Jaywalking

by Rachel Ember

  Two weeks passed. Emile kept expecting something from Jay. It didn’t make any sense because he’d told Jay that nothing more was going to happen between them, and it was ordinary and correct of Jay to take him at his word. In fact, if Jay had done otherwise, it would have been despicable.

  Still, Emile’s daydreams ran a little rampant. They began with a replay of the memory of what had happened between them in the classroom, then transitioned to a fantasy where they were never interrupted, and after devastating Emile with his sensational kisses, Jay spun him around, bent him over a desk, and—

  “Professor Mendes?” asked one of the girls in the front row, looking at him with polite confusion. Her hand was raised, and the look on her face suggested it had been up for a while.

  “I’m sorry, I was lost in my own head there for a moment,” Emile confessed, miraculously keeping his eyes from darting toward Jay on the far side of the room. “What was your question, Natalie?”

  He was instantly forgiven, of course. She was one of those front-row students who Sydney called ‘affirmers’—a type that stirred complicated feelings in Emile. On the one hand, he couldn’t help being pleased whenever a student was enthusiastic and hung on his every word. On the other hand, these students’ efforts to ingratiate themselves didn’t just grate on classmates, but sometimes on professors, too.

  However, Emile was a professional. He could treat each student with polite and warm objectivity.

  Even the ones who’d had their tongues in his mouth. Probably.

  This time, it was more of an effort to keep his attention from Jay. He rubbed his jaw, wincing at the bewildered look on Natalie’s face as he realized that he’d once again been tuned out while she’d spoken.

  “I’m not sure what you’re asking. Can you be more specific?” he hedged, hoping it covered his blunder. Natalie’s brow furrowed, but he didn’t think she was onto him—just trying to figure out how to rephrase her thoughts.

  “Is the rabbit really there, or is it just a figment of Will’s imagination?”

  Fortunately for Emile, he did enjoy teaching, and he was a sincere enthusiast when it came to the book they were reading at the moment. Bright October had been the book he’d chosen to analyze in a final essay for a class in his master’s program. It was challenging thematically, but the spare language and shorter length made it accessible to freshmen. He’d had good luck using it in Lit 100 before.

  He hopped up to sit on the edge of the steel desk that was placed in the corner of the room for instructors, but which he rarely used. His feet dangled an inch off the floor as he tapped his heel absently against the leg of the desk and considered. Not what the answer to her question was, but the best way to address it in a way that would help her delve into the analysis herself.

  “What makes you think it might have been just his imagination?”

  “Well, rabbits don’t really act like that, do they? They don’t come right up to people.”

  “Unless they have rabies,” Erin, the young woman sitting in the desk beside Natalie’s, offered with a sly but nervous smile. Erin was not an affirmer, or any other typical front-row type. She was a wallflower, only sitting front and center because she was Natalie’s friend and didn’t want to sit alone. Emile had been taking pains to encourage her to come out of her shell. So, he smiled at her poor joke even though he didn’t think it was funny.

  “Do you think this rabbit had rabies?” he asked Erin quietly. She blushed and shook her head, with the right balance of being reined in but unembarrassed, he thought with relief, and so he refocused on Natalie. “Rabbits don’t always behave naturally in fiction. Take Watership Down, right?” She nodded cautiously. “But, why wonder? Why not just assume he’s imagining the rabbit, if it seems so unrealistic to you?”

  She pressed her lips together, thinking hard. Moments like this were strangely painful for Emile, like he’d just handed his heart to someone, and now had to wait to see if they would stomp on it. He tried not to hold his breath, his heart beating a little harder with anticipation as he waited to see whether he’d positioned her to work it out.

  “Well,” she said slowly, “I guess it’s because—earlier in the book, after Will told his uncle about the wild horses, his uncle said he’d dreamed them up. But later, the whole family saw them.” She glanced up cautiously at Emile, and then her expression bloomed into a smile when she saw his grin.

