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“Hey, dumbass. Just letting you know I’m on my way, see u in 10 minutes”
Sir Pentious was blushing. He was blushing so much. He had been staring at this text from Cherri Bomb for at least a few minutes. His hands were trembling, it had been so long since he last saw her. Normally, Heaven wouldn’t allow her to visit, but recently, restrictions had gotten somewhat more lax, and, with the help of Emily, the three had scheduled to see each other this day. He was so happy, but also really anxious. He knew how she was, hot-tempered, a little judgmental, and so, so cool. He was hoping to appear cool in front of her. He tried to tell himself to not worry too much about it, that it was just how she was. Like her calling him a dumbass, for example. He knew it was affectionate and he shouldn’t take it to heart. Still, part of him was already spiraling, and he was going to concentrate so hard on being as cool as he possibly could be, to avoid any rejection from her.
Suddenly, the doorbell rang, taking him back to the real world. Shit, has it already been ten minutes? Focus, Sir Pentious, he thought, you don’t want her to think she caught you off-guard. Even though that would be true. He quickly opened the door.
“Miss Cherri Bomb!” He said, extending his hand.
She shook it, then entered the room.
“Woah, cool place,” she said, “I see Heaven has some cool apartments, and… wait, is that a drawing of us?! Is that ME at the center?!”
She pointed at the drawing on the wall, laughing so hard she couldn’t breathe.
“That- uh-” Pentious stammered, “this- Emily drew thisss!”
“Who’s…” Cherri said, catching her breath, “who’s Emily?”
“The… angel that welcomed you here” Pentious said. “You know she’s going to spend the day with usss, right?”
“Ohhhh, yeah, her! Well, that doesn’t surprise me at all, you know? She does seem like the kind of person who’d do this!”
Speaking of the devil -or, more accurately, the angel-, Emily opened the door.
“Hey guys! Should we get going? I’ve planned so many activities, and…”
“Actually,” Cherri said, “can you give us some time? It’s been such a long time, I feel like I should… ask him what he’s been up to?”
Sir Pentious felt warm. Cherri was interested about his life. She cared about him.
“Okay, I’ll be waiting outside!” Emily said, leaving the room.
Cherri sat down on the bed, inviting Pentious to do the same.
“Soooo… how’s it been?” She asked.
“Well- uh… pretty good, honestly! I’m… adapting pretty well.”
There was an awkward silence. Neither of them really knew what to say.
“I missed you” Pentious muttered, scared of saying it out loud.
“Same thing” Cherri said. “I’m bored as fuck without you.”
“Really?” Pentious said, his head perking up.
“Yeah. Never seen someone so dumb yet so smart at the same time.”
He didn’t know if that was supposed to be a compliment.
Suddenly, he felt something warm on his hand. It was Cherri’s hand on top of his. He tensed up, not expecting that.
Oh shit she’s holding my hand what am I supposed to do am I supposed to say something what does she expects me to-
“Let’s get going?” She said, smiling.
“Yeah!”
***
“Man, the food in Heaven just tastes so much better!” Cherri said after quickly finishing her plate. “How am I supposed to go back to Hell food after that?!”
“I’m glad you like the restaurant I picked!” Emily said. “It’s my favorite one!”
As the two girls continued excitedly chatting, Pentious was starting to get really anxious. Cherri and Emily were getting along so well. It seemed so easy for them. He admired how they could just… talk for so long, but not interrupt each other, or say something wrong. Meanwhile, he had been silent for at least twenty minutes. Was he supposed to say something? Did the girls find his silence weird, like he was disinterested or stupid? Or did they just not care about him? Did they prefer when he was silent, so that they could chat in peace without being interrupted by him? Maybe they just found him annoying.
He couldn’t help but feel excluded. But he knew that he only had himself to blame for that. He couldn’t blame other people for not liking him as much, when he wasn’t even putting in the effort to socialize. He knew friendships took time and effort. But when every single thing made him exhausted, he didn’t have enough energy left to nurture his relationships. It wasn’t that he didn’t care, on the contrary, he cared so, so much, but he was just so tired all the time. He had grown to accept it as part of his life. He was disabled, after all.
Suddenly, he heard his name mentioned in the conversation.
“…and we also need to stop by the hardware store to buy pieces for Pentious’ new machine…” Emily said.
His energy refilled in one second. This was an opportunity to talk about his new project, and his passion in general, building. His special interest, as his psychiatrist said. He felt a wave of happiness rush through him.
“I’m building a rocket ship!” He said, a huge smile on his face.
His hands started to flap.
“I’ve been working on it for the past week, and I’m almost done! I just need some last pieces, and some paint to make it pretty! I’m planning on painting it yellow, it will look so cool! You see, it’s an improvement from some of my previous attempts at making a rocket ship, because this time, I added more cargo space, and also a bigger fuel tank, oh, and I also built it in an aerodynamic shape so that it flies better! I’m so proud of myself, you guys need to see this!”
