Page 6 of Female Fantasy
“Ryke,” my brother says, finishing my sentence.
“Right.” I swallow, preparing myself for what comes next.
“And how many men have you ended things with prematurely because they didn’t hold a candle to Ryke?” he asks, treading carefully. “Twenty? Two hundred?”
I gasp. “Teymoor Saboonchi, are you slut shaming me?!” I feign horror. “I thought you were raised better than that. What would Oliver say?”
Tey groans, and I grin, knowing I’ve won this round.
Oliver is Tey’s partner and a public defender. He has bought Tey more books on social justice than he has room for. Every time I call my brother a bad feminist, even in jest, Christmas comes early. For me, anyway.
“Speaking of Oliver, I want you to come to Sunday dinner this week,” he says. “At the restaurant.”
“Done.” Even though my parents have fled town to become pirates or whatever, my brother and I have maintained our weekly Sunday dinner tradition. I, for one, am a huge fan. Free food and making my brother uncomfortable at work? Who doesn’t love dinner and a show?
“And Nico is coming,” he adds as quickly as possible.
“Tey!”
“Gotta go, bye!”
He hangs up the phone, leaving me to fume alone in front of the baked goods.
Nico is Tey’s best friend, my childhood crush, and the current bane of my existence. Tey met Nico playing LittleLeague, where they failed to impress their coaches and ended up benched for the majority of the year. Those two instantly became an inseparable duo. Legend has it that Nico once beat up a kid for making a terrorist joke about my family. Tey told the coach, and that racist kid was promptly kicked off the team. He was the first friend my brother came out to, and they’re still tight.
Can’t say the same about me.
I didn’t always find Nico to be as unbearable as listening to an off-key children’s choir. In fact, there was a time when I found his chiseled frame and buzzed blond hair appealing. Back when I was having trouble at school, Nico was one of the few people who stuck up for me. I looked up to him in so many ways.
I guess he acted that way because I was an extension of Tey and all that. But it felt good to have someone in my corner—a cool older kid, at that. I might have even developed a small middle school attraction to Nico. Okay, fine. When he started defending my honor, it felt like my favorite TV character had actually listened to my ship request. I fell hard.
The hopeless romantic: That’s me.
To a literal fault.
But it all came crashing down like the stock market after tenth grade.
Now I go out of my way to avoid him. Tey knows that.
Why is he torturing me?! Because I couldn’t make it work with a guy who once compared my birth control prescription to his preventative Rogaine?
“Hi! Are you Joonie?”
And it’s showtime.
I look up into a pair of deep-blue eyes the color of the nearby harbor. The owner of the eyes has hidden them behind round wire spectacles and floppy black hair. His ears are studded with small silver hoops, and he’s wearing black nail polish on his thumbs. A tote bag from a foreign bookstore hangs off his right shoulder. There’s a Bernie 2020 button pinned to the handle.
Underneath all that hardware, he kind of looks a little bit like a blue-eyed Ryke.
Like always, the highlights of the life we could have together flash before my eyes like a movie trailer.
The stolen kisses in public.
Trips to faraway lands.
The moment when he gets down on one knee and—
“So, where are you from?” he asks, taking a seat across from me.
