Exotic - Chapter 53: Chapter 53

Soft morning light peeked through the curtain and tickled at my throat, coaxing my eyes open. It immediately turned on me, burning my retinas and knocking me out of my cocoon amongst the couch pillows. I hit the floor like a sack of flour.
Hangover. It had been a while since I'd suffered one so all-encompassing. I groaned, pushing myself up like a seal and dragging myself back to my makeshift bed like a sun-deprived lizard. My legs bumped the coffee table, which rattled a glass that had been set there the night before. There was two aspirin next to it, still in their foil packaging. I would have thanked drunk Miles if I had ever known him to be so considerate.
Sitting on the floor, I downed the cure and focused on not throwing up my empty guts all over the carpet. My knees hit my chin as I folded myself up, and tried to work up the courage to face the day.
By the time Officer Bloom had sent us home, I'd been nearly falling over in exhaustion. She'd given us her number and several assurances of follow-ups and rapid turnarounds and results. Zsa Zsa's report had made an optimist out of her, it seemed. Reece and Aaron gave statements from the respective nights they'd witnessed the aftermath of Peter's violent temper. There had been more questions, and photographs; I had stood half-exposed in a bare grey room as my torso and aching jaw were documented, shivering and anxious. I'd swallowed down my nausea just long enough to get out to the street, and then I'd thrown up again next to the car.
"I can take him to my place," Aaron had said to Reece coldly. Zsa Zsa had also been giving my guardian a wide berth, expression flat and wary. There had been little time for introductions, but he knew all my stories.
Reece had ultimately left the decision up to me. Conflicted, I compromised by asking Aaron to drive me to my house. I'd phrased it like I needed to see Zsa Zsa home, but really, I was too tired to deal with any more conversation with Reece. However, I desperately wanted to sleep under my own roof, for familiarities sake. Aaron agreed in a heartbeat.
After Reece had driven away, the first thing I did was embrace Zsa Zsa. "You didn't have to come here."
"Of course I had to," he gripped me back with one arm, the other still occupied with his crutch. He pulled me, back, his face stricken with concern. "Babe, if I'd thought for a second he would lay a finger on you, I would have crawled to the station that night. I was such an idiot to think Saturday was a one-time thing for him. He could have..."
I shook my head, cutting him off. "Thank you. Thank you. I know you didn't want to, I wouldn't have asked you..."
"You wouldn't have had to," he reeled me back in for a hug. "Thank fuck you're okay. Fuck. If the police don't lock him up, I'm going to kill him myself."
I let myself be held. Zsa Zsa had been terse with Officer Bloom, terser still with the male officer who had joined her to take further notes. He'd been visibly uncomfortable stripping down to allow photos of his healing body. I'd held his hand through as much of it as they'd let me. Zsa Zsa'z recount of his experiences over the last few weeks with Peter had been hard to listen to; I could only imagine what it had been like for him to relive them. When the male officer had asked why Zsa Zsa hadn't reported his assault earlier, when officers had visited him in hospital, his jaw had set in a tense line; Aaron had answered for him.
"Because of being asked stupid, pejorative questions like that," he stated, glaring daggers into the man until he loosened his tie and coughed nervously. Officer Bloom had taken over from that point, and Zsa Zsa had been more responsive to her no-nonsense approach. She'd told us that she was confident they could make an arrest that night. While a trial would be long and drawn out, she could file temporary restraining orders for us both in the interim; a VRO for both of us that would bar Peter legally from setting foot near us, including our place of work and half a kilometre around it, effectively locking him out of the inner club district and Crescendo. His workplace would also be informed of what he was standing trial for.
Aaron was the next to face my vice grip, as I squeezed him.
"I'm sorry for running away again," my mouth was mashed into his shoulder.
"I can deal with you running away," he rubbed my back. "Generally, you run in a circle right back to me. I just have to wait it out."
The drive back to Zsa Zsa's was rife with comfortable pauses, no expectation to keep up a conversation after the experience we'd had. I just fell asleep against the window, jolting awake as we slowed and subtly wiping drool off the glass with the sleeve of Reece's jumper.
