AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He looks down at me, and his gaze turns genuinely thoughtful, like when we were talking about my paper. I’m beginning to understand that this is the way past his high walls, not perfect hair or flawless skin or an idealized body, but a mind that’s a match for his own.
“I thought,” he starts slowly, “I thought it was fascinating. I want to know why they chose what they chose. The makeup. The shoes. It must take practice just to walk in those things, and they were doing far more than walking. Why go to such effort? What drives it?”
“Euphoria,” I answer immediately, and his gaze sharpens. I have his interest now, beaming down on me like the full light of the sun in the middle of the day, and I’m basking in it. “Some people get a rush from playing with the gray areas, from bending the rules. Even if some of those queens take off the makeup and wigs and are are cis men underneath, there’s a kind of high from blurring the lines, even temporarily. And for some people, it’s not so temporary.”
“For you?”
It’s a brash question, but I don’t shrink away from it. Few people are bold enough to actually ask me something like that.
My hair is sitting in its usual high ponytail. I take a lotof pride in its length, in flaunting its sheen every day. I also put on a little eyeliner for this. I’m wearing two long, dangling silver earrings and a slinky sweater that drapes over my slight frame and the tight jeans beneath it. It’s not as far as I sometimes go, but it’s what I felt like wearing tonight, it’s the presentation that felt good today, and that’s most of how I make these sorts of decisions.
“Yeah,” I say after a sizable pause. “It’s not temporary for me. But it’s also not one stable thing. It can change from one day to the next. But I decided a while ago that I’m going to go with what feels authentic to me instead of what feels normal for everyone else. And people can think whatever they want about that.”
He looks at me for a long time, like he’s weighing out each and every word I said on some scale inside his head. I’m desperate to know what he’s thinking, what he makes of all this, of me, but his placid face betrays nothing.
A beat starts up in the other half of the bar. They must have finished clearing out the chairs and stage for the show. The crowding eases as people filter back over to that side of the venue.
“I studied this for so long,” Diego says eventually, almost to himself, “and somehow never really experienced it. I thought being gay in my small town was enough. I didn’t realize how much I was missing.”
“That’s why you came here, though, right?” I say.
He nods. “Yes. But still. Thank you for inviting me outto this. I wouldn’t have done this on my own.”
I can’t stop grinning. “Thank you for showing up. I was afraid you wouldn’t. I just wanted you to see what I’m so excited about in my research.”
“Your research,” Diego says.
Suddenly, I flash back to that conversation in his office and my bold suggestion that he join me at this event … for research. The phrase meant a lot more than gathering quotes for a required essay, and the way Diego repeats the words now suggests he remembers that. Vividly.
Heat trembles low in my gut. Diego is staring at me like he’s waiting for something, but I have no idea what to do about this. If he wasn’t my TA it would be so obvious, so easy. Normally, someone eyeing me up like this would be a blinking green “go” signal, but I have to be more careful here.
Or do I?
We aren’t at the university. We’re anonymous patrons at a bar. No one here knows us, and we don’t know them. The lights are low. The music is loud. We’re just two strangers in a bar, two strangers with an obvious and voracious attraction.
For the first time in a long time, all the stress of juggling the café and my degree lifts off my shoulders. Perhaps that’s what makes me bold enough to grab Diego by the hand.
“Dance with me,” I say.
He freezes for a second, but doesn’t jerk free of my grasp. Then he nods, just once.
It’s all the confirmation I need.
Chapter Ten
Diego
I LET AVERY tug me toward the dance floor.
Who am I kidding? I don’t “let” them tug me anywhere. I want them to. The moment they take my hand, I’m theirs, wholly and completely.
But it isn’t just that. The longer we stood there talking, the more I was waiting for them to do this, hoping they would do this. Their eyes seemed to get brighter and brighter the more I engaged and the less I held myself back, and I’m too weak to resist. So when they took my hand at last, I was already prepared to follow them; I was alreadyeagerto follow them.
I’ll pay dearly for this, I’m sure, but the bar is dark and the music pounds over my thoughts, silencing my own objections.
Avery pulls me into the throng of bodies on the dance floor. Only narrow lanes exist between grinding, gyrating bodies. Avery weaves expertly through the crowd, stopping at some mysterious cue. Perhaps it’s just the first somewhat open space they’ve found, but it doesn’t feel very open when they turn toward me and the bodies around us force us close together.
Oh God. I’m supposed to dance. I don’t dance. The gay bar back home has a single pool table with peeling felt and a row of stools at the bar. If they’re playing music, it’s only because there isn’t a sports game to put on. I’ve never been to a place like this, much less danced.
