Felix Ever After(18)

“I mean he knows that I’m a guy,” I say, ignoring the flinch of shame deep inside me—these days, I don’t even know if I’m a guy myself. “I don’t ever feel like I have to convince him of that. I mean that he calls me by my name: Felix.”

“Listen,” he says, “it isn’t easy to just suddenly switch my idea of who you are in my head. For twelve years, you were my baby g—”

I cut him off before he can say it. “That’s never who I was. That’s who you assumed I was.”

He’s quiet. A woman on the TV screen is crying, tears leaving streaks on her fake orange tan. My dad breaks the silence. “I’m trying,” he says. “I’ve shown you that. I’ve proven that. I don’t always get it right, but I’m trying to understand.”

Sometimes, I don’t know if that’s enough. I feel like a shitty son, getting angry at my dad when he’s the one who paid for my hormones, my doctors’ visits, my surgery, everything—but every time I’m around him, I feel like I have to work hard to prove that I am who I say I am. It pisses me off that he doesn’t just accept it. That there’s something he has to understand in the first place.

“I need you to be a little more patient,” my dad tells me. “I’ve had a certain idea of who you are in my head for twelve years. That’s a long time.” He hesitates, and I can tell he almost called me by my old name.

My dad won’t look at me. I don’t know if he even knows how to look at me. He can’t see me for who I really am—only who he wants me to be. Maybe this is fucked-up, I don’t know . . . but somehow, it’s his approval I need most, even more than anyone else’s. I need his validation. His understanding, not just acceptance, that he has a son.

I’m not sure that’s something he’ll ever give me.

I stand up, scratching my chair against the floor, grab my backpack, and head for the door.

“Where’re you going?” my dad calls, but I ignore him as I slam it shut behind me.





Six


EZRA’S EITHER ASLEEP OR NOT HOME WHEN I BUZZ HIS apartment number, and when he doesn’t answer his phone, I sit down on the concrete stoop steps, knees curled up to my chest, cheek resting on top of them. It might’ve been a little overdramatic, storming out of my dad’s apartment like that, and guilt is building in my chest. It’s going to be awkward as fuck the next time I try to go home.

I must fall asleep like that, leaning against the rusting railing, because when I open my eyes, there’s a hand on my shoulder. I blink away the bleariness to see Ezra leaning over me, illuminated by the orange streetlight.

“Hey,” he says, voice low. “What’re you doing here?”

“Fight with my dad,” I murmur, still half-asleep.

He sits down beside me and lets me lean against him instead of the railing. “You okay?”

I shrug. “Where were you? Special friend’s place?”

He nudges into me. “No. Couldn’t sleep, so I took a walk.”

“Insomnia again?”

“Guess I got used to staying up all night with you.”

Ezra helps me to my feet, and we stomp up the steps and to his apartment. He unlocks the door, and I let myself in first. The time on Ezra’s stove blinks 11:03. I head straight for the mattress, ready to crash. The two of us can stay up until three in the morning on a good night sometimes, but right now—after that fight with my dad—I’m exhausted.

But before I can drift back to sleep, Ezra sits on the edge of the mattress, kicking off his scuffed Converses. “I know something’ll that’ll cheer you up,” he says, twisting to look over his shoulder at me.

“Yeah?” I mumble. “What’s that?”

He flashes a grin. “A party.”

I stare at him. “What?”

“A party,” he says again. “Let’s have a party. I’ll invite some people over.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“No,” he says. “Why would I be kidding?”

“Because it’s eleven o’clock on a Monday night.”

“Christ, you’re an old fuck,” he says. “Real St. Cat’s summer parties don’t actually start until midnight anyway.” I wouldn’t know. I’m not usually the partying type. “The dorms are close. People should be able to get here pretty fast. I’ll tell them to bring booze for entry.”

He already has his phone out, scrolling through contacts. I reach out a hand to stop him, but he yanks his phone away.

“Look, if you don’t want to come to my party, that’s fine,” he says, standing up, fingers flying over the screen as he—I’m assuming—texts out an invite. “But this is my apartment, so you’ll have to wait outside until the party’s over.”

I groan and roll over, hunching myself into the fetal position. “You’re not inviting Declan and his dumbass friends, are you?”

“Who the hell do you think I am?” Ezra says. He starts marching around the apartment, tossing crap into the one trash can he has in the corner of the kitchen. It feels like three minutes barely pass before his intercom starts to buzz. He grins at me as he hits a button, and after listening to echoing footsteps on the staircase outside, there’s an impatient knock on Ezra’s door.