Where We Left Off (Middle of Somewhere #3)

THE NEON plastic cup slipped out of my hand where I sat slumped against the wall of the stairwell and plinked on every step on the way down when someone kicked at my shoe.

“Are you alive?”

With one eye slitted open all I could see were black skinny jeans terminating in expensive-looking black ankle boots. One of those boots nudged my sneaker again.

“Quit it.”

Skinny Jeans dropped into a squat one step below me, and I immediately tried to focus because he was wicked hot. He was black, about my height, and everything about his posture said he knew how hot he was, even squatting in a stairwell under fluorescent light. His white T-shirt was almost transparent and it was shredded in places in that artsy way that super expensive stuff sometimes is, so you could see smooth, taut skin through the fabric. He had permanent dimples and a mouth that turned up slightly like he was smirking at everyone.

He crossed his arms, making the deep V-neck of his T-shirt gape even wider and smiled knowingly when my eyes darted to his chest. His smile held no shadows. It was as bright and inviting as a sunrise, and I wished I could return it.

“You’re drunk alone in a stairwell, my friend,” he said, his voice light and warm and tinged with a New York accent. What I thought was a New York accent, anyway. “It’s only day one. You’ve gotta pace yourself.”

He winked at me, and I couldn’t find anything to say. I wished I’d had another one of those Jell-O shots. I could still taste the bite of artificial cherry in the back of my throat. But when I tried to stand up to go get one—and get away from the pretty guy who looked as happy as I was miserable—the whole stairwell tilted.

“Whoa, whoa. You’re toast,” Skinny Jeans said. “Here, sit.” My ass hit the step, jarring my whole spine, and I dropped my head to my knees. The guy sat down next to me, every movement graceful.

“Omigod, kill me,” I groaned.

“How are you this drunk? The party only started an hour ago.”

“I don’t drink really ever.”

He laughed. “Oookay, so, what, you’re newly away from home and feeling your freedom and independence or what?”

I squeezed my eyes shut trying not to replay the epic fail end of my hangout with Will in my head. Trying not to relive our first—and what was clearly going to be our only—kiss.

“Uuuggghhh,” I groaned, burying my face in my hands.

“What’s the problem, sugar?” Somehow Skinny Jeans made that ridiculous endearment sound friendly and casual, and suddenly I was close to tears. “Hey, hey, it’s cool,” Skinny Jeans crooned. His hands were on my face, and I tried really hard not to map every distinction from the sensation of Will’s. “Whoa, boy, what the hell happened to you?” He swiped his thumbs under my eyes and they came away wet. Oh god, I wished the stairs would turn into a slide like in the cartoons and a trapdoor would open up at the bottom of it and swallow me.

Skinny Jeans tried again. “You homesick?”

Was I? I hadn’t even thought about it, but when I did, I had to admit to myself that maybe I was just a little bit homesick. Not that I wanted to be back in Holiday, or back in my parents’ house. But it was overwhelming, having no clue what the hell my life would be like a month from now. Or a week. Or, really, tomorrow.

It was more than that, though. As long as I was in Holiday, dreaming of being in New York, anything was possible. It was all potential energy, anticipation, promise. Now that I was here, though… fuck, it was all so real it took my breath away.

He put his arms around me, surprisingly strong for how lithe he looked, and pulled me against him, the scent of something warm, like amber, and fresh, like moss, filling my nose. God, he even smelled expensive. And sophisticated. Like he could choose a cologne because he knew who the hell he was and what he was supposed to smell like.

All the things that Will would want in a boyfriend, right? Someone with taste, who knew about clothes and cologne and boots and how to sit in a stairwell and still look classy.

No, I reminded myself. No, Will didn’t want a boyfriend at all. Will wasn’t interested in a relationship.

I just didn’t get it. Like, I got wanting to go out and party and screw a different guy every night. The concept of it, anyway, though I was pretty sure it wasn’t for me. And I got not wanting to take a relationship further because you didn’t like someone enough. And of course I got not being into someone in particular…. But, not wanting a relationship? Like, weren’t relationships kind of the whole point? The eventual goal?

