by R. Cooper
“Is there a reason you’ve been ignoring me?” he demanded the second Iz picked up the phone. His tone wasn’t as harsh as it might have been.
Iz exhaled shallowly. “Yes.” He stopped, taking the time to form the words. “I am considering doing a double major. It’s late for that sort of decision, but I might be able to use some of the courses I’ve already taken. I’ll have to talk with my advisor. What’s the limit on credits per semester?”
“I don’t like the sound of you questioning the limits of anything. That’s never good.” Patricio was not supportive of Iz’s plan. “That is how breakdowns happen.”
“I’ll look for a new therapist,” Iz suggested. “There won’t be a breakdown.”
“Are you convincing me, or you?” Patricio was too clever. Iz’s friends were kind, but smart in inconvenient ways. “I was trying to talk to you yesterday, and it was alarming to get no answer. At least Giselle can answer a text.”
Iz had assumed he couldn’t feel more guilt today, but this was another false assumption. “I didn’t want to bother you. I bother people a lot.”
“No, you don’t.” Patricio was somewhere noisy, probably the loading dock or warehouse of the grocery store where he worked. But the background sounds quieted as if he turned away or pressed the phone hard to his ear. “Ronnie messaged me, asking me to check in on you,” he added, then said nothing.
“Oh.” Iz blinked. “He would, wouldn’t he? He should have all the happiness.”
“All the happiness,” Patricio echoed. “I’m on a break, Iz. I can’t talk long. What happened? When I left that party, you and Ronnie were together. Fine. Happy. Quietly all over each oth—how you normally are. Wait. What did you two talk about? Oh no. I should have warned you. Did you tell him about Rocco?”
“Not on purpose.” Talking about it was supposed to help, Iz reminded himself. “They both know.”
“Ah.” Patricio simply breathed for a minute or so. “Since Rocco isn’t with you, I’m going to assume it went badly.”
Iz closed his eyes. “I did everything all wrong.”
“You’ve always tried to be sensitive to Ronnie’s feelings,” Patricio assured him, or tried to. Mostly, he was confusing. “What did Rocco do?”
A band closed tight around Iz’s chest. “He left. They both did.” This did not make it better. This was not draining a wound. “They were right to.” The tightness spread to his throat, making his voice husky. “I’m not even a good friend.”
“I’m coming over after work,” Patricio declared. “You’re going to tell me everything.”
“You’ll be tired,” Iz protested. “And it’s so much.”
“Everything,” Patricio repeated firmly.
The following Friday, the sun emerged from the clouds. It didn’t raise the temperature much, but it did once again send nearly every available student on campus outside in a desperate bid to stave off Seasonal Affective Disorder or get some fresh air.
Sunlight was supposed to improve moods. That was Patricio’s reasoning for dragging Iz out of the library, where Iz spent all his free time these days when he wasn’t home. The back corner of the third floor had a cushioned bench window seat that was easy to fall asleep on. Normally.
Iz was not sleeping the way he was used to. He suspected it was guilt or shame that kept him up, though he hadn’t mentioned that to Patricio or anyone else. Eric had come up to study with him once, but he wasn’t one for talking while reading, and Iz wasn’t going to tell him anything if he didn’t know already. His heart was his business, but Rocco and Ronnie were entitled to privacy.
Rahim had come over the night to get essay help and so they could do each other’s nails. Hot Nurse was still hot, and so far, as nice as Rahim had hoped. Ronnie was not mentioned. A burning energy kept Iz restless after Rahim had gone, and he had only identified it as a vicious sort of satisfaction when he had mentioned the visit to Patricio today, and Patricio had raised his eyebrows.
Rahim didn’t want Ronnie. Or, not enough to overcome whatever had kept them apart in the first place. Iz would have wondered if that was him, but it seemed unlikely. Ronnie had run away from him, after all. It was much more plausible that Rahim had noticed Ronnie’s interest in Rocco, and so hadn’t taken Ronnie seriously.