  Emile clapped his hands together. “That’s right. Meadows writes Will in a way that feels inherently unreliable, but then we get evidence in the story again and again that he’s actually quite reliable.” He couldn’t keep from asking the next question. “What does that tell you about one of the subtler themes in the book?”

  “Um,” Natalie said. Emile scanned the rest of the room and saw blank stares. He had really set himself up for failure with that question, he thought wryly. Then, from the back of the room, before he could redirect into shallower waters, he heard a low, very familiar voice.

  “Trust,” Jay said.

  For the first time in weeks, Emile brought himself to look directly at Jay. His face was totally serious and unfairly handsome. His eyes were deep, knowing, and somehow wise in a way that belied his age.

  It wasn’t exactly the answer Emile had been looking for, which made it strike him even harder. “Can you tell me a little more about that?” Luckily, that was a standard line he used in class, and therefore tripped easily off his tongue… because he wasn’t having an easy time organizing his thoughts.

  Jay’s moment of boldness seemed to fade. He looked away and shrugged uneasily.

  Emile tried to picture Jay in classrooms growing up—this good-looking, clean-cut, athletic kid, undoubtedly popular. He wondered if Jay’s past teachers had ever expected him to have anything worthwhile to say.

  “I think it’s a really interesting idea,” Emile said, with careful sincerity. “Trust in general? Trusting the narrator? Or…?”

  Jay’s gaze crept back to Emile’s. There was a bright flush high on his cheekbones. “In a way. But it isn’t just that other people don’t believe Will, even when they should. It’s that he doesn’t really believe himself half the time. So, I think one of the book’s themes is trusting yourself.”

  Shit, Emile thought. His appropriate, irrepressible fondness for a bright student combined in a heady way with his inappropriate, irrepressible physical attraction to a handsome man his body already knew. He looked down as he slid off the desk, hiding his grimace. I’m in so much more trouble than I even imagined. But then, why was he surprised? He’d met Jay at Mac Talley’s reading, and seen his visceral reaction to Mac’s words. He’d already known Jay was much more than just a pretty face.

  So much trouble.

  The discussion moved on, but after days of successfully keeping his mind off of Jay in class, Emile struggled more than ever to keep his gaze from skating to the edge of the room, to the far row where Jay sat with his head bent, offering nothing else to the conversation. He also never seemed to notice Emile’s wandering attention, but Emile thought Jay’s friend—Bria, who sat behind him and never broke her silence—most certainly did. Her expression was somewhere between curious and hostile, and she was watching Emile avidly in a way that she never had before during classroom lectures. Like she was pondering something other than the literary analysis, which clearly bored her.

  Emile wound up the discussion when there were five minutes left in the period. “Next week, I’m going to pass around a sign-up sheet for an individual meeting with me so we can discuss your midterm essay topic. And if you’re not the scheduling-in-advance type, you’re also welcome to drop by any time during my open office hours, but just understand that if I’m already meeting with someone, you may have to wait. I’m told the furniture in the Cross Hall lobby is very uncomfortable.”

  That earned him a titter of laughter. He waved them toward the door. “You’re free to go, unless you have any questions and want to stick around.”

  Today, n
o one took him up on that offer. All of his students shoved their books and laptops into messenger bags and backpacks and streamed out of the room.

  All of his students, including Jay, Emile noted with equal parts relief and despair. Emile’s eye lingered on Jay’s back, and when he pulled his gaze away, it was obvious from Bria’s avid expression that she had noticed Emile’s attention. Not good. He quickly looked down, and hoped he’d imagined the sharp knowing in her gaze.

  When Emile got back to his office, he saw that he’d finally gotten a response from Ben to his email informing him about the conference. The message, though congratulatory, still grated on his nerves.

  Proud of you. Of course, you have my rubber stamp. Let me know if you need a sounding board—though anything you put together will be brilliant. B.

  Emile leaned back in his chair and gazed at his computer screen. If he’d received this email a few weeks before, he would have been a bundle of nerves. Reading it now—well, he was still a bundle of nerves. But not because thoughts of Ben were racing through his mind. No, as soon as his instant irritation at the tone of the email faded, the only absent person tormenting him was Jay.

