Where We Left Off (Middle of Somewhere #3)

“OMIGOD, THIS is the heaviest thing in the history of things.”

“Just keep it level,” Will grunted.

Gee. Thanks for that.

Yesterday I’d woken up feeling totally out of it even though Milton assured me I’d only had three drinks. Basically all I did was eat a shitty dining hall bagel and some vanilla soft-serve and sack out in my room. By the time Will called in the afternoon, I’d fallen asleep in the middle of reading Chaucer for my Great Books class. He’d wanted to know if I could help him move some furniture into his apartment from the storage unit in his basement. I hadn’t even really listened to what it was for, just agreed that I’d meet him there this afternoon.

He’d been normal when I got here. No mention of how we totally made out in a swanky shop last weekend. Not that I’d been expecting one.

As I inched along Will’s endless hallway, some semidetached flap of rubber from the sole of my shoe—I never did get new ones last weekend, since Will was too busy dressing me up and kissing me and not talking about it—nearly tripped me and I caught myself in the doorframe of the apartment before Will’s. I guess I kind of thudded against the door to avoid dropping my side of what was clearly the most epically heavy filing cabinet ever made. As I levered myself away from the door, it opened with a squeak and a forty-something dude who looked like he used to be a football player and now just watched a lot of it on TV while downing pizza and beer poked his head out.

“Did you knock?” His tone was primmer than I expected.

“No, Perkins, he didn’t knock. He just tripped. Back to your regularly scheduled programming.”

The dude—Perkins—just sniffed and looked put out, but he closed his door. We finally got the damn thing into Will’s apartment, but he could barely even tell me where to put it because he was too busy muttering ranty things about Perkins.

“What is your problem?”

“That fucking guy,” Will snarled.

“He said three words.”

“Three asshole words. He’s my nemesis. Screw that guy.”

“Um, kinda… dying.” I indicated the filing cabinet with my chin. My arms were about fifteen seconds from giving out.

We put the filing cabinet in place and lugged a few shelves and a table up from the storage unit too, Will glaring at Perkins’ door each time we passed.

“So, why’s he your nemesis?” I asked as we set up the shelves and what Will said was a drafting table.

“He’s just always around, doing infuriating shit like sticking his head out when I walk past. Or—he straightened my doormat once, the OCD psycho.”

I looked around at Will’s immaculately organized apartment.

“Um. Isn’t that maybe a nice thing to do?”

“No. He’s a busybody. Maybe I wanted my mat like that. Maybe I had it that way for a reason. He didn’t know. He’s just a control freak. You don’t go around rearranging other people’s stuff.”

I couldn’t help but smile because he sounded like a pissed-off kid and it was adorable, and when I did Will rolled his eyes and stalked off to the kitchen. He handed me a beer and popped the top off his own.

“Thanks for helping. You’re a pal.” He clinked his bottle to mine and flopped down on the couch, drinking deeply. I couldn’t look away from the movement of his throat as he swallowed. The gold of his weekend stubble faded into the creamy skin of his neck. His lips wrapped around the neck of the bottle.

He drained it, looking at me, and I started to get hard just watching him as he watched me.

“You’re—you—gah,” I mumbled, my cheeks going hot as Will’s gaze traveled down to my crotch and he smirked, but still said nothing. In an attempt to distract myself, I opened my beer, licking quickly at the fizz so it didn’t get on the couch, but grimaced at the sour taste. Okay, I guess I now knew I didn’t really like beer.

At my expression, Will’s smirk turned to a genuine smile, and he held out his hand to me, shaking his head affectionately. My heart beat faster as I slid my hand into his. He held on for a second, thumb caressing the tender skin on the inside of my wrist.

“I meant gimme the beer,” he said.

“Oh, right.”

I dropped his hand and passed him the beer, sitting next to him in silence for a few minutes as he flicked through the channels. Finding nothing that suited him, he jammed the power button on the remote and tossed it onto the coffee table with disgust.

“Hey, can I see that cover design?” I asked. Will had been working overtime on the design for some book that his bosses were sure would be huge.

At the console next to the drafting table, Will nudged his mouse to bring the computer to life. He had some kind of black rubber pad where a keyboard would be and a set of black plastic tools lined up next to it. When the screen came to life, his desktop was a blank white background with only one small, unlabeled gray folder in the bottom right corner.

“What happened to your desktop image?”

“Nothing. I just don’t like clutter.”

“But you’re all… artsy. I would’ve thought you’d want….” I trailed off, realizing how dumb I sounded.

“Number one, don’t ever say artsy again unless you want to sound like you’re eighty-five. And it’s visual clutter. I don’t want anything competing for my focus on the screen.”

