Your Life Is a Map With No Compass

Rian,” I whisper, pushing my head passed the curtain of his bunk and resting my chin on the edge of the bed. “Wake up. I gotta talk to you.” Rian groans, swats at my face with his hand before rolling over so he’s not facing me. I reach in and shake his shoulder, my thumb pressing into his Blink tattoo. His hand reaches out again, lands on my face, pushes me away. “Rian! Get the fuck up or I’ll steal your toothbrush!” He turns his head towards me, one eye open.
“You wouldn’t,” he says, his voice low, menacing. When he sees that I’m serious, he sits up as much as he can in the small expanse of his bunk and looks at me. “This better be fucking good, Jack. You know I need sleep to function.”
I roll my eyes. “Yeah, Ri. So does everybody.” I wave him out of his bunk and bring him into the back lounge, where he collapses onto the black leather couch, rubbing his face with one hand. He looks to the TV, sees the time on the cable box.
“Holy shit, Jack! It’s three in the fucking morning! Let me sleep!” I lift his head up and slip under it, sitting down and looking down into his tired eyes. “Why can’t you ask Alex to help you? Or Matt, or Vinny, or even Zack? Anyone but me.” He sounds miserable.
“Oh, stop whining. You should be flattered that I chose you, out of all the people in this bus, to talk about relationships with.” Rian sits up fast, looks at me in disbelief.
“You, you’re in a relationship? Jack Barakat is in a relationship? Who would’ve thought.” I roll my eyes once again, feeling a tiny bit of hurt run though my body. Even though everybody thinks that I live for backseat blowjobs and one-night stands, I really do want to settle down someday with someone that I love, have a kid or two, start a family. I want to be able to tell someone that I love them at a fancy restaurant on Valentine’s Day, to hold them when they have nightmares, to sit through awkward dinners with their parents. I want that, and I might have found the person I want to do it with.
“Not yet. But I want to be. So fucking bad.” I lean back against the pillows, close my eyes. Zack’s face floats in my mind, his lazy smile and bright eyes entrancing me. God, he’s hot. “I found someone who I might be able to actually love.”
I can feel Rian’s eyes on me. “Wow. You’ve really thought about this, haven’t you?” I have I’ve thought about it. So much. It’s not normal to feel butterflies whenever your best friend looks at you, it’s not just friendship when you want to be around them every fucking second of the day. It’s not normal to wake up at one in the morning with X-rated thoughts of Zack running through my head. If that’s not a crush, I don’t know what is.
But it scares me. For one, Zack’s a guy. I’ve never really questioned my sexuality until now, but it just feels so right, having a crush on another boy. It feels like it was meant to happen. But, god, what would people think of me if they knew? I mean, the fangirls would, well, fangirl over it and cry and coo at us whenever we went out in public. It would be a dream come true for them. But really, me dating a boy, who’s also autistic? God, I’d get a lot of weird looks. That’s the other part of it. The autism stuff. Sure, Zack dated that girl Katie for like, three years, but the reason they finally broke up is because she couldn’t handle all of his shit anymore. What if I’m the same way? What if I can’t deal with it all?
“Jack? This person, who you really like, who is it?” I look anywhere but Rian, heat flooding my cheeks. I know he won’t judge me, so why am I so embarrassed to tell him? Rian smiles. “Is it Zack?”
Holy fucking shit how does he know? I swear he can fucking read minds or something. He takes my long silence as a yes, then smiles even wider. “Holy shit, you like Zack! That’s really cute. You need to ask him out.”
“It’s not that easy, Ri,” I mutter, looking down at my lap. He just shrugs and smiles, lying back down on the couch.
“You’ll be fine, Jack. He loves you too.”
“Shut up, you know that’s not true.”
“But it is. He really, really loves you.” And with that, Rian’s out cold, leaving me shocked.
What?