“Huh?” Ezra frowned.
“Get in here.” Jake gestured, and Ezra went inside. Jake closed the door. “So… what were you going for exactly?” He motioned to Ezra’s outfit.
Ezra frowned again. “What do you mean?”
“What’s with the shirt?”
Ezra looked down at it. “Well, I just thought—”
“And the hair?”
Ezra touched his head. “It’s a party, and I thought I should look a little dressed up.”
“You call that dressed up?”
“You don’t have to be mean.” He crossed his arms. “It’s not like I get invited to a lot of parties.”
“Okay, I’m sorry. I just don’t understand why you couldn’t go how you usually look. Especially with one of the T-shirts you made. It makes you interesting, you know?”
“Yeah, so interesting that everybody thinks I’m a dork.”
Jake sighed. He didn’t think Ezra was a dork, but what he thought didn’t matter.
“Come with me.” He gestured for Ezra to follow him up to his bedroom.
Once he was in there, Jake dug through his closet. He was a little embarrassed because it was messy. Plus, he had to block Ezra from seeing the goofy stuffed dinosaur that his mom pressured him to take to college. It was Jake’s favorite toy when he was a little kid, but he didn’t want Ezra to see it or know that he’d named it Mr. Alfredo.
He pulled a shirt off a hanger. “Here, put this on.”
Ezra took it and looked at it as if a dark blue polo was way worse than what he was wearing.
“I think that should fit you,” Jake said, making sure he didn’t shut the closet door on Mr. Alfredo’s tail.
Ezra huffed. “Fine.”
He peeled off the tuxedo shirt right there in front of Jake, and Jake wasn’t sure why, but he felt his cheeks grow warm. He was surprised that underneath the shirt, Ezra was in decent shape. His skin was smooth. He had some defined muscles here and there. But then Jake felt funny looking at Ezra without a shirt, and also noticing things about his skin and muscles, so he averted his gaze as Ezra tugged the polo on over his head. Once Ezra had it on, Jake glanced over. It was a little big on him, but not bad. He looked pretty good, actually.
“Okay, now one more thing.” He went over to Ezra and ruffled his hair.
“Hey,” Ezra exclaimed, pushing his hands away. “It took me thirty minutes to get it like this.”
“And only thirty seconds for me to undo it.” Jake fixed Ezra’s hair back to its normal frizzy, halfway-over-his-face self. “There. That’s better.”
The look on Ezra’s face disagreed.
“Trust me. You look great. Now come on, let’s go.”
On the walk over, Jake advised Ezra on how to approach people and talk to them. Ezra listened, but his face got more and more anxious as the thumping bass from the Phi Gamma Delta house got louder. And then his face went pale as they came up to the front and saw a bunch of guys squirting each other with a garden hose and laughing. It looked like they’d somehow hooked the garden hose up to a keg and were spraying beer all over each other. Jake could tell they were absolutely wasted, which meant most people inside would have a good buzz going at the very least.
As Jake made his way up the steps to go inside, he realized Ezra wasn’t behind him. He turned around.
Ezra was standing at the bottom of the steps, looking more than just a little anxious, chewing on that bottom lip.
Jake went back down the stairs and stood in front of him. “What’s wrong?”
Ezra looked at his feet. Jake noticed for the first time he had on another pair of Converse sneakers, but they were bright red. “What if people start making fun of me?”
“They won’t.”
