stop and talk to someone—often a professor—on his way in. The professors loved him. Anyway, this statistics class was boring, this professor was a jerk, and I was….” Oh, this always sounded conceited.
“Way smarter and further ahead in theoretical mathematics?” Simon proposed dryly.
Alex flushed and concentrated on his plate. “I wouldn’t put it that way.”
“Oh, I would.” Simon brushed his knee under the table. “You’re our best accountant, Alex, not only our best worker. And I would bet you’ve been doing the books for your friend as well.” He nodded toward the modified kitchen. “How else could he afford all this?”
Alex shrugged. “For all of them. Kate, Jordan, and Cully all sell things through Barty’s booth. He just attends the cons, and they give him a percentage. I sort of make that all legal.”
“And profitable, I imagine,” Simon told him, that quiet confidence making Alex all glowy inside. “But go on. You were smarter than your professor, and Jordan was everybody’s friend. What then?”
Alex chuckled. “Well, the professor got something wrong, and I was explaining—at the whiteboard—why it was wrong, and the professor got mad and told me to sit down. And Jordan said, ‘No! I’m taking notes, and I want to see how this problem works when it’s done right!’”
Simon laughed, and Alex nodded.
“I was so flattered he’d even noticed me I almost dropped the marker. But anyway, I finished the problem, and after class Jordan stopped me at the doorway. I thought he was going to ask me to tutor him, because, you know, brain tutors slacker—it’s a trope. But Jordan’s grades were better than mine. He was asking me to come down to the river with him and his friends to go hunt bugs.”
“Bugs?” Simon looked a little squicked out.
“Well, yeah. At first I was like, ‘ew,’ but Jordan, he’s an entomologist, and he was taking pictures for a project. So he’s got the lot of us down there, taking pictures of praying mantises and dragonflies, and he’s just so excited with every find. Afterward, he took us all out for pizza—and asked us to his dad’s house party that weekend. Now me, I was like, ‘Uh, that’s forty minutes away and you barely know me!’ and he was like, ‘It’ll be all of us—don’t worry. There’s a pool, and my dad and his husband really like to invite people. They told me to bring friends. You guys’ll love it. It’ll be fun. Come party. No drugs, beer if you want it, free food. I swear, we don’t bite.’”
“Wow!” Simon squeezed his eyes shut in disbelief and shook his head. “That’s a little… forceful?”
“Right?” Alex shook his head too. “But… you know. Jordan. Kate and Josh were there, and Dante and Cully, and Jordan took me and Barty in his car, and we talked all the way up. And Jordan’s family is, well, the best. Asa and Sebastian—that’s his dad and stepdad—are the nicest people.” Alex chuckled a little. “It was hard not to crush on Sebastian—he looks like a boy-band front man, and he’s wicked funny. But it was a good weekend. And after that Jordan kept grabbing us. I mean, bug hunting, the zoo. He got us to pool our money and rent a house by the ocean for summer vacation. And his dad got us these houses for a steal for rent, and it was sort of wonderful.”
He reached out and touched the picture again, biting his lip.
“Tell me about them,” Simon said gently.
“They were… well, when we were bug hunting, I thought they were together, and when we left that night for our own dorm rooms, I thought they would end up in each other’s beds. Every time we went somewhere or did something or hung out together, I felt like… like they should be together. Dante—the bigger guy—is a journalist, but I think he hates his job. He’s good at it, makes a living, but he always wants to be, I don’t know, more creative. And Cully is a seamstress. Or seamster. He makes costumes for all the local playhouses, and his house is a mess, and his life is a mess. The only thing he can take care of is the dog.” Alex’s voice was shaking, but he couldn’t seem to stop it. “But they took care of each other. They were constantly going out with the wrong people. Dante was going for all these vapid twinky gym rats and Cully was always talking about his bear crushes, and you know