The plan was simple, spend a couple of weeks listening to live bands, checking out a few attractions, and of course, getting laid. Unfortunately, after a few days, I realized how unlikely those goals were of being met. My ears were too sensitive to go near any of the bands. The sheer force and power of live music was enough to shatter my eardrums. The mosh pits of people were just as loud and only added to the suffering. Wesson's favorite band was performing the second week, and I felt terrible for making him miss out. I told him to go without me, but when he realized I couldn't handle the live music, he decided to stay away from it too.

STR was made up of 3 main parts, the music, attractions, and the potential for hookups. Thanks to me, we had to give up on a third of what we came for. Somehow Wes didn't seem bothered by it.

"It's cool, man, we should have known," Wes said.

"I still feel bad," I replied.

"No need. We can still do what you came to do," he joked.

"And what's that?"

As we walked the sand-covered venue, Wes gestured to a group of girls walking by. His gesture was less than covert, and maybe a little embarra.s.sing, but I got the message.

"I don't know," I said with hesitation.

"You have to try, I mean we're here, no one is human, so they shouldn't care about the extra fur and stuff," he pushed and tried to persuade me.

"I know, but Wes I've never hit on a girl before, and these girls have wings, and fangs, and that one is juggling fire," I said, gesturing to a fire eater performance going on behind Wesson's back.

"Dude, I get it, but we're here," he said with a hand on my shoulder.

"So I have to try," I said.

"Unless you want to go the other way," he joked.

"Haha," I said sarcastically.

"Don't worry, I'll be your wingman," he added as we continued to walk.

"Have you ever been a wingman before," I asked as we both stepped over drugged-out festival goers pa.s.sed out on the ground like traversing a minefield.

"No, but I'll figure it out," he said.

We stopped walking, and for a moment, I waited for Wes to give me his plan.

"So?" I asked.

"I'm figuring it out, give me a minute," he said before playfully pus.h.i.+ng me over, causing me to trip over a bunch of people we then had to run from.

We hadn't seen Russell in days. At STR, people slept in RVs, tents, or whatever kind of shelter they could find because the venue was packed well beyond capacity. Sure, everything was out in the middle of the desert, but whoever was in charge should have had the foresight to order more tents and trailers. Somehow, Wes and I were lucky enough to snag a tent big enough for two, and it was a good tent. It had two cots comfortable enough to call beds and even a mini-fridge that held lukewarm water. The only downside might have been Wes or me having to share a small bed with Russell every night, but he wasn't around. After our 3rd day in New Mexico, Wes and I woke up to Russell missing in action. He was just gone. Wes tried calling him and sent a hundred text to which Russell replied, "I'll be back later," but we went into our second week without hearing a word from him. All of that was important because it left Wes and me to do what we wanted without hindrance. I doubt Russell could have been age-appropriate long enough to play the adult figure in our trio, so had he been around, it would have been a pain to regulate his actions.

Russell's absence allowed Wes to come up with a plan. Tents were scarce. How we managed to find one much less keep it from being overtaken by other festival-goers was a mystery. If I didn't know any better, I might have thought my luck was in an upward swing. Nonetheless, people were in a bind trying to find places to sleep at night. Wes thought girls would be more interested in meeting or talking if we offered one of our beds for a night. The catch obviously being they'd have to share the said bed with me. It was a simple enough plan. That's not to say it didn't feel transactional in a way, but before we'd let anyone sleep in our tent I had to spend time with them first. I wasn't asking anyone to blow me for a bed. I was just presenting an opportunity to get girls interested in a conversation. Hitting it off with a girl enough for them to genuinely want to stay would have been a welcomed bonus, but extra nonetheless. The way the festival had been going, just a few interesting conversations would have been enough.

Wes was cool enough to go out, scout, and send girls to our tent. I'm not sure what I might have done without him. I didn't have cool pick up lines. I didn't know how to tell a girl I was interested without coming off as creepy. With Wes sending them my way, I knew they'd have the expectation of my wanting to flirt. If they were coming to the tent, they must have known what they were getting into, and hopefully, that meant I wouldn't have to worry about mixed signals.

It could have been my fur, the desert climate, or the summer heat, but I was sweating with antic.i.p.ation, waiting to see who Wes paired me with first. I didn't give him any instructions on what type of girl to look for. I might have if I was decisive enough to have known myself. Back in Daybreak, I was lucky just to be acknowledged by people. It was a privilege to be taken seriously by girls back home at all. I wouldn't say I was desperate, but I wasn't about to be picky or shallow. Plus, how could I have possibly been specific about who I wanted in a place where everyone was so different? At STR, there were Trolls, Satyr, Siren, Leprechaun, Imps, Fairies, and a whole host of creatures I'd never seen before. I wasn't expecting Wes to send me a skeleton, or a centaur, but the longer it took for someone to actually pull back that tent curtain and step inside, the more concerned I started to feel.

