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Malcolm spends the entire week stressing about the radio show, pissed at himself for missing one of the few nights that Rebo is on. He forgot to even listen in that night, too busy thinking about assholes with pretty eyes who return people’s lost cats in the middle of thunderstorms.
When he does get the chance to call in again on Friday, he doesn’t waste any time. Rebo has barely even had the chance to introduce himself as the host before Malcolm is pulling up the show’s contact on his phone and ringing in.
“I am so sorry I didn’t call in last time,” Malcolm says as soon as he knows he’s made it through. “I lost my pet and it was this huge deal and I just—I completely forgot, I’m so sorry.”
“Clark Kent, the one and only,” Rebo says. He sounds relaxed, but Malcolm doesn’t miss the hint of relief in his voice. “It’s alright, man, you’re not obligated to call in or anything. I have to admit, though, I was a little worried.”
“You were worried about me?”
“Well, you are the most interesting part of this show. If you stopped coming I’d probably lose half my audience or something.”
Malcolm’s laughter comes easier to him now, and he closes his eyes. “So you’re just using me for better ratings, huh?”
“Absolutely I am, yes.”
Malcolm can hear his laughter verging on ‘school girl with a crush’ but he refuses to let himself feel an ounce of guilt about it. His chances with Rebo are non-existent. Rebo’s just a voice on the radio. So what’s the harm in playing around a little bit?
“What were you like in school?” Malcolm asks.
Rebo makes a curious sound. “Why do you ask?”
“Just trying to get to know this faceless stranger a little better.”
“Oh, you know,” Rebo says, and there’s the squeak of a chair. Malcolm imagines him relaxing back against it, his arms locked behind his head. “Thousands of friends. Endlessly popular. Every morning kids would fall to my feet to offer me their lunch money.”
“You were a loser, weren’t you?”
“Big time.”
Malcolm barks out a laugh, and Rebo follows with a string of low chuckles that settle like embers of a fire inside Malcolm’s chest, warm and electric.
“Yeah, I definitely wasn’t popular,” Rebo continues, although his voice has gained a skittish edge to it. “Being the only, uh, openly gay Black kid in a small-minded school made me a pretty easy target.”
Malcolm swallows, blinking up at his ceiling as he rests against his bed. He can tell that was big for Rebo to admit on the air. He shouldn’t have to be brave alone.
“I get it,” Malcolm says. He tacks on a little awkwardly, “I mean, I’m not Black, I can’t really compare my experience to yours there, but—well, I was the only queer trans kid that I knew up until college, so. I get that part, at least. You’re not totally alone.”
There. He did it. He came out to Rebo. Not only that, but he came out to everyone listening to the show. Sure, they don’t know who he is, but he did it. They both did.
“We’re pretty fucking brave, huh?” Rebo says.
Malcolm smiles. “You think so?”
“Hell yes, dude. From the sounds of it, we both grew up in shitty little towns that constantly tried to beat us into the dirt. And yet, here we are. Still kickin’. Still being unapologetically ourselves because why?”
It’s silent for a brief moment before Malcolm realizes he’s waiting for a response.
“Because...we rule?” Malcolm ganders.
“Because we fuckin’ rule!’
Malcolm shakes his head to himself. “You make me sound a lot cooler than I am.”
“I think you’re plenty cool, Clark.”
Malcolm turns over on his bed, laying his cheek on the cool side of his pillow as he speaks. The new position squishes his lips together, so he sounds a bit funny when he talks. “It helps to surround myself with a bunch of other people like me. I have a total of three friends, and every single one of them is like me.”
“They’re all like you?”
“Well, not exactly like me,” Malcolm corrects himself. “Out of the four of us, none of us are straight and only one of us is cis—as far as I’m aware, at least. We’re a whole smorgasbord of different identities. We’re a pretty eclectic bunch.”
Malcolm ends up talking for a full ten minutes about his friends (in vague terms, leaving out names, of course), and Rebo listens intently to every second. He talks about Mona’s love for skateboarding and her decadent cooking, Jazz’s punk phase that never went away and her admiration of bumble bees, Goby’s funky sunglasses collection and their habit of never wearing shoes if they can help it.
“Wow,” Rebo says at the end, and he sounds a little dazed. “I haven’t had a whole lot of friends that I can relate to before. That sounds...pretty damn amazing, honestly. I wish I could meet them all.”
“Maybe you will one day,” Malcolm says before he can fully think it through.
Rebo hums in thought. “Maybe I already have.”
Malcolm’s continuous fidgeting stops abruptly. It feels a bit like when Jazz hits the brakes just a little too hard, his stomach dropping quick as a stone. Rebo doesn’t seem to notice anything wrong as he continues to speak.
“It’s possible we’ve crossed paths already. Maybe we live in the same town and we’ve seen each other across the street, or in a store.” Rebo lets out a breathy laugh. “We wouldn’t even know. Wouldn’t that be crazy?”
“Yeah,” Malcolm says, and his voice sounds hollow to his ears. “So crazy.”
Malcolm doesn’t stay on the call for long after that.
***
“Tell me again why you’re freaking out about this?” Jazz says through a yawn. She’s laying across Malcolm’s bed on her stomach, kicking her feet in the air absentmindedly as she flips through the pages of one of his books. He thinks it’s something from Neil Gaiman, the one about the angel and the demon. (Malcolm thinks the angel and demon are in love, but the characters are men-ish and it was the 90s when it came out, so it’s all implication).
