“I don’t know how to say it, exactly.”
Daniel bit his lip. “Mmm, like, he asserts things really definitively in order to shut down conversations about topics he doesn’t want to think about?”
Rex nodded and said, “Yeah. Yeah, that,” and Daniel seemed like he was thinking about it.
“Whoa,” I said, also thinking about it.
“Leo,” Rex said gently. “Will isn’t superhuman. He’s just as scared and uncertain as any of us. He just has different ways of dealing with it. And not everyone’s so great at talking about that kind of stuff. Sometimes they show you things in other ways.”
“Wow, I feel like the biggest idiot in history,” I said. Then, when Rex looked guilty: “No, no, you’re fine. I just mean, I seriously didn’t think about the ways that Will might be… scared about stuff. About relationship stuff.”
Which was a pretty major oversight, considering everything he’d told me about his past relationships.
Rex and Daniel were quiet, Daniel’s shoulders pressed against Rex’s legs, Rex’s hands on his shoulders. I wondered what if felt like for them, looking at their image on the screen. Seeing their connectedness reflected back at them.
“I really love him, you guys.” My voice was a whisper, and I hadn’t meant to tell them that before I’d even told Will. But once I had, I went on. “I know it probably sounds like I think he’s perfect or something because of what I just said. And I don’t. I just think maybe….” I shook my head. It was too sappy to say out loud.
“Maybe you’re perfect for each other,” Daniel murmured, like he wasn’t even talking to me. Rex’s expression turned soft and private, and he touched Daniel’s hair, just for a second.
My thoughts were flying at the speed of light, but it was all stuff I should be saying to Will, not to Daniel and Rex. I saw myself nodding onscreen, just a tiny window against the large view of Daniel and Rex, caught up in each other.
“Thanks, you guys. Seriously, thanks a lot. I should go.”
Rex gave me a kind smile and Daniel gave me a goofy wave.
“Good luck,” he said, and I saw Rex reach for him just before the screen went black.
I THOUGHT a lot about what Daniel and Rex had said. I couldn’t sleep because of all the Coke, so I went back to pacing.
Rex was right. Will did sometimes use strong opinions to shut down a conversation he didn’t want to have. Had I been so distracted by Will’s bluntness about small things that I overvalued his honesty about bigger things? Scarier things?
Also—and this was so simple I almost dismissed it the way I had Rex’s question earlier—what if Will was just… wrong. Not lying, just… what if he’d spent so long believing he couldn’t be in relationships for x, y, and z reasons that he hadn’t stopped to reevaluate when a new variable was added to the equation. I actually snorted at myself. Like: NEWSFLASH, it has been suggested that there is the possibility Will Highland is occasionally wrong. Paging everyone everywhere.
So maybe I should just… what? Wait and watch? Look, as Rex had said, for the other ways that Will might express how he felt.
That was that, then. I would watch, keeping in mind my two new laws of Will dynamics: 1. It was possible Will was scared and uncertain, and 2. I had to look at what Will did in addition to what he said. Easy enough, right?
Chapter 16
April
I WATCHED for a month. And all the while, Will’s presence glowed like a lantern in the heart of my life, even when he wasn’t around.
School was a whirlwind of busy and Will was up to his ears in all the work it took for him and Gus to launch the business, so I didn’t see him as much as I’d have liked. But when we did get a chance to see each other I paid attention in a way I never had.
One afternoon when the subway got delayed on my way up to Will’s apartment it hit me with a startling clarity. This was the problem with scripting romances in your head. When someone doesn’t hit the beats, you expect of them you have no idea what their actual behavior means. Will had tried to tell me. So had Gretchen. Even Layne, in her way, had told me. That this was what being a romantic looked like: paying more attention to your own expectations than to the very real person in front of you.
“Fuck,” I muttered.
“I know, right?” replied the guy to my left, looking up from his crossword. “I should just get out and walk. Be faster.”
I nodded in sympathy, but he didn’t make a move to go anywhere.
THE SEX between us had been intense ever since we got back from Michigan, and tonight I was drawing it out, taking the whirlwind that Will began with and harnessing it, amping us both up, then backing off, keeping Will on the edge as long as I could. At first he threatened to push me away and finish himself off. But he didn’t. He looked up at me, and I saw the moment when he accepted that I’d make it good for him if he was patient. He kind of rolled his eyes and groaned, like he was giving in to me, but really I think he was giving in to himself.
More and more, I’d noticed a kind of restlessness in him, a desire to be distracted. He’d wander around the apartment, picking things up and putting them down like he was confused as to what they did. I’d ask him to help me with something, and he’d transfer his attention to it gratefully. Or I’d start something and he’d grab my clothes and my hair as if reminding himself that he could. Because we’d both been so busy lately, usually we’d fall asleep right after sex. It had taken a few times of this happening for me to realize that I was staying over. And Will was letting me.
Tonight, though, after I finally let Will come, I pressed him onto his stomach in his soft bed and rubbed the tension from his shoulders and back, kissing up his spine until I could lay myself down over him. I kissed his neck, his ear, the curve of his jaw, then I buried my face in the crook of his neck. He let out a soft groan and mumbled something into the pillow that I didn’t catch.
