IT ONLY took one day in New York City for me to break every single resolution I’d made.
Even after a year of dreaming what it would be like—a year of slogging back and forth between Grayling Community College and my parents’ house—I hadn’t even come close to anticipating how it would feel to actually leave Holiday, Michigan, much less to arrive in New York.
Nothing in any of the movies I’d seen prepared me for the feeling of watching the city rise like the distant sun of an alien planet miles and miles before the bus would reach it. It was just there, out the windows on both sides, its size an announcement: you still have time to turn back. Or: once you enter you’ll never get out again. Or: anything you could ever need is waiting for you.
LATER, AFTER I’d found my way to the dorms, I helped people move in, since I only had two suitcases, a backpack, and my skateboard. They were bringing whole lives with them into their rooms when all I wanted was to leave mine behind.
I exchanged some variation on the themes of What are you studying, Where are you from, and Have you met your roommate yet about a dozen times in the process.
The first girl I told I was from Holiday wore black jeans, boots, and a short black jacket even though it was in the eighties outside, and she was so amused by the name of the town that afterward I just said Michigan. In fact, all my responses seemed to vaguely amuse people, and I could feel my smile become forced, the muscles in my jaw starting to ache and the skin around my eyes tight.
That was Resolution 1—Make a good first impression—scuttled.
I hadn’t slept much on the bus, and what with all the changing buses and layovers on the way to New York, it already felt like the world’s longest day even though it was still early. The mix of sleep deprivation and overstimulation had made me feel all fluttery and tweaked-out. I finally escaped back to my room, desperate to throw my clothes in drawers and veg with an episode of something on Netflix.
I wanted to rest up before Joseph, my roommate, arrived. Joseph and I had e-mailed all summer, planning to go to the new student orientation together, to scope out campus and the surrounding neighborhood and to locate all our classes before school started so we weren’t wandering around like idiots. He’d been nice and funny; safe. And it’d been a relief not to be facing a new school all on my own, to say nothing of a whole new city.
When I opened my computer to find something comforting to watch, though, I found an e-mail from Residential Life instead. Joseph had declined to come to NYU at the last minute and they would be assigning me a different roommate in a few days. My heart started to pound and I closed my eyes. It was a small thing, I told myself. Not a big deal at all. But I guess I didn’t believe myself because suddenly I was close to tears, and before I knew it, I’d done what I always did when I felt freaked out or overwhelmed, which had happened a lot this past year: I called Daniel. As friends went, he was pretty much it for me, though I constantly doubted whether he thought of me the same way.
I’d met Daniel two years ago when he’d moved to Holiday from Philadelphia to teach English at Sleeping Bear College in town. Everyone had been talking about him—at least, everyone who was part of the circuit of small business owners around Mr. Zoo’s, the jumble-shop-cum-music-store where I worked.
At first, I was just curious. The mythology that had bloomed around him was intriguing, and the fact that one of the rumors was that he was gay made him irresistible. I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. I had begun developing a plan for how I’d choreograph our meeting. It would be casual, of course, subtle. I’d come off as cool and mature, and he wouldn’t be able to help wanting to hang out with me. In the end, though, it hadn’t gone anything like I’d planned.
Before I could even start phase one of Operation: Nab Daniel, he’d found me, swooping in to rescue me from getting my ass kicked by some jackasses I’d gone to high school with, like the hero of my own personal movie, vanquishing the bad guys with a few well-chosen words and gestures.
He was all messy hair and flashing green eyes and tattoos, his shirtsleeves rolled up after a day of teaching. So, okay, I kind of threw myself at him, but it wasn’t just because he was hot. He was like a tornado I wanted to get caught up in—lifted and spun around and deposited in a world more colorful and magical than the black-and-white of Holiday.
Daniel was confirmation that there were other options out there. That there was a world outside of Holiday that didn’t just exist in the books I read and the TV and movies I mainlined. I kind of made a fool out of myself making sure that he couldn’t ignore me, but somehow I just knew. I knew that being friends with him would change my life. I’d been right, too. Because here I was, starting college in a brand-new city because he’d helped me with my applications and my essays, and encouraged me when I wanted to give up on the whole thing.
When Daniel answered the phone, I could tell he was in the middle of something because he was swearing and spluttering when he said hello.
“You okay?”
“What? Shit. Yeah, yeah, just tripped over the damn… thingie. Anyway, hey. You there? You all moved in? Everything okay?”
Just hearing his familiar voice and having someone ask if I’m okay nearly made me lose it. I blinked hard and stared out my window at the endless stream of people cutting through the courtyard.
