Middle of Somewhere Series Box Set

by Roan Parrish

  I’d been right, too. Because here I was, starting college in a brand-new city because he’d helped me with my applications and my essays, and encouraged me when I wanted to give up on the whole thing.

  When Daniel answered the phone, I could tell he was in the middle of something because he was swearing and spluttering when he said hello.

  “You okay?”

  “What? Shit. Yeah, yeah, just tripped over the damn… thingie. Anyway, hey. You there? You all moved in? Everything okay?”

  Just hearing his familiar voice and having someone ask if I’m okay nearly made me lose it. I blinked hard and stared out my window at the endless stream of people cutting through the courtyard.

  “Yeah, I’m cool.” I tried to sound casual, but it came out shaky, and Daniel knew me too well to be fooled.

  “What’s up?”

  It came out in a sluice, but I knew Daniel would understand because it seemed like he felt kind of the same way when he first moved to Holiday.

  “I don’t know what I’m doing here, man. I don’t even know where to start. My roommate’s not coming and I don’t know anyone and there’s two days before classes but I’m already out of cash. I don’t even know how ’cause all I bought was like a coffee and a sandwich. And there’s this orientation thing, but I don’t want to go do freaking icebreakers with people and talk about my major—I don’t have a major. I just got here! Three people have asked me about my major. How do they have majors? I don’t understand.”

  Daniel hummed sympathetically. “Oh Jesus, icebreakers. No. That’s no good. Well, you could come here for the weekend if you want. BoltBus is cheap.” He paused as his partner Rex said something in the background. “Ha, yeah. We’ll totally put you to work, though. I’m useless because they swapped my class at the last minute and now I have to do all this damn course prep in five minutes.”

  Just the thought of being around someone familiar calmed me down. The year before, Daniel and Rex had moved into an old industrial space that the owner was happy to rent out cheaply in exchange for Rex’s promise that he could build in the interior. Rex had built his house in Michigan and was more than up to the task, in theory, but it had turned out to be a nightmare of zoning permits, arcane city mandates, and the kind of red tape that Rex abhorred, so they were still in the thick of it. Still, I’d gladly clear garbage or sand wood or scrub whatever they wanted if it meant I wasn’t by myself here.

  “Really? Yeah, man, I could totally help.”

  “Um,” Daniel said, not really into the phone. All I could make out was orientation and then Rex’s voice in response, pitched too low to hear. “Okaaay,” Daniel drawled. “So, good point. Rex says shouldn’t you go to orientation so you can meet all the people in your dorm and stuff?” Daniel sounded like it horrified him even more than it did me.

  “I don’t know.” I just wanted someone to tell me what I should do. I could hear Daniel fumbling with the phone and then Rex’s voice filled my ear.

  When Rex talked I was generally incapable of doing anything but agreeing. Something about his voice just made me melt. Daniel too. I’d seen it happen. He’d start out listening to whatever Rex was saying and then slowly he’d lose the thread because he’d started focusing on the sound of Rex’s voice instead of his words. You could tell the exact moment it happened because his eyes would go kind of sleepy and his hands would start to twitch like he was keeping himself from reaching out to touch Rex.

  “It seems like a good way to meet people,” Rex said. “Nice to know a few before classes start, huh? Might not be the most pleasant experience, but it’s better than trying to do it on your own.”

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  “You’re always welcome, Leo. But why don’t you give yourself a chance to make some friends first? Get to know the city a little.” He kind of trailed off, and I got the feeling he was talking to himself as much as to me. It was no secret that Rex hadn’t been overjoyed to leave Holiday and move to Philly. He didn’t like cities and he was shy around new people. Still, he’d wanted to be with Daniel, so he went.

  “Yeah, you’re probably right. Okay, cool. Well, I guess I’ll see you guys. Sometime.”

  The second I hung up I slumped onto the bed I’d claimed. It was the one next to the window because it seemed nice to be able to glance outside while I sat there and did work, but now I wondered if it’d be too distracting, so I flopped onto the other bed to try it out. From this vantage point, the room seemed completely different. Choosing a bed was choosing between two totally different experiences of the room. Of what the world would look like all year. It was too big a decision for the moment.