  Five

  Jay

  September

  “Are you still looking for a job?” Bria looked over Jay’s shoulder at his phone. They were sitting next to each other on a futon at an off-campus apartment, supposedly attending a party. The only party behavior Jay had witnessed so far, though, was the inclusion of a keg and a stack of red solo cups. “Or is that something more interesting, like Grindr?”

  Jay rolled his eyes and pulled his phone against his chest protectively. “None of your business.”

  “Oh, so it’s Grindr, then.” She had a gleam in her eye.

  “No.”

  “Then why won’t you let me see?”

  “Because it’s rude to look over someone’s shoulder while they’re on their phone. I’m trying to teach you manners.”

  Her grin was eerie. “Oh, now that’s something I’d like to see you try.”

  “I was joking. I know a lost cause when I see one.” Jay relented and turned his phone screen around. “It’s Mom.”

  “Listen, I don’t want to have to be the one to tell you this, but you’re really not supposed to text at parties. Especially not your mom.” She plucked the phone from his hand and flopped back onto her half of the futon. Catching his bewildered look, she frowned. “What? I’m just going to tell her hi.”

  “Text her with your own phone,” Jay said exasperatedly. Without his phone in his hand, he felt strangely restless. Bria didn’t bother answering him, her thumbs gliding over the screen. With nothing else to do, he leaned back beside her and looked around the room. Subbed-out electronica was playing somewhere, low, and the room teemed with people dressed in dark colors with ironic jewelry and exaggerated makeup. No one was speaking above a murmur, and most of their expressions were completely serious over the rims of their own plastic cups. Jay had been in coffee shops that were rowdier than this.

  He looked back at Bria. “What are you telling her?”

  “That I took you to a party just like your dad wanted.”

  Jay commented doubtfully, “That’s the second time you’ve called this a party. But is it, really?”

  Bria smiled one of her small, quick smiles that most people probably mistook for a trick of the light. “Yes, according to those people.” She waved her arm around the room without taking her eyes off the phone screen. “Your mom wants to know if you’ve interviewed for a job yet. She says you won’t ‘give her a straight answer, no pun intended.’ Am I going to have to get you a job to appease your mom, just like I’m taking you out to appease your dad?”

  “I don’t think this is what Dad had in mind when he told you I needed culture.”

  “What are you talking about? This party is ninety-percent theater majors. Your dad would be in heaven.”

  Jay rolled his eyes and picked up his cup, still half-full of cheap vodka and Kool-Aid. This party wasn’t his usual scene, but that wasn’t exactly a problem. He wanted a new scene. If he’d wanted his usual scene—basically, getting drunk with the rest of the soccer team—he’d have been doing that.

  Well, mostly he just wanted to hang out with Bria, and he guessed that if he took her to one of the parties the team threw, she’d murder someone.

  “Are you in heaven?” Jay raised an eyebrow at Bria. “How do you even know these people?”

  “I don’t know anyone here. I had to go out of my way to get invited so I could bring you. You think, if it wasn’t for you, I’d subject myself to all these tortured souls?” She gave two long-haired young men in the corner a dark look, and Jay laughed again. They’d been loudly arguing their competing interpretations of a scene in King Lear, which Jay had to agree was pretty much the epitome of drunk-and-pretentious-college-student behavior.

  Jay smiled at her, glad they were there if this was the excuse they needed to hang out. “I’ve missed you.”

  Bria glanced up from his phone, which she’d been busy with again, to grimace at him. “Oh, for fuck’s sake. Are you already drunk?”

  Jay grinned. “No.”

  She rolled her eyes and tossed his phone to him. “I put a number in there for you. You’d better call him, because I already told your mom you had an interview tomorrow.”

  Jay peered at his screen, bewildered. “Who’s Blake?”

  “Your new boss.”

