by Roan Parrish
“Well, it’s fine—the dorms stay open, so it can be just like any other weekend,” Charles said.
It was true, and it’d be good to have some quiet time to get a lot of work done before the last push leading up to finals. Still, maybe it made me pathetic, or a terrible person, given the whole slaughter, oppression, inhumanity issue, which I knew was true. But I was still kind of bummed at the idea of having nowhere to go for Thanksgiving.
I shot a quick text off to Daniel asking him what he was doing for Thanksgiving. The idea of spending it in with him and Rex in Philadelphia seemed perfect. Hey, maybe I could even convince Will to come.
Rex is taking me to a cabin, he wrote back, with one of the suspicious-looking crooked mouth emojis that looked laughably like the expression I’d picture him having to accompany that statement in real life. Good to see he’d mastered the smartphone. In a state park, he texted, this one accompanied by a straight-line mouth emoji, also eerily accurate. My heart sank.
Omigod, you have total emoji face! I wrote back. And, Have fun!
On a whim, I texted Will. Do you have plans for Thanksgiving?
Hell no, hate tgiving, he wrote, no emoji. I couldn’t even imagine the emoji that could come close to expressing Will levels of scorn.
“Maybe I’ll offer to work at Mug Shots on Thanksgiving,” I mused. At least I could make some money and maybe even rack up some karma points with Layne by volunteering. I was still trying to come back from the whole telling her I was gay in an attempt to get her to hire me thing.
“Aren’t things usually closed on Thanksgiving?” Charles asked absently.
I was ready to commit actual bodily harm against my physics TA by the last class before Thanksgiving break. It was infuriating because I loved the lecture so much, the readings were fascinating, and I was actually kind of thinking that being a physics major would be amazing. But this fucking guy made me want to invent new words just to express my loathing for him. I couldn’t tell if he had it in for me in particular or if he was this much of a dick to everyone, but it was like he took joy in shooting down my ideas and making everything as difficult as possible by giving me the bare minimum of information in response to any question I asked.
I walked back to my room and fell immediately face-first onto my bed where I lay, backpack still on, until Charles shook me awake a few hours later and asked if I was purposely reenacting what it felt like to be pressed to death. He was writing a paper about the Salem witch trials—I’d had no idea how many theories there were to explain the cause of the girls’ mania—and had explained in great detail the week before about pressing as a method of execution.
I woke up long enough to grumble, shrug my backpack off, and pull the covers up before going back to sleep. When I woke up the next morning, I almost panicked when I saw it was after ten until I remembered it was Thanksgiving break and I didn’t have anywhere to be until five, when Charles and I were going over to Milton’s folks’ house for dinner. When they’d heard Milton had friends who were staying in the dorms over Thanksgiving, they’d insisted we come celebrate with them, Charles’ critiques of the holiday notwithstanding.
Send me a pic of yr outfit, Milton texted me around noon.
Ummmmm, I wrote back. I was just wearing jeans and a hoodie like I always did. Is Thanksgiving an… outfit occasion? It never had been in my family. But I guessed I should’ve known that my parents might not be predictive of the sartorial habits of what I’d gleaned was a pretty stylish New York City family, considering that my mom’s idea of fancy was a sweatshirt decorated with white puffy paint lace around the collar and my dad’s was his plaid button-down from Lands’ End instead of his plaid button-down from Target.
Facepalm, Milton texted. Never mind. See you at 5.
“Hey, what are you wearing to dinner?” I asked Charles, who was reading up on the history of Native American cultural appropriation to make sure he could accurately synopsize the various critical positions.
“A navy suit, a light gray shirt, and brown wingtips,” he said.
“Right, sure.”
Holy shit.
I texted Will: FASHION EMERGENCY!!! Can I borrow something to wear? P.S. Happy Tgiving.
“So you seriously aren’t doing anything festive for Thanksgiving?”
“I got a turkey sandwich with cranberry compote for lunch. That was festive as hell.”
I rolled my eyes at Will and shrugged on the shirt he held out to me.
“Hmm, I wonder if Rex can cook Thanksgiving dinner in the cabin?” I mused. Rex was an amazing cook, and I couldn’t imagine him passing up the opportunity.
“Huh? They’re going to Michigan?”
“No, no. They went to a cabin in some state park for Thanksgiving. I just figured Rex had told you.”
Will snorted. “I never hear from that asshole anymore.”
“You don’t? Since when?”
He looked at me like I’d said something stupid. “Uh, since he and Daniel shacked up.”
“But… why?” I knew Daniel and Will weren’t exactly one another’s biggest fans, but I couldn’t imagine that Daniel would ever ask Rex not to talk to Will.
“Because that’s what happens when people get into relationships, kiddo. They don’t give a shit about other people anymore.” His tone was matter-of-fact.
He slipped the jacket over my shoulders, and we both looked at me in the mirror.
“It doesn’t look good on me the way it does on you,” I grumbled. The suit was light gray with a dark gray pinstripe, and on him it looked classy, but I looked like I was playing dress-up as a gangster or something.
“It doesn’t really go with your coloring. Besides, you’re skinny as shit.”
