QHL-0002: The Letter That Wasn’t Meant for Me

A note misdelivered to The Queer Historian’s locker.

Dear Elliot,

If you’re reading this, good. It means I finally worked up the nerve to leave you something other than a sarcastic comment and half a smile. (Also, locker doors are terrifying. I nearly lost a finger.)

I was going to say this to your face, but you keep doing that thing where you bend over to tie your shoes and my brain turns to soup. So here it is, on paper, which is marginally less pathetic.

I like you. There. I said it. I like you, even though you claim pineapple belongs on pizza, and even though you still call it “P.E.” instead of “the shame room”. I like that you fake being bad at squash just so I’ll offer to “correct your grip”. (You’re terrible at it, by the way. And I mean that romantically.)

I may or may not have written a poem about your forearms. It didn’t rhyme, so technically it’s literature.

If you want to meet me (or just do that thing where you pretend to punch me in the arm and then immediately apologise), I’ll be by the vending machine at 4:17. I’ll be the one pretending I don’t know how to buy a KitKat.

If you don’t show, that’s fine. I’ll just assume you were tragically struck down by vending-machine-related heartbreak. But if you do come… maybe we can stop pretending we’re not flirting.

Yours (unless this is wildly awkward),

R