I looked around at Will’s apartment. I hadn’t paid any attention when I’d been here the other night, too nervous and too distracted by Will to notice much about the place. It was stark. All clean lines and well-balanced shapes. Nothing distinguished itself by design, but nothing was exactly plain either. Like the black leather couch, everything seemed very high quality, but nothing screamed money. The furniture didn’t seem to belong to any period—not that I’d have recognized such a thing if they were, but it didn’t have that aggressively modern, cement-and-steel look, or the bought-the-whole-showroom look, or the I’m-bohemian-and-artsy look. Er, wait, not artsy.

The walls were white, the furniture black or light wood, and the rugs a neutral oatmeal-y color. There were some large framed black-and-white photographs on the wall just inside the door, and I knew I’d seen some kind of art in the bathroom, but there wasn’t anything but blank wall near the work area, and the open floor plan left the kitchen no walls at all. The only real color came from the motley spines on the bookcase behind the couch, and a stack of coffee-table books on art and design on the side table. In fact, with the curtains drawn open, the main attraction was the view of the city through the large windows.

Will’s clothes were the same as his décor, I realized. Everything fit him perfectly—though that might have been mostly how well-proportioned he was—and they were always sharp, but never flashy. He wore mostly black, white, grays, and neutrals. Sometimes a light gray-blue the color of his eyes, but I didn’t think I’d ever seen him in anything else.

“That’s it.” Will’s voice brought me back to the screen between us. “The proofs are at work, but this is the digital version.” He leaned in and made a sound of disgust. “The damn—shoot.” He pointed. “That has a weird green cast on this screen but it’s actually gray.”

“Oh, it looks gray to me. Wow.”

“It’s the first in a trilogy, and when you line the three up, the color will fade down diagonally until it disappears at the bottom right corner of the third book.” Will traced a downward arc, finger hovering an inch from a screen totally devoid of fingermarks or dust particles. “Then, here—” He opened a smaller window with a picture of the spine. “See the way the image wraps around here and goes all ghosty? When the three books stand together on the shelves—the hardcovers, anyway—you’ll be able to see it’s actually part of a larger image.”

“It’s amazing!”

Will smiled. “The author won’t like it. He wanted something flashier. But that’s why we don’t let authors design their own covers, thank god. I think it’ll sell, though. Especially sitting on a shelf next to some of the schlocky garbage that’s just the title and the author’s name in Arial against a generic stock background.”

Then Will was off, talking excitedly about design and marketing, color and balance, pulling up different files on the computer to show me other covers he’d done and images of those he admired. He talked as if I understood what he was saying. As if my knowledge of cover design aesthetic weren’t limited to the distinction between, like, a Danielle Steel cover and a Stephen King cover.

I couldn’t keep my eyes off him. How his face lit up when he talked about this stuff. How every now and then he’d bump my shoulder with his for emphasis. The way he pushed his hair back absently when he bent closer to the monitor, eyebrows drawing together in concentration as he searched for the next file he wanted to show me. The way his forearm moved when he clicked the mouse, muscle and tendon contracting under pale skin limned with golden hairs.

“So, um, you kissed me. Again.” It just kind of popped out, and I felt my face heat in that way that I knew didn’t actually look like I was blushing, but made my heart beat fast and my ears buzz with nerves. “In the dressing room,” I added stupidly.

His gaze shot to mine, his eyes burning, then slid down to my mouth, and I felt it like a caress. For a moment it seemed like he might respond. Like we might talk things through, instead of continuing this strange dance. But then he blinked and shot me a wink before turning back to the computer.

“You kissed me, kiddo.”

“SO, YOU have no experience working as a barista at all, you can only work on the weekends and when you’re not in class, and you’ve never heard of latte art. Why should I hire you when every third person in line to buy a cappuccino is probably more qualified?”

I’d ducked into Mug Shots on a whim when I saw the HIRING sign. I needed a job badly if I was going to have a prayer of being able to do anything in this city besides study, and, well, the state of my shoes was getting pretty dire.

The manager on duty was named Layne. Her dark jeans hung low and her white T-shirt and red-and-brown flannel were spattered with coffee and foam around the edges of a too-long apron. Her brown hair was cut short, her cheeks permanently flushed, and behind thick, nerdy-chic glasses her blue eyes were squinty and shrewd.

She was right. I was woefully unqualified for the job. And yet, it didn’t feel like she was shutting me down, exactly. More like she was asking it as a genuine question. And maybe was a little bit amused.

Anyway, she seemed so cheery, despite the chaos going on around her, and the stickers slapped onto her thermos said “Earth First!” and “Queer Rock Camp” and “NYQueer,” so I couldn’t bring myself to bullshit her.

