Conventionally Yours (True Colors) Page 7

  After I gave him the books, I gestured at the busy space. “Why don’t you show us around?”

  Like most stores, this one had the usual collection of goods for various fandoms, board games, and plenty of different trading card games. But this place also had a number of sidelines going that made the space even more cluttered—handmade jewelry, greeting cards, toys, and books.

  “Dude. You carry romance novels.” Jasper sounded both horrified and impressed.

  “They sell.” The owner gave a shrug of his bulky shoulders and continued to lead us back to the gaming area, which was pretty crowded for a Sunday evening. “Reserved you a table. And we’ve got a couple of people eager to play you.”

  On the one hand, I was happy to not have to play Alden in front of a crowd while Jasper filmed—something we’d discussed in the car as a possibility. But on the other hand, playing a stranger was its own challenge. They paired me with the owner’s daughter, who was a few years older than me with long, straight brown hair that matched her somber expression.

  “I like your T-shirt.” I gestured at her shirt, which had a Godzilla-like creature eating a guy and an “I eat stupid for breakfast” slogan. Her play mat featured the same hulking creature.

  “Uh-huh.” She didn’t look up from shuffling her cards, and the rest of the match was more of the same, me trying to make small talk to get good footage for Jasper and her resisting all efforts to be social. Some players were just like that—intensely focused on the game—but I couldn’t help but worry that maybe her dad was forcing her to play for more publicity. I knew exactly how heavy parental pressure could get, and I tried to be sympathetic.

  “Your dad get you into the game?” I asked.

  “Uh-huh.” She took the rest of her turn, then lowered her voice. “You can lose the flirting. I don’t get with Odyssey players. Ever.”

  Well. Okay then. I wasn’t about to tell her she had me all wrong. Knowing my fellow Odyssey players, she probably had good reason for the rule. And she wasn’t the first person who’d assumed that me being nice equaled flirting. But it did have the effect of getting me more focused on the game. After I won pretty easily, we cleared our stuff to make way for Alden, who was playing a younger guy with the energy of a squirrel and sharp, pinched facial features to match.

  “Can’t believe I get to play on the show.” The kid bounced on the balls of his feet, making his cheap sneakers squeak on the linoleum floor. “I’ve seen every episode. Twice.”

  “Awesome.” I gave him a smile because I liked his chances versus Alden, who deserved to be taken down a peg or six. Maybe the kid could succeed where my frog-soldier deck had not. “Good luck.”

  “So, like, what’s the real deal with you guys?” He gestured between me and Alden, who made a strangled sound.

  “What do you mean?” I asked cautiously. I didn’t think he was implying we were a couple, but I wanted to tread carefully, especially with Jasper nearby with a camera.

  “Like are you really enemies? You hate his guts, right?” He leaned forward, thirst for gossip clear in his eyes. Suddenly, I was much less inclined to see him win. But his question gave me pause. Were we true enemies? Did I actually hate Alden, or was it more of an annoyance thing? I did want to see him lose, but I wasn’t sure that equated the sort of hate the kid seemed to be implying.

  Before I could figure out an answer, the guy lowered his voice. “It’s okay. You can tell me. He’s annoying as fuck on camera. I’ll wax him for you.”

  “Dude, he’s right here,” Jasper said before I could say anything. Alden looked away fast, probably coming off as dismissive to the others, but I caught the brief slip in his stoicism, face flattening like a clay sculpture getting squashed by a bully, hurt and misery radiating off him for a brief instant before he buttoned himself back up tight again.

  “I hate everyone, not simply Conrad. Now, are we playing?” Alden’s voice was even more formal than normal, and the tension in his shoulders was clear. I couldn’t help but feel responsible, a feeling that lingered even after Alden beat the squirrel, a mere seven turns to victory—the sort of methodical dismembering that made him so damn scary-talented.

  “Good game,” I said to him on the way back to the car.

  “It was okay. I misplayed a counter in turn five. I should have been able to win on turn six.”

  “Still impressive.”

  “I’ll need to be better at the con. Are we eating prior to getting a motel room?”

  “Starving,” Jasper spoke up as we stowed our gear in the trunk.

