Page 10 of Check Me Out

The clicking record player stopped, and Angus joined me at the counter, naked, but unexpectedly serious. “What is it?”

I shook the can. It gave off a more forceful slosh than before. “This is definitely lighter.Significantlylighter. It’s not leaking. It’s sealed tight, so there’s no evaporation, either. What’s the deal?”

Angus leaned against the countertop, eyeing me. “Only one way to find out. But it’s your call, Sir Isaac. Your Happiness.”

“Is it, though? Because if you hadn’t marked down the price, I couldn’t have bought it.”

“Everything is caused by something—it’s an infinity spiral. Where it all began—you, me, the primordial soup of chaos—is anyone’s guess. But, this thing?” Angus dinked the can with his knuckle. “As far as a certain well-seasoned cashier is concerned, you paid for it. That means it’s yours.”

I turned the can around one more time, hoping I’d see something to help me make sense of it. Maybe a leak, or a logo, or some instructions hidden in the design. But, nope. Nothing.Just a can of indeterminate weight with unknown contents. And a label bearing just one word,Happiness.

I said, “Maybe I’m supposed to give it away.”

“If you think it’ll make you feel good, by all means, knock your socks off. All kinds of weird things pop up in my alerts forAndHedonia, one of which was a study about what makes people truly happy. There’s the stuff that makes you feel good: food, drugs, money, sex. And then there’s the stuff that gives you purpose and meaning, like self-realization and altruism. You can probably guess which ‘happy’ has all the staying power.”

Just because something felt good didn’t make it any less meaningful. At least…I hoped not. Because the way Angus’s bare thigh was brushing against mine felt very, very good. But the way I felt inside when I thought of getting to know him felt fantastic. And the way I felt when I imagined us really together felt even better.

With a clarity that felt more like momentum, I knew the can had to be opened. I scanned for the can opener before I could second guess myself. “What good is happiness unless you share it? Damn, that sounded worse than a cheesy motivational poster.”

“A cliche is hardly a cliche without a grain of truth.” Angus’s blue eyes twinkled as he beat me to the punch and grabbed the opener from where it had fallen between the cabinet and the fridge. He twirled it deftly on his finger, then handed it over to me.

As I fit the pointy bit onto the can lid and the blade fell into place, I steeled myself—though I wasn’t quite sure against what. The probability I’d be disappointed by what was inside? Or the possibility I might not be?

“You don’t have to open it,” Angus said softly.

I met his gaze. “But I do.”

“Then, here.” He wrapped a hand around mine—his fingers glittered with dented silver rings and a swirly homemade tattoo wound around his thumb. “We’ll do it together.”

11

Angus

I threaded my fingers through Newton’s, digging the feel of the way we fit together. Maybe not the most efficient way to use a can opener, but a heck of a lot more fun than doing it alone. I squeezed his hand and he, in turn, squeezed the grip. Aluminum flexed. A bit more force, and then metal pierced metal. The can released its vacuum….

And then the air pressure shifted and the entire world seemed to inhale.

My breath left me in a gasp and my eardrums flexed. An involuntary yawn forced its way out of me, and then the sensation was over just as fast as it had come on, leaving me to wonder if I’d just dreamed up the whole thing. But the way Newton’s soulful dark eyes had widened, I highly doubted it.

“You can’t stop now,” I said. “We’re just getting to the good part.”

Newton swallowed nervously, then gave the can opener a few good cranks. As the can turned, it shifted like there was nothing to anchor it down. It didn’t just feel like it was lighter. It felt empty.

Wouldn’t that be screwy—getting all worked up over a big can of nothing! But as the opener’s blade circled around to its starting point and the razor-sharp lid lifted, I saw the can wasn’t empty at all.

At the bottom was a single bean.

“Guess they don’t call ’em the magical fruit for nothing,” I said.

Newton rolled his eyes and groaned. “I can’t escape them.”

I tipped the bean onto the counter. It wasn’t a pinto bean, or a kidney bean, or a garbanzo. Just a medium-sized, nondescript brown legume. “Well, Sir Isaac? You gonna eat it?”

“I’m not even sure it’s food.”

“There’s only one way to find out.” I picked up the bean, planning to feed it to him like a slave offering peeled grapes to his master. At the last second, though, I changed my mind and took it gingerly between my incisors, threading my fingers through his hair and pulling him into a weirdly intimate not-kiss. Teeth clashed as he clipped off his half of the Happiness, and we laughed into each other’s mouths.

But then the bitten bean hit my tongue and dissolved…and reality went sideways.

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