Zal had even submitted to her styling for the show. He truthfully wasn’t that happy with the white feather boa slung around his neck—it’s angelic, not birdlike, I swear the feathers are fake, she had insisted and insisted — over the white plain shirt upon which she had scribbled a red outline of an angel with a halo, harp, wings, and all. She told him he looked edgy, hip, arty, like he was with her. An art couple, she had cooed. And for the first time, Zal saw Asiya in something other than black — she wore a white linen tunic and white flowing slacks, the outfit simple as ever but shocking on Asiya for its brightness, chosen to be in sync with her muse, her angel, her show, of course.
That night could have been the highlight of her life, too, it occurred to him too late.
In some ways it had all been overwhelming, the all-eyes-on-them as they walked in a bit late — Asiya had told him it was very important they be just a bit late — but once he had realized these were different looks than what he used to get, he fell in love with the attention. He was suddenly full of things to say and excited to shake hands and hug and even air-kiss and pose by his photos and even autograph one girl’s cocktail napkin.
If he had ever had a shot at smiling, that night was it.
And then finally there was that boy. The one with all the questions, mostly innocent ones.
“Who are you?” he asked, just like that.
“I’m fine,” Zal had said, mishearing who for how, several drinks into the evening. Since the night of Willa’s birthday those many months ago, he had developed a love-hate relationship with alcohol, locked, it seemed, in a cycle of regretting and indulging over and over.
The boy had chuckled. “Not too modest, huh?”
Zal had blinked, confused. The boy — freckled, thin, scrawny, in a cap, tank top, and jeans — was looking him up and down, in a way that was somehow different from all the other eyes on him.
“Is that you?” he said, pointing to one of Zal’s black Halloween wing portraits. “Are you the angel?” The boy was smiling, an oily smile; he knew the answer.
“I am the angel,” Zal said, and tried to make a joke to tag on: “But I’m no angel.”
The boy chuckled again, as if Zal were a masterful comic. “Oh yeah? You want to prove it?”
Zal didn’t say anything, just tried to follow those eyes that moved from his feet to his feathered boa.
The boy finally went for the least innocent question of all. “Do you want to go in there,” he asked, pointing to the restroom across the hall, “and kiss me?” Only one aspect of it had shocked Zaclass="underline" the very idea that you could kiss someone other than the one you were supposed to kiss. The notion was absolutely revolutionary, and of course appealing — he had recently felt just a touch enslaved by Asiya and his boyfriendhood, and of course, at the same time, he had become such a kissing enthusiast that the idea of a new set of lips was stupefying. Before he could make a decision — after all, he knew giving in was the wrong thing to do, and, should Asiya find out, which he suspected she would, suspected in fact he might be the one to tell her, if not that night, well, one day, everything could very well be ruined — the boy had led him by the hand to the bathroom and gone in first. A few seconds later, through just a crack, he motioned Zal in with a big smile, and all that beautiful hell had broken loose.
They went in and stayed there for what felt like an eternity. He lost all sense of himself, but gladly somehow. There he found himself kissing as if his life depended on it. The alcohol in his system was suddenly overwhelming him, so his technique (slow, circular, searching, whipping, flicking, thrusting, backing off, thrusting harder, and harder and harder, in that order) was sloppier than usual, but it didn’t hinder his desire to take that mouth in, take everything he had, and employ the hands, face, neck, ears, shoulders, arms, just short of another place he knew people went but he still felt too on the fence to introduce now, or anytime, for that matter. This was making out, and Zal thought he was good at it, maybe even better with the boy than with Asiya. So in the bathroom of the gallery where Asiya was having her first solo art show, he gave it everything he had, let the alcohol coat his conscience, and allowed himself to enjoy every bit of the very eager body before him, without a second’s second thought—
“Fuck!” The door opened, and both of their heads ripped apart from each other and turned to it, the source of the Fuck.
It was, of all people, Zachary, to Zal’s horror — one of two people it was paramount not be privy to this spectacle.
Zachary slowly shut the door, as if his eyes couldn’t believe what they were seeing, but not without a few words, dripping with disgust: “Fucking piece-of-shit faggots.”
It was like waking up from a dream. Zal suddenly looked at his partner as if for the first time.
It was not Asiya.
It was not even a woman.
It was a man. That, he knew, was what had made Zachary say it. Plus the fact that this man, or perhaps boy, this much younger male, Zal suddenly noted, was Zachary’s very close childhood friend from next door.
The boy, whose name Zal had suddenly forgotten, pulled Zal back close to him. “Who fucking cares anyway. Come back to me.”
And for a second Zal tried to, but the kiss had suddenly become the way it was that first time, foreign and confusing and wet.
He pulled away. “I’m sorry.”
The boy sighed. All they were wearing was their underwear — the boy his boxer shorts and Zal his briefs — their other clothes in one collective pile in that enormous bathroom. The boy got dressed, glaring at Zal.
“See you never, neighbor,” he said, before flicking off the lights and slamming the door on him.
Zal sat on the floor of the dark bathroom, his heart racing. He felt sick; he felt terrified.
It was nothing compared with the hell he felt when he got the courage to rejoin the party at the gallery, where of course Zachary and Asiya, in perfect nightmare form, were huddled in a corner gesticulating conspiratorially.
He had messed up with everyone.
Asiya didn’t say a word to him until the opening was over, when they were outside the gallery space, alone. She was smoking, something she did only when she was very mad or stressed, something she had begun doing more and more lately, it seemed.
“I’m sorry, Asiya,” he mumbled.
It took her red face to remind him of that sentence from the night of their own first kiss: You’re gonna betray me, aren’t you? And what had he said? He couldn’t remember, but he was sure it wasn’t yes.
She snorted and sucked on the cigarette for what seemed like ages, the longest drag he’d ever seen anyone take. “Tell me. . are you, um, gay?”
Another drag, shorter. She said, “And don’t tell me you don’t know what that is.”
He did know. He thought about it. He couldn’t be of that sexuality if he had no sexuality whatsoever, he wanted to tell her, but he couldn’t.
She said, “I can’t believe at my first fucking show, my special fucking night, you’d cheat on me.”
She said, “And, yes, especially considering we haven’t done anything else, that counts as cheating.”
She said, “Maybe you would have gone further with him, who knows? Maybe that’s more your thing.”
She said, “It’s one thing to hurt your fucking girlfriend, but Zachary? What has he ever done to you? Connor has been his dear friend since they were toddlers. How dare you? How dare Connor, too.”
Connor, he thought. Connor.