Love is Always Write Anthology Bonus Volume

painstaking process in the world. His attention went to the table as he talked.
    "You… started acting drunk all of a sudden," he said. "Wanting to dance. Like a stripper at a stag party. With me, at first, but I didn't want to so you grabbed the nearest guy and then you were going upstairs with three guys." He shrugged. "Before anything happened I got you away from them and locked us in the bathroom and called Lukas."
    "Just… got me away from them." Mallory stood in the booth, grabbed Alan by the hair and pulled him where she could plant a kiss on his forehead. "I'm taking your present back, babe," she said as she sat, "and getting you one twice as nice and if you complain I'll… I'll buy you something else too."
    Well, there would be two presents to take his attention off the fact that I'd almost certainly spent more than I should. But that didn't distract me from the fact that Alan had completely left out a big part of his unpleasant adventure. And it mattered.
    "Tell Mallory the rest," I told him. "So she can apologize."
    The glare he shot at me was pure venom. Mallory set her coffee down.
    "What did I do?"
    "You… groped me," Alan said softly. "A lot. And tried to make out with me. You said—" Alan looked away, "you said you were going to fix both of us."
    "Oh my god." Tears stood in her eyes. "Alan, sweetheart, I am so sorry. It was a stupid drunkism, you know that. I can't fix you, babe, because there's nothing broken. You're perfect as you are."
    "But you're not?" he asked.
    Remember that gay-straight spectrum? Looking at Mallory— smart, fun, beautiful, and rich, only ever went out with gay boys— I remembered the lecture that the spectrum wasn't really a proper representation either. I felt like an idiot. I'd known her two years. Alan had known her a couple months.
    "It's always easier," she said, "to love everyone else the way they are." She dabbed her tears away, leaving behind near-perfect makeup. "So. I'm safe and maybe I've learned something. You two are heroes, and it shall be so noted in the record. If you have time, Lukas, after breakfast I'd like to go find my car."
    "I'd like to go firebomb a house," Alan muttered.
    "Arson is bad," I told him. "Though I'm leaning toward assault myself. Or an avalanche."
    "If we could get an aardvark…" Alan mused. Mallory shook her head as the waitress brought our food.
    After breakfast we found Mallory's car where she remembered leaving it. She asked me to run Alan home so she could go exchange his gift. Alan protested he could walk, but I told him I needed his help picking out ice cream and guided him to Lilia's car.
    Alan lived in apartment 418. It was an ugly little studio with a water-stained ceiling and a view of a brick wall outside the one window. Alan shrugged as he closed the door behind me.
    "It's not a hundred year old work of art full of graceful antiques," he said, "but it does have orange shag carpeting."
    "That's what the real estate listings call 'unique,' right?"
    "Don't mind the mess," Alan said, scooping a pair of jeans off the floor. He grabbed a shirt from another pile, opened a drawer for underthings. "The maid went to Antarctica for the week."
    "I hear the penguin parade is something to see."
    He tossed me a grin. "Soda in the fridge," he said, and went into the bathroom. I threw myself in the bed-with-removable-cushions-to-pretend-it's-a-couch thing and thanked God for Lilia so I didn't have to live life in a place like that. My respect for Alan went up a bit. Surely it would have been easier to stay home and go to school— wherever he was from. Our film school, though, was better.
    Snooping, I told myself, was absolutely off-limits. Looking at what was in front of me, though— that I could do.
    The walls were off-white, some sections more off than others. Through an arch next to the bathroom door, the kitchen was a tiny cave with a tiny table two people could sit at if they had small plates. Those doors were one wall of the main room. The "long" sides of the room were the closet and the door to the urine-scented hall, and the wall with the bed-thing and the dresser. The fourth wall was taken up by stacks of milk crates holding books.
    He had Watership Down . I'd loved that book. He had 1984 too, and I'd hated that one. A lot of Vonnegut, a lot more than I'd read. Slaughterhouse-Five had been an assignment I hadn't enjoyed. Lots of fantasy, that was no surprise. Textbooks, of course. In the corner a spider plant clung to life. I