And maybe there Rex was right again. If I took away what Will had never said as well as what he had, I was left with someone who hung out with me, had sex with me, hugged me, joked with me, ate with me, slept with me, and told me about his day. I was left with… someone who acted like we were together.
I took his hands and pulled him back down on the couch.
“Okay, so, it’s not about me being dumb or oblivious. It’s not that I don’t notice things about you.” I rolled my eyes at myself. “I basically notice every stupid little thing about you, so. But sometimes things are complicated and they mean different things to different people, and I don’t want to assume that I know something about you just because I think I do, you know? Because sometimes I’ll get it wrong. Sometimes you’re not as obvious as you think you are, or sometimes my perception of stuff is more about me than about you, honestly. Like, if I’m feeling shitty about stuff, I might read something you did differently than if I’m feeling great, you know?”
“Yes, I understand. I’m not a sociopath. Even though you’re basically making me feel like Patrick Bateman over here.”
“Okay, good! See? Great example of how sometimes people feel things differently.” He glared at me. “I just mean, I wasn’t trying to say you were a sociopathic serial killer—although actually that scene with the business cards I can totally see—”
He snorted a laugh.
“But that’s what I’m saying, Will. I wasn’t trying to be patronizing, I was trying to explain how there is no, like, truth that we both share or anything. There are just so many ways it can go wrong to assume that we know what each other are thinking.”
“God, did you read Nietzsche this semester or something?”
“Um. No? Okay, but so the point is that even when you think you’re communicating something, I might not get it. Also, though, I just….” I twined our fingers together. “I want to hear you say things. Like, I know I’m a dork or whatever, and I’m skinny and clumsy and you think I’m all overenthusiastic or not cool enough and stuff. So maybe sometimes when there’s something about me that you do like, you could… I dunno, tell me. Just to balance things out a little bit. Maybe.”
I looked down at our hands, Will’s beautifully proportioned and nimble, with neat, clean nails, and mine, long fingers interrupted by knobby knuckles and various nicks and smudges from being clumsy, fingernails bitten down roughly.
“Leo.” Will said my name in that way he had that felt like a whole conversation in one word. And, shit, how had I not noticed how eloquent he sometimes was without saying anything at all.
He pulled me toward him, and I kind of draped my legs over his until we were sitting the way I’d sat as a child on the swings with Janie, each of us facing in opposite directions, one of us always moving backward while the other moved forward.
Will looked at me with soft eyes. “I like a lot of things about you,” he said. “I’d be saying things an awful lot if I always commented on them.”
“Yeah?” I grinned at him, and he rolled his eyes at me. I couldn’t help myself. “Okay, will you tell me just one?”
Will searched my face and ran a finger over my eyebrow as he started to say something.
“Wait, wait, but make it a really good one,” I interrupted. “I mean, if it’s just gonna be one.”
“I was about to say some flattering romantic shit to you, and you interrupt me to tell me how to do it?”
“Well we’ve already established you don’t know how to do it right.” I grinned at him.
“Oh yeah, good thing you told me because I guess what I was going to say wasn’t actually that good.”
“Aw, no, wait, but now you have to tell me.”
Will pursed his lips and shook his head. “Nah, you clearly didn’t want to hear.”
I pouted at him, and he smiled, but his finger went back to my eyebrow again.
“Your eyebrows do this thing,” he said, slowly pressing his fingertip to the inside of my eyebrow, “when you feel something really intensely. And sometimes all I have to do when you’re talking, or when you’re looking at something, or when I’m touching you, is look right here—” He tapped the spot. “—and I can tell if you’re kidding, or if you’re upset, or if you’re about to come. The whole rest of your face can lie sometimes. But this never does.
“And the night that you came over and I was with that guy?”
I bit my lip and Will smoothed my eyebrow.
“All I had to do was look right here, and I knew I’d fucked up in this major way I couldn’t take back. Not because I did anything wrong,” he said quickly when I started to protest that again. “But because I’d hurt you in this deep way that I never intended.”
Will gritted his teeth. His eyes were a little wild, and he squeezed my hands.
“Look, you have to understand, okay. I don’t discount the effects my behavior has. I’m not… I’m not oblivious either. And I’m not my sister. I can control what I do. I’m just so fucking scared that if I do this—if we do this… I have to know that we’re both being honest about what’s okay. Not like before.”
Shame washed over me for how much I’d hurt Will by trying to give him what I thought he’d wanted. I nodded silently.
“I can try not sleeping with other people,” he went on, “but I don’t know if I can promise it forever. I don’t know what will happen in the future. And I can’t fucking take it if you leave me again because you were making us something in your head that we aren’t.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yeah, I’m fucking serious. I wasn’t okay when you told me to fuck off. I was….” He sighed. “I wasn’t good. At all.”
I had actually meant was he serious that he’d try not sleeping with other people, but I’d be damned if I was going to make him regret admitting he’d been a mess without me.
“And you’d… you’d want to try. With me? With just me? For now?”
