IT WAS finals week again, but this time everything was different.
This time, I knew to load up empty containers with D-Hall food at breakfast so I’d have snacks all day. This time, I knew to make a schedule so I spaced out everything that was due to make it more manageable. This time, I knew to take the week off from Mug Shots so I didn’t lose my mind with stress and explode my heart with caffeine.
And this time I was studying at Will’s in the evenings because I spent most evenings there anyway.
“Okay,” I said, dropping my backpack on the couch and throwing myself over Will’s lap exhaustedly, needing just a little bit of a cuddle before starting in on the last push of writing and studying before this year was over.
Will ran his hand through my hair, and I nuzzled his hip.
“Hmm?”
“We’ve figured it out. Milton and Charles are getting a place, and probably Thomas, if he can convince his brother to stay in the city, which he thinks he can. And if I go in on it with them, then my rent’ll be affordable. Ish. I can get a bunch of hours at Mug Shots after my physics lab hours, and it’ll be totally fine. I won’t have to go back to Holiday.”
I said this last mostly to myself, since I didn’t think I’d even mentioned the possibility of it to Will.
Will’s hand had stilled in my hair, resting along the curve of my scalp, and I pressed into his palm, hoping he’d start rubbing my head again.
“Isn’t Thomas the one who’s in love with you?” Will asked.
I started to explain that, no, it had just been a crush and I was sure he was past it now. But instead I pitched my voice softly near his ear. “Jealous?” Then I kissed him on the cheek before he could answer, and eased away to do my work.
THE NEXT evening, I was working on my Cultural Foundations II paper, but I was hopelessly distracted. Everything in the apartment seemed more interesting than Dante, especially Will, working at the drafting table next to me. I could smell him every now and then when he’d reach his arms up to stretch his shoulders or recross his legs. The sinews of his forearm tensed as he drew, and his hair seemed perfectly arranged to torment me with the shadow it cast beneath his cheekbone.
“Eyes on your own paper, young Leo,” he said without looking up, and I realized I was staring at the curve of his biceps that his white T-shirt revealed. I looked down at my work with a little shiver; Will’s half-amused, half-scolding voice just did things to me.
A few minutes later, Will pressed his hand to my thigh, just above my knee, and I became aware that I’d been bouncing it.
“You’re shaking the whole floor, babe.” He rapped my thigh with the pencil he still held and turned back to his work.
“Sorry,” I muttered. I leaned back in my chair, the front two legs coming off the ground, and closed my eyes for just a minute, letting the sounds from outside—traffic and birds and a song in Spanish—filter in.
Hands on my shoulders pushed the chair back onto all four legs, and Will said, “Would you do your damn work? I can feel how distracted you are from two feet away.” I made a pathetic groaning complaint and tried to rest my head back on his chest for some sympathy, but he just tapped the desk in front of me with that damn pencil, his breath ghosting the back of my neck. I shifted in my chair.
“Ummm, this should probably not turn me on, but I love it when you’re so fucking bossy,” I muttered, shaking my head.
“Is that right?” Will drawled, his voice taking on an edge. “What do you love about it?”
“Uh….” Was he serious?
I craned my neck to look behind me. He let go of my shoulders and sat down, looking at me.
“Tell me why it turns you on when I’m bossy, Leo.”
My face and neck got hot. I wasn’t sure why exactly, only that it somehow felt like when Will made decisions for me that he was exerting some kind of ownership over me. Like by deciding that I was his to order around, he was decided that I was just… his.
Then there was the way his eyes burned when I told him no. How he liked to push my buttons, liked to see how far he could go before I’d stop him. How much I would give him. But my mouth didn’t currently seem to be connected to my brain, so when I opened it all that came out was an inarticulate noise from the back of my throat.
“Do you like when people tell you what to do, Leo?” His voice was filthy. “You got a little hot-for-teacher action going on?”
“I… I like it when you tell me what you want,” I finally stammered out. “I like giving it to you.” Will’s expression softened for a moment, then his mouth curled into a smirk.
“Well, then.” He leaned in close to me, expression stern. “I want you to write for ten minutes.” He tapped the desk. “With no distractions.” He tapped my cheek.
“Can I—?”
“Work time is not talking time, Leo.” He turned back to his own paper.
“Whoa.”
I looked back at my computer, not even sure what was going on. All the blood had left my head and rushed… elsewhere, and when I looked at the words on the screen, they all blended together. I was too aware of Will next to me. The heat of his body, his smell. The drag of his pencil along paper hit me like a caress up my spine and raised goose bumps on my arms. I reached down to adjust my erection and felt Will’s eyes on me.
Will slid a hand to the inside of my thigh. Just that touch sent warmth rushing through my legs, made me want to press into his hand to feel his strength against mine. “I’m going to need to see a bit more dedication to your work.”
I swallowed hard and found myself nodding.
I wrote a few sentences, but I couldn’t have said what they were about to save my life. My heart was beating faster and faster and every hair on my body was raised. Will kept drafting like he didn’t notice the state I was in at all.
“How close are you?” he asked without looking up, and I practically swallowed my own tongue as my dick pulsed. Will rolled his eyes. “To finishing your paper.”
“Uh, like one more page.”
“Write it.”
“I’m trying,” I grumbled.
