Page 55 of The Warmth of Our Closest Star

“I’m Enzo. Nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you,” he said. “You know this party is taking place in your house, right?”

“Um—”

“You’re not an outsider here.”

“Uh—”

“I saw you,” he said. “Hiding in the corner. Trying to be invisible. Why?”

I shrugged.

“Look,” Alex said, setting his beer on the island before reaching into the pan once more, “conversation works the same in every language. I say something. You answer. Maybe you ask something in return. Or suggest a topic. A shrug is not a response.”

I laughed nervously.

“Why were you hiding?”

“I wasn’t hiding,” I said. “I was just—”

“Making yourself small,” he said. “In your own home.”

“I suppose,” I said.

Alex was unlike anyone else I’d ever met. We had barely introduced ourselves and he was talking to me as though he had known me for years. He was interested to know about me of all people. And he seemed to not care how anyone perceived him. I suddenly felt I needed to know everything about him. I had no idea how to convey that to him.

With a snort and a grin, Alex leaned in from the other side of the island.

“These rich assholes just need to be validated,” he said. “They don’t care about you. They care what you think about them. They’re the easiest to talk to at parties.”

“I think they’re boring,” I said, then realized what had escaped my mouth, and slapped a hand over my mouth.

“Fuck yeah they are,” Alex nodded. “I’ve been here less than twenty minutes and I already want to slip Ecstasy in the punch. Do you have a punchbowl? I didn’t see one.”

“No,” I giggled nervously.

He waved me off. “I didn’t bring any Ecstasy. I quit that shit when I woke up next to a FedEx guy in my bed and had to piece together the previous night’s events using clues in concerned texts from friends. Anyway, that’s another story. These rich assholes don’t have to know you think that they’re boring. They just want you to believe they’re not boring. Nod, say complimentary things, ask them their opinions, congratulate them on the most basic of accomplishments, then apologize and say you have to make sure you talk to so-and-so and thank them once again for gracing you with their presence. You don’t have to know what the hell they’re talking about. That doesn’t matter.”

I stared at him.

“How do you know Peter?”

That was the biggest question on my mind. Crass and unrefined, though obviously not unintelligent, Alex seemed like the last person Peter would have had as a friend. Though, I found I was glad they were friends. It made me love Peter even more somehow.

“My family’s from down south. Rochester? I was up visiting from Texas and Peter and I happened to be at the same dive bar one evening. I was escaping my family for a few hours. I think he was down in Rochester for business.”

“Did you…”

Alex cocked his head and stared at me for a moment, as though trying to figure me out. When the realization of what I was asking hit him, he cackled.

“I’m queer but I ain’t that queer,” he managed to say through his laughter. “No offense.”

I grinned.

God, I adored this person. He was so awful.

Alex was rude. However, it was apparent to anyone with half of a brain that his rudeness wasn’t genuine, but a way to loosen up strangers, to ease them into conversation with him. He was making me comfortable. Alex made himself seem awful so others would feel superior and more comfortable talking to him.