“Oh gosh, you probably shouldn’t, if they’re way more qualified,” I said. “But—okay, things in favor of hiring me anyway?” I ticked them off on my fingers. “I’m super dependable. Maybe I can only work on specific days, but I’ll never call in and leave you searching for someone to take my place. And next semester I could schedule my classes so I’m more flexible. I’m pretty friendly and people usually like me, so I’d be good with, like, grumpy, pre-caffeinated people. What else? Oh, well, I’m smart, I promise. That sounds obnoxious, probably, but I mean that once you show me how to do stuff I’ll have it. You won’t have to tell me twice. And… well, I really need the money, honestly. So I won’t do anything to get me fired.”

I leaned in and lowered my voice. “Also, um, I’m gay, if, like, that helps?”

The look she gave me made it immediately clear that this was a miscalculation on my part. But just as she opened her mouth to respond, there was a crash, a splat, and a very inappropriate-for-the-workplace slew of swear words from the front of the line. The customer seemed to have somehow spilled the entire tray of coffee drinks he’d been handed, and half of them ended up on the counter and the girl ringing him up—hence the swearing. She was totally drenched in what smelled like a combination of coffee and hot chocolate, and the counter was swimming in sad islands of melting whipped cream.

Layne narrowed her eyes and sighed.

“What are you doing right now?”

“Nothing,” I said.

She nodded once, resigned, but I swear there was a damn sparkle in her eye like she was enjoying this. “Up for a trial by fire?”

“Um, what?”

Which is how I found myself hastily aproned and stationed behind the huge, gleaming machine that loomed like the obelisk in 2001: A Space Odyssey and would determine my future. After about ten minutes, when it became painfully clear to the other guy stationed at the machine that I had absolutely no clue what the difference was between an Americano, a macchiato, and a latte, to say nothing of how to make them, I was switched to taking orders.

Three hectic hours later, Layne called me over.

“Well,” she said matter-of-factly, “you definitely don’t know anything about coffee.”

“No,” I said.

“But you’re perky and polite, which shocks people in this industry.” She cocked her head, seeming to consider me.

“Look,” I said, “sorry about before when I said the thing about being gay. That was like maybe inappropriate? I dunno, I just meant—I was trying to say that—I didn’t mean to assume—I just thought you might like me more if—or be more likely to—um, but maybe that’s accusing you of some kind of, uh….”

“You’re not really helping yourself here.”

“Sorry.”

She shook her head. “Even if I did happen to be politically committed to providing jobs for queers, some pretty boy cis white dude wouldn’t be at the top of my list.”

“Oh shit. Good point. Um….”

She looked at me for a while, and I could almost see the questions she wanted to ask running through her head. “How do you feel about puns?” she asked, finally, smiling slightly and narrowing her eyes at me.

Crap! Did she like them and I was supposed to say I loved them? Or did they annoy her and if I said I thought they were cool I wouldn’t get hired?

“I-I—well….”

“You’re totally trying to figure out what I want to hear right now, aren’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, you’re hired on a trial basis. Be here tomorrow at three for training.”

IT TURNED out to be no coincidence that Milton had known how to get on the roof the night we met. He made it his business to always know an escape route, a side effect of going to a snobby private school, he said, where immediate egress was sometimes the only thing that had stood between him and losing his mind.

We were sitting on the fire escape on the north side of the building where we had Psych. Milton had pulled me out a fire door after lecture unexpectedly, talking loudly about nothing, and then hustled me up two flights before flopping down onto the chilly metal.

“What are you doing? Where are we? Jesus, is this even safe? This doesn’t feel safe.” The metal was an open grid, so if I looked down, I could see the dumpsters five stories below.

“Oh, just hold on to the railing, we’re fine.”

“Soooo….”

Milton rubbed his temples. He looked thrown.

“Umm, just this guy. He’s a senior and he’s like the best actor. Seriously, he was on some TV show or something after high school, and he took a few years off to do it and then came back to school because he wanted to learn more about his craft, isn’t that cool?”

Milton sounded uncharacteristically swoony.

“And why are we outside on this deathtrap because you have a crush on the next….” I couldn’t think of a really famous theater actor, and Milton laughed at me. Then he muttered something.

“What was that?”

“I just saw him coming down the hallway and I panicked is all.”

“Oh my gosh, this is great!”

“Not from where I’m sitting.”

“Oh, sorry, no, not great for you. Definitely not. For me! Because if you can get all freaked and flustered over a guy, then it means I’m not such a total mess. Jeez, I just thought you were cool all the time, but this is way better.”

“Gee, thank you so much, Leo.”