Will stood up and looked down at my work, resting his hand casually on my shoulder. He leaned just close enough that my skin buzzed with proximity, my hands itching to grab fistfuls of that perfect white T-shirt and pull him down into my lap. Kiss him until he forgot about what I was supposed to be doing and just begged me to fuck him. I groaned at the picture.
“Are you having trouble concentrating?” Will said in my ear. I let out a nervous laugh. “Maybe you need an incentive. Beyond, of course, the reward of a job well done.” I groaned as his voice dropped lower on the last three words and nodded so quickly I almost gave myself whiplash.
Will moved behind me and put his hands on my shoulders, pressing me closer to the desk. “Start writing,” he murmured and then proceeded to do something to my neck that “kiss” was far too tame a word for. He feasted on me—licking and sucking at the place where my neck met my shoulder, biting gently at the muscle there, scraping his teeth over tendons and breathing on my damp skin.
He kissed the back of my neck softly, nose in my hair, on his way to the other side, and did the whole thing all over again. I was writhing in the desk chair, hard as rock and gasping at the sudden attack that had amped up my arousal so quickly I was almost light-headed with it.
By the time I coordinated my brain and my limbs to reach back and touch Will, he had pulled away with one final, hair-raising kiss to the back of my neck. Then he sat down at the drafting table, and the scritch of his pencil tip tore through me.
“Fuuuuck.”
“Do your work,” he said softly, his voice rough. I groaned and dropped my forehead to the desk. His hand settled warm and heavy on the back of my neck and squeezed.
“Fuck!” I said again, and he chuckled, leaning close.
“Leo. Your first job is to finish your paper, and your second job is to fuck me over this desk.” He rested his palm on the desk near my face. “Each are worth fifty percent of your grade,” he said, voice teasing, and then sat back in his chair.
“Oh my god, seriously, why is this turning me on so much?” I shook my head at myself.
“Who cares why? Do your first job so you can do your second job, would you?”
“Mmhmm.” It came out as kind of a whine.
I wrote the end of my paper, the words coming from somewhere and who the hell knew what they were, but I told myself I would fix it in the morning before I turned it in. I hit Command+S and slammed my laptop shut, looking to Will immediately.
He raised an eyebrow. “Finished.”
“Yeah.”
“How did it turn out?”
“Uh-huh,” I said, taking in the angle of his jaw, the line of his neck, and then moving down to the strong planes of his chest. “Wait, what?”
He was up in a flash, straddling my thighs and attacking my mouth. I groaned as his tongue slid against mine and clutched him tight, grabbing his ass in both hands and dragging him onto my erection. He grabbed the back of the chair with one hand and wrapped the other around my neck.
We kissed with all the pent-up heat of the last hour. I was desperate for him. For the taste of his hot mouth and the feel of his weight on my lap, the sensation of his arms around me and the muscular thrusts of his hips flexing to stay on my lap, struggling to get us at the right angle.
When we found it, we ground together, groaning. I leaned back a little so he could balance and he folded against me, his weight pressing our dicks together. He made a tiny gasping sound in my ear, and I was wild with need for him. I started pulling at his clothes, just needing skin on skin contact. His chest was flushed and I pinched his nipple, loving his hiss in response, the feel of his nails digging into my shoulders. Then he found my mouth again, latching on and kissing me until we were both breathless and sweating.
I pressed him back against the desk, pushing the chair away so I could get his pants off. My movements wild, I kind of squashed him backward, and he grabbed for my laptop, catching it before it toppled off the desk. We both froze for a moment, and he laid it gently on his drafting table, on top of the drawing he’d been working on.
“Top marks for enthusiasm, but I’d hate you to have to explain to your professor how you couldn’t turn in your paper due to busting your laptop in a freak desk-sex accident.” I didn’t even know how he could say “desk sex,” which was a real tongue twister, when I could barely think in more than grunts, so I just nodded and went back to kissing the shit out of him. It was, after all, my job.
I bore him back onto the desk, and we ground into each other, arms clutching, hands everywhere, mouths meeting so heatedly my lips buzzed, and I could feel them bruising. And I loved it. I loved any evidence of Will’s passion that I could keep with me on my body. Whenever he left marks on my skin, I’d track their progress as they lingered on me, feeling bereft when they faded, like without them my skin was too uncomplicated.
I couldn’t get enough of him. I dropped to my knees before him and kissed his belly, exalting in the way his hands fell immediately to my shoulders to keep in contact. I cupped his hips and dipped my head lower, nuzzling into the crease of his groin, kissing the insides of his thighs until they trembled. I buried my face in his crotch, mad with the need to touch him, smell him, taste him everywhere.
“Ah fuck,” Will groaned as I sucked the base of his cock, pressing my thumb behind his balls. He canted his hips forward, and I slid my mouth over his erection, the taste of him exploding on my tongue, all heat and salt and sweet sweat. Will’s legs softened as he gave himself over to my mouth.
I worked him slowly at first, then lapped at the tip of his cock to make him shudder and pull away, only to press closer again. The sounds that were coming from above me sent bolts of arousal through me that gathered in the pit of my stomach and made my ass clench.
I stroked Will’s balls until he whined. I pulled off him and rested my forehead against his stomach, trying to calm down a bit. Will ran sweaty fingers through my hair and held me to him.
“One sec,” he said and pulled me up, twisting away. He tore open the condom and rolled it on me, and I bit my lip at his touch. I couldn’t look away from him. He was sweaty and flushed with arousal, his hair a mess and his lips swollen. His jaw and around his mouth were pinked from the stubble I hadn’t bothered to shave the last few days, and his eyes were wild.
