Tell Me It's Real

by T. J. Klune

  So at the very last second, I launched my foot forward with a squawk, the heel of my foot sliding along the right wheel of his cart. Naturally, this made me lose my balance, and I went forward, stumbling to the end of the hall, then careening into the living room and smashing into the far wall. But it was okay! Instead of the obvious solution of stopping my forward momentum by pressing my hands against the wall, I took the extremely radical approach of stopping myself with my face. Into the wall.

  Silence fell over the room.

  Then: “Sandy?” I asked, my face still pressed against the wall. My nose and right cheek hurt like a son of a bitch, but I wasn’t bleeding. Not yet.

  “Yes, Paul?” He sounded somewhat shocked, but like he was also trying very hard to keep from laughing, a breathless sound that reminded me why having a best friend was never a good thing.

  “Will you do me a favor?”

  “Yes, Paul.”

  “Will you look up the nearest Taiwanese restaurant for me?”

  “Of course, Paul. Can I ask why?”

  “You may. I’d like to see if they would buy my dog.”

  “Wheels, Paul? You want to sell your dog?”

  “Yes, Sandy. To a Taiwanese restaurant. So they may cook him and serve him to a table of four. I may even give him up for free.”

  “Table of four. Got it.”

  “Sandy?”

  “Yes, Paul?”

  “Did you both see me trip and smash into the wall?”

  “Yes, Paul.”

  “Has Vince run screaming yet?”

  “No, Paul.”

  “Would you tell him it’s okay to do so now? I’d like to take the rest of the night to die of embarrassment and look up recipes for the Taiwanese restaurant. I’m thinking something with cayenne pepper. I feel it would complement the taste of mutt on the palate.”

  I didn’t even hear Vince approach, didn’t even notice him until he was right up on me, pressing up against my back, putting his arms around my waist, holding me close. “You okay?” Vince murmured in my ear.

  “Sure,” I said. “I just wanted to teach this wall a lesson by headbutting it. It’s always giving me dirty looks and I just got sick of it. Thought it was time to man up, you know?”

  He chuckled near my ear, his lips almost on my skin. “Anything broken?”

  “Aside from my pride? Nope. Nope. Everything else seems to be just peachy.”

  “Why don’t you turn around and let me make sure?”

  “I’d really rather not do that. I think it may be better if you leave and go to the U of A.”

  “The college?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I need to see if you can find a physicist there and ask him how long it will be before time travel is invented. Because I really would like to travel back in time to when this house was being built so I could have stopped the builders from putting up a wall here, and then I would travel back to right now and instead of being face-planted against the wall, it would have looked like I was showing off some really sweet dance moves in a long hallway.”

  Vince snorted in my ear, which I found to be rather gross, and yet was okay with him doing it anyway. He turned me around in his arms, and even though I tried to avoid looking at him, he wasn’t having any of it. He gripped my chin and forced me to look up, inspecting my nose and cheek. They throbbed a bit, and I felt my face heat up under his careful gaze. I was proud of the fact there were no tears in my eyes, even though such a facial smash deserved them. I was manly, after all, I reminded myself; manly men didn’t cry after getting tripped by their two-legged dog and running into a wall with their face.

  Vince poked my cheek. “Ow!” I snapped at him.

  He shrugged. “Doesn’t look like it’s broken. Nose, either. Probably will get a black eye, though.”

  “Oh, thank you, Dr. Taylor,” I said, rolling my eyes.

  He grinned at me, dimples exploding like fireworks. “Did you notice how I didn’t laugh, even though it was pretty funny?”

  I glared at him and then heard a choking sound. I looked over to where Sandy stood in the middle of the living room. He had his hand over his mouth, squeezing tightly, tears streaming down his face as his body shook.

  I stepped away from Vince and his hands fell to his sides. I pointed at Sandy, who I was pretty sure was going to burst at any moment. “You can go home now,” I scolded.

  He nodded once and grabbed his keys off the coffee table. He almost made it completely out my door before he couldn’t hold it in anymore and starting howling with laughter, the sound ringing back to us as he closed the door.

