Page 24 of Spoonful

Jaylin attempted a smile before he threw himself out into the cold.

***

It was only as Jaylin was stumbling through his front door at two in the morning that he remembered he was supposed to text Hiro. He was freezing from the walk from the car to hisbuilding, exhausted, and sore. All of him ached, and he knew he’d have fresh bruises on his hips in the morning, even though Brent still wasn't supposed to leave any.

But he’d promised Hiro, and Jaylin hated breaking promises. So even as he told himself it was stupid for texting two hours after midnight, he did it. At least Hiro would get the text in the morning and know Jaylin had tried.

He shed his coat and gloves and limped into his bathroom, hissing in pain as he removed his clothes. When he finally made it into the shower, he nearly fell asleep under the spray, but he managed to towel himself off, work his product into his hair, and brush his teeth.

Falling into bed with a groan, Jayling fumbled for his phone to plug it in to charge overnight and realized, breath stuttering, that he’d gotten a voice message. From Hiro.

He pushed the button to play the message out loud, allowing his eyes to slide shut while he listened to it.

He drifted off to Hiro’s voice saying,“I’m glad to hear you got home safe. Sleep well.”

Chapter 6

Jaylin dragged himself out of bed when his alarm went off, glaring when he saw the fresh, dark purple bruises on his wrists and on his neck. He was once again grateful it was winter and that he had the excuse for long sleeves and high collars.

He wasn’t sure what he’d do once the weather got nice again.

Just thinking about three or four more months with Brent had bile rising in his throat, and he shoved those thoughts away. He had to take things day by day. Had to just keep putting one foot in front of the other. That was how he’d always survived.

He grabbed his backpack and a granola bar for the road, then headed out to the library. It was even colder today, and Brent’s coat was practically useless, so Jaylin was glad that he had opted to layer heavily. He was looking forward to getting his warm coat back from Hiro.

Even if he wasn't looking forward to seeing Hiro, exactly.

It wasn’t that he didn’t want to see Hiro again, because hedid.He owed the man a lot, and aside from Jaylin wanting to apologize again, he… liked Hiro. It wasn’t just that Hiro was nice to him, it was thewayhe was nice. How he continually thought of Jaylin’s preferences when treating Jaylin to food, or how bright his smile got whenever Jaylin went along with Hiro’s slightly quirky sense of humor. It was the way he asked questions about Jaylin that made it seem like Hiro was genuinely interested, like Jaylin was a person worth his interest. Jaylin just liked… he liked spending time with him.

But Jaylin had also been a supreme mess yesterday. He wasn’t sure he wanted to face Hiro down. The man must be thinking the worst of Jaylin’s poor behavior.

Aditi provided a welcome distraction. She was already there when Jaylin showed up, even though he was definitely on time this week, and she was vibrating with some kind of energy.

Jaylin asked if everything was okay, and got a deluge of resources for dyslexic-friendly learning.

“This too,” Aditi said twenty minutes into the onslaught, while Jaylin blearily tried to keep up. She held up what looked like a large phone.

“What is it?” Jaylin asked, tentatively taking it.

“It’s a note-taker,” Aditi said brightly. “Deepak invented it. There’s a little stylus that pops out the side–see? And you write down your notes like you would write on paper, and it detects your handwriting to convert it into a dyslexic-friendly font. It also integrates with an online database that tracks common misspellings and letter flipping and has machine learning capability so it can auto correct typos as it learns your handwriting. It also can run all your notes through a text-to-speech function, which lets it recite everything out loud.”

Jaylin stared down at the little rectangle. “So you just… you just have to write the notes down once?”

“Yeah! And then it’ll organize it all for you. It takes dictation too, so you can just speak to it and it’ll take the notes for you, and it responds to vocal commands and will search or cross-reference if you ask it to, so it’s easier to find the information. And it can wirelessly connect to printers. Deepak finds it way more intuitive than trying to use a keyboard. But I guess that depends on how you take notes and stuff.”

“Wow.” Jaylin didn't have to pretend to be impressed. “That’s really amazing.”

“Right? I’m mad I didn’t come up with it myself.”

Jaylin tried to smile, since he knew Aditi meant well. “Thanks for showing me,” he said, and offered it back.

Aditi frowned at him, holding up her hands. “Uh, no? That’s for you.”

Jaylin blanched. “What? I can’t take this.”

“Yeah you can,” Aditi said matter-of-factly. “My brother literally invented it. I can give ‘em to anyone I want.”

“But…” Jaylin couldn't even imagine how much this thing had to cost.

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