“Yeah, I’m cool.” I tried to sound casual, but it came out shaky, and Daniel knew me too well to be fooled.
“What’s up?”
It came out in a sluice, but I knew Daniel would understand because it seemed like he felt kind of the same way when he first moved to Holiday.
“I don’t know what I’m doing here, man. I don’t even know where to start. My roommate’s not coming and I don’t know anyone and there’s two days before classes but I’m already out of cash. I don’t even know how ’cause all I bought was like a coffee and a sandwich. And there’s this orientation thing, but I don’t want to go do freaking icebreakers with people and talk about my major—I don’t have a major. I just got here! Three people have asked me about my major. How do they have majors? I don’t understand.”
Daniel hummed sympathetically. “Oh Jesus, icebreakers. No. That’s no good. Well, you could come here for the weekend if you want. BoltBus is cheap.” He paused as his partner Rex said something in the background. “Ha, yeah. We’ll totally put you to work, though. I’m useless because they swapped my class at the last minute and now I have to do all this damn course prep in five minutes.”
Just the thought of being around someone familiar calmed me down. The year before, Daniel and Rex had moved into an old industrial space that the owner was happy to rent out cheaply in exchange for Rex’s promise that he could build in the interior. Rex had built his house in Michigan and was more than up to the task, in theory, but it had turned out to be a nightmare of zoning permits, arcane city mandates, and the kind of red tape that Rex abhorred, so they were still in the thick of it. Still, I’d gladly clear garbage or sand wood or scrub whatever they wanted if it meant I wasn’t by myself here.
“Really? Yeah, man, I could totally help.”
“Um,” Daniel said, not really into the phone. All I could make out was orientation and then Rex’s voice in response, pitched too low to hear. “Okaaay,” Daniel drawled. “So, good point. Rex says shouldn’t you go to orientation so you can meet all the people in your dorm and stuff?” Daniel sounded like it horrified him even more than it did me.
“I don’t know.” I just wanted someone to tell me what I should do. I could hear Daniel fumbling with the phone and then Rex’s voice filled my ear.
When Rex talked I was generally incapable of doing anything but agreeing. Something about his voice just made me melt. Daniel too. I’d seen it happen. He’d start out listening to whatever Rex was saying and then slowly he’d lose the thread because he’d started focusing on the sound of Rex’s voice instead of his words. You could tell the exact moment it happened because his eyes would go kind of sleepy and his hands would start to twitch like he was keeping himself from reaching out to touch Rex.
“It seems like a good way to meet people,” Rex said. “Nice to know a few before classes start, huh? Might not be the most pleasant experience, but it’s better than trying to do it on your own.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“You’re always welcome, Leo. But why don’t you give yourself a chance to make some friends first? Get to know the city a little.” He kind of trailed off, and I got the feeling he was talking to himself as much as to me. It was no secret that Rex hadn’t been overjoyed to leave Holiday and move to Philly. He didn’t like cities and he was shy around new people. Still, he’d wanted to be with Daniel, so he went.
“Yeah, you’re probably right. Okay, cool. Well, I guess I’ll see you guys. Sometime.”
The second I hung up I slumped onto the bed I’d claimed. It was the one next to the window because it seemed nice to be able to glance outside while I sat there and did work, but now I wondered if it’d be too distracting, so I flopped onto the other bed to try it out. From this vantage point, the room seemed completely different. Choosing a bed was choosing between two totally different experiences of the room. Of what the world would look like all year. It was too big a decision for the moment.
In fact, any decision felt too big at the moment, so I just grabbed my skateboard and took off. At the street, I closed my eyes for a moment. A blanket of noise lay over everything: traffic, horns, heels hitting pavement, dogs yipping, people talking in every language, music, and, underneath it all, a hum that seemed to rise from the ground itself. It was almost more vibration than sound, as if I were standing on something alive. A great slumbering beast guarding a treasure.
As soon as my feet hit the deck of my board a car nearly sideswiped me in a flurry of honking horns and yelled profanities, and I hit the ground hard, my board skidding against the curb. Within moments fear transmuted into humiliation, and I just hoped no one saw. But, of course, there were people everywhere. The chill of fear gone, it was oppressively hot, the air hanging humid and still, the smells of pizza and smoke, perfume and exhaust suspended.
Shaking off the near miss, I walked around Washington Square Park, and I could hardly believe I was really here. The white stone seemed to glow as it absorbed the sunlight. The soaring arch at the entrance to the park stood out starkly against the blue sky like it could reach the clouds, dwarfing the trees. People passed through like threading a needle, and you could tell the locals from the tourists by who walked by without even sparing it a glance.