“I don’t know!” Malcolm says, pacing the small length of his room. He picks up a Rubik’s Cube from one of his shelves, gives it a few mindless twists and tosses it back, never breaking his stride. “It’s not like he was saying he actually knows me in real life, he just said it’s a possibility that we’ve seen each other before.” Malcolm grunts in frustration. “I don’t know why that freaked me out so bad, but here we are.”
Malcolm runs his hand through his hair, his eyes burning. He hasn’t slept a wink. He hasn’t taken his morning shower yet either, he just called Jazz over as soon as it was a decently human hour to be awake. He would’ve called her right after the radio show, she’s usually still awake at that time, but he didn’t want to take that gamble. Jazz can be properly scary when you’ve interrupted what little sleep she decides to get.
He still ended up waking her at 7 in the morning. She had answered the FaceTime call still in her silk bonnet, her eyes half closed as she scowled at the bright screen. She’d threaten to hide his body where no one could find it if he didn’t give her a good reason for waking her up.
“God isn’t even awake right now,” she’d said.
Malcolm had apologized profusely, but he couldn’t explain his situation past a simple ‘I’m freaking out, dude.’ She arrived at the apartment in less than an hour with coffees in hand for the both of them.
“Would it be so bad if you did know each other in real life?” Jazz asks, putting the book back on Malcolm’s nightstand and sitting up, her eyes following him as he restlessly moves about the room.
“Yes!” Malcolm says, slapping his hand against his palm for emphasis.
“Why?”
“Because this isn’t real!” He stops in the middle of the room, eyes wild. “None of it is supposed to be real, Jazz! Knowing him, really knowing him—that’s not supposed to be a reality.”
Jazz squints at him. “Knowing him is what bugs you?”
“Of course it is,” Malcolm says. “If I know him, then this stupid fantasy crush would become a real crush, and then that real crush would turn into the deep shit, and then I’d fall for him for real, and that just—it cannot fucking happen!”
“Why the hell not?”
“Because I’m me! Jazmine!” Malcolm says. His chest rises and falls sharply, just once. He collapses into his desk chair, leaning his head back. “I am, without a doubt, the biggest fucking mess in this entire town. Possibly in the entire state.”
“Well, that’s bullshit.”
“It’s not.”
“It is!”
“No, it’s not!” He snaps, muscles tense as he tries to explain. “You know me, Jazz! You’ve seen me at every stage in my fucked up life, you know me. I can’t do that to him.”
“You act like you’re some sort of fucking illness,” Jazz says, and her face grows red with genuine anger. “Cut that shit out right now, you hear me? Don’t talk about my best friend like that.”
Malcolm huffs out a breath and closes his eyes. The fight drains out of him quickly, leaving him tired and raw. There’s a dull throbbing in his right eyebrow. Do they have any ibuprofen left? No, they ran out last week. Damn.
“He’s gay, Jazz,” Malcolm says. “Like, fully. Only likes men.”
“Okay? Isn’t that a good thing? A point for Malcolm?”
“In theory.”
“The fuck do you mean, ‘in theory,’” Jazz says, making exaggerated air quotes with her fingers.
“Well,” Malcolm stops, sighing as he gathers his words. “What if he has, like, a preference?”
Jazz stays silent for a moment, eyebrows furrowing. After a moment her face clears of its confusion, and her eyes grow dark. “Malcolm,” she says.
“No, Jazz, it’s a fair question,” Malcolm says before she’s finished. “What if I’m not, you know. Not enough like this?”
It’s not an unreasonable question, he thinks. He knows there will be people he admires who don’t see him as the man that he is—who won’t be able to get past that part of him. It’s why he never dated after he transitioned. It’s part of the reason why he’s so vehemently against the idea of falling for Rebo, or anyone else. It was hard enough getting to a place in his life where he was happy with who he was. He doesn’t need anyone messing that up.
“That’s horse shit,” Jazz says. “That’s your mom talking.”
“Well, what if she’s right?”
“She isn’t,” Jazz says. She stands from the bed and kneels in front of him, grabbing his hands a bit too forcefully before rubbing an apologetic thumb over his knuckles. “Anyone worth holding onto is not gonna care about how you were born. Do you think I care that Mona is trans?”
Malcolm shakes his head. “Of course not.”
Jazz gives him a pointed look. “There you go, then. Proof. Anything your mom says is shit. You’re gonna find someone who isn’t an asshole, someone who loves you like crazy and would rather die than live the rest of their life without you.”
“And what if that person doesn’t exist? What if I can’t find them?”
“Then you still have us, stupid,” she says, swatting him upside the head a bit too hard. He yelps, and she smooths his hair back down in apology. “We fit all that criteria anyway, minus the smooching and the sexing.”
“Sexing?”
“Although, from what I’ve heard about him, Rebo isn’t the type of guy to give a shit about how you were born.”
Malcolm shrugs, staring down at his feet.
“And if he is,” Jazz continues, “we can always just kill him.”
Malcolm finally laughs at that. Jazz smiles at him, her tongue between her teeth.
Jazz stands up and swiftly retrieves her phone out of her back pocket. Her thumbs fly across the screen in a blur, and a moment later Malcolm feels a buzz against his thigh.
“What was that?”
Jazz doesn’t look away from her phone. “Just texted the group chat to let them know we’ll be gone for the rest of the weekend.”
Malcolm blinks. “We will?”
“Yes, we will,” she says. “You need to get away from this shitty little town and live a little.” She tucks her phone away before turning to Malcolm, her hand outstretched and a grin on her face. “Come on, dude. We’re going on a road trip.”