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Chapter Two

A s soon as I shoulder open my apartment door, someone shouts "surprise!" from behind my sofa.

"Shit!" I drop my bag on my foot in shock, grabbing at my shirt over my heart.

The shout is followed by coughing, which doesn't surprise me.

It hasn't been vacuumed back there since my roommate Katiya left on her grand Backpacking-and-Smelly-Hostels Tour of The Continent with her fiancé.

Happily, this means I get the place to myself for the rest of the summer.

Even more happily, it also means she's not bugging me to spin the chore wheel every weekend.

Less happy for Dikembe, my fourth year lab partner, who is crawling out from behind the sofa, streaked with gray dust.

The "surprise!" is echoed from a few other hiding places around the apartment—not that there are many, it's just a two-bedroom, first floor of a crummy, crumbling row house in the student-ghetto part of downtown—and two more people tumble laughingly into the front hall.

"This is a gross misuse of the emergency key I gave you," I say as Hadi steps out of my front closet.

"Happy birthday!" she jeers, detangling the back of her purple hijab from the Velcro on one of my coats.

"Keep your shoes on," Dikembe says. "About face."

He pushes at me until my nose is nearly against the front door.

"No, no, no," I complain. "I've been on a train all day. I want to go to bed."

"You want to go with us to the bar and get waaaaaasted!" Mauli says, coming in from the kitchen. They're in their Party Skirt, the sparkly blue one, which means they are planning to really properly drink tonight. Shit, is that the last of Katiya's vodka swinging from their fist?

Dammit, I'm gonna have to buy a new bottle before she gets home. Make it an apology present to sweeten her up to the idea that I might not be moving out after all. The hope was that I would find a job and be outta her hair before January. But I'm starting to think that won't happen.

"It's a school night," I protest.

"You graduated a year ago!" Mauli reminds us.

"So it's a worknight." I aim an elbow at Dike so he’ll back up.

Hadhirah makes a noise like an old-fashioned telephone and lifts her palm to the side of her face. "Hello? Yes? Hmmm, you don't say. I'll let him know." She drops her hand. "Your boss says it's fine."

"Har har." I let them manhandle me outside and down the grungy cement porch to the broken sidewalk. "Just don't be on my ass tomorrow if I'm hungover."

"Hey, they're not my tips at risk."

We end up at The Brass Monkey, just down from Beanevolence.

My apartment is a few blocks north of the main street, where both the bar and the café are located.

It’s one of the few advantages to living in a place where the smells and stains of a hundred students who rented it before me are ground into the carpets.

Hadi spends a few minutes chatting with the bartender, while Mauli opines on the wonders of microbreweries. Dikembe makes eyes at the girls at the table next to us, and tries to look as cool as he can with a Chez Levesque dust bunny stuck in his twists.

One of the other nice things about living and working within the same few blocks is that you get to know everyone else who does the same. And sometimes, because of it, they give you free shit.

"Turn that frown upside down, grumpy gus," Hadi says in a syrupy voice when she comes back with a basket of Roasted Cauliflower Bites. There's a candle in the curry mayo. "Look, on the house."

I didn't realize I was frowning. The train trip must have worn me out more than I thought.

I blow out the candle, and Mau and Dike pound me on the back like I've scored a winning touchdown.

Our tasting flights come with an extra shot of Jaeger for the birthday boy, courtesy of the table of girls, and I tell Dike to go thank them for me. I even brush the dust bunny away first.

"You're not going with him?" Hadi asks as I down the shot.

"Nah, too bagged. Long day."

I'm not…

I'm not going to do it.

I'm not.

Somehow my phone is in my hand already, though, and from a distance I hear myself saying: "Rebekah usually has Mondays off. I could—"

"No!" Hadi shouts, so quick it's actually kinda insulting.

Mau pulls the phone outta my hands. They're tipsy enough that they fumble it. If they drop it into one of their glasses, I'm going to eat their soul. But they shove it down the front of their skirt instead, right into the boxers below it.

"Don't think I won't go in there after it," I say, pointing at their nose. "You know the saying about a bi person sticking their hands in someone's pants and being happy with whatever they find."