“Sorry, sorry, but I mean, obviously this guy will like you. You’re so awesome. And you’re hot. And a great kisser. I’ll testify to it if this guy wants.” We could say things like this to one another now, since we’d firmly established that we were not ever going to hook up again. It felt nice. Intimate, in a friends kind of way. “What’s his name, anyway?”

“Jason,” Milton said, the word practically a sigh.

After a few moments where I thought he’d say more and he stared down at the dumpsters, Milton seemed to shake it off, and he hauled me up by the arm and hustled me back to our dorm saying we were running out of time to eat before movie night.

“Direct all your criticisms to Milton,” I told Thomas and Gretchen. “I had absolutely nothing to do with this decision.”

When Milton announced that for movie night tonight we’d be starting to watch Felicity, I thought he was kidding, until he pulled out a disturbingly pastel box set.

“Are those DVDs?” Thomas asked, the way you might ask “Is that a cockroach?” Milton clutched the box set to his chest and glared.

Gretchen narrowed her eyes and looked between me and the box set. “Ah, I get it,” she said with what I could’ve sworn was pity.

“I am not Felicity!”

“Oh, boo,” Milton said, shaking his head. “You really haven’t ever seen the show, have you?”

MY CULTURAL Foundations paper was due in twenty hours, and Charles was deep into one of his conspiracy theory rants, this one, as far as I could tell, something about the Denver International Airport being secretly designed by the Freemasons.

“—an entire network of subterranean tunnels that they claim were an automated baggage delivery system, but it never worked even though its installation cost millions of dollars,” Charles was saying, and I was only half listening, nodding at what seemed to be key phrases, like “bunker” and “shadow government” and “New World Order.” Usually, if I just kind of nodded along, Charles would eventually run down his own motor.

It had become my approach ever since the day he’d tried to explain the theories of the second gunman in the JFK assassination, complete with schematics of the grassy knoll, reedited versions of the Zapruder film, and heavily redacted scanned documents from the Warren Commission.

Charles did eventually lose steam, trailing off back into his research. I was exhausted from my first real day of work at Mug Shots, despite my proximity to the espresso machine meaning I could caffeinate at will. Even though I’d taken a shower when I got home, everything still smelled like coffee, to the point where I was convinced that maybe coffee particles were stuck in my nose hairs or something, like bits of pollen on a bee’s legs, so that every breath I took was being filtered through coffee. Hell, maybe that’s why it was so addictive? I’d have to see if Charles had ever heard of a conspiracy theory about that.

The caffeine had clearly worn off, though, because I was staring at the screen where I’d written some notes for my paper and my brain felt like mush. I wrote a thesis statement and immediately deleted it because it was self-evident. I wrote another that I deleted because I knew I couldn’t support it, and another that I deleted because it would be too much work to explain. Ugh.

I closed my laptop and went to see if there was any tea in the hall kitchen. I found a mangled box of jasmine tea that it didn’t look like anyone would miss it and put water on to boil, slumping against the counter in the hope that somehow a paper idea would magically fall into my head.

“You gonna get that?”

I jerked up to Gretchen’s voice and the sound of the kettle screaming.

“Oh my god, I actually just fell asleep standing up.”

“You okay?”

“I have a paper on Jane Eyre due tomorrow and everything I think of is idiotic and I’m so tired.”

There was something about Gretchen that made me accidentally tell her all my problems.

“Come to yoga with me,” she said.

“Oh, no, I don’t have time,” I said. I thought only hippies and health nuts did yoga.

“Well, you’re not getting anything done in the state you’re in, are you? Also, you just majorly over-steeped that.”

I didn’t know you could over-steep tea. I took a sip. It smelled floral and sweet but was intensely bitter. I winced and Gretchen nodded in commiseration.

“Ugh!” I dumped the tea down the drain and slumped. “I can’t even make tea, what’s wrong with me?”

Apparently she decided this was a rhetorical question because she just nodded and said, “It’ll be good, I promise.” Then she took me by the elbow and pulled me after her.

The first twenty minutes were ridiculous, the next twenty minutes were torture, and the last twenty minutes were amazing. I was clumsy and not strong and had no idea that I apparently breathe incorrectly. But the instructor was amazing, telling us ways to adjust our bodies to do the poses more safely, more effectively, more beneficially, and every time I followed her instructions, I could feel my muscles engage differently, feel my breath deepen, feel myself calm down and my mind clear.

With all my attention focused on breathing in and out through my nose, turning my right hip forward and my left hip back, pulling my navel in, squeezing my shoulder blades together on my back, retracting my chin back so my head was in line with my spine, pulling my feet energetically toward each other, and pushing into the inner edges of my feet, along with a dozen other things I couldn’t do, I had no time to feel tired or stressed. I didn’t give a single thought to my paper, or to Mug Shots and all the ways I’d managed to humiliate myself in front of my coworkers, mess up people’s drinks, or spill things on myself.

