Tricks for a Heart [mlm]

Chapter 1

As I reach my twenty-fifth year, I discover that there aren't many games that can entice me. This is a huge contrast to my housemate of six months, colleague of two years, and schoolmate of five: Shafiq is all glued to his desktop, screaming into the headphone as he navigates Overwatch in his oversized gaming desktop.

I really want no computer games, nor any pranks that Shafiq probably won't be pulling off. He isn't that kind of dude. But I can't help being paranoid; I can't even sweat it off with this jump rope. "I swear I'll kill you if you're joking—"

"Behind you, fuckers!" Shafiq screams into his microphone. It's not easy for me to get his attention now; in fact, when the news broke a few hours ago, I simply acknowledged it, laughed it off, thinking Shafiq was giving me bull. And then I felt my heart racing. That's when I thought it'd be nice to sweat everything off with a jump rope.

I pause for a while. What if nothing's a prank? What if Shafiq is not fooling around?

"Dude, stop it," Shafiq turns around, taking his giant headphone off. He swivels in his office chair, and it creaks; he and I talked about getting a new one at Ikea for ages, but never really moved our asses to do so. "What's the point of being so agitated?"

"Meeting the boys? After all these years? What the fuck?"

"Relax, dude." I watch as Shafiq stands to approach this portable wardrobe in the corner of the room. "I'm sure it's going to be fine."

Honestly, I don't think so. Not after I'm outed to everyone on Facebook by my psycho ex-boyfriend—now everyone in the cohort knows. I don't know how to react to what it'd be like with the boys, and not everyone would be chill with me being gay. Not everyone's Shafiq, and that really sucks.

"I'm going to take a shower ... a long one. So you can decide if you're joining later or not."

I sigh. I drop the rope down and sit on the corner of Shafiq's double bed. Sometimes when the nights get tough, like when Shawn posted the photos of us kissing online that got me in trouble, I'd climb up here to sleep next to Shafiq. It's been like that with him and me for years. He'd stick by me through it all even when he really doesn't need to.

If only my relationship lasts this long ...

"What if they decide to be nasty about ... you know?" I say. I honestly don't know how to react if that happen. Shafiq was one of the rugby boys, and it was pretty common to assume them to be a bunch of dickwads. And some of them actually were. Shafiq was cool like that to not be one of them.

Shafiq approaches me, now only with a towel wrapped around his waist. Shafiq sort of lost all the muscly weight that he had in school ... when we reunited later after our university days, he was all lanky and slender.

Shafiq put his hand on my shoulder and says, "Dude, you know I won't give them face for it."

"What if it was Minho?" Luqman was his best buddy, the rugby's team captain. I shiver at just the thought of him. The nickname made me cringe then, and saying it now also gives the same effect.

"Don't give a shit about him now," Shafiq says as he walks to the door. "Although I won't push you to it if you're uncomfortable. You can hang out with Elena, though ... she's going to the bookstore during the reunion."

Maybe this is a good idea ... book browsing has always been a me and Elena thing. Shafiq's not on the book side of geeky, while we are. Shafiq's bookshelf, which is small and sits right across of me on the wall, only has novelizations of Star Trek and some computer games I have no clue about. When I first found out about it, I thought it was sort of cute. I thought all the athletes from our school were bland as hell, but Shafiq turned out to be surprising when we got to know each other a couple of years ago.

"By the way," Shafiq says as he stands by the bedroom door, "I heard that Ikhwan and Saiful would be there, too. That's why I thought you'd want to come."

Then he exits, leaving me to rethink my decision all over again. Because that's exactly where Shafiq has thought wrongly about it all.