I was most assuredly not one of the locals, since I was blatantly staring at everything around me, head whipping from sight to sight like I was at a carnival.
That was Resolution 2—Do not gawk at everything like a total noob—down the drain, then.
I passed leathery-skinned men and women with their belongings tied up in plastic bags sitting on benches, talking without listening to each other. Some asked for change, some ignored me, and one blew me a kiss. They sat next to men in the nicest suits I’d ever seen, subtle grays, browns, and blues that I could tell, even without knowing anything about fashion, were top quality.
These men sat, resting slices of pizza on paper plates, falafel in foil, and plastic cups of chunked fruit on their elegantly crooked knees, holding newspapers, books, and phones in one hand and eating with the other. The business-y women mostly wore black, and they walked quickly, heels clicking the stones, sipping iced coffees through straws, sunglasses covering half their faces.
There was a set of tables inlaid with chessboards where a surprising collection of people played, some in silence, others bantering with familiarity like they’d been playing together for years.
My favorite pairing was an immaculately dressed African-American man who must’ve been in his eighties, skin burnished and perfectly manicured fingers clawed inward with arthritis, playing with a white girl who couldn’t have been more than ten. She had light brown hair scraped into a raggedy ponytail, and pink wire-framed glasses, behind which she squinted at the board, her small hand with its dirty nails hovering above a piece.
As I walked by, she looked up at her opponent, clearly trying not to smile, and said, “Checkmate.” He interlaced his fingers over his stomach and leaned back, assessing the board before nodding once, one side of his mouth lifting. He took off the tidy bowler hat he was wearing and perched it on the girl’s messy head, tapping its brim so it slid her glasses down her nose.
Children chased pigeons up and down the park’s corridors and parents chased children. Bikers twined around pedestrians lost in their phones and groups of slow-walking tourists taking pictures with selfie sticks or iPads held aloft. Around the perimeter of the fountain, couples sat, hands entwined, or leaning against each other. The sun was directly overhead, sparkling in the droplets of water the fountain kicked up.
I settled in the shade, finally, taking a cue from the less well-dressed, of which I was definitely one. A group of twentysomethings in shredded band T-shirts and cut-off denim sprawled under a tree, heads on each other’s stomachs and fingers in each other’s hair. Under another tree a family was having a picnic, one of the kids complaining about the heat, the bugs, the food.
I tried to cheer myself up by texting my sister Janie, In NYC, sucker! with a picture of the soaring stone arch, and watched for the screen to light up in my hand, but she must’ve been busy because she didn’t write back.
I dozed off for a few minutes, unable to look away from the arch until my eyes closed, curtains coming down on the movie going on around me. A wet nose in the neck woke me, followed by a paw in the stomach. The puppy’s owner came running over and apologized, but the golden retriever puppy was adorable, rooting around next to me and throwing itself on the ground. We chatted for a few minutes. The puppy belonged to his boss at the internship he’d just started the week before, and he was terrified of anything happening to it because he was convinced he’d somehow managed to incur his boss’ wrath on his first day and didn’t want to give the guy any more reasons to hate him.
I found myself telling him about my roommate situation, and he gave me a sweet smile and said, “Well, maybe the new roommate will be even better.” I grasped at it desperately—this benediction from a stranger—in an attempt to renew my excitement. He was right! I was here, in New York City, starting over. Starting from scratch. And maybe that included a new roommate I hadn’t planned for.
So I didn’t know anyone in the city—that was okay. I’d meet people, surely.
Well, I knew one person.
Will Highland. It was Will I hadn’t let myself think of on the trip from Michigan. But, honestly? That had just been a stubborn game to prove to myself that I had other reasons for coming to the city.
Will was always lingering in the back of my mind. He was a shadow in my periphery. An unopened gift that might be the thing I had most wished for, or the disappointment of that wish.
There should’ve been a term for the moments that, when you look back on them, preceded your whole life changing. There probably was one in German—some twisty compound word I didn’t know. In a movie, there would’ve at least been a musical cue. Swooping strings that suddenly gave way to velvet quiet studded with the tinkle of bells as sharp as diamonds. Something that said Pay attention: this next bit’s important.
But there hadn’t even been any kind of bodily early-warning system when I met Will—no skipped heartbeat or light-headedness to indicate that something was about to happen. Nope. I had just fallen off my skateboard when I saw him, like an idiot.
I’d only known him for a few weeks. He had been in Holiday visiting his sister and I’d met him because he was Rex’s ex. And, yes, maybe the first thing I’d noticed about him was that he was, hands-down, the most beautiful person I’d ever seen in my life. But it wasn’t just that.
