Page 35 of A Really Gay Book
“Your dad was missing out,” Adam responded and earned himself another kiss.
ChapterTwelve
APPLE
Adam was right. The Adam Car was easily the ugliest car I’d ever seen in my life, but it had saved Adam’s life sixteen times, so it was my new favorite object. It just kicked my new emotional support couch into second place. After I got Vix to build us a newer, less vomit-inducing car, I’d have this one bronzed to match my couch.
It wasn’t quite as hideous on the inside, though, and snuggling with Adam in the backseat while we rode with Team Evil to get to Vix’s machine was simply lovely.
After all the fuss it had created, it ended up being ridiculously simple to fix the machine.
The worst thing that happened during the whole process was when I walked away from Adam to enter the building holding the machine. As soon as I was ten Adam-lengths away, a seagull swooped down from the sky and stole the breakfast sandwich I’d just given Adam.
He’d been so happy when I’d surprised him with it, and the look of resignation on his face had me running back to give him the extra one I’d tucked in my bag just in case something Adamy happened.
Go Team Me.
He kept getting kisses from me until his face stopped having amy amazing sandwich was just stolen by a wild animalexpression, and I made sure he was safely inside the Adam Car with his new sandwich before I walked away again.
I followed Vix through the run-down warehouse, down into a dusty basement, and into the room housing the machine and watched him fuss over it for a few minutes. I ended up getting antsy about leaving Adam, so I walked over to the surprisingly compact device.
I mean, you’d think it would be huge and clunky considering how many people it was supposed to contain, but it was silver, sleek, and the size of a Doberman. There was a hatch open on one side with a handful of tangled wires hanging out of it, and on the other side, a lone green light blinked sadly on a panel that looked like it should have a row of ten lights on it.
I didn’t think about it too much—I just reached out and wiggled a random wire. The machine made a happy humming sound, and a row of green lights lit up one after another until all ten were lit and holding strong.
“Holy fucking shit, Apple, you weren’t exaggerating.”
“I don’t exaggerate.” I didn’t need to.
“But I already tried testing that wire ten times!”
“You just needed some luck.” I tried not to give him a smug smile. I don’t think I succeeded, but Vix didn’t seem to care.
He gave me a hug that made my ribs hurt a little (thank you, Adam, for the rapidly vanishing bruise Vix found.) and then began punching buttons on the console of the machine.
“How did you get people down here anyway?” We were in a small, dingy basement room in a half-abandoned warehouse. It gave off serious evil lair vibes, and I was surprised Vix managed to get anyone to follow him to it.
“Oh, I didn’t,” Vix said absently. “I tried it out on the street. The more random sampling, the better. In the field, people won’t suspect they are about to be sucked into it, so I needed to recreate the conditions I’m planning on using it in.”
“So we’re about to have a bunch of people appear in this tiny ass room? People who don’t know what happened to them or why they’ve been kidnapped?”
“I prefer the phraseused for the greater good.”
“Don’t you think we should—”
“Nope.” Vix hit a button, and the tip of the machine began to glow. Bright pinpoints of light began to pop into existence all around us, growing in size and solidifying into people.
Within a few seconds, the room went from mostly empty to crammed to capacity.
Everyone was packed together like sardines. Except for me, of course. There was a lovely little island of space around me, so I was fine.
“Baz, your elbow is in my junk,” Vix complained loudly.
“That’s notmyelbow. But my hand is trapped between your ass cheeks.”
“My apologies. Lady, please get your elbow out of my junk. I haven’t decided if I want kids yet, and I don’t want you to ruin my chances.” Vix said to a very confused looking woman whose limbs were tangled together with Baz’s.
It took a while to sort everyone out, but, with my luck, most people were more interested in feeling me up than they were in worrying about trivial things like why they were missing a week or two of time from their memory.