Maybe I should have done the leg work myself. Wingman or not, it felt lazy having Wes make the initial approaches. It was a little emasculating, to be honest. I started to leave the tent to tell Wes I'd find my own love interest, but before I could walk outside, someone stepped in.

She was a Nymph named Echo. She had a mostly human appearance with pointed ears, hair green as emerald, and wings made of thin wood and vines. Her dress was made of wildflowers in such a way I couldn't comprehend how it held together on her body. She was taller than me, a lot taller. Probably taller than Wes. Russell might have been in her height category, but next to me, there was no way. I couldn't take us seriously sitting next to each other. I didn't want to be a d.i.c.k, and she was beautiful, so we still tried to talk for a while. We even hit it off enough to grow physically, but the moment she tried to move me into her lap, she had to go.

After Echo was gone, I stepped outside the tent to look for Wes. I wanted to call his plan off, but with no phone and a lack of knowledge on his whereabouts, I couldn't relay the message very well. He could have been anywhere.

Before I could walk off, I was greeted by guest number 2. She was closer to my height than the last. Her name was Alana, and she was a mermaid. When mermaids left water their tails turned into legs so they could get around on land, but seeing one out in the desert was odd. Alana was a cool girl. She thought I was funny. I liked how she tried to cover the smell of weed in her hair with the scent of stereotypical seaweed. Both our families lived in towns that people never heard of. To be fair, her hometown was at the bottom of an ocean, but still. We had some things in common. There was just one problem. Alana was so uncomfortable in the heat that she had to stop the conversation every 2 minutes to splash water on herself. Oh, and she couldn't speak verbally, so she had to communicate through writing everything in a notebook she carried around. I dealt with the waterworks and the slow conversation because we seemed to have legitimate chemistry, but I had a limit. It got old when her water made it harder to read what she wrote on paper. Her notebook became too soggy to distinguish a single written word, and that's when I knew our time was up.

I was beginning to think Wes was f.u.c.king with me. Had he been anyone else, I might have been certain. There was a slew of women that came by that day, and all of them were oddb.a.l.l.s. It could have been me. Sure, I might have had high expectations. I could have been more shallow than I realized. I could have been, but after being forced to spend 10 minutes in a tent with a girl whose body was made out of bugs, I knew it wasn't me.

The wave of love interests finally came to an end as the sunset. I was worn out and freaked out. On the brink of putting myself to sleep, I groaned at the sound of yet another person entering the tent until I opened my eyes to find that it was Wes.

I had a sarcastic scowl on my face as he walked in and laid in his bed across from mine. It took him a moment to notice, but when he did, he broke the silence.

"So," he asked, knowing something was wrong, or maybe he couldn't tell.

"I don't want to talk about it," I said.

"Come on, Pitch."

Did I want to tell him about the lion-headed girl that wouldn't stop licking my face? Did I want to tell him about the fairy I thought was a mosquito?

"Wes," I said, searching for the right words to convey how horrible it all was while also admitting it was hilarious how bad of a wingman he was.

"That bad?" he asked.

"Its fine, next time I'll pick up girls on my own, probably safer that way," I joked.

"We could always try again tomorrow," he said.

"Right now, all I want to do is sleep."

"It's not even midnight yet," he protested.

"I know."

"I was gonna grab something to eat," he said as he sprung from his cheap cot with enough energy to nearly send it flying.

Then again, our beds weren't made of durable materials, so moving in them at all was enough to warrant concern of wreckage. I doubt they were made to be slept in twice.

"You should," I said as I turned over and shut my eyes again.

"Come with me," he said, and I could tell that he was standing over me.

"Wes," I said without opening my eyes.

"Come on. You can try to get laid at a hotdog cart or something."

"Aren't you a vegetarian," I joked until I felt him grip my arm.

My eyes shot open.

"Dude, you're a rabbit, and you eat more meat than I do," he said as he pulled me out of bed like my dad used to do on Monday mornings.

It was annoying how easy it was for him to pick me up, almost like a toddler. I straightened up so he'd let me go.

"Do we even have the money for food anymore, your cousin took half our stuff, remember," I debated.

"There are other ways of getting food," he said.

"You mean stealing it?" I asked jokingly as we left the tent, but he didn't correct me.

"Maybe," he said.

"Wes, I'm not stealing food."

"Is it really stealing, I mean people toss a bunch of food every day, we'll just be saving it from a dumpster."

"Wes, I'm not stealing food," I reiterated sternly.

"Dude, I'm kidding, I still have plenty of money," he said in an attempt to rea.s.sure me.