I didn’t even think of Will. And an activity that managed to take my mind away from him and the fact that he’d kind of blown off my last few invitations to do anything, citing being busy at work? Well, that was worth something.

As we walked back to the dorms, I was alert and energetic, but not bouncing off the walls the way I often felt. I was calm. And how much did I love Gretchen for not asking me how I liked it and saying she told me so.

“I go three times a week” was all she said when we went our separate ways. “Come whenever you want. Good luck with your paper.”

THE NEXT month went by in a rush of total chaos, punctuated by the most fun I’ve ever had. Maybe it’s because of how busy and stressful everything was that the moments with my friends felt so intoxicating. Or maybe it was because I’d never really had friends like these before—the kind who knew about my daily life, who I was excited to run into at the library, or slump next to at a table in the dining hall with plates of pizza that managed to be simultaneously dry and greasy.

The kind of friends you told everything to because they were the fixed points in your ever-changing universe and who told you everything because you were the fixed point in theirs.

Milton had a seemingly endless supply of stories about adventures he’d had with his theater friends from high school. Nights they had to stay at school until two in the morning to finish painting the scenery for opening night the next day. Nights they told their parents they were at the theater but actually went out to bars and clubs. Times he snuck away to mess around with guys in the lighting booth or the sound booth or the catwalks (Milton had a bit of a thing for techies).

Milton’s roommate, Robbie, seemed to be the one person immune to Milton’s charms. He was quiet and kept to himself, leaving the room whenever we were hanging out in there even though Milton always made an effort to include him in the conversation. Milton said at first he’d worried that Robbie was freaked out by having a gay roommate, but he’d realized he was just pretty solitary.

Gretchen’s roommate, on the other hand, was the opposite. She was aggressively cheerful and always wanted to talk to anyone that Gretchen brought to their room. She had frizzy red hair that she straightened religiously, but she always missed a spot in the back, like she was waging an epic, unwinnable battle against a part of herself.

Within the first month of school, she had already joined something like ten clubs and was always encouraging Gretchen to come to this meeting or that event with her. Gretchen was basically a saint, but even she couldn’t keep her cool with Megan all the time. Thomas started calling her Megan-with-no-H because he said she was like the inverse of Meghan from Felicity. Then, so she wouldn’t know we were talking about her, we shortened it to No-H.

Sometimes, No-H would launch into cheery, interminable monologues and Gretchen would silently gather up her study materials and slink into the common room. If it was occupied, she’d come to my room, sink to the floor next to my bed—Gretchen loved sitting on the floor and had the kind of excellent posture that made it look like she sat on a throne even when wearing sweats on our dorm carpet—take deep, centering breaths in an attempt to cleanse herself of the static of No-H, and then work in total silence for hours, seemingly undistracted by either my sighs at my work or Charles’ clumsy entrances, exits, and muttering at his computer.

After I’d gotten the job at Mug Shots, Gretchen had started coming and doing her work there when No-H was driving her particularly up the wall, and I’d slip her coffees that people sent back or that went unclaimed at the counter.

Gretchen was from just outside Ithaca and was really close with her huge extended family, so she’d had a lot of experience blocking out noise and chaos. That No-H was able to get to her even though that was a true testament to her level of irritation. Gretchen had tons of stories featuring a zillion different cousins, aunts, uncles, and second-somethings-twice-removed that sounded idyllic and chaotic, like scenes from a movie.

Family reunions in parks where picnic tables full of food got eaten by dogs or doused in flash floods. Christmas Eves when all of the siblings and cousins slept jumbled together in living rooms, attics, and basements of various houses and opened metric tons of presents all at once. Birthday parties shared with three other people that sprawled over backyard fields and lasted late into the night.

Thomas’ stories were rambling and often featured his twin brother, Andy. They sounded inseparable. Thomas even narrated in the first person plural. They had only gone to different colleges because, after a guidance counselor told their parents she thought they were overly dependent on one another, their parents had said they’d only pay for school if they went along with it. Neither Thomas nor Andy had really spoken to their parents since then. They chatted and texted constantly throughout the day and played video games online together at night with a group of friends they’d been playing with for years.

Charles didn’t really tell stories so much as give disquisitions on various topics that sometimes included how he’d learned about them. So, I found out that he knew so much about computers because he built one as part of a school project, taken under the wing of a particularly zealous teacher, scavenging the parts from a computer lab graveyard of tech going back to the seventies in the basement of the school. (This was also the moment when I started to think that maybe when Charles said he went to “a good high school” that he actually meant some kind of super-genius school for science and technology.)