He had this… presence. This way of owning every inch of space around him as if he had a right to it. It was the kind of self-possession that can make a tyrant or a prince and Will was a fucking prince. You just got the sense that he knew exactly who he was and he’d never apologize for it. And, okay, I was pretty sure I had no hope of that rubbing off on me. But being around him made me feel like everything was right in my little world. I felt alive in a way I never had. In a colors-look-brighter, food-tastes-better, every-song-is-about-him way.
Though he never would have admitted it, we had… fit together in a way I’d never fit with anyone else. It wasn’t that we were similar—we weren’t. For every ounce of confidence Will possessed, I had an equal measure of dorkiness. But somehow it just worked. I felt different with him than I had with anyone else. Everything felt different with him.
If Daniel had been a tornado that promised me there was another world out there, Will’s arrival in Michigan had been a blizzard—the cold snow and ice that snapped me back to reality, made me take a hard look at my life and what it was likely to become and feel the true terror of it. And if dreamy, distracted Daniel had offered escape, Will had been as sharply present as a pebble in my shoe, making me aware of every moment we spent together.
But that had been almost two years ago. When I’d gotten my letter of acceptance to NYU my heart had begun racing in my chest like a wild thing, as if a part of me was already surging full-speed ahead into the life I could have at an amazing college, in an amazing city.
The life I could have with Will.
I hadn’t meant to go there, but my fantasies were traitors, constructing the life we’d have together with such insidious detail that my daydreams seemed almost more real than my actual humdrum life. I’d sit behind the counter at Mr. Zoo’s, and my stupid brain would spin tales of swoony romance, corny inside jokes, easy domesticity, and, um, other stuff. Like, okay, fine: sex stuff.
It wasn’t just Will, though. It was the promise of a future that was different than anything I’d let myself imagine. Freedom. Possibilities. Hope. When a letter from the financial aid office came a few weeks later, I’d torn it open without a second thought, a rush of pure happiness shooting through me at the purple NYU logo.
The gut punch of despair hit me as soon as I processed the contents of the letter: that they were only giving me enough financial aid to cover about a third of NYU’s extremely pricey tuition. My fist tightened unconsciously, along with my stomach. I forced myself to smooth the letter out again and slide it back into the envelope, but every hope I’d let myself have was crumpled as easily as that crisp, watermarked paper.
And talking to Will was a reminder of everything I couldn’t have if I didn’t want to go into astronomical debt. Because though I felt sure that somehow Will was my destiny, there were some things that even destiny couldn’t justify. I’d missed the hell out of talking to him, but it had just been too painful. Instead, I’d thrown myself into classes at the community college, determined to do well enough that the next year I’d get a full financial aid package and could roll up in New York with everything perfect. Just the way it was meant to be.
But now I was here, and every fantasy I’d had of Will being part of my life was stirring again, the slow unfurling of dormant seeds growing up through the ground to meet the light. I thumbed through my contacts to the end of the alphabet, even though he was already one of the five numbers in my Favorites.
Will answered just when I thought the call would go to voice mail, his clear voice electrifying me.
“Hey, kid. Get mugged yet?”
“Ha. How bad would you feel if I actually had gotten mugged?”
“At least a four out of ten.”
“So, um, I’m here. Wanna hang out?”
Wow, that sounded like I was about ten. Can Will come out and play?
“I’m at work,” he said, sounding vaguely amused.
“Oh, right.” I had lost all sense of time. My stomach flipped, and I couldn’t think of anything to say. It suddenly seemed imperative that I see him.
Voices were audible on Will’s end of the conversation for a minute, and I thought I heard Will sigh. “Um, okay, do you want to meet up at my place later? Sixish?”
He gave me directions, but they got immediately jumbled in my relief and excitement about seeing Will in only a few hours. I had already failed at Resolution 3—Memorize the subway map so you don’t get lost and have to ask for directions constantly—but I had GPS on my phone so whatever.
As I lay back down and stared up at the bright blue sky, I realized I was grinning.
IDEALLY, THE first time I saw Will in New York, I would’ve breezed through the door looking… I dunno, cute. Like, irresistibly cute. Instead, the back of my hair was flattened from riding with my head against a bus seat for twenty hours, my shirt was stuck to my spine with sweat, and my hands were dirty from sitting in the grass. I was also fairly certain that I’d stepped in something unspeakable on the subway, and I’d gotten dripped on by the air-conditioning units as I approached the building.
