Chapter 5

Chapter Five

Avery

THE BOYFRIEND CAFé is in full swing. I'm with a pair of nursing students who are nervous about doing rotations in hospitals this year. Cameron has a quiet, stressed out math major who hunches over his tea, while Julian chats and laughs with a girl I think I recognize from one of my gender and sexuality classes. Even our newbie server, Henry, is nodding along as his customer dumps their worries onto him.

The whole place is running like clockwork, but that doesn't keep me from worrying about it. I'm sure Mia did a great job with the scheduling, but part of my brain is chewing over the next round of customers and the transition between the groups and every tiny thing that could go wrong as the Boyfriend Café starts off the year.

This is a different Boyfriend Café than any that came before it. I'm literally the only holdover from the original crew. Everyone else is gone. I live in Albert's house now, and I go to Montridge Munchies to pick up the discounted baked goods we resell to our customers, but those are thin connections at best. In reality, I'm like a swimmer left out in the middle of the ocean without so much as a life vest, treading water and trying to stay afloat as a vast expanse of unknowable danger sweeps out in all directions around me.

I sip from my tea. Chill out, Avery. You know how to do this. Cameron and Julian started last year. They have more than a semester under their belts. And Mia is totally on top of her role as manager.

The part of my brain trying to calm me down is right. Everything is fine. The fairy lights are casting a soft glow through the sedate basement café. The tea has left the air smelling sweet and light. The customers are enjoying their conversations and snacks. There is nothing to worry about, yet I can't keep myself from stressing over every detail.

"But did you hear about that one student last year?" one of my nursing students, Rebecca, is saying to the other when I check back in to the conversation.

"Who?" the other, Martin, says.

"That one girl. The one who supposedly hooked up with one of the doctors."

"What?" Martin's eyes go wide, and he raises his tea to his lips to try to hide his smile .

"Yeah, it was a huge deal," Rebecca says. "Like, technically that's her boss or mentor or whatever. So everyone was freaking out. I think the doctor got fired."

"Yikes. Well, you'd have to fire him for messing around with a student," Martin concurs.

"Sorry," Rebecca says to me. "You probably don't care about any of this. It's just a rumor that went around all the nursing students last year."

I wave away her apology. "This is your time. Use it however you like. Besides, who doesn't enjoy a little tea with their tea?"

The nursing students laugh and move right along to their next bit of gossip. I have no qualms with that. Listening to gossip is fun, and it means all I really need to do is nod along and throw in a snarky comment here or there. It's my favorite way for these conversations to go. City University of Montridge is a massive school, so there's always plenty of juicy tidbits to gobble up.

The nursing students' story about a student hooking up with a doctor never quite fades from my mind as they move on to other topics, however. Against all my better instincts, the tale calls up images of Diego going wide-eyed the moment I walked into that classroom yesterday. I was just as surprised as he was by our reunion, but he seemed downright terrified on top of shocked. Some piece of me wants to think that's because I didn't merely imagine the spark that sizzled to life between us that night we met, but that's probably stress and wishful thinking talking. In reality, he's probably nervous that crashing overnight at a student's home, even if absolutely nothing happened, is inappropriate regardless of circumstances. But I'm not about to reveal his secret. It was one night. One extremely tame and uneventful night.

Nah. It can't be that. I probably imagined Diego being flustered at seeing me again. I could have sworn there was a faint blush in those tan brown cheeks flecked with dark stubble, but it's just as likely that I'm so stressed out and desperate that I simply saw what I wanted to see.

Besides, if that doctor got in trouble, imagine how much worse it would be for a TA. I could probably get Diego kicked out of the university by mentioning that he spent the night here once. If there was anything but surprise in his face yesterday, it was likely fear.

Which is a damn shame, really. The man is easy to look at. And I'm guessing there aren't too many straight guys going for a graduate degree in gender and sexuality, so my odds are better than usual.

If he wasn't my teacher, of course.

Can we carve out an exception for TAs? They're half-student, half-teacher. So does that make them half-available?

I mentally shake myself. Bad, Avery. Very bad. Worse still, I'm forgetting all about my customers while indulging my wishful thinking .

Thankfully, they don't really notice. I slip gracefully back into the conversation and finish out my hour with them without a hitch. The other servers and I get a short break to use the bathroom upstairs or grab a snack before our next customers arrive, and the night winds on. Even with the massive changeover in staff over the past year, the café is basically on autopilot. My worst fears do not, in fact, come to fruition, and all four servers make it through three rounds of customers, then loosen our ties and unbutton our vests so we can clean up the cups and plates and crumbs on the carpet.