  We ended up at an old-fashioned diner off the main drag with red booths, tons of kitschy memorabilia, and prices that Jasper’s app promised us were low. Jasper and Alden took opposite sides of the booth, but I stopped myself before sliding in next to Jasper. Still feeling bad for what happened with the stupid kid, I took the seat next to Alden. His surprised, slightly distrustful expression was further punishment for me not being able to speak up fast enough back at the game store.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, eyes narrowing.

  “I don’t hate you.” My voice came out too defensive, and his dismissive sigh said he knew it.

  “The kid was all talk. I won the game.” Alden made it sound as though that was all that mattered, and maybe to him it was. But I wouldn’t soon forget his hurt expression.

  “Hey, this place actually has liver on the menu.” Jasper made a face. “My grandma would be so impressed.”

  “And biscuits and gravy. I like it already.” A few places near Gracehaven offered the midwestern staple, but New Jersey as a whole either failed on the buttermilk biscuit part, offering up a doorstop instead, or made glue of the white gravy. I liked the dish, not just because it reminded me of weekend breakfasts with my long-gone grandpa, but because it was a dirt-cheap option. That, some water, and a side of home fries and I still wasn’t at ten bucks.

  “I’d rather have liver.” Alden made a face before ordering a chicken sandwich. Jasper got some sort of local burger special with a pretzel bun. Over dinner, we debated pushing on a couple of hours or sticking to the itinerary we’d worked out with Professor Tuttle.

  “We were in the car for nine hours. Let’s just get up early. Stick to the original plan,” Jasper said around bites of burger. “I vote we either play some rounds back in the hotel room or see if Columbus has a gay bar that Mr. Newly Legal can use his ID at.”

  “We are not going to a bar.” Alden made it sound as if we were proposing naked dancing at a morgue, not a totally legal beer and some people-watching. It wasn’t like any of us could get lucky, not with sharing a room and needing to be on the road early.

  “Game is fine. I need to work on my decks some more anyway.”

  “You do,” Alden said, not cutting me any breaks despite the fact that I’d just sided with him. Whatever.

  We split the check, and I made sure to add to the tip even though my funds were tight. I’d worked enough crappy jobs in the last year to know that every buck counted. The many papers Alden had been juggling contained information for all the planned stops, including motel recommendations, and we ended up at a chain place favored by budget-minded older folks. Personally, I would have been okay with a total fleabag motel at half the price, but I wasn’t going to make too big a stink.

  I was still doing mental math when Jasper unlocked the door and revealed the small room with two beds. “Okay, so who’s sleeping with who?”

  Chapter Ten

  Alden

  The two beds seemed both football-field huge—taking up all available visual space and looming large in my brain—and birdbath small, like, no way could two guys share easily. Add to that the fact that I had never slept next to another person that I could remember. Maybe when I was little, but another guy was different. More significant than I wanted to admit, and I was mortified that this possibility hadn’t entered into all my
pretrip planning.

  Add in that I wasn’t sure what the protocol was. Was I supposed to pick one? Jasper versus Conrad? Or stake my claim to a bed? In the end, I ended up standing there, total deer in the headlights, Jasper’s question rooting me to the spot. And honestly, Conrad didn’t seem much better, staying silent until finally Jasper huffed, which seemed to jolt Conrad into speaking.

  “Guys. It’s only sleep.” He threw his bag on the closest bed, then grabbed a pillow and turned it lengthwise. “Jasper, man, try to restrain from cuddling me. Alden, you can have the other one.”

  I had absolutely no business feeling disappointed that he’d so easily chosen Jasper over me. Did I want to sleep next to Conrad? Have him lecture me about no cuddling? Accidentally touch arms in the night? Was I seriously sad over missing out on that? As illogical as it was, the pressure in my chest said yes. Yes, I felt like I was missing out on something, and yes, I wished he’d chosen me, like this was dodgeball and I was the kid without a team all over again.

  “No snuggling?” Jasper pouted before sitting cross-legged on the bed near the headboard, and I supposed he was joking, but my inept sarcasm meter made it hard to tell as usual.