Having people you connected with, were intimate with, who knew you, understood you… wasn’t that sort of… everything?

Snot was streaming out of my nose, so I pulled away because the T-shirt my face was smooshed against probably cost more than anything I’d ever owned in my whole pathetic life.

“Jesus, kid, how many of those Jell-O shots did you have?”

“Don’t call me that!” I pushed away from him, missing his smell immediately as the stale air of the stairwell crept back in. He put his hands up in apology. I sagged against the wall. “Three.”

“Three Jell-O shots? Good lord.” He patted my back and gazed out past the toes of his boots. Next to the scuffed toes of my Vans, they looked aggressively pointy. “Come with me,” he said after a minute or two of diplomatically ignoring the sound of me sniffling into the silence. He dragged me up by the hand and kept hold of it, pulling me after him up flights of stairs. Finally, he pushed open a metal door and we were on the roof. He toed a brick between the door and the frame and pulled me to the edge.

“I thought you could use some air.”

I took deep breaths, the air thick with the residue of the day’s heat, smelling faintly of something metallic, like blood, but mostly of traffic and pavement and the mush of so many warm bodies in proximity.

In the dark that wasn’t really dark, the rooftop felt private. I could already tell that this city was a place where you had to make your own privacy. Construct a bubble that you carried with you as you moved through the streets. Something to prevent every little thing from getting to you. Every glance from a stranger, or brush of a shoulder, or startling noise. I’d never been very good at that. Things did get to me. Things that maybe shouldn’t have.

Skinny Jeans looked like he belonged on this rooftop. He looked like he could belong anywhere, from a fancy cocktail party to one of the benches in the park I’d seen this morning. Whereas I… didn’t. Looking at all those windows in all those buildings, all of them with lives happening, just made me feel insignificant. Like the more people I could see at once, the easier it was to dismiss them all and myself in the process.

The city spread around me in all directions and, without the guarantee of Will as a touchstone, I was so thoroughly alone I almost couldn’t wrap my mind around it. I didn’t have even one friend from home close enough to text. When I was still in school I’d hung out with a few people, but mostly not. High school had been small, and I hadn’t really fit in any of the groups. I could text Janie, but knowing my sister she was either on a date or recording an episode of her vlog, and either way she wouldn’t want to be interrupted. Which left exactly no one.

My stupid brain started trying to quantify it: how many millions of steps in every single direction could I go and not encounter a single person who cared about me? How many miles, how many kilometers, acres, leagues, furlongs, fathoms, hectares, picas.

Then it started making up new units of measurement to quantify my isolation. How many skateboard-lengths away from love was I? How many pineapple-and-bacon pizzas? How many medium lattes, mass-market paperbacks, USB to HDMI cables, park benches? How many Jell-O shots?

“Sometimes it’s easier to talk to a stranger,” Skinny Jeans said, leaning back against the chest-high wall I was looking over. “You know.” He rolled his eyes and gestured expansively, like we both knew he was repeating something common. “Anonymous confession and all that.”

“I don’t think you’re really dressed for the confessional,” I told him.

He grinned and turned toward me, his eyes doing that warm smiley thing. “Are you flirting with me?”

“What? No!”

He just smiled and went on.

“Seriously, what the hell is wrong? I get the whole ooh-college-new-city-angst thing, but you don’t seem the type to cry alone in a stairwell.”

“You don’t even know me,” I muttered, looking out into the expanse of night.

“Well, shit, I’m trying to! Just give me something.”

He was right. How the hell did I think I was going to end up with anyone who knew me if I didn’t start somewhere. So I did. I told him about how Daniel showing up in Holiday was about the best thing that had ever happened because for the first time I had someone to talk to who seemed to understand me a little.

I told him about Rex and how I’d watched them fall for each other. How sometimes it was physically painful to be around them because their love was an almost palpable thing in the room, showing me exactly what I wanted and didn’t have.

