by Roan Parrish
Then I realized that I was wearing these stupid white pants that I’d probably have to pay like five hundred dollars for if I came in them, and I pulled my hips away, groaning at the loss of his heat.
From outside the door came a very haughty stage cough followed by some heavy-duty throat clearing.
“Fuck,” Will snapped and dropped his forehead to my collarbone. “Fuck, Leo. Shit.” I could feel the warmth of his skin. He was sweating at his hairline and his back rose and fell with rapid breaths. He stayed like that for a long moment, clutching my hips, each finger palpable even through the pants, before he cleared his throat and told me he’d meet me outside.
And, hell. The idea of Will imprinting himself on the fabric was almost enough to make me want to buy the ridiculous things.
For the next week, I went to sleep with Will’s taste on my tongue and woke up to visions of him. I dreamt about him. By Friday night, though, Milton was sick to death of my play-by-play analysis of our dressing room encounter and of watching me (apparently) sigh all through meals in the dining hall, so he said that instead of movie night we were going to go dancing. He spent two hours forcing me to try on clothes from his closet because he said I didn’t own anything decent, but I was thinking of Will and our kiss the whole time.
Charles wouldn’t come with us—he said dancing was a ludicrous mating ritual, and when Milton said it wasn’t about mating, he just looked puzzled and said, “Well, if it isn’t at least that, then what possible appeal could it have?”
Thomas came with us, though, as did Gretchen. I hardly recognized Thomas without his Psych notebook, but he seemed bouncy and ready to go. Gretchen shocked me by turning up in a bright green dress and proclaiming her love of dancing. But when we got to the club—some place in Bushwick that Milton said didn’t card—I saw that she danced the way she did everything else: with a quiet joy that was just her own. She wasn’t there for anyone or anything except dancing. And I kind of got the feeling I could learn something from her on that front.
I sat at the bar with Milton, watching as this mess of people attempted to make connections. Everyone was checking out everyone else. Or they were with their friends and oblivious to anyone else. Or they were with their friends or dates and still looking for someone better or more interesting or flashier to come along. It made me incredibly sad. Like this club was a microcosm of the real world. Except, I guess it actually was the real world. And then I was imagining infinitely more bars just like this one, all with people inside them acting the same way.
What blew my mind about physics was how it could account for this whole random set of people. We were all subject to the same forces of the universe. For every action there was an equal and opposite reaction. Like, no matter how illogical an action seemed there was still a sense of predictability in the way the world absorbed it and responded. Maybe that shouldn’t have comforted me, but it did. Because it was partly the predictability of those reactions that kept things running smoothly—I mean, that was socialization, right? Take that away and everything was chaotic and terrifying.
The things that could happen. Not super dramatic things like getting mugged or killed, even. But, the guy over there in khakis and a polo shirt? He could go and pee in the middle of the dance floor while singing Queen if he chose to. Nothing was stopping him except that he could predict what our reaction would be.
I didn’t know why I was thinking about these things when we were there to dance. I think maybe even the two drinks I’d limited myself to had made me pretty tipsy.
Milton delighted me when he drank because he got super loose and brutally honest. And maybe a little bit mean, but in this way that was totally justified because he was such a nice person at base. And because people were idiots.
Like, this sleazy guy came up to him and was trying to flirt but kept saying super racist shit in the guise of compliments, and Milton was just like, “Goodness, I am so sorry, but I don’t speak English. No, seriously, I have no idea what you’re saying to me right now—it all just sounds like nonsense.” At which point, Milton slid another drink over to me, and I took it, even though I’d learned at orientation that I was a total lightweight, because I knew he was exasperated and wanted to commiserate.
But then I was definitely tipsy, which meant of course that I fished out my phone and called Will. He didn’t answer, and before I could leave a message, Gretchen pulled me off the bar stool to dance. Which was probably for the best, because I didn’t know what I would have said to him. Something about forces in the universe and the way he makes me see stars and his mouth and, shit, it was a good thing I didn’t leave a message. Well, good for me, not necessarily for the rest of the bar, which had to see me try to dance.