  In fact, any decision felt too big at the moment, so I just grabbed my skateboard and took off. At the street, I closed my eyes for a moment. A blanket of noise lay over everything: traffic, horns, heels hitting pavement, dogs yipping, people talking in every language, music, and, underneath it all, a hum that seemed to rise from the ground itself. It was almost more vibration than sound, as if I were standing on something alive. A great slumbering beast guarding a treasure.

  As soon as my feet hit the deck of my board a car nearly sideswiped me in a flurry of honking horns and yelled profanities, and I hit the ground hard, my board skidding against the curb. Within moments fear transmuted into humiliation, and I just hoped no one saw. But, of course, there were people everywhere. The chill of fear gone, it was oppressively hot, the air hanging humid and still, the smells of pizza and smoke, perfume and exhaust suspended.

  Shaking off the near miss, I walked around Washington Square Park, and I could hardly believe I was really here. The white stone seemed to glow as it absorbed the sunlight. The soaring arch at the entrance to the park stood out starkly against the blue sky like it could reach the clouds, dwarfing the trees. People passed through like threading a needle, and you could tell the locals from the tourists by who walked by without even sparing it a glance.

  I was most assuredly not one of the locals, since I was blatantly staring at everything around me, head whipping from sight to sight like I was at a carnival.

  That was Resolution 2—Do not gawk at everything like a total noob—down the drain, then.

  I passed leathery-skinned men and women with their belongings tied up in plastic bags sitting on benches, talking without listening to each other. Some asked for change, some ignored me, and one blew me a kiss. They sat next to men in the nicest suits I’d ever seen, subtle grays, browns, and blues that I could tell, even without knowing anything about fashion, were top quality.

  These men sat, resting slices of pizza on paper plates, falafel in foil, and plastic cups of chunked fruit on their elegantly crooked knees, holding newspapers, books, and phones in one hand and eating with the other. The business-y women mostly wore black, and they walked quickly, heels clicking the stones, sipping iced coffees through straws, sunglasses covering half their faces.

  There was a set of tables inlaid with chessboards where a surprising collection of people played, some in silence, others bantering with familiarity like they’d been playing together for years.

  My favorite pairing was an immaculately dressed African-American man who must’ve been in his eighties, skin burnished and perfectly manicured fingers clawed inward with arthritis, playing with a white girl who couldn’t have been more than ten. She had light brown hair scraped into a raggedy ponytail, and pink wire-framed glasses, behind which she squinted at the board, her small hand with its dirty nails hovering above a piece.

  As I walked by, she looked up at her opponent, clearly trying not to smile, and said, “Checkmate.” He interlaced his fingers over his stomach and leaned back, assessing the board before nodding once, one side of his mouth lifting. He took off the tidy bowler hat he was wearing and perched it on the girl’s messy head, tapping its brim so it slid her glasses down her nose.

  Children chased pigeons up and down the park’s corridors and parents chased children. Bikers twined around pedestrians lost in their phones and group
s of slow-walking tourists taking pictures with selfie sticks or iPads held aloft. Around the perimeter of the fountain, couples sat, hands entwined, or leaning against each other.

  The sun was directly overhead, sparkling in the droplets of water the fountain kicked up.

  I settled in the shade, finally, taking a cue from the less well-dressed, of which I was definitely one. A group of twentysomethings in shredded band T-shirts and cut-off denim sprawled under a tree, heads on each other’s stomachs and fingers in each other’s hair. Under another tree a family was having a picnic, one of the kids complaining about the heat, the bugs, the food.

  I tried to cheer myself up by texting my sister Janie, In NYC, sucker! with a picture of the soaring stone arch, and watched for the screen to light up in my hand, but she must’ve been busy because she didn’t write back.

  I dozed off for a few minutes, unable to look away from the arch until my eyes closed, curtains coming down on the movie going on around me.