“Yeah, I’ll try.” Then a strange look came over his face. “I didn’t mean it like that. I didn’t mean it would be a hardship to only have sex with you. That’s—that’s not what I meant. It’s not about sex between us at all. It’s… it’s separate, you know. It’s about me. I… we’re great at sex.”
“We are?”
He rolled his eyes. “Quit fishing, I just said so, didn’t I?”
“’Kay.” I smiled at him and he smiled grudgingly back.
“I still don’t think that I’m the only person you’ll ever want to sleep with,” he said, like he couldn’t stand to let us just be happy for a minute.
“I think we’ve already covered the we’re-not-sure-what-the-future-holds bit.”
“Fine,” he said.
“Fine.” I glared down at Will, whose face was set in a defiant sneer. It was the arms-crossed-over-the-chest of facial expressions, and I did the only thing I could think to do with that stupid sneer. I kissed it. Just a peck in the corner of his stupid mouth, but his arms came around me, and as always, the taste of him drew me in.
“Soooo,” I said a minute later, pulling away. “What does this mean?”
“This—” He pressed his hips up so his hard cock ground against mine. “—means shut the hell up and fuck me.”
“’Kay, in a minute, but seriously.”
Will groaned. “Seriously, what? What more do you want me to say?”
My first thought was that I knew exactly what I wanted him to say. The three words that I’d let loose like hellhounds a few minutes before and that Will had barely even seemed to register. But if I thought about it—really thought about it….
“I want you to say whatever you’re thinking. For real, though.”
I pushed myself off Will, and he winced when I accidentally elbowed him in the ribs. He ran a hand through his hair and threw his head back, addressing his words to the ceiling.
“Look, I don’t have a lot of answers here, okay? I am very aware that I’m not the easiest person to be around sometimes, and you’re
… well, you’re not exactly a paragon of experience yourself. And I reserve the right to find other people desirable. And to, like, renegotiate shit down the line.”
“Okay, great, fine, and I reserve the right to maybe want only you and for you to not act like that’s me lying to myself.”
Will nodded, though I could tell this part made him uncomfortable. That he couldn’t believe someone could want only him.
“Okaaaay,” I said, “so we’ve established that neither of us knows what we’re doing, so we both just have to trust that we know what we want right now and that what we want might change?”
“I… guess so?”
“So are we… together?”
Will rolled his eyes so hard I was surprised he didn’t have an aneurysm. “What, you want to update your Facebook status?”
“I don’t even have Facebook, you fucker.” I shoved at Will’s shoulder. “But like… just say I did, what would I be updating my status to?”
“It’s complicated,” Will mocked in a singsongy voice. I elbowed him. “How about ‘Leo is now in a relationship with Thai Food’?”
“Huh, you totally have Facebook, don’t you?”
“Whatever, Claire set it up for me a hundred years ago.”
“Wiiiiill,” I whined.
“Leooooo,” he whined back.
I climbed on top of him again, snaking my hand down his pants. “Well, you should be happy, anyway. This was, like, the absolute least romantic getting-together moment of all time. I should just go offer myself to Viggo Mortensen,” I told him, kissing his jaw. “He’d totally update his Facebook profile to include me.”
Will groaned like maybe the thought of me with Viggo Mortensen was kind of doing it for him, and arched up underneath me. I leaned down slowly, loving the way he tilted his chin up so our mouths met, like his lips were just waiting for mine. I put a hand on either side of his face, holding him still. His golden lashes fluttered open, and his brows drew together.
“Why did you do it?” I asked him slowly. His brow wrinkled in confusion. “In Holiday. Why did you really kiss me?”
Will pushed me off so he could sit up.
“I shouldn’t have,” he said so softly I could barely hear him.
I sighed.
“I didn’t say I didn’t want to,” he muttered.
I pulled him to look at me, willing him to give me something.
“Look, I don’t have a good answer for you, Leo.”
“Just tell me the truth.”
“You were honest and sweet and infuriatingly hot, and I wanted you to want me. It seemed like if someone like you could like me, then maybe it would mean I was worth liking.”
I gaped at him.
“That morning, I was packing my stuff up at Claire’s and she was upset that I was leaving, even though I’d been telling her for days, and I was too tired to get into it with her. She said, ‘You make it so easy for people to hate you. It’s the only thing you never fight about.’ I just… I wanted you be different. I wanted you to like me, okay? And that was the only way I could think to do it. And then when I kissed you—” He shook his head sharply. “I knew I’d made a big mistake.”
My stomach sank a little at that, even after all these months and everything that had happened between us since then. When he spoke again, his voice was rough.
“Because I was the one who ended up wanting you.”
He looked down, and I couldn’t quite catch my breath.
“You promised,” he said, still looking down. I bit my lip as guilt washed through me again. “You promised that when you found out I wasn’t the… the fantasy you wanted that I wouldn’t lose my best friend. But I did. The thing is… I knew I would. I knew it would all go to shit and I would lose you and I would miss you and it would suck, and I did it fucking anyway. Because I wanted you. I didn’t know how exactly, but I just… I wanted you, Leo. I always wanted you.”