Gretchen’s dress was green fire and her light hair floated out around her. It was like she spun without even moving, the pulse of the music carrying her effortlessly. She seemed strong and centered, and I couldn’t even imagine what it must feel like, so I tried to match my movements to hers.
I was a moon caught in the gravitational pull of her planet, and when I looked up and spun and spun the lights sparkling above were the brightest stars I’d seen since leaving Michigan.
4
Chapter 4
October
“Omigod, this is the heaviest thing in the history of things.”
“Just keep it level,” Will grunted.
Gee. Thanks for that.
Yesterday I’d woken up feeling totally out of it even though Milton assured me I’d only had three drinks. Basically all I did was eat a shitty dining hall bagel and some vanilla soft-serve and sack out in my room. By the time Will called in the afternoon, I’d fallen asleep in the middle of reading Chaucer for my Great Books class. He’d wanted to know if I could help him move some furniture into his apartment from the storage unit in his basement. I hadn’t even really listened to what it was for, just agreed that I’d meet him there this afternoon.
He’d been normal when I got here. No mention of how we totally made out in a swanky shop last weekend. Not that I’d been expecting one.
As I inched along Will’s endless hallway, some semidetached flap of rubber from the sole of my shoe—I never did get new ones last weekend, since Will was too busy dressing me up and kissing me and not talking about it—nearly tripped me and I caught myself in the doorframe of the apartment before Will’s. I guess I kind of thudded against the door to avoid dropping my side of what was clearly the most epically heavy filing cabinet ever made. As I levered myself away from the door, it opened with a squeak and a forty-something dude who looked like he used to be a football player and now just watched a lot of it on TV while downing pizza and beer poked his head out.
“Did you knock?” His tone was primmer than I expected.
“No, Perkins, he didn’t knock. He just tripped. Back to your regularly scheduled programming.”
The dude—Perkins—just sniffed and looked put out, but he closed his door. We finally got the damn thing into Will’s apartment, but he could barely even tell me where to put it because he was too busy muttering ranty things about Perkins.
“What is your problem?”
“That fucking guy,” Will snarled.
“He said three words.”
“Three asshole words. He’s my nemesis. Screw that guy.”
“Um, kinda… dying.” I indicated the filing cabinet with my chin. My arms were about fifteen seconds from giving out.
We put the filing cabinet in place and lugged a few shelves and a table up from the storage unit too, Will glaring at Perkins’ door each time we passed.
“So, why’s he your nemesis?” I asked as we set up the shelves and what Will said was a drafting table.
“He’s just always around, doing infuriating shit like sticking his head out when I walk past. Or—he straightened my doormat once, the OCD psycho.”
I looked around at Will’s immaculately organized apartment.
“Um. Isn’t that maybe a nice thing to do?”
“No. He’s a busybody. Maybe I wanted my mat like that. Maybe I had it that way for a reason. He didn’t know. He’s just a control freak. You don’t go around rearranging other people’s stuff.”
I couldn’t help but smile because he sounded like a pissed-off kid and it was adorable, and when I did Will rolled his eyes and stalked off to the kitchen. He handed me a beer and popped the top off his own.
“Thanks for helping. You’re a pal.” He clinked his bottle to mine and flopped down on the couch, drinking deeply. I couldn’t look away from the movement of his throat as he swallowed. The gold of his weekend stubble faded into the creamy skin of his neck. His lips wrapped around the neck of the bottle.
He drained it, looking at me, and I started to get hard just watching him as he watched me.
“You’re—you—gah,” I mumbled, my cheeks going hot as Will’s gaze traveled down to my crotch and he smirked, but still said nothing. In an attempt to distract myself, I opened my beer, licking quickly at the fizz so it didn’t get on the couch, but grimaced at the sour taste. Okay, I guess I now knew I didn’t really like beer.