I wanted to tell him how beautiful he was, how absolutely stunning, but I was afraid he’d hear only the emptiness of the words he’d heard so many others say to him in the past.
Someday I would find a way to tell him that his beauty wasn’t separate from him for me. That it was animated by the real him he let me see—made complicated and imperfect and specific because of his Will-ness. And I thought maybe he saw some of it on my face, because he softened for a moment, his eyebrows drawing together slightly and his eyelashes fluttering as he leaned in to kiss me, just a sweet press of his mouth to mine as we stood together.
“I want you so much” was all I said.
“I want you too,” he whispered against my lips.
I took his shoulder and turned him onto the desk, chest down and ass up. I kissed down his back to the perfect curve of his ass and bit lightly at one cheek, patting the other.
“This is a whole new level of ass-kissing to try and get a higher grade, Leo. You know, you already—nnggh!” He groaned brokenly when I licked his hole, holding him open for me.
He swore wildly, and I huffed out a laugh against his skin. “Okay, okay, do your job, please,” he said finally, breathing heavily.
“Wow, was that a please I just got?” I stood up and leaned over Will’s back to kiss his neck.
“It’s all you’re gonna get unless you get on with it right fucking now.”
“Always something to say, huh?” I spread his legs wider, felt his opening relax to my cock as I pressed against him.
“You love it,” he retorted.
“Yeah. I do,” I said, and I thrust inside him, pleasure shooting up my spine and down the backs of my thighs as I joined us together. We both groaned, and I stilled inside him, enjoying the closeness, the heat, the fucking delicious pressure of his body around mine. I could feel his heartbeat and smell his sweat, and I pulled out slowly to feel the drag of his ass, then slammed back inside him, groaning as pleasure tore through me.
We went fast and hard, and I bent my knees to get the angle right, governing my body by Will’s every reaction.
“Oh fuck, yes, harder,” he demanded when I changed position slightly, and I did as he said, the desk slamming into the wall. “Oh my god, if you break my apartment, I will kill you,” he groaned, then, “Fuck, don’t stop!”
I laughed into his neck as I tried to fuck him harder and not break his apartment at the same time. Finally, I just grabbed his hip and his shoulder and pulled him back against me as I pounded him as hard as I could.
I felt him come apart in my hands, his back bowing, his head thrown back, his hands scrabbling at the wood of the desk. I bit the side of his neck and used every muscle I’d developed in yoga over the past year to maintain enough of a crouch that I could thrust upward at just the right angle.
He went wild around me and then froze, letting out a broken cry as he came all over the desk. He grabbed his dick, stroking hard and groaning as he kept coming.
“Oh god.” I slammed into him in a rush of hot pleasure, my hips moving even after my orgasm had wrung me dry, body seeking each shivery tendril of sensation. I collapsed over Will’s back, and he whimpered. Then the whimper dissolved into a laugh and I looked down to see that he’d come all over my notebook.
“Omigod,” I said into his neck.
“Good thing I moved your laptop.”
“Thanks,” I murmured absently, kissing up his neck and jaw to his ear. He shivered a little, so I did it again. After a minute, I eased out of him, biting my lip at the loss of his heat. I turned him around and pulled him to me, kissing his mouth. Then I wrapped my arms around him and just hugged him. He always tensed at first, and then he always softened. I waited for it, and when it came, I squeezed him even tighter.
“So, what’d I get?” I asked.
“Hmm?”
“Well, you said this was fifty percent of my grade. That’s a lot, especially during finals.”
Will grabbed my ass and squeezed. “An A,” he said softly. “Definitely an A.”
His voice was gentler than I expected, and there was no tease in it at all. He didn’t let go but kept holding on to me, wrapping his arms around my waist.
It felt… heavy somehow. But good. Right.
“What?” I teased, just a little, so he didn’t get self-conscious the way he sometimes did. “Not an A plus?”
Will squeezed me, and I could feel his smile against my collarbone.
“NYU doesn’t give A-pluses, silly. You know that.”
TWO DAYS, many bagels and coffees, and not enough hours of sleep later, my last paper was turned in and my final final taken. I thought my physics project had turned out well, despite changing it again at the last minute.
After Gretchen and I left sunrise yoga, I’d been floaty, almost drunk on the morning, but for all that I’d considered grand notions like measuring love and every yoga-related physics experiment I could think of, the image I couldn’t get out of my head was of standing with my friends and hallmates in the middle of the night, during finals of my first year in a brand-new city, and picturing Will bathed in the light of the same moon.
It was sappy and personal, and no one would know that it had anything to do with Will except me, but I couldn’t help it. I measured the gravitational force of the moon.
At first I wanted to measure its effects on me and then on Will, so I could have actual data that would show how much of it we shared. But when I sat down to actually design the experiment, I realized I’d have to measure the fluctuations in weight over a twenty-four-hour period, during which we’d have to basically stay totally still in the same spot. And, like, not eat or pee or sweat or anything, so that wasn’t really feasible. So I just measured its effects on a glass of water instead. After all, we were seventy percent water, so whatever effects the moon had on water it had on us, right? Plus, you know, it was a way easier experiment.
Anyway, call it a love letter sent in the form of a final project—that was as romantic as sending the sounds of your love into space, right? Even if Will would never know about it.