Thomas was irritated by Charles, I knew. He took things Charles said personally and got offended when Charles corrected him. But since Charles was also the only one who No-H seemed flummoxed by talking to, and since Thomas had hated No-H with a passion ever since she’d yammered at him about some study she’d read about how codependent most twin relationships were, Thomas usually suffered him without complaint.

I saw Will a lot, too, and though our hangouts had begun grudgingly, he clearly wasn’t just humoring me anymore. We got along in this way that shouldn’t have worked but did, like the first time someone tells you that Brie and pear go well together and it seems impossible until the tastes are lingering on your tongue.

Sometimes we just watched Netflix and Will got takeout, never accepting the money I tried to press on him, which was lucky for me since I didn’t really have any to spare. With anyone else I would’ve tried to argue over the bill, but Will rolled his eyes when I tried and made it clear my protests irritated him, so I stopped. Other times we’d talk for hours—meandering conversations that spiked in heated disagreements and equally heated laughter.

Will was the only person who had ever made arguing with him feel safe. He wasn’t angry or threatened if I disagreed with him, so I found myself licensed to be more forceful with my opinions than I ever had been. One night, disagreeing over I don’t even remember what, I rose onto my knees on the couch and yelled, “That’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever said!” It had sounded ridiculous the moment it was out of my mouth, but Will, after a beat, had grinned and ruffled my hair, pulling me down on top of him as he laughed, clearly pleased with me.

ON HALLOWEEN, Milton, Gretchen, Charles, Thomas, and I went to the Village Parade with a whole group of people from our dorms. In the dining hall before we went, we each came up with lists of things we thought we’d see and then made bingo boards of them, agreeing that the first person to get bingo got to pick the next thing we watched at movie night. Of course, Milton turned out to have a huge advantage because, being from New York, he’d been to the parade before.

The rest of us had no reason to imagine that we should put down things like “a person dropping a puppet head,” “someone’s hair catching on fire,” “a child being terrified of an overly zealous adult in costume and screaming,” or “drunk dude running out of the bar and dropping trou to moon the parade.” (Although, I did randomly get lucky because I wrote down “a dragon,” mostly as a joke, but then there was a sister and brother dressed as Puff the Magic Dragon and Puff’s little brother.)

I called Will when I got home, exhilarated and a little tipsy.

“You know we met two years ago, today,” I told him.

“I remember,” Will said. I could hear the smile in his voice. “You looked hilarious falling off that skateboard.”

I got flustered all over again at the memory.

He’d been coordinated and sophisticated, and I—well, I’d fallen off my skateboard, half in actual clumsiness and half to disguise the fact that I got hard under Will’s stare, as if his hands were touching me everywhere his gaze landed while he looked me up and down for the first time.

He had been abrupt and aggressive and a little bit rude. He’d pissed off Daniel, made me feel like a loser for having no one to hang out with on Halloween, and had even managed to make Rex roll his eyes. Despite all of it, he had been the most dynamic person I’d ever met. He was honest and uncompromising and didn’t seem to second-guess himself. He wasn’t awkward or nervous or uncertain about anything, and for some reason that made him seem invincible, superhuman.

He’d driven me home after we’d played Pictionary, and he’d complained about Daniel and what he called his “helpless act.” “Of course Rex would go for that,” he’d said, shaking his head and muttering something about a hero complex.

“Why do think it’s an act?” I asked, since to me Daniel mostly seemed like he tried to cover up the fact that he was sometimes bad at doing things that even I knew were common sense.

Will turned to look at me for the first time since he started driving, as if he’d forgotten I was there, actually listening to his vitriolic monologue. He pursed his lips and let out a long breath. “Ugh, it’s probably not even an act,” he said finally. And then he sulked.

“I don’t get it. What’s your problem with Daniel? Are you still in love with Rex or something?”

“No,” he said, with finality but without force. At first I thought it was because he didn’t mean it, but after I knew his habits a little better, I realized it was because Will said what he meant and didn’t care if people believed him or not. When he dropped me off at home, just before he drove away, he rolled down the window and said, “Happy Halloween.” His voice bordered on mocking, but he had chosen to prolong our conversation, and I decided that had to count for something.

“Watch out for the tricks,” I said, trying to wink at him and succeeding only in kind of squeezing my eyes shut emphatically.

“It’s the treats you really have to watch out for,” he said, and drove away with the window down, like maybe he was hoping to hear more from me. Or maybe he’d just liked the fresh air.

After that, all I’d wanted was for Will to like me. Well, and to be around him all the time. I had always second-guessed myself, always been a little uncertain. I’d been raised to be polite to people and not to make waves. So Will’s straightforwardness, even if it was a bit abrasive, was intoxicating. The notion that you didn’t actually have to say what people wanted to hear just to make them feel comfortable—that it was a choice—felt thrilling and transgressive, and I’d become fascinated by watching Will move through the world and interact with people in that way. He wasn’t unkind exactly. He just refused to follow what I’d always thought were ironclad rules of social engagement but which, it turned out, were as easily brushed aside as cobweb.