"My mother is probably sitting in the loungeroom with the lights off," Zsa Zsa mused, rubbing his forehead as we pulled up outside's his parent's house. "She isn't used to strange men pacing on her front lawn like I am."
"I was wondering whether it was alright to knock on your door in the middle of the night," Aaron argued. He hopped out to help Zsa Zsa with his crutches, fumbling over himself every time a hand touched his shoulder or waist, searching for balance. I watched with fascination from inside the car, at the regularly nonchalant Aaron fell apart in the presence of Zsa Zsa Magnifique.
"It's was very gentlemanly. Next time, just sneak around the back and hurl pebbles at my window," I heard him purr, and Aaron had flushed so pink I thought he might pop like cartoon bubblegum.
"Or, you know, you could just give me your number," he tried to sound casual but seemed to run out of air at the end of his sentence, choking out the last word. "For next time."
Zsa Zsa stared at him with his mouth slightly open, before settling into a heartbreaking smile. "Darling. You're adorable. And very young. Please, graduate. Go have some fun. See the world. Perth is a small pool for fishing. I think you'll find when you look further afield, I'm probably not your type."
My heart stung at that, though Zsa Zsa's rejection had been far more graceful than Caleb's.
"Am I yours?" Aaron asked bluntly. I envied his ability to cut through flowery language, even when he was visibly dejected. "For hypothetical's sake, so I don't embarrass myself in five years."
Zsa Zsa sighed softly. "I'm starting to think that having a type is more trouble than it's worth. I tend to overlook gaping character flaws when I find people that match it. No, I think I just need people in my life who are kind. You opened my eyes to that. If someone doesn't snatch you up in the next five years, I'll be the one throwing pebbles at your window. Guaranteed."
Aaron opened his mouth to argue but was swiftly shut up with a smacking kiss to his temple. I couldn't even dream of reaching his temple unless I was in heels. My nose was pressed to the glass by that point. Aaron's fingers travelled to the place Zsa Zsa had kissed, his mouth gaping.
"Get home safe, darling," Zsa Zsa gave him one last smile for the road, and started to swing across the lawn. I saw Aaron fall against the side of the car, apparently in some form of standing catatonia.
After an appropriate amount of time for him to process, I'd tapped on the window. "Hate to be this person but if you need more time, can I have the keys to use the heater? It's getting frosty in here."
He had flipped me off and driven me home, buzzing with adrenaline and talking virtual nonsense the whole way.
"That was a solid maybe, right? I mean, I wasn't implying anything, it's obviously too soon for him and Maya would flip if I came out the gate dating someone seven years older than me and.. hey, what's that look for? You don't judge hopeless crushes, you of the most hopeless crush of all."
I was too tired to defend myself. "He said you were adorable. That's got to be a good sign."
"You know who else is adorable? Babies. Puppies. Little old ladies," he grumbled.
I'd gotten home and set up a bed on the couch, not wanting to face the mess of my bedroom. When Reece had come downstairs, I had slipped under the covers and faked being asleep; which very quickly evolved into deep genuine sleep as the weight of the day dragged me under.
"Awake?"
In the present, I groaned at the timbre of Reece's voice, hovering over me. My head fell back on the couch. "That's about the only thing you could have asked this morning where the answer is, unfortunately, yes."
He was standing in the doorway with black cotton pyjama pants and a well-loved Iron Maiden shirt, arms crossing and uncrossing in a way that seemed almost nervous. I was still wearing his jumper and the loaned pants from the police station; the gold dress was hanging off the back of the armchair. My heart leaped for a second when I saw it in plain view of Reece, before settling. Right. All that was out in the open now.
"Want coffee?"
Too surprised to think about it for too long, I said, "Yes."