And I told him about Will. By the time I got to the part where Will had kissed me and then left for New York the next day, Skinny Jeans was shaking his head.

“What?”

“Tell me you didn’t. Tell me you didn’t pull a full-on Felicity and come to school in New York to follow this Will guy.”

“Dude, Felicity?”

“Felicity’s my jam! Whatever, don’t judge me. I have an older sister. What the hell’s your name, anyway?”

“Leo.”

“Ooh, are you one?”

“Um. No. I’m a Pisces, I think? I always forget the dates of it. Wait, what’s your name? In my head I’ve just been calling you Skinny Jeans.”

“Oh, weird, that is my name.”

He bumped me with his shoulder, and I felt this wave of warmth just from some dude palling around with me.

“No, seriously,” he went on. “Everyone said to my parents, ‘You can’t name him that; those aren’t even in style yet!’ but my folks were all, ‘Well, we can’t call him Boot Cut, it’s not black enough!’”

I started giggling a little, and we both jumped up to sit on the side of the wall.

“It’s Milton,” he said.

“Whoa. Heavy name.”

He grinned at me, then pulled out a flask. It was silver, and not the cheap, plain kind you can get at a gas station. Ornate, with filigreed cuts that shone in the moonlight like it was bejeweled.

“So, you were sad-drinking over whatshisname before. Now you’ve gotta happy drink with me over being here instead of in whereverthefuck Michigan, and making friends with magnificent me, and all the hot guys who’re gonna be psyched to jump the bones of a cute little white-boy skater with serious face.”

Whatever was in the flask burned going down but tasted of nothing.

“Just vodka, same as in the Jell-O shots, so you’ll be fine,” Milton said.

After a few mouthfuls, he pulled me down from the wall. “Just to be safe,” he said, and after a few more I was sure that he was going to be the best friend I’d ever had. I was warm in a good way, and the tension seemed to have seeped out of my shoulders.

When I looked out into the night, the lit-up windows twinkled like imperfect stars, waiting for the hand that would extinguish them. Then I was on my back looking up at the real stars, trying to pick out constellations like I had at home, but there was too much light pollution and probably regular pollution, so I couldn’t see anything.

Milton was talking about the boyfriend he’d had last year—he’d gone to some school here in the city that he kept calling by name, but I didn’t know what it was. Sounded fancy, though. And he talked about all the cute guys he’d already seen.

I guess it was the spirit of confessional that Milton mentioned—or maybe it was the vodka—but I found myself telling him that I’d never really had sex. That Will’s kiss hadn’t just been the best kiss of my life but also my first. That since then I’d briefly messed around with a guy in my statistics class at Grayling, but it had been… well, awkward would have been an understatement.

“Well, do you want to?” Milton asked, matter-of-factly.

“Ummm, yeah?”

He leaned over and touched his lips to mine softly, his kiss a question. The warmth of him next to me, his smell, the brush of his hand against my face. It didn’t feel scary or intense like Will or overwhelming like this city. It just felt comfortable. Welcoming. Like someone actually appreciated me for once. Wanted me. Not out of pity or because I wore them down, but because maybe he actually liked me.

I sought his lips again, pulled him down next to me until we were facing each other. Then he gave me this grin—this bright grin full of joy, and went for it, lips and tongue and hands everywhere. Every time we pulled apart for breath, Milton smiled at me, like he was happy to be there, with me, right then. Until I pushed my hand up the back of his stupid T-shirt and rested it between his shoulder blades, holding him to me. Then his smile turned wolfish, and he tangled our legs together, so we were locked up tight.

I froze when the bulge in his tight jeans ground against my answering hardness. At my stuttering breath, Milton kissed me deeper and rolled his hips into mine. The pulse of pleasure washed through me like a stone dropped into still water and heat crept down the backs of my thighs and up into my stomach.

