“We’ll have two pancake stacks,” Oscar said. “And coffee.”
“A whole pot,” Aaron added. “And syrup.”
“Yes,” Oscar replied, meeting his bright eyes across the table. The fucking sky. Maybe his favorite color wasn’t green after all. “A whole lot of syrup.”
The sidewalk was bathed in the amber light of the older streetlamps still thriving in this part of town. Oscar liked old things that survived, aged things, not-dead things. The sky had gone pitch black, and the stars were invisible from inside the coffee house, the moon shedding silver from a corner out of Oscar’s field of view.
Aaron slid his fork into the large slice of carrot cake the waitress had just brought him. Oscar sipped hot chocolate, unable to eat anything else. Pancakes had turned into a dinner of hot steak sandwiches with potato chips on the side, and now Aaron was having dessert.
“Are you sure you should be drinking that?” Oscar frowned at the dregs scraping the bottom of the third pot of coffee they’d finished. Well, Aaron had. Oscar had only had one cup. Anymore and he’d be swaying to the bathroom to throw up. It had always been strange—the love-hate relationship between him and coffee.
“I’m accustomed.” Aaron waved a dismissive hand and shoved a forkful of cake into his mouth. His cheeks blew up as he chewed, chipmunk-like, cute. In the last few hours, watching him eat, Oscar had suddenly been struck by theepiphany to end all epiphanies. He’d never much understood as a child why aunts and grandmas liked to pinch and prod cheeks like they were sampling meat at the market. But if Oscar could guarantee that Aaron wouldn’t fly from him like a kite in a blizzard, he’d have pressed into that freckled skin several times over their pancake-sandwich-dinner-lunch. Or was it lunch-dinner?
“You didn’t have glasses on at the clinic. New prescription?” Oscar asked.
Aaron shook his head, chewing and making waves with his hand as though trying to speed up the process.
“Don’t go choking now. All that money on the nurse only to croak the moment you’re out of the house.”
Aaron sputtered out a laugh, projecting crumbs of carrot cake across the table. His cheeks went scarlet, bleeding shame. Oscar wanted to trail his lips across them, to brush the heat away with his thumbs. To touch him in any way humanly possible.
“Thanks for that, Spike.”
The familiar name shook Oscar to the core, reminding him of that moment standing underneath pale yellow lights about to cross a threshold that would change his life forever. He’d been compelled then to share with him that secret joy, the name he’d said to himself over and over in his bed at night, covers high over his head, pretending everybody knew he was a boy and not just Papa.
“No. I’ve had glasses since forever. It’s not a heavy prescription, though. I don’t have to wear them all the time, but signs and text are blurry when I don’t, so I’d much rather.”
“Really didn’t want to see your boobs one last time, huh?” Oscar’s mouth twisted to the side.
“Do you have a boob humor fetish?” Aaron rolled his eyes and took another bite of cake.
“Beats the crippling fear of having them.” Oscar shrugged, eyes sliding away.
He knew it must be strange to someone else, for him to joke about something like that, something that had made him want to shrivel up and cease, something that had stopped him showering on more nights than he cared to admit. But if he didn’t joke about it, Oscar would explode, because it wasn’t fair he’d had to pay so much and hurt so much and hate himself so much to finally be the person that he was. It wasn’t fair he’d had to spill his ugliest at therapists’ feet, time and time again, just so they could give him needles to put inside his body, just so they’d agree to take his money and his parts.
“It sure does.” Aaron pushed away his empty plate and wrapped his hands around the mug, taking a sip of coffee. “I like it.”
“What?” Oscar asked.
He wanted to keep his eyes on the street outside, on the people passing by with groceries in tote bags, because everyone loved the environment where he lived. He imagined he looked pensive and cool, studying the streets from the old-fashioned coffee house, so much like a diner. He imagined Aaron could look at him and think he wasn’t bothered by anything in the world. Other than chests, of course. That cat had leapt out of the bag the moment the two of them had met. And now, so did the illusion of his pensive coolness. As if he could resist turning his gaze back upon the man that sat before him with those freckled cheeks.
“That you’re always making jokes and laughing about everything.” Aaron’s lips thinned as his mouth curved.“It’s…it helped me before my surgery. It’s nice.”
“Well, good.” Oscar shrugged.
He didn’t know what to do with earnest compliments. Life had taught him different things. Like when his mother told him his jeans looked nice, she’d follow it up by saying howhe was finally getting hips and looking a little more like she did at his age. Or when Ryan, Lina’s boyfriend, said he looked like he’d bulked up, he’d say something like Oscar should be careful with how many cookies he had. So Oscar switched to what he knew.
“Your avatar is a catfish.”
“Oh?” Something in Aaron’s face fell, making Oscar realize how it had sounded.Shit.
“I mean, youlie, Aaron. Honestly. The glasses are chunkier in the avatar, and your hair looks like a firetruck.” He gestured at Aaron’s head. “A firetruck.”
Aaron laughed, his shoulders easing as he leaned back in the booth.
“It was the closest color they had! It’s not any other type of brown,” Aaron complained. “And the glasses weren’t customizable.” He threw his hands up.
“And you’ve changed your hair since then, so the style is also a blatant lie.” Oscar narrowed his eyes.
