“Whoa, your nipples are pierced?” he blurted, causing Cya to press the bunched up hoodie to their chest as they shot him a glare. “Not that I was looking! I wasn’t, like, trying to… Sorry.”
A chuff of dry humor clattered up their throat. “It’s not like I have much in the breast department for you to see anyway.”
To be honest, Dex hadn’t really noticed. Cya usually wore loose clothing, and he was always more interested in their unique jewelry than whether he could make out the shape of their tits or not. Besides, he tried really hard not to be gross, and staring at girls’ boobs was creepy.
Unless they invited him to stare, in which case, he happily obliged because boobs were awesome.
Instead of saying any of that, he said, “That’s okay. Size isn’t everything. I bet you have great tits.” Their eyes widened at that, and he backtracked. “Uh, that’s not—I just meant that you shouldn’t be insecure about your body because you’re smoking hot.”
When their eyebrows shot up so high they nearly reached their hairline, Dex started to panic. “Not that your self-worth is contangent on the male gaze or my validation. Honestly, the beauty metric is rooted in patriarchy and pedophilia, so as a society, we should fully reject it.
“Plus, beauty is subjective. What trips one person’s trigger might be a big turn off for another. So trying to conform to an unrealistic andunattainable standard is feudal, anyway. It’s just a form of control and abuse by toxic men who are embarrassed about their height or dick size.
“Which is also patriarchy, by the way, even though incels try to blame it on feminism which just feeds the cycle—”
Cya held up a hand, and Dex gratefully swallowed his next bout of word vomit. They folded their pinkie and thumb into their palm, leaving three fingers up. “Three things.”
“Okay,” he said meekly.
“One, it’s contingent, not contangent.”
“What’scontangentmean then?”
“It’s not a word,” they said with a slight air of condescension. “Secondly,feudalrefers to a medieval social structure.Futilemeanshopelessorineffective.”
“Noted,” he whispered.
“Thirdly”—they lowered their hand to rub at the space between their eyes—“what the fuck are you even talking about?”
He kicked at the metal floor and shrugged. “I dunno. I panicked.”
Silence stretched for the beat of two seconds before Cya snorted a laugh, slapping a hand over their mouth to smother it. Dex grinned sheepishly, and the Sypent buried their exasperated amusement in his hoodie. They slipped their arms into the sleeves and shrugged it on over their head.
It was too big for them, the sleeves swallowing their hands until only the tips of their fingers peeked out from the cuffs. They released the last of their hair from the bun and secured the scrunchy around their wrist as the wavy strands tumbled over their shoulders.
They looked cozy and comfy and… shit. He liked Cya wearing his clothes. They’d smell like him now, and if he ever got the hoodie back, it would smell like them. Which was wonderful. And terrible. Because they weren’t actually friends.
This felt like friends, though. If Dex was being truly honest with himself, this felt like more than friends. This felt like a crush, a big, fat, probably self-destructive crush. But he didn’t want to stress about that part right now. He had other, more pressing priorities.
“I’m sorry, Cya,” he said, and the Sypent’s head jerked up so fast he worried they’d given themself whiplash.
“What?” they asked in disbelief.
He avoided their gaze and tucked his hands into the pockets of his gym shorts. “I’m bad at boundaries. It’s probably ’cause of my abandonment issues from my dad leaving and stuff, but it’s not an excuse.”
“Dex,” they tried to interrupt, but he wanted to get through this quickly, if only to save himself some semblance of pride.
“You kept telling me to leave you alone and not talk to you, and I just… I assumed you were putting up a front or something.” He took a shuddering breath and shook his head. “But I should have listened to what you were saying. I should have just believed you, and that was my bad. So I’m sorry for bothering you, and I’ll leave you alone from now on.”
“Dex,” they said again, but he really just wanted this to be over.
“If you still want me to tutor you, I will. I don’t want you to fail the class. But we can do it here at school; I bet Professor Myls won’t mind if we stick around the lecture hall for an hour. Outside of that, we can just…notanymore, you know? Clean break.”
When he finally made eye contact with them again, Cya was gaping at him like he’d grown a second head. He rolled from his heels to his toes, then back again. They continued to stare. He blew an awkward raspberry, then jabbed his thumb over his shoulder.
“Okay, cool. I’m gonna go because this fucking sucks. You can keep the hoodie.” He half-turned, then thought better of it. “Actually, that’s not true. I want the hoodie back. But not now. Whenever it’s convenient for you, I guess.”
“Dex,” they said for a third time, and he splayed his hands as he walked backward.