  A wet nose in the neck woke me, followed by a paw in the stomach. The puppy’s owner came running over and apologized, but the golden retriever puppy was adorable, rooting around next to me and throwing itself on the ground. We chatted for a few minutes. The puppy belonged to his boss at the internship he’d just started the week before, and he was terrified of anything happening to it because he was convinced he’d somehow managed to incur his boss’ wrath on his first day and didn’t want to give the guy any more reasons to hate him.

  I found myself telling him about my roommate situation, and he gave me a sweet smile and said, “Well, maybe the new roommate will be even better.” I grasped at it desperately—this benediction from a stranger—in an attempt to renew my excitement. He was right! I was here, in New York City, starting over. Starting from scratch. And maybe that included a new roommate I hadn’t planned for.

  So I didn’t know anyone in the city—that was okay. I’d meet people, surely.

  Well, I knew one person.

  Will Highland.

  It was Will I hadn’t let myself think of on the trip from Michigan. But, honestly? That had just been a stubborn game to prove to myself that I had other reasons for coming to the city.

  Will was always lingering in the back of my mind. He was a shadow in my periphery. An unopened gift that might be the thing I had most wished for, or the disappointment of that wish.

  There should’ve been a term for the moments that, when you look back on them, preceded your whole life changing. There probably was one in German—some twisty compound word I didn’t know. In a movie, there would’ve at least been a musical cue. Swooping strings that suddenly gave way to velvet quiet studded with the tinkle of bells as sharp as diamonds. Something that said Pay attention: this next bit’s important.

  But there hadn’t even been any kind of bodily early-warning system when I met Will—no skipped heartbeat or light-headedness to indicate that something was about to happen. Nope. I had just fallen off my skateboard when I saw him, like an idiot.

  I’d only known him for a few weeks. He had been in Holiday visiting his sister and I’d met him because he was Rex’s ex. And, yes, maybe the first thing I’d noticed about him was that he was, hands-down, the most beautiful person I’d ever seen in my life. But it wasn’t just that.

  He had this… presence. This way of owning every inch of space around him as if he had a right to it. It was the kind of self-possession that can make a tyrant or a prince and Will was a fucking prince. You just got the sense that he knew exactly who he was and he’d never apologize for it. And, okay, I was pretty sure I had no hope of that rubbing off on me. But being around him made me feel like everything was right in my little world. I felt alive in a way I never had. In a colors-look-brighter, food-tastes-better, every-song-is-about-him way.

  Though he never would have admitted it, we had… fit together in a way I’d never fit with anyone else. It wasn’t that we were similar—we weren’t. For every ounce of confidence Will possessed, I had an equal measure of dorkiness. But somehow it just worked. I felt different with him than I had with anyone else. Everything felt different with him.

  If Daniel had been a tornado that promised me there was another world out there, Will’s arrival in Michigan had been a blizzard—the cold snow and ice that snapped me back to reality, made me take a hard look at my life and what it was likely to become and feel the true terror of it. And if dreamy, distracted Daniel had offered escape, Will had been as sharply present as a pebble in my shoe, making me aware of every moment we spent together.

  But that had been almost two years ago. When I’d gotten my letter of acceptance to NYU my heart had begun racing in my chest like a wild thing, as if a part of me was already surging full-speed ahead into the life I could have at an amazing college, in an amazing city.

  The life I could have with Will.

  I hadn’t meant to go there, but my fantasies were traitors, constructing the life we’d have together with such insidious detail that my daydreams seemed almost more real than my actual humdrum life. I’d sit behind the counter at Mr. Zoo’s, and my stupid brain would spin tales of swoony romance, corny inside jokes, easy domesticity, and, um, other stuff. Like, okay, fine: sex stuff.

  It wasn’t just Will, though. It was the promise of a future that was different than anything I’d let myself imagine. Freedom. Possibilities. Hope. When a letter from the financial aid office came a few weeks later, I’d torn it open without a second thought, a rush of pure happiness shooting through me at the purple NYU logo.