I couldn’t believe it had been two years. By comparison, last Halloween didn’t even bear thinking about. I’d wandered around Holiday after getting home from a long day of classes, wishing that Daniel and Rex still lived there, wishing that Will were with me, wishing… wishing for there to be something that made the day stand out from any of the others.

Now I asked Will, “What did you end up doing tonight?” He’d declined my invitation to come to the parade with us.

“Oh, you know, not much,” he said casually, which I was learning was Will code for “I hooked up with someone.” Which, of course, I knew he did. But somehow knowing it happened, and knowing it had just happened, weren’t quite the same, and pain lanced through me at the thought of Will with someone else.

I didn’t press him about it, though. I’d made that mistake a few weeks before when I’d shown up to hang out one night, and he was clearly in a bad mood. Even though I took some small pleasure in hearing him complain about what an idiot the guy he’d hooked up with had been, it hadn’t outweighed the knowledge that Will would rather mess around with some random guy than try being in a relationship with me. When I’d said as much, Will had fixed me with a pained expression and said, “You’re not like those fuckheads.”

A million questions had buzzed to the surface with that comment. Like, if they were fuckheads, why did he sleep with them? (Well, fine, that one I could figure out on my own.) Or, if I weren’t like them, then wasn’t that a good thing? Didn’t it bode well for our chances?

But before I could start reeling off my questions, Will had patted the couch next to him and rolled his eyes. “I’d rather hang out with you, anyway,” he’d said, flicking the TV on. And my breath had caught in my throat so I couldn’t have said anything if I’d wanted to.

“So, did you dress up for the parade?” Will asked.

“Yeah, I went as Dream from The Sandman. It was pretty awesome.” I had borrowed Charles’ long black coat and moussed my hair into a gravity-defying mop. No one had known who I was, though, or they’d asked “Are you that dude from The Cure?” To be fair, the hair was rather Robert Smith-esque.

“Ah. Feeling tragic, are we?”

I was, now, kind of.

“What would you do if I was?” I had been going for a flirtatious tone, but it ended up sounding like a genuine question.

“Well, I suppose I’d have to distract you from the utter tragedy of your young life.”

That was totally an opening for some kind of racy comment about precisely how he might distract me, but I flubbed it by thinking too hard for something sexy to say, and gave up.

“Midterms are getting so stressful,” I said, allowing the legitimate exhaustion I’d been fighting to infuse my voice. “Everyone’s totally crazed and everything’s loud and I can’t concentrate. I have a gazillion things to do, especially this project for my physics class that I really want to do well on.” Will was basically a workaholic, so I figured he’d respond well to that.

“I have it on good authority there’s a perfectly functional library you could throw yourself out of,” he teased.

“Yeah, but everyone’s at the library this time of year, so it’s not even that quiet. Besides, I’m guaranteed to run into someone I know there.”

“Aren’t you quite the social butterfly.”

“And then they’ll want to talk, and I don’t wanna be rude….”

“Ugh, the horror.” Will sighed. Getting caught in small talk was basically his worst nightmare, so I figured that one would get him. I waited, tapping my foot and biting my lip.

“Was there something you wanted to ask me?”

Damn it, I should’ve known better than to try and float any kind of passive-aggressive shit with Will. He always dismantled it, and then I felt like an idiot for trying.

“Um, maybe I could… come over and do work at your place?”

Will snorted. Clearly he’d known what I was angling for all along.

“Yeah, sure, come over.”

“Omigod, thank you so much. That’s awesome.”

THE NEXT evening after I got done with my shift at Mug Shots, I went right to Will’s. He was just getting home from work as I turned the corner to his building and we rode the elevator up to his apartment together.

I found myself imagining what it’d be like if we lived together. We’d get home around the same time, both eager to see each other. Maybe some days we’d meet like this on the street, the pleasant surprise of seeing your boyfriend washing over us both. We’d fall into step and hold hands in the elevator. Or maybe we’d get home within a few minutes of each other and chat about our days while Will changed out of his work clothes for the evening. Maybe we’d take a shower together (which would lead to messing around in the shower), or cook dinner together (which would lead to messing around in the kitchen), or order takeout and watch TV together (which would lead to messing around on the couch).

In reality, Will bitched about one of his coworkers in the elevator and shut himself in his room the second we were in his front door. He did not invite me to shower with him or participate in changing his clothes. And he didn’t seem to have any plans whatsoever for making dinner, as evidenced by the fact that he grabbed a beer and a box of dry cereal and flopped onto the couch to consume them without speaking to me.

