Ethan

We’d only made it two steps in the front door when my dad called out, “Do you boys want pizza?”

I’d been happily planning on a salad for my dinner, and I’d promised Rue one too, but I’d take any excuse to cram some more calories into Rue’s body. 

I picked out a veggie pizza and Rue unhelpfully insisted he’d eat anything until my dad decided they’d just get a few to share. Once that was sorted, I took Rue into the kitchen and got a glass of water for each of us. I felt very clever knowing he’d be thirsty because I was thirsty and we’d both eaten those very sugary biscuits, but maybe that was just the kind of thing that was obvious when you weren’t autistic, not some strike of deductive genius. But then, sometimes people would act like I was very sweet for thinking of these things—but was that only because they didn’t expect much from me?

“Are you vegetarian?” Rue asked as he sipped his water, leaning back against the kitchen counter

“Huh?” I said, but it only took a second for my brain to catch up to the very obvious reasons he might think that. “No. I eat meat sometimes.”

“So you don’t mind if I eat it in front of you? I can just not do it if it bothers you.”

“It’s a texture thing. I don’t care what you eat.”

“Hm,” he said, setting his glass down and turning his body in towards mine. “So you’ll still kiss me if I do?”

I leant in and gave him a quick peck to the lips. “Yes.”

Before I could get too far out of his space, he looped an arm around me and snagged the back of my shirt. He paused for a breath, watching my face, and then turned me so that my back was to the counter and pressed his lips to mine. This was different from the kiss at the lookout—needier, his hips pressed against mine sending a nervous thrill of excitement through me.

But before things could get too heated, he leant back so that he could see into the living room and then meekly stepped back, his hand lifting to tangle in his hair. “Sorry. Couldn’t resist.”

I didn’t know what he was apologising for. I thought I’d made it clear I was receptive, but what did I know about what I’d made clear? Kissing him back seemed like it should be enough to me, but maybe I was standing awkwardly or making a funny face and that told a different—entirely fictional—story.

But he’d seemed like he’d been concerned about my dad and Wendy being in the other room, so I tugged him by the sleeve and led him back to my room. Of course, that meant walking right past the two of them, and that made Rue so uncomfortable that it reached the level of palpable perception. Normally, knowing what people were feeling was a matter of deductive reasoning, but some emotions hit me like a kick in the teeth.

Usually it was tone—the slightest waver or hardening of a voice. This time, with Rue, it was the set of his shoulders, the look he shot my dad. I was pretty sure that was the same look my dad had called ‘guilty,’ but that wasn’t quite the word I’d use for it. Through my eyes, it was the look of someone who expected retaliation.

But of course, my dad wasn’t mad at him, and I didn’t even know why Rue thought me might be. All Rue got was a smile and a wave as we went past.

I’d planned for more kissing when we got back to my room, but Rue was skittish and distracted, stopping every time he heard a sound and never really committing. When we heard the doorbell, he pulled away completely and sat listening, waiting. He jumped when my dad knocked, but all he did was announce, “Pizza!” in a booming voice and leave without opening the door.

Why did he think my dad was going to be mad if he caught us kissing? I was an adult. Rue was an adult. We could do what we wanted.

Unless… unless Rue didn’t really think I was an adult. Not a proper one. Plenty of people had talked to me like I was a lot younger than I actually was in my life, but Rue never had. But then, I’d heard about some adults who’d date minors, and they’d tell them they were so mature for their age so that they didn’t realise they were being taken advantage of. Was that what Rue thought he was doing?

Maybe. But maybe not. When I tried to guess people’s motivations, I was usually wrong. The idea that Rue was some creep just didn’t sit right, either. I just didn’t like not understanding, and it was hard not to assume it was something bad when this whole thing had gone far too well. I had never in my life been socially successful, so if this whole thing with me and Rue seemed to be working out, there had to be some catch.

Rue had made his way to the door while I was lost in thought. When I didn’t immediately follow, he paused and turned to look at me, his head canting to the side. “You okay?”

I felt bad for mentally accusing him of being some kind of predator, because he was much too sweet to be that. But—

No, I’d worry about whatever was making him so jumpy later. For now, I needed to focus on my original goal of fattening him up.

I nodded and hopped off the bed, following him out the door.

The coffee table in the living room was piled with food. I collected my veggie pizza and a loaf of garlic bread to share with Rue while my dad encouraged Rue to pile a plate with a mix of pizza slices. We normally just drank tap water with our take away, because we were healthy like that, but my dad had bought a big bottle of Sprite and he made sure Rue got a glass of that as well.

I gave my dad a nod of approval. He returned it with a quizzical smile because body language as a form of communication was indecipherable almost all of the time. Also, now that I thought about it, he probably didn’t know that Rue needed fattening up and he definitely didn’t know I was on a mission to do so. 

Realistically, Rue wasn’t actually any skinnier than me, but he’d had more weight on him in the mirror pic and it hadn’t been the kind he was better off losing. It reminded me of the way my mum had lost weight while she was going through her cancer treatment. It’d felt scary and horrible long before she’d actually been medically underweight.

But I wasn’t going to explain any of that, so I let my dad be confused and led Rue back to my room.

By this point in our holiday getaway, I was pretty unenthusiastic about take away, but Rue had plenty of appetite. He cleared his plate in the time it took me to eat through three slices of pizza and two pieces of garlic bread. I offered him some of my pizza, but he just shook his head, lay back on the bed, and rubbed a stomach that bulged in a way it hadn’t when I’d seen him shirtless. Fattening achieved, if only until he digested his meal.