He was expecting his friends to be interested, maybe even impressed, but instead, he was met with blank faces. Well, not exactly blank. He wasn’t great at reading expressions, but he recognized immediately the look of boredom and disapproval. Oh no. He did it again, he interrupted a conversation to talk about his stupid interests nobody cared about except him and made a fool of himself.
“Okay” Cherri said, clearly annoyed. “Can we go back to what we were talking about?”
Sir Pentious felt a stabbing pain in his heart, and a sick feeling in his stomach. He felt stupid. He knew he looked stupid too. He felt like a self-centered asshole. He shamefully lowered his head as the two girls resumed talking as if they had known each other for years. Why was he so bad at this?
He tried to think about something else. But it kept replaying in his head. “Can we go back to what we were talking about?”. Cherri’s angry tone, the disapproving look on her face… she was mad at him now, he knew it. It always ended like this, he should have known it by now. He tries to open up to people, he starts to feel a connection, and then, the second he thinks he’s doing good socially, he says something wrong, does something wrong, makes a bad joke, oversteps boundaries, shares something too personal… to put it simply, he always messed it up. He was starting to wonder why he even tried in the first place. Maybe it was just how he was. He was born a social failure, he died a social failure, he would probably stay that way forever.
He felt the tears come. He tried to hold them back, but it wasn’t gonna work. He had to leave. He just wanted to be alone.
“I- I have to go to the ressstroom” he said, quickly getting up.
He slithered away while trying not to attract too much attention. Once he got to the other side of the restaurant, he quickly looked around. Luckily, he found a door leading to the backyard. He opened it and, once he was outside, closed it behind him as fast as he could.
Finally, silence.
Pentious leaned back against the wall and sat down, hugging his tail. He was sobbing now. He tried to distract himself. Usually, when he was feeling down, he would think about his latest project. It always brought him joy. But this time, it felt like his project was ruined for him because now he was going to associate it with this moment. He was trying so hard to calm down. To just stop thinking about it. But he felt like he got punched in the stomach. Everything felt wrong. He felt wrong. Fundamentally wrong. He was so ashamed and he felt like he would never feel good about himself again. He felt stupid, annoying and selfish. Part of him was mad at Cherri for being mean to him, or at least he really felt like she was mean to him, but he was first and foremost mad at himself. He knew that he had a real problem with respecting boundaries and that it was just normal that she let him know he was interrupting. Because he was in the wrong. And of course, that meant he was a terrible person and Cherri was mad at him.
No matter how hard he tried or how good his intentions were, at the end of the day he was always reminded that he couldn’t run away from his own brain. From his autism. He tried to accept himself, he really tried, but it was getting increasingly hard to love what made him so isolated and miserable. Nothing would change the fact that his brain literally wasn’t built for socializing with most of the population. Nothing would change how he always felt an invisible wall preventing him from truly connecting with people.
He knew he shouldn’t think that, but he often mourned the life he could’ve had if only he was neurotypical like everyone else. Maybe then he would have grown up making friends instead of always ending up alone in the school yard. Maybe he wouldn’t feel so far behind all the time. Maybe he would’ve effortlessly socialized like normal people, without having to censor himself and monitor every single thing he said, without even worrying about people’s opinion of him. Maybe he wouldn’t need to fight so hard just to get even a little bit of affection from other people. He wouldn’t be so exhausted all the time. He wouldn’t have developed constant, never-ending anxiety.
He wouldn’t hate himself.
***
“Hey,” Cherri said, “where’s Pentious? He’s been in the bathroom for quite some time now…”
“Maybe he’s sick,” Emily said, “he seemed really unwell. I’ve heard it’s common for autistic people to have stomach issues.”
“I see,” Cherri replied, not really wanting to think about that.
Still, she was starting to get worried. Knowing Pentious, it wasn’t unlikely that he had gotten lost or something like that.
“I’m gonna go check on him.”
She got up and started walking across the restaurant. Once she found the bathroom, she opened the door, only to find it was empty.
“Shit, where the fuck did he go?” She muttered to herself. “Doesn’t he know he’s scaring me?”
Glancing around the restaurant, a half-opened door leading outside caught her attention. She stepped outside, and, as she expected, Sir Pentious was there, sitting against the wall.
“Hey,” she laughed, gently hitting his shoulder, “I thought you were in the bathroom.”
He didn’t react. Surprised, Cherri Bomb observed him for a few seconds.
“Pen? Are you crying?” Her voice softened.
No answer.
“What happened?” She asked with concern in her voice. Pentious had never heard her speak to him in this tone.
“Take a wild guessss” he said. He didn’t mean to sound angry, especially not to her, but he was tired and overwhelmed.