I glared at him. “Well, fix it!”
“What, like feed you a calorie-dense meal?”
I slugged him in the shoulder.
He picked through his closet and pulled out a pair of dark gray pants, a thin white shirt, and a thick navy sweater that buttoned with round wooden buttons and looked like it should be worn by a shepherd in Wales or something.
“Ooh, soft.” I reached for the clothes.
“Are you wearing boxers?” Will asked, eyeing my ass in a distinctly nonappreciative way.
“Yeah, why?”
“Take them off.”
“Um.”
He just looked at me.
“Turn around,” I said. He rolled his eyes and pulled some underwear out of his drawer, throwing them at me.
“Put those on.”
“You want me to wear your underwear?”
“Don’t get too excited, kiddo.”
He turned back around while I changed. The pants probably weren’t supposed to be this baggy, but they didn’t look too bad. The shirt was soft and the sweater fit me perfectly in the shoulders, its heavy knit lending me enough bulk that I didn’t look so skinny.
“I look like I should be at a fancy ski lodge or something.”
Will came and stood behind me, looking at my reflection in the mirror. He nodded, as if satisfied.
“Does it look okay?” I was totally fishing, but I couldn’t help it. The sweater smelled like him, and I could smell him right there, and his hair gleamed golden in the mirror next to the dark of my own.
Will slid his arms around my waist from behind and rested his chin on my shoulder.
“Yeah,” he said. I grinned, and I could feel his lips move against my neck as I saw his smile bloom in the mirror.
Milton’s parents were nothing like I’d imagined. I’d only ever known people’s parents who were… well, parents. Milton’s parents were people. His mom was in some kind of nonprofit arts administration, and she dressed like the ladies who ran galleries I’d seen in movies about New York: a fitted black skirt that came to midcalf over heeled black boots, a cobalt blue sweater, and a necklace that looked like The Hulk had torn a piece off the side of an airplane and twisted it into a circle and put it over her head. She wore her hair in a riot of natu
ral curls tipped blonde, and her bright pink lipstick would’ve looked ridiculous on my mom, but on her it was amazing. Even though she was really nice, I’d been ridiculously intimidated by her since the moment she’d first opened the door for Charles and me.
His father was less intimidating because he was less interested in me, clearly wanting to take advantage of his time with Milton and his sister, Clarice, who was in her last year at Parson’s studying fashion design. His father did something that I didn’t fully understand and taught a class on political economy once a year at The New School. He apparently had a huge Twitter following because he was outspoken about the intersections of race in popular culture and political economy.
The Beales lived in Park Slope and had an amazing view of Prospect Park. I snapped a quick pic and sent it to Will with the caption Giving thanks that I didn’t show up looking like a total scrub! Xoxo.
Milton’s grandparents on his mom’s side showed up about an hour after we got there, as did a few of Clarice’s friends, all of whom were ridiculously well dressed in this way that I could never pull off even if someone picked my clothes out for me.
I was learning that there was this whole approach to fashion that wasn’t about what was most flattering but more about expressing personality. It elevated people-watching all across the city because it gave me even more material to use to try and figure out who people might be. Or, at least, who they wanted the world to think they were.
Some of Milton’s parents’ friends showed up a little while after that, carrying covered dishes of food and bringing an argument they’d been having in with them. It was about a recent policy change in the mayoral office, and I was embarrassed that I didn’t know anything about the local politics of the city yet. I saw the front page of the New York Times all over town, strewn across tables in the library or the dorms, and the Post and the Daily News at the counter of Mug Shots. But I still hadn’t absorbed enough of it to be able to remember names and make connections.
“Tommy’s a defense attorney and Skya works for the Sylvia Rivera Law Project,” Milton told me, eyebrow raised as if I was supposed to know the significance of that. Before I could ask, though, Milton’s mom herded us into the dining room where a long table was set with creamy white dishes that were probably the nicest thing I’d ever eaten off. The food was set up on the sideboard against the wall, and we filled our plates, the conversation zinging off in multiple directions.
Mostly I just ate and listened. Charles brought up the origins of Thanksgiving, spitting out his research in a tone with which I was intimately familiar. Milton’s dad and Skya, who were sitting closest to him, nodded as he talked about the hypocrisy of celebrating genocide, and I could tell Charles was excited to talk about what he’d learned.
But rather than either dismissing him or praising him, Skya asked Charles what he did to advocate for Native American issues on a daily basis, and told him gently but firmly that while it was all well and good to trot out a critique on a holiday that people have developed a sentimental attachment to for reasons far removed from its origins, it’s another entirely to actually do the work to make any kind of difference relating to that critique.
If I’d been Charles, I’d’ve been mortified, but he just nodded and said that he would look into it. And I was sure he would too. Skya patted his arm affectionately and told him that she could help him with some resources if he wanted.
The food was delicious. There was a turkey, stuffing, and mashed potatoes and gravy, but it was all fancy. The stuffing was made with cornbread and figs, the mashed potatoes were velvety and had a flavor I couldn’t place. There were also baked macaroni and cheese with truffle oil, and a shaved brussels sprout salad that managed to make a vegetable my mom usually served boiled to disgustingness taste like fluffy magic. For dessert there was a pecan pie, a blueberry pie, and a chocolate cheesecake with some kind of salted caramel sauce that tasted like liquid gold and that I basically wanted to drink out of a water glass.
