With a half-full box of donuts, Robin walked across campus. He couldn't erase the last image of Tyler's smile from his mind. Each flash of those pearly white teeth and twirl of blonde curls made a rocket filled with flurries launch in his chest.
As the highlight reel from the recent tutoring session kept playing on repeat, Robin barely paid attention to what was going on around him. He walked on autopilot toward his dorm room.
And that's how he found himself suddenly standing under a rainbow banner with "Vale U LGBTQ society" written in bold letters. Robin stared at the banner. It spoke to him. He wished he was as bold as those letters.
Every year, the LGBTQ society arranged a Pride Event on campus. Robin had watched the last one from his window, with longing eyes and a lonely heart. He envied the happy students marching together among rainbows and love. They seemed so free and sparkling. Not stuck and dull like him.
He could never be like them. Or could he? The recent questions that wreaked havoc on his mind made him dream of breaking the cage that surrounded him. The possibility seemed impossibly scary, and yet also marvelously exciting.
"Hi." A girl with pink hair, piercings in both eyebrows, and a t-shirt with a rainbow-spewing unicorn approached Robin. "Do you want a pamphlet?"
Usually, Robin just shook his head and avoided eye contact when someone unknown tried to engage with him. It just took too much effort out of him to try to hold a normal conversation.
But this time, he didn't avoid the encounter. Instead, he looked up and took the pamphlet. "Thank you," he mumbled, attempting a smile. The girl smiled back. He experienced a brief moment of recognition and belonging.
"Do you want a gift bag too?" she asked, perhaps sensing his curiosity and longing. "We hand them out to anyone who wants one."
Robin nodded. The response came automatically, without him even telling his neck muscles to move.
Soon a rainbow-patterned bag was handed to him. "Thank you," he mumbled again.
"You're welcome!" the girl replied. "We have meetings every Wednesday after school if you're interested."
A meeting sounded like a place that would have a lot of people. That sounded like too much for Robin right now. Just grabbing the bag was a huge step for him. He took a peek inside the colorful treasure trove.
Rainbow pins. A t-shirt. Stickers. A couple of chocolate bars. A small pamphlet about sex. A couple of condoms and a small tube of lube.
Robin's cheeks blossomed red as he registered the content. His heart rate sped up. It was too much. Too much too fast.
He wanted to throw the bag into the bushes and run home to hide.
Then the loop on repeat played in his mind again. A sweet smile. Blonde curls. Green eyes.
Robin didn't throw the bag. Instead, he continued his trek through the campus with the rainbow bag dangling in his left hand. In his right hand, he balanced the precious donut a certain boy had gifted him.
When he got home, he sat down on his unmade bed. A random show played on the TV but he didn't even know what he was watching. Contestants ran around frantically along aisles of groceries, shoving stuff into carts before time was up. Robin watched shopping carts clank into each other and groceries fall, with no clue what the rules or objective of the game even was.
His mind was as frantic and cluttered as the action on screen. Every aisle stocked with thoughts was suddenly scrambled beyond recognition.
His phone rang again and again. He ignored it each time. Because he knew it was his mother and couldn't deal with her right now. A sweet smile and a pair of hidden green eyes had thrown him into a personal crisis.
He pulled the pamphlet out, before hiding the colorful bag under his bed. He didn't want anyone to walk in and see it. But the informational guide seemed like a good place to start making sense of everything. Perhaps it would give him answers.
Rainbows and happiness. Smiles and pride. Girls kissing girls and boys kissing boys.
Each page made Robin long to belong. To be a part. To be someone else. To be himself.
He'd never really thought of himself in this context before. He'd never put a label on himself. He was just Robin. Awkward and weird. Most comfortable around the girl he called his best friend and often tongue-tied in the presence of cute boys.
Perhaps the mere fact that he considered boys cute should've been a clue. But the attraction was so natural for Robin that he hadn't realized it was not something all guys felt.
Had Tyler flirted with Robin? How would he know? Should he flirt back? How would he even do that? What would it lead to if he did? Did he want whatever that was?
Those were only a fraction of the questions running through his head. Thoughts whirled at lightspeed and collided like the shopping carts on the show that still blared on the TV, creating a scattered sticky mess in their wake.
Round and round they went, the same thoughts time after time. And always the same answer to that first question. An answer that didn't make sense.
Because the answer he landed on was yes. Tyler had flirted with Robin.
The problem with that answer was all the other questions it led to. If the answer was no everything would have been so much easier.
But yet, Robin didn't want the answer to be no. And that made everything even more complicated. That's when he needed the pamphlet to guide him. Because he needed a roadmap for how to act on that answer.
A knock on the door interrupted Robin's tangled yarn of thoughts. He almost fell off the bed as the sound startled him. He threw the pamphlet on the floor in a fit of panic.
"Robin, are you in there?" Des' voice carried through the flimsy door.
"I'm here," he replied. "You can come in..."
