by Max Hudson
As the class began to divide into little groups, and Lance chatted with everyone, Stefan awkwardly waited for his moment to talk with Lance alone. Stefan wasn't sure how Lance did this, talking to many people at once, talking so candidly at times with an audience. Stefan himself found it impossible. So he just nodded along to his table's conversation and waited.
Lance's voice broke through the sound around Stefan. "Oh, no, she won't be coming. Actually we broke up. So I won't be coming either."
“Oh, I'm so sorry," Carla replied. "I can be your date if you want. I mean, I was going to dance with the instructor. I just don't want you to feel left out!"
Lance shook his head. "It's okay. I'm not sure I'd want to mess up someone else's plans for a pity date."
"It wouldn't be a pity date, or even a date," she insisted. "We all like you here, Lance."
Keira, who had been listening, nodded. "Yeah, Lance, if you wanna come you come. We won't mind dancing with you. It'd be a pleasure, I'm sure."
Bit by bit, voices across the room chimed in, insisting that they wanted to go to the dance with Lance. Of course they did. He was a great guy.
"You'd go with Lance, right?" Carla asked him, making direct eye contact.
"Uh, yeah," Stefan said, feeling his brain totally freeze.
"See? Stefan doesn't even want to go and he'd go with you. You're the life of the party. So, come on," Carla said, turning back to Lance.
Stefan wasn't sure why he felt so disappointed by Carla's insistence. Surely he should be happy? Lance would get to go to the dance, and Stefan could stay home like he had planned. He had no reason to be angry at Carla for stating the obvious: that Stefan didn't want to go to a party. So why did it hurt a little?
"I guess it must be weird to be missing out on Valentine’s Day when you've been with someone for what, a year now?" Carla asked.
Lance shrugged. "It is what it is. Relationships happen."
"Wow, you're pretty cool with it," Carla replied, seeming a little surprised. "Did you know it was ending or...?"
"Ah, no, we had a date planned and everything. I just..." Lance sighed, shook his head, and forced a smile. "I won't go. It's not you guys. Or her. I think I just need time to myself to think about shit."
"Oh well," Carla replied. "As long as you're sure. If you change your mind feel free to come back. Not like we'll lock you out or anything."
Everyone seemed disappointed when Lance didn't want to go somewhere. This was no exception. Stefan understood why. When he was his usual self, Lance was a spark of light. Lance could bring life to any setting. They wanted him there. Perhaps because they thought he would feel better himself if he was around them. Perhaps they were right.
However, Lance had said he didn't want to go. Stefan was now a little more uncertain about asking him. If he really didn't want to go, then it wasn't something to press. Stefan decided to trust his instinct on this one. Normally Lance would want to go, so perhaps he would be glad to go with a friend instead of a prospective partner from Book Club.
It would be easier to find out once he didn't have to talk about it in front of everyone.
Walking away from the club together, Stefan wanted to be out of earshot before he spoke to Lance about any of this. It was just too uncomfortable for him. He wasn't sure why, but speaking about these things in public was always so awkward.
"So," Stefan began, still a little paranoid that someone they knew might overhear them. "You're not interested in the dance?"
"Of course I'm interested," he said to Stefan. "I love dancing and mingling and just having fun. But..."
"But?" Stefan asked.
"I dunno. I guess people are gonna feel bad for me if I'm there, and it might put them off a bit. Besides, I kinda need to think about stuff other than chicks right now," Lance explained.
"I wasn't planning on going either," Stefan replied with a sigh. "You know my mom, she'd be giving me a shopping list of who to bring, or something."
Lance laughed out loud. "Yes, she would. What was it? A good Jewish girl, single, five foot six, maybe a bit smaller or taller, but not too much?"
"Yeah, yeah," Stefan replied nervously.
"It sounds like a real headache," Lance said.
Stefan shook his head. "Nah, she means well. In her way."
