On a whim, I texted Will. Do you have plans for Thanksgiving?
Hell no, hate tgiving, he wrote, no emoji. I couldn’t even imagine the emoji that could come close to expressing Will levels of scorn.
“Maybe I’ll offer to work at Mug Shots on Thanksgiving,” I mused. At least I could make some money and maybe even rack up some karma points with Layne by volunteering. I was still trying to come back from the whole telling her I was gay in an attempt to get her to hire me thing.
“Aren’t things usually closed on Thanksgiving?” Charles asked absently.
I WAS ready to commit actual bodily harm against my physics TA by the last class before Thanksgiving break. It was infuriating because I loved the lecture so much, the readings were fascinating, and I was actually kind of thinking that being a physics major would be amazing. But this fucking guy made me want to invent new words just to express my loathing for him. I couldn’t tell if he had it in for me in particular or if he was this much of a dick to everyone, but it was like he took joy in shooting down my ideas and making everything as difficult as possible by giving me the bare minimum of information in response to any question I asked.
I walked back to my room and fell immediately face-first onto my bed where I lay, backpack still on, until Charles shook me awake a few hours later and asked if I was purposely reenacting what it felt like to be pressed to death. He was writing a paper about the Salem witch trials—I’d had no idea how many theories there were to explain the cause of the girls’ mania—and had explained in great detail the week before about pressing as a method of execution.
I woke up long enough to grumble, shrug my backpack off, and pull the covers up before going back to sleep. When I woke up the next morning, I almost panicked when I saw it was after ten until I remembered it was Thanksgiving break and I didn’t have anywhere to be until five, when Charles and I were going over to Milton’s folks’ house for dinner. When they’d heard Milton had friends who were staying in the dorms over Thanksgiving, they’d insisted we come celebrate with them, Charles’ critiques of the holiday notwithstanding.
SEND ME a pic of yr outfit, Milton texted me around noon.
Ummmmm, I wrote back. I was just wearing jeans and a hoodie like I always did. Is Thanksgiving an… outfit occasion? It never had been in my family. But I guessed I should’ve known that my parents might not be predictive of the sartorial habits of what I’d gleaned was a pretty stylish New York City family, considering that my mom’s idea of fancy was a sweatshirt decorated with white puffy paint lace around the collar and my dad’s was his plaid button-down from Lands’ End instead of his plaid button-down from Target.
Facepalm, Milton texted. Never mind. See you at 5.
“Hey, what are you wearing to dinner?” I asked Charles, who was reading up on the history of Native American cultural appropriation to make sure he could accurately synopsize the various critical positions.
“A navy suit, a light gray shirt, and brown wingtips,” he said.
“Right, sure.”
Holy shit.
I texted Will: FASHION EMERGENCY!!! Can I borrow something to wear? P.S. Happy Tgiving.
“SO YOU seriously aren’t doing anything festive for Thanksgiving?”
“I got a turkey sandwich with cranberry compote for lunch. That was festive as hell.”
I rolled my eyes at Will and shrugged on the shirt he held out to me.
“Hmm, I wonder if Rex can cook Thanksgiving dinner in the cabin?” I mused. Rex was an amazing cook, and I couldn’t imagine him passing up the opportunity.
“Huh? They’re going to Michigan?”
“No, no. They went to a cabin in some state park for Thanksgiving. I just figured Rex had told you.”
Will snorted. “I never hear from that asshole anymore.”
“You don’t? Since when?”
He looked at me like I’d said something stupid. “Uh, since he and Daniel shacked up.”
“But… why?” I knew Daniel and Will weren’t exactly one another’s biggest fans, but I couldn’t imagine that Daniel would ever ask Rex not to talk to Will.
“Because that’s what happens when people get into relationships, kiddo. They don’t give a shit about other people anymore.” His tone was matter-of-fact.
He slipped the jacket over my shoulders, and we both looked at me in the mirror.
“It doesn’t look good on me the way it does on you,” I grumbled. The suit was light gray with a dark gray pinstripe, and on him it looked classy, but I looked like I was playing dress-up as a gangster or something.
“It doesn’t really go with your coloring. Besides, you’re skinny as shit.”
I glared at him. “Well, fix it!”