Cramming at randys, p.1
Cramming at Randy's, page 1
Cramming at Randy's
Diner Days
Alex Silver
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. All registered trademarks are the property of their owners. Cover design is for illustrative purposes only, and any person(s) featured is a model.
Copyright © 2024 by Alex Silver
Cover designed by Cormar Covers
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without
written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of quotations in a book review. For more information, address: asilverauthor@gmail.com
ISBN: 978-1-998885-11-4
Contents
Dedication
1. Chapter 1
2. Chapter 2
3. Chapter 3
4. Chapter 4
5. Chapter 5
6. Chapter 6
7. Chapter 7
8. Chapter 8
9. Chapter 9
10. Chapter 10
11. Chapter 11
12. Chapter 12
13. Chapter 13
14. Chapter 14
15. Chapter 15
16. Chapter 16
17. Chapter 17
18. Chapter 18
19. Chapter 19
20. Chapter 20
21. Chapter 21
22. Chapter 22
23. Chapter 23
About the author
Also by
Blurb
These study buddies are getting randy.
When Ray transfers to university in Boston, he has every intention of using his new start in a new city to step out of the closet. His family knows he’s bi, but he hasn’t quite figured out how to tell them he isn’t the daughter they always thought of him as. His first new friend, Jordie, is the one who gives him the courage to follow through on living as himself. Ray has Jordie pegged as the one he wants to take from study buddy to steady date—he just needs to figure out how to get Jordie to see him as partner material.
With graduation in their sights, Jordie isn’t looking to mentor another baby queer. Let alone get tangled up in a messy crush after he imprints on them. But there’s something intoxicating about helping Ray embrace his gender euphoria. Is it really such a wild idea to turn their study dates at Randy’s into a love connection?
Love beyond the binary: serving up low angst trans romance at Randy’s Diner.
Cramming at Randy’s is an X/X friends to lovers standalone romance between a newly out demiboy transfer student and an openly genderqueer older student who helps him find the confidence to be himself.
Dedication
This one is for all the readers who see themselves in this series, Kat for putting this series together, and all the Diner Days authors for making this project so special, thank you!
Chapter one
Ray
Iget off the plane feeling untethered. This is it. My first steps into being an independent adult. It’s scary to heft my battered old school bag over my shoulder and drag my carryon toward customs all by myself. This and the two checked bags my parents paid for at Trudeau International this morning constitute all my worldly possessions.
Even in my head, that seems a tad dramatic. I still have all the stuff in my room at my parent’s house a five-hour drive north in Montreal. It’s just daunting to move out on my own for the first time. Studying abroad seemed so cool from the comfort of home, but standing here on my own with so much unbounded freedom has me equal parts terrified and exhilarated.
I tug my colorful knit toque lower, covering the long dishwater blond hair that’s tucked up in a messy bun under it. How many times have I wished for the courage to chop off the wavy ponytail my parents love so much? Ugh. Soon. The whole point of coming to Boston for school is to give myself the space to figure out who I am, away from my family’s smothering love.
Standing in line with the other passengers from my flight, I’m getting cold feet. I’ve never had to talk to the border agents alone before. The winding lines give me plenty of time to fret that I’m going to mess up my grand university adventure before it even really begins. It would be humiliating to get sent back to Canada in disgrace. I fiddle with my passport and student visa; the paperwork is all in order. My middle brother is a lawyer and my whole family helped to make sure I have everything I need. I’ve totally got this.
The line shuffles along slowly. The longer it takes, the more I get all worked up that my nerves are going to make the stern-faced border agents think I have something to hide. What if they don’t let me through? Am I going to be stranded at the airport? Deported? Can they even deport you if you technically never clear customs? So maybe a random search is more likely? I swallow hard, bile rising at the thought of being searched.
A big, intimidating man in a uniform waves me up to his kiosk when it’s my turn. He barely glances at my papers and asks why I’m coming to the US. His voice is warmer than his expression. His accent reminds me of an old cowboy movie with vowels that pour like honey.
“School.” I bite back my nervous babble about my program and what I’m planning to study. He might sound nice, but he doesn’t need to know my life story. I’ve done this before to visit my aunts, but always with my parents doing the talking. My dad rambles at the agents, and my mom always reminds him to only give them the information they ask for. No need to volunteer anything and draw out the ordeal.
The agent nods, checks my visa, squints between the picture in my passport and my face and asks me to lift my hat. I do. He nods again.
“Good luck with your studies, ma’am.” He waves me through.
My gut roils with the wrongness of that title. It’s not just that it makes me feel like a fraud of a grown up. A kid cluelessly adrift in a world that expects me to be a functional adult when I was living under my parent’s roof just this morning. I want to correct him. Sir.
It’s still scary to face the responsibility of being a grownup, but that word is less viscerally wrong. I swallow the impulse as I follow the other weary travelers from my flight toward the baggage claim. My nerves settle as I wait in the crowd to collect my things and turn to find my ride on the other side of the security cordon.