  “Dude. You’re like…a cousin or something. Weird city. And besides, we don’t want to freak Alden out.” He gestured at me as though I were some sort of affection deterrent. And maybe I was. If I wasn’t along, maybe they’d hook up, the casual way guys like them always seemed to excel at. Me, I couldn’t manage a handshake without awkwardness, but as long as I’d known him, Conrad had always rolled from guy to guy, changing partners more easily than I changed out my card decks. Jasper didn’t have quite the same reputation as Conrad, but he’d had a regular boyfriend part of the previous year, and I was certain he hadn’t been celibate since.

  “I don’t freak out,” I lied as I put my bags on the other bed.

  “Yes, you do.” Conrad sat on the edge of his bed, digging in his backpack. “If we started making out, you’d squawk like my neighbor’s chickens back home.”

  He wasn’t wrong, but I still took umbrage with his assessment. “Not wanting a…sex show doesn’t make me a prude.”

  “Yeah, it does. Kind of the definition right there.” Jasper set several deck boxes on the bed in front of him. “Now, at tomorrow’s stop we’re supposed to film a casual game, partner style. Think you guys could be on the same team?”

  “No,” Conrad and I said at the same time. I should have been insulted, but I couldn’t deny that no way were we suited to working together, hashing out a joint strategy. If Mr. Fly by the Seat of His Pants even had a strategy.

  “Well, okay then. We’ll give you each a local. But you’ll want to make sure you’ve got a deck that melds well. How about I film each of you talking deck tech for that sort of match, and then we can send those clips to Professor Tuttle?”

  The camera had a stand, and we didn’t technically need Jasper acting as a cameraperson, but I couldn’t deny that he was a good buffer. Making the videos and discussing decks, breaking down the cards that we’d included and why, took us all the way up until we were yawning.

  “I’m showering tonight,” Conrad announced. “I probably still smell like soda.”

  “Yeah, you do.” Jasper good-naturedly agreed, waving him toward the small bathroom while he and I cleaned up the cards and camera equipment. But even as I stowed my cards, my brain kept drifting to Conrad in the shower. I tried not to let the visuals distract me. Fantasy had never really been my strong suit, but my imagination was proving a new capacity as it kept calling up images of Conrad wet and soapy. And Conrad emerging some time later with damp hair and a T-shirt that clung to his back didn’t help at all.

  Thus, it really was no wonder that I lay awake for hours, listening to the other two breathing and wondering about trivial details like whether Conrad had socks on and whether his bare foot might brush whomever he was sleeping next to and whether it was his or Jasper’s soft whistle of an exhale. I tried not to make too much noise rolling over, desperate to find any position that didn’t make the bed feel too big and my feelings way too small.

  * * *

  Somehow, I did manage some sleep with weird dreams of being in a crowded space and bumping into people, all of whom looked and smiled like Conrad. I’d set a phone alarm the night before, but it was actually Jasper’s phone bleating out multiple text alerts that woke us all up.

  “Crap. Crap.” Bleary-eyed, Jasper scooped up his phone and headed to the bathroom.

  “Guess I’m up too.” Conrad stretched, T-shirt bunching around his ribs to reveal a stripe of bare stomach. I looked away before I got caught staring. I supposed we should get dressed, but I preferred to do that in the bathroom, not in front of Conrad. Jasper, however, was still in there, and I could hear him on the phone, talking in low tones.

  While I was going back and forth in my head, Conrad had no such issues, pulling a hoodie on over his T-shirt and switching his flannel pants for shorts. “There’s a free cold breakfast, right? Why don’t I go snag us some doughnuts or whatever they’ve got?”

  “If they have cereal or something with less sugar, could you bring me a box?”

  “You’ve got it.” Conrad gave me one of his easy smiles, the same type that never failed to distract me, and I waited until he was gone before I slid from bed and quickly dressed myself. I wanted a shower, but I wasn’t about to evict Jasper from what sounded like an impassioned conversation. He finally emerged from the bathroom right as Conrad came back with a stack of doughnuts in one hand and a prepackaged bowl of cereal and a carton of milk in the other.

