Oscar grumbled as his phone came to life. The vibration scared Luigi off the couch, and the path he conveniently chose cut right across Oscar’s lap, obscuring his vision long enough to take two major hits. His glowing phone screen tore his attention away, opening him up for a third.
A message request.
Odd. Oscar shook his head. He’d look at it later; probably someone from the gaming server, wanting him to join a campaign. They had a cartoon avatar. Oscar’s eyes snagged on their username.
CowBoy0705
Although Oscar was more partial to Jack and Ennis, an image of Matthew McConaughey wearing a cowboy hat crossed his mind, and now Oscar could no longer think about the man without imagining a young kid dramatically running across a cornfield, even though Lina had said a million times that never happened in the actual film, and when Oscar thought about that scene he’d made up, he remembered Timothée Chalamet, and then he’d start thinking about an Italian summer of queer love and bike rides. Even though Oscar didn’t know how to ride a bike. Nor did he have a boyfriend, and given he was already twenty and didn’t want to be the Oliver of the North Italian summer situation, he couldn’t foresee any of this happening.
Fine, Cowboy, you win.
Oscar had never been very good with curiosity. He’d ruined at least four Christmases as a child, begging to have his gifts early because he couldn’t wait to see what he was getting, only to throw a tantrum when there were no surprises on the day. Papa would always find something interesting to give him: a sheet of stickers, a special Oscar-only bottle of bubble bath lifted from that week’s shopping and wrapped in silver paper,and one time there’d been magic chocolates that made wishes come true. Oscar still closed his eyes and thought of something he wanted when he had a Hershey’s Kiss.
A scream tore out of the character as Oscar abandoned his controller and picked up his phone, clicking on the avatar. It was cute and cartoonish, with a flop of dark red choppy hair, freckles, and chunky glasses over large, exaggerated blue eyes.
“What the hell, why not?” Oscar pressed the fat, oblongACCEPTbutton and studied the empty conversation screen for what felt like several minutes. “Oh well.” He’d never really hadthatbig of a crush on Matthew McConaughey, anyway. Oscar was more of a Jonathan Bailey kind of?—
Oscar’s stream of thoughts was abruptly cut off by the appearance of three bouncing dots, buffering the return of his stalled heartbeat. The freezer whined behind him as it tried and failed to make ice cubes for his diet sodas. For the however-many-days-Oscar-had-lived-here in a row, he’d had to resort to refilling the plastic tray like any other person with a fridge their own age.
CowBoy0705: Hi! Didn’t mean to slide into DMs like this. Just wondering if you’re “Oscar” Spike?
Spikey: It’s Oscar, not “Oscar.” And it says Spikey, not Spike. Who’s asking?
As the three bouncing dots reappeared, Oscar’s stomach punched in for its shift, reminding him of its existence as it tumbled in his body. The only person in the online space who knew that Oscar and Spike co-existed in one body was Lucas, his long-term long-distance gaming friend. Lina would never apologize for something like sliding into a DM. And Grandma wasn’t likely to have that username. Or be on one of the gaming servers. Although Oscar would putnothing past that woman. And shedidlike Jake Gyllenhaal inBrokeback Mountain.
It left him with one plausible answer that stopped his breathing. While he waited, his respawned character stood at the oak tree, the deceptively serene soundtrack playing in the background, as though the character wasn’t about to be slobbered on and rent apart. As though Oscar wasn’t about to pass out from sheer anticipation.
CowBoy0705: Well, I’m “Aaron” Aaron. I don’t know if you remember me. I promise I’m not a creepy stalker or anything.
Oscar’s heart became the gymnast he never could be, much to his mother’s chagrin.
Spikey: Sounds like something a creepy stalker would say…
Shit, Spike. Oscar couldn’t believe he was trying to be smart right now. As though it were remotely funny that this asshole had ghosted him or that Oscar had been looking at his phone waiting for a message to pop up like a lovesick schoolboy for weeks, more concerned with the person he’d met before his top surgery than the grueling healing process that came after it.
This time, he didn’t wait for the bouncing dots.
Spikey: I have a faint recollection of who you are. With my busy social life, it’s hard to keep track of all the people I meet in clinics and such.
CowBoy0705: You’re even funnier when you’re not about to go under the knife.
Spikey: What can I say? I have honed and perfected the art of deflective humor as a defense mechanism for all my childhood and queer trauma.
CowBoy0705: Seems like you have. Do you also do avoidance, by any chance?
Spikey: That sounds very much like a you thing.
CowBoy0705: Hey, I’m the one who tracked you down.
Spikey: To feed your inner stalker. You must be feeling so proud.
CowBoy0705: Relieved.
CowBoy0705: :)
Oscar’s heart skipped. Not a beat or anything, like in those YA novels that had kept him going through the toughest years of high school, those stories of boys touching and girls kissing and gender-queer people finding love under the bleachers. No, Oscar’s heart did a proper flip, like a pancake. His stomach grumbled, reminding him of the cookies he was supposed to bake.
CowBoy0705’s message stared at him, that closed-mouthed emoji burning holes into Oscar’s soul. Well, not CowBoy0705.Aaron.
