Page 25

I crouch by his bed and press my face close to his mouth.

He’s snoring gently, so I decide to give him a few more minutes before I wake him up.

With his eyes closed and his dark hair covering the cut in his head, he doesn’t look hurt and I watch him for a minute, wishing I could see him look this peaceful all the time.

All the anger balled up inside him makes so much sense now.

I can’t even imagine what it would be like holding all of that in.

If I didn’t have Alice, I could at least speak to my sister, or someone in the orchestra.

But Alexei has no one. Just some guys on a hockey team and a dad who wouldn’t support him.

I don’t know how old his sister is, but she looked really young.

Too young for him to confide in. And I don’t know if his grandmother would share his father’s sentiments when it comes to his sexuality. Maybe he doesn’t know either?

I wonder if he’s ever tried reaching out to anyone online. A helpline or a support network. Anything. Or is he so scared of talking about certain parts of himself that he wouldn’t even open up to a stranger?

Where the light falls on one of his bookcases, I spot the familiar spines of Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn trilogy. He has all the books in hardback. I guess he really does like them.

The thought of this tough, moody hockey player being a secret fantasy nerd makes me smile, and I have to go and study the spines on his bookshelves before waking him up.

Next to the Mistborn trilogy is the Stormlight Archive. Then some of the other Cosmere books. Novellas and standalones. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy. The Percy Jackson books. All fantasy. Except…

I recognize Stephen King immediately. Mostly because they usually print his name bigger than the title of the book, but also because it’s the same copy of The Shining that I have.

The Shining was the first horror book I talked to Kelsier38 about.

He asked me what was better, the book or the movie.

And when I asked him how he knew I liked it, he pointed out my handle – RedRum237.

I told him both were great in their own way.

Then he told me about Kelsier from the Mistborn books.

38 is the character’s age. Not his age, he assured me.

He’s a college student in his early 20’s.

From Brooklyn. He made fun of me, talked about West Side Story .

I look back at Alexei sleeping in bed. He isn’t wearing a shirt and I can see the silvery scar on his shoulder from an operation. Like the one Kelsier38 has.

There’s just too many coincidences, it couldn’t…

I make my way back around the bed to where Alexei is still snoring gently on the pillow. Dangling from his chest onto the bed are two gold chains. One with a St. Christopher pendant and one with a crucifix. Like the ones Kelsier38 wears.

I stumble back onto my butt.

It can’t be. I don’t get it. How could Alexei be Kelsier38? Does he know it’s me? Has he been messing with me?

The snoring stops and I remember that I’m supposed to be watching someone with a concussion and making sure they don’t die in their sleep. It’s more important than whatever else is going on right now.

I shake Alexei by the good shoulder and it takes him a moment to open his eyes. He looks understandably disoriented and then shy and surprised when he sees me watching him.

“I’m sorry, I have to wake you up, you have a concussion.”

He rubs his eyes and flops onto his back, his chains splaying out across his shoulder.

“It’s okay.”

I just stare at him, trying to make sense of what I’ve just learned. Or what I think I’ve learned. Say something. “Who was the president in 2016?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah.” He laughs. “Obama.”

I get up to leave and he calls me back. “Wake me up in three hours if you want. But I’ll be okay. I promise.”

I nod. Backing out of the room, I close the door behind me and flop back onto the couch.

This can’t be happening.

After waking Alexei up a couple more times, it gets light out and he tells me to go to bed. I hear him making coffee, but I’m too tired to check if he should be having that. Surely a hockey player knows more about concussions than I do?

After a fretful sleep – if you can call thrashing around for hours while the light floods in around the drapes sleep – I give up and get out of bed.

Alexei’s sitting on the couch with the fort I made around his head.

“Hi, how are you feeling?”

“Like I got run over by a truck. You?”

“I didn’t get a concussion.”

“Yeah, but you did stay awake all night to make sure I didn’t die.”

“It was nothing.” I shrug, going to pour myself a cup of coffee.

“It wasn’t nothing. Thank you.”

“Any time.”

I try to put what I think I learned last night out of my head. Alexei’s wearing a t-shirt again and I can almost convince myself that I imagined that scar.

I can’t be in this apartment anymore while I’m feeling like this. I put my coffee in a flask and tell Alexei I’m going to the library.

“Wait, shit, are you gonna be okay by yourself?”

“I’m fine.”

“I won’t be long.”

I call Alice and ask her to meet me, and if she can call Mischa and ask him to come over and watch Alexei for an hour.

She’s waiting for me at the campus coffee shop when I get there, sweaty and out of breath.

“What happened to you? You look like you just ran a marathon.”

“I need coffee.”

“You don’t really look like you need stimulants, if I’m honest, you look wired.”

I let her order me a lemon tea.

“What did Mischa say?”

“He’s going over to your place right now.”

“Good.” I nod.

She gives me that eyebrow. “Why couldn’t you sit with Alexei? Did you two have a row or something?”

“No. Not exactly.”

The barista brings my tea over and I make a huge point of stirring it while Alice watches, trying to figure out if I should tell her or not. I’m gonna go crazy if I don’t tell someone. I think I already am half way there. And there’s no one I trust more in the world than her.

“I think Alexei is Kelsier38.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I think Alexei, my roommate, is the guy I’ve been talking to online for the past year.”

She frowns. “How could that be? Did you sleep last night? You sound delirious.”

“No, not really, but that’s not it. I figured this out before I’d been awake all night.”

She puts her coffee down and leans back. “I don’t understand. How on earth could Alexei be this Kelsier guy?”

“I don’t know. And I know it sounds crazy, but, he has all the Mistborn books.”