I’d been hoping for some more making out, but by the time I decided I was done with my own food and cleaned everything up, Rue looked like he was halfway to falling asleep. He dragged me down onto the bed with him, but all he wanted to do was cuddle. Which was fine. I mean, I still wanted my make outs, but cuddling was pretty nice too.

After a while, his arm around me loosened and his fingers stopped teasing at my hair. I carefully eased myself out of his embrace and looked down at his closed eyes and slack face. I wanted to kiss his forehead, but I didn’t want to wake him, so I gave a little kiss to the air and slunk out of the room.

Out in the living room, my dad and Wendy were cuddled up on the couch, watching TV. They were watching a medical drama, which didn’t surprise me because Wendy loved medical dramas. They were all comedies through her eyes. She got the giggles every time the doctors on the shows did something unrealistic or just wildly unethical. Apparently careless, deadly mistakes were a lot less easily forgiven in real life than they were on TV.

Sometimes I’d watch the shows with them, but tonight I had other things on my mind.

“Dad,” I said. “Can Rue stay here tonight? He fell asleep.”

“Well, first of all, you’re an adult now,” my dad said. “You don’t have to ask my permission.”

“You’ve asked me if I was okay with people staying over before.”

“Okay, smartass,” he said, though what I’d said was just factually true. “The other thing is that his parents are going to be worried if he just doesn’t come home, so you should wake him and see what he wants to do.”

I wasn’t sure how true that was, but my dad saying parents reminded me that he didn’t know all the things I did about Rue’s home life. But he was probably right anyway. Maybe Rue’s dad would be worried, or worse, maybe he’d be mad. I definitely didn’t want to get him in any trouble.

I headed back to my room and stared down at Rue’s peacefully sleeping form. He didn’t look like he was going to wake up on his own any time soon, so I prodded his arm.

Rue startled and ducked his head towards his chest, and I took a couple of big, guilty steps back. I’d promised him I wouldn’t scare him again. Well, technically I’d promised I wouldn’t throw things near him again, but poking him awake got the same reaction, so I still felt bad.

His eyes blinked open and he smiled when he saw me. “Hey. Time to go?”

“My dad said you could stay here tonight. If you want.”

Rue pushed up onto his elbow. “Do you want me to stay?”

That question felt way too intimate to answer. I swear, half my masking was dedicated to finding ways to not look completely insane whenever my selective mutism kicked in mid-conversation. 

I settled on a shrug. “It would probably be easier than getting up and going home, right?”

I wasn’t sure that was true or made any sense at all, but he nodded. “Yeah, I bet your dad’s not all that excited about driving me back this late.”

I had no idea if my dad cared about that at all. It wasn’t even nine yet so it wasn’t like it was super late. I nodded anyway. “So, you can go back to sleep.”

Rue let out a little laugh as he flopped back down onto the bed. “Oh, okay. I’ll do that then.”

Glad we’d sorted that out, I left the room so that Rue could sleep because I wasn’t tired enough to go to bed yet. Since there wasn’t really anywhere else to go, I sat down on the arm of the couch to enjoy the medical drama and Wendy’s accompanying commentary. Today, she was listing all the things the doctor on screen was doing that should have been the work of a nurse—starting IVs, administering medication, changing dressings.

I’d been there less than ten minutes when Rue slunk tentatively into the room, quietly approaching my side.

I poked him in the shoulder. “I thought I put you to bed.”

“I thought you were gonna stay too.”

“I’m not tired yet.”

“Yeah, okay,” he murmured, fingers plucking at the sleeve of my sweater. “Do you want me to go home?”

A violent urge to rage quit being a social animal rose up in me. How had we ended up getting our wires crossed again? Probably because he was insecure and I was way too autistic for any of this. I pressed my hands against his cheeks so hard his lips made a fishy pucker and leant our foreheads together, trying to psychically project into his brain how much he needed to just settle down and not worry.

Wendy sat up and hauled my dad’s legs out of the way, then patted the empty spot they’d made. “Here you go. Let’s watch something together.”

Apparently four was a crowd when it came to making fun of medical dramas, but the important thing was that Rue did sit down and he let me nestle under his arm and he seemed to have accepted that I didn’t want him to leave without us having to have a conversation about it. Whoever said autistic people were bad at nonverbal communication?

We settled on a sitcom that was much less funny than Wendy’s medical drama commentary. At least I thought so, though my sense of humour was maybe a little broken. I’d be a ‘try not to laugh’ champion if I were ever in situations where I’d be challenged to do such a thing, though I was pretty sure that just made me boring. I was well aware that nobody actually enjoyed watching people not react to things. The fun was in the failure.

My dad had no such issues. He laughed loudly, easily, and often. Wendy didn’t laugh much at the show, but she seemed entertained by my dad’s booming laughter. You’d think she would have been used to it by now, but it still made her smile every time.

Rue wasn’t laughing, but he was probably too sleepy. Or distracted. We were cuddled up together, but he’d settled stiffly and then stayed completely still, even as I rocked my head back and forth against his shoulder.

It felt like my relationship with Rue moved in fits and starts. We’d have these moments where it felt like we really connected, but then later things would be awkward again and I wouldn’t be quite sure where we stood with one another. Maybe it was all in my head or maybe it was even him getting too much in his own head.

But that was why I’d embraced the temporaryness of this relationship, right? I was me, so of course we were on shaky footing, but it didn’t have to stay stable for long. I just hoped, when it was all over, Rue didn’t regret the whole thing.