Middle of Somewhere Series Box Set

by Roan Parrish

  I pushed myself off Will, and he winced when I accidentally elbowed him in the ribs. He ran a hand through his hair and threw his head back, addressing his words to the ceiling.

  “Look, I don’t have a lot of answers here, okay? I am very aware that I’m not the easiest person to be around sometimes, and you’re… well, you’re not exactly a paragon of experience yourself. And I reserve the right to find other people desirable. And to, like, renegotiate shit down the line.”

  “Okay, great, fine, and I reserve the right to maybe want only you and for you to not act like that’s me lying to myself.”

  Will nodded, though I could tell this part made him uncomfortable. That he couldn’t believe someone could want only him.

  “Okaaaay,” I said, “so we’ve established that neither of us knows what we’re doing, so we both just have to trust that we know what we want right now and that what we want might change?”

  “I… guess so?”

  “So are we… together?”

  Will rolled his eyes so hard I was surprised he didn’t have an aneurysm. “What, you want to update your Facebook status?”

  “I don’t even have Facebook, you fucker.” I shoved at Will’s shoulder. “But like… just say I did, what would I be updating my status to?”

  “It’s complicated,” Will mocked in a singsongy voice. I elbowed him. “How about ‘Leo is now in a relationship with Thai Food’?”

  “Huh, you totally have Facebook, don’t you?”

  “Whatever, Claire set it up for me a hundred years ago.”

  “Wiiiiill,” I whined.

  “Leooooo,” he whined back.

  I climbed on top of him again, snaking my hand down his pants. “Well, you should be happy, anyway. This was, like, the absolute least romantic getting-together moment of all time. I should just go offer myself to Viggo Mortensen,” I told him, kissing his jaw. “He’d totally update his Facebook profile to include me.”

  Will groaned like maybe the thought of me with Viggo Mortensen was kind of doing it for him, and arched up underneath me. I leaned down slowly, loving the way he tilted his chin up so our mouths met, like his lips were just waiting for mine. I put a hand on either side of his face, holding him still. His golden lashes fluttered open, and his brows drew together.

  “Why did you do it?” I asked him slowly. His brow wrinkled in confusion. “In Holiday. Why did you really kiss me?”

  Will pushed me off so he could sit up.

  “I shouldn’t have,” he said so softly I could barely hear him.

  I sighed.

  “I didn’t say I didn’t want to,” he muttered.

  I pulled him to look at me, willing him to give me something.

  “Look, I don’t have a good answer for you, Leo.”

  “Just tell me the truth.”

  “You were honest and sweet and infuriatingly hot, and I wanted you to want me. It seemed like if someone like you could like me, then maybe it would mean I was worth liking.”

  I gaped at him.

  “That morning, I was packing my stuff up at Claire’s and she was upset that I was leaving, even though I’d been telling her for days, and I was too tired to get into it with her. She said, ‘You make it so easy for people to hate you. It’s the only thing you never fight about.’ I just… I wanted you be different. I wanted you to like me, okay? And that was the only way I could think to do it. And then when I kissed you—” He shook his head sharply. “I knew I’d made a big mistake.”

  My stomach sank a little at that, even after all these months and everything that had happened between us since then. When he spoke again, his voice was rough.

  “Because I was the one who ended up wanting you.”

  He looked down, and I couldn’t quite catch my breath.

  “You promised,” he said, still looking down. I bit my lip as guilt washed through me again. “You promised that when you found out I wasn’t the… the fantasy you wanted that I wouldn’t lose my best friend. But I did. The thing is… I knew I would. I knew it would all go to shit and I would lose you and I would miss you and it would suck, and I did it fucking anyway. Because I wanted you. I didn’t know how exactly, but I just… I wanted you, Leo. I always wanted you.”

  He bit his lip and took my face in his hands like he had that first time. He leaned in slowly and we kissed and kissed and kissed.

  19

  Chapter 19

  May

  “Oh Jesus, no. No. No fucking way,” Milton said. “Hard limit. Just no.”