It had been hard to leave Will’s the other night. After we had sex, he was in a mood I didn’t recognize. Like he had something to say but was holding back. Everything in me wanted to stay and pry it out of him, but I reminded myself of Tonya’s words and I made myself let go. My work now was to finish finals. I knew I had to have a major conversation with Will, but that wasn’t the moment.
Our dorm room looked like a whirlwind had hit it. An FBI-profiling, serial-killer-tracking genius whirlwind. The filing cabinet seemed to have taken up permanent residence on Charles’ bed, and I didn’t even think he was paying attention to where he was in any schedule, thirty-six-hour days or otherwise, because he had, as far as I could tell, been up for two days straight, finishing the write-up of his behavioral psychology project. I couldn’t really bring myself to care much, though, and, since the filing cabinet wasn’t on my bed, I dropped onto the messy covers and was asleep before I could even think the words filing cabinet.
Later, I’d just gotten out of a much-needed shower and was feeling shockingly not dead when I got a text from Will telling me to come over whenever I was done and we could watch the Lord of the Rings extras in celebration.
When I’d been at my parents’ house in Holiday, I’d grabbed the DVDs out of my bedroom. I had been teasing him ever since about how in love I was with Viggo Mortensen and how Will would have to sword fight him to compete for my affection. And I’d extracted the promise from him that when I was finally done for the year, he’d watch them with me. All of them. I couldn’t fucking wait. I also couldn’t wait to tease him about looking like Legolas, who he always referred to as “that elf douche.”
As I stepped out of the elevator on Will’s floor, Mrs. Gemelli was leaving her apartment, flowered silk scarf wrapped around her hair, pink lipstick bleeding into the wrinkles around her lips. We had bonded over fabric softener in the laundry room when I stayed here over January term.
“Hi, Mrs. Gemelli.”
“Hiya, DaVinci. What’s cooking?”
“Just finished up with finals, so I’m free!”
She clapped her hands in front of her, pink press-ons clacking together.
“How’s Toadstool?”
“Oh, the little shit started taking a wee in my shower. It was too much. I put him on Prozac, so that should help. Damn cat’s out of his mind.” She shook her head.
“Wow, I didn’t know they even made Prozac for cats.”
“Honey, this is the twenty-first century. They make Prozac for everyone.” She winked at me and walked slowly to the elevator, her hand resting on my shoulder for just a moment as she passed, light as a leaf, leaving a whisper of violets behind her in the hall.
It was quickly overpowered the second I opened Will’s door, though, the smell of Thai food making my stomach lurch with hunger.
“Did you know they made Prozac for cats?” I asked as Will came over to me.
He kissed me hard. “Uh-huh,” he said, then he kissed me again.
I gave him the highlights while we ate, the most significant of which was that Milton’s roommate had had some kind of breakdown and they’d had to call his parents in the middle of the night. It was horrible and Milton felt awful because he was convinced he should have said something earlier when he noticed that Robbie was staying in the room more—honestly, though, Milton was almost never in their room and they weren’t friends, so I thought he was being too hard on himself.
Will didn’t want to admit it, but he was so into the extras. It was a cool, breezy night and we had the window open, the sounds of the city drifting in to mix with the sounds of the New Zealand-created Middle Earth. Will kept saying “Whoa”—as the timeline for creating the Shire was revealed, as horses galloped over the plain, as huge blocks of foam were carved into the exterior of castle walls. I think he was even kind of developing a crush on Orlando Bloom (out of costume, that was), much to his horror. “He kind of reminds me of you, actually,” Will said. “He’s all… twitchy and soft.”
“It’s strange watching these now,” I said when we’d finished one branch of the extras tree. I hadn’t seen them in a few years and the first time I saw them I’d been a kid. “The way they make all new friends and they’re far from home and everything—it’s like college.” I ducked my head, embarrassed to admit it. “I actually hoped it was what college would be like.” Will raised an eyebrow. “That sense of becoming part of a group, mostly. Of making a place feel like home because of the people there. Well, and, you know, I hoped it would be like the Shire.”
“And does it?”
“New York, not quite yet. But, school? Yeah. And here.” I gestured around his apartment.
He smiled. “You gotta give New York at least another year. Takes that long for the shock to wear off.”
I had been waiting for the right moment—a good opening or the perfect segue, but this wasn’t an essay for school and it was bound to be a hard conversation whenever we had it, so I let the idea of the right moment go. I slid closer to Will and took his hands in mine, the haunting menu screen music hiccoughing momentarily, then the loop restarting.
“Listen,” I said. “I have things. To say.”
Will was immediately on guard, and I squeezed his hands and moved closer.
“No, no, I don’t want to fight, just talk, okay? We’ve kind of been… you know, doing our thing, but we’ve both been so busy we haven’t really talked about what it is.”
“How about we just make out instead?” he offered, but I could tell he knew it wouldn’t work.
“I need to explain something,” I said. “I’m not quite sure how to say it and I don’t want you to get mad, so just listen, okay? Because it sounds wrong if I can’t say the whole thing.”
Will gave me a whatever eyebrow raise and waved me ahead.
I cleared my throat nervously, still unsure how to say everything I wanted to say even though I’d rehearsed it on the subway coming here.