Alice gives me that eyebrow again. “You do know Brandon Sanderson is a best-selling author?”

“And Stephen King!”

She doesn’t even humor that with an answer.

“And he has a scar exactly like Kelsier38’s, on his shoulder.”

“Okay, you should have led with that. What?”

I just nod. Feeling overcome with fatigue. I wave the barista over and order an espresso.

“Okay, wait a minute… is that it? A scar? How similar is it? Because a lot of people have scars.”

“It’s not just the scar. He’s from Brooklyn, Kelsier38’s from Brooklyn. He likes the same books. And I’m sure Kelsier said he was into sports. Then there was this weird reaction Alexei had when I made a comment about West Side Story .”

“What about West Side Story ?”

“Just some stupid joke. Alice, I really think it’s him.”

The barista brings my espresso over and I take a grateful swig.

“Well shit. What are you going to do? You need to ask him outright if it’s him.”

Thoughts of Alexei crying on my hand flood to the forefront and I shake my head. “I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“He’s in a bad place right now, and he doesn’t have anyone but me and horror boy to talk to. If he finds out we’re the same person, it’s gonna freak him out, and then he’ll have no one, and I’m worried about him Alice, I’m really worried.”

She sighs. “Steffy,” she says, leaning over and putting her hand over mine on the table.

“One of the reasons I love you is because you care about everyone around you, so deeply. You see the best in people and you give them the benefit of the doubt. Even if they don’t always deserve it.

But sometimes, this is to the detriment of your own wellbeing. ”

I pull my hand back, feeling burned. “What do you mean?”

She keeps looking at me with that sympathy in her eyes that makes me feel ten years old. “I mean, it’s not your place to play Mother Theresa to every lost soul you come across.”

“I’m not playing Mother Theresa.” I bite back. “He’s my friend, and my roommate. And he stood up for me against Dorian, more than once. He doesn’t have anyone to do this for him.”

“He has Mischa.”

I shake my head. “I don’t think they’re close like you and me are. I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t even have one friend I could tell anything to. I’d be a mess too.” At that admission, I soften again. Wishing I hadn’t snapped at her.

“So what are you going to do?” She sighs, sitting back in her chair. “Just carry on talking to this Kelsier guy like you don’t know he’s sleeping in the room next to you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Steffy, you can’t do that. You have to either tell him, or stop speaking to him online.”

I realize I’m biting the nail on my thumb and sit on my hand. “But I think he tells things to horror boy he doesn’t tell me.”

“It’s wrong. Ethically.”

Gah, why does she always have to be right about things? “But it’s for the right reasons.”

I can’t stand Alice being disappointed in me. I think she’s going to call me out again when she opens her mouth.

“What would Tom Hanks do?”

“What?”

“In You’ve Got Mail , what did he do?”

I think about it. It’s been a minute since we watched that one, but I’m pretty sure… “he kept lying to her.”

Alice tuts. “Okay, not that part, what else did he do?”

“He literally kept up the charade, let her tell him about the guy she was talking to online and fooled her right up to the very end, and she ate it up, she said, I wanted it to be you, I wanted it to be you so bad! ”

She rolls her eyes and groans. “You’re impossible!

” Slapping her hands on the arms of her chair, she says, “he worked on their relationship in real life! He said, ‘I have a few things to figure out right now’ - I can’t remember the exact words - but he told her he had a project he was working on and he’d tell her about it when he figured out the details. And that project was her!”

“This is real life, not a movie. If I tell Alexei I don’t want to talk to him anymore, he’ll just think I’m mad at him or I moved on. I already told him…” My stomach drops. “Oh god.”

“What?”

“I told Kelsier38 that something happened with a guy – I told Alexei that something happened with Alexei.”

Something changes in Alice’s expression and she jolts in her chair. “Something happened with Alexei?”

I blush furiously under her glare.

“I couldn’t tell you because it wasn’t just my business to tell, but we might have kinda… kissed.”

“When?”

“After he came to Queens and met my family?” I wince.

“Stef! I can’t believe you didn’t tell me! We tell each other everything.”

“I couldn’t! I’m sorry. Don’t be mad.”

She sighs. “I’m not mad.” She looks up, giving me a little smile. “Are you sure he doesn’t know you’re horror boy?”

I shake my head. “I did briefly consider the possibility he was messing with me on purpose, but…” I think about him kissing me.

How scared he looked after. Him crying on my hand and telling me he’s gay.

“I really don’t think he knows. And I was very vague when I told him about what happened. We always said ‘no details.’”

“What a good idea.”

“Shut up.”

I swig the rest of my cold espresso and wait for her to say something.

“Stef, are you sure if you tell Alexei you’re horror boy, he’ll react badly?”

“What do you mean? How else could he react?”

She bites her lip, getting that look on her face when the romantic, mushy part’s coming up in a movie.

“Well, isn’t it possible that he’ll react the way Meg reacted?”

The way Meg reacted…

She puts a voice on, I guess it’s supposed to be Meg Ryan. “ I wanted it to be you, I wanted it to be you so badly !”

My heart pounds and I know I have a stupid smile on my face by the way Alice is looking at me right now. But reality in the form of his freak-out right after our kiss comes and smacks me across the face.

“No.” I shake my head. “He’s not ready.”

“What do you mean he’s not ready? For what?”

“For any of it. A relationship. Coming out. Me.”

Alice’s eyes have gone all sad and I hate that I had to ruin her happy ever after.

“I’m sorry, I guess this rom-com isn’t getting a happy ending.”

“Are you sure?” She asks.

“Yes. I’m sure. I think what Alexei needs right now is a friend. And I think you’re right about one thing at least. I have to stop talking to him online.”