  We were standing in the kitchen of an apartment where Melissa, one of the seniors in Milton’s acting class, lived. She was leaving for the summer, going on tour with some Disney cruise or something, and was offering to let us rent it cheap. We’d dragged our asses out of bed at seven in the morning on the day after finals to look at the place because she had to go to a 9:00 a.m. training on the particulars of how to comport oneself while in Disney costume on the ship or something.

  “It’s not a big deal,” Melissa said. “You just stomp when you come into the kitchen and they totally scatter. Little fuckers.” She kicked at a roach that was skittering down the side of the cabinet. “They mostly stay in the kitchen, anyway. And the bathroom,” she said upon consideration. “Well, and sometimes—”

  “Dude,” Thomas said to Milton. “I know you don’t want to, like, be dependent on your folks anymore or whatever, but….”

  Milton sighed.

  “Roaches are fascinating,” Charles said, peering at one that was poised at the corner of the doorframe. “Did you know some of the largest ones fly? Strange. They seem so grounded. Armored. But I suppose so are planes.”

  Andy and Thomas conversed in glances, Andy’s saying, “Yo, your friend is weird as hell,” and Thomas’ answering, “Yeah, but he’s not so bad once you get used to it.”

  “Maybe we should just check Craigslist,” I offered.

  We had really left looking for a place until it was too late, none of us quite making it from thought to action, even though we’d been talking about living together for the better part of a month.

  We trudged back to the dorms in low spirits, deciding we needed sustenance in order to sort out the whole mess. We only had two more days before we needed to vacate our rooms, so whatever we were going to find, it had to be quick.

  “Hey, how was it?” Gretchen asked, finishing her oatmeal as we dropped down at our usual table in the corner of the dining hall.

  “Remember the Felicity where she and Ben move in together and she rents the place with all the roaches?”

  Gretchen nodded, wrinkling her nose.

  “Well it was like that,” Milton said. “Only worse because no Ben.”

  “Yikes. Well, good luck, guys. I’m going to meet Layne. She’s taking me on a picnic in Central Park.” Gretchen grinned and scuffed her toe.

  “Aww,” Thomas and Milton chorused.

  “But we’re on for tomorrow night, right?”

  We were going to smuggle all the food out of the dining hall that we could and then hole up in our room (Charles had returned the filing cabinet to the hallway and largely deconstructed the FBI profiler wall above his desk since finals had ended). We had the second half of the final season of Felicity to watch, and we were going to marathon it as our farewell to the year. Milton had seen it before, of course, but the rest of us had all laid bets on how things would end.

  “You guys,” Milton had said repeatedly. “You guys, you have no idea how intense shit’s about to get.”

  “I Wikipediaed it,” Charles said, shrugging, “and I don’t understand why—” Milton practically flew across the table to clap his hand over Charles’ mouth.

  “Say not one single word,” Milton hissed.

  “We are absolutely on,” I said to Gretchen, and she gathered her dishes and walked off toward the door, hair almost white in the bright sun that streamed through the windows.

  We spent the next hour combing through Craigslist properties. It w
as becoming increasingly clear that the things Milton had told us about our real estate options were inaccurate and likely gleaned from overhearing conversations among people with a lot more money than us.

  A few hours later, I was officially exhausted and completely demoralized. We’d traipsed to four apartments, each one more horrible than the last. There was one place we all loved, but when we tried to sign the lease, it turned out that the Craigslist poster had transposed the first two numbers of the rent on the announcement. He apologized profusely and said that explained why he’d gotten so many calls about the place, but the fact remained that it was now about a thousand dollars out of our price range.

  As I walked past Washington Square Park, the white arch against blue sky funneled me in. My phone rang as I dropped down under a tree and when I swiped to answer, Daniel’s face was looking at me, shocked.

  “Holy… what did you… how are you on my phone?” he said, shaking it.

  “Dude, you FaceTimed me.”