God, why hadn’t I at least showered before coming here? My hands were so sweaty my thumb nearly slid off the button when I buzzed Will’s apartment.
“Stairs are on your right.”
Through the crackle, Will’s voice was as clear and sharp as always, like even static had no power over him.
Whenever I’d pictured Will living in the city, I’d imagined his apartment building looking like the ones on TV: as modern and shiny and stylish as he was. But the building was… well, ugly. Brown and square and kind of lurking back from the sidewalk like it was embarrassed by its ugliness. And it was bizarre that he lived behind one of these doors, each exactly like the next, when he was completely different from anyone I’d ever met. But when he opened the door, he was so vivid it was like the whole apartment building had been made ordinary to better set him off, like a jewel in a plain setting.
When I’d been around Will for multiple days in succession in Michigan last winter, the effect had worn off a little, like I’d been inoculated. Now, seeing him again, I was so struck by the lines of him that it felt like I was falling. I was staring at him in what was probably a gooberish way, but he was so damn beautiful. Beautiful in an obvious way that everyone would agree on. Beautiful like I couldn’t always concentrate on what he was saying because his words got lost somewhere around the curve of his full lower lip that dipped toward his sharp chin.
The lines of his jaw, nose, and cheekbones were clean and defined, his pale skin flawless except for a dark beauty mark over his lip and one next to his eyebrow. His eyes were this grayish-bluish color that could look cold and remote when he was in what Daniel called scornful fashion-model mode, or deep and mischievous when he was more approachable. His hair was longish on top and short at his neck, and this improbably light blond all the way to the roots, like he was limned in frost.
“Are you gonna come in or are you going to stand there gaping? FYI, you might want to lose the whole mouth-hanging-open look before you hit the streets, unless you really do want to get mugged.” His teeth were straight, and white, and as sharp as his words, but he was smiling and his eyes sparkled. He was at least a little bit happy to see me.
“Hi,” I said and went to hug him. He felt amazing in my arms, and I couldn’t help hooking my chin over his shoulder to try and get a whiff of his hair. “Oh, wow, we’re the same height now,” I noted with my nose in his hair. I thought I heard him sigh a little, and I held on to him a beat after he tensed in my arms. “Sorry. I probably stink.” I let him go, missing the feel of him immediately.
“What the hell happened to you?” Will said as he shut the door.
“What? Oh.” The knees of my jeans were abraded where I hit the ground to avoid the car hitting me, and there was grass stuck in the creases where the fabric had rucked up above my high-tops. “This car almost hit me, man. It was ridic. Talk about defensive driving.”
Will’s eyes snapped to my face and then down to my skateboard, and he shook his head. I had almost forgotten how much he could communicate just by the way he looked at things.
“Lesson one,” he said, getting me some water and leading me over to sit on the couch. “Everything in New York is designed to kill or maim you and everyone wants something from you. It is basically the Hunger Games. Trust no one. Be ever vigilant.”
“Mix your Hunger Games and Harry Potter streams much? Nah. I met a totally nice guy in the park who I’m pretty sure wasn’t trying to kill me. He had a puppy.”
Will looked me up and down and winked. “Then he was trying to get in your pants. Puppies are sex bombs. That’s not even an advanced technique.”
“No! Puppies are not sex bombs. God, don’t say that. Puppies!”
“True story, sorry. They’re like babies. Everyone’s already agreed that they know what our reactions to them should be. Have you noticed how pissed parents get if you don’t smile at their baby? For real, they look at you like you’re the devil.”
“Um, I guess I usually smile at them?”
“Of course you do. Try it next time you’re walking. Even the sweetest-looking East Village mom straight from baby-and-me yoga will cut a bitch if you don’t smile at her baby.”
“You just go around glaring at babies?”
“I didn’t say I glared at them. I just don’t smile at them because they don’t amuse me. And, seriously, people act like you’ve broken a basic tenet of human interaction or something.”
“And you enjoy this? Terrorizing babies and antagonizing yoga moms?” I teased.
Will’s grin was mischievous. He slid down deeper into the couch. It was buttery black leather and, like so much about Will, seemed casually nice but was probably posh and expensive.
“So, did the fam give you a tearful send-off?”
I shook my head. “My mom dropped me off at the bus station in Detroit, but the bus left at like seven in the morning so everyone else was asleep. Besides….” I ran my palm absently over the soft leather of the couch. I was so aware of Will next to me, every shift of his body stirring the air between us. “They probably won’t really notice that I’m not there anymore. Not like they cared that much that I was there before.”
At Will’s sober expression, I immediately felt disloyal to my family.