  The gut punch of despair hit me as soon as I processed the contents of the letter: that they were only giving me enough financial aid to cover about a third of NYU’s extremely pricey tuition. My fist tightened unconsciously, along with my stomach. I forced myself to smooth the letter out again and slide it back into the envelope, but every hope I’d let myself have was crumpled as easily as that crisp, watermarked paper.

  And talking to Will was a reminder of everything I couldn’t have if I didn’t want to go into astronomical debt. Because though I felt sure that somehow Will was my destiny, there were some things that even destiny couldn’t justify. I’d missed the hell out of talking to him, but it had just been too painful. Instead, I’d thrown myself into classes at the community college, determined to do well enough that the next year I’d get a full financial aid package and could roll up in New York with everything perfect. Just the way it was meant to be.

  But now I was here, and every fantasy I’d had of Will being part of my life was stirring again, the slow unfurling of dormant seeds growing up through the ground to meet the light. I thumbed through my contacts to the end of the alphabet, even though he was already one of the five numbers in my Favorites.

  Will answered just when I thought the call would go to voice mail, his clear voice electrifying me.

  “Hey, kid. Get mugged yet?”

  “Ha. How bad would you feel if I actually had gotten mugged?”

  “At least a four out of ten.”

  “So, um, I’m here. Wanna hang out?”

  Wow, that sounded like I was about ten. Can Will come out and play?

  “I’m at work,” he said, sounding vaguely amused.

  “Oh, right.” I had lost all sense of time. My stomach flipped, and I couldn’t think of anything to say. It suddenly seemed imperative that I see him.

  Voices were audible on Will’s end of the conversation for a minute, and I thought I heard Will sigh. “Um, okay, do you want to meet up at my place later? Sixish?”

  He gave me directions, but they got immediately jumbled in my relief and excitement about seeing Will in only a few hours. I had already failed at Resolution 3—Memorize the subway map so you don’t get lost and have to ask for directions constantly—but I had GPS on my phone so whatever.

  As I lay back down and stared up at the bright blue sky, I realized I was grinning.

  Ideally, the first time I saw Will in New York, I would’ve breezed through the door looking… I dunn
o, cute. Like, irresistibly cute.

  Instead, the back of my hair was flattened from riding with my head against a bus seat for twenty hours, my shirt was stuck to my spine with sweat, and my hands were dirty from sitting in the grass. I was also fairly certain that I’d stepped in something unspeakable on the subway, and I’d gotten dripped on by the air-conditioning units as I approached the building.

  God, why hadn’t I at least showered before coming here? My hands were so sweaty my thumb nearly slid off the button when I buzzed Will’s apartment.

  “Stairs are on your right.”

  Through the crackle, Will’s voice was as clear and sharp as always, like even static had no power over him.

  Whenever I’d pictured Will living in the city, I’d imagined his apartment building looking like the ones on TV: as modern and shiny and stylish as he was. But the building was… well, ugly. Brown and square and kind of lurking back from the sidewalk like it was embarrassed by its ugliness. And it was bizarre that he lived behind one of these doors, each exactly like the next, when he was completely different from anyone I’d ever met.

  But when he opened the door, he was so vivid it was like the whole apartment building had been made ordinary to better set him off, like a jewel in a plain setting.

  When I’d been around Will for multiple days in succession in Michigan last winter, the effect had worn off a little, like I’d been inoculated. Now, seeing him again, I was so struck by the lines of him that it felt like I was falling. I was staring at him in what was probably a gooberish way, but he was so damn beautiful. Beautiful in an obvious way that everyone would agree on. Beautiful like I couldn’t always concentrate on what he was saying because his words got lost somewhere around the curve of his full lower lip that dipped toward his sharp chin.

  The lines of his jaw, nose, and cheekbones were clean and defined, his pale skin flawless except for a dark beauty mark over his lip and one next to his eyebrow. His eyes were this grayish-bluish color that could look cold and remote when he was in what Daniel called scornful fashion-model mode, or deep and mischievous when he was more approachable. His hair was longish on top and short at his neck, and this improbably light blond all the way to the roots, like he was limned in frost.