"Ok," I said, but he didn't seem too convincing.

The festival was full of exotic people from exotic places, and of course, they brought their exotic food. Wes and I searched for something new to try but didn't want anything too over the top. There was a stand selling Firebird Nachos, made with real firebird. Firebirds were made of living flames, so eating one would be the equivalent of swallowing a firework mid explosion. There was a bar selling Snake Charmer's Pizza, essentially pizza with snakeheads instead of pepperoni. A few places were tamer like the chocolate bistro, but we didn't have that kind of money.

Eventually, I found myself sitting at a table while Wes canva.s.sed the scene for something we could both eat and afford. He was doing the most to make sure I had a good time. At times it felt like he was waiting on me, serving me, or doing more than I deserved. I attributed the behavior to his natural optimism and good outlook.

Wes returned with plates of what looked to be Mabel's Marble Slab ice-cream and fries.

"I guess Mabel's is popular everywhere," I said as Wes pa.s.sed me a tray of food and took a seat across from me.

"It was some kind of knockoff, Marlin's Mint Stop," Wes corrected.

"Of course."

I was sure we had to be out of money, so seeing how much food Wes managed to get surprised me.

"How much money do you still have," I asked.

"Enough for our stay," he said, but again it didn't feel convincing.

"So did Russell only take half of my stuff," I pressed.

"No, he still has my phone charger, and the rest of my jackets," he said with significant weight seeing how he only wore jackets and hoodies.

But it felt like he was dodging my question.

"How did you pay for all this stuff?" I finally asked

"Pitch," he said without looking directly at me.

He wanted me to drop it, but I couldn't.

"You couldn't afford breakfast yesterday, but tonight you had enough for one of everything at a knockoff Mabel's?"

I didn't mean to push, but he was acting suspiciously. Even if he stole it, the lie felt more important than the act. Wes never lied, at least not to me.

"Ok, so maybe I didn't buy 'all' of it," he said.

"Wes!"

"It's not that big a deal. I took it from this trolls table; the guy didn't need all of it," he said, perhaps trying to convince himself just as much me.

"Wes, you know my mom is a thief," I said.

"I know, dude, but it's just this one time. I wanted us to eat together. That's all," he said with a disappointed tone.

I didn't mean to embarra.s.s him or make him feel like I was angry, but Wes never lied. It's just something he didn't do. BJ lied all the time, I lied sometimes, but Wes was too good a person for that. He was too honest a person for that. I wasn't mad; I was surprised. Sure, I couldn't believe he stole food, but the lie was most important. Then again, I couldn't harp on him too harshly while I was still eating.

"As long as it's just this once," I said.

"It is," he swore.

We continued to eat, and for a while, everything felt peaceful. It was nice to kick back and just take in the sights. The festival built a bunch of wood sculptures all over the venue, and every night they would light a new one. On that night, a sculpture of a b.u.t.terfly resting in a hand was lit. The flames were brilliant enough to be seen far from STR. While I watched the fire, I couldn't shake this feeling that Wes was watching me. To be fair, he was facing me, but his eyes kept meeting my own whenever I checked on him. I hoped I didn't embarra.s.s him too much.

We left the food area pretty late that night. The night seemed to go on forever, but naturally so. That awkward tension was still present but fading.

"We need to find your cousin," I said

"I know," Wes replied.

"We have to head back home next week, but we don't even know if he's still here."

"I know, Pitch, but can we try to just stay in the moment for now?"

I suppose I was beginning negative. For the sake of killing off that awkward tension, I tried to be more positive and in the moment.

On our way back to the tent, we stumbled upon a new attraction. It was a blue tent with glowing green orbs floating around the perimeter.

"A fortune teller," Wes read on a sign.

"I don't do fortune tellers," I said as I continued to walk, but he quickly pulled me back.

"Why not?"

"Asking someone to tell me my future is like asking for the schedule to a train wreck I'm already living."

"Well, I'll get my fortune, and you can watch," Wes said, but he was asking more than telling me.

"Wes," I said like he was a 5-year-old asking to ride a roller coaster.

"Humor me," he said, tugging me toward the entrance.

I debated the trustworthiness of a fortune teller but went along with it in the end. I couldn't find a real reason to object, and it was free if nothing else.

Inside there was an old lady wrapped in silks sitting at a round gla.s.s table. Her face was completely covered, so we could only see the glare of her eyes. She offered us a couple of seats at the table. Her attention was on me until we made it clear Wes wanted the reading. She didn't have a Crystal ball or playing cards, but those glowing orbs we saw outside were also present inside. She wasn't human, and whatever she did to read fortunes had to be a natural ability because she never used a spell. She took Wes by the hand and examined it as her orbs began to swirl, creating an ambient light.

