Middle of Somewhere Series Box Set

by Roan Parrish

  He’d driven me home after we’d played Pictionary, and he’d complained about Daniel and what he called his “helpless act.” “Of course Rex would go for that,” he’d said, shaking his head and muttering something about a hero complex.

  “Why do think it’s an act?” I asked, since to me Daniel mostly seemed like he tried to cover up the fact that he was sometimes bad at doing things that even I knew were common sense.

  Will turned to look at me for the first time since he started driving, as if he’d forgotten I was there, actually listening to his vitriolic monologue. He pursed his lips and let out a long breath. “Ugh, it’s probably not even an act,” he said finally. And then he sulked.

  “I don’t get it. What’s your problem with Daniel? Are you still in love with Rex or something?”

  “No,” he said, with finality but without force. At first I thought it was because he didn’t mean it, but after I knew his habits a little better, I realized it was because Will said what he meant and didn’t care if people believed him or not. When he dropped me off at home, just before he drove away, he rolled down the window and said, “Happy Halloween.” His voice bordered on mocking, but he had chosen to prolong our conversation, and I decided that had to count for something.

  “Watch out for the tricks,” I said, trying to wink at him and succeeding only in kind of squeezing my eyes shut emphatically.

  “It’s the treats you really have to watch out for,” he said, and drove away with the window down, like maybe he was hoping to hear more from me. Or maybe he’d just liked the fresh air.

  After that, all I’d wanted was for Will to like me. Well, and to be around him all the time. I had always second-guessed myself, always been a little uncertain. I’d been raised to be polite to people and not to make waves. So Will’s straightforwardness, even if it was a bit abrasive, was intoxicating.

  The notion that you didn’t actually have to say what people wanted to hear just to make them feel comfortable—that it was a choice—felt thrilling and transgressive, and I’d become fascinated by watching Will move through the world and interact with people in that way. He wasn’t unkind exactly. He just refused to follow what I’d always thought were ironclad rules of social engagement but which, it turned out, were as easily brushed aside as cobweb.

  I couldn’t believe it had been two years. By comparison, last Halloween didn’t even bear thinking about. I’d wandered around Holiday after getting home from a long day of classes, wishing that Daniel and Rex still lived there, wishing that Will were with me, wishing… wishing for there to be something that made the day stand out from any of the others.

  Now I asked Will, “What did you end up doing tonight?” He’d declined my invitation to come to the parade with us.

  “Oh, you know, not much,” he said casually, which I was learning was Will code for “I hooked up with someone.” Which, of course, I knew he did. But somehow knowing it happened, and knowing it had just happened, weren’t quite the same, and pain lanced through me at the thought of Will with someone else.

  I didn’t press him about it, though. I’d made that mistake a few weeks before when I’d shown up to hang out one night, and he was clearly in a bad mood. Even though I took some small pleasure in hearing him complain about what an idiot the guy he’d hooked up with had been, it hadn’t outweighed the knowledge that Will would rather mess around with some random guy than try being in a relationship with me. When I’d said as much, Will had fixed me with a pained expression and said, “You’re not like those fuckheads.”

  A million questions had buzzed to the surface with that comment. Like, if they were fuckheads, why did he sleep with them? (Well, fine, that one I could figure out on my own.) Or, if I weren’t like them, then wasn’t that a good thing? Didn’t it bode well for our chances?

  But before I could start reeling off my questions, Will had patted the couch next to him and rolled his eyes. “I’d rather hang out with you, anyway,” he’d said, flicking the TV on. And my breath had caught in my throat so I couldn’t have said anything if I’d wanted to.

  “So, did you dress up for the parade?” Will asked.

  “Yeah, I went as Dream from The Sandman. It was pretty awesome.” I had borrowed Charles’ long black coat and moussed my hair into a gravity-defying mop. No one had known who I was, though, or they’d asked “Are you that dude from The Cure?” To be fair, the hair was rather Robert Smith-esque.

