18. Rainbow
"Will you just give it a rest, Tuck?" Danny sighed in frustration as he poked his straw around his milkshake.
Tucker rolled his eyes. "Come on, Danny. How long are you going to play this game? You know she's interested."
Danny's eyes darted up to Tucker for a moment and then back down to the thick pink shake in front of him. "She's not interested, Tuck. Just trust me, alright?"
"No, no I won't," Tucker insisted. "Every time you say that you wind up half dead or Sam and I get stuck cleaning up your messes while you fly away." Tucker swam one of his fries through ketchup before waving it at Danny, heedless of the way the ketchup splattered the table. "You tell me why you think she's not interested."
"Know. Not think, know."
"Fine, you know. Whatever. Just tell me," Tucker ordered as he bit into the fry, frowning at it as he realized that it had barely any ketchup.
Danny gave the shake another stir and that pushed it back with a resigned sigh. Without even looking at Tucker he dug into his pocket and pulled out a folded piece of newspaper, sliding it across and waited for Tucker to read it.
"So she protested," Tucker said with a shrug. "This is Sam we're talking about here. She's always protesting about something."
"Come on, Tucker. I know you're not stupid, but you're being dense. It's all there in black and white. It all adds up."
Tucker only gave him a blank stare.
"You ever notice that all of the other goth people she hangs out with like each other? I mean, the girls like the girls and the guys like the guys. And then that," Danny said with a dismal sigh as he pointed at the headline. It screamed, in twenty point font, Protesters Insist on Equal Rights for Homosexuals.
"So?" Tucker asked, and then spluttered as he began to choke on another fry. "Oh. Oh. You think that Sam's… gay?" He started laughing hysterically. "You think that she likes chicks because everyone else like her is gay. Oh, god, that's priceless."
Danny's face heated and he knew his cheeks were turning red. "Well, wouldn't you? If the shoe fits and all."
Tucker snickered again. "Danny, Sam is an individual. If all the other goth kids are gay, do you think that she is going to be gay?" He paused and pondered another fry intently. "Well?"
"I guess not," Danny admitted grudgingly. "But it's not like you choose to be gay or not."
"So this is why you've been avoiding her for months?" Tucker finally asked as he scanned the article, only glancing up to catch Danny nodding silently. "She's going to kill you."
