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The sounds of laughing, yelling, screams from the roller coasters, music from the arcades—it all became distant white noise as Felix rested his head on my shoulder and we gazed at the sea. At the very top, Felix sighed and turned to kiss me. It felt like there should be fireworks exploding for us in the night sky.
I hadn’t gotten a call or text from a sponsee all day, and I hoped the trip had made my cancellation of a few days before up to Felix. The scent of his shampoo mingled with the ocean salt, fry oil, and sugar smells in the air. I matched my breathing to his and memorized every detail.
Too soon, the wheel completed its second rotation and we were forced out into the real world again. I bought us a funnel cake, but Felix was too tired to eat any, so we walked back toward the subway.
On the train, Felix slid onto the seat next to me and immediately rested his head on my shoulder.
“Thank you for today,” he murmured as the train pulled out. “It was magic. It was perfect.”
He was asleep in seconds.
It was. It was a perfect day.
Chapter 8
Felix
Two nights after our perfect day at Coney Island, I woke up in the middle of the night from a dream where Dane didn’t know I existed. In the dream, I showed up at his apartment like I often did, but he acted like I wasn’t there. He cooked and ate dinner and did the dishes, and the whole time I was talking to him, tugging at him, trying to get him to notice me, but he acted like I was invisible. When I finally went to leave, he looked up and said, “Oh, hey,” then turned away.
Even though it was just a dream, it left me with a gnawing panic in my stomach because the Dane in the dream had seemed so real. Sofia wasn’t home. I tried to go back to sleep, but all I could think about was what if the next time I went to Dane’s, that really happened. Finally, I worked myself into such a lather of panic that I picked up the phone in the pitch black and called Dane.
After a number of rings, he answered, “?’Lo?” Clearly he’d been asleep.
“I—I—I don’t wanna be invisible to you,” I blurted out.
“What? Felix? What?”
“I had a bad dream and you ignored me and it just—sorry, sorry—it really freaked me out, and you’re…you never call me and I’m always the one to invite you to hang out and if I didn’t do that, would you let me go? Would you never call me? Would I never see you again?”
My eyes adjusted to the darkness a bit and the familiar shapes of the living room emerged. Suddenly, with a little grounding, I felt very foolish.
“I…shit, sorry, I…” Still no response. “Dane? I—sorry I woke you,” I finished miserably. “You can just hang up. I’m…yeah, shit, I’m sorry.”
There was a sigh from the other end of the line, so I knew he hadn’t hung up. I was an idiot. I’d called and woken my boyfriend up in the middle of the night because of something he’d done in a dream.
“Dane?” I ventured, very softly. “Do you hate me now?” I bit my lip, heart pounding.
Another sigh and then I could hear a creak, like he was getting out of bed. I imagined him prowling his apartment, pacing from the bedroom to the living room in his underwear, powerful muscles soft from sleep.
“Felix.” He said my name low and gruff. “Will you come to dinner with me at Caleb and Theo’s?”
“Will I…what? Yeah! Well, wait. Are you just inviting me ’cuz I called you in the middle of the night all freaked and made you feel obligated?”
“No.”
“Um. Okay? Then, yes.”
There was a sound on Dane’s end I couldn’t place, then he said, “I’m sorry. No, I wouldn’t have let you go without getting in touch if you stopped calling me. I didn’t…I didn’t think of it that way. I—shit. It made me feel good. When you’d ask me. So I kept letting you. Sorry you thought I didn’t want to ask you.”
I let that sink in: it made Dane feel wanted when I asked to see him. I hadn’t even considered that he might need that.
“Oh. Okay. I thought…I thought I might be bugging you and you didn’t know how to tell me to buzz off.”
“No.” He said it fast and certain. “I…Fuck, Felix, you’re so young. I worry that I’m not…not good for you. I’m not good at this. Not like someone else could be.”
It was the first time he’d ever really acknowledged that he thought about our relationship when we weren’t together. That he thought about me when I wasn’t around. But also for the first time, I was able to hear his fear.