“You made it! Welcome to Boston, kiddo!” Aunt Marie-Clarie, Dad’s little sister, meets me with a bone-crushing hug and helps me wrestle my suitcases out to her car. “How was your flight? You must be hungry?”
“Good, nice quiet flight. Yeah, I could eat,” I agree.
She rattles on a mile a minute about how much I’m going to love Boston and how glad she is that I’ll be close by for the next few years. We get into the car and pull out of the airport lot. I let her words wash over me as we drive. They’re a comforting reminder I’m not entirely alone in this new life I’m starting. I have a touchstone if everything gets too overwhelming.
I tune back in when we’re approaching my campus in Boston’s South End. The stately Victorian homes here remind me a little of home, or at least some of the ritzier neighborhoods back in Montreal. This is going to be home for the next few years and I want to drink in every sight.
“I can’t believe I’m really here,” I say, more to myself than my aunt.
“You are. You know you can come to me for anything if you need a friendly face or a hug or a listening ear. Tammy says I shouldn’t pry, but I want you to know we’re here for you, no matter what, alright?” Aunt Marie-Claire glances over at me to emphasize that she means the offer.
I smile because it’s nice to hear her confirm that I have people I trust in the city if I need a safety net. And my aunt’s wife, Tammy, reeling in her more pushy impulses sounds about right. The two of them always make me feel safe.
I told Marie-Claire I’m bi before having the words to tell my parents. I just needed to run it past another queer person to make it feel real. She’s a huge reason I chose Boston for university. I need the freedom from expectations my aunts give me to explore again now; the chance to figure myself out without a lifetime of assumptions freezing me in place.
“Yeah.” I can’t figure out how to say all that to her yet, but she doesn’t make me and more of the anxiety knotted in my chest loosens. Her ability to make space for me to share without pressuring me to fill it seems like a superpower right now. “Thanks, Aunt Marie-Claire. I appreciate it. And the ride.”
“No problem.” She reaches over to ruffle my hair through the knit hat I hate to take off. “Anything for my favorite niece.”
I squirm in my seat at the subtle sting of that title. I know I’m supposed to laugh and remind her I’m her only niece. But it cuts, chafing even more now that I’m so close to my fresh start. My chance to just be me.
“What’s wrong, ma belle?” her genuine concern, even as she uses the familiar gendered endearment, cuts like a knife. I should just tell her. This shouldn’t be so hard. I trust her. I do. There’s just no way she could keep something that huge from my folks and I’m not ready for them to know.
“Nothing. Just nervous about the new school.” I scrunch down low in my seat and pull my hood over my hat, hiding.
“You sure?” Marie-Claire glances over, eyes darting over me, then back to the road in one of her more parentally concerned expressions. I avert my face. The piercing denim gaze so like my own is too much scrutiny to bear. At least the neighborhood we’re driving through is inter
“Yeah. It’s nothing. Just tired from the flight.” I continue staring out the window. She goes back to keeping her full attention on the traffic, letting the little lie pass.
It’s not entirely a lie. I was up at the crack of dawn, triple checking that I had everything I needed. We had to get to the airport hours early, thanks to the international travel rules. But it wasn’t a bad flight, and I had a quick nap on the plane. I’m excited for the new student orientation on campus and more than ready to focus on that instead of family drama.
Still, I am all but certain that if anyone in my family will understand this, it’s my lesbian aunt. The words still get caught in my throat. Like they’ve been getting stuck for ages with all three of my older brothers, even though the second oldest, Darren, is queer too.
“Okay. But you know you can tell me anything, right?” Marie-Claire pats my knee as we stop at a red light.
I swallow hard, try to nerve myself up to say the words for the first time. I’m not your niece because I’m not a girl.
Nope. I can’t do it. Those are words I can’t take back and I’m not ready to upend everything. What if it’s not real? Or if nephew doesn’t fit the way I think it will? What if I’m wrong? I can’t even figure out exactly what I’m trying to say. I’m not a girl? It’s true, but if I say that, then everyone will assume I must be a boy. For a while, that felt close enough. Still off, but at least in the right vicinity.
Except then I grew up and now calling myself a woman makes my stomach churn, like the words are a massive lie I can’t keep telling. And man feels like a funhouse mirror version of the truth, an exaggerated caricature. Hence Boston. I don’t have the words to describe myself yet, but I’m hoping a bit of anonymity in a new setting will help me figure it out. I just can’t explain something I don’t fully understand myself yet.
“Yeah, I know.” I force a tight smile.
“Alright.” Aunt Marie-Claire pats my knee again. It feels like the light will never change and I’ll be stuck in traffic enduring her too perceptive scrutiny for an eternity. I can tell she sees right through my lies, but for now she’s willing to wait until I’m ready to talk rather than prying. She points out the window. “Oh, look, that’s Frisky’s. Did I ever tell you that’s where I met your Aunt Tammy? We danced until they kicked us out and then got milkshakes at Randy’s afterward. Just down the road here.” She points out a diner that looks like something out of a fifties era movie. The wide windows look in on pink and blue neon lights, chrome accents, and a checkerboard tile floor.
