Izzy and the Right Answer

by R. Cooper

  “Not exactly.” Iz responded cautiously, since he had done or said something wrong. “But it’s close enough.” He could show them the pictures if they wanted.

  Rocco exhaled. “Okay.” The tension left him all at once. Some of the warmth returned to his gaze. “Well, thanks for that, sweaterpaws. I’m going to see if Alistair is about done. Let me know what the plans are.” He walked off without giving Iz another chance to explain, tapping Eric lightly on the shoulder as he passed him.

  Iz’s cheeks were stinging hot. His mouth was dry. His stomach was clenched. “I can’t go out. I should leave.” A normal person would have learned how to handle his emotions already. Not let them lead him in accidentally hurting someone else.

  “Iz, he’s not mad at you.” Patricio was gentle and quiet. “He knows you. This is just something you don’t understand.”

  Iz didn’t understand anything, that was clear. “I should still go. It’s not going to be an evening I will enjoy.” He threw Patricio a smile much too similar to the one he’d seen on Rocco’s face a moment ago, then slipped off the couch to search for his shoes.

  Ronnie and Rahim were downstairs, talking quietly but urgently beneath a streetlight. They looked up when Iz skirted around a car to avoid them and tripped over some trash by the curb.

  “Izzy?” Ronnie called after him, probably worried.

  Rahim said, “Oh, Ronald,” in an exasperated voice, and Ronnie went silent. But Iz waved over his shoulder to soothe their concerns and stepped back onto the sidewalk.

  He stayed on the brighter side of the street and walked quickly. It was a short walk home, anyway, and sometimes being alone was easier. He didn’t have to guess at things that everyone else already knew, or keep track of the people around him and try to figure out from their expressions what they were feeling.

  Alone, his heart could settle and he could breathe. But it was nice, ten minutes later, to get home and discover everyone in the group chat complaining they missed him already. He did not know if they were teasing or if they meant it, but it was nice. It allowed him to put on his warmest pajamas, and answer the group together and Ronnie’s text separately, and then somewhat calmly contemplate what he had said wrong.

  Chapter Two

  Iz had accepted the state of confusingly painful contentment that was having deep feelings for someone. He wondered if it was this painful and confusing even if the person returned the feelings, true, but he had accepted it before he had mentioned it to Patricio.

  But this was different, because he’d hurt Rocco with his ignorance, and that, it turned out, was almost unbearable. Especially since Patricio kept telling him that bringing it up again would only make the situation worse. Rocco wasn’t mad, Patricio said. But it was a tricky subject, and Rocco probably had bad memories—because grade school and junior high were horrible periods in everyone’s life—and he had assumed Iz was making fun of him.

  Only at first. Then he’d accepted that Iz meant well, even if he hadn’t believed him or understood that some cloud formations took over entire skylines, that they looked painted by gods and put anything manmade to shame, that some types of clouds were, if not rare, then uncommon.

  Looks were a sensitive issue. When Iz dressed conservatively for things like college interviews, he got treated differently than other people because he was regarded as attractive. Beautiful, to some. But beautiful or not, he still got glares when his hair was in braids and his nails were bright. People liked him less that way, but liked him more than Alistair when Alistair tried drag looks because according to Alistair, ‘nobody wants a fat drag queen unless she’s funny.’ And for all the stares and whispers about Iz, even on campus, it was nothing to what Damien or Rahim dealt with no matter how they were dressed. And they would both insist they were ‘fine as hell.’

  Looks mattered. Iz knew that—had known that.

  But he didn’t think they saw what he did. Not even Rocco, who noticed more than he let on.

  Right now, for example. Rocco spotted Iz the moment Iz walked in the door to the small gift shop-slash-book store-coffee shop on campus. Iz could tell he did because his smooth pricing motions stuttered and he glanced away before he nodded in greeting.

  Iz smiled brightly at him in return and then moved toward the coffee bar with purpose. He tried not to notice how Rocco relaxed minutely at being ignored, but, well, Iz noticed most things, even when he didn’t understand them.