I rolled him toward me, sliding an arm under his neck.
“What’d you say?”
“I said, are you staying?”
I smiled into his hair.
“’Kay.”
He fumbled for the bedside lamp, couldn’t reach it, and let his arm drop onto the bed. I leaned over him and flicked it off, lying down on my back next to him.
“Hey, Will?”
He grunted.
There were a hundred things I wanted to say to him. That I loved him and I wanted to be with him and I thought maybe he felt different about me now than he had before Michigan. I wanted to tell him that if he needed to still sleep with other people, I was willing to talk about it if it meant we could… I dunno, have something more.
But the words stuck in my throat. It was too much and not enough.
He’d never asked me to stay before. It felt like a step in the right direction, and I wanted to just let it happen, to enjoy that it was happening right now and not scuttle it by picking it apart or making him self-conscious.
It could wait, I decided. It could all wait until after finals, when we could really talk.
“Nothing,” I said. “I just like being here with you.”
He reached for my hand in the darkness.
WILL HAD never come to see me on campus, so I was surprised when, lying in bed, I looked up from my calculus book a few days later to find him at my door. He looked out of place in the dorm hallway, surrounded by scrubby students in sweats and jeans with dirty hair and harried expressions, where he wore black ankle boots, a black-and-white houndstooth shirt tucked casually into gray wool pants, and a black overcoat.
“Hey!” I started to stand up but somehow got all tangled in the sheets and kind of slumped back down. Will smiled and stalked over, pressing me back to the flimsy mattress and kissing me deeply.
“Mmm,” he murmured into my mouth. His cheeks and hands were cold, and I tried to pull him down into the bed with me, but he resisted.
“You don’t have class until three, right?”
I nodded, ridiculously pleased that h
e’d remembered my schedule.
“Want to come with me to look at this space Gus wants to set up business from? It’s not far from here.”
“Okay, sure. Let me put pants on.”
Will raised an eyebrow and slid a hand beneath the covers, groping me. He pouted when he realized I was wearing pajama pants, but reached inside the waistband and stroked me gently.
“Gah,” I said, hardening for him.
Will “Mmm”ed and leaned in to kiss my neck. There was something ridiculously hot about lying sprawled in my bed in my pajamas with Will looming, fully dressed, having his way with me.
“Oh, oops, sorry” came Milton’s voice from the open door. He didn’t sound sorry, though. Will, being Will, didn’t stand right away, lingering long enough to press one more kiss to my jaw and give me a squeeze beneath the covers that practically made me swallow my tongue.
“This must be Will,” Milton said in a voice calculated to express maximal scorn, leaning in the doorframe to show himself off to his best advantage.
“This must be Milton,” Will said dismissively, straightening up and squaring his shoulders.
Milton narrowed his eyes, looking Will up and down, and Will faced off, not trying to disguise his once-over of Milton either.
“I basically hate you,” Milton said, “for the way you’ve treated Leo.”
“Milton, man, come on,” I started, actually managing to get out of bed this time, wanting to at least be standing in case things got ugly.
“I basically like you,” Will said evenly, “for being a good friend to Leo and for not dressing like a tsunami has decimated every store selling anything besides track pants and school-affiliated sweatshirts.”
“God, right?” Milton rolled his eyes toward the hallway where Will was looking. “This is New York, for fuck’s sake. Have a little respect.”
Will inclined his head approvingly.
“Um, okay, glad you guys’ve met. I have to get dressed now.” I looked at Milton.
“Well, it’s nothing I haven’t seen before,” Milton said, his implication and its challenge to Will clear.
But Will just smiled and said, “Then I’m sure you understand that once Leo’s naked, I’m not going to be able to resist being all over that ass. So unless you’d like to watch, you might want to excuse yourself.”
Milton’s eyes went wide and I flushed hotly, letting out a nervous laugh as he tried to retreat with dignity. Point: Will.
THE PLACE that Gus wanted them to rent was an office in a coworking space near the Tenement Museum on the Lower East Side. He and Will both thought it was important that they have a physical space to work from so they could invest in supplies, have a place to meet with clients, and have an address where things could be delivered. Even if they’d had the money to rent their own space, they didn’t want to commit to a long-term lease in case things didn’t work out.
It was a converted warehouse space, open on the first floor, with banks of tables full of people typing away on laptops and congregating around screens. In the back were offices for permanent staff, and a shared kitchen, bathroom, and lounge space scattered with smart, modern-looking couches and poured cement tables.
Upstairs were the offices for rent by the month that Will and Gus were interested in. There was a courtyard, and as Will paced out the space, I could see him picturing how he’d set up here. He asked a lot of questions, about Internet speed, tech support, and hourly availability, and took his time looking around.
“What do you think?” he finally asked me.
“Me? Oh, um, yeah, it’s really cool.” I had no clue what possible insight I could have.
“If you came to meet with a potential collaborator at a place like this, what impression would you have of them?”
“Hm, kind of… edgy, I guess. Like, modern and nontraditional. It’s neat, actually. I think I’d be excited to be around so many people working on so many different projects. It’d make me think that the people I was meeting with were on top of, like, trends or popular culture or whatever.”