He bit his lip and took my face in his hands like he had that first time. He leaned in slowly and we kissed and kissed and kissed.
Chapter 19
May
“OH JESUS, no. No. No fucking way,” Milton said. “Hard limit. Just no.”
We were standing in the kitchen of an apartment where Melissa, one of the seniors in Milton’s acting class, lived. She was leaving for the summer, going on tour with some Disney cruise or something, and was offering to let us rent it cheap. We’d dragged our asses out of bed at seven in the morning on the day after finals to look at the place because she had to go to a 9:00 a.m. training on the particulars of how to comport oneself while in Disney costume on the ship or something.
“It’s not a big deal,” Melissa said. “You just stomp when you come into the kitchen and they totally scatter. Little fuckers.” She kicked at a roach that was skittering down the side of the cabinet. “They mostly stay in the kitchen, anyway. And the bathroom,” she said upon consideration. “Well, and sometimes—”
“Dude,” Thomas said to Milton. “I know you don’t want to, like, be dependent on your folks anymore or whatever, but….”
Milton sighed.
“Roaches are fascinating,” Charles said, peering at one that was poised at the corner of the doorframe. “Did you know some of the largest ones fly? Strange. They seem so grounded. Armored. But I suppose so are planes.”
Andy and Thomas conversed in glances, Andy’s saying, “Yo, your friend is weird as hell,” and Thomas’ answering, “Yeah, but he’s not so bad once you get used to it.”
“Maybe we should just check Craigslist,” I offered.
We had really left looking for a place until it was too late, none of us quite making it from thought to action, even though we’d been talking about living together for the better part of a month.
We trudged back to the dorms in low spirits, deciding we needed sustenance in order to sort out the whole mess. We only had two more days before we needed to vacate our rooms, so whatever we were going to find, it had to be quick.
“Hey, how was it?” Gretchen asked, finishing her oatmeal as we dropped down at our usual table in the corner of the dining hall.
“Remember the Felicity where she and Ben move in together and she rents the place with all the roaches?”
Gretchen nodded, wrinkling her nose.
“Well it was like that,” Milton said. “Only worse because no Ben.”
“Yikes. Well, good luck, guys. I’m going to meet Layne. She’s taking me on a picnic in Central Park.” Gretchen grinned and scuffed her toe.
“Aww,” Thomas and Milton chorused.
“But we’re on for tomorrow night, right?”
We were going to smuggle all the food out of the dining hall that we could and then hole up in our room (Charles had returned the filing cabinet to the hallway and largely deconstructed the FBI profiler wall above his desk since finals had ended). We had the second half of the final season of Felicity to watch, and we were going to marathon it as our farewell to the year. Milton had seen it before, of course, but the rest of us had all laid bets on how things would end.
“You guys,” Milton had said repeatedly. “You guys, you have no idea how intense shit’s about to get.”
“I Wikipediaed it,” Charles said, shrugging, “and I don’t understand why—” Milton practically flew across the table to clap his hand over Charles’ mouth.
“Say not one single word,” Milton hissed.
“We are absolutely on,” I said to Gretchen, and she gathered her dishes and walked off toward the door, hair almost white in the bright sun that streamed through the windows.
We spent the next hour combing through Craigslist properties. It was becoming increasingly clear that the things Milton had told us about our real estate options were inaccurate and likely gleaned from overhearing conversations among people with a lot more money than us.
A few hours later, I was officially exhausted and completely demoralized. We’d traipsed to four apartments, each one more horrible than the last. There
was one place we all loved, but when we tried to sign the lease, it turned out that the Craigslist poster had transposed the first two numbers of the rent on the announcement. He apologized profusely and said that explained why he’d gotten so many calls about the place, but the fact remained that it was now about a thousand dollars out of our price range.
As I walked past Washington Square Park, the white arch against blue sky funneled me in. My phone rang as I dropped down under a tree and when I swiped to answer, Daniel’s face was looking at me, shocked.
“Holy… what did you… how are you on my phone?” he said, shaking it.
“Dude, you FaceTimed me.”
“What the shit is a face time?”
“You video called me instead of regular calling me. Like Skype.”
“Shit, that’s a thing?”
I nodded as he paced around the room. “Um, you’re kind of giving me vertigo. Can you either sit still or just regular call me.”
“Oh, sorry.” He threw himself down on the couch. “Where are you?” He cocked his head, squinting at the phone.
“Washington Square Park.” I tilted the phone so he could see the arch and then the fountain.
“Oh, nice.”
We chatted for a bit and swapped finals horror stories. One of his students had asked for an extension on a paper because his roommate accidentally took mushrooms and then dropped his computer out their window on the tenth floor.
“How do you accidentally take mushrooms?”
“I don’t think he took them accidentally,” Daniel said. “I think he probably just misestimated their efficacy.”
“Did you give him the extension?”
“Yeah. I mean, Jesus. Living with people sounds like utter hell.”
Since Daniel had never lived in the dorms while he was in college, he had been fascinated all year to hear my stories of the bizarre goings-on there.