I put my backpack down on the floor next to the desk that sat beside the drafting table I’d helped Will bring up from his storage unit last month. Now it was covered with sketches, graphics, and samples of typography.

I started in on my work, hoping he’d get hungry for real food eventually, because I hadn’t eaten since before work and I was starving.

After an hour or so, Will came over and sat at the drafting table, our chairs side by side. He didn’t say anything, but he sharpened a pencil and started to work on one of the sketches. I could practically feel his whole vibe change from the moment he came over to when he settled into his work. He relaxed into his chair, and his pencil moved effortlessly over the paper. Even his breathing changed. He seemed the way I feel when I leave yoga.

I’d been going with Gretchen three times a week ever since that first class, and I would never joke about it being just for hippies again. I loved it. I could walk into the room feeling stressed as hell—scattered and anxious, or tired and grouchy—and walk out feeling calmer, more relaxed, and more energized.

I snuck a look at Will while he was concentrating. His full lips were parted, and he was hunched over his drawing, shoulders slumped forward, neck bent. His hair fell in his eyes and his ankles were kind of hooked around the front legs of his chair. It all looked very uncomfortable, but his expression was one of total absorption. His eyes were locked on the pencil lines before him even as he blew the hair out of his face.

I took a chance and rose, moving behind him. In a moment when he’d lifted his pencil from the page, I slid my hands onto his shoulders, pulling gently to straighten his posture the way my yoga teacher moved our shoulder blades together to counteract the posture of living hunched over our computers. I squeezed gently at first, not sure if he’d whirl around in a fury at being interrupted or shrug me off.

Instead, when I began to press into the knots in his muscles with my thumbs, Will softened under my hands and took a deep breath. I let my hands follow the lines of his body, rubbing up his neck and through his hair. I massaged along his spine, feeling his back press closer to me with each breath. When I leaned in and put my weight behind it, Will groaned and the sound sent a bolt of arousal through me. I leaned a little closer and smelled his hair and the scent that was just him.

I slid my hands under his sleeves as I massaged his upper arms, feeling the improbably smooth skin overlying lightly sculpted muscle. I wasn’t quite brave enough to ask him to take his shirt off, scared my voice would break the spell, cut short the moment we were suspended in.

He kept making these obscene sounds, and they went straight to my dick.

I slid my hands forward a little, massaging the fronts of his shoulders and along his collarbones. Then I leaned in and kissed his neck. He gasped and tensed for a moment, but though I was sure that he would pull away now, he relaxed when I started massaging again. I squeezed his upper arms and leaned down again, kissing the other side of his neck. This time he didn’t tense as much. I rubbed his shoulders and nuzzled his neck, kissed under his ear, along his hairline and down the other side of his neck to where it met his shoulder.

The top of his chair could swivel, and I turned him to face me. His face was impossible to read. He looked relaxed, but it all seemed like it could shatter at any moment. Moving as slowly as I could, I slid in front of him and kept massaging his shoulders from the front. He looked at me, eyelids heavy in relaxation. Then his eyes fluttered shut as I slid my fingers into his hair and massaged the base of his neck. I leaned forward and kissed him softly on the mouth.

He jerked back, startled, and looked at me.

I went back to massaging his shoulders, even though every atom of my being yearned for him. I was stupidly turned-on. I slid my hand around the back of his neck into his hair and leaned in again, kissing him deeper. This time, he kissed me back, the press of his mouth sending my heart racing, and I slid into his lap, twining my arms around his neck.

He tasted like the Honey Nut Cheerios he’d been eating, which I found ridiculously endearing. I could imagine kissing him after he ate breakfast, sending him out the door to work and tasting his cereal on my tongue even after he was gone.

Finally, his pencil clattered on the floor and his arms came around me. He rubbed up and down my back at first, then slid a hand into my hair, holding our faces together as we kissed. It was slow and sweet until Will pulled me closer and I could feel how turned-on he was. The idea that I could turn Will on flushed heat through me and made me strain against him. It was incredible. He was so beautiful. And talented. And… Will-like. I was just… me.

Will groaned into my mouth and pulled back, looking at me with furrowed brows.

“Don’t stop,” I said quietly.

He framed my face with his hands. “We can’t do this.”

“Do what?” I asked, smiling, and I leaned back in to try and kiss him again.

He looked at me intently, like he was going to say something serious, but then he just ran his thumb across my eyebrow and down my cheek.

“You’re supposed to be studying,” he said, finally, and gently eased me back onto my seat. He bent back over his work without another word, the slight tremble in the hand he used to rake his hair back the only indication he was anything but completely relaxed.