Page 6 of Check Me Out

I’ve always thought caution was for wet paint and choking hazards, but I was leery of this sudden change of heart. “Sorry to disappoint you, but I planned on staying in tonight.”

When I moved to close the door (honestly, not all that forcefully), he blocked it with the side of his foot. “That’s just it. When I said no, back there at the register, it wasn’t that I didn’t want to go out withyou. I did. Immensely. But I’m flat broke, and I couldn’t really go out at all—”

“Wait a sec. Stop right there.” On one hand, theimmenselypart went a long way to soothing my bruised ego. But on the other…. I indicated myself with an impatient wave of my hand:tattered jeans, holey chucks, and a misprinted band T-shirt with a crooked logo. “You think I care about money?”

“No idea. I don’t know you well enough for your preferences to figure into the equation. It was me. My problem. That the minute you suggested going out, all I could do was rank all the local restaurants by cost…and admit that I couldn’t even afford to eat off the dollar menu.” He paused, then mumbled, “Not with sales tax, anyhow.”

“I’m not big on tradition, which just seems like another way to make people like us flail around navigating gender-normative bullshit, but come on. It wasmyinvite. I would’ve picked up the tab.”

Newton closed his eyes as if he was counting to ten—hell, maybe he was calculating its square root—then opened them and said, “How could I accept, knowing I was in no position to reciprocate?”

“You’re confusing a date with a transaction.”

“All relationships are transactional.”

“Is that what you think?” I asked, in all sincerity. “If so, you sorely need to wrap your head around the concept of win-win. You join me for something other than a quick flirtation at the register, we get to know each other. Who knows? Maybe we both end up getting what we want. That’s not so hard to imagine—if we’re both looking for the same thing.”

As I spoke, I’d closed the small distance between us, feeling bold again. Maybe even daring him to chicken out and run away. And when he stood his ground, my leg brushed his—and bumped up against something hard.

Our banter hadn’t beenthatarousing. The hardness wasn’t inside his pants, anyhow. It was in his overcoat pocket. A perfectly cylindrical, can-shaped hardness.

He locked eyes with me.

And I’ve always loved a challenge.

I slipped my hand inside. The pocket interior was warm where it touched his body, but the can was slightly cool. I pulled it out and held it up between us so we could both take it in. Lit from the yellow incandescent of the hallway on one side to the cool blue bulb of my vestibule on the other, the label’s printing visually vibrated on the liminal space of the threshold, sparkling with flecks of mica and gloss I hadn’t noticed under the fluorescents of the store. But the swirly cursive looked the same. Not to mention the slightly crooked orange label I’d slapped on.

“Well, well, well, Sir Isaac. What have we here?”

6

Newton

Angus quirked an eyebrow. “No need to bring a payment—there’s no cover charge here.”

The people I interacted with on a regular basis had some sort of internal bookkeeping running at all times. You don’t realize how much of a tally you’ve been keeping until you come across someone with no mental spreadsheet.

I said, “It’s not about payment. I did a reverse image search of that can and came up with nothing. Yet, each of my roommates saw it—four, in all—and not one of them was even the slightest bit curious.”

“Never underestimate people’s capacity to ignore what they don’t understand.”

“That’s not the point. Only you took notice. Of course I’d want to open it with you.”

Angus’s sharp blue eyes softened. “I suppose I’d be a real dick if I turned down the guy who offered to share his Happiness.”

I’d eaten nothing that day except a shallow bowl of goopy lentils to stave off the hunger pangs, so why I’d chosen to research the can instead of opening it up and devouring thecontents, I couldn’t quite say. Just that in some unquantifiable way, it didn’t feel right to keep it all to myself.

Angus fell back a few steps into his cramped hallway and let the door swing open wide. The smell of exotic spices intensified and my stomach rumbled—audibly. “Well, dinner’s nearly ready,” he said. “Don’t just stand there eating crow when there’s plenty of food here for both of us.”

He gestured to the apartment’s interior with the can, which he then hefted experimentally and subjected to a brief scrutiny. “Huh. Could’ve sworn it was heavier.”

With a shrug, he turned and strode inside without waiting to see if I’d follow.

But how could I not?

The building was old, with hardwood floors and high ceilings. It had been divvied up into multiple units, and the space was narrow, but surprisingly deep. I followed him down a hallway plastered on both sides with so many layers of band fliers it looked like the message board at the student union. It had the look of a place he’d lived in for a while. Not like me, in a generic house-share I would shed at the end of the semester and promptly forget.

Angus paused in the kitchen. He parked the can on the counter, lifted the lid of a nearby pot, and gave the contents a quick stir. The smell of spices redoubled, now with additional peppery notes that might have been ginger, or maybe coriander.

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