Chapter Text
I search the dinner crowd of Olive Garden for my date—a cute college girl by the name of Rin, Asian with curly hair and big doe-like eyes. Her hair is a different color in every one of the pictures on her dating profile, so in my efforts to find her, I look around for any flash of color at all.
And sure enough—bursting through the front doors like a battering ram—comes a small green-haired girl, wearing a striped long-sleeved shirt under a pair of purple overalls.
Rin looks around the restaurant in a panic, but the second she spots me, a smile explodes across her face.
She comes and sits in the booth across from me, says my name in this lilting voice like it’s half a question—”Hey… Arlo?”—and then throws her hand over the table for me to shake it. It’s soft. And small.
“Rin,” I say. “Hi.”
It seems I’m momentarily stunned.
She’s wearing beautiful makeup—mostly around her eyes, though I really don’t know much about makeup at all—that perfectly frames those big brown eyes.
“Gorgeous,” I say. “You. Are. Gorgeous.”
Her face explodes into shades of pink. As if she’s surprised by the objective statement I’ve merely laid out in front of her.
She says, “Oh, god.” A giggle and then: “Thank you. You’re—”
I feel her eyes on me, looking me up and down. She sees my red polo shirt and my plain brown hair. She smiles. It’s… polite. A very polite smile.
“Your eyes are beautiful.”
This was her opening line when we matched on Tinder.
When I don’t respond fast enough, she says, “I’m so sorry I’m late, by the way. I took the bus.”
“Oh, you’re fine.”
She grabs her drink—she’d asked me to get her a water—and takes a sip, her eyes never once leaving mine. “Can I be honest with you?” She hardly waits for my answer. “I’m bad at small talk, so I’m just gonna immediately say exactly what’s on my mind: I’m surprised a girl like you matched with a girl like me in the first place.”
I laugh. I can’t help it. “And what do you mean by that?”
“It’s just. You’re so pretty. And you look like the type of girl who was popular in high school.”
“My god.” I raise an eyebrow up to the ceiling. “Is that an insult?”
“No!”
“In what way do I look popular?”
“Well, I guess—it’s just that you weren’t smiling in any of your pictures. Like… an angry supermodel!” She shrugs and smiles real big. “And you didn’t really show off any of your personality on your profile. All the pictures were pretty much the same. It’s like I was supposed to already know you.”
I cross my arms and lean over the table. “Now I’m wondering why you matched with me at all.”
“Because you’re pretty! Obviously!” She puckers her lips and looks away. “Tall, hot, and mysterious. Of course I swiped right. Why did you swipe right?”
“You’re the most vibrant person in this restaurant. And on all of Tinder, to be frank. I like that.”
“But my profile—”
I sigh deeply and begrudgingly. “For an autistic person, you’re really beating around the proverbial bush here. Yes, I saw that you’re autistic. I also saw the huge pile of stuffed animals in the background of your dorm room, so I’d say it wasn’t really a question at all.”
She giggles. “I just wanted to make it clear. With online dating and everything, I didn’t want people swiping right and—” She grimaces. “You know, getting more than what they signed up for?
“I’m autistic, too.”
“Oh!” Her face completely lights up. “Oh, that makes a lot of sense now.”
The server comes by and drops off the salad and the bowl of breadsticks, and Rin eyes the latter of the two like a man waiting on his last meal. For a moment, I just watch. The glimmer in her eye. That mischievous little grin.
I say, “You know you don’t need to ask for permission, right?” and she snags one breadstick faster than I can blink.
“God, I love this place.”
“Did you come here for me or the bread?”
She laughs real hard, hunched over the table and waving her half-eaten breadstick around like she’s about to cast a magic spell. “Honestly?” She grins. “I came for the bread, but I stayed for you.”
I shake my head and start to dish myself out a plate of salad.
Halfway through my first bite, she asks me the dreaded question: “So, Arlo, tell me about yourself!”
I hesitate.
She finishes her breadstick and rests her chin in her hands and watches me. Unblinking big brown eyes. “You know I have an unhealthy obsession with stuffed animals,” she says. “You know I’m an art student. You know I like space and astrology and crystals and tarot. What about you?”
I crunch on a crouton. She watches expectantly, her big smile never wavering.
“That’s the worst question you could possibly ask me,” I finally say. “Autistic girl to autistic girl.
She pouts.
“What if I ask you something first?”
