“Get off him,” comes a familiar voice. May, barreling out of the crowd, shoving Luca off me so that he slides away in a cascade of popcorn and petals. I shakily stand, aware that the space around us has doubled. Two security guards push through the crowd, and when she sees them, May thrusts a finger at Luca and shouts, “He started it!”
“We weren’t fighting,” I say, but the guards are already herding us away from the crowd. Luca, for once, is agreeing with me, but they want us out of here.
I throw a last look at May. She’s still got some moss clinging to her ear. Text me, she motions solemnly. Inaya stands next to her, somehow looking completely innocent while covered in zombie gore. Then she turns back to the cameras, the interview becoming all hers.
Shit.
Luca and I are led through a set of back doors. The guards ignore us as we beg them to listen, eventually pushing us into a small conference room full of boxes of lanyards. One stays with us while the other talks on his radio in the hall. After a long time, the door opens, and in walks Madeline. The person running Trip-C. She regards us with restrained annoyance and…is that fear?
“She wants to see you both.”
Eight
Then
Thirteen months ago
As soon as we get to the studio, Luca ducks into the bathroom to strip off his shirt and try to scrub away the paint. A little baffled by the whole situation, I do what I always do when I’m nervous: I get to work.
I consider pulling from my brand-new Plasma Siren fabric, but something tells me Luca won’t want a shimmering gossamer tank top with scalloped, eyelash-edged lace. What else do I have? A few months ago, I did a simple Chihiro cosplay. She’s the main character from Spirited Away, a Miyazaki classic. At the beginning, she wears a simple shirt with a fat, horizontal stripe in frog green. I made it roomy so it’d give me the look of a kid, but that means it’ll still be a little tight on Luca. I find it crumpled up at the bottom of one of my many bags, hidden in the studio’s cedar closet. It’s wrinkled, but it’s nothing my steamer can’t handle. Easy.
But I don’t want easy. Somehow, this boy, flecked in gold, has followed me all the way home. Maybe he’s straight, but maybe he isn’t. Either way, just handing him a shirt feels terribly anticlimactic. I’ve got a live audience for once, and I want to show off.
The water shuts off in the bathroom, and Luca emerges shirtless and damp (yet again). I suddenly wonder why I’m racing to put a shirt on him at all.
“I have an idea,” I tell him.
And that’s how Luca and I end up collaborating on a tank top. It’s just a simple garment, but he takes it very seriously when I tell him the fabric choice is up to him. We spread scraps from previous projects all over the table, and Luca considers each one with the care of a vintage wine enthusiast. When he finally does pick one, it breaks my heart to tell him that he’s chosen wrong.
“But I like the color.”
I take the fabric from him. It’s a bright orange canvas, waxy and inflexible. Maybe he is straight after all?
“We need a knit fabric. It’s got to be able to stretch.”
“Knit? Like a sweater?”
I pull out a swatch of jersey knit in viridian, leftover from a hipster Midoriya cosplay I did last year. “See?” I say as I stretch it out. “This is knit together, and it has good recovery. It stretches, but it takes back its shape when released. Perfect for tight clothing.”
“But I like the orange.”
I scan the heap before us. There’s no other orange. But then I get another idea. I race away and return carrying a toolbox full of sewing supplies, popping it open with such a flourish that Luca lets out a whistle.
“That’s a lot of needles.”
“They’re pins.”
“What do you do with them?”
“Pin things.”
I find what I’m looking for: a length of neon orange bias tape.
“What if you pick a workable knit and then we finish it with an accent trim in this bias tape?”
This sentence, while perfectly reasonable to me, earns me a few slow blinks from Luca. I’m ready for what’s coming—a scoff, or maybe a taunting laugh as he strolls out of here—but instead he says, “Say that again, but with different words.”
“Want me to just show you?”
He crosses his arms and smirks. I do my best to keep my eyes on his. His smirk opens into a smile, which he wipes away with a cupped hand. “You know what you’re doing, don’t you?”
Not really, I think.
We end up going with a cotton blend rib knit in a rich forest green. I consider using his ruined shirt to make a quick pattern, but again, my efficiency fails in favor of flare. Instead, I made Luca stand still as I take his measurements.
This takes me one hundred years to get right. I hold one hundred breaths. I’m halfway under his arm when I realize I have not written down a single number, and I start over again, hoping he doesn’t notice. The whole time, he watches me with amusement.
“You’re shaped weird,” I tell him.
“What’s my shape?”
“Somewhere between anime man and upside-down Dorito. Very triangular torso.”
“Are you calling me top-heavy?” he gasps, clutching his chest.
I’m a little self-conscious, aware that at any moment, the conversation could turn to my own body. I’m not like Luca. I am soft and round almost everywhere. I don’t want him thinking he has some sort of upper hand because of his athletic figure.
“Just busty,” I say, tapping the tape.
Luca just grins, watching me.
While I cut the fabric, I pretend I’m streaming on Ion. At first, it’s much weirder to have a person to actually talk to, but then it’s the easiest thing in the world to narrate as Luca peppers me with questions. I let him do some cutting, and I like how careful he is with the scissors. I let him do some pinning, and I am enamored with how delicate his fingers can be. When we get to sewing, I sit him down in the chair, introduce him to the pedal, and coax him into stitching a seam that starts out wavy but is pin-straight by the end.
“Good, see? You’re a natural.”
I handle sewing on the bias tape, since it’s tricky. As I feed the garment through my sewing machine, Luca sits on the other side and gathers it into his palms, whistling with amazement. And then we’re done, and I recognize the glow of accomplishment that hovers around Luca as he pulls on his new tank top.
“It fits!” he exclaims.
“Of course it fits. That’s why we measured.”