“Yeah. Is there a problem with that?” he asked.
And it was as if immediately, Haven put on her sympathetic face. “No! Of course not!” she cried. Then she smiled at him. “My sisters' roommate is gay.” It took everything inside of me to roll my eyes, so I simply looked down at the ground.
Delcan smiled at her, but his smile clearly showed how annoyed he was with her already. “And?”
“Are you sure you aren’t straight?” Fawn asked him, rubbing her arm. I stepped back a little bit, and simply leaned on the locker, watching as my thoughts were telling me to snap back at her. Though, ‘I just met Delcan,’ so I have no reason to defend him.
Delcan nodded. “Positive,” he said.
“But you’re really cute,” Fawn said, giving him a flirtatious smile. It grosses me out how dumb girls can be when they see a hot guy around. I mean sure, sometimes I can blush myself, but with the four years of practice that I’ve had, I’m getting better each day at not showing my emotions with things like that. Fawn was no different than my sister, or Haven was around a guy with muscle impacts, though I really do wish she would at least go and flirt with some other guy who’s actually...available.
Delcan smiled at her. “I’m aware.”
And he wasn’t wrong. Delcan knew how good he looked, and he wasn’t afraid of showing it. More than half of his Instagram profile was just him showing off, or doing some effort to at least show his body in some way. That was why when he’d post something new, I would always have to wait until I was out of the way of my parents, which sometimes with bothersome.
Maybe it as weird for me to actually be...whatever we’re doing is called, but hey, when I said he was hot, I wasn’t lying.
“Fawn, stop it,” Haven said, rolling her eyes. Clearly, she wasn’t a fan. “He’s already made the choice anyway, so you probably can’t tell him different.”
I had to refrain from rolling my eyes because that was one of the worst things my dad would always say about gay people. “They’ve made the dumbest choice,” Dad would say, shaking his head as a gay couple would walk across the street. The last time he’d said it, we were sitting in the car together, and I looked up and watched as one of the men had kissed the other’s hand. “It’s horrible, Ezra. Just horrible,” he said. I had to refrain from saying anything back, and I nodded as I kept my eyes away from him.
He said that stuff all the time...and sometimes it hurt.
But not as much as it did when he said that towards Delcan.
“Woah,” Fawn said, snapping me out of my thoughts. “Did your eyes just change color?” Haven had noticed it, too, and they were watching Delcan with shock - like what basically everyone does - as he turned away from a split second, biting back something. I got myself off the locker and walked back over to Delcan, standing next to him now as both Haven and Fawn stared at him with their mouths open.
After a moment of silence, Delcan nodded. “Yeah,” he muttered. “They do that.” I had to hold back the laughter I felt at the moment. Delcan had heard all of that so much by now, I’m sure he had his own script for how to answer it. But even Evvie, who hardly talks about how somebody looks, blinked a few times the first time his eyes went from green to amber around her. It’s pretty cool that his eyes can change color like that, though I’m sure he gets annoyed by it sometimes, or when people ask Callie if she has the same thing.
“That’s cool,” Haven said.
“How did it even happen?” Fawn asked, saying something before Delcan could even respond to him. I could already tell he’d rolled his eyes.
“What colors do they change to?” Haven asked again. Now, she seemed interested in him, more than she had been before.
After a second, they actually gave him some time to answer. “My parents know all the answers to why they change, and they change every color but red,” he said, sounding as if I’d been practiced in the mirror over and over again. And before Fawn or Haven could even ask another question, Delcan continued. “No, I don’t know why. And yes, it’s a genetic thing that happened to me when I was born, and no, I have no clue exactly what its called.”
“But why don’t you know why they don’t turn red?” Fawn asked, not amused by the whole new situation and everything.
Delcan shrugged. “Is it seriously that-” I bumped his shoulder lightly and he paused for a minute. Rethink your words, I wanted to say to him, which would sound like my mom when she would try to stop Eric and Evelyn from fighting in public. “I’m not sure,” Delcan said.