After dinner, we sat in the living room having whiskey (the adults) and hot apple cider (the rest of us) and speaking at half speed because we were all too full and relaxed to muster the energy to form complex sentences. I was so satisfied that I was even drifting off a little. If I let my eyes cross slightly, I could make my vision double so that it looked like the Beales’ tastefully decorated Christmas tree was also sitting in Prospect Park.
Charles was deep in conversation with Skya about the implications of gender self-determination in the legal system, and Milton was in his element, charming Clarice’s friends. I was warm and full and at peace with the world. I nuzzled Will’s sweater and replayed the moment when he’d rested his chin on my shoulder.
My phone chirped with a text reply from Will, almost like he’d felt me thinking about him. I grinned. It was a picture of himself, taken in the mirror of a bar. He looked as beautiful as ever.
Then I turned my phone over to enlarge the picture and saw that over his shoulder were all men, some of them shirtless. His text said Gonna be giving thanks pretty soon myself *leer*.
My heart instantly plummeted into my stomach and I blinked hard, swallowing, the taste of all that delicious food gone sour in my mouth.
6
Chapter 6
December
There were only a few days of classes left before Reading Day and finals period, which was also when my Great Books paper and my dreaded physics final project were due.
Gone was the camaraderie of the week before when, in an attempt to distract myself from the knowledge that Will chose to spend Thanksgiving in a sleazy bar with some other man instead of with me, I’d gone impromptu sledding with Milton and some of his theater friends—including the mysterious Jason, on whom Milton’s crush had reached hero-worship levels.
And I kind of understood why. Dude was cool as hell. He was loud and confident and intense, but genuinely nice when you could get him to slow down enough to engage. He liked being the center of attention, but it was natural, not obnoxious. He just had charisma. Everyone, guys and girls alike, seemed to be totally into him. Hell, I couldn’t help but stop whatever I was doing to listen when he monologued.
He wasn’t handsome exactly—in fact, he was kind of funny looking. His nose was too big for his face and his smile was crooked, and his eyes and hair were a dirty-looking medium brown. But he was compelling. Engaging. All reaction and micro-expression and intense gaze.
We’d taken trays from the dining hall and gone to Prospect Park during the first snowfall that stuck. It wasn’t great sledding, but Milton had done it since he was a kid. Besides, I quickly realized that being from Michigan set my expectations of snow much higher than other people’s. One girl, a hilarious premed student from Louisiana called Sasha, had only seen snow once before in her life, and she was a riot, reacting to the modest hill we found like it was a black diamond ski slope.
Still, it was some of the most fun I’d had. We all fell over each other like puppies trying to pile onto the trays. There were a few families when we first arrived, but they left soon after dark and we got rowdier, pushing each other down the hill, holding on to each other’s hands and trying to slide down in tandem, and generally horsing around like idiots.
One of the guys whose name I never learned made some joke about sledding and Ethan Frome, which I didn’t get and I made a mental note to ask Daniel about it.
Finally, freezing cold and shaky from exertion, we left the dining hall trays at the top of the hill for anyone else to use, and trooped back toward the subway, stopping for hot chocolates twice at bodegas along the way. My mouth sticky with cheap chocolate and my fingers still numb, I fell asleep that night smiling, imagining someone walking past our trays poised in the snow and jumping on one with a grin, sliding downhill in the quiet darkness of the park.
Now, that night was like a distant memory. I was completely on edge, cursing every moment of leisure I’d ever enjoyed for being one more moment of work I had to do now. Charles was in som
e kind of intense caffeine and paranoia-fueled frenzy where he didn’t sleep, just paced around the room alternately muttering to himself and typing loudly on his computer, which drove me bonkers. He had crudely converted his school-issue side table into a standing desk by stacking it precariously on top of his actual desk and propping up the back edge on books.
Even Milton, who was usually cool as a damn cucumber, wasn’t unaffected. His outfits were distinctly uninspired, and he’d canceled the last two movie nights despite Felicity—which we had given up trying to pretend we were not full-on watching from start to finish with true gusto and strong contradictory opinions—being his total happy place.
Only Gretchen seemed mostly calm. She had a system that included detailed study and work schedules combined with long periods of rigorous physical exertion and timed psychic relaxation. In fact, I was pretty convinced that the fact that I’d been going to yoga with her regularly was the only thing that kept me from melting into an actual Leo puddle on the horrible carpet of my dorm room. I’d never worked so hard in my life, and things with my physics TA had reached a point where I practically started to freak out anytime his name showed up in my e-mail inbox.
I came to Will’s in hopes that being around him would calm me down.
He was clearly about to make some snarky comment about my disheveled state, but swallowed it when I rushed in and dropped my backpack on my way to burrow into his couch and have a minor nervous breakdown.
“Ooookay,” Will said. “I take it finals are not going well?”
“I’m gonna fail out of college,” I groaned into the couch.