"I guess so. She's nice. I didn't mean it, like, that way. More like, I dunno. A small inconvenience having a mother who cares so much?" Lance suggested.
"Yeah, it is more like that," Stefan agreed. "She cares. She gets worried about me not dating properly."
"That's just the mom thing," Lance agreed in return. "Remember when mine used to come in to check on us playing games when we got loud cause she thought we were actually fighting?"
"Sometimes I think moms don't get boys," Stefan mused.
"Anyways, why were you asking about the dance? Are you worried about me being all alone as well?" Lance asked. "Because I know for sure you were telling the truth when you said you weren't planning on going. So what gives?"
"I want you to be my date," Stefan replied. "Like, some people are just going alone, or as friends. You can be my date for the night."
Lance fell completely silent. Stefan knew that had been a weird gamble. Yet, it felt like he was betting a lot more than a bit of awkwardness.
"I don't want a pity date," Lance said.
Stefan shook his head. "It wouldn't be. Except maybe for me. I need to get out more. How bad can a book club dance be? But I won't go on my own."
Lance hesitated and pursed his lips. "Okay, let's go together then," he finally said, lips stretched into a warm and genuine smile.
Stefan felt his heart warm up with Lance's smile. It was such a beautiful thing to be able to make a friend happy like that.
Chapter Three
People like Stefan were one in a million, honestly. Lance knew he would never meet such a wholesome human being again in his life. That night, walking through the park in the dark so Lance didn't have to go back to his apartment just yet, Stefan was going out of his way to make Lance's day a little bit better, a little bit easier. Though some might not notice, Lance did. It made all the difference.
Stefan just knew what was good and right; what was needed of him at any given point. He was that sort of nice, warm guy who could almost instantly tell what others needed. At least that was how he seemed to Lance. Stoic, willful, powerful, rational, observant. Everything Lance was decidedly not.
It struck Lance as odd that Stefan was not more extroverted or popular. Not everyone could be the same, and Stefan was special in his own way. Stefan might not seem like the best guy to an onlooker, but Lance knew better, and Lance felt determined to not waste a single minute he could spend with Stefan.
He wasn't sure what it was about Stefan that had motivated him to actually go to the dance. In his head, when he told Carla there was no chance, he felt like there really was none. Yet, as soon as Stefan offered, he found his excitement swelling up inside him, nearly stopping him from thinking before answering. Of course he wanted to. Stefan was a great dance date.
As a friend.
It was weird to think how perfect a fit Stefan was. It wasn't like Lance hadn't been offered the chance of taking a few other people to the dance. But Stefan was different. Stefan made Lance actually look forward to it.
As they walked around the park, talking and joking about all sorts of random things, Lance felt the weights of his life lifted from his heart. He almost wanted to hold hands with Stefan, but that would be a bit too far. Maybe when they were boys they could walk around innocently like that, but as men they were a bit more restricted in terms of what they could do without raising eyebrows.
Stefan was right that Lance had wanted to go to the dance, of course. He loved going to events where he could learn new things and have fun. It was a core aspect of who he was. He had an insatiably curious mind and he needed to make good use of it or else he felt his brain was burning alive. It was just the way he was. He was more than
grateful he could go with someone who understood him, someone he trusted. Even if it was under the pretense that Stefan actually wanted to go, which was a pretty ridiculous suggestion.
"Anyway, I gotta get back home," Stefan said out of the blue. "I have barely slept all week. I need an early night."
Lance nodded. "I should probably go home and actually read the chapter I have to get through by my next lecture."
"Started it?" Stefan asked.
"Yeah, I'm not you," Lance replied, sticking his tongue out a little and receiving a playful punch to the shoulder.
"See you tomorrow?" Stefan asked, looking down the street, in the direction of his house.
Lance paused. "Probably not. See you on Sunday?"
"See you Sunday," Stefan replied. "Call me or message me if you need anything."
"Will do," Lance replied with a faint sigh, turning in the opposite direction, all but dragging his feet on his way home.