“Does it, like, change color because of the lighting, or your mood?” Haven asked, seeming just as interested as Fawn was. Her eyes didn’t even go over to me once, which was shocking, because she always did that.
Then again, the first time I saw Delcan’s eyes change, it took me a second, too. I didn’t want to say anything at first, either, because that felt wrong. But when they changed a second time, I actually pulled him to the side and asked him about it. He laughed then and told me that it wasn’t a huge deal. After Delcan had explained that it was an eye change that happens with his mood. After I went home that night, my brain kept on bringing back Delcan, even after I’d erased the thought. But after learning about his eyes, and how to understand it, I just became even more oddly attracted to him.
Delcan sighed, and I looked over to him before he could talk back. He hit his shoe into the floor, then looked back up, his smile fake. “It changes when my mood does, so if you know me well enough, you’ll be able to know exactly what thoughts I’m having,” he said. Delcan’s parents and Callie were the only people who seemed to know all of the eyes, and even sometimes, I wondered if Delcan knew all of the different shades his eyes can have.
Both Haven and Evvie nodded, watching him with shocked eyes as Evvie began walking over. The person she was supposed to be guiding wasn’t with her anymore, so she wondered if they’d found their classes, or not.
“Hello,” she said. Haven rolled her eyes, and then looked at her. “What’s going on here?”
“They’re talking about my eyes,” Delcan muttered. It was clear that he’d wanted to say something rude, but he was restraining from it at the moment.
Evvie rolled her eyes, and then looked at them. “And why is that such a big deal?” she asked Fawn and Haven. Instead of responding, Haven crossed her arms over her chest, and Fawn copied her. “Lots of people have eyes that can change color. Why are Delcan’s so fascinating?”
“Well-” Haven began. When I knew she didn’t have any excuse to give for being interested, she closed her mouth, looking angry.
Delcan didn’t even give thanks to Evvie, but she’d given him one of those nods that clearly meant you’re welcome. Haven seemed to have caught it, and she instantly became interested in it.
“Sounds like the two of you know each other,” Haven said, moving her eyes between Delcan and Evvie. Again, I rolled my eyes and waited for this entire conversation to be over. “Where from?”
Delcan and Evvie looked at each other at the same time, and then Evvie turned back around to look at Haven and Fawn, a short smile on her face. “Our parents used to know each other in high school, and they kind of stayed friends until a little while after the two of us were born,” she said. It would be a good cover up for Haven to believe, but I couldn’t. First off, Evvie’s dad grew up in Mexico, and Delcan’s dad went to a school somewhere close to Cuba before moving to the U.S. for college. On top of that, Evvie’s parents were around 28-29 when they had her, and Delcan’s dad was 21 when Delcan was born. There would be no way that either one of their dads would’ve known each other, especially with Mr. Hamill in Alaska.
But, Haven doesn’t exactly care about other people like that, so she believed it.
“What she said,” Delcan said, giving Evvie a smile. I knew it was fake, but the smile was still charming in some way.
Haven nodded slowly. “That’s...cool,” she said. “I guess.”
Fawn gave Delcan one last look, then locked arms with Haven. “We need to get to class, Hav,” she said. Then, finally, people noticed I was standing right there. “And all of you should, too,” Fawn said, making eye contact with me.
“Right,” I said, looking over to my girlfriend, who had just now seemed to realize that I was there. “I’ll see you later, Haven.” She smiled at me and then turned around with Fawn. The two of them left the hallway then, going into AP Science.
When I knew that both of them were gone, I sighed. “That was horrible,” I muttered.
“You weren’t the one getting interviewed,” Delcan said. “At least nobody stops you randomly in the middle of a conversation and asks why your eyes just changed.”
Evvie looked over to me, but then her eyes fell on Delcan again. “One more question, though,” she said.
“Shoot.”
“What color are they supposed to be, naturally?”
“Green,” Delcan said. “But they can change hundreds of different colors throughout the day.”
I already knew as much as I’d wanted to about Delcan’s eyes, plus, being late wasn’t my favorite thing in the world. “For one, Fawn is right,” I said. “We should probably get to class.”
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