“Okay, so. This thing happened where I was at sunrise yoga—” Will snorted. “No, yeah, I know, anyway, and it was kind of part of my physics project because I was realizing that I could try and measure effects instead of the thing itself, and so I had to convert it to entropy and like what is the flavor of love and then when I was looking at you the other day it was like your… your whole… gorgeousness became this other thing, and I realized what you’d been saying about its effects, and then that made me think about the laws themselves, and that to be laws they have to be applicable for always, but in this scale that’s so massive that it almost doesn’t matter anymore, like the sun kind of massive, and really that’s not the level of constancy that any relationship demands, you know? Or any person. And you’ve been right to say that I don’t know for always, but then the point is that always isn’t the scale that makes any sense to use given where we are right now. So Tonya was right too about it being about the present moment and things are always shifting and changing and there’s no law because the second you learn something you’re changed forever, and then everything’s different anyway, you know?”
Will was silent for a beat and then he nodded. “Yeah, totally.”
“Yeah?” I let out a breath of pure relief.
“No! I have no fucking clue what you’re talking about! Key terms I heard: sunrise yoga, which I really want to refer to a cocktail; flavor of love, which I think was a reality show on VH1; entropy, which I know is a band; and changed forever, which is what I hope this topic is about to be.”
I giggled nervously. That did not go well.
“Can I get like even a Jeopardy category idea of what this conversation is about?”
About fifteen cute, cheesy, romantic answers popped into my head that I knew I could use to change the subject or alleviate the awkwardness. A hundred ways I could give up. And then we could go back to watching the extras, cuddling on Will’s couch, which was pretty perfect just the way it was. But I didn’t.
“The Jeopardy category is ‘Our Relationship.’”
“Ugh, is there anything less than a $100?”
I shook my head. “They’re all Daily Doubles.” I pushed the blanket aside and kind of clambered into his lap. “Will, kiss me.”
He kissed me tentatively, like maybe there was a catch.
“Okay, now lemme try again.”
Will’s sigh was long-suffering but he ran his fingers through my hair. I hadn’t cut it all year and it had gotten pretty long.
“Babe….”
“No, let me. Okay. You tease me about being a romantic. And you’re right. I like to imagine that things make sense. That everything isn’t just chaos and meaninglessness. That things are predictable, or knowable.”
“Like physics.”
“Yeah, like physics. Where there are laws that govern things. Only, the thing about physics laws is that what makes them laws is that they’re so enormous and universal that, yeah, they explain things, but they’re also too big for those explanations to be super useful in the particular. Like, okay, sure, gravity, but, like, if my question is why did I fall down, then yeah, I know it was gravity in the universal sense, but what I mean is what the hell did I just trip over and who the hell left it there.”
Will nodded, fingers still in my hair. Good, he was listening.
“So I’ve been thinking about it. The way being a romantic or whatever is kind of like saying that the universal laws, like gravity, are more important than the particular details, like who left the thing there. When really, it’s a lot more like yoga than like physics. Where it’s all about how things are in the present. Not because the future doesn’t exist or because there’s nothing bigger, but because every day we change just by being in the world and learning about ourselves.”
Will’s expression softened a little.
“And it’s bigger than just you and me, actually. It’s not how I want to be. Thinking that I know some right way to do things that ignores all the other ways. Not leaving room for, like, surprises and new possibilities, and changing my mind. And I definitely don’t want to make someone else feel that way. Anyone else. It’s scary. Not feeling like you know how things should be. But… a good scary, maybe? A necessary scary. It is for me, anyway,” I said when Will jutted his jaw out in a yeah-right-nothing-scares-me expression.
“Okay, so anyway, I’m just gonna say this, and it’s what I want. I’m not saying you have to agree, or even respond right away if you want to think about things or whatever. So. Here goes.”
My heart felt like a candle flame guttering in the wind, and my stomach felt like someone had reached in and scooped it hollow. I squeezed my eyes shut the way I used to when Janie and I would ride the wooden roller coaster at Michigan’s Adventure. Just at the apex of the hill, hovering in the air before we slid over the other side and hurtled downward, I would close my eyes and try to identify the exact tipping point when gravity acted on the combined weight of human and machine and dragged us down, screaming.
My voice was a whisper. “I… I love you. I want to be with you. I want to try. I want to figure out a way that we can both get what we want. And I guess I just want to know what it would take for you to want that too.”
My heart was still pounding as my eyes fluttered open and the wave of adrenaline that had carried me through the last few seconds drained away, leaving me shaky and with a weird ringing in my ears. I ventured a quick look at Will. He was frowning.
“Will, did you hear me?”
“I don’t understand,” Will said slowly. And, wow, that was really not the response I wanted.
“Maybe I’m not explaining it well….” I swallowed hard.
“No.” He shook his head frustratedly. “I thought… I….” He sounded confused in a deep way. Like, fundamentally confused. “I guess I thought we… were. After Holiday—after we—” He narrowed his eyes at me. “You said you understood. After you… fucked the geologist or whatever,” he spat out. “You said you understood that I wasn’t trying to hurt you. That night.” He winced. “You… I thought you forgave me for that night.”
Wait, what?
“Forgave you? For the Tiramisu Incident? There was nothing to forgive, Will. I mean, it was awful and I was upset and, okay, fucking heartbroken. But like you said at the time, you didn’t break any promises to me. You had told me what the reality was and I was the one who was out of touch with it.”
Will stood up suddenly, looming over me with his hands on his hips and his eyes fixed on mine.
“But you fucking left!”