  “Ah. Feeling tragic, are we?”

  I was, now, kind of.

  “What would you do if I was?” I had been going for a flirtatious tone, but it ended up sounding like a genuine question.

  “Well, I suppose I’d have to distract you from the utter tragedy of your young life.”

  That was totally an opening for some kind of racy comment about precisely how he might distract me, but I flubbed it by thinking too hard for something sexy to say, and gave up.

  “Midterms are getting so stressful,” I said, allowing the legitimate exhaustion I’d been fighting to infuse my voice. “Everyone’s totally crazed and everything’s loud and I can’t concentrate. I have a gazillion things to do, especially this project for my physics class that I really want to do well on.” Will was basically a workaholic, so I figured he’d respond well to that.

  “I have it on good authority there’s a perfectly functional library you could throw yourself out of,” he teased.

  “Yeah, but everyone’s at the library this time of year, so it’s not even that quiet. Besides, I’m guaranteed to run into someone I know there.”

  “Aren’t you quite the social butterfly.”

  “And then they’ll want to talk, and I don’t wanna be rude….”

  “Ugh, the horror.” Will sighed. Getting caught in small talk was basically his worst nightmare, so I figured that one would get him. I waited, tapping my foot and biting my lip.

  “Was there something you wanted to ask me?”

  Damn it, I should’ve known better than to try and float any kind of passive-aggressive shit with Will. He always dismantled it, and then I felt like an idiot for trying.

  “Um, maybe I could… come over and do work at your place?”

  Will snorted. Clearly he’d known what I was angling for all along.

  “Yeah, sure, come over.”

  “Omigod, thank you so much. That’s awesome.”

  The next evening after I got done with my shift at Mug Shots, I went right to Will’s. He was just getting home from work as I turned the corner to his building and we rode the elevator up to his apartment together.

  I found myself imagining what it’d be like if we lived together. We’d get home around the same time, both eager to see each other. Maybe some days we’d meet like this on the street, the pleasant surprise of seeing your boyfriend washing over us both. We’d fall into step and hold hands in the elevator. Or maybe we’d get home within a few minutes of each other and chat about our days while Will changed out of his work clothes for the evening. Maybe we’d take a shower together (which would lead to messing around in the shower), or cook dinner together (which would lead to messing around in the kitchen), or order takeout and watch TV together (which would lead to messing around on the couch).

  In reality, Will bitched about one of his coworkers in the elevator and shut himself in his room the second we were in his front door. He did not invite me to shower with him or participate in changing his clothes. And he didn’t seem to have any plans whatsoever for making dinner, as evidenced by the fact that he grabbed a beer and a box of dry cereal and flopped onto the couch to consume them without speaking to me.

  I put my backpack down on the floor next to the desk that sat beside the drafting table I’d helped Will bring up from his storage unit last month. Now it was covered with sketches, graphics, and samples of typography.

  I started in on my work, hoping he’d get hungry for real food eventually, because I hadn’t eaten since before work and I was starving.

  After an hour or
so, Will came over and sat at the drafting table, our chairs side by side. He didn’t say anything, but he sharpened a pencil and started to work on one of the sketches. I could practically feel his whole vibe change from the moment he came over to when he settled into his work. He relaxed into his chair, and his pencil moved effortlessly over the paper. Even his breathing changed. He seemed the way I feel when I leave yoga.

  I’d been going with Gretchen three times a week ever since that first class, and I would never joke about it being just for hippies again. I loved it. I could walk into the room feeling stressed as hell—scattered and anxious, or tired and grouchy—and walk out feeling calmer, more relaxed, and more energized.

  I snuck a look at Will while he was concentrating. His full lips were parted, and he was hunched over his drawing, shoulders slumped forward, neck bent. His hair fell in his eyes and his ankles were kind of hooked around the front legs of his chair. It all looked very uncomfortable, but his expression was one of total absorption. His eyes were locked on the pencil lines before him even as he blew the hair out of his face.

