“Isn’t that kind of ghoulish?”
“Uh, no. Trust me, this’ll be the turning point of Bree LaRue’s career. She should thank Cash Howard for making her interesting.” He unzips his bag, chucks a shirt at me. “If they write her off the show she’ll be in some Lars von Trier film within a year. Guaranteed.”
“I was just going to—”
“Stay here, stagnate, watch Castaway on your phone. Forget it.” He pulls on a Blondie t-shirt and zips up his fake python cowboy boots. “We’re gonna stir shit up. You and me.”
I know what he’s up to. I scramble for brilliant excuses. Migraine. Tainted cheese powder.
“Jesus, will you relax?” he says. “I’m putting your boy renaissance on hold. You don’t have to talk to anyone but me.”
I don’t trust him. “Bec, will you come?”
“Nope.” She has her flip-flops kicked off and she’s eating rice crackers and reading Blankets again. “Too hot. You’re on your own.”
“What if someone breaks in?”
“I’ll blind them with spray cheese.”
I uncrumple the shirt Abel threw me. It’s hot-pepper red with SEX BOMB on the front in army green. The O is a grenade at a jaunty tilt, the sex bomb in mid-hurtle toward its target. It’s so ridiculous I have to smile.
“I wore it the night I met Kade.”
“At that astrophysics lecture, right?”
“Put it on.” Abel gives me a shove. “You dress like you want to disappear.”
Don’t do it, says Father Mike.
What if I did?
That isn’t you. I know you better.
I close my eyes, dig my nails into my palm until it hurts.
“I’ll go,” I say.
But I don’t put on the shirt.
***
The sign on the red door says THE EDGE OF HEAVEN in chipped gold curlicue letters. Underneath is a ragged flyer for the Cleveland OutPride Film Festival, stapled over a mural of two male seraphim doing something distinctly unholy.
I think of Bec white-robed and pink-haired in her punk-angel costume two Halloweens ago; Mom with cat ears stuck in her mess of blonde curls, snapping pics in our front hall. Closer, you two! How about a hug?
“This okay?” Abel taps the door. “It’s not too cheesy, is it? Guy at the hotel said it was chill.”
“I’ve never been in a bar,” I blurt.
“Seriously?”
“I mean, yeah, I have. Just not this kind.”
“I know, right? Poor you. Zero gay bars in Blanton.” Abel sticks his hands in his hair and expertly messes it up. “Whatever; it’s not like Rocky Horror. They don’t harass virgins.”
My face gets hot, but then I realize he means bar virgins, not actual virgins. I make a big show of opening the door. “Shall we?”
Inside, dim rosy light and that sad-sweet smoke machine smell I remember from our freshman-year production of Godspell. The bartender is short with a wiry gray mustache and he’s got on one of those cowboy shirts with pearly snaps instead of buttons. White Christmas lights frame the bar in back of him, which is decorated with a dirty rainbow flag, vintage seashore postcards, a little kid’s card that says I love grampa in green crayon, and some gold-framed photos that confuse me. Guys dancing shirtless with glow sticks, wagging huge fake penises on parade floats, singing karaoke in sequins and wigs—should I like this stuff too? Take it seriously? I’m supposed to belong here. I should at least smile and not stand here like an idiot in my flip-flops and cargo shorts.
But you don’t like that stuff, do you?
Abel gets us two brown-bottle beers with a fake ID and we snag a table in the corner, near a red velvet couch where a skinny guy in a tank top is chatting up a hot guy in a suit. The jukebox plays that tinny old song Abel loves about riding on the metro. He cracks our bottles open with his keychain and slides one over.
“It’s Hammerclaw.” He starts tapping at his phone, shoulders perking to the music. “You’ll like. Trust me.”
I check the room for cops and take a sip. The beer tastes different from Dad’s; it’s thick and smoky and makes me think of beef jerky, though it’s probably not supposed to.
“To Bree LaRue.” I lift the bottle.
“To Bree LaRue, and her beautiful bitterness, and the sound of a hundred Cadsim shippers sharpening their pitchforks.” He clears his throat and reads off his phone. “Bree LaRue’s stupid opinion should be disqualified immediately, as she was clearly under the influence of illegal substances.”
“Oh Lord.”
“droidluv95 responds with a drabble, in which Sim rips off Cadmus’s shirt and moans hotly in his ear, ‘Captain: rumors of my asexuality have been greatly exaggerated.’”
“Ha!”
“Our good buddy Miss Maxima adds, Keep the faith, true believers. She may be lying on purpose! Odds are they’re planning the first Cadsim kiss for sweeps week. God, they’re a special kind of stupid, aren’t they?”
I get an idea. I arrange my best heartbroken-cynic face, which is kind of like my Sim face but with broodier eyebrows.
“You know,” I say, “what Bree said is totally true.”
“Meaning…?”
“Asexual people are the lucky ones.” I shrug with careful nonchalance. If I deliver this just right, he might leave me alone for the rest of the trip. “Sim’s got the right idea, you know? It’s just easier if you never have to think about it. Plus I already lost the only romantic gay guy in Pennsylvania, so I’m screwed anyway.”
“Uh-huh. Nice pose.” He takes a swig of Hammerclaw. “Don’t hold it too long or you’ll freeze like that.”
“It’s not a pose.”
“Then that’s just sad.”
“Makes sense to me.”
“Right. ‘Cause everyone else is all meaningless random hookups in men’s rooms.”
“Maybe not everyone, but—”
“Ew. Brandon. Do you write NOM propaganda in your spare time?”
“Look at you, though.”
“What about me?”
“What’s your number? Like, fifteen? Twenty?”
He straightens and flutters his eyelashes. “Five, since you asked so politely, and I was safe every time, and three I actually dated. And FYI, asshole, I never once cheated.”
“Right.”
“I haven’t!”
“You’re a unicorn, then.” I shrug and take a pull of Hammerclaw, the way tough guys are always taking pulls at their beers in the detective novels Dad reads. I’m coming off like a jerk, but it’s too late to backtrack. “Just think I’m better off alone.”
“Don’t be a doof. Think of everything you’ll miss! Don’t you want someone to mock bad movies with? And like, skinny-dipping and diner eggs at midnight and snowball fights and come on: first kisses? How great are they, right?”
I peer in my bottle and wish I was a genie who could vaporize and hide inside. Ryan Dervitz. His moonface pale against the school’s dark brick. The shock of his soft lips brushing my skin. The little-kid crack in his voice when he yelled after me—Hey! I’m sorry!—and I just kept running and running.
“Can we not talk about that?”
Abel looks surprised. “Why?”
“It’s too…um.”
“What?”
“Sacred.”
“Effing Zander.” He shakes his head. “That guy. The sex must’ve been—”
“Spectacular.” My leg jitters. Can he tell I’m lying? I picture it with Sim, how it would be to lie with him under cool white sheets. “Like, intergalactic.”
“Did you kiss him first or did he kiss you?”
“I don’t—”
“I’ll tell you about my first time with Kade. We were at his parents’ pizza place at two a.m., and they have one of those kiddie rooms with the plastic balls, and—”
“I don’t want to know.”
“Whatever! Just tell me one place you did it.”
“In the silken softness of beach sand, under three alien moons.”
He squints. “Is that from a Cadsim fic?”