All of which, for some reason, filled Iz with a bubbling glee that was not nice or kind or something a good friend should feel. He told Patricio that, and Patricio shrugged.
“Feelings aren’t always nice. You don’t have to act on them, though.” Patricio was not sketching today. He was reading a paperback from the library, playing on his phone, and occasionally glancing across the quad to a bench occupied by some people they knew.
Iz was not. He would have moved, but Patricio insisted they were here first, and that anyway, Iz technically hadn’t done anything wrong.
Iz disagreed but had been overruled.
He kept his scarf over his nose and mouth and his head down, and huddled over another coding textbook with shivering concentration.
“It’s interesting,” Patricio said after a while. Perhaps he’d had enough of Iz glowering at his book. Giselle had suggested Iz stick to things that didn’t make him feel worse about himself for a while, but Iz had not totally abandoned his idea of a double major yet. If he could make himself think like the books, then he was sure to have no trouble with a CS degree. He just had to be like a textbook. Other people did it all the time. He could too.
“Ronnie isn’t with him over there,” Patricio continued despite Iz’s lack of response. “That could be their schedules. Or maybe they aren’t speaking right now either. Guess I’ll find out this weekend if people decide to go out. One or both of them should be there.”
Iz, obviously, would not be going out with anybody.
“If they’re going to date and have sex to get over you, they could at least be noisy messes about it like anyone else after a breakup,” Patricio complained.
“It’s not a breakup,” Iz corrected him, gaze firmly on the words he wasn’t reading. Then he paused. “No one is getting over me. Ronnie is over me. Rocco was never—” the corresponding language momentarily escaped him “—into me.”
“Pfft.” Patricio kept texting whoever he was texting. “Rocco might dress like he sees no point in putting himself in nice clothes, but he chooses his bags and his shoes carefully. He has taste, and—if I may use a loaded term—class. He’s also a jock, and you are, like, jock-bait. So he was definitely into you, at least a little.”
Iz raised his head, then dropped it with a sigh. “Knowing that he might have been somewhat attracted to me does not help.”
Patricio stretched over to briefly pat Iz’s knee. “He’s an idiot who would be lucky to have you.”
Iz did look up at that. Rocco was at one end of the bench, standing and not sitting, listening to someone talk. He wasn’t laughing, which may or may not have had anything to do with Ronnie not being there, and his expression was serious. The cold might have added the slight pinch to his features.
Iz skipped over the leather jacket on Rocco’s shoulders and turned back to Patricio. “Because everyone thinks he’s ugly, he would be lucky to have my attention? I’m hardly the prize you think I am, and he knows it.”
“Iz,” Patricio chided gently.
“How could I have known?” Iz dutifully repeated the phrases Ronnie had drilled into him. “I can’t be expected to know everything and saying too much while drinking is a routine, embarrassing experience for many people. I just need to give this time.” He wasn’t sleeping, and the events of that night had not stopped popping up at random moments during his days, and he hadn’t realized how often he usually saw Ronnie and Rocco until this week. But he was supposed to ‘give it time.’ “I could apologize to him again. Maybe I can get the words right now.”
“You can apologize if you’re sorry for hurting his feelings, but you will not apologize for your own,” Patricio said, forbidding, then sighed. “But I really don’t think you
need to. He’s probably not mad. He’s just, you know, going to be awkward around you for a while. Or maybe he thinks he should stay out of the way so you can pursue Ronnie.”
“Ronnie doesn’t want me,” Iz reminded him. “Rocco doesn’t either, and even if he did, he doesn’t think I meant it because of his own issues, or because I also like Ronnie. It’s all, as Ronnie said, fucked.”
Patricio made a sound between a hum and a harrumph. “Does he think that? Rocco, I mean. It’s a point in need of clarification, Iz, whenever you do talk to him. You were drinking and you said you loved him—while you were cuddling his best friend. Honestly, he could be thinking anything. Have you talked to Ronnie yet?”
Iz shook his head. “He nodded at me from across the parking lot by the History Department when he saw me looking at him and then he headed in another direction. That was Wednesday.”