  I took a chance and rose, moving behind him. In a moment when he’d lifted his pencil from the page, I slid my hands onto his shoulders, pulling gently to straighten his posture the way my yoga teacher moved our shoulder blades together to counteract the posture of living hunched over our computers. I squeezed gently at first, not sure if he’d whirl around in a fury at being interrupted or shrug me off.

  Instead, when I began to press into the knots in his muscles with my thumbs, Will softened under my hands and took a deep breath. I let my hands follow the lines of his body, rubbing up his neck and through his hair. I massaged along his spine, feeling his back press closer to me with each breath. When I leaned in and put my weight behind it, Will groaned and the sound sent a bolt of arousal through me. I leaned a little closer and smelled his hair and the scent that was just him.

  I slid my hands under his sleeves as I massaged his upper arms, feeling the improbably smooth skin overlying lightly sculpted muscle. I wasn’t quite brave enough to ask him to take his shirt off, scared my voice would break the spell, cut short the moment we were suspended in.

  He kept making these obscene sounds, and they went straight to my dick.

  I slid my hands forward a little, massaging the fronts of his shoulders and along his collarbones. Then I leaned in and kissed his neck. He gasped and tensed for a moment, but though I was sure that he would pull away now, he relaxed when I started massaging again. I squeezed his upper arms and leaned down again, kissing the other side of his neck. This time he didn’t tense as much. I rubbed his shoulders and nuzzled his neck, kissed under his ear, along his hairline and down the other side of his neck to where it met his shoulder.

  The top of his chair could swivel, and I turned him to face me. His face was impossible to read. He looked relaxed, but it all seemed like it could shatter at any moment. Moving as slowly as I could, I slid in front of him and kept massaging his shoulders from the front. He looked at me, eyelids heavy in relaxation. Then his eyes fluttered shut as I slid my fingers into his hair and massaged the base of his neck. I leaned forward and kissed him softly on the mouth.

  He jerked back, startled, and looked at me.

  I went back to massaging his shoulders, even though every atom of my being yearned for him. I was stupidly turned-on. I slid my hand around the back of his neck into his hair and leaned in again, kissing him deeper. This time, he kissed me back, the press of his mouth sending my heart racing, and I slid into his lap, twining my arms around his neck.

  He tasted like the Honey Nut Cheerios he’d been eating, which I found ridiculously endearing. I could imagine kissing him after he ate breakfast, sending him out the door to work and tasting his cereal on my tongue even after he was gone.

  Finally, his pencil clattered on the floor and his arms came around me. He rubbed up and down my back at first, then slid a hand into my hair, holding our faces together as we kissed. It was slow and sweet until Will pulled me closer and I could feel how turned-on he was. The idea that I could turn Will on flushed heat through me and made me strain against him. It was incredible. He was so beautiful. And talented. And… Will-like. I was just… me.

  Will groaned into my mouth and pulled back, looking at me with furrowed brows.

  “Don’t stop,” I said quietly.

  He framed my face with his hands. “We can’t do this.”

  “Do what?” I asked, smiling, and I leaned back in to try and kiss him again.

  He looked at me intently, like he was going to say something serious, but then he just ran his thumb across my eyebrow and down my cheek.

  “You’re supposed to be studying,” he said, finally, and gently eased me back onto my seat. He bent back over his work without another word, the slight tremble in the hand he used to rake his hair back the only indication he was anything but completely relaxed.

  5

  Chapter 5

  November

  By the time Charles slouched into our room around eleven the next morning, I was in a full-on panic about my physics project. What was due at the midterm mark was the proposal and a bibliography for what would be my final project. I’d had a frustrating meeting with the teaching assistant who was in charge of my discussion section about it during his office hours last week but had thought we’d worked things out.

