by R. Cooper
He had been in exile for precisely one week and a day and was sitting on his bed, back against the wall by the window when Giselle knocked on his door.
“I’m not hungry,” Iz told her. He had finished off his third bag of dark chocolate hearts for breakfast. Hours ago now, but he hadn’t even wanted it then. He had not noticed any improvement in his mood, the chocolate made him ill, and all the sugar left him restless. Giselle was going to try to make him eat a salad, and she wouldn’t respect a closed door if she was really worried. “I’ll eat later,” he promised, without agreeing to anything with lettuce.
“Uh,” Rocco said, quiet but audible. “It’s me. Rocco.”
Iz whipped his head around from the window and his view of the neighbor’s rusty gutters to stare at the door. The door told him nothing. He picked up his phone, which was also silent, and saw his plain, bare fingernails with torn cuticles.
“Iz?” Rocco asked, and Iz heard himself, his voice, calling out, “Come in!” although he was unshowered, wearing pajama pants, a cat sweater, and a scarf.
Rocco kept one hand on the door after he pushed it open. He swept a quick look over the room—duvet, pillows, artwork, laptop, library books, space heater, bed again—then focused on Iz. He didn’t move from the doorway.
Giselle was in the living room. She must have let him in. She was probably listening right now.
“Rocco,” Iz greeted, voice cracking. It was the only part of this that didn’t surprise him.
“Izzy.” Rocco finally moved, taking a step inside then stopping again. “Can I close the door?”
Giselle was listening, then, and not hiding it. Iz couldn’t blame her. But he nodded, cautious and confused, only to have his heartbeat lurch into rapid staccato once Rocco was in his bedroom alone with him.
Rocco was in faded black, a zip-up sweatshirt that was stretched and loose around the collar. He wasn’t wet except for some drops on his shoes, although his leather jacket was nowhere to be seen. He didn’t look like someone with sleepless nights, but his hands were at his sides, not in his pockets, and he tapped one against his thigh while submitting to Iz’s close scrutiny. When Iz’s bewildered stare finally returned to his, his eyebrows were knitted together in a fierce, unhappy frown.
Iz’s mouth was dry. “Is something wrong?”
“Are you really asking me that?” Rocco answered, too gruff to be sharp. Annoyed, maybe.
Iz stared blankly. “Yes? I am? Is Ronnie okay?”
“Ronnie.” Rocco leveled Iz with a look that from anyone else would have been nothing, but from Rocco was as good as a shout. He was upset and perhaps even upset about being upset. “He kissed me.” Rocco shut his mouth with a snap. There was a tic in his jaw.
“Oh.” Iz wound his hand in the length of his scarf. He hadn’t expected to hear this news from Rocco himself. “Was it wonderful? Was it perfect?”
“Yes.” Rocco’s short, furious answer was magnificent. Iz would have loved it under other circumstances. “Soft,” Rocco added, cheeks darkening, though his chin went up. “And then not soft.”
He wouldn’t let Iz look away.
Iz wound his hand tighter in his scarf, which pulled it, but the distraction was helpful. “Oh. Well.” Words fell out of his mouth while he thought of the house party, and salt and lime, and Ronnie’s impatience just for that small intimacy. Iz could extrapolate from that how eager Ronnie would be the moment Rocco had touched or kissed him back. “You two have all the experience there, so I am sure that was perfect too. If you had sex, or whatever you did. Is congratulations the right thing to say?”
Rocco’s eyebrows stayed locked together. “Aren’t you bothered? Because you sure as hell don’t seem surprised.”
Iz sat up straighter at the subtle, and correct, accusation. “That he kissed you?” He shook his head. “I’m not. Were you both sober this time? Did he say anything?” The open window left Iz with goosebumps on his skin but inside he was warm. He leaned forward, watching Rocco watch him. “Did you make him come?”
“Iz.” Rocco’s voice was low. “You are dangerous.”
Iz remembered to blink. “You keep saying that.”
