My eyes prickle. Oh no. No, no, no. I am not crying on the subway about a text message.
But AntD gets it. He actually, really gets it.
This is what I can’t explain to Jade or Teddie or anyone else who asks why I spend so much time messaging a stranger. It’snot just that AntD is funny, though he is. It’s not just that he’s easy to talk to, though he is that too.
It’s that he seems to align with me in a deeper way.
NickKnackPaddyWhack
Exactly. But now if you’re not poly or into kink or whatever, suddenly, you’re boring or repressed.
AntD
It’s like we fought so hard to not be put in boxes, and now we’re creating our own boxes and judging anyone who doesn’t fit.
NickKnackPaddyWhack
Yeah, I’m over boxes. Unless they contain pizza. Those boxes can stay.
AntD
Actually, that’s not a bad idea for a song.
NickKnackPaddyWhack
What, pizza boxes?
AntD
No, the idea of fighting so hard to be free only to lock ourselves in different cages.
NickKnackPaddyWhack
You should definitely write that song. I’d listen to it.
Along with your other millions of listeners because, you know, you’re Anthony Devine.
AntD
You are completely correct. I am Anthony Devine.
I huff out a quiet laugh. Sure he is.
But you know what? Whoever AntD actually is, he just did something that Anthony Devine’s music has always done for me. Made me feel less alone, more understood.
Isn’t that all anyone wants in this world?
CHAPTER SIX
NICK
“Oh my fucking god, Nick, get off your freaking phone.”
Okay, so I might have just bumped into a stack of Campbell’s soup cans at the end of the aisle because I was too busy reading AntD’s latest message ranking zoo animals by how likely they are to hold a grudge—elephants are number one, obviously. We’re in complete agreement on this.
The cans fall to the floor in what looks like a modern art installation titledGen Z Meets Reality.
“Sorry!” I scramble to pick them up while a store employee gives me the kind of look usually reserved for people who bring twenty items to the fifteen-items-or-less line.