At my expression, Will’s smirk turned to a genuine smile, and he held out his hand to me, shaking his head affectionately. My heart beat faster as I slid my hand into his. He held on for a second, thumb caressing the tender skin on the inside of my wrist.
“I meant gimme the beer,” he said.
“Oh, right.”
I dropped his hand and passed him the beer, sitting next to him in silence for a few minutes as he flicked through the channels. Finding nothing that suited him, he jammed the power button on the remote and tossed it onto the coffee table with disgust.
“Hey, can I see that cover design?” I asked. Will had been working overtime on the design for some book that his bosses were sure would be huge.
At the console next to the drafting table, Will nudged his mouse to bring the computer to life. He had some kind of black rubber pad where a keyboard would be and a set of black plastic tools lined up next to it. When the screen came to life, his desktop was a blank white background with only one small, unlabeled gray folder in the bottom right corner.
“What happened to your desktop image?”
“Nothing. I just don’t like clutter.”
“But you’re all… artsy. I would’ve thought you’d want….” I trailed off, realizing how dumb I sounded.
“Number one, don’t ever say artsy again unless you want to sound like you’re eighty-five. And it’s visual clutter. I don’t want anything competing for my focus on the screen.”
I looked around at Will’s apartment. I hadn’t paid any attention when I’d been here the other night, too nervous and too distracted by Will to notice much about the place. It was stark. All clean lines and well-balanced shapes. Nothing distinguished itself by design, but nothing was exactly plain either. Like the black leather couch, everything seemed very high quality, but nothing screamed money. The furniture didn’t seem to belong to any period—not that I’d have recognized such a thing if they were, but it didn’t have that aggressively modern, cement-and-steel look, or the bought-the-whole-showroom look, or the I’m-bohemian-and-artsy look. Er, wait, not artsy.
The walls were white, the furniture black or light wood, and the rugs a neutral oatmeal-y color. There were some large framed black-and-white photographs on the wall just inside the door, and I knew I’d seen some kind of art in the bathroom, but there wasn’t anything but blank wall near the work area, and the open floor plan left the kitchen no walls at all. The only real color came from the motley spines on the bookcase behind the couch, and a stack of coffee-table books on art and design on the side table. In fact, with the curtains drawn open, the main attraction was the view of the city through the large windows.
Will’s clothes were the same as his décor, I realized. Everything fit him perfectly—though that might have been mostly how well-proportioned he was—and they were always sharp, but never flashy. He wore mostly black, white, grays, and neutrals. Sometimes a light gray-blue the color of his eyes, but I didn’t think I’d ever seen him in anything else.
“That’s it.” Will’s voice brought me back to the screen between us. “The proofs are at work, but this is the digital version.” He leaned in and made a sound of disgust. “The damn—shoot.” He pointed. “That has a weird green cast on this screen but it’s actually gray.”
“Oh, it looks gray to me. Wow.”
“It’s the first in a trilogy, and when you line the three up, the color will fade down diagonally until it disappears at the bottom right corner of the third book.” Will traced a downward arc, finger hovering an inch from a screen totally devoid of fingermarks or dust particles. “Then, here—” He opened a smaller window with a picture of the spine. “See the way the image wraps around here and goes all ghosty? When the three books stand together on the shelves—the hardcovers, anyway—you’ll be able to see it’s actually part of a larger image.”
“It’s amazing!”
Will smiled. “The author won’t like it. He wanted something flashier. But that’s why we don’t let authors design their own covers, thank god. I think it’ll sell, though. Especially sitting on a shelf next to some of the schlocky garbage that’s just the title and the author’s name in Arial against a generic stock background.”
Then Will was off, talking excitedly about design and marketing, color and balance, pulling up different files on the computer to show me other covers he’d done and images of those he admired. He talked as if I understood what he was saying. As if my knowledge of cover design aesthetic weren’t limited to the distinction between, like, a Danielle Steel cover and a Stephen King cover.