Ten minutes later we were sipping in silence at the dining table. The blinds were down for my sake. There was an untouched newspaper by Reece's elbow, and a bowl of oats rotating in the microwave. It was like any other morning, except it wasn't, because Reece and I were sitting together and I didn't hate him with every fibre of my being for breathing the same air as me.
It was strangely peaceful.
"You don't have to go in today," he finally said, draining his mug.
I rolled my eyes at that. "We only just got the truancy officer off our front lawn."
Reece didn't laugh. "No one would expect you to."
I fidgeted with the handle of my mug. "I need to. I have some things I need to sort out."
He nodded slowly. The microwaved beeped, and he got up to open it. "How are you feeling, hangover aside?"
Hangover aside? It was kind of consuming my every thought. But I knew what he meant. "I feel... sore."
I hadn't dared look in the mirror yet. My face was tender to touch, and my abdomen sent shockwaves through me whenever I bent to sit down, but at least everything felt the same angle and size it had been the day before; my eyes weren't swollen shut, all my teeth were accounted for. My skinned hands, the lower half of each wrapped in gauze, still stung whenever they brushed anything too hard. I hadn't brushed my teeth the night before, and my gums still tasted slightly metallic.
Reece returned to the table to set the porridge in front of me, and a Tupperware container full of first aid supplies to my right. "The dressing needs changing."
Which I knew was his way of asking if he could help. Wordlessly, I held out one hand to him and started to eat with the other. He pulled off the padding, and both of us hissed through our teeth at the angry rash beneath. He dabbed a healthy amount of Savlon cream over it before rewrapping.
"Have you thought at all..." I heard him swallow. "About... where we go from here?"
I had another few spoonfuls before answering. God, I was hungry. When had been the last time I'd eaten a whole breakfast? "Not really. It was kind of low on my priorities last night."
He nodded, taking my other hand as carefully as his mechanics hands could. "I think you should talk to your Uncle Thomas."
I nearly spat out my mouthful. "You want me to go to England?"
"No, no, of course not..." he grunted, rubbing one temple before rewrapping my right hand. "But I might not be... he might not approve of you continuing to live under my care, after... you understand this arrangement was never really what he wanted. He wanted you to live with family. And... maybe he was right."
I stared, and stared, and stared. "I wanted to live here. I asked you to live here."
"Not because of me," he released my hand and sat back. He sounded frustrated. "Because you were fifteen and didn't want to pick up your life and move it to the other side of the globe. Because of your friends, because this was where you felt closer to your mum."
It wasn't entirely true. My resentment for Reece had boiled in the years of my mother's absence, not before. When I'd asked Reece if I could keep living with him, under mum's roof, I had thought living with him would be kind of cool. Like having a housemate. It was only as he became more of a de facto parent that I began to regret my decision. Only when I started to hear how his friends spoke about people like me and my friends, and how he didn't protest, and how he sometimes laughed. Even then, I only started to be afraid of him when Sephora Utah became a part of my life. Because I knew he wouldn't understand her, and I knew how men who looked like him and spoke like him treated people they didn't understand.
"Look, Miles," he sighed. "I don't want you being forced anywhere you don't want to go. But..."
"I'll be eighteen by the time they figure out where to send me," I said firmly. I remember the last process, the tedious months of waiting, wondering where a faceless court would determine I go. How I would live out the rest of my adolescence. "I'm fine where I am."
His fingers wound together, twisting apprehensively. "With me?"
"I don't have much of a choice, do I?" I jabbed automatically and immediately felt bad when Reece's face fell. "No. Jesus. I don't... I don't mind. But..."
My thoughts trailed off. I took a deep breath to reboot.
"Yesterday, you asked me what I was."
He put a hand over his mouth and nodded, fingernails digging through his morning (two mornings worth now) stubble. "Yes. I'm sorry..."
"No. You asked me what I was," I repeated firmly, pushing aside the empty bowl and turning to face him. "I'm gay. I'm also a drag performer. I use makeup and women's clothes and shoes and wigs to create a female illusion and I sing and I make people laugh and I go by the name Sephora Utah. When I am in drag, I use she/her pronouns, but I identify as male. But all you really need to know is that drag saved my life and it makes me feel beautiful and I'm quite good at it. That's what I am."