“I mean, it’s not like they’re terrible or anything, just… I don’t have much in common with them. Like, Eric and my dad have their whole outdoorsy thing going on, and Janie and my mom are all into crafts and tutorials and Pinterest hacks.” Will snorted in amusement. “And Eric and Janie are both so… normal, I guess? They just… have friends or whatever. Anyway, they all have stuff they share and I just never did. And especially with the whole college thing….”
“Bad year?” Will asked.
“Oh man. It sucked. It really sucked. The whole thing—” I shook my head.
“What happened?”
I had e-mailed Will when my plans to come to NYU changed. A long and, let’s face it, whiny e-mail about how I couldn’t justify going into debt for, like, the rest of my life to come to NYU, about how sad I was that I wouldn’t get to hang out with him. And his response had been totally nice. That he agreed it wasn’t worth it. That he was sure I’d do great at community college. Et cetera, et cetera. But I hadn’t wanted him to be nice. I’d wanted him to be as devastated as I was, and he just… wasn’t.
It had been Daniel’s idea that I could take classes at Grayling rather than have to sit out a whole year, since NYU was the only place I applied to. It’s what he had done, transferring to Temple with enough credits under his belt that he only had to pay for a year’s tuition. And it was good advice. He’d had a great experience with his classes and his professors. But he’d also been in a city he loved, with friends, and a goal he was working toward.
“It just felt like high school all over again. Half of the people were people from high school, actually. And just… it was depressing,” I admitted. “I didn’t want to seem like a snob. I tried to be friendly and keep an open mind and everything. But there was an air of, like… despair. Seriously. It was grim. And my parents—ugh. My mom would be all, ‘How was school, honey?’ just like she did when I was little.”
“God, the unmitigated gall of the woman,” Will drawled.
“No, I know, it’s nice, just—ugh, I’m not explaining it well.”
I wasn’t sure how to explain it, exactly. What I’d felt was something close to humiliation. I’d never told my family about NYU, so I didn’t think they were disappointed in me or anything. Neither of my parents had been to college, so it certainly wasn’t something they expected. Eric hadn’t gone, and I didn’t think Janie was interested. No, it was more like a humiliation born of the distance between what I wanted and the life I was living.
As if I’d somehow tempted fate by thinking I was special enough to get out of Holiday and fate had smacked me down.
“I get it,” Will said. “You had an idea of what you wanted from college and that didn’t fit it. It’s almost worse to have some wack approximation of the thing you want than not to have it at all.”
“Yeah, how’d you know?”
Will shrugged and grinned at me.
“Well, now you get your chance.”
I nodded but felt the sudden terror that somehow the fantasy of NYU would blow up in my face all over again. That fate would, once again, punish me for dreaming above my station. But Will had successfully gotten out of Holiday and made a go of it here, proof it was possible.
I told Will about my roommate bailing and how big New York seemed. How unfathomable I found the scale of a city where the subway made it so you couldn’t see how things were connected. How far it seemed you could go without meeting anyone who knew you.
“At least I have you,” I said, testing the waters.
Will’s eyes were on me, but he didn’t say anything, and I started to feel awkward.
“I mean, um, well, and I’ll get a new roommate.”
“My freshman roommate was a nightmare,” Will said. “He’d been homeschooled and he was a total cliché. Awkward as all hell, showered about once a week, and did these relaxation exercises before he went to bed. He’d sit cross-legged and kind of flap his arms and legs around while breathing in through his nose and out through his mouth. Total freak show.
“But, oh man, that was nothing compared to this other girl on my hall. She had night terrors, and she’d wake up sometimes convinced that she was part of some kind of army invasion—I think her dad was in the military or something—and bust out her door to forearm crawl down the hallway. Jesus, it was hilarious. And she went to bed early, so she’d wake up this way at like one in the morning and, of course, half the hall was still awake so everyone would see. Ahhh,” he sighed, laughing. “Poor Louise. I wonder if her military crawl skills ever came in handy later in life.”
I laughed with him, but now he’d gotten me even more nervous about who my roommate was going to be.
“Well, if mine’s that bad then I’ll just have to come over and crash on your couch,” I said, sliding a little closer to him.
“You’ll be fine,” he said with a careless smile. “You’ll probably forget I’m even here in a week or two. With this grin?” He chucked me under the chin. “You’ll make a ton of friends. Besides, you’ll have all your classes.”
The concept of forgetting about Will was an absurdity of the magnitude of the IC 1101 galaxy. But I was now veering into dangerous territory. Resolution 4 territory.
