Page 89 of Loverboy

Signing the waivers and getting instructions passed in a blur. I wasn’t listening, too busy wondering about what the instructor might think about us. Did it look like a date? Did we seem like siblings?

When the headset came on, Jasper became an avatar, and from there, there was no way to tell whether he was enjoying it until it was over, and that made everything worse. I wanted to get something right. I wanted to make him happy.

The experience started, and I moved slowly, worried I might stumble or walk into a wall, even with the obvious markers meant to keep us on the path. We stepped onto a virtual platform that ascended towards the pyramid's entrance, and vertigo hit me hard. He moved ahead, and I nearly tripped trying not to be left behind.

I reached for his arm.

“You good?” He chuckled, slipping his fingers into mine and squeezing.

“Yup,” I lied, squeezing back.

I didn’t let go after that.

By the end, my head ached from the pressure of wearing the headset, but it was worth every second. When we took them off, and I could finally see him again, he looked dishevelled and pleased, a smile tugging at his lips that made my blood run hot.

“Was it good?” I asked cautiously.

“Surprisingly, yeah.”

My heart felt several sizes too big for my ribs.

In the gift shop, Jasper drifted toward the shelves. I watched him touch everything, silently cataloging each reaction. If I could pick something he liked and buy it for him, maybe, just maybe, I’d be less of a burden.

I tracked how he picked up a replica of the pyramid and pulled off the top half, amused by what he found.

“It’s a candle.” He tipped it towards me with a cheeky grin.

“It would look good on your bookshelf.” I snatched it out of his hands and clutched it to my chest.

“It would,” he agreed without hesitation, seemingly clocking what I was trying to do.

He let me buy it for him without protest, the warmth in my chest igniting into a full-blown fire. I felt a sudden burst of energy, excitement washing over me and nearly making me nauseous for the first time in a while. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been this happy.

“I wanna look around,” I said quickly. “Can we?”

“Fine, I guess I can tolerate the mall a little longer,” he relented.

Jasper turned the candle over in his hands as we exited the store, pointing out details on each side of the little pyramid. “You can tell whoever designed this didn’t actually know anything about Egypt, since these are all just kind of random symbols that don’t go together. Like, look, here—”

I followed his attention to where he’d pointed, but my gaze drifted back up to his lips.

“—what you’d call a ‘false door’ stelae that you’d find in the tomb chapel, usually facing West—” His hands moved when he spoke, and our shoulders brushed as we walked.

He was such a fucking nerd.

“—believed they functioned as metaphysical portals that allowed the deceased’s soul to travel back and forth between the tomb and the realm of the dead—”

I had no idea what he was saying.

“—mirrored the physical door that the living used to enter the tomb, which made the chapel itself a liminal space where life and death overlapped—”

Life and death overlapped. That sounded dramatic, and I didn’t know what it meant. I just liked the way it sounded in his mouth.

“—usually decorated with the wedjat, or the eye of Horus, which was both an apotropaic symbol to guard against evil and symbolically represented the eyes of the deceased, which allowed them to observe their worshippers from Aaru—”

I wanted to kiss him.

“—exclusively funerary and has nothing to do with any of the symbols on the other faces—”