“I love your weird long flat.”Lucas’s eyes had softened, and his hand traveled from my back to my neck, gently finger-combing my curls.“And it’s looking much better these days, if I do say so myself, but I don’t think she’d like sleeping in the same room as her son and his boyfriend.”He grinned, having felt the happy shiver that ran through me whenever he used that word.
“I suppose that would be ...not ideal.”I leaned into his touch.
“Nope, I want to be able to jump you at a moment’s notice.”His eyes went a bit distant.“You know, in case I go into an anxiety spiral.”
“What do you mean?I thought everything was going well?”
“It is.”Lucas had let go of me entirely and was fiddling with a cloth napkin.Folding and refolding.Smoothing it out, straightening each corner, folding again.“I’m just worried—” he swallowed, and I barely suppressed the urge to reach for him “—that everyone’s working so hard, and I’m getting this amazing opportunity, and when the time comes it’ll be ...”
I gave up and took his hands, interrupting the napkin ritual.“It’ll be what?”
“Sophomoric.”
Goose bumps ran up and down my arms.“Why would you think that?”
Lucas shrugged, his fingers twitching under mine.“I don’t know, it’s stupid.I guess I’ve never really thought of myself as makingart.I take pictures.And I love it.And it means something to me, but”—his brows pinched together—“it’s supposed to be something more.And I don’t know if it is.Maybe I’m wasting everyone’s time.”
I bit back the unhelpful observation that he’d just described art to a T, and instead rubbed my thumbs across his knuckles.“Lucas, I make a comic about a penguin.”
“But it’s notreallyabout a penguin.”He huffed.“There’s a deeper meaning to it and stuff, with symbolism or whatever.”
“It’s about a penguin, love.”
“No, it isn’t.It’s about fate, and freewill, and society, and othering, and finding your place in a myth that couldn’t conceive of you—”
“Lucas, you silly man, it’s about a penguin, and the rest of it sort of happens.Like your photos.”
“No, it’s not like my photos!”His hands under mine had gone rigid.“I don’t make beautiful things, I just take pictures of them, and there’s nothing under them because I don’t have anything to say.And how could I?I’ve never been anywhere or done anything.”
This was him.This has to be him.I focused on Lucas.
“And yet, somehow”—I brought his hands up to my lips and kissed each in turn—“people see your photos and feel a way about them.Here.”I reached for the camera bag forever at his side, currently resting on the muted leather of the booth.Lucas gave it over, and for about two seconds I stared at the mess of buttons before asking him to boot it up.
“Now what?”he asked sulkily.
“Take a photo.Er.”I didn’t quite bite back a cringe as he turned the camera on me.There followed the usual mysterious shutter sounds, and then the somehow predatory digitalclick.
Lucas lowered the camera.“Nowwhat?”
He was being such a brat, it was hard not to smile.“Show me it.”
He did, and I meta-cringed at the sight of myself cringing.“All right, er, why’s the focus here?”I touched the raggedy collar of my jumper.
Lucas frowned.“Um.Because of the texture?”
I nodded, trailing my fingers over his again, the roughness between his thumb and forefinger.“Contrasted with my skin and the wood paneling of the booth, which are both relatively smooth, and it draws attention to the tension in my shoulders, to the way a large, brown, poorly dressed man is trying to make himself small in a fancy ethnic restaurant.It’s a commentary on class, the hollow aesthetics of modern masculinity, and the commodification of immigrant cultures.”
Lucas stared.“It is?”
I shrugged.“Just sort of happens, dunnit?”
Lucas set the camera down and leaned forward to kiss me.He tasted of mango lassi and spices and Lucas, and I wished I could kiss every last doubt from his mind.I certainly tried.
Lucas whispered against my lips, “I definitely feel an anxiety spiral coming on.”
I immediately pulled away in concern.“Oh love, everything’s going to be fi—” I was cut off by his mouth.He’d pulled me back in by the neck of my jumper, and kissed me in a way that was not meant for public venues.
“I meant I want to jump you.”He chuckled, both of us flushed and gasping.“Let’s go home.”