I couldn’t keep my eyes off him. How his face lit up when he talked about this stuff. How every now and then he’d bump my shoulder with his for emphasis. The way he pushed his hair back absently when he bent closer to the monitor, eyebrows drawing together in concentration as he searched for the next file he wanted to show me. The way his forearm moved when he clicked the mouse, muscle and tendon contracting under pale skin limned with golden hairs.
“So, um, you kissed me. Again.” It just kind of popped out, and I felt my face heat in that way that I knew didn’t actually look like I was blushing, but made my heart beat fast and my ears buzz with nerves. “In the dressing room,” I added stupidly.
His gaze shot to mine, his eyes burning, then slid down to my mouth, and I felt it like a caress. For a moment it seemed like he might respond. Like we might talk things through, instead of continuing this strange dance. But then he blinked and shot me a wink before turning back to the computer.
“You kissed me, kiddo.”
“So, you have no experience working as a barista at all, you can only work on the weekends and when you’re not in class, and you’ve never heard of latte art. Why should I hire you when every third person in line to buy a cappuccino is probably more qualified?”
I’d ducked into Mug Shots on a whim when I saw the HIRING sign. I needed a job badly if I was going to have a prayer of being able to do anything in this city besides study, and, well, the state of my shoes was getting pretty dire.
The manager on duty was named Layne. Her dark jeans hung low and her white T-shirt and red-and-brown flannel were spattered with coffee and foam around the edges of a too-long apron. Her brown hair was cut short, her cheeks permanently flushed, and behind thick, nerdy-chic glasses her blue eyes were squinty and shrewd.
She was right. I was woefully unqualified for the job. And yet, it didn’t feel like she was shutting me down, exactly. More like she was asking it as a genuine question. And maybe was a little bit amused.
Anyway, she seemed so cheery, despite the chaos going on around her, and the stickers slapped onto her thermos said “Earth First!” and “Queer Rock Camp” and “NYQueer,” so I couldn’t bring myself to bullshit her.
“Oh gosh, you probably shouldn’t, if they’re way more qualified,” I said. “But—okay, thing
s in favor of hiring me anyway?” I ticked them off on my fingers. “I’m super dependable. Maybe I can only work on specific days, but I’ll never call in and leave you searching for someone to take my place. And next semester I could schedule my classes so I’m more flexible. I’m pretty friendly and people usually like me, so I’d be good with, like, grumpy, pre-caffeinated people. What else? Oh, well, I’m smart, I promise. That sounds obnoxious, probably, but I mean that once you show me how to do stuff I’ll have it. You won’t have to tell me twice. And… well, I really need the money, honestly. So I won’t do anything to get me fired.”
I leaned in and lowered my voice. “Also, um, I’m gay, if, like, that helps?”
The look she gave me made it immediately clear that this was a miscalculation on my part. But just as she opened her mouth to respond, there was a crash, a splat, and a very inappropriate-for-the-workplace slew of swear words from the front of the line. The customer seemed to have somehow spilled the entire tray of coffee drinks he’d been handed, and half of them ended up on the counter and the girl ringing him up—hence the swearing. She was totally drenched in what smelled like a combination of coffee and hot chocolate, and the counter was swimming in sad islands of melting whipped cream.
Layne narrowed her eyes and sighed.
“What are you doing right now?”
“Nothing,” I said.
She nodded once, resigned, but I swear there was a damn sparkle in her eye like she was enjoying this. “Up for a trial by fire?”
“Um, what?”
Which is how I found myself hastily aproned and stationed behind the huge, gleaming machine that loomed like the obelisk in 2001: A Space Odyssey and would determine my future. After about ten minutes, when it became painfully clear to the other guy stationed at the machine that I had absolutely no clue what the difference was between an Americano, a macchiato, and a latte, to say nothing of how to make them, I was switched to taking orders.