But there’s nothing I can say, and Jack doesn’t stay to hear it anyway. She stomps out of the bathroom. I sit perched on the edge of the sink, listening to the sound of her footsteps receding into the distance, melding together with another Christmas song.

It feels terrible to be the one who’s left behind.

A Webcomic

By Oliverartssometimes

Episode 6: The L-Word
(Christmas Eve, 6:57 p.m.)

Uploaded: January 28, 2022

“Honesty game: I feel like I’ve known you forever.”

“Okay, that’s not how the honesty game works. You’re supposed to say honesty game, and then ask a question you want an honest answer to.”

“The game has existed for, like, ten hours. And as its creator, I think I’m allowed to bend the rules to my will.”

“Then why even have rules?”

“Fine. Then ask me if I feel like I’ve known you forever.”

I sigh. “Honesty game: Do you feel like you’ve known me forever?”

Jack cranks out a half-moon smile that makes me feel absolutely giddy. “I do. Oh—nachos!”

The owner of the bar drops a mountainous platter of nachos onto the table and gives us a grunt. “What kind of idiots stay out all day in the middle of an unprecedented snowstorm?”

“Us kind of idiots,” Jack answers pleasantly as she pulls a nacho from the middle of the stack, a jalapeño falling onto her flannel as she attempts to shove the chip into her mouth.

“Well, the nachos are on the house. I don’t want your deaths on my conscience.”

We are sitting in a dark corner of a dark bar, knees and calves and elbows all touching. The bar is mostly empty, save for a few regulars who live in the apartments across the street and a group of unhoused people the bartender invited out of the cold. Most places have closed, but we found a bar where the owner lives upstairs and has no reason not to stay open for anyone who needed the heat. Or any idiots who needed dinner.

And we are idiots.

We still haven’t crossed the bridge that will take us to Southeast Portland, the bridge that will take us home. We haven’t discussed it, but the bridge feels like this chasm between the people we are today and the people we will be tomorrow, or in a few days when the snow melts, when this weird, magical, time-defying bubble pops.

We claimed starvation was the reason we got off track this time, but I know for me, at least, it was partially fear. Fear of what comes next. Fear of how this ends.

My fear should be about getting home, but the owner is making another batch of spiced eggnog, and Jack is kissing me between bites of nachos in our corner booth, and I can’t seem to care. Knees and calves and elbows and hands. Spicy, sweet kisses.