I press my forehead against the car window, staring at the place as the light finally changes and traffic crawls past the bustling place. I imagine a future where I can fit in with the vibrant people drinking milkshakes and flirting with their dates out in the open. It looks so unabashedly queer and I want to be like that. Open and honest, and just me.
My aunt glances over at me, assessing. Before I can open my mouth to offer any kind of reply, she pulls down a laneway and into an open spot, parallel parking like it’s nothing. She pats my knee. “Come on, I’ll get you some pie to celebrate being new to the city.”
“Um, okay?” I slouch in my seat, not ready to go in there with my curves and long hair on full display. Everything about me feels wrong today. With the stress of traveling, it’s one of those bad days where the dysphoria makes me wish I could erase my entire corporeal form from anyone else’s perception.
Failing that, I’ve got on so many layers I’m melting in the autumnal heat.
“Don’t look so nervous. It’s a queer friendly diner, not an inquisition.” Aunt Marie-Claire winks at me. “It’s close to campus, and it’s not the worst place to make friends, since you’re new to the area. Introducing you to Frisky’s will have to wait until after your birthday. But it’s a great place to meet girls. Or guys, since you aren’t picky.” She winks at me.
I wrinkle my freckled nose at the idea of going to a queer club with my aunts to hook up. They might be way cooler than my folks, but that’s still a resounding no to trying to grind up on potential dates in front of them. “Yeah, uh, I might see if I can make some friends to go with.”
Aunt Marie-Claire gives me a faux-stern look and a finger wag. “Only once you’re old enough. It’s only a few more months until you turn twenty-one. We don’t want you getting into trouble and jeopardizing your visa.”
“Yeah. I know.” I force a smile, stomach roiling at the thought of messing this chance up before I even begin. It’s jarring that the age is so different here. Back home I’ve been of legal drinking age for years, but I can wait to go out clubbing until I turn twenty-one next month.
Any thoughts of drinking fall by the wayside as I follow Aunt Marie-Claire into the diner. I tug the drawstring on my dysphoria hoodie tighter over my toque, wrapping the oversized garment around me like an invisibility shield.
The people inside make me ache with a longing to be open about myself. Guys with stylish clothes and hair, a server in an aqua pinup model dress that matches her manicure and her coif. A rainbow flag decal in the window and pride stickers of every sort on various patrons’ belongings. I see a laptop with no less than three different flag stickers plastered over the back.
My heart beats hard against my ribs with a longing I can’t put into words to belong in a place like this. Not as the bi girl I’ve told people I am, but as myself on every level. A place that sees me and accepts me without making demands I can never meet.
I shove my hands deeper into my hoodie pocket and wish I had more layers on to hide my curves.
A group of raucous college kids is sitting in the corner booth as Aunt Marie-Claire leads me up to the counter to order a to-go pie. My eye catches on one of the student’s pulling another down into her lap. The one being pulled down laughs, the sound ringing with effusive joy. Another of their friends is wearing a Northeastern hoodie. My new school. We could be classmates.
The alluring stranger’s shaggy dark hair makes me think of a rockstar and they flash a gleaming grin as they struggle up off their friend’s lap. They stand and I notice their shirt has a splashy genderqueer pride striped heart across the chest. Huge letters around the graphic spell out ask me about my pronouns; I want to ask them.
What would it be like to be that carefree and open? What does it feel like to be yourself?
“Come on, Celeste. I gotta go for real this time. Need to grab my books before all the good used copies are gone for psych 101 with McGregor.” They turn to address their friends, still laughing. “He’s the one who makes you buy the book he wrote for supplemental readings and there are never enough copies.”So they are a student, and they’re in the same psych class as me. Or at least we have the same professor. What are the odds of that? Getting to see them again might be worth the frustration of my CEGEP psych credit not transferring even after I appealed the decision. I’m openly staring and I should tear my gaze away before they notice me creeping. But I can’t seem to actually do it until my aunt touches my elbow.
“Hey, which flavor is your favorite these days, kiddo?”
“Um, I guess they don’t have tarte au sucre?”
“Nope, but pecan is similar.”
“Ok, that, I guess? Thanks Auntie.”
“Sure, anything for my favorite local nibling.” She ruffles my hair through my hat and I freeze at the new favorite label. Does she suspect? Before I can spiral overthinking it, she continues talking. “Want a milkshake or anything else while we’re here?”
“No, I’m good!” I say hastily.
My stomach is roiling from being here and everything I want to try but don’t feel ready for. I just want to get settled into my dorm room. My cute new potential classmate is standing behind us at the register, waiting to pay. I might combust from the electric tingle of their eyes on my back. It takes all my self-control to resist the urge to turn and stare awkwardly some more.
My aunt pays for the pie and I carry it back out to the car. I catch one more glimpse of the cutie in the pronoun shirt as they flirt playfully with the server taking their money.
