The Bubble

When COVID hit, Nathan’s trivia team—“Tequila Mockingbird”—reconvened on the first official Friday night of the pandemic for a game night in one of the soon-to-be-coined “bubbles” but without one team member in attendance: Nathan himself. Nathan, the only member of Tequila Mockingbird without a spouse, lived two doors down from the team’s gay married couple, Sam and Leo, who were hosting the bubble that night. Nathan could overhear the team from his own balcony, picking up their conversation through their open sliding glass door across the courtyard.

“Nathan is a slut,” Priscilla said. “He could give us all COVID. I don’t think we should invite him.”

“But he lives right down the hall. His balcony literally faces ours,” said Sam.

“You guys, he could be listening right now. You should really keep it down,” said Tate, Priscilla’s husband.

Priscilla wasn’t wrong, Nathan thought. He was a slut. Without question. But as far as he knew, nobody was even hooking up (he certainly wasn’t) so he didn’t understand why he was being singled out and excluded from the group. To Nathan, it suddenly felt like everyone who was lucky enough to have already been paired up before the pandemic was now part of a united force field, deserving of special privileges such as bubbles and game nights, intent on keeping people—sluts—like Nathan out.