  He wasn’t going to bring up the discussion from Friday night. Iz was here for coffee and to make absolutely sure Rocco didn’t hate him. He would have liked to know if Rocco was okay, but Rocco wasn’t the sort of person to show his every emotion willy-nilly.

  He’d messaged Ronnie to ask, because Ronnie would surely know, but Ronnie had answered with a ??? text and then As far as I know before asking why Iz was worried about Rocco and if he should talk to Rocco. Then Iz had gone to class and so had Ronnie, and that discussion had ended there, although another one, about weekend plans, had continued later.

  Iz poured himself a plain black coffee in his reusable cup and took a deep breath for strength before carrying his coffee to the counter by the register.

  Rocco put down his pricing gun. “I still cannot believe you drink that stuff. And black.”

  The store wasn’t a real coffee shop. Or even a full bookstore. The main campus bookstore was huge, and there were a few cafes close to campus as well as a coffee cart by the library, but anyone desperate for caffeine, or broke, came in here. The wall by the register had several self-serve carafes, along with a selection of creamers and plastic-wrapped pastries. The setup was not unlike a gas station.

  The coffee was also terrible.

  Iz shrugged. “Black coffee is to the point, and hot, which is all I want. Savoring something good is for late mornings and while reading a book. Otherwise, coffee is just a drug I use for fuel.”

  “It’s moments like this when I remember that you code for fun and that someday you are going to be a scarily accurate systems analyst.” Rocco rang up the coffee without glancing at the keyboard of the register.

  “Scarily accurate,” Iz repeated, trying to decide if he liked it or not. “Systems analyst?” He was fairly certain he and Rocco had never talked about their possible futures. At least, not together.

  “Design isn’t your thing. Neither is architecture. Analyst makes more sense. One-oh-eight, please.” Rocco wasn’t smiling, and yet a large coffee did not cost a dollar and eight cents. A small coffee did.

  Iz glanced down at the top of his large cup and could not stop his smile. “Okay.” The word came out small and soft. Iz didn’t know why, but there was no helping it. He handed over his card since he had eight cents but not a dollar in cash, then looked around. A professor was lurking in one of the aisles, in the section where people liked to leave anonymous letters as part of an old campus tradition. Iz couldn’t tell if the professor was reading one or thinking of writing one, but either way, he wasn’t paying attention to them. He turned back to Rocco. “Sort of slow in here. Are you bored?”

  “A little. But it pays some of the bills, and I can always study in my downtime.” Rocco pulled out a book from under the counter and waved it playfully before putting it away.

  “You’re very busy,” Iz remarked, taking his card back and sticking in his pocket. “Maybe some downtime is nice, even if you are in here.” He leaned in to whisper. “Do more people leave love notes or hate notes? I’ve never read any of them, but I’ve wondered.”

  “Fifty/forty,” Rocco whispered back. “With ten percent left over for miscellaneous things like apologies. Donalson over there reads them all the time. I think he uses them as inspiration for his terrible books.”

  “Are they terrible?” Iz asked in delight. “I’ve never taken a class with him.”

  “Smug and dry and superior.” Rocco quirked a smile. “Don’t bother.”

  “I won’t.” Iz nodded. “Have you ever written a letter?”

  “That would be
telling. And that is against the rules.” Rocco straightened up when someone else wandered in and headed to the stationary supplies.

  “Emotions are troubling. Maybe the letter writing helps.” Iz curled his cold fingers around his cup and considered whether Rocco would guess if Iz wrote a letter about him. Then he tried to imagine writing a letter about this and decided he didn’t know his feelings well enough yet to discuss them.

  “What about you?” Rocco asked after a few moments. “Time to go study?” Iz didn’t have to work. He had all the time in the world to study. Rocco knew that but was politely not saying so. He was possibly trying to get rid of Iz, which made Iz sigh and take a step away from the counter.

  “I have twenty minutes before I need to get to my media class.” Iz irritably tucked several strands of hair behind his ear, but several more came down. The bun at the top of his head felt loose, so he put the coffee on the counter and took a few moments to redo it. “I should never have taken a Communications class. I’m probably going to get a C. But it’s awful.”

  “A C?” Rocco echoed, in what even Iz knew was fake sympathy. “That will never do.”

