“Of course,” Al said, understanding very little of what Ezra had just said.
“Here, how about this? I’ll tell you my story, but then you have to tell me the truth about what happened between you and Jude.”
Al was slightly taken aback. Tilting his head, he asked, “Why would I not tell you the truth? Do you feel like I am untrustworthy?” But even as he said it, he felt a small pang of guilt. Hedidtry to be as honest as he could be, but surely a lie didn’t count when he was forbidden from telling the truth, right? He would have no qualms telling Ezra absolutely everything if it weren’t for Jude’s instructions.
“We got a deal or not?” was all Ezra said, holding out his hand. Brow furrowed, Al took his hand to shake it and, as usual, was comforted by the pinpricks of sensation that were Ezra’s innate kindness and support. This time, however, there was also an inkling of… discomfort? Hesitation? Perhaps dread? Al was still a mediocre telepath at best, and whatever emotion Ezra was feeling was too far underneath the surface to read with any kind of accuracy.
“So, I had a high school sweetheart,” Ezra began, launching into his story the moment the handshake broke. He laid his arms out across the back of the couch again and adjusted his feet on the coffee table so that they were crossed the opposite way from how they had been before. “Do you know what that is? Are there high school sweethearts in ‘Greece’?” Upon saying the word “Greece,” he made those fake quotation mark gestures with his fingers the way Corbin, and occasionally Jude, liked to do as a means of sarcasm—a dialect Al was still far from mastering. Al was confused by the gesture. One of the most favorable things about Ezra was the fact that he was remarkably straightforward.
Marking it down as a fluke of language miscommunication, Al said, “I know the term from entertainment programs. It means when a couple falls in love as adolescents in an academic setting, and then continues to feel love for one another into adulthood. This is noteworthy because often adolescent love is a fabrication caused by forced proximity in small, unpleasant schooling locations. Am I correct?”
Ezra snorted, not unkindly. “Yeah man, gold star.”
“Gold star?”
“Never mind. The point is, this guy, Zane, and I got together when I was fifteen when we were in an ‘unpleasant schooling location’ together. We were from totally different social circles—he was super popular and I wasn’t—but we got paired up for a project in history class and hit it off. The catch, though, was that he didn’t want anyone to know about it, so we only ever met in secret, or at my house or his when nobody was home.”
“I don’t feel comprehension. Why did he not feel desire for others to know about your relationship?”
“Good fucking question, man,” Ezra said with a humorless huff of a laugh. It was the closest thing to angry that Al had ever seen him get. “It wasn’t a gay thing. Everyone, including his family, knew that he was gay. Social standing means a lot to kids, I guess, and he just thought he was too cool to be going out with someone like me.
“I wasn’t like, bottom of the barrel or something. I was kind of just… a nobody. I was a bit of a loner, but a really good student, too. I was in the top one percent of all my classes, and was taking college courses while I was still in high school, but I never really fit in with the super nerdy kids because they took everythingsoseriously. On the flip side, though, I didn’t have much in common with the stoner kids, because they cared too little. Aside from Jude and Corbin, Zane was the only person I had. I didn’t want to lose him, so I just accepted it when he said we had to be a secret. I figured once we got out of school, he’d get over himself and we would be able to be together properly. I guess I thought he’d realize he loved me more than he loved his cool guy persona.”
“But this is a story of heartbreak,” Al said, knowing there could be no happy ending. Ezra smiled sadly, gaze trained out into the middle distance.
“But this is a story about heartbreak,” he agreed solemnly. “He was really good at pretending, is the thing. He treated me so good when it was just the two of us, and after we graduated he let me refer to him as my boyfriend to Jude and Corbin, and he even met my parents a couple times. After a while, though, I realized he always had an excuse for why I couldn’t meethisfamily, or hang out withhisfriends. He went to college a few hours from here in Santa Fe, and he never once let me visit.
“I was love blind, but I finally came to my senses when my stepdad passed away suddenly, and when I asked him to go to the funeral with me, the first thing he thought to ask was if anyone from high school would be there to see us together. Then he got mad atmefor being upset about it. I broke up with him right then and there, and have since sworn off egotistical assholes for the rest of my life.”
Ezra clicked his tongue a few times and then looked at Al with a shrug. “There you go,” he said. “There’s my tragic heartbreak backstory. It’s your turn now. Tell me what’s going on between you and Jude.”
Al’s stomach churned unpleasantly. For a few blissful minutes he’d been distracted from his problems with Jude, but the weight of it all came crashing back down like it had never left. He sighed deeply, wishing he hadn’t adapted to the extra oxygen in the atmosphere, because he could use a little bit of calm at the moment. Maybe Ezra would let him be a douchebag again and drown his feelings with the vape pen full of marijuana. Perhaps he could even make another grilled buttered bread with cheese on the inside. Marijuana and grilled buttered bread with cheese on the inside would have to cheer him up a little, right?
Maybe it would even be enough to make him stop crying, which he was definitely doing again as he told Ezra in a wobbly voice, “Jude does not feel love toward me, and he wants me to return to my home without him.”
Ezra patted him on the back several times as he cried into his hands. He then got up from the couch and disappeared into his room briefly, returning with a box of tissues.
“I don’t mean to pry,” he said, pulling several tissues out of the box in rapid succession and handing them to Al, “but I feel like there’s gotta be more to the story than that. Jude’s an idiot, but he’s not cruel. Remember our deal, Al? How you said you’d tell the truth? You know you can confide in me, right? Anything you tell me, I’ll keep between us, dude.”
Ezra gave Al’s forearm a tight squeeze, and through the touch Al felt a flash of overwhelming honesty. Ezra meant what he said wholeheartedly. The proof was right there between his and Al’s skin, so strong that it left no room for debate, not even for a lackluster telepath like Al.
Al swallowed, mouth thick and sticky with saliva because crying was theworst, and shifted in his seat to face Ezra more fully. “What would be your response, dude,” he asked seriously, “if I told you that I am not actually from Greece?”
“Well, bud,” Ezra said, “My response would probably be ‘fucking duh.’”
Al blinked. Ezra blinked back.
“A-All right. But what if I told you that I am not—”
“—From Earth?” Ezra finished for him, like it was nothing. “Yeah, man, same response. Fucking duh.”
Al’s mouth hung open. He was at a total loss, shocked enough that even his tears finally stopped flowing. “But—when did—nobody is supposed to know. Are you attempting to make me feel amusement? Are you playing a joke?”
“Areyou?” Ezra countered, and what could Al say to that? Hehadpromised to be honest, hadn’t he?
“No,” he admitted after a pause. “I am not playing a joke. I am not from Alberkerkakay, and I am not from Athens, Greece, Europe, Earth. I am—”
“The alien that crash-landed that spaceship the government has been trying to cover up for months? Do you know how many videos there are on Reddit of that thing falling from the sky? Yeah, Al, Iknow. It’s not a secret, man.”