“Volatile!” Rocco erupted, a bit louder than before, his hands twitching at his sides. It was a petite eruption and Iz must have smiled, probably was smiling, because he had missed Rocco and he would never have expected this to be the limits of Rocco’s temper. Rocco didn’t seem to enjoy seeing that expression on Iz’s face. He pointed a finger. “You disrupt dreams. Which should be safe. They’re dreams! They aren’t supposed to be real or come true. You interrupt them or guess them, somehow. You burst in, and instead of crushing me, you tell me you have feelings for me but to ask out someone else? I tell you he kissed me, and you ask if it was perfect? If I made him come? How am I supposed to plan for that?”
“Did you have a plan for Ronnie?” This was news to Iz. “He’d been waiting for years.”
“There is no plan. Someone like Ronnie wouldn’t—” Rocco stopped in frustration, perhaps remembering that Ronnie had.
“Your plan with Ronnie was to like him—or love him—and never do anything about it?” Iz would have said such a plan was logical if he hadn’t known Rocco and how incredible he was. It was almost inconceivable that Rocco would hesitate. “You were really never going to kiss him?”
Rocco inhaled through his nose. “So you did tell him to kiss me.”
How he got to that point was a mystery.
Iz frowned. “I don’t tell Ronnie to do things.”
Rocco’s hands finally went in his pockets. “No, you suggest it.”
“And if he wants to do what I suggest, he does. If he doesn’t, he doesn’t.” Iz put his hands up. “I could have suggested he kiss me. Again. We did. Once. That night, in fact.” He trailed off into a sigh, then realized where he was. “Here, actually. But that was before. Now he’s kissing you.”
He looked up. Rocco’s eyes made him conscious of his clothes, the patch of skin that was bare because the sweater was meant to be off-the-shoulder.
Rocco had recovered enough to keep his voice down, but the eruption was still visible in his eyes. “This isn’t how things work, Jamie Islington.”
“It should be. It makes sense.”
Rocco dragged one hand out of its pocket to point at Iz again. “You have the nerve to tell me that I need to believe I can be loved, meanwhile you’re sitting there all alone with the memory of a kiss?”
Iz sank back down onto his legs and crossed his arms. “You have a way of yelling at me without yelling at me.”
Rocco’s head went back. “I’m not going to yell at you.”
“You could if you feel it’s warranted.” Iz waited, just to see, but Rocco didn’t comment. “Do you think I deserve it?
“You deserve—I don’t know—something.” Rocco was breathing hard. Iz studied him in wonder. Rocco glanced around the room again, focusing on the cracked window. “Do you think you deserve it?” he asked, albeit very softly and without waiting for a response. “The manners and the hair and your little wrists that somehow don’t stop you from thrusting right into people’s hearts. Everyone’s, even when you don’t mean to. Although you definitely meant to here.”
Iz’s lips parted.
“I knew all that.” Rocco had gone still again. “I knew that within minutes of meeting you. You were all that he said, even when I hoped you wouldn’t be. He told me everything before I ever laid eyes on you and I thought it couldn’t be true. I didn’t know yet that you would do anything for him, and that most of the time, you have no idea what you do to people. But sometimes you do. Not with him, though,” he went on when Iz tried to object. “With him, you’re clueless. I’ve seen from the beginning. And I couldn’t even mind. Because you were always nice to me, and everyone else seemed to love you. Of course, they loved you. Of course, he loved you. It’s easy to love people like you—that’s what I thought then.” Rocco took a moment. “The anxiety stuff. The ace stuff. The way
you dress and how you feel about yourself, learning about those changed things. Like your brain. It bothers people, doesn’t it? They’re careful with you. Ronnie jokes about being afraid of you, but he might be the only one who isn’t.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Iz asked weakly, shaking his head. “I was trying to make you happy.”
“Were you?” Rocco studied him. “You didn’t offer yourself.”
“You don’t want me.” Iz made a sound instead of words because for several seconds he had too much in his mind to articulate. “Why does everyone keep making me say it?”
Rocco’s eyes were as bright as they ever got, alight with some revelation. “You aren’t listening. Almost as if you don’t want to.”