Reece was nodding, slowly, thoughtfully, eyebrows furrowed in the middle.
"I don't care if you don't understand it all. I don't care if you never do," I hesitated, and turned to face forward. "But if we are going to live together, I need you to accept all of that. Because I have spent way too long tiptoeing around who I am for the comfort of everyone else. I won't hear anything about the gay thing I can deal with but... No buts. It's all or nothing at this point. Drag is me. Sephora Utah is me."
I finished, voice ragged with emotion and breathing hard through my nostrils. My chapped lips were pressed firmly shut.
Reece took a long time to reply. "You're right, I don't understand. Not all of it."
My heart sunk in anticipation.
"But I can accept you know far more about yourself than I do," he continued. "And I don't understand a lot of things. Therapy. Voting below the line. Past participles. That doesn't mean they don't exist. The best thing I can do when it comes to those things is listen to someone who knows what they're talking about. So... if you're willing to occasionally answer a stupid question or two... I'd like to know more about you. The real you. Do you think that could work?"
There was no way I could adequately respond to that. I just fell back on an old classic. "Yes."
We sat quietly for a while after that. Peacefully.
My uniform was in my room, so there was no avoiding it. Reece told me he had been in that morning to tidy up some of the mess he'd made, but still, I approached the door with a lump in my throat, pushing it open with a rising sense of nausea. The memory of walking into it the last time was seared into my brain, Sephora scattered all over the room like a murdered hooker in the intro of a trashy crime show.
But the chaos had depleted wholly since the day before. Reece had undersold himself by saying he'd 'tidied up'. Every piece of clothing had been hung back up in the open closet, wigs placed crookedly on foam heads. The makeup that had survived was piled on my desk. I ran my hands along it, and my heart raced until it was warm in my chest. Reece had caused the mess in the first place, but his effort to put it all back together was clear. There was love here, in the effort. Messy, complicated, far from perfect love but... I didn't know if there'd ever be another kind, for us. We had too much history. But maybe I wanted him to keep trying so that maybe he could be a part of my life beyond eighteen. Maybe.
After dressing, I faced myself in the mirror. The bruising was bad, to be sure, but at least the swelling was minimal. My eyes were a little bloodshot from lack of sleep, and my lips were peeling. If it was acceptable, I might have dulled the discolouration with a layer of foundation, lit up my eyes with a little concealer, put some blood back in my cheeks with blush. Run over my lips with some gloss. But it wasn't like Sephora could go to school with me.
Could she?
Before I could talk sense into myself, I gathered up the supplies I needed and marched to the bathroom. Delicately, brushing gently across the tender parts of my jaw, I covered the damage Peter had done until his effort to break me was blended into nothing. Nothing visible.
After that, I had to finish the job. I went for a very natural look, nothing too out there, but anyone who got close enough would be able to tell I was wearing makeup. I couldn't make myself care. I rubbed my shiny lips together and brushed my bangs down across my eyes. The school uniform still hung off me unflatteringly, and I lacked the pageantry of Sephora Utah, but I didn't feel half-done by any means. I felt like myself.
Downstairs, Reece offered me a lift; but Aaron was already blaring the horn from outside. I rushed down the hallway, fumbling with my house keys and phone.
"If you're not doing anything," Reece called to me on my way out the door. "I thought we could paint your car this Sunday. If you're still up to it."
I hitched my bag high on my shoulder. "I'd like that."
We didn't quite smile at each other; just kind of nodded in silent acknowledgement of one another. The door closed between us softly; I made care to make sure it didn't slam.
Aaron was tapping the steering wheel urgently as I climbed in. I dumped my bag between my legs and collapsed into the passenger seat, pulling down the visor to fight off the sun. The back seat was noticeably empty.
"Where's your worse half?" I asked him.
