The Soulmate System

31. A Theme of Acceptance, Pt. 4

Dylan returned to his table while Bryce called Katie outside. He sullenly sank down into the chair and sighed, staring down at the lukewarm buffet food and the still-bubbling fizzy drink before him.

"You okay?" asked Sarah curiously.

The man narrowed his eyes and shook his head. "I don't want to talk about it right now."

An uncomfortable silence fell over the circular table; one by one, the others quietly noticed the empty space beside Dylan. Mrs. Matthews cleared her throat and whispered, "Are you okay?"

"I said I don't want to talk about it!" he snapped, the exclamation coming out louder than he had intended. His mother withdrew and very slowly, the energy shifted away from Dylan, leaving him feeling desolate and alone at the table.

This was the time when Dylan pondered what Bryce had said carefully, where he poured over every word that had escaped either's mouth in an attempt to find, maybe, a hidden meaning beneath their conversation.

There wasn't one. Bryce's message was straightforward – he was tired of Dylan continuously avoiding a problem and he wanted him to address it. But the issue was that he didn't know how. And it didn't help that Dylan didn't know the issue, either.

Dylan excelled at ignoring his feelings; it had become second nature. Parts of his life he preferred to leave behind. 'Why can't Bryce accept that?' he wondered, shuffling his now-cold food on the plate. Brows furrowed in contemplation, Dylan went back to what Bryce had said first –

"I know...so little about you."

'Why was that such a big deal?' Dylan wondered, standing to get another glass of cola from the open bar. 'It wasn't like he didn't know my birthday.' Incidentally, Bryce didn't know Dylan's birthday, only knowing the month from the monthly birthday celebrations at work. It had fallen under the jurisdiction of "Things I Will Tell You Later", and never addressed again.

If Dylan had bothered to tell Bryce, they would've discovered they were a month apart – Bryce being August 18th and Dylan being September 17th. But this was a logical oversight in Dylan's head. It simply didn't appear in the larger picture that he was looking at.

He moved on.

"So what'? So what? That's important to me. How do you think it makes me feel, knowing that I'm in love with someone, and I didn't even know they were allergic to Swiss cheese?"

Dylan tapped his fingers against the bar's countertop. "I did tell him, right?" he wondered openly. No recollection presented itself in his head. 'How can Bryce freak out about something like that?'

Useless facts sprouted up in his head. Bryce learned to ride a bicycle before he even approached a tricycle.

'So?'

He doesn't like brussel sprouts, and has no reason to not like them.

He knows the plot of Jane Eyre back to front, and, following his breakup with Becca, refused to ever touch it. He previously believed Jane Austen wrote the book.

'...okay, so?'

Bryce drew fictional maps and studied topography in his spare time after school.

Architecture hadn't presented itself until the final years of primary school, and he immediately enveloped himself in it. He planned out entire towns, cities even. He became fascinated with the population of cities around the world throughout history.