I make a point of being the last one out of the basement and locking it up behind me. Then I walk everyone around to the front of the house. All three of them are headed back to the university, and after what happened to a past server, Mal, I encourage them to make the trip together. Only Cameron grumbles about it, but Henry and Julian are chatting happily before I even finish waving goodbye.

I retreat to the quiet and solitude of Albert's home. It feels huge and empty with just me inside it, but I can't really complain. I'm a junior in college who has an entire freaking house. I'm tempted to see if any of the servers want to use the spare bedroom next year, though. It would be nice to have a roommate. I would get a pet, but I'm still a student, so in a year I might have to move, and that doesn't sound very fair to the poor creature .

For now, the best I can do is call up my brother, Gabriel, who reliably answers every time I feel like chatting for no reason.

"Hey," he says when I flop into bed with the phone. "How was opening night?"

"Everything went perfectly," I say.

"Of course it did. I never had any doubts."

Easy for him to say. He was never in charge when he worked at the Boyfriend Café. He was always just a server, and often he didn't even do that alone. Him and his eventual boyfriend Trent had such a powerful dynamic even before they started dating that customers frequently requested them as a duo — and paid extra for it.

"I'm just glad nothing disastrous happened," I say.

"Nothing disastrous is ever going to happen. You've got this," Gabriel says.

He's been saying it for a while. I've always been close with my oldest sibling, especially since we're both queer, so he's had to listen to all my complaining as the nerves got the better of me. He's been a huge source of support, but he's also not here anymore, so that support has been entirely over the phone.

"Anyway," Gabriel says, "what about the rest of your life?"

"What rest of my life?" I say.

"Come on, Avery. You're young. You're in college. You have to do things other than work. I didn't set you up with this job so it could consume your whole life."

"I know," I say, "but eventually there was no one left but me. I kind of had to take it all on."

Gabriel sighs. "Sometimes I regret dragging you into that café. I never meant for it to be a burden."

"It's not a burden. I love it. And Albert gave me his entire house so I could run the café. It's not exactly a hardship."

"That's true," Gabriel says, "but I haven't heard you talk about anything else going on in your life except the café in ages. How are your classes? Are you going to parties? Have you met anyone? Tell me everything."

I shrug, even though he can't see it. "There's not much to tell."

"That's sort of what I was afraid of."

"My classes are getting tough," I say in my defense. "I have this Queer and Trans History class and it's going to be super intense. There's a research project at the end of the semester and—"

"God, you are such a nerd," Gabriel cuts in.

This, at least, is just brotherly banter. I've always been a huge history nerd, gobbling up textbooks that weren't strictly required and regurgitating facts no one really wanted to hear.

"Yeah, well, it could be worse," I say, hoping to deflect. "Did you ever hear any rumors about students hooking up with mentors and stuff when you were here? "

Gabriel gasps. "Avery. You didn't!"

"Not me . Geez. It's something a customer said tonight. Something about a nursing student who hooked up with some doctor while doing her rotations. I'm not that dumb." I hope.

"Good," Gabriel says. "It better not be you. You'll get mega-expelled for that."

"I don't think mega-expelling is a thing."

"It is if someone hooks up with a professor. Or a doctor, I guess. But to answer your question: No, I never heard anything like that. It would be beyond stupid for everyone involved."

Beyond stupid. Yeah, he's right about that. It would be mega beyond stupid for me to hook up with a guy I have to see twice a week for the rest of the semester, a guy who's terrified of simply having stayed in my spare bedroom once. That isn't stopping me from thinking about it, but I can at least acknowledge that it would be a huge mistake.

Maybe Gabriel's right. Maybe I do need to get out more. Maybe I'm latching onto Diego not because he's gorgeous and intelligent and deeply interested in the same things I'm deeply interested in, but simply because he's there and going to class is pretty much the only thing I do besides working at the café.

"Anyway, just promise me you'll try to go out and have some fun this year," Gabriel says. "And not with any professors or doctors or whatever. "

I roll my eyes. "I will do my very best. Mia is already threatening to make me go have fun."

"Mia?"

"The manager helping me at the café. She said basically the same things you have, so I'm sure she'll drag me out one of these days."

"Good, I'm glad someone there is a positive influence. I would come up there and drag you out myself, but you're still twenty and Mom would kill me if you got caught with a fake ID or something."

"No fake IDs, I promise," I say. "And no freaking out Mom. I'm going to be fine, Gabriel. And I'll have fun. Eventually."

Gabriel sighs, but he lets me get off the phone without further protest about my depressingly dull lifestyle. Is it really my fault if I genuinely want to spend my time at school studying? Isn't that what I'm here for?

I can think of one person who would agree with me, and he's the exact person I shouldn't be thinking about. Not now. Not ever.