"He left before I woke up," he worried at his lower lip as he pulled off the curb. "All I got when I texted was 'Team Meeting at School'. But, I can't help thinking... well, they usually meet on Monday, right? And never this early."
My hangover was instantly overshadowed by a dawning realisation that made me sick to my stomach. "Do you think Aidan called it?"
"I don't know who else would," he looked across at me and his attention zeroed in on my features. "Are you wearing makeup?"
I struck a half-hearted pose, giving him what I knew to be my best angles.
"You're not doing this to draw attention away from Caleb, right?"
I blinked. I hadn't even thought of that. "No. But... maybe that's a good thing?"
"High school students aren't goldfish. They can manage to gossip about two gay kids at once," he groaned. "I think our best course of action would be taking a day off. You've gone through enough in 24 hours."
I pressed a hand to my chest. "All those days I asked you to skip with me last year and you choose today?"
He was coming up to an intersection; a right turn would take us to Truman. A left would take us anywhere else, as far as Aaron could drive. I didn't hesitate.
"I have to talk to Caleb," I said firmly.
"Miles, he..." Aaron looked a little sick himself. His skin was pale from a restless night, his reaction times slower than usual. He wasn't coming back at me with his usual scathing cynicism, "... if things are going down right now, he might not have the time or the energy. He might not have outed you to Reece but that doesn't automatically mean he wants to talk to you after what happened. Which, by the way, I know wasn't your fault so don't you dare start moping."
I straightened my ever-slouching shoulders. My mind was whirling with possibilities, solutions that didn't involve kidnapping and threats of bodily harm, and time machines. "I am not moping. I am going to do something about it."
"Do what?" Aaron's question exploded from him. "I'm sorry Miles. But what could you possibly do at this point? If Aidan had made up his mind, there's no stopping what's going to come out. It's going to be bad, and Caleb might not be ready for apologies. Not for a long time."
"Apologies?" I scoffed, outraged. "I'm not going to apologise. I'm going to overshadow him."
Out of my backpack came a can of red paint, from the stash Reece and I had bought for the car. I'd squirreled one away during our brief stop off at the garage the day before, not certain what I'd need it for but forming a vague idea of how things might be made even. I shook it hard for emphasis.
"What are you planning to do with that?" Aaron sighed.
"Just a little Instagram self-promotion. Across the school entryway."
Aaron was quiet for a moment. "Absolutely not. You are not throwing yourself under the bus for this, you stupid martyr."
I folded my arms. "I'm not taking feedback on this one."
"God help me I will turn this car around," he threatened.
"Aaron..."
"I'm not letting you make a public spectacle, a public shaming, out of your coming out!" he shouted and swore as he nearly ran a red light. The car lurched to a violent stop and my seat beat strained to keep me in my seat. "I'm not letting you turn something this important to you into... gossip fodder. I'm sorry. You'll thank me later."
I was breathing unsteadily, my chest burning where the seatbelt had dug into the fresh injury. I let my eyes fall closed, my voice tight when I spoke. "It won't be a public shaming. Because I'm making the decision for it to get out. I'm in control. At the end of the day, I am ready for this. For people to know, because I'm exhausted of pretending and keeping track of who knows and who doesn't. Caleb isn't. Besides, I have a lot more experience in the spotlight than him."
The car behind us blasted its horn. We'd overstayed a green light. Aaron's face was a storm cloud, but he was still driving in the direction of Truman.
"I wish you weren't doing this for him," was all he said.
"I'm not. Not entirely," I put a hand on his shoulders. "I know this is hard for you to accept, but... I'm such an attention whore, and frankly I'm sick of pretending otherwise. Do you know how many followers I'll get out of this?"
He did laugh at that, a short hysterical bubble, and then sighed, and then bashed his head shortly on the steering wheel. "I suggest cutting, and you have to up it to vandalising school property. I can't keep up with you."
"Don't try to," I advised, as Truman High School materialised around a corner. I tensed my fingers around the can, bumping the cap to my lower lip in nervous anticipation. Sephora Utah was about to go mainstream.