  “This can’t possibly be a good way to start things,” I muttered.

  Chapter 10

  I Hate Waiters Named Santiago and I Really Hate YouTube

  VINCE tried to say we could just stay in, but I told him that it was probably a good idea if we went out, given that I wanted to pretend Wheels was a soccer ball and I needed to score a basket. Vince then told me that it was a soccer goal and not a basket and that’s why those announcers always screamed, “Goooooooaaaaaalllllll!” I cocked an eyebrow at him and he just rolled his eyes at me.

  There was silence in the car that was almost uncomfortable, but I was distracted by the fact that my face was slightly throbbing. I wondered if I would actually get a black eye or not and if it would be believable if I told people in the office on Monday that it was from the fight I’d gotten in over the weekend, where I took on a gang on the south side with nothing but my fists.

  “Don’t keep touching it,” Vince told me as he drove. “You’re going to make it worse if you keep poking your face.”

  “I’m making sure I don’t have nerve damage,” I said, poking myself again, feeling the burn. “I may have smashed all my nerves to death, and I want to make sure I don’t get droopy-eye.”

  “It’s going to bruise,” he warned.

  “Maybe it’s my penance for hurting you. Like some kind of divine retribution for causing pain and misery and giving you two days off from work in a row where you did nothing but text me the whole time.”

  “You liked it when I texted you,” he said, sure of himself.

  “It was pretty annoying,” I said.

  “Then why’d you keep responding?”

  I poked my cheek instead of answering him. It hurt. A lot.

  Instead of arguing with me further, he took my poking hand in his and held it, intertwining our fingers together, effectively shutting me up, an action I thought impossible. I suppose I could have used my other hand to poke my face, but it didn’t seem all that important anymore.

  And since I wasn’t allowed to distract myself by poking my war wounds, I began to get nervous again, realizing not only was I on the date I’d been dreading/hoping for, but he was already holding my hand. This immediately caused me to start sweating, which made my hand clammy, and I was pretty sure that Vince was getting drenched, but he held on anyway, regardless of the fact that my body was leaking all over him, and not in the good way.

  He took me down to Fourth Avenue, near where the gay bar was, and I let myself reminisce that this was where we’d first laid eyes on each other… six days prior. I rolled my eyes at my own mushiness, which hurt my cheek quite a bit. Then I started to sweat some more.

  He parked near a little street café called Poco’s and asked if it was all right. I’d never been there before. It looked cute and I hadn’t heard any news stories of rats being found in the food, so I figured it would be okay. I didn’t share any of those thoughts, though. I just smiled widely and said this was one of my favorite places ever. I felt bad that I was building the beginning of our relationship on lies, but I figured it was just about a restaurant, so Jesus would forgive me. Then I got stuck on the word relationship and blanched at my audacity to think such a thing, which caused my hands to sweat even more. I’m pretty sure anyone walking by me would have thought I’d just climbed out of a pool. Luckily, Vince had dropped my han
d by that point (probably to discreetly wipe his hand off on his shirt in disgust and to wish he had an industrial-sized bottle of hand sanitizer), so I didn’t have to worry about getting him any more wet then he already was.

  We were seated almost immediately at a table near the sidewalk where we could see people walking by. Before I could open my mouth and find out exactly what would fall out, we were assaulted (yes, assaulted!) by what had to be the world’s most attractive waiter. He was all skinny and tall with eyelashes that looked like they had to be fake and eyes so green that you would have thought they were made of emeralds. His hair was dark and his skin was a lovely mocha color, like he bathed nude on a beach in the Dominican Republic, his lithe body and tawny muscles browned by the sun. He was wearing a red collared shirt, much like the one I wore, but he looked far better than I ever could. In a nutshell, he was fucking gorgeous, and I was dressed like a waiter at the café. Fan-fucking-tastic.

  And of course, when he saw Vince, you would have thought he was going to flop his dick out on the table, crawl into Vince’s lap, and rut against him right in front of me.