“Fine.”
“Do you really believe in...” I wave my hand around, searching for the right word. “...all that witch stuff?”
“I’m sensing judgement here.”
“It’s a genuine question.”
She makes a face at me. So I slide the bowl with the last breadstick in her direction. As a bribe of sorts. And her face absolutely lights up. “No, I couldn’t possibly take your breadstick….”
“I’m not a big fan.”
She snatches the breadstick. Through a mouthful of garlic, she says, “I don’t know whether I should be overjoyed or incredibly disappointed in your terrible taste.”
I hum and flip through one of the menus, looking for something that doesn’t have too much cheese. On a date night, I really don’t want to be shitting out my guts.
“To answer your question,” comes her long-awaited response, “I choose to believe. I want to know there’s more to life than just this, you know?”
“Salad and breadsticks?”
She looks me in the eye, intense all of a sudden. “I want to believe in souls. In life after death.” She raises her hand, as if to touch me, but draws it back at the last second. “Soul. That’s what drew me to you. To your profile, I mean. It’s like I can see your soul straight through your eyes.”
Suddenly, eye contact is a whole lot harder.
I look away, but I can still feel her watching me.
“I don’t like having blue eyes,” I say under my breath. “There’s less melanin between me and the world.”
She covers her mouth and giggles. “There’s something about you.”
“There’s something wrong with me.”
“You mean, other than the autism?”
I sigh. “Other than the autism.”
“Well, I think you’re perfectly pleasant.”
I raise a disbelieving eyebrow. “Are you lying straight through your teeth or are you just insane?”
She watches me, her face squished between both her hands. Then, with an adorable little smile, she says, “I secede. Maybe there’s something wrong with both of us.”
By the time we’re done eating, the last bus has already left, so I ask Rin if she’d be comfortable with me driving her back to campus. She says yes, of course, and follows me back to my car.
I feel her eyes on me as I reach for the gear.
Careful to keep my face blank and unreadable, I turn to look at her. She’s all smiley and pink, her hands clasped neatly in her lap. She very clearly has something on her mind.
“What is it?”
“Well.” She looks away and plays with her hands. “I don’t really want to go home yet.”
Outside the window, I see the sun starting to set. A street light flickers on, setting the inside of my car aglow. I say, “Everything’s closed by now, or at least getting ready to close.”
She giggles.
This time, it’s me watching her.
Then, in a soft, lilting voice, she says, “You said you live nearby, right?”
I stop the smile before it reaches my face, tearing my eyes away from her and putting my car in reverse. “Should I show you around my place?”
“Yes.” She leans forward and turns the volume up on my radio until the music is just loud enough to hear. “I would like that very much.”
Ten minutes later, I pull up to the house and park on the side of the street. She looks down and plays with her hands as she follows me up to the backdoor, passing the hedges and pretty flower garden that Mary takes such pride in.
“I live on the second floor. Mary—that’s the landlord—and her son live down below.” I offer my hand to Rin, and she takes it as we climb the stairs up to my apartment. “Careful. It’s steep.”
“It’s nice,” she whispers.
By now, it’s dark out. There’s a chill in the air, but it’s not quite cold enough for a jacket. Summer, it seems, is only hanging on by a thread.
I go up and press on the door and grab my keys from my pocket, but before I’ve had the chance to wrestle the right key into the lock, the door creaks open on its own.
Rin stiffens behind me.
I groan.
“Did you… leave it unlocked?”
“No,” I say. “I did not leave it unlocked.”
I push the door the rest of the way open, dragging Rin in behind me. “McCalister!”
McCalister—pink swollen eyes, surgical face mask, and all—walks out of my bedroom and into the open-concept living room and kitchen like a child about to be scolded. He’s wearing a blue plaid sweater vest, and his dark hair is bleached blond at the ends.
“Sorry.” He sneezes into his elbow. “I thought you were going home with another girl today.”
It’s at that moment that he sees the girl behind me.
“Oh.”
I pinch my nose. “McCalister.”
“I just wanted to see Ham!”
Ham the golden retriever pokes her head out from behind the bedroom door, her little face lighting up at the sight of a new person. She bounds in Rin’s direction and nearly takes her right off her feet.
Rin doesn’t seem to mind at all. With a big goofy smile, she kneels down to pet the happy dog.
