It's just like high school again, really-

The two of them speak in static-filled phone calls, horny text messages, and poems sent through email deep into the night. Made in voice-memo of course, since you aren’t supposed to write during Shabbat. 

Eddie still doesn’t know if this was going to work out in the end. Granted, his last boyfriend broke up with him on Christmas Day over text, so he might just have trust issues.  

Jules says the dating started in January, a few Januarys since that break-up, just so we’re clear. They had let Eddie stay over the night before his campus would officially open, and both parties would swear it was just a friendly invite with no ulterior motives. Yet thirty minutes after Eddie arrived, they were laughing in bed together about the airline employee feeling his binder up, and their hands touched. 

There was build-up beforehand: the usual queer romance-filled with weird tension and shared comrades and missed connections. But Eddie hadn’t dated at all since transitioning. It felt like he was fourteen all over again, he didn’t know how to properly do or say- 

But that one night they just clicked. 

 He asked to kiss them, and they said yes, and in the end they both fucked to lo-fi studying music.  

Now Jules sends him pictures of Central Park flowers and Eddie texts them in between delivering pizzas, drenched in humidity. 

Their connection is disembodied, its fantasy, its imagination and hope and a future of expectation. Eddie hopes he won’t blow it.  

 During school it had been an awkward and wondrous affair: passing out in dorm-beds together, getting drunk on free Manischewitz and waxing poetic on life, drawing on each other's faces and going off to watch the rich people watch parades.  

The sky was amber with the past storm when they talked last night. “It’s just like high school again, really-” Jules murmured, “Like an everlasting summer. We’re all just these wide-eyed creatures stuck in our homes and waiting for it all to be over.” 

“Waiting for life to begin again,” Eddie breathed out, and wished desperately that he could clutch at them. 

It was just after Mardi Gras when colleges decided we could no longer live in the places we paid for. Or in Eddie's case, what scholarships paid. He knew it was fine, he just needed to pack his stuff up, sure he lived in the South, and still looked half-femme, but it was fine. Going to be fine. Sure-his internship plans for the summer were ruined and he had just planted that garden for entomology but- it was fine. People had it worst, he would have more opportunities. It was fine. 

But Jules wasn’t sure yet. Maybe Jules was going to try to find an apartment in New Orleans. Maybe go back to Manhattan. And suddenly they had a train-ticket for the next morning, and were crying, and had to pack everything up. And had no idea where to even put it all. 

Eddie was useless, and this was new. Anything he did, or options he said, or details he tried to figure out, just seem to make the whole thing worse. And they were just crying in a puddle on the floor, and he couldn’t make it better. If it was just him, he would slap himself, turn off everything else, and just make it happen. Survive until you can do more. But you can’t do that for someone you care about. 

He left, told them to please text if they needed help, but he needed to pack. Jules eventually called a counselor and figured it out. They stayed up the entire night packing and didn’t text until the morning.  

What is that feeling of both guilt of what you couldn’t do and apprehension for what they couldn’t? That was Eddie. Yes, there was a pandemic, and Jules was just a college kid, and they were from a well-off family in New York, so they hadn’t had a chance to learn such things, but despite every justification, emergency bells still rung in Eddie’s head.  

Not to brag, but Eddie has survived a lot worse than this. He has already been in debt, had a mental health crisis, had a debilitating accident, worked three jobs at once, and had just avoided being sent to conversion camp. Not to brag, but Eddie has had quite a bit of stress, thus-far. 

He was still useless.  

There are no longer the labels of dating because they’re four states apart. In some ways Eddie finds it easier. It’s easier to fall in love with someone when the practicalities aren’t in your face. Jules has a brilliant mind, the way they see art, arcs, acts; it’s intricate and lovely. Eddie has pitched stories to them, and they point out the way he doesn’t understand relationships. How these two people getting together in the end wouldn’t make sense or ruins their character growth; how impact doesn’t always mean staying. 

  They write too, stories in Hebrew filled with context, epic poems you feel were written out thousands of years ago. More than that: they draw, and edit, and take pictures, and learn random musical instruments that on anyone else would seem kitschy. Jules draws them all into life.  

But Jules can’t find apartments or jobs or everything else you need in a life. Maybe Eddie is stressing too much, maybe it’s something they just need to learn about the real world. He’s never been much of a teacher or communicator in general and doesn’t know how to help them. Or he disappointed them or at least believes he does. Half of him just wants to do everything for them, so they would be happy, and the other half tells him to run away as fast as possible. 

And yes, he knows both of those options are extremely unhealthy things to feel. He is a psychology minor, after all.

Jules is shameless and earnest and has morals, and it’s incredibly attractive. More so, they’re caring. They’ll develop relationships with the homeless woman in the purple hat, will spend hours nurturing feral kittens, will worry over the fact their lizard hasn’t taken a shit yet as they give her into a warm bath and massages their doll-sized scaly stomach. 

But it’s easy to love someone when you’re four states away. He wonders- 

He enjoys the time and tries not to think of other things. 

Eddie is driving back to New Orleans. He’ll see Jules in two days. He’s coming back with some useless presents: a baby-alpaca kippah, shells drilled with hundreds of tiny holes, random recipes for scones. And it's fall again. They’ll walk together and drink whatever liquor they want now that Jules is 21, and try to do college, even if it’s just online. They’ll try to be normal, even if neither of them has ever been particularly good at it. 

Eddie is trying not to picture anything else, because he is young and happy and in love and a complete idiot. He doesn’t want to ruin that-not yet.