Felix Ever After(17)

I start gathering the acrylics to put them away in the supply closet.

“Where’re you going?” Ezra whispers, barely glancing up from his sketches of dresses sprawled out in front of him. A few of the others glance up, too.

“Home. Nothing’s coming to me.”

“Home? You mean my place?”

“No,” I tell him, “my dad wants me back tonight.”

“Oh, good,” he says. “Now I can finally invite my special friend over.”

“See you later, Ez.”

“All right,” he says, and actually looks a little sad to say goodbye. “See you later.”

I walk to the door, ignoring Declan, who rolls his eyes and shakes his head, muttering something across his two tables to James as I leave. Things have calmed down at school. I don’t know if Ezra made it a personal mission or what, but somehow, everyone figured out that I did not want to talk about the gallery. I just want to pretend it never happened. And so that’s what everyone’s doing. This has made being back in class bearable, even though my throat still closes up every time I walk through the lobby, or whenever I open my Instagram app, afraid that there’ll be another message waiting for me. To be honest, the only thing that makes any of this better is thinking about how I’m going to destroy Declan Keane’s life. I can’t help it. I’m a little obsessed.

The trains are running pretty smoothly for once, and I’m back up to my dad’s apartment in less than two hours. He’s in the kitchen, cooking stir fry from the smell of it. Smoke fills the tiny apartment and instantly burns my eyes. The TV is on, playing The Real Housewives of New York. My dad’s love of reality TV is immeasurable.

I cross over into the living room and make myself comfortable on the plush chair. Captain sits in front of the screen on the TV stand, staring right at me, purring deeply. “The prodigal son returns,” my dad says, only slightly passive-aggressively.

I stop myself from rolling my eyes. I don’t know why he’s suddenly annoyed that I’m staying at Ezra’s. I get that I’m the kid in this situation, but this is still supposed to be a chance for me to break free and get used to the idea that in a year, I’ll be living on my own as an almost-adult. We agreed that I’d split my time between home and Ezra’s, so it’s pretty frustrating that he’s acting like this.

I tell him that I need to grab clean clothes. I bring my backpack into my bedroom to pull out my dirty laundry, tossing them into my basket. I’m a little bit of a neat freak, and there isn’t much space to be messy anyway, so the floor is spotless, bed made, Akira on my nightstand. I pull open my drawer and grab a few tanks and T-shirts, jean cutoffs, and boxers, before I stuff them into my backpack and head into the living room again, switching off the light. My dad puts plates on the dining table that’s pushed up against the wall.

“Hey, kid,” my dad says as I sit down with my food, “maybe you should give Ezra’s apartment a break.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean it’d be nice if you stayed home a little longer than one night every few days.”

I frown as I pick out the green beans, pushing them to the side. “I thought you said it was okay to stay with Ezra.”

“Yeah,” he says, “every once in a while. I was thinking every few weeks.”

“The program is over in two months. It wouldn’t make any sense for me to just stay down there once every few weeks.”

“So it makes sense for you to not live here, at home, with your father?”

“It’s not a big deal,” I say. “It’s not like I’ve never stayed over at Ezra’s before.”

“I’m not sure how I feel about you spending all that time with a boy.”

I freeze. It’s the sort of thing my dad would say before he knew I was a guy. The sort of father must protect daughter stereotype that pissed me off before, and sure as hell pisses me off even more now. “Is that what it is?” I ask. “You don’t like me staying over at Ezra’s because he’s a guy?”

My dad hesitates. “His parents aren’t with him—”

“I’m a guy too, though,” I say, and I’m met with silence. “If I’d been born with a penis, would it be as much of a problem?”

“You’re putting words in my mouth,” my dad tells me. “The issue would be the same. You two are in that apartment without any adult supervision.”

“We’re seventeen,” I say. “We’re going off to college next year. We’re not little kids.”

My dad’s shaking his head. “Never said you were.”

Neither of us says anything for a while. There’s a scraping of knives against plates, clatter of glasses against the table.

“Besides,” my dad says, “just because you’re both boys, doesn’t mean you can’t be . . . inappropriate with each other.”

“Ezra and I are friends. Best friends. Nothing else going on there.” My dad won’t meet my eye, and I know I should stop, but there’s so much about this conversation that pisses me off. “I like staying down by Ezra’s, because at least with him, I never have to feel like he doesn’t respect me.”

My dad frowns at me. “And what does that mean?”