“This is Rin,” I tell McCalister, “and this—” I look at Rin and grimace in McCalister’s direction. “—is my downstairs neighbor.”
“Greetings and salutations,” he says.
McCalister disappears into the bedroom and comes back out a moment later with a bearded dragon tucked like a baby in his arms. “And this is Henry!” He holds the lizard up over his head, grinning stupidly. “I am so sorry, Ham. We’ll have to continue this playdate another time.”
He glares at me and heads for the door.
“It’s 10 PM,” I say.
He stops at the door, with his arms still up. “Decontaminate me!”
Sighing deeply, I grab the lint roller from the kitchen counter and get most of the dog hair off of his clothes. He says, “I hope you got all of it. One hair, and I’m dead by morning.”
He walks out with an indignant huff, and I shut the door behind him.
Rin looks up from where she’s petting Ham. “He’s interesting.”
“That’s one word for it.”
“You know, I would’ve thought you more of a cat person.”
“I am.” I drop our leftovers off in the fridge then join her next to Ham. “She wasn’t mine originally. She was Mary and McCalister’s dog, but his allergies were so bad that they gave her to me as soon as I moved in.”
“That’s sweet.” She stands up, playing with her hands as she looks around my apartment.
When this house was first built, the second floor was more of an attic than anything. On one side of the living room is a small closet with a toilet that wasn’t always there, and on the other side of the living room is another small closet with a shower that wasn’t always there.
Endearing. I know.
There’s a couch, a small TV, and a coffee table. The kitchen is bare bones, and—now that I’m seeing it from Rin’s eyes—kind of pathetic. I’ve lived here for a couple years already, but it doesn’t quite look lived in. Apart from all the dog hair, of course.
The first thing out of Rin’s mouth is, “You need magnets on your fridge,” and somehow, I’m not at all surprised by this observation.
“I need a lot of things.”
“It’s cute.”
“The dog is cute.”
She looks around once more. When I look closer, I see that her hands are trembling for whatever reason. I know it was a little chilly outside, but I thought my apartment was a comfortable temperature.
I offer my hand again and smile. “Shall I show you the bedroom?”
She nods, so I take her to the bedroom and close the door to keep Ham out.
I usually don’t bring girls home. It’s vulnerable—and embarrassing, in a way—to show them the bed I wake up in every morning, the kitchen I eat out of every day. I prefer to see their apartments. To ask about their lives.
But it’s fine.
No big deal.
I can do this.
I look at my bed, again seeing it from her eyes. Black comforter. Black pillow. It’s plain and boring, the polar opposite of the glimpse I got of her dorm room in the pictures on her profile.
She must be… judging me. Everything about me is the opposite of her.
When I turn away from the bed to look at her, I find her kneeling at my bookshelf with a sly smile on her face. “Finally!” she says. “This is what I’ve been waiting for!”
“...Books?”
She fingers the spines, reading some of the titles out loud. “Frankenstein… Dracula… You’re really into gothic horror, aren’t you?”
I clear my throat, feeling stupidly embarrassed.
No girl has ever seen my bookshelf.
“Do… you… like to read?” I say, redirecting the conversation, because god forbid I talk about myself.
She claps her hands together. “I love to read! Mostly graphic novels, though. I like the art.”
I go and sit on the bed—because how obvious do I need to be?—but, of course, she grabs a book from the shelf before she comes to join me. She flips through it, saying, “Carmilla. I think I’ve heard of this one. It’s about lesbian vampires, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.” I touch her face, and her cheeks go pink. “I’ve been wanting to do this since the moment I first saw you.”
“...Oh?”
She closes the book, and I take it from her to set on the nightstand.
I lay back and gently pull her on top of me, her face slack with horror. I wonder for a second if this is her first time with a girl. And then I wonder if this is her first time with anyone.
“You can touch me,” I say. “If you’d like to.”
So she touches me. And then—slowly and carefully, like she’s weighing every word—she says, “I know, on your profile, you said you were only looking for something short-term.” She hesitates. “How short-term are we talking?”
I guide her hands, and she trembles on top of me.
This is a question I don’t know how to answer.
“Just the night?” she whispers. “And then never again?”
Why… does she sound so scared? Why would any girl want a second night with me?
And why does this feel… different?
When I open my mouth to speak, I don’t know what I’m about to say. “I….” She touches me and leans in, and her skin is soft and warm and safe. I say, “I want to see you again.”
And then she kisses me.