Autoboyography
Page 16

Slowly, he pulls his headphones off.
I want to fall over in relief: His red cheeks tell me everything I need to know.
“Tanner?” He grins, so wide. “Hey.”
“Hey, yeah, I . . .”
Glancing back at the clock on his laptop screen, he makes the obvious observation: “You left campus.”
“Doesn’t everybody?”
“Actually, no.” Blinking back over, he gazes at me in mild confusion.
“I . . . brought you lunch.” I glance down at the food in my hand. “But now I feel like I’m breaking the law.”
Peering closer at what I’m offering, he says, “Panda Express?”
“Yeah. So gross, I know.”
“Totally. But, I mean, since you’re already here . . .”
He grins at me. It’s the only invitation I need.
I open the bag, handing him a takeout container of noodles and another of orange chicken. “I also have shrimp.”
“Chicken is good.” Opening it up, he moans, and it causes my entire body to stiffen. “I’m starving. Thank you.”
You know those moments that feel so surreal you have a legitimate Am I really here feeling? Where you’re not just using hyperbole but, for a breath of a second, have an out-of-body sensation? I have that right now. Standing here with him, it’s dizzying.
“My dad calls this Fatty Fat Chicken,” he tells me as I pull out the chair beside him and sit down.
I blink, working to get my brain and my pulse under control. “I won’t tell him if you won’t.”
Sebastian laughs. “He eats it at least twice a week, so don’t worry.”
I watch him tuck in, using a fork, not chopsticks, neatly managing to get a pile of noodles in his mouth without greasing up his chin. There’s something Teflon about him: He always looks pressed, clean, sanitized. Looking down at myself, I wonder what impression I give off. I’m not a slob, but I don’t have the same immaculate sheen.
He swallows, and a million pornographic images fly through my head in the ten seconds before he speaks again.
“What made you come over to campus?” he asks, then neatly maneuvers a forkful of chicken into his mouth.
Is he fishing? Or does he really think I’d come over to BYU for any reason other than to see him? “I was in the neighborhood.” I take a bite, chewing, swallowing through my smile. “Came over to campus to dance and sing some songs.”
His eyes twinkle. He doesn’t seem to mind that I’m not LDS, let alone mocking it a little. “Cool.”
I look down the hallway, toward the windows facing the quad. “Are there always people outside just . . . celebrating?”
“No, but it’s a pretty happy place.”
I lean in, grinning. “Someone actually said ‘Gosh darn it’ out of frustration.”
“What else would they say?”
He’s fucking with me again. Our eyes snag, and hold. His are green and yellow, with these razor-sharp flecks of brown. I feel like I’ve taken a running leap off a cliff and have no idea how deep the water is.
Finally, Sebastian blinks back down to his lunch. “Sorry I left so abruptly the other day.”
“It’s okay.”
I think that’s all I’m going to get on the subject, but somehow, the way he can’t look back up at me, the way color blooms again across his cheeks tells me so much.
Something is happening between us, holy shit.
From one of the floors below us, an older man’s deep voice rings out. “Hello, Brother Christensen.” In turn, this Brother Christensen murmurs a polite reply that drifts up to us, and as they move farther away from the atrium, their voices echo away.
“Wait.” I look back at Sebastian, realization dawning. “Are you an elder yet?”
He swallows before answering. “No.”
This is amazing. “Sebastian Brother. That means you’re Brother Brother.”
He grins, thrilled. “I’ve been waiting my whole life for someone to make that joke. People at church are too nice to do it.”
I hesitate, unable to read the spark in his eyes. “You’re messing with me.”
“Yeah.” If possible, his smile widens and carves out a space in my chest when he breaks, laughing happily. “But I think it’s even better that Lizzy is Sister Brother.”
“Does she think it’s funny?”
“We all do.” Pausing, he watches me for a few seconds longer, like he’s trying to puzzle me out and not the other way around, before bending and taking another bite of food.
I think I’ve screwed this up. I have such a weird impression of Mormons as bland, serious, and secretly evil. It seems impossible to me that they would make fun of themselves this way.
“I’m being an asshole.” The word just slips out of my mouth, and I wince as if I’ve just cursed in a cathedral.
Sebastian shakes his head, swallowing. “What? No.”
“I’m not . . .”
“Familiar with the church,” he finishes for me. “Most people aren’t.”
“We live in Provo,” I remind him. “Most people are.”
He looks up at me steadily. “Tanner, I know the world isn’t represented in Provo. We all know that. Besides, and I mean this in the kindest way possible, it’s likely that the non-LDS kids in town don’t share the best side of the church when they talk. Am I right?”
“That’s probably fair.” I blink down, poking at my mostly untouched lunch. He makes me so nervous, in this giddy, excited way. When I look back up at his face, it almost hurts where my chest pinches. His attention is on his next bite of food, so I’m given a handful of seconds to stare at him without shame.
A weak voice tries to reach me from the back of the crowded room in my head: He’s Mormon. This is doomed! Pull back. Pull back!
I stare at his jaw, and his throat, and the skin I can see just below, the hint of collarbone.
My mouth waters.
“Thanks again for this,” he says, and I snap my eyes back up, catching the glint in his as he watches me realize I’m busted for ogling him.
“You really never snuck off campus?” I ask in the world’s most awkward segue.
He chews another bite, shaking his head.
“Part of me wants to hope you misbehave a little.”
Holy.
What did I just say?
Sebastian laughs, coughing through a rough swallow, and washes it down with a sip of water from a bottle on the table near him. “I did skip out once.”
I nod for him to continue, shoveling some food into my mouth in the hopes that it will calm my uneasy stomach and lunatic mind.
“Last year I had an orthodontist appointment, and when I came back, class was nearly half done. We had an assembly after that, then lunch, and”—he shakes his head, blushing that goddamn blush—“I realized no one would be looking for me. I had three hours to do whatever I wanted.”
I swallow a bite of shrimp, and it goes down rough. I want him to tell me he went home and googled pictures of guys kissing.
“I went to a movie by myself and ate an entire box of Red Vines.” He leans in, eyes full of that teasing shine. “I had a Coke.”
My brain is tangled: Cannot compute. Which emotion to drop into the bloodstream? Fondness or bewilderment? For the love of God, this is Sebastian at his naughtiest.
He shakes his head at me, and in that instant, I realize I’m the naive one here.