The Honeys

by Ryan La Sala

But invisible to anyone else is the moment we both reach a grim understanding as to why we’re being introduced. We’re both gay.

Bright things in nature are often poisonous. Let that be my defense, then.

I will be a ruin to consume.

super-freaking-perfect. “Watch your language, SpongeBob,” I scold.

Dandelion spores pirouette on a sweet breeze like a prophecy, or a temptation. Wyatt

maybe it’s because I’ve spent my life on the outside, peering through a yearning distance at the games girls play, memorizing every turn and trick with the desperate hope that one day I’d be invited to play along, too.

The tears come quickly. For once I don’t try to hide them. I can’t, with my hands locked to Sierra’s, and it doesn’t matter because she’s crying, too. The tremor of emotion passes between our hands, back and forth, back and forth. Shared. Divided. Lessened. The songs outside keep changing, and finally the tears stop.

Ah, I think to myself. Mars has a crush. I decide no, I don’t, but thank you anyway.

participate in their stuff. Sports and poker night. Show them you’re, like, chill.” “Wyatt, that’s not being chill. That’s performative heterosexuality.”

This sadness is unlike what I started with. It feels spread thin, a bit in each of us. Shared. Not so heavy anymore.

Contentedness is a party I leave early every time. It’s not often that I feel invited to begin with, and even rarer that I feel welcomed enough to stay. I’ve learned to never test any group’s hospitality. Patience like that is finite for someone like me, and it’s dangerous to indulge in it.

We just survive in different ways. Tyler assimilates, and since I can’t do that, I resort to exceptionalism.

As I lean back in the chair, I stare at my reflection in the blackened screen and finally see the person sitting behind me in the lab.