  Now I was staring at my e-mail in disbelief because he’d just responded to say that I needed to completely reconceive my project.

  I barely noticed that Charles was wet until I heard him kind of squelch across the room.

  “Is it raining?” I craned to see out the window, but no, it was clear outside.

  “I need your help,” Charles said. This was just kind of how Charles talked, and there was no point in asking for clarification because then he’d actually explain what he was doing, which would take longer than whatever he needed in the first place.

  “Does it have to be right now?”

  “Now would be ideal.”

  “Uh, should I assume I’m going to end up soaking wet?”

  “It’s a distinct possibility.”

  I sighed my you’re-lucky-I’m-the-best-roommate-in-the-history-of-roommates sigh, which was completely lost on Charles, as I pulled on already dirty clothes and shoved my feet back into my Vans. If nothing else, at least Charles’ random excursion would distract me from my physics drama.

  “Hey, are you going to Boston for Thanksgiving?” I asked Charles an hour later as we walked back to the dorm. I had not, in fact, ended up getting soaking wet, since apparently the sprinklers Charles had run through earlier were on a timer. He’d never told me exactly why he needed to take pictures of me in various locations outside an unmarked building, and I hadn’t asked, content that I was serving some greater, mysterious purpose.

  “No. Even if I relished the idea of spending time with my family, I can’t countenance a celebration of the violent slaughter and subsequent systematic oppression of Native Americans in the service of a massive land grab, followed by sexual violence, cultural negation, and acts of inhumanity perpetrated under the guise of constructing a national identity. Besides, I don’t even like turkey. The meat cleaves disturbingly. Are you?”

  “What? Oh, no. Can’t afford the plane ticket. Besides, Thanksgiving is when my grandparents come over, and they aren’t really down with the whole gay thing.”

  That was an understatement. My dad’s father looked at me like I was scum and wouldn’t hug me hello, like maybe I was going to try for some action or something. My dad’s mom mostly just shot me side-eye and didn’t answer me when I talked to her, so I’d stopped trying long ago. On my mom’s side, my grandparents acted like they didn’t know I was gay.

  My grandmother would pat my cheek and say how handsome I was. Then she would ask if I had a girlfriend yet. She always managed the question with such sincerity that I had no clue whether she was legit delusional, being passive-aggressive, or possibly just displayin
g early-warning signs of Alzheimer’s. Except that my grandfather, who was sharp as a tack, did the same thing, making comments about the women we encountered that would’ve made me uncomfortable even if I had found them attractive.

  Like, okay, none of it was The Worst—I knew that people had it way worse with being out to their families. The part that stung the most was that my parents never corrected them, reminded them I was gay, or called them on it when they made derogatory comments about queerness in general.

  Sometimes my mom would shoot me apologetic or guilty looks when they said these things. Looks that said, It’s so unfortunate that this is a thing that has to happen. Like it never even occurred to her that she could intercede. That maybe she should care more about my feelings than about keeping the peace.

  Janie and Eric were better. Eric would roll his eyes at them, and Janie’d sometimes say, “He wouldn’t have a girlfriend, Nana, he’d have a boyfriend.” Of course, she inevitably followed this up with, “if he ever actually spoke to anyone instead of acting like a freak,” under her breath to me. She meant it affectionately, though. I think.

  It had been just this kind of family gloominess that I’d managed to escape when Daniel had invited me to have Thanksgiving with him and Rex the year Will was in Holiday. I’d said yes immediately, even though I’d known that my mom would be upset. She had turned out to be surprisingly understanding, though, and at first I’d wondered if maybe I’d underestimated how bad she felt having to watch me navigate the uncomfortable family conversations.

  But another part of me couldn’t help but wonder if what I’d actually underestimated was how awkward she felt watching it. How much easier it was if I just wasn’t there and she could say, “Oh, Leo’s spending the holiday with friends.” And I’d wondered if that was how things would be from then on: my absence making things easier for everyone.