Tythwig. I filed that away for a later date so I could try and look up anything and everything about tythwig on the internet at my leisure. A lot of what humans knew about Orbs wasn’t readily available online but that wasn’t going to stop me from trying.
“Well, I’m sorry that happened.” Myers stated, our waitress heading our way from the other end of the restaurant. The last thing I wanted was to have a stranger overhear the subject matter of this conversation. “Hopefully you can sort things out when you go back to work on Thursday.”
“Yeah, hopefully.”
We quickly ordered our food and slipped into a different type of conversation. Since I’d been working, I hadn’t been able to keep up with what Myers had been doing in her spare time. Apparently, she’d been spending most of her town getting to know what she called ‘the real Phoebe’. She’d gone to the antique shops to see what sort of knick knacks she could acquire for Mom, something she’d done at almost every single state we’d visited during our trip. Then she’d indulged in a couple of the Tim Burton movies that were slated at the local movie theater. I’d also learned that Phoebe had a killer pumpkin patch, emphasis on the killer part. Apparently, you could pick a pumpkin while running from actors paid to try and slaughter you for taking their respective pumpkins.
Phoebe truly was a freak of a town and I’d never been more in love with a place.
Myers had struck up a friendship with a guy that worked at the movie theater that she was swearing up and down waspurelya friendship and nothing more. But I knew my sister just as well as she knew me, and the fact that she’d felt the need to clarify their standing told me that she definitely liked him a little more than friends. Because I was a good brother, I only teased her a little before our food finally arrived, and we shelved most conversation in favor of savoring our meals.
Towards the end of our meal, once my chicken and chorizo was eviscerated and Myers had eaten most of her cheese lathered burritos, I was feeling a lot lighter about the Arze situation. If he did or didn’t want to have anything to do with me in a more intimate fashion, I was fine with that. I just needed to know why he’d reacted the way he did and then that could be the end of that chapter.
I was about to tell Myers how much better I was feeling when something caught in my periphery. Movement towards the door caught my eye, since I was facing the entrance of the restaurant from our booth. It felt like my entire breath was stolen from me when I realized that standing at the host stand, wrapped in a very nice dark green suit, was the man I’d spent most of the dinner trying to free from my mind.
Arze looked fuckinggoodin his suit. My heart sank when a woman in a glittering silver dress came up to him, sliding her arm around the lower half of his back as he spoke to the host at the stand. Her brown skin was etched the same way his was, looking like wood, as her wild pink hair was tamed into two adorable afro puffs.
I had a full view of them as Arze gave the host one last smile and walked out of the front door of the restaurant with his date. Once they were outside the glass door, they exchanged onesingle kiss before tossing a few words back to one another, and they started walking in different directions down the sidewalk.
My insides burned with a betrayal that wasn’t justified. Arze could be bisexual, just like me, or any other variant. But in that moment, seeing him with a female tythwig made me instantly question what I’d been deciphering from what happened at Batwings. Could I be wrong? Could I have interpreted his intentions that night?
No. Fuck that. Arze had wanted to kiss me. I’d read the signs exactly right and I refused to doubt myself now, even after seeing him with a woman.
Rage over not knowing what had triggered him blazed a well of unlimited depth within me. I stood up from the booth, inching myself out before I knew how to stop myself.
“Krueger?” My sister’s voice was barely registered from the blood pounding in my ears as I stood next to our table. “What are you doing?”
“I’ll be right back.” I heard myself say with a cold steel in my voice.
I couldn’t accurately explain the myriad of things brewing inside me right now to my sister. All I knew was that I needed to speak to Arze and it needed to be right now before I lost my nerve.
Weaving my way through, I made it outside into the dark of the night as the sun finished setting over the mountains that cradled Phoebe. I looked behind me, seeing the tythwig in her silver dress continuing to retreat from view until she turned a corner, vanishing. Whipping my head in the opposite direction, I saw Arze doing the same thing. Except just before he was about to turn the corner, I knew I had to intervene.
“Arze!”
Screaming his name out in public like that might not have been the best idea, especially considering that I was pretty suremost of the people inside the Mexican restaurant had heard my bellow, but I cared more about getting answers from him more than I cared about my dignity in that moment.
Arze turned around, his eyes narrowing to see that I was the one yelling after him. I was already running up to him by the time the shock swept over him, his eyes widening as I skidded to a stop just before him, my lungs burning from the sudden burst of energy I’d just expended.
“Krueger?” His voice went higher than usual, a clear indication that I’d caught him off guard as I continued to regulate my breathing into a more normal ebb and flow. “What are you doing here?”
“I saw you leaving the restaurant,” I told him. “I was having dinner with my sister when I saw you leave.”
“Oh.” That one simple word felt heavy in my ears, and I wasn’t sure if Arze was feeling guilty for having me see him on a date or if he was replaying our encounter over and over in his head since it’d occurred, just like I was. But it wasn’t enough. I needed more from him. He needed to tell me what had made him leave that night at Batwings so I could quit losing sleep over it.
“Just tell me why you left Batwings.” Cutting to the chase was the only way to put both of us out our misery. “If I made you uncomfortable or I misunderstood something, I need to hear you say so and I’ll apologize. Because I thought...” In the moment, I couldn’t say the words.Because I thought you wanted to kiss me. I just couldn’t stomach voicing the truth and having him rip me from reality with the opposing side. I closed my eyes briefly before I reopened them, staring into his beautiful orange irises. “Just tell me, please.”
“Krueger…I don’t think…” Arze started, and I could already hear the hesitation to confirm the truth one way or the other. “I just needed to leave.”
“Because I leaned in to kiss you?”
The way his eyebrows shot up followed by his head careening in every direction, as if he were looking for anyone that cared enough to eavesdrop on our conversation, only confused me more. We were alone down the sidewalk, the fluorescent street lamps giving us the only light as the sky kept getting darker and darker around us.
“We’re done having this conversation.” He confirmed with a shaking of his head. “I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings the other night, but there’s nothing going on between us.” His voice was louder than it needed to be, considering we weren’t that far apart. Why the hell was he raising his voice like we had an unseen audience? Everything about his reaction was making me more and more unsure of what was going on.
“Arze,” I pleaded, reaching out and grabbing his hand when he went to walk away. His leave halted, earning me a gaze of high intensity that started at where our hands now connected and ending with our mutual stare. My heart was pounding in my chest, but I had to do this. I had to try and get the answers I was looking for. “I’m into you. I wasn’t trying to force anything. I thought you were into me too and—”
“Enough.” His words left his mouth with a heightened hiss, making my hand recoil from his like I’d been physically burned by his command. He leaned forward, his eyes darting to the empty darkness around us. “It doesn’t matter what I feel for you, it’sforbidden.”
