How wet dreams feel

Erica was wearing the brightest shade of yellow I had ever seen. It was so bright that I wondered if it glowed in the dark, because even her mood was electricity.

“How… do… I look?” she squealed as she tossed her long brown braids to the side. Honestly, she looked like a princess. Always looked like one, just that today she was more intentional about it.

“Tu es très belle, mademoiselle,” Henry said in an exaggerated deep voice, with his hands making gestures like in theater.

“I know right,” she said, and then her expression changed very quickly to a serious one. “Here—” she placed her phone in my hand, then she picked up her glass of orange drink to take a sip, “—make it look unaware,” she said. I took a picture of her, and she collected her phone back and took a sip from the drink.

“Urghhhh,” she exclaimed. “Tastes like dust,” she said while checking out the photo.

Someone walked up to our table, a boy who was so short I would have missed him if he didn’t call my name so loud with a screeching voice.

“Alfie Sinclair, right?” he said. I turned. We all turned to look at the short round guy.

“Yes, that’s me,” I said, anticipation brooding in my chest.

“The principal wants you in his office. Now.” He left just as he came, like a rolling cannon.

The windows of the principal’s office felt too small, and the light too dim, and the air conditioner was blowing a whirlwind. It was too cold. The principal, who adjusted his glasses as often as he breathed, asked me to tutor Riley Beaumont. And I said yes.

I didn’t know how. I didn’t know when. My head felt light, like it was filled with air. I was in the middle of a conversation that I wasn’t sure I was part of. And when I said yes to tutoring Riley, I wondered if I could say no. If I could stay in the principal’s office and tell him no to his face. I wondered how his brows would twist and how sharply he would dismiss me from his office, with one finger on the bridge of his nose—adjusting his glasses—and one motioning for me to leave.

After all, it was Riley Beaumont, and the school thought of me as his tutor. If Riley won the Nationals, it would be partly because of me, and the school would recognize my effort. So it was impossible to say no. Even if I knew that this was wrong for me, it was the rightest wrong.

Later that day, I was with Erica and Henry. We were behind the tennis court, where we usually hung out sometimes in the evenings. I had not realized that Erica mentioned going on a date, and I felt stupid not to have noticed it from her dress and how bubbly she felt.

“How did it go?” Henry asked, tilting his head to the side as if to tease Erica, who was unyielding.

“What?” she said, acting oblivious.

“The date,” Henry pressed. She was staring at her screen, reapplying her lip gloss, then she looked at him.

“A douchebag—” she said, rolling her eyes before continuing. “Could you believe he started acting all crazy when I mentioned being trans? He said he didn’t know, even though it was clearly written on my bio ‘trans girl’ with the pride flag and trans flag, and my entire pronouns ‘she/they.’”

She spoke in increasing pitch. I was worried that she’d run out of breath, so I started breathing faster, as if to replace her lost breath.

“Damn, that was shitty, I guess,” I said, and I hoped it sounded empathetic enough.

“Send me his address. I have a present for him,” Henry said. I knew he was having a crooked smile on his face even though I wasn’t looking at him

.

Erica flared her hands, as if to release some of the tension in her body into the air through her fingertips. “Not to worry—” she said. “Who needs a man anyway? I got up and left, so fast before he could blink.” She flipped her braids.

“You go, honey,” I said, wondering if it sounded right, but it wouldn’t be a problem with them. They accepted me and my awkwardness.

“That’s by the way—what happened at the principal’s?”

I told them everything. They almost lost it, especially Erica. I was scared of her, like a big sister. She was the one to yell, “ARE YOU CRAZY?!” And maybe I was. But at the end of the day, they reassured me of their support and respected my decision, even though that was something she said to sound politically correct. The actual translation is: “You better not put yourself in trouble and give me a heart attack. I’m not ready to give a story time on T****k.”

That night, I dreamt that I was back in Riley’s room, on my knees in front of him, shirtless. But his friends didn’t come out of the corners. I sucked his dick. It was such a lewd dream. I resented my subconscious for picturing such images. I spent the entire day trying to forget that dream, but all my actions fell to the ground when I knocked on Riley’s door, and he came out wearing shorts and only a singlet that hugged his body so tight, only little was left to the imagination. There was a tattoo on his shoulder. It was written in Chinese.

He stood in front of me, towering over me by several meters. It felt like my world was shrinking. I couldn’t look at him. He was just too… close. So I looked down.

“Riley Beaumont. I was appointed as your tutor,” I said, half hoping for him to send me away, or maybe push me to the floor and enjoy the sight of me writhing in pain. But he asked me to come in.