“You’re still not downloading Venmo?”
Gerald dropped his phone onto the bed, pressing the speaker button. “I’m sorry if I don’t want my identity stolen or something.” With his hands now free, he continued their battle with the suitcase on the floor, grunting as they attempted to force the zipper closed.
“What … that noise?” Carl’s voice came garbled, mostly because of the poor connection at Gerald’s house. “… sounds …ving sex! Holy sh… … pick up while … with AJ?”
Gerald pursed his lips and refolded a shirt that had been caught by the zipper. “No, Carl. I’m alone.”
“I mean, we …ade jokes about … probably vanilla or whatever but I never ……
so
bad that you … phone conv....”
“Can we please stop talking about me having sex with AJ?” It came out harsher than he’d intended, and he flopped down on the bed next to his phone. “Sorry.”
Carl chuckled. “Come on, Ge. If I couldn’t handle …tle snap … wouldn’t have made it through three years …ship.”
Gerald stared at the ceiling, eyes tracing the pattern of the glow-in-the-dark moon and stars that Sam’s mom had probably placed there when she was a kid.
“But anyways, you’re still going to be a dinosaur?”
“Can’t I just like mail you a check or something?”
“You’re adorable.” Gerald reflexively rolled his eyes at the phone. “You seem … have forgotten in … age how slow …tal service is. Besides, don’t you … long flight in like two hours?”
Gerald picked up his phone, cursing as he confirmed that Carl was right. “How the hell do you know my schedule better than I do?”
“You’re … not used … our dynamic? … brooding artist, I’m … nervous system … everything is working. It’s why we’re perfect together.” He paused.
Gerald fills the silence. “Maybe we should have a Broadway show or something. Though it’d probably help if we were gay men.”
On the other end of the line, Carl was grateful that Gerald was quick to respond before he could say anything more. He listens patiently as Gerald’s grunts are followed by a few thuds then a heavy
bam!
“Ge? You alive?” Unbeknownst to Carl, Gerald was dragging himself out of a mental rut as he dragged himself to the edge of her bed — Sam’s bed — blindly reaching around for his phone.
Which he then knocked to the floor before turning off the speaker and pressing it to her ear. “Sort of feels like it,” Gerald replied. “So. Aight. Do you really need my chunk of the gift money right now?”
“You’re forgetting the cost of the hotel. And yeah, kinda. AJ is putting part of it on his credit card, but he’s got his mom’s hospital bills to worry about so I only took what I could.”
Gerald sighed. “All right, tell me how this Venmo thing works.”
“Bless my stars,” Carl drawled, affecting the Southern accent that Gerald had only heard after
particularly heavy doses of liquid courage. “I’m bringing Gerald Aguirre into the 21st century!”
“Oh please. Are you forgetting that time you crashed my computer because you tried to download what you claimed was a puppy video but turned out to be a virus-ridden copy of Fifty Shades of Grey?”
Carl remained silent, and Gerald knows he’d never admit he did it because he thought they could teach Sam to appreciate, well …
The Venmo app was downloading, the icon appearing over Sam’s face in Gerald’s wallpaper of them. Gerald dragged it down to the corner of the screen, pausing for a moment as those brown eyes, barely losing their luminescence in the photo, stared back up at him.
He spent the next few minutes picking a password and username and fighting to recall his Facebook password in order to connect the networks as Carl rambled on about his younger brother and his new girlfriend. “Seriously! They’re, like, sixteen.”
“Didn’t you tell me you had your first girlfriend at fourteen?”
“And aren’t you supposed to be on my side here?”
Gerald laughed, shaking his head as he sent Carl a friend request.
“Look at that, GAguirre39 wants to be my Venmo friend. Better send me something good in the subject line.”
With a groan, Gerald turned to his emoji keyboard to choose what he should add after ‘
I now have another annoying form of communication you’re going to judge me by’
, knowing that the symbol she needed would be the first one up on the recently used tab (because who the hell else would he ever be willing to send emojis to), but also that he needed to give Carl at least the illusion of whining and complaining and struggling with basic human interaction. It was their dynamic, and it worked.
Carl’s response was instantaneous when he got the message. “You’re such a dork. Thanks, man. You’re a lifesaver. There’s only so many times I can borrow from my dad to prevent overdraft fees until we start on the ‘seven years of college’ train.”
“Happy to help,” Gerald replied, making a note in his phone to check her own balance to make sure that the inevitable identity theft had not occurred.
“Please tell me you’ve already left for the airport.”
Gerald jumped up, yanking his charger out of the wall and hanging up on Carl with a quick and desperate “Bye!” before sprinting down the stairs. He grabbed his keys, stumbling out the door with his bag in tow. As soon as he’d fastened his seatbelt in the driver’s seat, he felt his phone buzz in his jacket pocket.
Carl:
Can’t wait to see you.
He chalked the chill in his spine up to the cool Portland air before flooring the gas and heading to the airport.