Felix beamed. “A Felix shenanigan.”
Jacob groaned. Felix covered his mouth, unsurprised when Jacob licked his palm. Some habits never changed.
“You know that won’t stop me,” Felix said. “Especially now.”
Jacob stopped licking his palm and shoved it away instead. “What are you dragging me into?”
“Dragging? Excusemoi, you’re the one who wanted a whole new Jacob by the end of the semester.” Felix grabbed Jacob’s shoulders, his heart skipping a beat when he realized he was going to touch them later without making an excuse about it. “You’re going to do somethingfun. And I’m gonna be there to help.”
“Fine,” Jacob said flatly. “What are we doing?”
Twenty minutes later, they were standing under the fluorescent lights of the bedroom section of a Macy’s.
“This isn’t fun,” Jacob said, pushing back the bowler hat Felix placed on his head when they walked through the accessories section. “Why are we here?”
“It was the closest fun I could find without paying bus fare,” Felix explained. He’d done the math in the shower—his parents couldn’t afford to send more money for his cooking lessons, let alone the fee he’d inevitably have to pay when he found a cleaning guy, so his thin spending money was almost nonexistent this semester.
Jacob took off the bowler hat and set it down on one of the dozens of beds surrounding them. “People will stare.”
“People don’tcare,” Felix argued, throwing out his arms to indicate the absolute lack of shoppers populating a Macy’s at three-thirty p.m. on a Thursday. Then he adjusted the scarf he’d taken when he was grabbing the bowler hat. “Now go on and role-play. Don’t pretend you didn’t love drama class.”
“I didn’t.”
“Youdid! You got really into it, but only when you thought no one was watching. Which made you useless in that production ofMamma Mia,” Felix said.
Jacob glanced nervously around the empty bedroom section. Felix sighed, plucking the bowler hat off the bed and placing it back on Jacob’s neat hair.
“I’m basically no one,” he said. “You don’t have to be embarrassed around me.”
Jacob gave him the kind of look that was so exasperated it was only possible from someone who had known him forever. The look lasted so long Felix started preparing another motivational speech. Then Jacob sighed and stepped back to mime opening a door.
“Hi honey,” he deadpanned. “I’m home.”
Felix jumped back into his theater kid roots immediately, adopting a Southern accent that rolled in all the wrong places. “Oh my god,Bernard! Where have youbeen? You left home for cigarettes eight years ago, why come back now? I’m remarried! My husband will be home any minute!”
Jacob’s mouth hung open. “Uhhhh. Um. Who’s your new husband… Gwendyl?”
Gwendyl, Felix mouthed.What the fuck?
Jacob shrugged, his eyes gleaming in a way that meant that if Felix was going to pull stupid shit, Jacob was going to do it right back at him.
Felix swished his scarf dramatically. “Well, I’d rather not say.”
Jacob’s mouth twitched. “Gwendyl.”
“No, I mustn’t!” Felix laid a hand on his forehead and stumbled back against a bedpost. “Oh Bernard, my poor heart… and yourtemper…you’d only jump to conclusions!”
Jacob huffed, picking up a sudden Irish accent that was just as awful as Felix’s. “Don’t tell me it’sHarry.”
Felix wailed so loudly Jacob glanced around again, unable to keep the grin off his face even as he shushed Felix.
“Oh, it’s true,” Felix cried. “I just couldn’t help myself! All alone in this empty mansion… I just have so many beds, I couldn’t get it out of my head!” He gestured at the dozens of beds lined up around them.
Jacob snorted, then tried to hide it. “I can’t believe you, Gwendyl,” he said, the Irish accent falling apart with every word. “All this time I was trying to get home to ye and our mansion full of beds and ye were shacking up with my best friend!”
“Eight years!” Felix said. “A woman hasneeds, Bernard!”
“Just tell me it didn’t start until after I left for the cigarettes.”
