by Kris Ripper
“I love this food coloring,” I said in satisfaction.
“Livens things up a little. Should we divide them between us?”
I counted. “We have odd numbers of T. rexes and pterodactyls.”
“I’ll take an extra pterodactyl, you can have the extra T. rex.”
“Well, okay, but I think Team T. Rex can kick Team Pterodactyl’s ass.”
“I’m pretty sure there are birds alive today that descend from pterodactyls.”
“Oh-ho-ho, common myth, my friend, common myth. Though I think birds might actually be dinosaurs, they do not descend from pterodactyls.” I took a bow. “Thank you, I watch a lot of weird documentaries.”
They stared at me. “No. Really?”
“Yep yep.”
“But...but... I liked the idea of dangerous looking ptero-birds flying around somewhere.” They looked totally crestfallen.
“Um. I feel like I just told you Santa’s not real.”
“That is exactly what you did.” They grabbed my upper arm, shaking me a little. “Why can’t you let me have my illusions of pterodactyls, Declan?”
“If I’d known how much it meant to you...no, I probably would have told you, anyway. But I would have been more gentle about it!”
“I’m sad now. I’m in mourning.”
I hid my smile.
“I’m in mourning for the pterodactyls I will never see in real life.” Their voice began to rise dramatically. “All these years I have fantasized about taking a trip somewhere—a rain forest, maybe—and seeing birds that shared DNA with pterodactyls, but now, in one fell swoop, you have destroyed this dream.”
“I am a monster,” I agreed solemnly.
“Truly. You are a thief of dreams.”
I lost it. “Oh my god, a thief of dreams.” My maniacal cackling set Sidney off and then both of us were losing it a little, maybe because we were anxious about the date, maybe because the idea of a thief of dreams was legit funny. Probably more the former than the latter.
Sometimes the brain triggers a burst of absurd amusement when it registers a high level of emotional tension. I didn’t see that in a documentary or anything. I made it up. But it’s totally accurate. Science should find a way to do a study. Or no, we could! After The Love Study we could find other stuff to study! I’d propose it to Sidney maybe, but later, when I was better able to decide how bad an idea it was.
Decorating cookies went well, and I managed to make a pterodactyl with a hot-pink-with-electric-blue-rim Santa hat on it for them. “Sorry I ruined Pterodactyl Claus for you,” I said, presenting it with a flourish.
“I’ll recover. I made you a rainbowish brontosaurus.”
“Aww, you did?” It was super cute, with rows of pink-yellow-green-blue stripes all down its long body and a green head with yellow eyes. “Thank you! I shall call him Stripey. And spare him as long as I can afford to do so.” I paused reverently. “And then I shall eat him with all due respect.”
They grinned. “That’s how you show your respect to a cookie, I think: you eat it.”
“Good point. Speaking of, let’s finish this and then do some eating.”
“I didn’t bring any non-cookie food, sorry.”
I waved at the fridge. “It’ll only take me fifteen minutes to make pasta, no worries.” Yes. The sauce was ready. Go, past me. Way to pre-make sauce. I wanted to jump up and down with joy at my foresight, but thought it best to act casual.
My business card should read: Declan Swick-Smith: not good at casual.
“I-made-a-sauce,” I mumbled.
“You what?”
“Made a sauce. I hope you like garlic.” Wow, it’s like I went out of my way to be unkissable. “Upon reflection, maybe garlic wasn’t the best choice. I was trying to show off. The sauce is really good, though. It’s cheesy and garlicky and has a little bit of a pepper kick.”
“That sounds delicious.”
I barely restrained myself from pouting. “I mean, I love the sauce? But also I am looking forward to making out later? Then I made a very freaking garlicky sauce. Like a jackass.”
Sidney swallowed, very possibly looking at my lips. “We have some time in our schedules now, if you want to...make use of it. Um. With kissing.”
“Yes! I mean, yes, very calm, very measured yes.”
“While the icing...sets. I think that’s a thing.”
“Icing setting, of course. Sure. All the cookbooks talk about using your, uh, icing-setting time wisely.”
“Like kissing.”
“I’m sure I read that in Julia Child.”
They smiled. “I really like you, Declan.”
“I really like you too.”
Their lips were soft and citrusy, sweet with icing. In a way it felt almost first-kissish, maybe because of the aforementioned emotional tension. I focused on the small area of our skin touching, trying to keep myself in the moment.
Sidney leaned in, taking it deeper—
Clack.
—until our glasses bumped and both of us drew back.
“Oh god, sorry.” They turned away.
“No biggie, and I think it’s a shared responsibility. I’m sorry too.” Cue awkwardness. “So um...do you think the icing’s set?”
“Definitely.”
“Should I put on water for pasta while we quality inspect our dinosaurs?”
“Sounds good.”
The dinosaurs tasted good (which we already knew, since we’d sampled both the cookies and the icing as we worked). And the pasta sauce was freaking exceptional. If I do say so myself.