Robin realized that he hadn't even locked the door when he entered after the tutoring session. He'd been in such a hurry to get out of the public eye with the rainbow bag in his hand.
Des strolled inside. A yellow sundress, with frills and lemon-shaped buttons, lit up the room. She looked like summer, sunshine, and tangy sweetness.
Why wasn't Robin in love with her? It was an enigma connected to his current internal turmoil. Considering how much they hung out as kids, it had almost been expected of him that he would be. But he wasn't, and he think he knew why now.
"Your mom called me," she said, an unamused expression on her face. Conversations with Liza Erie tended to cause that reaction. "She says you're not taking her calls."
Des walked toward the bed but her approach was halted as she spotted something on the floor. She picked up the pamphlet and handed it to Robin without a word.
Her gaze told Robin that she knew why it was there. But he wasn't ready to tell her. Because he wasn't sure exactly what to tell her. He needed to figure out the path on his own first.
"What did you tell her?" Robin asked, tucking the pamphlet discreetly under his thigh.
"That you were chosen for a special seminar for gifted students."Des plopped down next to Robin on the bed. "I figured you needed a break from Liza and that seemed like something she would approve of. So remember that when you do talk to her."
"I will..." Robin mumbled and braved himself to glance over at Des. "Thank you. You know how she is..."
Des nudged his shoulder lightly. "Your mom can be... a bit much," she said diplomatically. A paranoid controlling nutjob would have been another way to put it. "She called me about a dozen times while I was in class. Does she not realize that you're an adult and should be allowed to be out of reach for an afternoon? You really should tell her to chill."
"It's not like she would listen." Robin shrugged. His mother never listened. She wouldn't listen if he told her to back off and she certainly wouldn't listen if he told her what he wasn't ready to say out loud yet.
Des patted his leg, right next to where the pamphlet now dwelled. "Look at me, Robin," she demanded and tried to tilt his chin toward her. Reluctantly he obeyed. He could never refuse her commands.
She let her eyes search his for a moment. "What's the matter?" she asked. "You seem troubled."
"Nothing," he mumbled and pulled his knees up to his chest to drape his arms around them.
"That's not very convincing." Her hand touched his. It didn't bubble and fizzle like with Tyler's hand. Instead, it felt like a warm velvety blanket. It felt safe.
"I'm just... confused about something," he mumbled, looking down at his hands again. The memory of how his hand had touched Ty's reverberated through his body. "I can't explain to you... because I can't even explain it to myself yet."
Des' hand flicked through his hair. "Just know that I'm here if you need to talk, Robin," she assured him. " You know I won't judge you."
She looked down at the hidden treasure under Robin's leg as she said the words. He'd never been able to hide anything from Des. She knew him better than he knew himself.
"I know..." He wanted to tell her, but the right words wouldn't come to him. There were no words for his emotions. They were just sparkling, alive, and wreaking havoc on his mind. But yet, he didn't want them to disappear.
Still, Des' presence felt comforting. Having her beside him made Robin feel like perhaps he could work this out. "Can you just hold me?" he asked, feeling like a little kid. Although his mom's embrace never felt comforting, only suffocating.
In an instant, Des wrapped her arms around him, rocking him back and forth. "Whatever it is, Robin," she whispered and patted his back. "I'm here. Whenever you feel ready to tell me."
In her embrace, he exhaled. Everything would be alright.
That's when Des spotted the donuts on the other side of Robin. "Oh, can I have one?" she asked and immediately snatched a treat behind his back before he could even answer.
"I guess no wasn't an option..." Robin treated himself to a donut as well. Sweet, soft, and melting.
His phone rang again. He picked it up this time. He felt ready to tackle her now with Des' supportive presence beside him. "Hi mom, I don't have much time to talk," he said, without missing a beat. "I got selected for this special seminar with a Nobel laureate."
Robin exchanged a smile with Des as he spun further on her cover story. It wasn't the first time his friend had helped him by feeding Liza a small white lie. "Oh, Des already told you. Good, then you weren't worried," he continued. "I need to go back in there now, but I'll call you later. I probably won't be back home until around six tonight though."
Feeling lighter, Robin hung up the phone. He had bought himself a few hours before he had to deal with his mom again. A few hours to try to sort out his tangled mess of a mind. A few hours to play a certain vignette of a smile over and over in his head.
Des rose from the bed. "I'll make us some tea," she said and started tinkering with mugs in the kitchenette. "It'll go great with the donuts. Jeopardy is starting soon."
They always watched Jeopardy together. It was their thing. During his upbringing, the thirty minutes running time of the show had been a brief respite from his mother's demands. It was one of the few shows Liza had no objection to.
It felt safe and warm to sit on the bed next to Des, drinking piping hot tea, eating donuts, and engaging enthusiastically in the game show by shouting answers over each other. If only the questions that whirled around in Robin's mind were as straightforward to answer.