X finally met Dallas and Val.
Zoe had postponed it all week. Val was still livid about her going to the Lowlands, and Zoe needed her to calm down enough so that she wasn’t levitating off the floor with rage when she met X. In the end, Dallas suggested he cook them all dinner at House of Huns after closing. It was a nice offer, especially if Dallas still had unsimple feelings for her. Zoe said yes to the dinner immediately, even though “Hun” food creeped her out. She’d once had a nightmare about drowning in a bathtub full of brown glop.
House of Huns was empty except for Dallas, who banged the gong and chanted “Furg! Mrgh! Furg!” when Zoe and X entered. He was still wearing his work uniform and holding a rubber-tipped spear. The pointy fur hat sat just above his eyebrows. The leather straps crisscrossed his naked chest. Zoe wondered if Dallas had engineered this whole dinner just so that X could see how ripped he was. Rather than annoying her, she thought it was sweet. Dallas was never, ever going to stop being himself. She didn’t want him to.
X stepped forward to shake Dallas’s hand, not knowing that Dallas considered the grill a sacred place and never broke character when he was anywhere near it.
Dallas grunted. He poked X’s hand lightly with the spear.
“Krot!” he said.
“Okay, now you’re being weird,” said Zoe.
“No, no,” said X. “Dallas, you are the very embodiment of a Hun. I was acquainted with one in the Lowlands—he’d lived on the Sea of Azov—and I feel as if he stands before me now.”
Hearing this, Dallas broke into an unabashed grin, and all but lunged to shake X’s hand.
“Thanks, dawg!” he said. “People don’t realize how much thought goes into the character. The guy I play? Mundzuc? He’s complicated.”
“Your work has borne fruit,” said X.
“Boom!” said Dallas. “That is so cool to hear.” He paused. “This may come out wrong, but I’m glad you’re not in hell anymore. That shit was unfair.”
“Thank you,” said X. “I owe my freedom, and everything else, to Zoe.”
“Zoe’s the best, right?” said Dallas. “She crushes stuff.”
“Okay, that’s enough,” said Zoe. “What’s happening with you and Mingyu? Did she agree to go out with you?”
“She’s still going over the lists I gave her,” said Dallas.
“The All-Time Favorites thing?” said Zoe.
“Yeah,” said Dallas. “I put stuff on there that she’d never heard of—which I’m kind of proud of, honestly. She knew all the music because she literally knows all music. But now she’s reading the books, and watching the TV shows and stuff. She won’t give me a yes or no until she’s finished. She calls it ‘the research phase.’ She says a lot of people skip the research phase before they hook up with somebody, and then they regret it.”
“You don’t think all this is kind of annoying?” said Zoe.
“Are you kidding? I think it’s awesome!” said Dallas. He adjusted a leather strap that had apparently been chafing a nipple. “I think it’s badass. This girl is not playing.”
“Then I’m happy for you, Mundzuc,” said Zoe. “I mean it. X and I are gonna grab a table, okay?”
Dallas gripped his spear, and disappeared back into character.
“Furg zot zot!” he said. “Oh, wait, sorry—I forgot to ask what you wanted to drink.”
As they drifted to a booth by the window, Zoe thanked X for being kind to Dallas about his costume.
“I can’t believe you’ve met a Hun,” she said.
“I haven’t,” he said quietly. “It’s just that I liked Dallas immediately, and he seemed to be trying hard.”
“What about the Sea of Azov?” said Zoe.
“There is no Sea of Azov, so far as I know,” said X. “We’ll have to check the shower curtain.”
At the table, X set his backpack carefully on the chair next to him. Zoe smiled to herself. She was pretty sure it was empty. Shortly afterward, Dallas brought them their drinks (“Furg ice water! Furg Mountain Dew!”), then stomped Hun-like back to the grill.
“I was thinking about something Timothy said,” said Zoe.
“Yes?” said X.
“He said he met your mother in September,” said Zoe, “and that he only knew her for a month.”
“I remember,” said X. “But what does that signify?”
“What it signifies,” said Zoe, “is that we’re going to throw you a birthday party this summer. You were a July baby.”
X seemed not to know what to say.
“A July baby,” he said eventually. “I like the sound of that.”
“I’m going to buy you a ton of presents,” said Zoe.
“And I am going to carry them in my backpack,” said X.
Zoe got nervous waiting for Val to show up. She was much more worried about Val meeting X than she’d been about Dallas meeting him. By the time she saw her friend’s blue head approaching through the parking lot, Zoe’s nerves were jangling like silverware loose in a drawer. She needed the people she loved most to love each other.
Zoe went outside to intercept Val, and gauge her mood. Val was with Gloria, which she hadn’t expected.
“It’s you!” Zoe shouted to Gloria, happily. “It’s you! It’s you! It’s you!”
Zoe knew how hard it was for Gloria to be around people because of the anxiety and depression. Now that she thought about it, maybe shouting at her hadn’t been the best idea. But Zoe couldn’t help herself: Val and Gloria looked so lovely arm in arm.
“It’s me,” said Gloria, waving back shyly. “It’s me. It’s me. It’s me.”
“Sorry we’re late,” said Val. “We were making out in the car.”
“I assumed,” said Zoe.
She hugged Gloria first.
“I love that you’re here,” she said. “I love it. Thank you.”
“I wanted to meet X,” said Gloria. “And I have kind of a thing for Dallas. Don’t tell my girlfriend.”
“Your girlfriend knows,” said Val. “Your girlfriend is appalled.”
Zoe hugged Val now.
“You’ll be nice, right?” said Zoe.
“That kind of thing is so hard to predict,” said Val.
“She’ll be nice,” said Gloria. “We had a long talk about manners in the car. I think she understands the basic idea now.”
The three of them entered House of Huns together, and once again the gong clanged and shivered. Dallas was so surprised to see Gloria that he broke character, and let her hold his spear.
“I’m so stoked to see you guys!” he said.
X stood up from the table and came to shake their hands. He always shook hands, Zoe thought, with an adorable seriousness.
“I am stoked to see you as well,” X told Val and Gloria, “though I do not know what ‘stoked’ means.”
“It means pumped or jacked,” said Dallas.
“I am pumped or jacked,” said X.
There was a silence where no one knew what to say, Zoe included.
“Val, you are a legend to me,” said X. “And, Gloria, I have wanted to meet you especially.”
Zoe had a twinge of panic. She’d told X virtually nothing about Gloria. He had no idea how fragile she was, how guarded.
“Me?” said Gloria. She took a half a step backward. “Why?”
Everyone looked at X questioningly, and he seemed to falter.
“Because—well, because you are a foster child,” he said.
Gloria dropped her head. Zoe felt her stomach lurch. She should have warned X not to bring it up.
“That is not a thing Gloria wants to talk about,” said Val.
“Yeah,” said Gloria. “I’m not … I don’t … I’m not embarrassed about it. But it’s hard to talk about because—honestly?—some of it sucked, and it’s just kind of impossible to make anybody understand.”
“I am truly sorry to have mentioned it,” said X. “All I intended to say was—”
“Let it go, X,” said Zoe.
“I will in a moment,” he said. “All I intended to say was—”
“I mean it, X,” said Zoe. “Let it go.”
“It’s okay,” said Gloria, her head still low. “Go ahead.”
“Thank you,” said X. “I only wanted to say that I think I do understand a little.” He paused. “Because I was a foster child, too.”
Gloria looked up finally.
“What’d you mean?” she said.