  “Good evening,” he purred at Vince, ignoring me completely. “My name is Santiago, and it will be my pleasure to… serve you tonight.” He looked Vince up and down, and I had an urge to call 911 for the eye-rape I was witnessing. It didn’t help that Santiago had an accent that made you want to either stab him or touch his balls. Guess which one I wanted to do?

  Vince grinned up at him, though part of me realized he was oblivious to Santiago’s (who names their kids like this?) blatant “come fuck me” gaze. The other, more impractical, part of me wanted to punch Santiago in the back of the head and then throw a glass of water in Vince’s face for even considering looking so attractive in public. I was able to choke this part down. Barely.

  “Hey, Santiago,” Vince said. “We’re going to need some time to decide.”

  “Oh, of course!” Santiago gushed. “If you need any help with the menu”—or getting your cock sucked was the clear implication—“please don’t hesitate to flag me down, because I’m here for you. I’m sure I could see those arms from a distance, though.” He winked and dragged his fingers along Vince’s bicep. I eyed the tight polo shirt Vince was wearing, his arms straining against the sleeves, his chest hard against the fabric. I could even see the outline of his nipple piercing. I’m sure Santiago could too, because his gaze strayed over Vince’s chest and stopped exactly where the bar was poking through. He didn’t lift his fingers from Vince’s arm.

  “Can we get some bread and some butter up in here?” I blurted out, sounding way fatter than I actually was. “I’m hungry.”

  Santiago looked startled, as if he was only then aware of my presence at the table. When he saw me, a grimace came over his face like he smelled something awful. But then he twisted his lips into what I’m sure he thought was a professional smile, but was absolutely sardonic. “Of course, sir,” he said politely. “I shall get you some bread and butter. Lots and lots and lots of butter.” He turned back to Vince and the smile turned dazzling again. “And you, sir? I can get you anything you want while you wait for your”—he glanced back at me—“father’s bread.”

  “Father?” I repeated, outraged.

  Vince didn’t get the dig. “That’s not my father,” he said to Santiago. “That’s Paul.”

  “Oh!” Santiago said, as if that explained everything. “So he’s your accountant or something?”

  Vince’s brow furrowed. “He’s not an accountant. We work together.”

  Relief spread over Santiago’s face. “Do you?” he asked, his voice again a purr. “Well, that certainly is good news. I’ll be right back with your coworker’s loaf of bread that he really seems to want, and then maybe you and I can get to know each other a bit better.” He winked and walked away, his hips doing enough of a roll to put Helena Handbasket to shame.

  “Wow,” Vince said. “He sure seemed interested in you. I wonder if I should be jealous at all.” He looked at me with a pretty smile.

  “I don’t think it was me,” I said, trying to keep the bitterness out of my voice. “In case you didn’t notice, he was practically fucking you right in front of me.”

  Vince laughed. “What? You’re so full of shit. He was just being nice.”

  “He was rubbing all over you!”

  Vince shrugged. “I didn’t even notice. I was too busy watching you.”

  My eyes bulged. “What… you can’t say shit… like that… so unfair… I don’t even….”

  “You’re so cute when you sputter, you know that?” Vince said, reaching over to take my hand on top of the table. I thought about pulling it away, but his hand was warm and it seemed awfully rude to not allow him the comfort of my touch.

  Santiago chose this moment to walk back to the table, and I knew the moment he saw our hands joined because he almost tripped and fell right into Vince’s lap. Vince didn’t even look up at him; he sat there, rubbing his thumb over the back of my hand. Santiago scowled at him, then looked at me with a dark smirk. “What happened to your face?” he asked me. “You look like you got punched in the eye.”

  I blushed and mumbled something incoherent, looking down at our joined hands.

  Vince took that as his cue. “Me and Paul are into some pretty kinky shit,” he told Santiago, whispering loudly. “You should see the bite marks on my ass. Nobody gives it to me like my boyfriend.”

