Something About Us

Neither Good Nor Bad, Part Three

Enter: Ryan Gabriel Tramblay

My stomach croaked loudly. I was laying on top of the sheets in Holiday's bed shirtless too, so the noise escaped out into the air completely unfiltered. As soon as the wambling stopped Holiday's laughter started. "You hungry or what?" He chortled.

"Shut up! Besides, it's two in the morning. I'm going back to sleep."

"I'm not going to let my boyfriend go to bed hungry."

I sat upright in the bed and looked at Holiday in the dark. Moonlight illuminated the curtains and cast us in a blue-grey light. Holiday's green eyes were wide and looked as though the colour had been washed out of them. "I didn't mean to say boyfriend."

"What do you have downstairs?" I asked rubbing my eyes. I chose to ignore the boyfriend comment. My eyes burned with the want of sleep.

It became alarmingly clear to me then that I punished Holiday by refusing to be with him. I punished him but not half as much as I punished myself. I wanted to be with Holiday and yet I was afraid.

"I don't memorize the fridge. Put on a t-shirt and we'll go get something to eat," Holiday climbed out of the bed and sucked out all of his warmth. I had let my walls down far enough that we were sharing blankets and now I felt cold without the weight and warmth of Holiday against me.

I slipped a t-shirt over my head and followed Holiday down the staircase. I was so familiar with the house I knew better then to step on the sixth and second stair going down as they creaked loudly. In the dark I followed Holiday's form until we were in the kitchen.

Holiday flicked on the stove light as it was small and flooded the kitchen with warm yellow light. He opened the fridge while I stood on one side and he stood on the other. All the food was colour coded with round stickers so none of the guys ended up eating someone else's groceries. Food with green dots were Kirei's, red dots were Jason's and blue dots were Holiday's.

"Anything with a blue dot. Unless you want me to get beaten up."

"Damn, your fridge is dry! What is this?" I asked holding up a jar of white sauce. The fridge at my house was completely packed. Getting things into the fridge was akin to playing a game of Jenga, only you tried to wedge a container of leftover spaghetti in-between two bags of milk and a carton of drinkable yogurt.

"Hm . . . tartar sauce."

"For what!?"

"For breaded fish. Jason likes it on his chicken nuggets too."

"Wow."

"We eat out a lot so we don't need a lot of food to cook stuff."

"Again: wow. Do you have cheese? Tortillas? Chicken?"

"You're thinking of quesadillas?" Holiday said with a smile. When I nodded he chuckled nervously. "I don't have chicken. We have tuna. We can be resourceful and make tuna quesadillas."

I sighed and Holiday laughed. We took out the ingredients and quietly prepared the quesadillas. Once the tortillas gleamed gold, we quietly plated them and slipped the frying pan into the sink to be washed tomorrow morning.

Back in Holiday's bedroom we ate on the floor with the TV off. We talked in hushed tones and drank pomegranate juice so dark it stained our tongues purple. "At times I really do wonder what I'm doing at university," Holiday muttered between bites. "I never had to go. I don't need to be there right now. What the hell am I going to do with an art degree?"

I grinned. "Become an art professor."

Holiday pantomimed a rope's presence. He pretended to tie the invisible rope into a noose, secured it around his neck before allowing himself to hang limply. "I would rather die than be a professor. Ditto for teaching. I spent twelve years trying to get out of school and I'm not going to willingly go back."