Page 3 of Kailirex

Eric looked at me proudly. “She wants to be able to do her own show, if necessary, on public access.”

Everyone stared at me as I had suddenly sprouted two extra heads.Our chef must have felt really sorry for me, as he decided to up his game and started juggling his knives in an even more impressive way than before.

“Whoa, look at that,” my nephew Paul gasped, eyes wide at the display.

Thankfully, no one said or asked anything else about mine and Eric’s plans for the rest of the meal. I knew this wouldn’t be the last we heard about it, though. Mom and Pop would call us to “discuss” the matter, and it would also be one of the main topics of discussion at far too many Sunday dinners to come.

I grimaced. If they were in a tizzy about our plans now, wait until they found out we’d gone to the Scholarship Center. We had an appointment the week after next, seven days exactly after the first ever Friendship Day. Hopefully listening to all their grandchildren’s school party plans for the big day would provide enough distraction that we could make it to our appointment without too much more fuss. Sure, we’d still get given the third degree about having taken the risk of getting matched, but truth be told, as far as I was concerned, it wasn’t a risk. My first crush was on the Mylos warrior who graced a poster advertising the program on the subway wall during my freshman year of high school. I’d avidly watched every show with a Mylos sweeping their mate off of their feet as they were matched, Eric teasing me along the way but sitting with me through some of them. He was now tired of the dating scene and wanted to settle down, and the idea of finding he was meant to be mated to a perfect match appealed to him as much as it did me. And that was where he had something else to confess to the family. I’d always known of course, but he wasn’t only into women.

It wasn’t that our family were raging homophobes. It was that as far as we knew, no one else in the family was LGBTQIA or had friends who were. A few co-workers, at best, which had led to remarks such as, “Everyone deserves the right to marry another adult no matter what gender,” and “I really wanted to get a sandwich from Sam’s Deli but the damned road was blocked and you couldn’t get down the sidewalk for all the people because of that damned Pride parade”. So Eric only name dropped the occasional female name and brought all of two women to Sunday dinner over the years, saying if his forever turned out to be a guy, then he’d step out of the closet to the rest of the family. I hated that he felt that way, but I got it.

“Eleven days to go,” he said to me as he started up the car to take us back to his apartment once we’d all said our goodbyes.

“And if you’re matched?” I prodded.

He grinned at me lopsidedly. “Then I’ll get to avoid awkward Sunday dinners until they get used to the fact that I’m bi and mated to an alien. Living on a spaceship would definitely be a perk in this regard.”

“I just hope if you get matched, I do too.”

“Me too,” he replied, acknowledging how we’d always been not just siblings, but also best friends. “Surely fate wouldn’t be so cruel as to split us up.”

I really hoped not. “Alien warriors for two please,” I quipped, holding up a finger as if ordering from a menu. “And make them a Mylos!”

He laughed, shaking his head at me.

“It’ll work out. You’ll see. We’ll either get mated or not, but either way, our schooling and living expenses will be paid for and we’ll be able to stop Door Dashing except to add to your TV show fund.”

“Yeah,” I whispered, looking out the window. “We win either way.” I knew that intellectually but the heart wants what it wants and that was for me and my brother to get a happily ever after both with school and in love. It wasn’t too much to ask, was it?