“Well, yeah. I was sad as hell and embarrassed and it was too much, thinking of you with another guy. But that doesn’t mean you were wrong.”
“No.” He spun away from me, hands fisted at his sides. “You left me! You… you fucking left me, Leo.” His voice broke. I tried to pull him to face me but he wouldn’t, so I stood up and walked in front of him. All I could see as he stared at the floor was the fall of blond hair and the tip of his nose.
“Hey.”
I tried to tilt his chin up so I could see his face, but he shook me off.
“It was just sex with him.”
“Yeah, I know, Will. You don’t have to—”
Will’s head snapped up and his eyes were a blaze of blue.
“It was just sex. It was nothing. You were my best friend. You were my best fucking friend and I’d told you the truth and you just left me. No more hanging out, no more talking or texts. No more… anything. That one moment meant more to you than every fucking thing we’d shared. That sex meant more to you than it ever could have to me. Because then you were just gone.”
Oh Jesus.
Before the Tiramisu Incident, Will and I had been hanging out all the time, cooking, watching TV shows together, going all over the city together, having a lot of (I thought) hot sex. And all those things meant a ton to me. Had made me deliriously happy, which Will no doubt knew since it’s not like I was super subtle about it. And during that, I had always known Will slept with other people, though I hadn’t let myself think about it. But seeing it in the flesh had in some ways overpowered all the rest of what we’d shared.
And I had left him.
“I—you never said….”
“You told me not to! You told me you didn’t want anything to do with me, Leo. And I understand, right: you were looking out for yourself. You were taking what you needed. And fuck if that isn’t exactly what you should’ve done. It’s what I’d been telling you to do all along. It just….” He jutted his chin out like he was preparing to take a punch and clenched his jaw.
“It hurt you.”
He gave a shrug, absorbing it. It was like everything had polarized. I had hurt Will. I had hurt him with my absence. I had hurt him when I lied and said I could handle things the way they’d been when I knew that I couldn’t. I’d hurt him and he hadn’t said a thing. He’d respected my wishes and left me alone until… what? Until he absolutely couldn’t anymore. And then I was the one he’d called. The first one. The only one.
“I’m so sorry, Will. Fuck, I’m so, so sorry I hurt you.” I grabbed his arms and turned him so he was facing me. He sighed, still silent, but his muscles unclenched a little under my palms. I stayed that way until he finally looked at me.
“The thing is, though? When you told me you didn’t want to be around me anymore.”
“Couldn’t. I couldn’t. Not didn’t want to.” It was essential that he understood the difference.
“Okay,” he conceded, “couldn’t. That was the first time I believed that maybe I was wrong about what being in a relationship meant.” He shook his head at himself.
“How do you mean?”
“I always saw them as the Borg, where the two of you just kind of sloshed into one being. Or that you had to sacrifice all the pieces of yourself that didn’t fit with the other person. But you… didn’t. You were totally yourself. Even though you wanted us to be in a relationship. Even though you knew getting upset about it wasn’t what I would want. I don’t know, maybe that makes me a total dick. But it made me kind of hope that it was possible. Autonomy and a relationship.”
“Wow,” I said.
“What, you think it does make me a total dick?”
“No. Well, when you put it like that, I guess it kind of makes you a total dick that you realized it when we broke up. Or—sorry, I mean, not broke up. Stopped being whatever we were being. But, no, I was gonna say, wow, Rex was right.”
“Huh? Rex. About what?”
“Oh, um, well….” I gave a nervous laugh. “I kinda… asked Daniel for advice. About you. Us, I mean. And Rex was there because, duh, he lives there, and he overheard and, yeah. It was the night I got home from Holiday. You were still there and I didn’t want to bug you about like, What Does It All Mean, because you were handling everything with Claire and the kids.
“But I was dying, seriously. Like, chugged five Cokes and couldn’t sit still dying over not knowing where we stood. Point is, Rex told me that just because you seem fearless about being blunt to people doesn’t mean you don’t get scared and resist saying stuff about yourself. Anyway….”
Will was glaring.
“Fuckin’ Rex,” he muttered, shaking his head.
I stepped closer to him and slid my arms around his neck, wanting the closeness, the feel of him. “It’s just… I want… I want you to tell me that stuff.”
“I do,” Will insisted. “I do tell you stuff. I called you about Claire even though you’d told me you basically never wanted to see me again!”
“You’re right.” I bit my lip, trying to figure out how to explain what I meant. “I just… I want…. Okay, you know how you tell me what you want when we’re, uh, you know—”
“Having sex?”
“Yeah.”
“Yes,” Will said, and he wrapped the word around his tongue like a caress, like maybe he thought he was about to distract me from this discussion.
“Right, well, I love when you do that. When you tell me what you want, what you like. Even if I don’t… give it to you right away, I always want to know it. I like knowing where we stand. I feel—I don’t know, free when I don’t have to wonder. I don’t have to worry about whether I’m pleasing you or question where we stand. I’d rather fight with you than not know what you think.”
Will looked uncertain. “But you do know me, that’s what I’m saying. You know me better than… anyone. I mean, hell, you’re a scientist, you collect data. You’re great at figuring it all out.”
“I don’t want to have to conduct a science experiment to know how you feel! Do you know how shitty it is to say that to me? Like it’s one hundred percent my responsibility to… study you? That I’m supposed to look at everything you do and draw my own conclusions and act based on them with no confirmation? Why? Why would you want it to be like that?”