Getting back to the apartment, he quickly made his way to his room, once again grateful they had rented a two-bed and not a one-bed. If he wasn't out on the street, he'd have to be in the living room, on the couch, listening to Millie shouting and playing loud music and having loud sex. At least the rooms had something resembling sound-proofing, and through the two doors it wasn't too bad. Her music became a hum, merging with her voice and that of whichever of her male friends she had over that night.
Lance put his earphones on, playing music to drown out the last of the noise, and sat down to read his chapter, happily immersed in it. It wasn't so bad having to live with her. Not when he could do this and just get on with his work.
When it was time for bed it was worse.
Lying awake, unable to use earphones in bed without tangling in them, he could barely sleep for the creaking of her mattress. He didn't want to think about it. It wasn't jealousy, the connection had faded away long ago. He just wanted to sleep. The sharp, irritating sounds, combined with mental images of her getting railed, were stopping him from resting.
He didn't want to be that guy who went and bitched at his roommate for having sex. Though, she was being at least ten times louder than she had ever been before. A part of Lance wondered if she had just been hiding this side of herself. No. She got louder every time. Every morning she had to talk to him about it. She was baiting him. Trying to get a rise out of him.
It wasn't like baiting him served a purpose. She probably didn't want to kick him out or she would have already. She didn't want him back, or she'd have acted like the breakup was an accident and stopped seeing other guys. She would know that Lance didn't get angry about things like this. There was no reason for it at all.
Still, Lance knew she had to be doing this on purpose, but that was her problem. He got up and, finding a bag of cotton from his somewhat overstocked hygiene drawer, shoved two rolled cotton balls in his ears, blocking out the sounds entirely. That would work much better. He wondered if he should contemplate getting proper ear plugs or even noise canceling headphones. Something to just make the rest of the academic year a bit more tolerable. Staring at the ceiling, the thought briefly crossed his mind that he shouldn't be in a living situation where he was having to take such measures just to get by. He didn't want to be an inconvenience to his friends either, especially not when something as simple as some cotton could solve his problems.
With his ear plugs in, he finally slept all night long, even through his alarm, making him too late for his first lecture to even bother. Without taking the cotton out, he looked at his phone, dropped it on the bed beside him, and stared at the lights dancing on the ceiling, broken by the tree outside his window, yellow and white and green. He knew he ought to have gone. He knew he would have to make up for it by re-reading the chapter and getting some notes. It would have been so much easier to just go; it was too late now.
Still, he got up and dressed and set off for the tutoring session which followed the lecture, hoping it would help him. It would not, as it had been canceled. The tutor was ill, it turned out. So, Lance would have to study this on his own.
He hated studying. He loved learning new things, he just wished it could happen instantly and he could just go and use those skills. Learning in lectures and classes, even on work assignments, was so much better than learning out of a book. For a while in school, he had been thought to be pretty dumb because he did so poorly on standardized tests. He'd been placed in the class with all the other kids who barely scraped by with Cs and amended Ds. Then, when he got to the later years of high school and started having tutors, he started to excel. Suddenly he was in class with all the A-grade students.
College had almost put him off studying forever. It had been a return to the rote-learning and standardized tests he hated, even as a biology student with a leaning to practical applications. He had scraped through and he wasn't even quite sure why he had chosen to get a Master's. He felt like an old man in all the clubs and at all the events he used to love. He was having to do even more reading and writing than ever before. It was everything he hated about studying.
The only thing that kept pulling him back was his connection to Stefan. Lance wasn't sure how they had remained so close through the years, but after meeting up again and spending four all-too-short years together, he didn't really want to go back home yet. Stefan was getting a Master's, so it sort of felt natural to just do the same as Stefan was.
He was hoping to see Stefan around campus as he wandered back from the room the tutor used, but no such luck. Unlike in their first two years and later, their fourth year of college, where their optional courses were mostly the same, now they had only one class and one club that overlapped. Even if Lance went to his clubs that evening, he would not see Stefan. He didn't really feel up to going.
