Now, I crawl to the actual door, slam it shut, and lock it. I know I can’t hide in here forever. To seem less unstable, I run the shower but never get in. There’s a worsening feeling that says no matter how much lavender-scented body scrub I use, I’ll never know calm again.
“Wren?” Avery’s groggy question comes from the other side of the door. “Are you doing that thing where you pretend to be showering to avoid us?”
“He’s definitely avoiding me. Look at this,” Mateo says in what he thinks is a whisper but is actually a stage whisper that whips right through the thin door.
Mustering up all my strength, I jerk the door open and snatch Mateo’s phone out from between them. Neither has enough time to blink or react. I’m running into the living room where I jump onto the futon, frantically finding the buttons to delete the evidence of my emotional downfall.
One click is all it takes for the email to self-destruct.Whew.I can breathe again.
Mateo and Avery stand at the inlet to the hallway looking both mighty confused and confusingly parental. Disappointment looms in the air. I hand the phone back, but my peace of mind is still nowhere to be found.
“Are you done acting like one of those aggressive rescue dogs who just needs a patient owner with lots of treats to learn to love again?” Avery asks, hands on hips.
Mateo unlocks his phone again. “Do you think he’ll bite me if I tell him that Gmail stores your trash for thirty days?” I groan with great volume. “Also, like I wasn’t gonna take a screenshot?” He’s glaring at me now.
I lie down in defeat, folding my arms over my chest to protect myself from the onslaught. I probably look like the corpse of a boy who once had starry-eyed prospects but now has nothing. Here lies Wren Roland, beloved son, tolerable brother, loyal friend, and hopeless romantic (heavy on thehopeless).
Mateo and Avery kneel around the coffee table, which is covered in our plentiful cacti friends. Mortification crackles in my chest until I feel ready to fizzle out.
“Just spitballing here, but does this have something to do with the long-winded, partially confusing, entirely embarrassing but semisweet email about our almost-kiss that I received last night while I was making out with Brandon?” Mateo asks. I don’t even need to look to know his eyebrows are doing a provocative dance.
“Oof.I totally forgot you two almost kissed,” Avery says, amused. “I’d kill to visit the parallel universe where that happened. I bet you two dated for, I don’t know, three months and then broke up over something stupid like which Lady Gaga album is the best…”
“Born This Way.”
“A Star is Bornsoundtrack.”
Mateo gasps. “You’re clearly in a crisis, so I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that.” Disdain seeps from every syllable.
“If you’re not ready to talk about it, we get it,” Avery says.
I’m pretty sure I’ll never be able to talk about the fact that in my drunken spiral of sadness, I sent four boys four different emails they were never meant to lay eyes on. I thought coming out was going to be the biggest life-altering event I could handle this year, but, somehow, this overrules even that. I’m going to be picking up the pieces of this forever. Mateo is never going to let me live it down. Who knows what else Derick said in response. And I can only hope and pray the other emails failed to send.
“Forget that noise. Stop stalling and spill, babe,” Mateo demands.
My mind is in ruins. The aftershocks are still reverberating through my sternum. I have no idea what those emails mean or why I sent them. Sure, I was sad and drunk and annoyingly nostalgic, but that doesn’t explain why I didn’t immediately send follow-ups reading:Sorry! I got hacked! LOL LMAO Hahahahaahaha. Send me bitcoin.
Wait. Is it too late to do that?
“It’s an old email,” I mutter, fiddling with a stray thread on the armrest. I decide not to mention the others. Not now anyway.
“No duh. I figured as much. But why now? Why’d you send it now?” he asks.
“I didn’t mean to…” It sounds pathetic. I can make up a billion excuses, but it doesn’t refute the fact that somewhere in my subconscious Iwantedto send them. Maybe I just wanted the attention, the possibility. I don’t know.
Or, maybe, I thought this was the first step on my kiss quest. Reel in the almosts and turn them into actuals. There’s a twisted sort of logic there.
“Didn’t mean to or regretted it after?” he asks.
“Ugh.” I press the heels of my hands into my eye sockets.
“Babe,” Mateo says, reaching a hand across the table and finding my shoulder. “I’m not judging you. I’m trying to get to the bottom of why you’re acting so weird.”
I’m acting so weird because I came out as “gay” to my family approximately five months ago and something about it still doesn’t feel quite right. The wordqueerfeels better in my body, more encompassing of me, but I’m not sure I’m ready to say that out loud or what that means. I can’t just come out all over again. When you add together the email fiasco and our impending graduation, acting weird feels warranted. Earned, even.
“Are you okay?” Avery asks after some serious silence.
It’s a great question. One I can’t answer until I get this fire under control. So instead I get up and fumble for my lanyard on the hook by the door. I stuff my feet into sneakers and my arms into a denim jacket I’ve yet to wear this spring. Without my bag or my books or my laptop, I tell them I need to go study, get some air, be alone. Like the supportive best friends they’ve been all along, they let me claim my space.
