“Dude. It’s about time. I’m starving.” Indranil scarfed down the pizza provided by their little sister while the both of them sat at the wooden table in the kitchen. The genderqueer, nonbinary nineteen-year-old sighed with content.

“Mmmm. Cheese is such a blessing. Am I right, Saanvi? Like if the beat dropped while I was eating a slice of cheese pizza and yellow glitter exploded from cannons at that exact moment where I’d be DJ-ing at a nightclub called, ‘Cosmic Curdle’, that’d be sick.” Indranil closed their eyes and groaned in pleasure as the hot cheese slid down their throat.

Saanvi rolled her eyes.

“Indranil, chill. You need to stop making porn noises. It’s ruining my pizza. Also, I am totally into that club idea. We need to make that happen. Pizza plus clubbing plus glitter. It would be the gay holy trinity. But first. Lemme tell you why the pie took so long.”

Saanvi cleared her throat.

“Okay. So I’m walking to the pizza place, and usually Rinaldo takes like five seconds to make our cheese pizza, right? The dude knows our order, it’s simple, and he owns the place.”

Indranil nods.

“So, I get to the shop. Rinaldo isn’t there. He left to deliver pizza to a customer who’s recently moved into the neighborhood. You know what that means. Rinaldo doesn’t do pizza deliveries. For one thing, he’s terrible at directions. But he was texting me the other day, talking about this customer, and he’s super into her. She’s visited his pizza store a lot the past couple days just to stop by, say hi, and grab a slice. From my understanding, it’s completely mutual. I mean, I love pizza, and I love Rinaldo; he’s like an uncle. But if I were to eat it for four days straight, even I would be sick. Remember The Incident Of 2009? Anyway, so Rinaldo is off galavanting with a cute forty-something lady, and when I get there, the pizza place is being handled by Becky.”

Indranil’s eyes widened. “Oh my god. No way. Rinaldo must have it bad. I can’t believe he’s finally getting back into the swing of things. Darrell really fucked him up.”

“I know right? Rinaldo is the sweetest guy out there. He did not need someone who had been cheating on him for, what? 2 years?” Saanvi huffed in frustration. “Why does that even happen to people like him? I’d get it if the two had consented to an open marriage, but Rinaldo is a total monogamist. I can't believe Darrell. Objectively speaking, Rinaldo is a 10 in looks and personality.” Saanvi shook her head. “Okay, we’re past that. Rinaldo is definitely past that father-fucke--”

“Saanvi!” Indranil chided in a mocking tone. The 19-year-old didn’t give a fuck about Darnell or the names their sister liked to pick out for him.

“So Becky. She was handling the pizza place tonight. You heard of her? She’s excelling in Calculus III Honors as a junior in high school, but she can’t cook pizza for shit.”

“Well, ya. I know her. You’ve also had a crush on her for months now.”

“I’m getting to that. She’s just super hot. It’s hard to talk to hot people.”

“Ha. You should look in the mirror.”

“Brah. You need to work on your insults.”

“Sis, every girl wants to date you, promise. I’m being objective.”

“Sure. Back to the story. Becky’s at the pizza store. It’s a Tuesday night--not very busy. We’re the only one’s in there. The oven is hot as hell, and we’re both sweating up a storm.”

“Now you’re the one sounding like a porno.” Indranil chuckled.

“Brahhhhhhhhh.”

“Okay. Sorry. Sorry. Continue.”

“Becky looks me up and down and says what do you want. But not in that, ‘Ugh. What do you want.’ sort of attitude. I mean, the girl is totally hitting on me. She gets up real close to the counter and smiles at me. I could see her pearl-white teeth against her dark, plum lips and her dark, black skin. That’s how close we were.”

“Wow. Nice word choice. A+ for plum. Keep going.”

“Well, I just blurt out, ‘You!’, in a pipsqueak voice. I swear, my voice cracked. And then my spit went down the wrong pipe, and I started choking. She had to get me a drink of water.”

“Oh Jeez. So smooth.”

“Ugh. I know.” groaned Saanvi. “At this point, I was blushing like mad. But, I don’t think she could really tell. Anyway, I’m drinking my cup of water. All of a sudden it gets really quiet and then she starts laughing. Like full on chortling. Then, I start bursting out laughing. Actually, my nose hurt a lot afterwards because I accidentally got some of my water to spill out of there while I was giggling. We were laughing even more after that. And then she wrote down her number on a napkin and handed it to me.”