Lance found himself dreading coming back to his apartment. It wasn't that Millie had been especially difficult lately. If anything, she had been too easy to deal with. Which made Lance suspicious, especially after Stefan confirmed that Millie was, indeed, usually unpredictable. All her silence meant was that she was building up to some sort of an explosion. That made every step like walking on eggshells.
As if walking on eggshells would change anything. As if she wouldn't snap eventually if he were just "good enough". He knew it would happen sooner or later. He was just delaying the inevitable.
Considering how Millie could be, Stefan's offer was more than welcome. Lance hoped he wouldn't need to use it, but he was still happy for it. It was good to know he had somewhere to go when this happened and he wasn’t stuck without anywhere to stay. Only, he'd rather not.
It would be nice to have enough time to save up a deposit instead, so he could move into his own apartment and not bother his friend. Buying time wasn't exactly a bad idea. Though, it also left him feeling anxious as he walked up the stairs, skipping the elevator, trying to use the exertion to calm himself before entering the apartment.
Being who he was, Lance had received a few offers to hang out that morning. It seemed that as soon as the news from yesterday, the news that he was single, had gotten out, a number of girls wanted to go on a date and a number of guys wanted to take him out drinking to help him get over it. But, for the first time in a long time, he just didn't have the energy for it. He felt drained by poor sleep and the combined stress of his studies and his insecurities. He didn't need his usual friends, who were louder, full of energy, always ready to party. He didn't want to get drunk and pull an all-nighter, turn the music up until the police were called, or play party games in the middle of someone's basement. He just wanted to relax, to breathe, to have time and quiet so he could think.
The only person he could really do that with was Stefan. Stefan would already be fast asleep, recovering from his nearly endless stream of tasks only to be met with another equally long stream of tasks by Monday. Stefan didn't need Lance moping around. Though, just having a nap with Stefan would be nice too. It was a shame guys were expected not to do that. Lance felt it would be wonderful to jus
t relax with Stefan as he slept.
Turning the key in the lock and pushing the door open as loudly as possible, Lance met no response. Millie was not home. Her bedroom door stood wide open, as she confidently left it whenever she went out. The sitting room and open kitchen were clear. Lance's own bedroom was still locked. There was no light under the bathroom door. Lance breathed a sigh of relief and sat down on the couch, turning on the TV and starting to stream the latest episode of his favorite show. Maybe that would help him relax.
Halfway through the second episode he would watch that night, Millie got back home. Lance didn't look at her. He just listened to her movements, the hairs on the back of his neck standing up. Unceremoniously, she opened the door, not even acknowledging him as she made her way to the fridge and took out something. The microwave went on. Then the faucet ran. Finally, Millie spoke to him.
"Wait, you were watching our show on your own?" Millie asked.
Lance turned around, surprised to see she seemed serious. "How can it be 'our show' if we aren't together? For fuck's sake," he insisted, rolling his eyes.
"Even if we're not together, we were watching it together," she said, her face looking more offended than her voice sounded, as she obviously tried to make herself angry about it.
"I'm watching it on my own profile," he replied. "Our old one is still paused on episode seven."
"That's not the point! Am I not your friend anymore or something? I don't know why I would keep you here if you're not a friend," she said angrily.
Lance sighed. He couldn't deal with this. "Okay, let's watch it together, then."
"On our shared profile?" she asked.
"Sure," he replied.
The microwave dinged.
Millie still seemed angry as she put the bowl on her tray with her glass of water and all but stomped over to the other chair, moving so violently the glass of water shook and dribbled a bit. Once she was seated, she began eating, not looking at or speaking to Lance any more. He just swapped onto their old shared profile and loaded the episode he had already watched all the way through. Millie took out her phone and scrolled through social media as she ate, ignoring Lance and the screen. He sighed again, took out his phone and, leaving the show on in the background to run its course, also began browsing social media.