  Jay looked up at her and blinked. “Doing what?” He’d complained to her before about how impossible it was to find any work with hours that fit around his practice schedule, but his parents were adamant about him having a job. Between scholarships and their generous allowance, Jay hardly needed the money, but apparently his allowance was now dependent on him having some part-time work, somewhere. To ‘teach him the value of a dollar,’ according to his dad.

  “Walking dogs.” Bria yawned. “You’re welcome.”

  Jay was pleasantly surprised. “That actually sounds kind of cool. Thanks.”

  She winked at him. “You can make it up to me by helping me with that paper for Lit 100.”

  And just like that, Jay’s baseline good cheer plummeted. He looked dejectedly into the pale pink contents of his cup.

  Bria fixed him with a penetrating stare. He knew it without looking up; he felt the energy on his hairline like a laser. “What’s wrong?”

  Jay knew that whatever she’d caught in his expression had to have freaked her out, because she leaned over with wide, worried eyes like she thought he was about to have a stroke.

  “You look like you’re about to cry.”

  Or that.

  Jay huffed and glared, sitting up. “What? No.” He brushed the back of his hand under his eyes just to be sure, and it came away dry. “No.”

  “Um, okay,” Bria said slowly, pursing her lips. She looked around the room, her frown deepening, and then got to her feet with a sigh, grabbing Jay’s hand and dragging him after her.

  They wound up in the house’s tiny backyard, which was serendipitously empty and quiet. In the neighboring yard, a dog strained at the end of a tether and began barking incessantly.

  Ignoring the dog, Bria turned to Jay and crossed her arms. “Okay, tell me.”

  Jay bit the inside of his cheek. He really didn’t want to tell her. And yet, he really did. Bria did enjoy torturing him, but not about serious stuff. She cared about him. She was the first person he’d come out to. He could trust her.

  “Remember,” he began cautiously, “when I went to Andersonville for that poetry reading?”

  “Did you end up going?” She looked confused. “You sent like five texts about how much you wanted to go, and then never said anything about having actually gone. I assumed you missed it.”

  “No.” Jay swallowed. “I went.” For a moment, he could hear the rain pounding on the roof of his car, and then the slap of his feet in the layer of rainwater on the pavement while he dashed toward the bar.

/>   “Okay,” she said patiently, like a TV cop interviewing a witness, “did something happen there?”

  Jay pulled his entire bottom lip into his mouth and dug in his teeth until it hurt. Finally, he released it and managed, “Yeah. I met someone. Like, right inside the door. A guy.” He flashed her a look through his eyelashes, and she rolled her eyes.

  “Yes, obviously a guy. If there were such a thing as pure gay, it would be you.”

  Jay wrinkled his nose, not ready to get into her there’s-no-such-thing-as-sexuality, we’re-all-on-the-pan-spectrum theory—especially not right now.

  “We hit it off, I thought,” Jay said. “It all seemed so perfect, like we were on the same page from the first second. Do you know what I mean?” He looked up at her again, his cheeks hot, searching for some sign of recognition in her steady, dark eyes.

  Her mouth twitched. “Yes,” she said quietly. “I have an idea.” She leaned back against the doorway. The muted sounds of the party raged on, and Jay noticed the dog had stopped barking.

  “I’ve never felt the way I did that night,” Jay went on, the words coming more easily now. “I didn’t feel self-conscious at all. Instead, it was like everything I did was in response to some kind of—I don’t know—signal, from him.” He swallowed hard, grasping for words to capture the feeling he’d had in a way that would make sense, that would explain—not excuse, but explain—what he’d said and done. “It seemed like he wanted to be—pushed. So, I pushed him.”

  “You ‘pushed him,’” she quoted.

  Jay nodded, wincing.

  “Which means… what, exactly?”

  “You know.” He averted his eyes while Bria waited silently for him to explain. “I got close to him. I touched him.” He repressed the urge to scratch his arms or pull his own hair. “And then, I told him to meet me. In the… bathroom.” He swallowed hard. “But when I went up there, he was gone. He’d run off.”

  Jay stared at his shoes. He was acutely aware of Bria, unmoving, right next to him.