One Last Stop

by Casey McQuiston

“You gotta eat it all in one.” “You’re so mean to me,” August says when she manages to swallow. “I’m showing you how to eat dumplings the right way!” Jane says. “I’m being so nice!”

She has to stop picturing what they look like to every other commuter: a couple laughing over takeout, ribbing each other on the ride to Manhattan.

Shit. August supposes she did ask for it.

For a few ringing seconds, August imagines herself melting onto the floor of the train like the ghosts of a million spilled subway slushies and dropped ice cream cones.

August does as she’s told, and Jane makes another sound, one deep in her throat, which August assumes is a good sign.

“So many questions for someone who does not come to work,” Lucie tuts.

Side note: I imagine Lucie as the waitress from "Emperor's New Groove" and you cannot convince me otherwise. I know that she is a (I think) 29 year old but my brain likes the waitress from ENG and it will not change that image.

She loves it earnestly. For a punk who knows how to fight, she seems to love everything earnestly.

She eyes August dubiously. “Most people are happier to hear this.”

She’s been deliberately not doing the math on her credits, caught in anxiety limbo between another student loan and the inevitable push off the ledge into adulthood. This is the ledge, she guesses. And the push.

She feels like a cartoon character in midair, looking down to see the desert floor and a jacuzzi full of TNT five hundred feet below her.

What the fuck is she supp...

It’s easy to know who you are when you chose once and never changed your mind.

That dynamite hot tub is starting to sound very appealing.

“I’m trying to have a nervous breakdown here.”

“Why do I feel like I’m about to take my life into my own hands?”

August makes the absolutely terrible mistake of looking down and feels like she’s going to throw up.

“That’s my girl!”

“None of us know exactly who we are, and guess what? It doesn’t fucking matter. God knows I don’t, but I’ll find my way to it.”

Maybe I don’t know what fills it in yet, but I can look at the space around where I sit in the world, what creates that shape, and I can care about what it’s made of, if it’s good, if it hurts anyone, it makes people happy, if it makes me happy. And that can be enough for now.”

“Look, I was gay in the ’70s. I can handle an emergency.”

“She got off the train, and you led with the kissing? God, you are the most useless bisexual I’ve ever met in my entire goddamn life.”

Today I remembered that I dated a girl in Spanish Harlem who liked to get head to this album! XOXO Jane August chokes on her sandwich.

Thankfully, after the first, they’re almost never songs that she used to eat girls out to.

“People take obnoxious things on the subway all the time! I was on the Q last week and someone had an entire recliner! It had cupholders, Wes.” “Yeah, and that person was an asshole.

You haven’t been in New York long enough to earn the right to be an asshole with impunity. You’re still in the tourist zone.” “I am not a tourist. A rat climbed up my shoe yesterday, and I just let it happen. Could a tourist do that?”

Isaiah is saying something about his day job, about Instagram influencers asking if they can write off handcrafted orchid crowns on their taxes, and Wes is laughing—eyes closed, head thrown back, nose scrunched up laughing.

“I haven’t even seen the inside of Wes’s bedroom, and I share a wall with him.” “Yeah, it’s cute! You expect it to look like a hobbit hole, but it’s really nice.”

He’s aiming for indignant, but his mouth splits into a begrudging smile. Oh, man. He is in love.

Dear Natalie Cole, when you sang the line When you touch me I can’t resist, and you’ve touched me a thousand times, were you thinking about a confused queer with a terrible crush? Dear Freddie Mercury, when you wrote “Love of My Life,” did you mean for it to reach across space and time in a platonic way or a real-deal, break-your-heart, throw-you-up-against-a-wall type of way?

If she absolutely has to have feelings, she can at least do it in private.

“It’s complicated.” “Is it, though? Like, my crush lives on the subway. You have it so much easier.”

“I’d disappoint him,” he says, maintaining stubborn eye contact as he dusts his jeans off. “He doesn’t deserve to be disappointed.”

It’s all about loving someone so much you can’t stand the idea of losing them, even if it hurts, that all the hard stuff is worth it if you can get through together.

Okay, she types, thinking of Wes and how determined he is not to let Isaiah hand him his heart, of Myla holding Niko’s hand as he talks to things she can’t see, of her mom and a whole life spent searching, of herself, of Jane, of hours on the train—all the things they put themselves through for love. Okay, I get it.

“And what better day than this holy Sunday to bless the rains down in Africa,” he says, waving them into his apartment with a flourish.

“Loving the sacrilege,” Niko says, unloading a pan of vegetarian pasteles. He picks up one of the figurines, which is wrapped in a bedazzled sock. “White Jesus looks great in puce.”

“It’s nothing special,” Wes grumbles as he shoulders past her to the kitchen. “Tell him what kind.” There’s a heavy pause in which she can practically hear Wes’s teeth grinding. “Orange cardamom with a maple chai drizzle,” he bites out with all the fury in his tiny body.

This boy is so in love and I adore him

“Oh shit, that’s what my sister’s bringing,” Isaiah says. Wes looks stricken. “Really?” “No, dumbass, she’s gonna show up with a bunch of Doritos and a ziplock bag of weed like she always does,” Isaiah says with a happy laugh, and Wes turns delightfully pink.

He turns to them, gesturing across the room at an incredibly hot and stubbly guy who’s walked in. He looks like he fell out of a CW show and into Isaiah’s living room. Wes is instantly glaring.

oooo someone is jealous

“Oof,” August says, “you’re jealous.” “Wow, holy shit, you figured it out. You’re gonna win a Peabody Award for reporting,” Wes deadpans. “Where’s the keg? I was told there would be a keg.”

What in the world goes on at drag family Easter brunch?

I’m pretty sure that’s the only thing Niko’s parents don’t like about me, my heathen upbringing,”

“The Catholic church taught me everything I know about drama. And candles.”

Our parents should get together with the blood of Christ sometime. Except mine are Methodist, so it’s grape juice.”

Wes, who is perched on the countertop observing the conversation with the vaguest of interest, says, “August, didn’t you go to Catholic school for a million years? Is your family horny for Jesus too?”

“I’m—I’m tough. Like a cactus.”

You’re—you’re a little sugar pumpkin.” “I’m a garlic clove,” August says. “Pungent. Fifty layers.”

“Look, I know I don’t have the firmest grasp on time, but I’m pretty sure it’s really late for brunch.” “What, are you into rules now?”

“If you care what time brunch happens, you’re a cop.”

She’s friends with a whole psychic, and she believes him.