  Iz gave him a stern look while pulling a hairband off his wrist with his teeth. Rocco seemed to force himself to blink. Iz snapped the second band around his bun, then adjusted the scarf wrapped around his throat. Soft tendrils of hair tickled his ears, and he made a regretful face. “This is why I like braids. Anyway, don’t be smug. Just because you are all A’s doesn’t mean the rest of us are.”

  “Who told you I was all A’s?” Rocco reached out, stopped himself, then reached out again to tug on the end of Iz’s scarf to pull it even with the other end. “And not to tell you how to style yourself, but if you don’t like long hair, and there aren’t religious reasons, you can always cut it.”

  Iz shrugged in answer to the first question and stuck out his bottom lip sulkily in response to the rest of what Rocco said. “Because I become a runaway from a military school when I cut my hair short.” He looked smaller and younger with a buzzcut. “Being a boy and looking like a boy are so different.”

  Rocco leaned his head to one side, befuddled or thoughtful or possibly even bored with Iz’s gender issues. Iz had no way to know.

  All Rocco said was, “You’d be all A’s too, if you didn’t have to take the required courses. Or maybe if you hired a secretary to help you actually turn in your assignments.”

  Iz stopped with one hand resting on his scarf. “The purpose of required courses is to give us a solid foundation and to encourage multidisciplinary thinking. I just don’t like being told what to do. And you are pretending that you don’t work very hard for those A’s by saying mine were easy to get. Or something. You are pretending something. Patricio would know what. Ronnie might as well.” Iz pursed his lips while he studied Rocco intently. Rocco held very still but didn’t take his eyes off him.

  He also didn’t give anything away.

  Iz liked him so much.

  “I suppose you are allowed your secrets, the same as anyone else,” Iz stated at last. “But you are academically gifted and I’ll say so. I have anxieties and an attention problem, but you work and do your sport things and still manage to get A’s. That’s a lot.” He smiled.

  Professor Donalson cleared his throat and left without buying anything.

  “All of that, and still a C,” Rocco observed, and leaned to the side to ring up some correction tape and a notebook for the other customer.

  There was no joy like a clean, new paper notebook. Iz offered the customer a friendly grin and got a huff and an eyeroll before the woman took her things and walked out.

  “A C,” Iz lamented. The class wasn’t even that difficult. He just didn’t like it and that made it hard to pay attention. “Do you think I could hack the admin system?” he asked, only half-serious. “I mean, yes, I doubt it’s that secure. But could I do it without getting caught? I don’t know that I’m that clever.” He sighed, discarding the idea. “Oh well.”

  Rocco nodded while frowning thoughtfully. “And you’re not concerned with it being morally wrong?” He wasn’t really asking.

  “What’s morally wrong is for them to charge what they do while holding our futures hostage,” Iz told him earnestly. “It’s a system designed to help people who don’t need the help and to keep out those who do. The administrative officials are not concerned that students are giving up decades of their lives to debt to attend this place in the small hope they will get a decent job in a career they like. All they want is their paychecks and tenure for the professors least likely to question that system. If it would achieve anything, I would hack the administration and eliminate debt and raise everyone’s grades. Which, let’s face it, are often arbitrarily high or low depending on what kind of professor you have. There are,” he added quietly, “a lot of shitty professors.”

  “Yes,” Rocco said shortly, without explaining which part he agreed with. “I’m going to have to visit you in prison someday, aren’t I? I described you as scary once and I wasn’t kidding.”

  “So it was a compliment.” Iz raised his head to grin proudly. “The nail polish tricks people into thinking I’m harmless.”

  Rocco rolled one shoulder. His smile made an appearance. “Could be the lip gloss.”

  “That’s sexist.” Iz didn’t know what to make of Rocco’s serious gaze and cameo smiles.

  “Yup,” Rocco agreed, giving Iz another teasing glimpse of the gap in his teeth.

  That was what this was. “You’re teasing me,” Iz realized out loud. Rocco didn’t hate him. He was messing with him. “It’s lip stain, anyway. That doesn’t come off on my coffee cup lids.”

  “Not something I’ve ever considered, but it makes sense.” The amusement in Rocco’s voice made it lighter, playful like bubbles.

