Holiday His Stories (BXB short stories)

Pretzels at Prom (that's a holiday, right?)

"You should just do it," Savannah giggled, nodding with assurance. "Go for it!!"

Lauren nodded. "Just go up there and say it, rip it off like a bandaid. Stop freaking out and just do it!"

David shook his head, blonde hair in his face. All three of them sat on the concrete stage, lined with brick walls, where they sat every day for the last four years of high school for lunch.

He couldn't eat, even though he had the leftover fried rice with spam he'd made for his Thursday night dinner. David made dinner twice a week, for their family of five. To earn his keep and to learn a life skill, his mom repeated over and over again. So lunch today was exactly what he loved, even with a healthy dollop from the jar of chili crunch he'd ordered online. But the butterflies in his stomach were on a diet apparently.

Lauren zoomed in on her phone, held up casually, their favorite tool for lurking on the guys they liked. It panned over the group sitting at a few picnic tables near the cafeteria door. If this was an 80's or 90's movie, they'd be described as the indie kids, or the emo kids, maybe. These days, they were just regular guys, a few in leather jackets, beanies almost all around, even though it's almost summer vacation, a few with piercings, a few in black converse.

He copied her and found his target. Shawn Leslie. Shawn Leslie. He was an exchange student this year. From London. He didn't look drastically different from the other guys here at school, maybe a little paler, but when he opened his mouth, that sexy British accent made everyone stare.

"Come on, David. Just jump into the water! You say, 'Hey, I was wondering. Would you like to go to prom with me?' What's the worst that can happen?"

"I'll be mortified for life when he says he's straight, and despite seeming like a nice guy, turns out to be homohater who says mean things to me and makes me cry," he responded, done looking at Shawn's manly beauty for today, tucking his phone back in his pocket and frowning at his rice and promising himself he'd eat it when he got home. Wasting food is a terrible habit.

"You don't know that!!! Has he said he's straight? No, right?"

"Be quieter, please," David begged his best friends. "The whole school will know by now."

"David, you really should just do it. If he laughs, he laughs. If he's mean, he's mean. But at least you'll know you tried. And who knows? Maybe he'll say he's loved you since he saw you from a distance on the first day of school. Or that he writes sonnets to you in your English class together." Lauren shrugged. "What if he goes back to England, lovelorn, never having gotten to kiss the cutest gay boy in America?"

He pulled on his backpack and stood up, hardly towering over them, since he was five feet three inches. There were many conversations with the pediatrician, since his parents and siblings were all relatively tall. But according to the doctor, David was likely done growing. Eighteen and could probably pass for a fifth grade student. Maybe not even that. It made dressing like a teenager, almost a man, pretty challenging.

So he made do. Jeans in the youth section and extra small girls shirts, so at least there was more variety than Sonic the Hedgehog or Baby Yoda to choose from. Today it was a gray one with a cartoon snail carrying a boat load of creepy mushrooms. Cottage core meets goth chic. He didn't mind doing the cute stuff, he liked it. Hard to avoid the stereotype anyway, a short gay boy with pale skin, fluffy blonde hair, powder pink lips and baby blue eyes. Even if he dressed in death metal core, he'd look adorable.

Or so everyone around him said.

Adorable isn't likely to net a hot, British date to the prom.

"I'm going to class. I'll see you guys after school."