Cherri took a few seconds to process his reaction, taken aback. She wasn’t expecting him of all people to snap at her.
Suddenly, she realized.
“Is it because of what I said earlier?”
He weakly nodded. Cherri couldn’t help but burst into laughter.
“Wait, really?” She exclaimed. “Oh my god, Pentious, it’s such an insignificant thing to cry about! That’s so stupid!”
Sir Pentious only cried even more. He felt so dumb and oversensitive.
“Sorry” Cherri said, going back to being concerned. “That was mean. I shouldn’t laugh at you, especially after making you cry.”
Sir Pentious was so confused that he stopped crying for a second. She had never acted like this. Cherri was always this temperamental, aggressive girl. She didn’t worry about hurting people’s feelings. What made her change?
“It’s okay,” she continued as she sat down with him, “you know, your… uh… your feelings are valid, and… fuck, I’m so bad at this.”
Pentious laughed. His laughter quickly faded, though.
“Do you… hate me?” He asked. It was the question that was always at the back of his head every time he talked to her, but he always held himself back from actually asking it, out of fear of making things even worse.
“I don’t hate you, you idiot!” She laughed. “I was just a bit annoyed that you interrupted our conversation, that’s all.”
The stinging feeling in his throat came back. Hearing her actually say it made the pain come back. He felt like such an asshole.
“I’m sssorry” he said.
“I know you’re sorry! And I forgive you!” Her voice was so sweet.
“Really?”
“Yes! It’s really not that big of a deal, believe me!”
“But… I always end up acting in a bad way, and then I make everything about myself by crying so much. I’m such a manipulator.”
“Hey, you’re not a manipulator. Nobody’s perfect, it’s normal to make mistakes. Hell, I make mistakes all the time!”
“No, I mean… I’m a social disassster! It… seems so easy for you, and for everyone else… I’m just… whiny.”
“Pentious. You have a disability! It’s normal that some things are harder for you! I figure it’s already hard enough to live as an autistic person. It’s normal for autistic people to struggle socially, it’s part of the diagnosis criteria!”
Pentious looked at her.
“How do you… know that?”
Cherri blushed and looked to the side, feeling vulnerable.
“I, uh… started researching about autism. Y’know, I started reading… books, stuff like that. I just feel like it would make me a bad friend to you if I just… didn’t try to learn anything about your disability. I know I have no filter, and I can be quite rude, but… I promise I’ll try to be more careful around you. I’m sorry too.”
All of a sudden, Pentious started getting teary-eyed again.
“Th… thank you, Che-e-rri…” his voice was shaky.
“Eh, no problem” she was a bit flustered too. “Feel ready to go back at the table?”
“Uh… I… still need a moment. I’m sssorry.”
“Believe me, it’s fine. I’m gonna stay with you until you’re ready.”
There was a moment of silence. Pentious felt so glad to have a friend like her. And also so relieved she didn’t hate him. He should learn to not hate himself too.
“I love you” he told Cherri.
“Me too!”
“Wait- really?!”
“Yes! Are you finally asking me out? I thought you’d never ask!”
“Uh… I’d love to, but… don’t you think you deserve better?”
“The fuck you mean? What’s not to love about you? Do I need to make a list about everything I love about you?”
“Well… I would like that.”
“Okay, first of all, you’re the kindest person I ever met. You may have a hard time socializing, but you always worry so much about other people, and it’s so easy to see you’re a good person and you care. Second, you’re smart. Honestly, I really don’t tell you this enough, but I can’t help but admire you. You’re a fucking genius! Third, you’re passionate. About your machines, about your friends… about everything! You care so much, and I mean this in a good way! You always try your best, and that’s so admirable!”
Sir Pentious looked at her, his face soaked in tears.
“Fourth… you’re so cute” she said, leaning forward to kiss him.
Pentious was blushing so much.
“It’s too bad I can’t stay very long” Cherri sighed. “I really missed you. Believe me. I care about you, Pentious.”
“Well, I’m convinced one day you’ll get redeemed, and then we’ll finally be together again.”
“You really think I can be redeemed?”
“Of courssse!” He said with a big smile. “And then maybe we could even start a family!”
“Heh. Our kids will definitely inherit your autism.”
They both laughed.
“Pen, could we go back to your place today before I leave? I wanna see the rocket ship you’re building.”
Pentious’ eyes lit up.
“Really? You want to sssee my machine?!”
“Yeah, of course! I’m curious!”
“Of courssse you can see it! But… can I infodump about it when I show it to you, or is that…”
“Please do! I know I won’t understand anything, but I love hearing you talk about the things you love, as I said, you’re so passionate. I love the way your eyes light up when you talk about your… special interests? Is that what it’s called?”
Pentious hugged Cherri Bomb. He was so, so incredibly thankful for her.