Will had listened to me seriously, and he nodded once, satisfied. “Me too.”
“Okay, great,” he said to the woman who’d been showing us around. “I think we’ll probably go ahead with it. I just need to confirm it with my business partner. Can I let you know later today?”
The woman looked between us and Will offered no explanation.
“Sure, that’ll work.”
Will shook her hand, and when we walked outside, he was grinning.
“I like that place,” he said giddily. “It’ll be so different than the office. Want to get a coffee? I want a coffee.”
“Yeah, sure.” I loved seeing him so happy. So exuberant and light. It didn’t happen that often. As we walked, though, and the usual barrage of admirers looked Will up and down, their gazes lingering on him, his mood dimmed. By the time he pulled me into a little café on Houston, he was tapping his fingers against his thighs irritably. There were no empty tables, so we stood at a corner of the counter to drink our coffees, Will glancing around as if he could still feel eyes on him.
My phone chimed with a text from Layne asking if I could come in an hour early for my shift the next day. In the minute it took me to respond, a man sidled up to Will and started talking to him. Will’s jaw was tight, teeth gritted.
All the things he’d told me. About being so aware of people’s eyes on him that he sometimes felt stripped bare by it. Of the way it gradually wore down his energy and his mood by the end of the day until sometimes he could hardly wait to get home behind closed doors just so he could exist in a space where he wasn’t being looked at. They coalesced into a surge of protectiveness like nothing I’d ever felt before.
“Oy,” I said to the guy. I slid an arm around Will’s waist in a way I had secretly always wanted to but never dared do in public. “Back off my boyfriend, dude.” I channeled Daniel, who’d once told me that you had to be totally confident in your superiority over the person you were challenging to make them take you seriously.
The man smirked at me disbelievingly and looked at Will. His look clearly said, Yeah right. No way did a skinny kid like you manage to land yourself a hottie like that. I flushed, but stood my ground, fingers curling around Will’s hip. I was expecting him to pull away at any minute or tell us both to go fuck ourselves. But he didn’t. He narrowed his eyes at the guy and put his arm around me in turn, tugging me closer. Then he kissed me on the cheek, lips lingering long enough for me to smell the vanilla from his latte.
“Oookay,” the guy said like he’d just been faced with something too confusing to attempt to puzzle out. “Have a good one.” And he walked away.
I felt as triumphant as if I’d been telling the truth about Will and me, the warmth of being able to defend Will suffusing me. I went to drop my arm from his waist before he could call me on the fiction, but he let his arm linger for a minute, so I did too.
“Um, sorry I said you were my boyfriend. I just… I thought you might want a rescue, and that guy seemed like kind of a douchebag.”
Will gave me a long assessing look and then smiled. And I couldn’t help thinking that maybe he didn’t totally hate what I’d done after all.
Chapter 17
April
SPRING HAD sprung with a vengeance and the energy on campus was electric. No matter what time of day I walked through the park, there were groups of students camped out, shirts rolled up to the sun, heads on each other’s shoulders, and textbooks lying abandoned in front of them in the new grass.
Those who were staying on campus for the summer were angling for the best rooms, those who were from the city making plans to see each other after the semester ended, and everyone else was grumbling about going home or scheming about how to stay. I didn’t know a single person who hadn’t fallen in love with New York in some way.
Midway through April, I found out I’d gotten the job working as an assistant in the physics lab and could count myself among
the excited ones who would be staying in the city for the summer.
The only problem was that the job was only part-time and wasn’t for credit, so I didn’t qualify for campus housing.
The next night, we all went to see Milton in his drama class’ production of Pippin. I’d never heard of it, but Milton assured me it was a classic.
“What… what is this?” Charles whispered to me, horrified, about ten minutes in. I had no answer at all. Milton was great, though. He sang, he danced, he had a few lines, and he looked thrilled the whole time. After we’d gathered our bags and the tatters of our sanity, we went backstage and found him in close conversation with a wildly gesticulating, intensely staring Jason, so we just waved and gestured that we’d see him later.
The real surprise of the night came when we got back to the dorm to find Thomas waiting for us. Only it wasn’t Thomas because Thomas had been with us.
“Oh wow, they really look alike,” I said stupidly.
“Identical twins,” Charles said, nodding once.
Thomas and his brother hugged like one of them was returning from war. They were all over each other like puppies, with no bubble of personal space. They really did look startlingly alike, but unlike Thomas, Andy was quiet, often looking over at his twin when someone addressed a question to him. I wondered if they had always been this way and, if so, how hard it must’ve been for Andy, away at school without Thomas there to speak for him.
Andy’s school was on a different schedule so he’d taken the train down as soon as the semester ended. I got the sense that he wouldn’t mind just hanging out in Thomas’ room and playing video games while Thomas studied. I told him he could come by Mug Shots the next day if he wanted a free coffee and a place to hang out, but though he nodded politely, Andy didn’t seem to like me. I guessed I couldn’t blame him if Thomas had mentioned anything about me not returning his feelings. I wouldn’t like me either.