  “Thank you.” I took the cereal and perched awkwardly on my bed to eat.

  “What’s up with you?” Conrad asked Jasper. “Everything okay?”

  “No.” Jasper shook his head. His eyes were red and his shirt and hair damp, like he’d splashed a lot of water on his face. “It’s April.”

  “Shit.” Conrad whistled low. I was missing something—it was June now, not April. And Jasper looked despondent. Even I could sense his misery from the way he kept twisting his hands and his somber tones.

  “What?” I didn’t like being out of the loop, and my question came out a little demanding.

  “April is his younger sister.” Conrad’s voice was more patient than I probably deserved. “She has some sort of rare blood disease.”

  “Yeah.” Jasper nodded. “And she’d been doing really good the last few months. But now she’s back in the hospital. The local one just transferred her to the big children’s hospital, so I know it’s serious, even though my mom is telling me it’s not.”

  “You need to get home.” Imagining myself in his place was easy—I had sisters. I knew how I’d feel if one of them was ill.

  “Yeah.” Jasper’s expression was pained. “But Professor Tuttle is counting on us taking this trip. I can’t ask you guys to turn around for me.”

  “It’s your sister.” My mind was locked on that fact. My own might drive me nuts with how perfect their lives could be, but they’d also stood up for me for years, even when it wasn’t the most convenient, and there wasn’t a lot that I wouldn’t do for them.

  “Exactly. You’d do it for us.” Conrad clapped him on the shoulder.

  “But if we turn around, who will send content to Professor Tuttle? I hate the thought of him disappointed that all of us had to go back.”

  “What if we keep going, but you take a bus or plane back?” My mind was racing, considering and discarding scenarios that could get Jasper back to April quickly. I got what he was saying about Professor Tuttle, but I also knew that I couldn’t let Jasper soldier on when his family needed him.

  “Same-day airfare from Columbus is crazy expensive. My mom looked. She says to just keep on the trip, and she’ll update me.” Jasper groaned. “God, I can’t even think right now. My brain is mush. Last time, we almost lost her. And I hate
leaving you guys with all that driving between just the two of you.”

  “It’s your sister, man,” Conrad said firmly, his conviction so strong that he had to have at least one sister himself. “You need to be there. I don’t have much cash—”

  “I do.” I fished out my wallet. Conrad might be better at the emotional support, but knowing that there was something I could offer made my voice stronger, more decisive. “I have an extra credit card for emergencies. I’ve never had to use it, but this counts. I can explain to my moms later if you use it for a plane ticket.”

  “You’d let him use your credit card?” Conrad gaped at me. “For real?”

  “It’s his sister.” My face heated. I didn’t like him looking so intently at me. And I truly did not like the idea of continuing on the trip without Jasper, but I couldn’t deny that splitting up was probably our best option. Keep Professor Tuttle happy and distracted while he recovered, get Jasper back to his family, and get Conrad and me to the convention as planned. It was only practical, but my heart still pounded like the bass tracks that always seemed to filter out of the frat houses on Saturday nights. Glancing away from Conrad’s inquisitive eyes, I fished out my phone. “I’m going to look up tickets.”

  We quickly ruled out the bus—all the options we could find that weren’t already sold out were like fourteen-plus hours to get back. Airfare was several hundred, but it would get Jasper there a lot faster. I found a flight that worked, used my credit card, and figured out how to forward the boarding pass to Jasper’s phone.

  “Now let’s get loaded.” While Conrad said all the right words as he sat next to Jasper on the bed, I gathered up Jasper’s things and packed them back into his backpack before hustling us out to the car.

  I made sure Jasper ate one of Conrad’s doughnuts, letting go of my no-food-in-the-car rule because him not getting sick from lack of eating was more important. As I rushed around, I was a little surprised that my anxiety was strangely at bay. Unlike when Professor Tuttle had fallen, I wasn’t frozen. Here there had been an urgent need, and I’d been able to meet it with a clear plan that helped all of us meet our goals—get Jasper home, get us on our way, keep the professor happy. And having that plan accomplished made me feel great, buzzed almost as if I’d had too much soda but without the racing pulse.