* * *
We had cookies and more cocoa on the couch later. I’d put on a baking show and turned down the volume, just to have something going in case conversation fizzled out. A precautionary measure. This was the thing I’d wanted all night and maybe I’d built it up too much in my head, or maybe I was too self-conscious after feeling like I was date-failing an amazing date, but I was glad the TV was on in the background.
Sidney seemed to be in a weird mood too, or else I was projecting. I’d asked about something mundane, but we’d wandered into talking about their past dating history, which, given the nature of our relationship and YouTubeness, I knew almost nothing about.
“I figured you had a traumatic dating experience and swore off it or something.” I leaned my head on the back of the Jenkinses’ couch where we were facing each other, both of us clutching hot cocoa with tiny marshmallows.
“No, not at all. I had a lot of mediocre experiences, a few okay ones, a few lousy ones. And I just got tired of it.”
“Because of all those Valentine’s Day fights?” Gosh, their eyes were dark in the low light, dark like the deepest part of a lake, like I could dive all the way into them.
“Because I didn’t know what the point was. For me, I mean. I understood what the point was for a lot of people, but I didn’t share their goals.” They stirred a few more marshmallows into their cocoa, seeming mesmerized. “My whole life I’ve felt... Have you ever let a drop of soap hit water that has something on the surface?”
“Um. Probably?”
“You know how everything pulls away from the drop of soap like it’s repelling? Like nothing can stand being anywhere near the soap?”
“Sure.”
“That was always me. I always felt like I was that drop of soap. As if my very presence made people move in the opposite direction, everyone except my brother. It was nice once he was born, though I was sixteen by then so I guess I was still more comfortable being on my own.”
I swallowed, caught up in the image of Sidney alone surrounded by empty space. I wanted to reach for their hand or pat their knee or something, but I didn’t think they needed comfort half as much as I needed to provide it, so I sipped my cocoa instead. Self-soothing through chocolate. Kind of a theme
in my life. “That sounds really lonely,” I said, since I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“I had friends, casual friends. I don’t mean to give you the idea I was that isolated. Just mostly I didn’t quite fit in places other people expected me to fit, and I wasn’t good at doing the work to keep friendships strong, so they eventually faded.” Sidney kept stirring, still staring down into their mug. “Anyway, I made the executive decision to stop trying to find common ground with people who had very different priorities.”
“And that was...like...everyone?”
They glanced up. “It seemed like it at the time. But that’s why the show was so important. Or I guess why it came to be so important to me. It was a way of establishing common ground and connections, and I know there are a lot of people who feel like face-to-face is the only way to have friendships or community, but that hasn’t been my experience. I answer comments most days. I talk to people like Mara, people who’ve been consistently present for a while, all the time. Those relationships matter to me. When I barely spoke to anyone in the house where I was renting a room, I was exchanging emails with and having conversations with a lot of people I knew from YouTube.” They shook their head. “Sorry, I’m rambling. I guess the point was that I gave up on finding common ground with people in my life at the exact moment I was putting a lot of energy into actually doing that? And I didn’t even realize it until—well, until now. Until The Love Study.”
“Really?” That felt...good. Maybe I was part of something bigger, something positive for them, the way they’d been part of that for me.
“I think...watching you figure out dating, and asking you questions, has clarified for me some of my...um, what I might potentially want. In that context.”
“Oh wow, it’s like the show legitimately worked.”
They smiled. “Yeah. Right? I didn’t think it would have that effect on me, but if it has, then maybe it’s also working for other people.”
“Totally. So like. Um. What...do you want? I mean, I’m asking purely out of curiosity. Not at all self-interest.” I gave them my best innocent face.
“Certainly not,” they agreed. “No self-interest here on either side.”
“I’m glad we understand each other.”
Both of us smirked a little.
“I haven’t put it all into words yet. I want to be able to go deep with someone, and also have the freedom to be on my own without them taking it personally, like I need a sense of intimacy to co-exist with a sense of space. Mutual growth, mutual change. And I want...dimension. I want the way I relate to other people to expand in more than one direction.”
“That sounds really beautiful.” It wasn’t quite the right way to put what I meant, but it was as close as I could get.
“Thanks. I mean, it’s all theoretical, obviously. But I think those would be nice qualities for a theoretical romantic relationship.”
“Along with physical and intellectual chemistry?”
They smiled. “Yep.”
“I think your theoretical romantic relationship sounds pretty excellent.” And I did. What I didn’t know was what they meant by “theoretical.”
“That’s good to know.”
In the background someone’s soufflé was falling. Suddenly I felt unnervingly vulnerable sitting there looking at Sidney. Being looked at by Sidney. What did they see? Someone who was worthy of a theoretical romantic relationship? Or were they more saying that in some fantasy world they’d want those things, but in this one, they were willing to settle for me?
It was hard to avoid the reality of the situation. They might really like me. (And I knew I really liked them.) But sooner or later, I was going to screw this up. History repeats and all that.
I reached for the remote. “I love the judging part. I try to anticipate what the judges are going to say before they say it.”
Sidney shifted a little closer, and even though I didn’t think I deserved it, I couldn’t help pressing my arm against theirs as they sipped their cocoa. “I can’t believe I’ve waited so long to watch this show. Though I bet it’s more fun with company.”