And it hit me with a twist of nausea that this was how Will thought things had to be. That he’d grown up watching for signs of what things might mean. Clues. Were his parents going to be distracted enough with each other that he could take money from them to go buy whatever he wanted at the grocery store? Was Claire in a mood where he needed to tell her this thing or that one in order to handle a situation? Was someone giving him something because of how he looked or on his merit?
Will had become so adept at reading the signs that it never occurred to him to say something if he thought he’d already communicated it in another way. With a gesture or an eye roll, a pattern or a habit. Words were just a redundancy to him. Like the time I pointed out that there were bananas and he got pissy because he could see them.
And maybe there Rex was right again. If I took away what Will had never said as well as what he had, I was left with someone who hung out with me, had sex with me, hugged me, joked with me, ate with me, slept with me, and told me about his day. I was left with… someone who acted like we were together.
I took his hands and pulled him back down on the couch.
“Okay, so, it’s not about me being dumb or oblivious. It’s not that I don’t notice things about you.” I rolled my eyes at myself. “I basically notice every stupid little thing about you, so. But sometimes things are complicated and they mean different things to different people, and I don’t want to assume that I know something about you just because I think I do, you know? Because sometimes I’ll get it wrong. Sometimes you’re not as obvious as you think you are, or sometimes my perception of stuff is more about me than about you, honestly. Like, if I’m feeling shitty about stuff, I might read something you did differently than if I’m feeling great, you know?”
“Yes, I understand. I’m not a sociopath. Even though you’re basically making me feel like Patrick Bateman over here.”
“Okay, good! See? Great example of how sometimes people feel things differently.” He glared at me. “I just mean, I wasn’t trying to say you were a sociopathic serial killer—although actually that scene with the business cards I can totally see—”
He snorted a laugh.
“But that’s what I’m saying, Will. I wasn’t trying to be patronizing, I was trying to explain how there is no, like, truth that we both share or anything. There are just so many ways it can go wrong to assume that we know what each other are thinking.”
“God, did you read Nietzsche this semester or something?”
“Um. No? Okay, but so the point is that even when you think you’re communicating something, I might not get it. Also, though, I just….” I twined our fingers together. “I want to hear you say things. Like, I know I’m a dork or whatever, and I’m skinny and clumsy and you think I’m all overenthusiastic or not cool enough and stuff. So maybe sometimes when there’s something about me that you do like, you could… I dunno, tell me. Just to balance things out a little bit. Maybe.”
I looked down at our hands, Will’s beautifully proportioned and nimble, with neat, clean nails, and mine, long fingers interrupted by knobby knuckles and various nicks and smudges from being clumsy, fingernails bitten down roughly.
“Leo.” Will said my name in that way he had that felt like a whole conversation in one word. And, shit, how had I not noticed how eloquent he sometimes was without saying anything at all.
He pulled me toward him, and I kind of draped my legs over his until we were sitting the way I’d sat as a child on the swings with Janie, each of us facing in opposite directions, one of us always moving backward while the other moved forward.
Will looked at me with soft eyes. “I like a lot of things about you,” he said. “I’d be saying things an awful lot if I always commented on them.”
“Yeah?” I grinned at him, and he rolled his eyes at me. I couldn’t help myself. “Okay, will you tell me just one?”
Will searched my face and ran a finger over my eyebrow as he started to say something.
“Wait, wait, but make it a really good one,” I interrupted. “I mean, if it’s just gonna be one.”
“I was about to say some flattering romantic shit to you, and you interrupt me to tell me how to do it?”
“Well we’ve already established you don’t know how to do it right.” I grinned at him.
“Oh yeah, good thing you told me because I guess what I was going to say wasn’t actually that good.”
“Aw, no, wait, but now you have to tell me.”
Will pursed his lips and shook his head. “Nah, you clearly didn’t want to hear.”
I pouted at him, and he smiled, but his finger went back to my eyebrow again.
“Your eyebrows do this thing,” he said, slowly pressing his fingertip to the inside of my eyebrow, “when you feel something really intensely. And sometimes all I have to do when you’re talking, or when you’re looking at something, or when I’m touching you, is look right here—” He tapped the spot. “—and I can tell if you’re kidding, or if you’re upset, or if you’re about to come. The whole rest of your face can lie sometimes. But this never does.
“And the night that you came over and I was with that guy?”
I bit my lip and Will smoothed my eyebrow.
“All I had to do was look right here, and I knew I’d fucked up in this major way I couldn’t take back. Not because I did anything wrong,” he said quickly when I started to protest that again. “But because I’d hurt you in this deep way that I never intended.”
Will gritted his teeth. His eyes were a little wild, and he squeezed my hands.
“Look, you have to understand, okay. I don’t discount the effects my behavior has. I’m not… I’m not oblivious either. And I’m not my sister. I can control what I do. I’m just so fucking scared that if I do this—if we do this… I have to know that we’re both being honest about what’s okay. Not like before.”
Shame washed over me for how much I’d hurt Will by trying to give him what I thought he’d wanted. I nodded silently.
“I can try not sleeping with other people,” he went on, “but I don’t know if I can promise it forever. I don’t know what will happen in the future. And I can’t fucking take it if you leave me again because you were making us something in your head that we aren’t.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yeah, I’m fucking serious. I wasn’t okay when you told me to fuck off. I was….” He sighed. “I wasn’t good. At all.”