  I don’t know who was more shocked at Vince’s pronouncement, me or Santiago. While Santiago was probably more focused on the kinky-sex aspect of it, all I could hear in my head was the word boyfriend, boyfriend, boyfriend over and over again. I tightened my grip on Vince’s hand and I’m pretty sure I almost broke three of his fingers by the slight wince he gave.

  “Boyfriend?” Santiago asked in a low voice, sounding incredulous.

  “Boyfriend?” I asked, high-pitched and slightly hysterical.

  Vince shrugged and smiled at me.

  I didn’t even notice Santiago leaving because I was staring at Vince like he’d made the most insane statement in the history of the English language, which, to be fair, he pretty much had. Granted, I did maybe spend a second or two at the thought of putting bite marks on his ass (I mean, come on; who wouldn’t?) but I couldn’t seem to wrap my mind around the word boyfriend. As sad as it might seem, I couldn’t think of a time when anyone had actually called me that before, nor did I think there was anyone I had thought of that way. The last guy I’d dated (the psychic psycho, for those keeping track) turned out to be batshit crazy. I didn’t do the boyfriend thing. I was fucking Paul Auster. It didn’t happen to me.

  But Vince continued to smile at me and he continued to hold my hand. He looked like he was going to say something further, but he stopped himself. He was obviously waiting for me to say something, anything, but since it was me, I let the silence drag on, making things even more awkward than they were before. Finally, I said the only thing I could think of.

  “You’re really not Freddie Prinze Junioring me?” I asked faintly.

  “Only if you want me to,” he said with a wink. I still didn’t think he understood the concept of being Freddie Prinze Juniored. He made it into something dirty and that was not helping the situation in the slightest.

  “You’re the weirdest person I know,” I told him. “And Santiago is probably going to put pubes in my food.”

  Vince rocked his head back and laughed. “I’ll make sure your food is pube free.”

  My eyes burned a bit. No one had ever said that to me about pubes before. Part of me still wanted to believe he was pulling my leg, that this was all going to end badly. But that little hopeful part that had grown out of nowhere, that little light flickering way down in the dark, got brighter, and I latched onto it, hopeful for something I couldn’t quite name.

  And then Vince had to go and ruin it by asking seven words that I should never be asked, given my history of being incapable of holding any kind of intelligent convers
ation with a hot guy, even if he’d just essentially proclaimed he was my boyfriend. I wanted to stay in the afterglow of the moment, staring deeply into each other’s eyes as if to communicate with each other’s souls without speaking or some such bullshit. I couldn’t make a jackass of myself if I didn’t speak (well, that’s not entirely true, since I’d proven earlier that I was perfectly capable of being a jackass by simply trying to walk down a hallway).

  But Vince must have realized that we couldn’t spend the rest of our lives just staring at each other, so he made it all that much worse. “So, Paul,” he said as he leaned forward, “tell me more about yourself.”

  “Excuse me?” I squeaked.

  “Well, I know a few things about you. But since you’re my boyfriend now, I obviously need to know more. I don’t know if I can get by on just knowing you like black dildos and action movies.”

  “Keep your fucking voice down,” I hissed at him, looking around to see if Santiago was listening in, trying to eavesdrop for the intel he could use to tear me away from Vince like some Victorian heroine. I saw the top of his perfectly manufactured head through the window near the kitchen, and I wondered if he was pulling out his pubes one by one in preparation for when we ordered. “I told you that dildo wasn’t mine! I’m holding it… for a friend.”

  “You’re watching a dildo for a friend?” he asked in disbelief.

  “Yes! My friend….” Think of a name, think of a name! I looked down at the table. “My friend… Salt. Cup. Straw. Table. My friend Saltcup Strawtable. He’s Indonesian.” I was building a relationship on lies, all lies.

  Vince waited with a smirk on his face.

  “Fine,” I growled at him. “It’s mine, okay? I tried to use it once, but it was too big, so I put it in the box under my bed and left it there. It felt like it was going to tear me in half.”

  “We’ll just have to try it out again,” he said, his voice going all husky.

  Synapses fired. Fireworks across the sky. Angels sang. Jesus clapped politely.