Page 2 of The Stars and the Stage
Andhewassorry.
“Please,” Maddox repeated, “I just need her to know.”
Diego slipped around the bend in the hall, keeping to the shadows. They had to see him, if only once more. They could handle that much. They thought they could, at least, until he came into view, and their heart stopped.
Their Maddy was as beautiful as ever, tall and angular, his deep brown waves mussed and his motorcycle helmet tucked under one arm, a leather riding jacket over his other. The angle of the lamp above the doorway hid his eyes, but Diego remembered their delicate curvature like the back of their own hand. They could almost hear all the times Maddox had joked that his monolids and his love for a well-tailored suit were the only thing his father had left behind during the business trip that had unwittingly produced him. Diego had always told him that it was a perfect combination, that he was exactly who he should be. That he was the most handsome boy in California.
“Just California?”He’d laughed.
Diego had shoved him playfully.“I don’t want you to get a big head. That would throw off your perfect proportions.”
“Hmph. Well, I will love you with any size head. I’m just that selfless.”
Diego was pretty sure Maddox had kissed them then, tongue roving past their then-flat teeth. He’d love them with any sized head, perhaps, but not with fangs.
As Maddox’s gaze wandered over the darkness where Diego stood, he seemed to sense their presence. “Please.”
Serina shook her head. Her grip tightened on the door. “As I’ve said, there’s no one here—”
Diego wasn’t sure why they did it, but they stepped forward like a thread had gone taut between them and Maddox. As the light hit them, they almost recoiled, but they forced their chin high. They were no princess. They were the sovereign. Maddox would know just how high they’d risen without him. “The person you’re looking for was a myth. When everyone else had shunned me, I found myself.”
Serina’s confusion turned quickly to understanding. She nodded in a quiet signal of protection.
Maddox met Diego’s gaze, but his contemplation didn’t hold there, drifting over their androgynous haircut, their flat chest, their small hips. When they’d first found their identity a full year after leaving San Salud, in the midst of what was otherwise their worst days, Diego had secretly wondered how it might feel to be seen as themself by the person who’d once known them best. They had never imagined the way Maddox’s attention would consume them, like he was trying to create a hundred memories out of this one moment. “You look… good,” he breathed, then seemed to come back to himself with a start. “I—I’m happy for you.” His weight shifted and he held out a hand like he meant to surrender something. “And I’d like to apologize.”
Apologize. He had said he was sorry, echoed it down the halls, but what good was a word after so long? Diego didn’t even know the man who offered it. He was nothing to them.
And they were everything now.
“You’re ten years too late for that, Maddy.” Diego shook their head. This was all he deserved of them. They took one step back, into the dark, then another.
“Please,” Maddox called after them, “at least tell me your name. So I can think of you in terms you approve of.”
Diego huffed. “Perhaps I don’t want you thinking of me at all.” But that was a lie. They wanted Maddox to think of them as much as they had thought of him all these years. To yearn with no release. He deserved that. “Diego,” they said, sharply. “My name is Diego now.”
“And your pronouns?”
Diego smiled from the shadows. “Theyfor my friends,hefor my lovers.”
Maddox watched, and smooth as silk he asked, “Which would I be?”
The way Diego’s heart fluttered was all too traitorous. “You get to figure that one out yourself.”
With that, they turned their back on him.
Serina spoke with Maddox for so long that Diego nearly went to check on her, but then she returned and the night settled back to normal. She didn’t ask Diego questions, and Diego offered no answers. By the time they locked up for the night, it seemed the incident had barely happened. But Diego could not forget it.
On their walk home, they risked sliding on their headphones and starting up their CD player, but they couldn’t focus on the music, not when every engine whine made them think of the sleek black Honda Shadow motorcycle Maddox had just gotten for his birthday the year everything fell apart. He’d threatened to buy Diego one of their own—a graduation present, he’d claimed. Graduating class of ‘84. It felt like a lifetime ago.
It also felt like yesterday, like they’d just lived every touch, every laugh, every theater production and wild night at the boardwalk’s roller rink that ended in breathless moans in Maddox’s boathouse, the lake bobbing them to sleep in each other’s arms after. If only that was all their relationship had been: a blaze that had sizzled out like so many relationships did as they neared college. But they’d chosen to live like they were Romeo and Juliet, so they’d died that way too.
Every brilliant memory was tainted now by the shock of their final meeting as teens, electric like a death sentence.“What the fuck,”Maddox had shouted, his voice trembling like he was the one about to sob, and not Diego.“How could you do this to yourself?”
“I didn’t mean to—I was just trying to help them.”The freshly grown fangs in Diego’s mouth had still felt wrong, each word a little sloppy. A little salty. They’d learned much later that it was the combination of blood loss and healing vampire venom and bad luck that turned them, but after days of agony as their body had rewritten itself into something new, all they wanted was their boyfriend’s arms around them, the promise that they were still loved. All they received was disgust.“They were going to die without blood.”
“Don’t they have places for that?”
“Not for people like—”