I had actually meant was he serious that he’d try not sleeping with other people, but I’d be damned if I was going to make him regret admitting he’d been a mess without me.
“And you’d… you’d want to try. With me? With just me? For now?”
“Yeah, I’ll try.” Then a strange look came over his face. “I didn’t mean it like that. I didn’t mean it would be a hardship to only have sex with you. That’s—that’s not what I meant. It’s not about sex between us at all. It’s… it’s separate, you know. It’s about me. I… we’re great at sex.”
“We are?”
He rolled his eyes. “Quit fishing, I just said so, didn’t I?”
“’Kay.” I smiled at him and he smiled grudgingly back.
“I still don’t think that I’m the only person you’ll ever want to sleep with,” he said, like he couldn’t stand to let us just be happy for a minute.
“I think we’ve already covered the we’re-not-sure-what-the-future-holds bit.”
“Fine,” he said.
“Fine.” I glared down at Will, whose face was set in a defiant sneer. It was the arms-crossed-over-the-chest of facial expressions, and I did the only thing I could think to do with that stupid sneer. I kissed it. Just a peck in the corner of his stupid mouth, but his arms came around me, and as always, the taste of him drew me in.
“Soooo,” I said a minute later, pulling away. “What does this mean?”
“This—” He pressed his hips up so his hard cock ground against mine. “—means shut the hell up and fuck me.”
“’Kay, in a minute, but seriously.”
Will groaned. “Seriously, what? What more do you want me to say?”
My first thought was that I knew exactly what I wanted him to say. The three words that I’d let loose like hellhounds a few minutes before and that Will had barely even seemed to register. But if I thought about it—really thought about it….
“I want you to say whatever you’re thinking. For real, though.”
I pushed myself off Will, and he winced when I accidentally elbowed him in the ribs. He ran a hand through his hair and threw his head back, addressing his words to the ceiling.
“Look, I don’t have a lot of answers here, okay? I am very aware that I’m not the easiest person to be around sometimes, and you’re… well, you’re not exactly a paragon of experience yourself. And I reserve the right to find other people desirable. And to, like, renegotiate shit down the line.”
“Okay, great, fine, and I reserve the right to maybe want only you and for you to not act like that’s me lying to myself.”
Will nodded, though I could tell this part made him uncomfortable. That he couldn’t believe someone could want only him.
“Okaaaay,” I said, “so we’ve established that neither of us knows what we’re doing, so we both just have to trust that we know what we want right now and that what we want might change?”
“I… guess so?”
“So are we… together?”
Will rolled his eyes so hard I was surprised he didn’t have an aneurysm. “What, you want to update your Facebook status?”
“I don’t even have Facebook, you fucker.” I shoved at Will’s shoulder. “But like… just say I did, what would I be updating my status to?”
“It’s complicated,” Will mocked in a singsongy voice. I elbowed him. “How about ‘Leo is now in a relationship with Thai Food’?”
“Huh, you totally have Facebook, don’t you?”
“Whatever, Claire set it up for me a hundred years ago.”
“Wiiiiill,” I whined.
“Leooooo,” he whined back.
I climbed on top of him again, snaking my hand down his pants. “Well, you should be happy, anyway. This was, like, the absolute least romantic getting-together moment of all time. I should just go offer myself to Viggo Mortensen,” I told him, kissing his jaw. “He’d totally update his Facebook profile to include me.”
Will groaned like maybe the thought of me with Viggo Mortensen was kind of doing it for him, and arched up underneath me. I leaned down slowly, loving the way he tilted his chin up so our mouths met, like his lips were just waiting for mine. I put a hand on either side of his face, holding him still. His golden lashes fluttered open, and his brows drew together.
“Why did you do it?” I asked him slowly. His brow wrinkled in confusion. “In Holiday. Why did you really kiss me?”
Will pushed me off so he could sit up.
“I shouldn’t have,” he said so softly I could barely hear him.
I sighed.
“I didn’t say I didn’t want to,” he muttered.
I pulled him to look at me, willing him to give me something.
“Look, I don’t have a good answer for you, Leo.”
“Just tell me the truth.”
“You were honest and sweet and infuriatingly hot, and I wanted you to want me. It seemed like if someone like you could like me, then maybe it would mean I was worth liking.”
I gaped at him.
“That morning, I was packing my stuff up at Claire’s and she was upset that I was leaving, even though I’d been telling her for days, and I was too tired to get into it with her. She said, ‘You make it so easy for people to hate you. It’s the only thing you never fight about.’ I just… I wanted you be different. I wanted you to like me, okay? And that was the only way I could think to do it. And then when I kissed you—” He shook his head sharply. “I knew I’d made a big mistake.”
My stomach sank a little at that, even after all these months and everything that had happened between us since then. When he spoke again, his voice was rough.
“Because I was the one who ended up wanting you.”
He looked down, and I couldn’t quite catch my breath.
“You promised,” he said, still looking down. I bit my lip as guilt washed through me again. “You promised that when you found out I wasn’t the… the fantasy you wanted that I wouldn’t lose my best friend. But I did. The thing is… I knew I would. I knew it would all go to shit and I would lose you and I would miss you and it would suck, and I did it fucking anyway. Because I wanted you. I didn’t know how exactly, but I just… I wanted you, Leo. I always wanted you.”
He bit his lip and took my face in his hands like he had that first time. He leaned in slowly and we kissed and kissed and kissed.
