they were written down instructions, which made it much easier.

I think it confused people sometimes how competent I was at things like cooking or plant care. To most people, those things were harder and more complicated than the things I had trouble with. I’d spent years of my life not even being able to talk, which seemed to come as easy as breathing to a lot of people. I also had a really hard time doing things I didn’t want to do and just as much difficulty not doing things I did want to do, even when I knew I probably shouldn’t.

But I also wasn’t stupid, so when something clicked just right, I could surprise people with how competent I was.

I made three batches of biscuits, which was a lot, but that was the point. If I made way more than we could eat, nobody would question me sending Rue home with a bunch. Maybe they’d question why I’d made nearly a hundred biscuits, but I was fine with that.

I tried not to think about the fact that it took much longer than a few days to put on any serious weight. I tried not to think about… a lot of things. The me of two days ago who thought this whole thing having a scheduled end date was a good thing felt like a stranger now. 

Not that the rationale that had been behind my thinking was any less valid. I’d be a terrible person to try to have an actual relationship with. But last night, Rue pulling me under that overhang, his lips against mine…

I didn’t feel anywhere near done with this.

When we were driving home from the restaurant after dropping Rue off, my dad had mentioned that maybe we could visit again in the summer even though we never went on holidays in the summer and we never went to the same place twice. So that we could go for a swim in that pool that had been near the restaurant, he’d said, like he thought was being sly. As if I would even want to swim in a crowded pool full of screaming children.

There was no way Rue would still be single in half a year’s time—he was too handsome and kind—so it would just be awkward if we did come back. I didn’t like thinking about that hypothetical future guy who would take Rue away from me, but that was what he deserved. Someone who wouldn’t leave, yes, but also someone who could just… be normal. I couldn’t do that. I didn’t want to do that.

But at least I could make biscuits.

It was just past seven thirty when there was a knock on the door. I was ready and prepared for nighttime walking with my shoes on, my messenger bag loaded up with biscuits, and wearing jeans, a long sleeved shirt, and a sweater.

When I opened the door, Rue’s lips sprung into a smile. Facial expressions were weird and I didn’t like to spend a lot of time analysing them even though I’d had a great deal of therapy that aimed to teach me how. But all that therapy was useless, because it didn’t tell me why this smile was… the way that it was. 

There was nothing wrong with it, but it wasn’t quite like other smiles people had given me. Maybe there was something right with it.

It dropped off his face. “What’s wrong?”

I tilted my head in confusion. “Nothing?”

“You’re frowning.”

Was I? Well, maybe I was now, because we were talking about this. “That’s just what my face looks like.”

“Yeah?” Rue asked. “You didn’t look happy to see me.”

“That’s just another beautiful facet of my vibes being extremely off. My face does random emotions. Usually angry or annoyed or just bored, but a couple of times people have told me I was smiling when I didn’t feel like I was and really shouldn’t have been. So that’s fun.”

“Damn. Your life’s complicated, huh?”

I couldn’t tell if he was making fun of me, so I just nodded. “You can put your bag in my room so you don’t have to carry it if you want, then we can head out for our walk.”

Rue was a little reluctant to give his bag up, but in the end he did leave it in my room. My dad of course took the opportunity to harass him with friendly greetings as we went past.

Once we were out in the chill of the open air, I took Rue’s hand. “Why do you keep so much stuff in your bag? I mean, I guess I do too.” I lifted my messenger bag. “But only small things.”

Reu gave a stiff shrug. “I just like knowing that if anything happens, I’ll have everything I need.”

“Like a plush tiger.”

“Everything important to me,” he clarified. “What if the landlord decided to evict us and we couldn’t get in to get our stuff or something?”

I swung his hand in mine. “I don’t think that’s legal. You have to give people notice.”

“So? Landlords do plenty of bullshit illegal things. It’s just better to be prepared for anything, because lots of things can happen.”

“It still seems kinda strange to me, but then it also seems strange to me when I call a stranger on the phone, like the hairdresser or the doctor’s office, and they ask me how I am even though I guess that’s perfectly ordinary.”

