Filthy/Gorgeous [Rewrite]

"So," Alexis said as he observed me from my bedroom doorway the Wednesday afternoon before our big move, "this is what it looks like when you clean out, huh?"

"Well, you know what they say: a room has to get messier before it gets cleaner…or something like that." I shrugged and shoved a handful of junk into a garbage bag. "Anyway, thanks for offering to help. Come on in and just start dumping stuff into a pile. The one by my closet is for stuff I want to keep. Everything that looks questionable can go in that pile by my desk. Everything else goes in the trash."

"Hmm…" He looked around for a path through the rubble and finally found a series of empty spots he could tip-toe through to make his way to my side. "So, are you actually planning to go through every single thing in your room?"

"Heck yeah! I don't want to accidentally leave something embarrassing behind and have my mom come in here while I'm gone and find it. Take this for example—" I scraped around the deepest, darkest corners of my dresser drawers and produced a nearly empty lube bottle, three expired condoms, and a thong one of my ex-girlfriends must have left behind.

Alexis didn't look impressed as I used the thong as a slingshot to fling the condoms one-by-one into the trash, but he said nothing.

"Sometimes I really have to wonder what I was thinking when I saved some of this stuff. I mean what the hell is this crap?" I held up a yellowing piece of paper, scribbled all over with random squares in a variety of different colors. I started to wad it up and toss it in the trash bag, but Alexis stopped me.

"No, wait Erik! Don't you remember when we invented our own language in the third grade so we could write to each other and nobody else would be able to understand us? It was based on color instead of letters. Remember? Purple was A, red was B, green was C…"

"Oh yeah!" It all suddenly came flooding back to me. "I gave it up after a couple of days because I couldn't keep track of which colors we designated for each letter. I wonder what this one says?"

"Let's see…I think gray was I. And orange was H…" He took the paper and began studying it intently.

"How can you possibly remember that after all these years?"

"I thought it was a great idea, so I kept at it longer than you did. I wrote you a lot of letters that I planned to put in your backpack or in the cubby hole in your desk, but since you gave it up, I ended up keeping them to myself."

"Holy shit. That is too goddamn cute. What did they say?" I nudged him with my elbow.

"If you hadn't given it up, then maybe you would already know the answer to that question." He turned up his nose and went back to decoding the letter.

"Pffft!" I gave a sassy flip of my hair and turned back to my dresser drawer, but inside I was beating myself up. Why did I have to be such a lazy kid? Think of all the extra affection Alexis had been trying to give me back then that I just THREW. AWAY.

"'You are my best friend. I hope we stay friends forever.' …That's what it says," he said, bringing me out of my self-pity party, and then made a face. "Ew. I was kind of a dorky kid, wasn't I?"

"So? You were precious." I grabbed the paper back and smoothed out the wrinkles before carefully laying it on top of my keep pile. "We need to remember to buy some magnets. This is going on the refrigerator."

"Didn't we have a secret handshake at some point, too?"

"Well, we talked about coming up with one, but once again we gave it up after a couple of tries. Oh well, we've got something way better than a secret handshake now, don't we?" I scooted across the carpet and gave him some smooches.

"Or maybe we can count something like this as a secret handshake—" He reached between my legs and went straight for the point.

"You know, there's still a few dollops of lube left in this bottle…"

"And it's a shame to let anything go to waste," he agreed.

…Man, there were still a couple of days left before we moved into our new apartment. My cleaning could wait until later.