“Oh.” Patricio put a lot into one word.
“I can’t blame him.” Iz shrugged, but it was a jerky, tense movement. “I hurt him before and I’ll probably do it again. Patricio—” he hesitated, then plowed ahead. “If he likes Rocco and Rocco likes him, I could get them together—”
Patricio cut him off ruthlessly. “I think we’ve determined that your analysis of these relationships is not the best.”
“Yes.” Iz agreed because they had determined that. He was missing the necessary experience and information to reach the correct conclusions. “But if they speak to me again, I could ask.”
“Maybe, for right now, accept that there isn’t a solution. I know that sucks and it isn’t how you’re built. But you can do this.”
Iz made a face behind his scarf that Patricio couldn’t see. “I might be motivated for selfish reasons and not their best interests, and that is clouding my judgment?” he guessed.
“Maybe.” Patricio stretched over again, this time to pull Iz against him. Iz went without a struggle. “Or maybe it’s not your job to take care of them, especially not when you have your own emotional health to consider.”
Iz hadn’t said it was, but it was something to contemplate with Patricio’s warmth along his side and Rocco in the distance.
“But if I asked them?” he wondered at last.
“You mean, if they are speaking to you, and everything is fine, and you find a way to ask something like that which isn’t invasive?” Patricio put his phone down for a moment. “It wouldn’t bother you if they dated?”
Rocco was looking at him—at them, possibly. Iz couldn’t be certain. But his stomach swooped because apparently hopelessness did not negate romantic feelings.
He slowly pulled his scarf from his face and smiled, although Rocco probably wouldn’t see it. Holding Rocco’s stare made him shaky, anxious, so he ducked his head, then risked another glance up.
Rocco hadn’t moved. His expression hadn’t changed either.
Iz didn’t know if that was good or bad, but it was warming in a secret, strange way, to be acknowledged. Rocco didn’t sneer or flip him off or give him the cold shoulder. If he was furious, Iz couldn’t tell.
The sigh that left Iz was pure relief. Rocco might not be pleased, but he didn’t hate him. Someday, he and Iz might be friends again. Maybe even Ronnie too.
“If they were happy, I think I could live with it,” Iz decided out loud. “At least they would be settled.” It was soothing to finally have an answer.
“Ah. Your heart would be unsatisfied, but the rest of you would be at ease.” Patricio finally understood. “You might be envious, you might miss their company when they become a couple, but you wouldn’t have to worry about them anymore. Or not as much. That’s… compartmentalizing, probably. But that’s you anyway. And you would still get to be friends with them. I see. That almost takes care of everything as far as you’re concerned.”
“I think he’s confused,” Iz mused after Rocco finally turned away.
Patricio snorted. “He’s not the only one,” he remarked, but then softly kissed Iz on the temple to make up for it.
Chapter Seven
Iz skipped his visits to the bookshop for coffee, though habit still took him in that direction. When it did, he made sure to turn away without going in and to never look through the window to see who was working. At least, until the weekend had passed, and after long deliberation, he went to the bookshop again, but not at his usual time.
He stood several yards from the door for about a minute, clutching something in his hands. But perhaps that was too long, because then Rocco, who should not have been working according to Iz’s best approximation of his schedule, opened the door.
They stared at each other. It seemed to be what they did now.
Rocco looked good. The same as ever, really—warm, comfortable sweatshirt and clean, if messy, hair.
Iz wanted to smile, but he hadn’t this close to Rocco since that moment. He froze and couldn’t get unstuck. He had felt that before. But Rocco wasn’t Ronnie, and Iz wasn’t allowed to dart forward to kiss him because he’d forgotten words.
He wasn’t allowed to do that with Ronnie anymore either.
Rocco regarded him steadily, with one hand on the door. “Just come in and get your coffee,” he said at last. “It has to be killing you to go without.”
He went back inside without waiting or holding the door. Not that Iz had expected him to hold the door, but it didn’t seem mannerly, which Rocco tended to be. Iz approached the shop with trepidation and poked his head inside for a cautious look around.