“Perfectly ordinary,” Rue echoed, a smile quirking his lips. Why, I didn’t know. “I actually don’t really know why they do that either.”

“If it was just the doctor, I’d understand. My wellbeing is their business. And hairdressers are nosy creatures by nature. But it’s more than just doctors and hairdressers. It’s everyone.”

“It’s just manners, right?”

“I guess,” I said, slightly exasperated. I looked left, looked right, looked left again before we crossed the road at the end of the street. “Sometimes it feels like we might end up stacking ourselves so deep in things that are just manners that we don’t have any time left to actually say anything real. But maybe that’s how it’s supposed to be when you’re talking to people who are doing their job. You’re meant to follow the script.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“I’m not opposed to a little scripting, but I don’t always know what my side of it is supposed to be.”

“I think that’s fine. People say all kinds of shit to me when I’m at work and I really don’t give a damn as long as no one gets agro.”

“I don’t do customer service. Do you want to hear a story?”

Rue let out a little laugh. “Okay.”

I frowned. Why was he laughing? Was it because I was talking so much? When I didn’t immediately keep talking, he turned a quizzical smile on me, and I decided that he probably did want me to continue with my chatter.

I swung his hand in mine again as we followed a path into a park. It was dark and vacant this time of night, a possum or bat rustling the branches of a nearby tree.

“Okay, so this was when I was fourteen,” I began. “There was this guy who worked at the nursery, and he was… I guess a bit older than we are now? Whenever we were alone, he’d needle me into putting on the work apron and helping with check outs.”

“Needle you into it?”

“He was pushy and I don’t like conflict,” I explained. “Unfortunately he was pushy in a… friendly way, I guess? I couldn’t figure out how to tell anyone it was a problem, especially since my dad thought it was good that he was, you know, ‘helping’ me push my boundaries. But only when we were alone, so obviously my dad left him alone with me even more.”

Rue’s hand tightened on mine. “Oh.”

“So then money started going missing from the till, and my dad quickly figured out it’d happened when we were alone together.”

“You got blamed?”

I snorted. “No. That’s what he thought would happen as well. I was fourteen, disabled, and not confident using the register. Of course he could convince my dad I must have made a mistake, right? Except that my dad knew I was great at maths and my anxiety about the till only made me careful to a fault. Oh, and I would never never never steal. I guess I can sometimes be naive or not understand people’s motives, but with him I instantly knew that he’d tried to set me up.”

“What an asshole.”

“Afterwards my dad tried to talk to me about how much it hurts when you’re betrayed by someone you thought was your friend. He didn’t get it. I always knew that guy wasn’t my friend. I just… didn’t know how to tell anyone else that.” I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “So anyway, that’s one of the many things I’m still bitter about.”

Not so much towards the guy, who’d actually ended up apologising after my dad had a long talk with him and I think maybe actually meant it. My dad was the one I was still a little mad at. He’d been so excited about the idea of me becoming something I wasn’t and would never be that he’d missed what was really going on.

“What are you bitter about?” I asked.

We came out of the other end of the park and started making our way up the steep slope of a road as Rue mulled that over. “A bunch of things, I guess, like how my mum’s parents were dead set against her getting an abortion when she was pregnant with me but then barely helped my dad after she disappeared. But today I‘m enjoying being alive here with you, so I guess I can’t be too mad.”

I really wanted to somehow put a bandaid on Rue’s lifelong issues with abandonment, but really, I was only going to make them worse. At least I wouldn’t be choosing to abandon him, but I would leave just like everyone else. 

Maybe it was cruel to get into something like this with a neurotypical. They formed attachments so easily. My dad was the only person I was really attached to. Anyone else, including my grandparents who I saw every couple of months, could move to another country so I never saw them again and I wouldn’t really care. 

That might have just been a ‘me’ thing, though. It was one of those things, like feelings about death, that was better not talked about if you didn’t have the perspective you were supposed to.

Rue already knew I was leaving, so I supposed he could decide for himself whether this was good for him or not. I didn’t even really know if it would be good for me, but it felt worth the risk in a world where most things weren’t. I’d destroyed my mental health for a lot less, so whatever this cost me, it was fine.