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“I don’t have to have feelings for everyone I sleep with,” Buck says, and then there’s a weird squiggle in the universe and Tommy is… gone?
No, that’s not right. Buck peers over the kitchen table and sees that there's something on the floor. It’s about eighteen inches long and curled up in a ball. He approaches it cautiously and reaches out and pokes it, and he’s seen this before, when he was driving across the country. It’s… an armadillo?
He tosses a blanket from the couch over the curled up animal and gently rolls it up in the blanket and carries it to his couch. Then he stops and thinks and re-routes to the bathtub. Just in case it pees.
He’s not sure if this is Tommy or if something has taken over Tommy or if a weird curse was just placed on him or what, but there’s an armadillo now and he’s not going to just dump it out in the yard, because first of all they’re not native to LA and second of all that seems cruel.
So he puts it in the bathtub and draws the shower curtain and shuts the door and then googles “what do armadillos eat”.
He also calls Tommy. Tommy’s phone rings on the bedroom floor.
Okay. So Tommy must still be in his house. And the only other thing in the house is the armadillo. Ergo.
It looks like armadillos eat mainly bugs, and Tommy is afraid of bugs. Buck knows this from their time dating. But what if he's hungry?
He scoops some scrambled eggs into a tupperware and then heads back to the bathroom.
He squats down next to the tub and ends up curled on the bath mat, gently lowering the tupperware of eggs into it. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I hope you still like breakfast even when you’re an armadillo.”
The armadillo snuffles up some eggs and then noses at Buck’s wrist. “Yeah, the guy who made these is pretty good at eggs. I miss him. I miss him a lot. He's good at breakfast and he's good at picking restaurants and he's really good at pairing drinks.”
The armadillo keeps snuffling.
"My winter's been really bad. Eddie moved away. You know that. And he was so pissed at me for being upset about it, even though I was only upset because I knew I was going to be lonely. Ravi doesn't really like hanging out. Maddie got kidnapped and that was really scary. I don't know. I think I'm lonelier than I thought I was going to be. I miss being with you. I miss being your boyfriend. I don't know how good I was at it, but I miss it. And I miss you. And the way you talk, and all your jokes, and your stupid finger guns, and the avocados, and your bad coffee. And your cutoff shorts. And how much you talk about sports, like, I don't get it but I like listening to you."
Meanwhile the armadillo is fully letting Buck pet it.
Finally he says, “You know, that was a stupid thing to say. I didn’t mean to say it, not about you. I’m sorry if that hurt your feelings. I do have feelings for you.”
And then the universe squiggles again and suddenly there’s a naked Tommy stuffed into Buck’s bathtub, and the plate of scrambled eggs has gotten squished underneath him, and the plate cracks, and Tommy has egg stuck to his thigh, and the first thing out of Buck’s mouth is “what happened to the clothes you were wearing?”
And Tommy sighs and says “The universe stole them. Happens every time.”
Buck asks, “Did you hear what I said?"
"I did," Tommy says.
Buck asks, “But did you hear me?"
"Yeah, Evan, I heard you," Tommy says, and then they kiss. And they get back together. And everything is different from then on. And Tommy only turns into an armadillo when he’s scared and hurt and needs to hide.