“Dude.”

“I know.”

“But, how did the pizza get made? I know for sure Becky could not have made this pie.” Indranil gave a last look at the final slice, but they were too full.

“I’m taking the last slice.” Saanvi scooped it up and shoved it into her mouth. “R--wwawado came bwack and mwawade it.”

“Uhhh. Rinaldo came back in time and made it?”

Saanvi swallowed. “Yup.”

“Wow. Sis. Totally worth the pizza wait if it meant scoring Becky’s number. Sacrifice made, deposited, and invested in smartly. I’m so proud of ya.” Indranil beamed.

The two high-fived.

“Banking and DJ-ing. If you weren’t my brah, I’d think that combination doesn’t exist.” winked Saanvi. “Well, the world’s a tossed up pair of dice with a couple extra thrown in that have letters on them instead of numbers.”

“Well said.” smiled Indranil.

“Although, Indranil, one weird thing did happen to me right before I got up here. The elevators in this apartment take forever. Mom’s out now, but she was just commenting about getting Dad to fill out an invoice for her company to take care of it. Being a repair worker has its benefits. She wants to fix it soon and figured she could get paid by her company to take care of it even though Dad would be paying for it, so the money would just go back to them and there wouldn’t be any positive returns really. She doesn’t care. Figures getting her work put on the clock is still good I guess.”

“Right. But what’s the weird part? Mom is always like that. She’s a blue overalls, oil-smudged fixer with a clock-in, clock-out attitude.”

“The weird part is that when I walked into the building, I saw the elevator doors closing on this purple-suited black 20-year-old something, and even when I asked her to keep the doors open, she just turned around and smirked. I looked at the elevator numbers light up and stop at our floor. She got off on our floor, Indranil. But we know everyone. There’s no one like her in our building. Plus, that was kind of asshole-ish behavior.”

“How do you know the person goes by, ‘she’?”

“Oh ya. I guess I don’t know. Uhh but--and I know I shouldn’t always go by this--she didn’t give off a genderqueer vibe. Sounds super douchey but my instincts are off the charts when it comes to those things.”

“Hmm yup super douchey but I honestly think you have a superpower. No joke. Like, you, Mom, and Dad all have surprising talents.”

“Ha I guess. Mom can fix literally anything, Dad can swerve through traffic and find the most perfect route to get to a place in no time, and I can piece together people’s identities pretty easily. Maybe we have E.S.P. But like at the same time I shouldn’t be assuming people’s identities. Makes me a shitty asshole,” Saanvi pursed her lips.

Indranil crinkled their brow in thought.

“It’s also weird because you’re always right. Like super queerdar?”

“Maybe. But I’m not gonna be that asshole that tries to convince people they’re one thing over another. On the topic of weird talents though, you destroy things super easily.”

“I really destroyed this pizza.”

Saanvi rolled her eyes.

“You know what I mean. You can take things apart. See how they function. Really tear ‘em apart. That goes for things and people. Mom always has to put the things back together for you. The people usually end up in the hospital. Although, I guess in your defense, most of the time those people are bullies and you’re fighting to protect others from them.”

Indranil sighed a huff of frustration.

“I just can’t stand when people decide to hurt others just for the hell of it. You know me Saanvi, I don’t even condone violence, but I hate being a bystander even more. I’m lucky that college has been more chill.”

“Brah, you were popular in high school.”

“Ya, but there were still assholes in high school. In college, people kind of just do their own thing.”

“Speaking of assholes, I didn’t finish talking about the purple-suited lady in the elevator. The one who got off our floor.”

“Spill.”

“She didn’t keep the doors open for me, but as I rushed to catch them--I didn’t make it--, the woman was tossing this huge ass golden coin up and down while smirking. It was almost creepy but attractive? Like, she knew she was hot stuff but had business to attend to and couldn’t possibly wait on me. I also got the sense that she spoke French.”

Indranil paused.

“Saanvi, why the hell would you think she spoke French? Because she was rude to you?”

Saanvi smiled and tapped her temple, “Intuition. Not prejudice, I promise.”

There came a knock at the door.

Saanvi and Indranil got up, walked over to the door, looked through the peephole, and glanced at each other in shock. They both whispered, argued, shrugged, unlocked the door, and pulled it open.

“Bonsoir, mes amies.”

Indranil watched as the corner of Saanvi’s mouth quirked upward.

It was the purple-suited woman.