  Iz’s attention dropped to Rocco’s lips a half second before he could ask if Rocco wanted to try some of the stain he was wearing. He imagined them darker, parted and then puckered up like someone about to kiss a mirror. He came back to the moment with a blink.

  Rocco blinked too.

  “I should—I have class soon. And you’re working.” Iz patted his hair nervously and took a step back while ignoring the swooping in his stomach. Then he recalled his coffee and stretched to grab it. “I suppose I should go.” Iz ducked his head as he turned away to walk to the door.

  “I wasn’t forcing you to stay,” Rocco pointed out, sounding confused again.

  “Of course not.” Iz twisted around to tell him. “I want to stay. But we have things to do.” He sighed. “Always things to do. But I’ll see you around. Thank you.”

  “I didn’t do anything?” Rocco called out softly, lost, from the sound of it.

  His confusion would have been disheartening if Iz had any real intentions toward him. As it was, Iz was happy that their conversation hadn’t been too disastrous. They were still friends, and Iz would learn to be more careful about how he complimented Rocco in the future.

  “He’s going to guess something is up if you keep staring,” Patricio remarked. His tone was gentle despite how much he was shivering. A cold snap had dropped the temperature even lower, and yet he was the one who had suggested sitting outside on the library steps to study.

  This entrance overlooked the junction of paths from the History building and the older lecture halls. It also happened to be in sight of a bunch of tables and benches at the end of one of the jogging trails.

  Rocco and Ronnie and some others were standing around, drinking water, checking their pulses, stretching, and all the other things athletes did after or between runs.

  Iz hadn’t chosen to sit here. But he didn’t resist looking over once in a while to the flush in Rocco’s cheeks and the sweat-drenched curls poking out from underneath his beanie, and the fit of his running pants.

  “Imagine voluntarily running anywhere.” Iz dug out a tissue to wipe his nose, then got his gloves. Gloves made it harder to turn book pages, but he was cold. His full
-price coffee from this morning was gone and couldn’t warm him anymore. “Imagine rarely having free time, and then spending it jogging.”

  For Ronnie it made sense. Ronnie was energy and persistence, struggling for air but pushing forward anyway. He’d bent over with his hands on his knees when they had first stopped, resting and catching his breath, and Iz had felt bad for him and at the same time thought that Ronnie looked right with his cheeks red and rosy, mouth curved in a smile even as he panted.

  But jogging for fun was almost incomprehensible.

  “Bizarre,” Patricio agreed, sketchpad closed, pencil down, to help him focus on a math textbook. He said the library was too comfortable for him to study something like math. He’d fall asleep. “You’re still staring.”

  “I think he enjoyed the running, or at least, he enjoyed spending time with his friends,” Iz mused out loud. “Do you think it’s discipline or having an orderly mind that allows that?”

  “I have an orderly mind. I am not jogging.” If Patricio was going to shudder so dramatically at the weather, he shouldn’t have dragged them out there. They could go inside right now. “That is about discipline.”

  “It must be, with all he does. He has a lot of self-control. I’m sure I noticed that before, but I didn’t think about it.” Iz sighed and scooted closer to Patricio to share what little warmth he had. One of the joggers pulled up one of his pant legs to show off a tattoo.

  “Mmm,” Patricio commented. “The running pays off for them, though.”

  “You’re staring.” Iz huffed into his tissue.

  “I don’t have a crush. Doesn’t matter if I get caught staring,” Patricio returned. “Unless that guy decides to kick my ass.”

  “Rocco and Ronnie wouldn’t be friends with someone who would, even if that guy isn’t gay.” Iz stuck his tissue back in his pocket and glanced forlornly at the textbook he had forgotten on the step next to him. “What do you think would happen?” he asked after a moment. “If Rocco knew, I mean. I thought about it, because I am not a good liar, and it seemed like I should think about it. He might be horrified—at the very least, I think he would avoid me.” Of all the people Iz had rejected, he only felt terrible about one of them. “But I don’t think he would be angry or disgusted. He likes men. Just not me. I would miss seeing him, and things would be strained, but it wouldn’t be the end of the world if he found out.”