All the Right Notes

by Dominic Lim

Even more than the way he made being Asian look not only different but special, almost cool.

“You gonna drill me hard?” he said.

“Take it easy on me, okay, dude? I’m a virgin,” he said with a completely straight face.

“You’re a dick.” “Well, if we’re talking percentage-wise, that is my biggest body part, so…”

He looks like what would happen if Prince Henry and Elmo had a very gay, very hyper child.

“Wow. Wow. What a dress.” He pivots to me. “And you’re Quito. Interesting outfit. Very simple. ‘Cazh Friday’ for a Special Saturday.”

“Geez, I’m sorry,” I say. “I think I might have soiled my pants.” The door opens. Emmett’s face stares back at me, changing from concern to amusement. “Well, hello to you, too.” “Shit.” “In your pants, apparently.”

“Ha. Ha. You’re a funny bunny.”

And for us to have a relationship again. A friendship, I mean.

“You still do that.” “Do what?” “Rhyme when you’re nervous.”

“Yeah. Thanks. No balls in this face, please,” I said, then closed my eyes as a wave of mortification washed over me.

J.B.’s the person I want to be when I grow up. Minus the having-sex-with-girls thing.

“The songs that run through my head, you’re always the one singing them. I can’t hear anyone else. I write for you because that’s all that will come out. So you have to come. Or I won’t be able to finish my degree.”

“Yeah, well, no one could possibly replace me,” I joked. “Exactly.” He stretched the word out, filling it with unspoken things. “It’s just not the same without you.”

one button left unfastened at the top. It made me feel scandalously slutty.

“I always wanted Emmett to be the one for you, Quito. From that very first day he came into our lives.”