Resolution 4 was serious. Resolution 4 was essential. Resolution 4 was basically Daniel’s voice in my head and it went something like: Do not stalk Will like a total psycho when you get to New York in order to confess your love for him because you barely know him and haven’t seen him in almost two years and also he’s a bag of dicks. The bag of dicks part was definitely Daniel’s voice, though the rest of it wasn’t exactly untrue.
So, yeeeaaahhh. Did I mention yet that my feelings for Will were pretty… intense? I knew that I didn’t super know him, but I also knew I wasn’t wrong about the connection we had. One half of my brain repeated Resolution 4, Resolution 4, while the other half pictured Will and me tucked up together on his couch just like this every night, talking about everything. Getting to know each other the way no one else had ever known me. Going out together so Will could show me the city. We’d hold hands and—
Will was looking at me strangely and my heart started to hammer, an awkward, sick feeling stealing into my stomach. I didn’t remember what I’d been saying and became convinced maybe I’d said things about us going out aloud.
Pretend it’s casual! I shouted at myself. Everything’s super casual! You’re a casual guy! “Uh, hang out! We can hang out. Right?”
Will’s narrowed eyes suggested that I hadn’t sounded quite as casual as I’d intended.
“Sure,” he said, “we can hang out.” But the way he said it—like maybe he was just humoring me—scraped at the last nerve I had. And, okay, maybe I slightly overreacted. But I had ridden on buses for what felt like forever, lugged around my hallmates’ worldly possessions, been abandoned by my roommate, almost been hit by a car, gotten on the subway going the wrong way twice trying to get here, and now Will was wrenching away the one scrap of comfort I had.
I was trying to keep calm, but my voice had gone all tight with the promise of a subway ride back downtown by myself, each stop putting more and more distance between me and the only person I knew here.
“I don’t get it,” I said. “We got along so well in Holiday. And now I’m here, and I thought… I mean, I came here so that….” Abort! That was definitely not casual. “I just mean that now that I’m here, I thought maybe we might have a chance. Just to try, you know, being together.”
I swallowed and I imagined the sound of it echoing through the open window and out into the streets beyond, announcing to the inhabitants of East Harlem that Leo Ware was completely and officially pathetic.
Will was looking at me like he was puzzled by something essential about me. I felt taken apart by his gaze, like he could see things about me I hadn’t even figured out yet.
“Leo.” He almost never said my name and it cut right through me. “You didn’t come here for me. You came here for college. I live here, yeah, but this is a big city. It’s a whole world. You’ll see.”
I opened my mouth to say something, and he pressed a thumb to the swell of my bottom lip, fingers curling around my chin.
“Look, I want to be clear, okay? I’m not looking for a relationship,” he said. There was an almost savage cruelty to the gentleness of his tone as his words tore through me. It was a quelling blow from an honored enemy, a poison kiss, an end before things had even started.
“You’re… not interested in general, or… with me?” I forced myself to clarify, pressing farther onto the sword.
“In general.”
The silence between us stretched. Usually I’d feel compelled to fill such a silence, but I couldn’t even find the words.
“So, then, you just….”
Will’s eyes went hard with the warning of irritation.
“I sleep with people when I want to, yeah, if that’s what you were going to say.” His tone dared me to find fault with what he’d said.
I looked at him, but it was as if I were watching myself from outside my own body as the one thing that I had promised myself I wouldn’t say fell out of my mouth and landed between us on Will’s posh couch like an unwelcome splotch of oatmeal.
“But… you kissed me.”
It sounded so inconsequential, so childish; like I was dangling something unsavory and clumsy in front of him and insisting that he take it as proof.
Will’s brows drew together, but then he just smiled casually. “Yeah, well, I’m sure I’m not the first to do that. That fucking smirk you throw.” He winked and tapped my lip again.
I gaped at him. In fact, he had been the first. Well, not counting Christina Marciano at the eighth-grade social that Carter had dragged me to back when we were still best friends. Before he decided that sports were cooler than movie marathons and being popular was more important than me. And she didn’t really count because that was spin the bottle, so she kind of had to kiss me. But that wasn’t even the point.
Will’s smile faded in the silence.
“Okaaay. Um, I shouldn’t have done that. I was in a weird place. Being back in Michigan, and stuff with my sister and—”
I couldn’t listen. He regretted kissing me—not even regretted: discounted. Basically the best moment of my entire life, and it had been nothing to him. A mistake.
When you’re in a weird place you, like, impulse buy dumb trinkets at the gas station or decide that you probably should watch Fifty Shades of Grey just to see what everyone is talking about. But Will had kissed me. I mean, really kissed me.