Someone was already getting coffee. Rocco was back behind the counter, eyebrows raised as if he was surprised Iz had followed him.
Iz tumbled the rest of the way inside, his chest and stomach nothing but flutters that he resolutely ignored. Rocco’s eyes were on him. Iz tried not to meet them and glanced down the aisles while slowly making his way to the coffee counter. He pushed up his sleeves so he wouldn’t splash them, then was faced with a conundrum. He looked over his shoulder to the counter.
Rocco was watching him.
Iz flushed with heat and knew it would show on his face before too long. In the end, he went to the counter to get in line.
He waited until the door had closed behind the other coffee drinker before he placed the folded piece of white paper onto the counter and pushed it forward.
Rocco studied it, and then Iz again, from his single braid to his Bridal Suite Pink nail polish, before he reached down to pick it up.
“I was going to leave it with the other letters on the shelves, but I needed to know you would read it. And an apology letter to you wouldn’t work if it was anonymous,” Iz explained, only just stopping himself from picking at his pretty nails.
Rocco didn’t read the letter out loud, but Iz remembered every word.
Rocco,
I’m sorry I was careless with your feelings, or if you thought I was teasing you. Feelings are a delicate matter, particularly romantic ones, and I am still learning the ways of them. But I never wanted you to be uncomfortable, and I don’t want to lose you as a friend. If you like, we can forget everything I said, and we can blame it on the alcohol. I won’t mind. If that isn’t acceptable, then I will continue to leave you alone.
Sincerely,
Jamie Islington
Rocco folded the paper once, then swallowed. “You’re the only person who would write notes like these. You don’t need to sign them. I’d know they were from you.”
He apparently wasn’t going to address the contents of the letter. Iz supposed that would take time, even though waiting was frustrating.
“I don’t want any more confusion,” Iz finally answered. It seemed safest. “It’s good to see you,” he said after another moment.
“You look terrible.” Rocco inhaled sharply. “As much as you are capable of looking terrible. Have you been sick?”
“I haven’t been sleeping well.” It was a struggle to meet Rocco’s eye. Iz coughed before scurrying over to the coffee counter. Once there, he had to roll up his sleeves again. He hadn�
�t brought his reusable mug so he had to select a paper cup.
“How’s Ronnie?” Rocco asked gruffly while Iz was choosing between a light roast and a dark roast that would taste almost the same.
Iz splashed the dark blend on the countertop as he turned around. “Aren’t you talking to him?”
The frown on Rocco’s face was both startling and magnificent. “He left with you.”
“You told him to. And he’s my friend—or was. I’m not sure now.” Iz plopped the cup down without worrying about the lid. “You haven’t seen him?”
“People in new relationships don’t need other people around,” Rocco informed him through gritted teeth.
Iz stared and stared until he remembered to blink. “You think Ronnie would want to be in a relationship with me?”
Rocco slipped Iz’s letter into his sweatshirt pocket and then crossed his arms. “You said— You were all over him.”
“So were you.” Riposte was a fencing term. Iz wasn’t sure exactly what it meant or if it applied here but he was out of breath as though he had been jumping around with a sword, and that seemed close enough.
Rocco’s head came up as though Iz had surprised him.
Iz gestured loosely at the air. “I thought you two would be together. You usually are. You’re best friends, aren’t you? Even when you aren’t sharing a lime.” Rocco had locked his expressions down again. Iz had to learn how he did that. But in any case, it didn’t matter. Rocco only did it because Iz had said something that bothered him. Ronnie had told him that—Rocco got quiet when he was unsure. “You two were very pretty sharing that lime. Overwhelmingly so.”
Iz turned back to the coffee. He added sugar he didn’t want to it, to give himself something to focus on. He spilled some. His hands were still trembling. “As you know, Ronnie is amazing. I think it would be worth asking him out, if I were you. You’re already close. You have common interests. And the issue of attraction has already been proven.”