Milton’s groan was unguarded appreciation, and he kissed my neck. I was light-headed with sensation, and I didn’t know what I was supposed to do, really, so I just ran my hands over the smooth skin of Milton’s back. His kisses canted my head back, and I found myself straining to see the stars like I could at home. It seemed like they should be there, clear and bright, standing witness.

But then Milton went for my zipper and I didn’t give a crap about the stars anymore because his hand felt amazing, his grip firm as he started to stroke me. I struggled up to my knees, almost falling on my face because of the tangle Milton had made of my pants, and pulled him up, unzipping him and trying to pull down his jeans. They were so tight I ended up with my face level with his crotch, trying to yank at the fabric.

I was swearing at his pants and kind of laughing, too, because my dick was sort of just bobbing between us. Milton had his lip caught between his teeth, silently cracking up at me.

“Too tight,” I complained, and he just laughed harder. Finally he took pity on me and slid his jeans down gracefully, like a snake shedding its skin. We were kneeling, facing each other, and I was appreciating the first hard-on I’d ever seen in, you know, context.

“You want me to shine my flashlight app down there or something, bro?” he asked, and I realized I was basically just staring at his dick in the dark of the rooftop with my junk hanging out like a total fool.

“No, it’s okay.”

He chuckled and pulled me upright, pressing me against the wall when I lost my balance, my pants still rucked around my ankles, and licked a slow line up my throat. My heart was beating wildly and I grabbed at his shoulders to keep steady.

With his face buried in my neck, he started stroking me, slow and hard, until I was pushing my hips toward him and squirming to encourage him to go faster. His breath against my wet skin was warm, and the smell of his cologne was intoxicating.

I wanted to make him feel as good as he was making me feel, but my hands were shaky and useless. I pulled at his ass, trying to get him closer and, with a groan, he palmed his erection and started stroking us together. He was hard and slick, and we strained together.

I had my eyes squeezed shut so tight I saw starbursts of white before I felt the explosion. Milton’s hand took me over the edge, and it was like everything was collapsing. A sky folding in at the edges and buckling like paper crumpled in the hand.

My thighs were trembling and my stomach was clenching and my breath was coming short as I collapsed against the wall, pulling Milton closer. This time when I reached for him, he pressed himself into my hand and both our fists slid over his dick faster, faster, until he swore and came, biting my earlobe hard enough to sting.

He didn’t let me feel awkward or weird about being slumped against a total stranger, half-naked, slick with sweat and tacky with come. He just snaked back into those damn jeans and dragged mine up by the belt loops, zipping me back up carefully and kissing me once more on the mouth.

“We’re going to be friends,” he said and gave me the same warm smile he’d given me before.

I’M LYING in bed with another guy’s come all over me, I texted Will once I was back in my room, tipsy with alcohol and overwhelmed by the night, the only light my gently glowing phone screen. Still no sign of my new roommate, and I was glad I’d have a little time by myself. As freaked out as I’d been before, and as lonely, I didn’t think I could’ve stood facing a stranger while trying to strip off come-stuck clothes.

It was a lie. My text. I’d taken a shower as soon as I unstuck myself. But still.

I stared at the screen as it dimmed halfway, any hope of a response fading with it. Fuck, I couldn’t believe I actually sent that text. I didn’t know what I was hoping for. That it’d make him jealous? Punish him for not wanting me? Both were ridiculous in light of our earlier conversation. God, there should be a function where you can unsend a text for thirty seconds like there is in e-mail.

Just as I buried my head under the pillow, my phone chimed. My breath came quicker as I looked at Will’s text.

That’s exactly what you should be doing in college. Play safe, kiddo.

I squeezed my eyes shut as if I could unsee the words. Obliterate them. But the hollow feeling gaped in my stomach, and I curled around it, pulling the covers up though it was warm in the room.

The extra-long jersey knit sheets from the bookstore smelled of the plastic package they’d come in. Not comforting at all. No history of sleep or relaxation in their fibers. Just the reminder that they were brand-new, with nothing to make them inviting except time.