“I have noticed no Izzy-shaped holes.” Iz squared his jaw and decided not to repeat himself.
Rocco eased back, posture alert but no longer as tense as before. He considered Iz for several moments, then said, “I thought those things about you because I wanted to think them. Because you’re brilliant, and beautiful, and because Ronnie adores you, and I adore Ronnie.” He paused there, steadying himself, before continuing. “You’re all that, and I’m oversized, and big, and ugly. I was never going to have him anyway, and it was fine. It was all fine and livable how it was as long as I kept you in the distance.”
“But now you have him,” Iz reminded him, although he didn’t think Rocco had forgotten, not for one second.
Rocco unexpectedly fell back a step to sag against the door. “Fuck. I never thought he’d—”
“But he did.” Iz didn’t know what to make of the small smile on Rocco’s face, though he liked it. “He likes you so much. I’m so proud of him. I wish I could have been there.”
Rocco returned his attention to him in the blink of an eye. The tender smile vanished.
“Do you?” Rocco watched Iz closely. “I should be smug. But I’m not. It makes no sense that he’d choose me over you.”
“I asked him to think about you, and if I was worth losing you. His choice was no surprise to me.” Iz flinched in perplexed dismay at how ferociously Rocco scowled at that. “Now would you like me to tell you all the things I like about you?”
Rocco hitched his shoulders back. “I don’t need you to lie. Or exaggerate.”
He had so many old wounds around this issue. Iz kept stumbling over them. Ronnie had possibly known about them from the start.
“Is that why you’re so kind?” Iz asked with intense interest. “Because people have been cruel to you?”
“Isn’t that why anyone is kind?” Rocco batted away the implied comment. “Do you see me that way? Honestly? I’m not. Ronnie is kind. Ronnie is the kindest person I’ve ever met.”
“Yes, he is.” Iz could only agree. “I’m not particularly kind. I can be, usually only as an afterthought. But you are, more than you want to believe. I think that’s what I like. That’s my type. You and Ronnie are both a part of the world but you’ve stayed solid and good. Although, obviously it can’t only be that, or I would want Patricio too, and I don’t. We checked, you see, to be sure. Because I was worried.” The kiss had been perfunctory and then Patricio had rolled his eyes and gone back to studying. Iz blinked at the memory, then pushed it away. “That’s why I want you. And also why I want him.”
He sighed heavily as his thoughts reached their inevitable conclusion. “I know that society likes one true love and all those strange things in the romcoms Alistair marathons. I’ve watched those with as much attention as I can give them. But I don’t know anything about romantic relationships. Friend relationships have been hard enough. Love?” Iz held up his hand in a plea for understanding. “I don’t think it’s weird that I feel for both of you. You might say I’m already weird, and others would agree. But I don’t think it’s that freakish for me to be in love twice, even if it’s hopeless in both cases. You find it hard to believe because of your own biases. That it must be less for you and more for him. But, as far as I can tell, I fell in love with Ronnie sometime after our freshman year, and I fell in love with you only a few months ago, so of course, I’ve reacted differently. It’s not less or more. It’s different.”
Rocco was listening to every word without much visible reaction. But he was quiet and attentive, so Iz didn’t stop. “I’ve thought about love a lot this past week. If you love someone, and they don’t love you, the feeling doesn’t disappear immediately. If you love someone who loves you and they die, the feeling doesn’t disappear immediately. If they leave you, if they go to war or wherever, the feelings stay—as feelings do. In all those scenarios, you still love them. And yet remarrying is allowed for divorces, for widows and widowers. Because loving more than one person at the same time is permitted by our culture under those conditions. Which means it happens under other conditions as well. So… so in this sense, what my heart has done should finally seem real to you. The rules might say one thing, but feelings will do what they want. It’s feelings that are dangerous.”
“And amazing,” Rocco finished softly.
Iz wrinkled his nose but nodded. “Do you believe me now?” That was the important thing.
Rocco clenched his jaw and looked away, then looked back. “Yes.”
“Ah.” Iz pulled at his scarf and didn’t resist the urge to smile. “And you believe that he could love you too, and you’ll take him on dates? You make sense, you know. Interlocking puzzle pieces. Bookends. Opening and closing brackets.”
