laughs, his head shaking as he chokes on a bit of casserole. My stomach jumps a little at the sound of it and all I want to do is make him laugh again. “Okay, yes, a fancy bathroom to poop in would be fantastic, but I’m talking about something that would change everything for you.”
“You underestimate the power of luxury,” I tell him, as the irony of this dingy little trailer really sinks in.
He has another bite of the casserole and lets out a delicious sigh that gives me chills. Then he points his fork at me. “Try again.”
It takes a minute for my brain to work, because his sigh is on a constant loop. I clear my throat and force myself to think. “Honestly, if I could just be me. That’s it. That would change everything. If I could just be the version of myself that exists in my head, but in real life all the time, that would have made high school better. Maybe then I would have run for prom queen because I wanted to and not because some knuckle-dragging Neanderthal nominated me.”
“Full Waylon,” he says knowingly, like he can perfectly imagine exactly what form that might take. “But if you think about it, everyone feels like that. Don’t you see it everywhere you look?”
“Oh, come on,” I say, a little outraged by his inability to see what I see. “People like Melissa and Bryce and Bekah and even Mitch and Callie—those people always get to be themselves without getting eaten alive.”
“I’m not saying the stakes aren’t high for you—they are, but take Bekah, for instance. She’s more than a baton-twirling blonde.”
I shrug and drag my fork through my food. “Bekah and I are not the same. Bekah is hot. I’m a fat gay guy who has a female alter ego.”
He takes a huge bite of food and keeps talking—which is somehow gross and adorable. Who have I become? “First—maybe there’s more to Pumpkin than you think. Maybe spending more time as Pumpkin might help you feel more like . . . you.”
It’s the first time I’ve really heard someone talk about Pumpkin like she was a legitimate thing and more than a silly nickname from Grammy. Like I could actually build a life around being Pumpkin by night and Waylon by day. And like maybe in order to fully be Waylon, I need to let myself be Pumpkin.
“And B of all . . .” He looks down at his near-empty plate. “You’re pretty hot yourself,” he says softly.
That should make me blush. I should feel a fluttering in my chest. I should be asking him a zillion questions right now. But the truth is his words make my stomach turn, and I lose my appetite faster than I can push my food away.
I’ve tried not to spend too much time thinking about the differences between me and Tucker, but this morning when I saw us both in the mirror in our matching outfits, it was more apparent than ever. We’re both tall, except he’s broad and trim where my shoulders seem to slope down like I’m some kind of penguin, and my gut pooches out to complete the whole look like I’m not just a penguin. I’m a penguin with a beer belly. I try not to think too much about my body, and the fact that I can’t confront that part of myself embarrasses me. It makes me feel weak, but honestly, I don’t even like to look too long at what’s underneath my clothes. So hearing Tucker call me hot doesn’t make me feel good. It makes me feel uncomfortable and patronized. At least with Lucas, there was less talking and more fumbling in the dark.
“We need to start on this homework,” I say quickly, and pull Mr. Higgins’s folder from my backpack.
He clears his throat, his cheeks flushed. “Right.”
For the next hour, we fill out worksheets, I share my leftovers with Tucker, and he makes us awful break room coffee. And slowly my brain forgets about the extreme discomfort I felt at the sound of someone calling me hot. Everything that’s been a source of pain or worry for me over the last few weeks falls away until it doesn’t matter, because Tucker Watson and I are sitting across from each other with only a narrow table between us. If this table wasn’t here, all I would see is his thigh laced between mine and the inside of his foot resting against mine.