Even all these months later I could slide back into the moment like a jacket worn perfectly to fit my shoulders….
Laughing at a snarky joke Will made and looking up to find his eyes locked on my mouth, those honey gold lashes vulnerable where his eyes always flayed me. The sudden heat I felt, like every atom between our bodies was agitated to a singing vibration. The drag of those lashes as his eyes met mine and he inhaled sharply through his nose like he was startled by whatever he saw in me. How slowly he moved—almost imperceptibly—until my eyes crossed trying to track his mouth’s approach.
His breath caught moments before we touched, a tiny automatic sound that I thought might be nerves, though Will had never indicated he had any. I closed my eyes at the hint of vulnerability and waited for contact, the whole world—my whole stupid, pathetic life—reduced to our mouths, microns apart, taking each other’s breath into our bodies like maybe we could share something.
But when contact came it wasn’t Will’s lips. It was his hands, one on either side of my face, holding me fiercely still. His eyes were knives again, any hint of uncertainty gone, and he crushed his mouth to mine before I could even register that he’d moved. It startled a sound out of me, a kind of whine in the back of my throat that I try not to think about, and then it was just the taste of him, like warm ocean water on my tongue.
I pushed up on tiptoes to kiss him back, fisting the fabric of his shirt until he yanked me against him and his tongue stroked mine. It was a shock that electrified my whole body. The fucking intimacy of it. Of someone touching my mouth with his. That something of Will was inside me, a part of me—spit and breath and taste and touch. In that instant he owned me.
When I slid my fingers into his hair it even felt blond, the strands smooth and heavy, and Will let out a breath into my mouth. We broke apart for a moment and his eyes were narrowed. Had I done something wrong? Made a misstep I didn’t even recognize?
Before I could apologize or ask or do anything, really, other than try not to plaster myself back against his body, he covered my mouth with his palm and closed his eyes, shaking his head slightly. I tried to say something, but he pressed his palm tighter against my lips, his fingers a blunt disappointment after the poetry of his mouth. His hand stayed there for a moment before sliding away in a silent benediction as he took a step back, leaving me breathless and shaky and tremblingly hard.
Leaving me totally destroyed for anything but another taste of him.
Since the moment I had gotten my acceptance letter to NYU—no, from the moment it had occurred to me that I could come to New York—I’d had a fantasy of this moment. The one where I saw Will for the first time since our leave-taking in Holiday. I’d played it in my head so often, scripted different versions of it so many times, that it almost felt like it’d already happened. As if this meeting were something I’d already read in a book, years before, its details gone flat and hazy with the familiarity of a scene read a thousand times.
I’d pulled that story around myself like a blanket for so long, and needed it so badly, that I hadn’t ever let myself imagine what would happen if Will went off script. After all, I’d written him so many.
There were the ones I’d thought of as realistic, where he smiled and was amused at me and I was awkward and self-deprecating, and we kind of laughed and he said, “Yeah, we’ll see,” but in a way that left me buoyant with hope. There were the ones that were more porn than romance, where we didn’t speak at all, he just stripped me bare and claimed me, as if I had finally come home.
Then there were the swoony ones. The embarrassingly detailed ones that never ended. There was no climax to them because they were just us, always together. Sharing all the small, daily things that people share. They were punctuated by things like Will bringing me my favorite flowers (not that I knew enough about flowers to have one), or buying me a Valentine’s Day stuffed animal (not that I could imagine real-life Will ever doing such a thing), or planning an elaborate surprise for our one-year anniversary (this was always hazy, since my only exposure to anniversaries was my parents, who exchanged cards from the grocery store over breakfast on their anniversary like clockwork).
I found myself suddenly furious with Will, not just for not wanting me, but for, with one sentence, wrenching away the fantasies that I’d been playing on a near continuous loop for more than a year. I had needed them just to get through the day sometimes, especially this past year. And now he had burned them to the ground.
I shuffled backward and grabbed my skateboard, determined to get out of there before Will saw me cry. I plastered a smile on my face and nodded.
“Yeah. Yeah, okay. No problem. Cool. Um, thanks for”—I gestured around searchingly—“the water and all. I’ll uh, I’ll see you around, okay, night!”
I thought he might’ve said my name as I slammed out the door, but he didn’t follow me. I didn’t wait for the elevator, just stumbled down the stairs and out onto the street. I wanted to be swallowed up by the noise and the heat and the thick air and everything that didn’t care I was crying as I picked a direction blindly and walked, my fantasies joining my well-intentioned resolutions in dissipating around me like smoke in the evening breeze.
