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He took us into his bedroom, the massive space feeling completely different to the room we had just spent hours in. There was a pleasant lavender scent in the air, most likely coming from the large diffuser sitting on his nightstand, set inside a pot of bamboo, the soft clouds from the diffuser rising up through the sticks of bamboo and wrapping around the thick green leaves.
Rocky laid me down on the side of the bed closest to the bamboo. I watched him walk around the bed, his entire body looking as if it were painted by a master painter, every shadow and highlight placed with intent and artfulness.
He went around and shut the heavy drapes on the windows. “I set a glass of water there for you, too.”
Sure enough, next to the bamboo was a glass full to the brim with water. I thanked him and grabbed the cup in both hands. I took a few big grateful gulps. Lying down, I felt a pang of nerves, realizing this was the first time I’d ever spent the night over another guy’s house.
The nerves quickly evaporated when Rocky got into the bed and wrapped his arms around me, pulling me into him and holding me for the five minutes it took for me to fall into the deepest, most restful sleep of my life.
I couldn’t remember my dreams that night, but it didn’t matter. I woke up next to my dream the next morning anyway.
* * *
THREE WEEKS LATER
My feet were curled up under me, my fingers dancing across the keyboard, my friends shouting through my laptop speakers. I was supposed to be focused on the tar-covered dragon we were fighting, but all I could really think about was one thing, and one thing only:
I can’t believe I got to go into his Velvet Room.
It had been a solid three weeks and two days since the night I’d been invited into Rocky’s room, and I still had not stopped thinking about it. That entire night went down as the certified best night of my entire twenty-three years of existence. Something had happened that night. Rocky wasn’t the only one unlocking doors. There had been a dusty, cobweb-covered door deep inside me that I had long forgotten about, until Rocky came around and handed me the key.
Behind it was a well of endless confidence. The kind of confidence that had me wearing my mom’s heels as a kid and dancing circles in the green living room rug. The confidence that had me speaking up in class whenever I knew the answer and sometimes when I didn’t. A confidence that had me excelling in my karate classes and my Spanish classes and my art classes.
It was a confidence that I’d slowly suppressed at some point in high school, when I began feeling more and more distant from the rest of the kids, as the closet I was hiding in became stuffier by the day. I had sealed and cemented that door shut the night I was almost taken advantage of. That night had changed me in ways I didn’t even realize until recently.
“Sam! Did you fall asleep on the keyboard?” Silk asked, her character casting a bright white light onto me, my health points shooting back up into the green.
“Sorry, sorry,” I said, jumping back into the game. A ding rang through the living room, letting me know someone else had subscribed to my channel. I shot a wink at the camera and blew a kiss.
“Thank you…” I read the name on the side of my screen. “MissyKitty69, for subscribing and joining Sam’s Club!”
“Dude, I’m telling you,” Icey said over the sounds of ten different spells being cast at once, “you’re gonna get sued.”
I laughed and thanked someone else who had subscribed right behind MissyKitty. I peeked at the number of current viewers and almost tipped the flimsy desk over.
Four hundred and twenty-five people were currently watching me. A new record for me.
It was a welcome side effect of all this newfound confidence. I found myself letting go and actually connecting with the people behind the screennames, and having more fun playing games than I’d ever had before. I thought it showed, and it propelled me to higher numbers, even though my setup was janky and my laptop couldn’t handle a consistent sixty frames per second without sounding like a dual-engined jet plane getting ready for takeoff.
Hazel walked over from the kitchen with a steaming cup of coffee, and the scent alone was enough to wake me up a notch. She took a seat next to me, the couch dipping in her direction.
We’d only gotten in a couple of days ago, and truthfully, it was still weird. If it weren’t for having three months left on the lease with a clause forbidding us to sublet, then we would have been out of here from the night everything had happened.