"Buy me dinner first," Mau says, sticking out their tongue. I make a swipe for it and miss.

"What do you call this?" I Vanna White the cauliflower.

"Didn't buy it. No Gs, No Os."

"I can get my own Os!"

Hadi snorts, and I realize what I just said.

"I can do that , too," I say, leering cartoonishly. "Masturbation is a normal and healthy part of—" She shoves me. "Abuse! Abuse! This is homophobia!"

Hadi finally breaks out a real smile, instead of that tight, sardonic thing she likes to call one. Score.

"If you can get your own, go get one from them.

" Mau leans across the table and flicks their eyes at someone at the bar.

Their back is to us, but they're still moving enough to make it clear that they were turning away quickly.

Like they didn't want to be caught. "They've been staring at you since we got in. "

I turn to glance over my shoulder and—

It’s him .

My heart jumps into the back of my throat, and I’m halfway off my stool before my brain catches up with what I’m actually seeing. In the light of the overhead lamps, the guy at the bar’s hair only looks ginger, their dirty blond hair reflecting the reddish light of the barback.

Not him.

"Snacky," I stage-whisper all the same, committed now that I’m on my feet. Mau drops my befouled phone into my hand.

"Colin," Hadi says, grabbing my sleeve before I can head over. "Hey, be smart, okay?"

"The Rules?" I tap my temple.

"The Rules," she agrees, and lets me go.

As I work my way through the crowd, I try to shove away the weird flutter that even thinking I had spotted him caused. It's a stupid thought. There's no way someone like him—upright, posh, snobby —would sit and shoot the shit with the bartender for funsies.

So why had I been excited when I thought it was him?

People like him don’t date people like me.

Do they?

It's just curiosity. It has to be. Because of the access , right?

It would have been the perfect excuse to finally bridge that customer-service gap.

Sidle up to him, actually meet in a place where I didn't work to distract me, where I could casually drop the fact that it was my birthday and I wouldn't say no to a celebratory drink.

Actually get a conversation out of him.

Yeah, right.

He never talks to me. I stopped trying to start a conversation with him over a year ago, because he'd always looked like I'd smacked him between the eyes with a wet fish whenever I tried. It seemed kinder to just let him hide behind his newspaper—an honest-to-god paper paper—and stare at me.

And he does stare. Sometimes I think the staring is the kind you do when you appreciate the look of another person. Sometimes, I think it's some weird split-tongue thing. It's gotta be, ‘cause if he was into me, he would've said something by now, right?

The part of me that’s still a writer sometimes makes up stories about my fussy regular.

Why he's here. What he's thinking about. Whether he really sleeps on a pile of gold (if that’s not a speciesist stereotype.) What the no-doubt beautiful maiden he goes home to every night thinks of his morning routine. Or if maybe he’s into something a little more me-shaped.

Oh my god, I am such a romance novel cliché right now.

Also, dammit Colin. Maybe focus on the person you are actually trying to get between the sheets?

"Hi." I slide onto the bar stool beside the guy.

"Hi. I hear it’s your birthday." his voice is softer than I expected and I look again. Not a guy, but a butch gal. Still snacky.

"Yup." I flash her a smile.

It's about half the wattage I can usually manage.

I'm tired. The long train ride, the unexpected surprise... and I remember doing this with Caden. And from Caden, my brain jumps to Rebekah, and how last year for my birthday we'd done one of those boat cruise dinners at Niagara Falls, and I’d had a ring burning a hole in my blazer pocket, and…

… I just don't wanna anymore.

"Sorry," I say, before she can suggest anything. "I thought you were someone else. I shouldn’t have… my bad."

I don’t wait for her response and slink back to the table.

"Not into you?" Mauli asks.

"I’m not up for it."

" Up for it," Mauli snickers, and I pinch them hard on the shoulder.

I leave at closing time, after a few beers too many, frustrated and manhandling Mauli into one of the cheap cabs that prowl downtown for desperate fares.

Dike had headed off with one of the ladies hours ago, and Hadi had bailed before I’d even returned from my failed attempt to hit on the guy at the bar.

Happy birthday to me, I think morosely as I trudge home.

Alone.