  “What the shit is a face time?”

  “You video called me instead of regular calling me. Like Skype.”

  “Shit, that’s a thing?”

  I nodded as he paced around the room. “Um, you’re kind of giving me vertigo. Can you either sit still or just regular call me.”

  “Oh, sorry.” He threw himself down on the couch. “Where are you?” He cocked his head, squinting at the phone.

  “Washington Square Park.” I tilted the phone so he could see the arch and then the fountain.

  “Oh, nice.”

  We chatted for a bit and swapped finals horror stories. One of his students had asked for an extension on a paper because his roommate accidentally took mushrooms and then dropped his computer out their window on the tenth floor.

  “How do you accidentally take mushrooms?”

  “I don’t think he took them accidentally,” Daniel said. “I think he probably just misestimated their efficacy.”

  “Did you give him the extension?”

  “Yeah. I mean, Jesus. Living with people sounds like utter hell.”

  Since Daniel had never lived in the dorms while he was in college, he had been fascinated all year to hear my stories of the bizarre goings-on there.

  “Well you do live with someone, you know.”

  “Oh, well, but Rex isn’t someone.” I could see the softness that always crept into Daniel’s voice when he mentioned Rex in his eyes too. “He redid all the cabinets this weekend.” He pointed the phone into the kitchen where I could see exactly nothing because he wasn’t holding his hand still or angling the screen right.

  “You’ll have to give me the grand tour in person.”

  “Oh, right, right, that’s why I called. So, do you want to come next weekend or the weekend after? Either is fine, but Rex is doing this workshop at the queer youth group where Colin volunteers next Saturday, so he just wouldn’t be around for some of it.”

  “Oh man, how’s stuff going with you and Colin?”

  “The same, really. It’s good, but kinda awkward. He never comes here because he says he can tell that Rex still hates him. Basically true. But Rafe and Rex actually get along really well—they’re ridiculous together. Like, Rafe will talk super seriously about something and explain the whole thing and then ask Rex what he thinks, and Rex will say like five words, but of course they’re so perfectly true, and Rafe actually gets him, so he’ll just sit there and be like, ‘Huh. Yes. That’s true.’ And then they’ll both sit there and think about shit together.”

  “Can I meet them when I visit?”

  “Yeah, sure. You’ll think they’re weird. Rafe has like zero sense of humor, and Colin will probably do magic tricks for you.”

  “Um. Yeah, that is weird. Okay, so weekend after next sounds good. Hopefully I won’t be homeless by then.”

  I filled Daniel in on our fruitless search for an apartment.

  “Ugh, what a shit show. You should go to res life. They usually have a list of buildings around campus that do deals with students who are staying in the summer.”

  “Seriously? Oh god, thank you, you’re a life saver.”

  At the far end of the park a camera crew was setting up, clearing an area for a group of women in colorful saris who began to dance, their movements made magical by the spray of the fountain.

  “Hey, so, listen,” I said just before we hung up. “Um. What if I could convince Will to come to Philly with me? Would that be cool? I mean, I don’t know if I’ll be able to, but. Just in case.”

  “So… does that mean you guys are like…. What does that mean?”

  “We’re gonna try being… a thing or whatever.” My grin was so huge it was kind of hurting my face.

  Daniel got this almost sappy expression on his face.

  “Aw, man. That’s great. I know it’s what you wanted. Also, PS, if that fucker does anything to you, I’ll—”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. Thanks. Really, thanks.”

  He nodded, but then his expression soured.

  “Ugh, so I guess that means we’ll have to try and get along better.” His mouth was in a resentful pout. “So, okay, yeah, sure, bring Mini-Skarsgård, whatever.”

  “You know he calls you the Prince of Poetry.”

  Daniel scowled and muttered something that sounded like “pretty boy model asshole bullshit,” but I couldn’t be sure.

  Having done all the laundry I’d been hoarding during the last month, I was idly packing my clothes while Charles and I listened to Serial, pausing it every few minutes to argue about what was going on.