“And what about you?” A man who had two people in love with him should at least look happy about it. Rocco was flushed, but also seemed close to pulling out his hair. Which meant, in Rocco terms, that he had taken his hands from his pockets and now didn’t appear to know what to do with them.
“I don’t know how to date anyone,” Iz reminded him. “This is better. The most elegant solution is one without an Iz in it. I tend to muck these things up.” He had to work harder to smile now. “As we all know.”
Rocco made a noise of supreme doubt. “And it’s not for any other reason?”
“Like what?” Iz had to frown. “I thought the other reasons were clear. I’ve never had sex, for one, or any interest in it until now. Ronnie knows all this and I assumed you did too, but maybe you don’t? I’ll be weird about it, probably, want it only sometimes, if I really want it at all. I’m not sure about that since so far there have only been two experiences I’ve actually enjoyed. And you both want sex, and you wouldn’t want... not having that, and I wouldn’t ask you to give it up. For another point, I try, but I’m not sensitive to what others are feeling. I don’t—I have the same feelings as everyone else, I do. I just don’t know what they are when I’m having them, sometimes. I still feel them. I still react. But I don’t know why until later, and I worry too much about it. Are those enough reasons? There is also that I have never dated, even casually. I will make a better friend than a friend and lover. Isn’t that also what love is? Neurochemicals and physiological reactions, yes, but also commitment and care and wanting what is best for our friends? I love you, and I love him, enough to know I am not what is needed. Q.E.D.”
“You mean it,” Rocco said, awed. “Every single genius little word.”
“It’s better not to convince me of my own brilliance,” Iz warned. “After all, I ruined everything.”
Rocco’s eyebrows twitched into a frown. “Are you going to cry?”
Iz touched his cheekbone, then pressed his fingertips against his eyelashes. They were damp. He stared at his wet fingers for a moment before he looked at Rocco. “I don’t need to be protected from my own tears.”
“Protected?” Rocco had taken a step away from the door. His hands were still out of his pockets. “Even the idea of making you sad makes me want to fight someone. It drives Ronnie up a wall trying to figure out ways to make you smile again. That’s… that’s another reason for you to like him, right? Aside from his kindness. How much he wants to brighten things?” He stopped. “Wait, is that—does that scare you, when I sa
y things like that? About fighting? I’m not violent. Fights for your friends are different. I know I look—like this.” He jerked a hand toward his face, his twice-broken nose. “This is from a ball. The first time. The second break was someone’s head during practice. Not a street fight or whatever people imagine.”
“Are you trying to convince me of something?” Iz dried his hand on his pajama pants and sniffed. “I’ve never been afraid of you. The opposite, really.”
“You’re still crying,” Rocco observed as if this was important.
“Are you telling me again that I’m no longer beautiful?” Iz demanded while forced to wipe his eyes.
Rocco came forward again. He hadn’t reached the bed, but he would if he kept going. Iz tipped his head back in astonishment.
“You’re afraid,” Rocco said, “though maybe not of me. Can I sit down?”
Iz nodded because of course, Rocco could sit with him, although Iz was a bit confused. “You don’t have to stay.”
“Your nose gets red when you cry. Blotchy,” Rocco informed him, almost whispering. He lifted a hand, left in the air between them. “May I?”
Iz didn’t understand Rocco’s intentions until after he finally gave Rocco another nod of consent.
Rocco fitted his hand to Iz’s cheek, dragged his thumb softly through Iz’s lashes.
Iz wasn’t sure if it was allowed, but he wrapped one hand around Rocco’s wrist. Rocco didn’t object. Iz didn’t ask. He raised his other hand to lightly touch Rocco’s bumpy nose, then the stubble at his cheek and what he thought were acne marks. The scar at Rocco’s chin was raised. He wasn’t smooth or soft like Ronnie.
Iz looked up, but it took a moment for Rocco to meet his gaze. The heat in his eyes made Iz want to shift in place or inch closer. “Is that desire for me?”