It’s 2:34 AM when we go to IHOP. It’s when the syrup is sloppy and won’t stay on our plates and the marionberry reduction is heavier on one side than the other.
I don’t ask why we’re here. Not at first.
“Did you know that marionberries were created in Oregon?”
“No. That’s pretty cool,” you say. You got french toast and the powdered sugar is streaked like stars on the dark table top. When you ordered it I didn’t see the point. Why insist on a place known for pancakes if all you wanted was french toast? Denny’s has french toast too, ya know, I’d said. You hid your face in your burnt coffee.
“Yeah,” I say. I pick at my half eaten three stack. Which means I’d actually eaten a whole pancake and a half. It’s simple math.
It’s quiet again, which means all we can hear is the drunk duo on the other side of the dining room. They laugh, spill their lemonades and debate the cook on their bacon. Where’s the line between crispy enough and too crispy?
My eyes wander to them way more than I want to admit. I wish that it was us. I wish you hadn’t messaged me right as I was heading to bed asking to see me and then scarcely said a word. I wish we were drunk on bottom shelf vodka and the room would spin and I could chew on the straw I’d bribed the waiter for.
My side of hashbrowns is cold and my drink is reaching its end. I pull on the straw and the liquid stutters between the ice. I laugh. You give me a look.
“Sounds like a bong rip,” I say.
“Ah,” you say. You attempt a smile.
I squeeze my fingers into my glass and flop backwards into my side of the booth.
This is a waste of time.
I’m tired.
“Okay. Seriously. Who died?”
You blink, and I see the moment of dread. It’s swept away with a dull acceptance.
“Why does someone need to die for us to see each other?”
“They don’t, that’s what I’m saying.”
You fight to unfurl my straw wrapper that I’d balled up.
“Sorry,” you say. “It’s just been scary.”
“Which part? The trying to stay friends part?”
You give me a sharp look that withers.
“The global pandemic part.”
Oh. Yeah. I sigh, my hand idly going to my pocket full of fabric.
“Okay. I get it.” I look up at the panel ceiling, brown and splotchy with water damage. Some shitty K-pop song plays over the restaurant’s speakers and I wonder who back there has the aux cord. I tap my foot along to its beat nonetheless.
“So why now then?” I ask. “It’s not even over yet.”
You stuff a big slice of french toast in your mouth. Why it’s called french toast is what I think about in your lack of an answer. I think about pulling out my phone to google it.
“I’ve barely seen anyone since March,” you say suddenly. You study your plate, and I get the feeling you’re refusing to look at me. Your hair is dull, the red having washed out to a cotton candy pink.
Pastel isn’t really your style.
I put my glass back on the table.
“What about Chris and Allie?”
You let out a breath, face curling into something like a smile.
“When they aren’t fighting they’re taking up the living room watching The Bachelor.” It’s all I really need to know.
The waiter comes back around and refills your coffee cup. D’you guys need boxes? He asks. He has an earring that dangles lower than the other and the line of his lips suggests his shift just started or is just about to end.
“Please. Two,” I say. The waiter leaves and doesn’t come back.
The song overhead fades out and a new one starts.
“Allie holds my hand sometimes,” you tell me. You’re sweeping the powdered sugar into a pile at the edge of the table with the side of your hand. “It makes me … feel.”
I taste the sweetness in the air.
“Do you love her?”
“Not usually,” you admit with a shrug.
I hook a finger under my necklace and run it back and forth. I remember what it was like to hold your hand, to be the “usually.”
“Does she know?”
“I’m not crazy, Jaxon.”
No nickname.
Guess I know where we stand.
I think about saying it so much I might have actually said it. I fish a piece of ice from my cup and I chew on it, pretending it’s glass.
“Have you ever thought about doing mushrooms?”
“Jesus Christ—” I swallow ice shards and pretend I don’t feel it the whole way down. “What the hell does that have to do with anything?”
“You didn’t answer the question.”
I sit forward and I run my hands over my face. Maybe this was a dream and I’d gone to bed after all.
“I don’t know, dude. I can’t say I’ve thought about it much.”
“It’s legal now.”
“It’s decriminalized, Reese.”
“Legal.”
I glance over my shoulder at the drunk pair, paying their tab and asking personal questions about the waiter.
“Is this the part where you ask me if I wanna do Magic with you in your car?”
It gets a laugh out of you and I can feel my shoulders relax.
“No. I just—” you quiet. “I don’t know. People say it connects them. To each other and the world. Bigger picture stuff.”
“Or you can have a bad trip and see your own death or demons ’n’ shit.”
“You can read about it, it’s apparently a great treatment for depression,” you say in a whisper. “Maybe it’d help.”
My bravado cools in my chest and I’m reminded just how stone cold sober I am. All at once we aren’t at IHOP, instead we’re in the dark, in your room and you’re sobbing and the ambulance is on the way.
I curl my fingers into my palms and focus on the now.
“Maybe,” I say, forcing it into gentleness. “Have you … looked into it?”
“I don’t know where to start.”
“Makes sense.”
I wouldn’t either.
We’re quiet again.
Before all of it I don’t remember us being so quiet.
The drunk people leave and it’s just us and the Ashnikko feat. Hatsune Miku on the speakers.
“Hey,” I reach out for your hand. “You wanna come over? We can watch something that isn’t The Bachelor.”
You look at my hand over yours for a long moment—then you look up at me and something changes.
“Sure.”
Kei Oni Garcia is a Junior at SOU majoring in creative writing. They write literary and genre fiction as well as poetry.
Main Squeeze Literary Journal 