“Yes,” Trinity huffed. She was already starting to regret this. “But be quick before I change my mind.”
Dennis began to scurry around the tiny room, gathering his things. Trinity almost raised her hands to help a few times before thinking better of it. She wasn’t going to pick up some random farm boy’s underwear, thank you. Dennis had just finished zipping up his bag when the air in the room shifted. He looked up at her with giant eyes. Tension twisted in Trinity’s chest.
“Can I-um-well…I need to tell you something.”
“Look, it’s just, um.” He cleared his throat. The bags under his eyes seemed to increase tenfold. “It might affect whether you want me to stay with you or not, so I’m just gonna rip the bandage off right now. And you can tell me to f-fuck off if you want. At any time, ok?”
Trinity’s jaw clenched. She hated this feeling. The way she was suddenly all too aware of the fact that she was alone in the night with a man she’d barely met. A wash of memories tried to break through the dam carefully constructed in her mind. Her fingers crept into her pocket, keys slotting between knuckles. Dennis didn’t look dangerous. Honestly, he looked like a terrier on the brink of a nervous breakdown. But people never were what they seemed.
“What is it?” She tried to break the tension in the room. “Are you a nudist or something?”
“What?” Dennis looked genuinely taken aback. “No, just. Ok, this is really hard for me.”
“Spit it out, Huckleberry. I’m tired.”
“I’ve…I’ve…in the past.” Dennis’s hands were twisting into the bag strings so tightly, she could see the white of his blood-drained skin shining out in the semi darkness. “I struggled with attraction to men.”
Trinity wanted to snort. Make some sarcastic comment like ‘join the team’. Dennis wasn’t done, though. His next words made her sick. That kind of familiar aching feeling in your chest that never really goes away once you find it. Pain, any kind of pain, becomes an ocean of sorts. A push and pull of the tide against sand. Dennis Whitaker was slowly drawing her into a hurricane.
“I’ve been working on it. I have, please believe me.” Dennis’s eyes flicked from her face to the floor to the shelves to the sky and back to her on loop. “But it’s taking longer than it should’ve and I’m sorry. Just know that I’m going to be better and-”
“Dennis,” Trinity was surprised to find her voice calm. “Respectfully, what the fuck are you talking about?”
“I don’t give a fuck if you’re gay-”
Trinity was getting frustrated again. That waves began to boil. “WELL I AM! So I don’t care if you like boys or girls or humping your pillow at two in the morning, but if you’re gonna bring that ‘gays are sinners’ shit into my house, then yeah, I guess you are uninvited.”
Dennis’s jaw dropped. The bag slackened in his hands. “I didn’t mean it like that. You’re fine. You’re ok, I wouldn’t judge you.”
It was almost funny how genuinely sincere he was. Trinity pinched her nose. This was shaping up to be a disaster. “Jesus Christ, Huckleberry.” Dennis winced. “You’re almost as fucked up as I am.”
“Almost?” A tiny smile graced his lips. There he is, Trinity thought, despite herself.
“Yeah, well, you’re incapable of beating me at anything. So.”
“True,” Dennis said. Then he began to unzip the bag.
“You said I was uninvited.”
Trinity snatched the bag and slung it over her shoulder, stalking towards the door. “You are such a Fuck-leberry.”
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
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