It’s the first step toward something intimate, the moment one person offers and the other says, “Yes.”

Inbox (57)

Emsayshey asked: hi noah. thank you for running the mcd blog. seeing other trans people talk about their love stories every day really keeps me going. it makes me feel like there’s a meet cute out there waiting for me, and i just have to stay alive long enough to find it. but the hate blog going around is really making it hard to be a diary fan. can you ask some of the anons submitting their stories to leave some proof so people will stop believing the haters? thanks!

The next morning, I wake up to the sound of Brian slamming the door on his way out and immediately check the Diary. I’m still dropping followers, so I text Becca like Yo, did you make that post or what? but she doesn’t respond, so I read through some DMs that just make me miserable before finally crawling out of bed.

I head to the kitchen to heat up some leftover arroz con pollo from last night. Part of Brian’s cooking kick involves actually embracing our cultural heritage—white and Japanese on our mom’s side and Afro-Caribbean on our dad’s—for the first time in his nineteen years on the planet. It’s nothing spectacular, but it’s nice to have something that at least mostly tastes like home while I’m so far away.

My thumb opens the Tumblr app out of muscle memory, and I check my recent notifications to see more people commenting on the bookstore meet cute. Despite all the negativity, there’s still a good number of excited commenters, so I can’t be too upset. Then I feel my stomach drop as I remember the interview from yesterday. Yeah, that was pretty humiliating, and I can’t quite say I’m ready to brave the world of job hunting again just yet, but I’m also kind of sad about Drew. Well, about the fact that I’ll probably never see him again since I didn’t get the job.

I’m just finishing breakfast as my phone rings, and my first instinct is to throw it across the room because my phone never rings. I mean, sometimes my mom calls, but I don’t recognize the number on my screen. I’m not even sure what area code that is, and knowing my luck, if I answer, I’ll end up on a permanent telemarketing spam list.

So maybe it’s the hand of Fate that pushes me, causing me to stumble as I head out of the kitchen and race to grab my phone before it can hit the tile, accidentally answering the call in the process.

“Hello?” the voice on the other end says, and I freeze.

“Drew?” I say.

“I—yeah. Noah?”

“Um, hey,” I say. “How did you get my number?”