"You are a light-hearted soul," she said with a frail voice.

She gave many observations, most of which seemed vague and uninteresting.

"Your family is warm and sweet," she continued.

I was getting bored. I might have yawned three times before we got to anything good.

"You are popular, loved, sought after and even adored, but there is something, no, someone you want that you fear you can never have," she said.

I couldn't think of anyone Wes couldn't have. People would blow him in the middle of the street if he asked.

"Ok, I think that's enough," Wes said, pulling his hand back and away from the mysterious old creature.

He seemed caught off guard, so maybe she wasn't far off.

"Come on, Wes, it's getting good," I said jokingly.

"Pitch, man, we can go," he said.

He was nervous. I don't think I'd ever seen him in such a rush to leave before.

"Wes," I said as he pulled me out of my seat to drag me out.

"You seek the affection of one who knows you but cannot see you, " the fortune-teller said before we got far.

"Lady, that's enough," Wes said as we finally left.

Outside I heard the old silk-covered woman simply respond, "ingrates."

Wes didn't let go of my arm until we were well enough away from the fortune teller's tent.

"What was all that about?" I asked.

He let me go but kept walking. We made it back to our tent before he acknowledged me directly again, but even then, he stood with his back to me.

"Pitch," he started, then paused.

"Wes, what is it," I asked.

"Are you really this blind, or am I this stupid," he said in a joking tone, but I could tell he was serious.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," I said.

He turned around slowly, and it seemed he couldn't look me in the eye for a long while. Unfortunately, we were sharing a tent, so he had to speak eventually. It wasn't like him to be timid or afraid to speak his mind. That made twice in one day he acted out of character.

"Pitch, I like you," he said.

"I like you too, Wes," I replied, still confused.

"No, I mean I 'like' you," he said with extra emphasis that got the message through.

"Oh," I said in response.

"Yea..."

"f.u.c.k," I said in realization.

"Yea," Wes said before trying to play it off with a laugh that ended just as quickly as it started.

"Wes, that's... I'm not even sure I'm into...," I said, stumbling.

"I know, and that's why this is all so stupid, I got you all the way out here so I could try... I mean, you're not even..."

We were both speechless for what felt like forever.

He invited me, and only me, to go with him to a festival. He came out to me before we left town. He probably sent me all of those quirky girls earlier that day just so I'd turn them down and remain available. h.e.l.l, he stole the closest thing to our favorite food for us to eat that night.

"I said I don't know, but this is a lot man," I said, scratching the back of my head.

"I know," he said.

We both looked away.

"Why me, honestly I'm nothing special," I asked.

"Dude, I don't know how many ways I can say it, rabbits are cool," he joked, and it brought air back into our lungs with a short shared laugh.

"So its because I'm a rabbit," I said, continuing the joke.

"No. I mean sure, I'm half-goat, so it's a turn on, but that's not the only reason," he said.

Hearing him speak so openly about his attraction threw me off balance, but we rolled with it.

"You're a good person. You're fun. You don't make fun of me when I do stuff that humans think are weird," he added.

"People make fun of you?" I asked with disbelief.

"All the time or they used to. I wasn't always the guy people wanted to hang out with. When my family moved to Daybreak, we were like aliens. It took time to learn how to be normal, human normal any way," he said.

It got easier for him to speak as he went along. I could see him physically relaxing. Even the distance he put between us started to close.

"You remember when you tried to join that group for magical creatures at our school?" he asked.

"No one wanted me because I was born human," I said.

"I was still the weirdo who came to school naked back then. I couldn't let those a.s.s holes turn you away when I was feeling like an outsider too. In a way you were like me," he said

"Wes."

He brought a grin, if not a smile, to my face.

"I mean it, maybe people haven't come around for you the same way they have for me, but if I'm cool, then you're cool. And I only wanted the coolest person I know to come with me to STR."

In the silence, I think we both came to realize just how alone we were and just how close we stood. It was all a little too much. I took a step back and tripped into a seat in my bed. Wes tried to catch me but pulled himself back when he realized I was ok.

"Wes in the spirit of honesty," I said, pausing to think over my words.

"Yea?" He asked

"I'm not completely freaked out about you being into me," I said.

It was such an awkward conversation to have with my best friend, but his being my best friend made it easier.

"But," he said.

"I didn't say that."

"You were about to," he joked.

He wasn't wrong.

"...but I don't know how it would work," I said.

"Neither do I," he replied.

"Well, you've put up with me ruining our entire time at a kick-a.s.s festival. I guess if you're willing to try, then maybe I can too."

His face lit up. I could see his trying to hold back the expression, but he was happy, and probably relieved.

"Thanks, dude," he said with a grin.