“Definitely.”
They went home at the end of the episode, leaving me the last of the cookies, which I mindlessly ate sitting in front of the TV with Toby the Australian Shepherd curled up beside me, his head in my lap.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The brides looked beautiful, all sun-dappled and luminous. I’d seen them in their dresses before, but I don’t know, on the actual afternoon of their actual wedding they looked...more beautiful. Apply all happy bride clichés here—they glowed, they radiated—but it was true.
Every time they looked at each other it was honestly like the glow intensified, their smiles got wider, their eyes got brighter. The breeze picked up at one point, blowing Ronnie’s hair into Mia’s eyes in the middle of the ceremony, and both of them laughed. Not nervously, and not with the rest of us, but just...as if they were in a bubble only the two of them shared. It was kind of sublime, watching them like that, all euphoric together. After months of stressing about the wedding, when it finally arrived, they spent most of the day holding hands and dancing and laughing, which was perfect.
Mia’s dad didn’t tell too many Korean jokes (that’s jokes about Koreans, not jokes in Korean, though if we could convince him to joke in a language most people present didn’t understand, that would probably make Mia really happy). Ronnie’s parents didn’t show up, as expected, but her sister made a wonderful toast that had pretty much everyone in tears.
Then there was the dancing. You find out how many queer people are present at a gathering when the dancing starts. I don’t want to act like queers are better dancers than non-queers (though statistically speaking, we are), but get enough of us together and we can turn anything into a club. Even a local park with three separate playgrounds in sight. (Why does the park need three separate playgrounds? Is that a thing?)
By nine p.m. I was ready to drop. Mason and I had shown up at the bridal residence at eleven that morning to do some decorating and make the bed with sexy sheets (that would probably fall apart the first time they were washed, but whatever). We’d also stocked the fridge with a mix of real food and some, uh, vulva-esque food carvings that had been Oscar’s contribution to the honeymoon suite’s mini-bar-and-complimentary-snacks-buffet.
My resolve not to get drunk was hanging on by a thread as I made my way back to the small table the three of us had taken over once the party had really gotten going. The loving and adorable brides had just said their goodbyes, after which I’d taken a minute in the bathroom to remind myself that I still didn’t want to consume an entire bottle of wine (even though I kind of did).
I slumped down in between Mase and Oscar, propping my head in my hands. “Is it bedtime yet?”
Mason patted my shoulder. “There, there, sugar plum.”
“There there what, though?”
“Sugar plum.”
“But there there what?”
“I was calling you sugar plum. As a joke.”
“I realize that, I meant—”
He giggled.
“You asshole.” I slugged him in the arm. “Stop messing with me, I’m exhausted. Doesn’t it feel like this morning was literally weeks ago?”
“Seriously.”
Oscar pulled the last of the wine toward him and dumped it in his glass. “We can leave now, right? We don’t have to stay longer now that the newlyweds are gone?”
“Come over to my place,” Mase said. “I have a decent bottle of wine and a bunch of junk food I bought last week.”
“Sloppy seconds from The Stoner, count me out.”
I looked in between them. “Wait, you had The Stoner over again? And you didn’t tell me?”
“Dude, you’ve been a little busy. Plus, it’s not like we’re friends, we’re just fucking
.”
“You bought snacks.”
Mase shrugged. “He’s always hungry. For obvious reasons. The last thing I want is for him to get the munchies in the middle of sex, so I feed him first.”
The line must have repeated in his head at the same time it did mine. Both of us started laughing.
“This is what it’s come to,” Oscar moaned. “Those two get married, Dec finds true love, Mason starts keeping a stoned sex monkey as a pet, and I die alone. I always knew it would end this way.” It looked like he was going to actually pull off the elaborate sad face routine he was attempting...until it all fell apart and he barked laughter. “Oh, fuck us, you guys.”
“Nah. Come help me eat monkey feed.” Mase clapped a hand to both of our backs and we obediently followed him out.
“Shouldn’t we say something to Mia’s parents?” I whispered.
“We sat with them all night, they’ll be fine.”
True. Probably. Anyway, we were out of the tent and passing one of the playgrounds on our way to the cars. The rest of the wedding would have to fend for itself.
* * *
“Here’s the thing,” I started, then lost my nerve.
We were back at Mason’s apartment. I was sprawled on one side of the couch with Mase while Oscar was in an armchair with his feet propped on the coffee table. We’d killed two bags of chips and a box of chocolates that somewhat belied Mason’s claim that he’d had The Stoner (AKA the last guy he was with for longer than a week) over as a booty call.
Oscar sighed. “Just say it.”
Mason only looked at me.
“Here’s the thing...”
Oscar rolled his eyes.
“...I’m really happy for Ronnie and Mia.” I was. I knew that for sure. Super happy.
“Obviously.” The total irritation in Oscar’s voice—familiar, heartfelt irritation—made it easier for me to talk.
“Is it fucked up that today also kind of made me...sad?” I didn’t want to look at them as I said it, but I couldn’t not-look at them either.