  I’d texted Milton to go to res life since he had already packed, and he’d gotten leads on three really good options for apartments. We were going to go see them the next morning.

  I couldn’t believe the year was over. It was kind of how I felt when I sank into watching a really immersive TV show—like I couldn’t imagine the characters and settings not being parts of my life—and then it was over. Only, unlike a show, there was no real climax.

  I was glad we had a concrete activity tonight to celebrate the end of the year. Besides, I was actually dying to see how Felicity turned out. Will could say whatever he wanted about how it was unrealistic to expect life to be like fiction, but I was pretty sure most people would agree it feels better to have some kind of closure. Some way of marking a momentous occasion.

  Will texted while I was in the middle of packing, a strangely elliptical text asking me to meet him at the planetarium at five. When I wrote back to ask why, he just said, Duh, what do you think you do at a planetarium.

  When I got there, he took my arm and led me inside. He seemed tense and kind of irritable, which wasn’t that unusual, but he didn’t generally invite me to do stuff when he was irritable.

  “I watched that scene in Rebel Without a Cause,” I told him as the lights dimmed.

  “Just the scene? Oy vey, the younger generation.” But he slid his hand onto my thigh and settled into his seat as the show started. I leaned my head against Will’s shoulder and breathed in his smell, and his hand tightened on my thigh. The stars were as interesting as ever, but Will was clearly distracted, which made me unsure why he’d invited me.

  After the show let out, we lingered in the park, Will still seeming fidgety even though we were outside. He kept fiddling with his phone and didn’t seem to hear me when I asked if he wanted to get food.

  Finally, assuming he was just in a mood, I said, “Okay, well thanks for taking me to the show,” and leaned in to kiss his cheek, ready to go back to the dorms and leave him to his brooding. When I went for a peck, though, he grabbed my hand almost painfully. I raised my eyebrows at him as if to say What is your problem today? Finally, he jerked a folded piece of paper out of his back pocket and thrust it at me.

  “Here,” he said, holding on for a second after I’d taken it so I had to tug it from his fingers. He made a sound like Ugh and a waving me off gesture, then stuck his hands in his pockets and half turned away.

  I ope
ned the paper, feeling the residual heat from Will’s body. It was a color print-off from a website. At first glance it looked like a star chart and I thought it had something to do with the show we’d just seen, but when I looked closer….

  “Oh. My. God.”

  “Oh, just shut up about it, okay? I just thought you’d like it.”

  “Oh my god, you bought me a star?”

  The paper was a certificate printed out from a website called StarRegistry, declaring me to be the proud owner of a star called The Shire.

  “Wiiiiiiill,” I whined, grabbing his arm and bouncing up and down on my toes. “You made a romantic gesture!”

  Will looked like he was about to vomit.

  “Okay,” he said, “whatever, the point is that you should just stay with me this summer. It’s stupid to waste your money on an apartment with those guys. Besides, you’ll be so busy with two jobs that you won’t have time to do anything else, and it’s supposed to be your summer vacation, so whatever. It’s cheaper if you just stay with me.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Little bubbles of joy started to rise in my stomach and chest like champagne. I couldn’t stop bouncing, and the moment stretched out as vast as a galaxy. There was me, standing there, my arms tethering me to Will, and there was Will, holding something out to me that was as delicate as starlight and as ineffable.

  Where once I would have grabbed at it, only to watch my hands slide through nothing, now I just watched it, appreciating everything it illuminated.

  Will was eyeing me suspiciously, lower lip caught in his teeth. I shook my head, forcing myself to stop bouncing.

  “Gonna need a little more than ‘it’s cheaper,’” I told him with a smirk, still holding on to his arm. Star or no star, I wasn’t about to impose myself on Will for three months if he was just letting me stay out of pity or because he was jealous I might live with someone who had a crush on me.

  I mean, okay, I was mostly just giving him shit. Obviously, I wanted to stay with him. I just wanted him to say it nicely.