Derek rolled his eyes. “Way to miss an opportunity, dude. You’re saying you were just…you?”
“Yeah. I was just me. But I had another name and lived in Nashville.” He couldn’t believe he was admitting all of this aloud to someone who wasn’t Alice.
“How boring.”
“I guess so.”
Derek tilted his head. “Do you know how you died?”
“I was hit by a truck.”
“Fuck,” Derek winced. “Sorry, man. That’s crappy.”
“It is.”
Derek patted the place next to him. “Sit. Tell me more.”
It wasn’t as though Neil let it all come tumbling out, but still, gradually, Derek came to be the only person aside from Neil’s mother who knew all about his past life and Joshua. Neil even showed him the videos of Joshua that Lee had posted to Facebook over the years, and they discussed at length Neil’s memories from his first life.
Derek was pretty fascinated by it all, but he never made fun of Neil or suggested that he was crazy. It was a relief to have someone else who accepted his reality as truth. Though Neil himself still sometimes wondered in the wee, sleepless hours of morning if it was true at all, or if he was simply delusional, if not schizophrenic.
But, as far as Neil was concerned, a fuck buddy and a friend wasn’t a bad trade-off at this point in his life. If he couldn’t have Joshua, he didn’t see why he needed to be a friendless monk. He supposed he deserved a little pleasure outside of his work.
Neil also knew that if it wasn’t for the sex, the friendship would never have happened. If they hadn’t been fucking, then Derek would never have been in Neil’s bedroom, or, if he had, Neil would’ve accused him of snooping or looking for cash or something worse. But sometimes they screwed on Neil’s bed instead of Derek’s, and Neil would get up, shower, and go back to the labs, leaving Derek blissed out on the mattress.
Some part of him had to have known it was only a matter of time before Derek would notice the collection of books, all of them on reincarnation, and ask about them. It wasn’t common for young people to have paper-and-ink books anymore, and he had a lot of them. Neil could admit to himself that maybe he’d wanted Derek to ask. Maybe Neil was lonely, and Derek was as good a potential friend for him as any. It wasn’t as though he could share the truth about himself with any of his professors or his fellow scientists without doing harm to his career. As far as Neil was concerned, between the orgasms and the expectation-free company, Derek’s friendship served him well.
It turned out that Alice liked Derek, too. Neil wasn’t the best son ever, but he submitted to her request for monthly meals together, so long as they were held at his apartment with Derek. That way he could zip out of the lab, eat takeout with her, do his sonly duty, and go right back to the lab afterward. That plan backfired the night he got wrapped up in his work, forgot about their dinner plans, missed her text messages, and returned to the apartment to find her and Derek sacked out on the sofa watching old romantic comedies and drinking hard cider like old pals.
After that he was always on time to meet his mother for their dinner dates. He hoped that would put an end to the inappropriate fraternizing between his mother and his fuck buddy, but it didn’t. He returned from his lab one evening seeking sex and dinner to find Derek talking over video call with Alice. He stood, dumbfounded, outside Derek’s door listening to them discuss the ‘reincarnation thing.’ Like it was no big deal, and when Derek looked up and saw Neil standing there, he went on talking to Alice like it was normal and like Neil wasn’t there listening.
“Yeah, I agree. The problem isn’t that Neil’s hot for someone older. Lots of guys have hopeless crushes. It’s more than that, and he’s gonna have to let this one go,” Derek said, sticking his tongue out at Neil and motioning toward the kitchen where Neil could smell some Chinese takeout waiting. “I mean, as far as this Joshua guy’s concerned, Neil’s dead. And heisdead. Well, not our Neil, but the other Neil. You know what I mean.” He muted the microphone so that Alice couldn’t hear. “It’s your mom. I got the Lo Mein like you like, okay? I’ll be off in a minute. Unless you want to talk to her?”
Neil just stood and stared at him. Derek rolled his eyes, blew his hair away from his face, and unmuted his mic. “Alice, listen, I’ve gotta go. We can talk about this more later, okay? But don’t worry so much. Neil’s okay. He works a lot, but he’s eating plenty. And he actually smiled twice yesterday, so either it’s a sign of the apocalypse or he’s doing pretty all right.”
Neil wasn’t smiling now. Hell no, he wasn’t. “Have you told her that we’re fucking, too?” he asked as soon as Derek disconnected.
“No. Do you want me to?” Derek stomped into the kitchen, got some plates out, and put them on the table. “I could tell her all about how you make me come so hard with that big dick of yours that I see stars. Think she’d like that?”
Neil knew Derek was messing with him, but it pissed him off all the more.
Derek sighed. “Listen. She’s lonely, okay? She’s got this big, weird thing in her life—”
“You mean me.”
“Yeah, you. And she needs to talk to someone who gets it. When she found out I knew everything and that I believed your story, she was so relieved. Don’t deny her that. Besides, I like her, okay? She’s kind of awesome. And one day, when you’re off…being you…she might need a shoulder, and I might need a mother figure who isn’t actually my mom. So, just chill. And eat your Chinese food.”
Derek took his plate to his bedroom and shut the door. Neil stood and stared at the boxes of food for a minute and then filled a plate, before knocking on Derek’s door. “So are we going to screw or what?”
Derek threw something soft against the door. Neil heard whatever it was bounce against the opposite side. “Call your mother and maybe we’ll fuck after.”
Neil sighed. He didn’t really have time to talk to Alice. But he supposed ithadbeen almost a week. He sat down with his meal and phoned his mom.
“Hey, Mom,” he said around a mouthful of food. “I can’t talk long, but how are you?”
Of course, thenext time Alice came to dinner, she spent the entire time asking him why Derek couldn’t be his boyfriend.
“Because it doesn’t work like that,” Neil said, calling on all the patience he could muster, thankful that Derek was out with some of his other friends for a change. He wanted to be a good son to Alice. He did. It was just that sometimes she made it really hard.
