Love Is What You Make It

4. Missed Connections

          They do as they'd said the next day—Thomas talks with his teachers, then to all the teachers in the building, using the "my friend" excuse to explain what had happened without giving away his and Jack's carefully-kept secret.  None of them know of a Lacey Aberwie.

          He and Jack retrace his steps at every opportunity, Jack with one eye on the crowds and one on his arm.

         They get nothing.

          For the next week they try to spot her, walking the same path over and over at all hours of the day and night—they ask the staff of all the shops on the Burger King block if they know a Lacey, walking up and down the streets, and Jack takes to studying at McDonalds during Thomas's shift so they can test the waters without having to ask all the customers what their names are.     

          It becomes increasingly difficult to seek her out while simultaneously attempting to keep her out of conversation with friends and classmates, not wanting to draw attention to her importance to them before they even knew if she was really around, and when Jack's shift gets moved up a few hours, time constraints impede their quest as well.

         They look up what the colors on Thomas's arm mean, finding a BPNQ website deep on the interwebs with a list of name colors translated into genders, but somehow the yellow and purple theme isn't listed. They come to the conclusion that whatever she is, Lacey probably isn't male or female, maybe something in between or outside the binary altogether—but they do find color schemes for about thirty other genders they hadn't even realized existed.

         "Probably shoulda learned about all this years ago," Thomas remarks one night, reading over Jack's shoulder. "Bein' bi and all."

         "I never really thought about it," Jack admits with a shrug, scrolling down a page about bigenderism.  "I just figured soul mates were soul mates and the rest didn't matter."

          Thomas smiles, soft and affectionate, and kisses Jack's nose.

          "Sounds just like something you'd say," he says, and they keep learning.

          A month passes, and they don't find her (if she is a her). Fifteen thousand students hadn't seemed like much on paper, but looking for a specific person amongst them feels like questing for a compass in a forest.

          Time passes and they start to lose enthusiasm for the quest, slowly coming to terms with the idea that they won't be finding her for some time.

         They fall back to their routine—law school, film school, shifts in town, making out when they should be writing essays, hanging with friends when they should be sleeping.

        They pass their finals and celebrate by sleeping in the next morning, eating cold pizza from Jack's mini fridge and spending the rest of the day playing video games half-naked, drinking flat Mountain Dew and half-stale Doritos.

         They go home over the summer to spend time with Damara and Bradford, who notice Thomas's new colors faster than Jack did—and the absence of the same colors on Jack's arm elicit apologies and sympathetic whines that Jack could do without.

         They give advice that doesn't help—look her up online (they can't find a Lacey Aberwie anywhere), ask all their friends (they're still in the closet, and that's the last conversation they want to have right now), maybe the Dean knows her—and in general, make Thomas wish he'd never told Bradford about the second and third names in the first place.

         But it's nice to see their guardians again, and Damara doesn't mind hosting them both as long as they help with the laundry and Bradford doesn't wear his work clothes in the house. Jack's discovered that he doesn't mind laundry—he kind of finds it relaxing—so he spends a lot of time helping Damara fold shirts and pants and socks in the basement while Thomas and Bradford shoot the shit in the family room.