“Give him time to become fully corrupted,” he says. “I know the type. Their kindness is predicated on their power. Once they feel the power slip, they’ll cut even their closest friends to hold on to it.”
“Gosh, I hope that’s not the case.” I hear the longing in my voice, and suddenly realize how invested I am in the well-being of all these friends. Brendan, Cyril, all of them.
“Trust me,” he says. “Nothing is more dangerous than the wrath of the powerful who are feeling their supremacy slip.”
“He’s not a good friend of mine or anything, but he’s my cousin’s roommate. It would break my cousin’s heart if Jack turned out to be as awful as you think he is.”
“Is your cousin in love with him?” he asks.
“I—I don’t know, honestly. We talk of fashion and music, we make jokes and mock each other mercilessly. But as you heard out there, talk of love... well, sometimes I think that in this world, our kind of love is the ultimate taboo.”
His eyes light up when I say this, like he’s sure that I’m a kindred spirit now. “And the sweetest one too. May I sit with you?”
“Yes,” I say. “Thank you for asking.”
“Thank you for giving me another chance.” He sits next to me. Eyes the open book. “Good old Plato.” He says the name like he’s referring to an old friend.
“You’ve read it?”
“I’ve read everything.” The sly smile on his face is intoxicating. “Well, everything I’ve gotten my hands on.” He places his hand on the right side of the book. Mine rests on the left side. Our fingers almost touch as they wander across the words. Words like thepower of loveandlove is our best friendandchildren of the sun. “What do you think of it? His theory of who we once were?”
“I love it,” I say excitedly. “I don’t know if it’s true but imagine if it is. It would explain everything, wouldn’t it?”
“And you...” He hesitates. “Are you a child of the sun?”
I glance over the passage our fingers rest on again. It says that in the beginning, we all had two sets of arms and legs and faces. There were three sexes then. The children of the sun were two men. The children of the earth were two women. And the children of the moon were a man and a woman. Being whole like this made us powerful, and that scared the gods. So Zeus split us in two, leaving us searching for our other half. “Yes,” I whisper. “I am a child of the sun.”
“And your other half?” he asks. “I take it you believe he’s out there, since you believe this is all more than a romp.”
“I have to be believe it,” I declare. “If I don’t, then I’ll lose all hope. And if you have no hope, well... how do you move forward?”
“Hope is the only thing that’s kept me going all these years.” He sighs.
I laugh. “All these years,” I echo. “How old are you? Eighteen? Nineteen?”
“Seventeen, actually,” he says, and for the first time, I notice him blinking. Finally, those feline eyes look calmer, less precise in their stare.
“Me too!” I squeal, excited to have found something in common with him, even if it’s just a number.
“But I’m a very old seventeen,” he says wearily.
“My mother sometimes says I’m seventeen going on forty, but that’s because I work so hard. But in so many other ways, I feel like a kid, honestly,” I confess. “I know nothing of love. Of intimacy. I hadn’t read Plato until a few moments ago. I haven’t read any of the material in this room. Havelock Ellis—”
“Overrated.”
“Freud.”
“Complicated.”
“Wilde.”
“Wild indeed.” His eyes crackle like fireworks.
“Your eyes,” I whisper. “Am I imagining it or are they...”
He closes his lids self-consciously. Turns away from me. I suppose, like so many of us, he’s scared of being seen. “They’re brown,” he whispers, eyes still shut. “But when you look at them long enough, they turn orange. I’ve been told it’s frightening.”
“No, it’s beautiful. Like a kaleidoscope.” There’s awe in my voice. “Or like a cat?”
