by Roan Parrish
“Seriously, what the hell is wrong? I get the whole ooh-college-new-city-angst thing, but you don’t seem the type to cry alone in a stairwell.”
“You don’t even know me,” I muttered, looking out into the expanse of night.
“Well, shit, I’m trying to! Just give me something.”
He was right. How the hell did I think I was going to end up with anyone who knew me if I didn’t start somewhere. So I did. I told him about how Daniel showing up in Holiday was about the best thing that had ever happened because for the first time I had someone to talk to who seemed to understand me a little.
I told him about Rex and how I’d watched them fall for each other. How sometimes it was physically painful to be around them because their love was an almost palpable thing in the room, showing me exactly what I wanted and didn’t have.
And I told him about Will. By the time I got to the part where Will had kissed me and then left for New York the next day, Skinny Jeans was shaking his head.
“What?”
“Tell me you didn’t. Tell me you didn’t pull a full-on Felicity and come to school in New York to follow this Will guy.”
“Dude, Felicity?”
“Felicity’s my jam! Whatever, don’t judge me. I have an older sister. What the hell’s your name, anyway?”
“Leo.”
“Ooh, are you one?”
“Um. No. I’m a Pisces, I think? I always forget the dates of it. Wait, what’s your name? In my head I’ve just been calling you Skinny Jeans.”
“Oh, weird, that is my name.”
He bumped me with his shoulder, and I felt this wave of warmth just from some dude palling around with me.
“No, seriously,” he went on. “Everyone said to my parents, ‘You can’t name him that; those aren’t even in style yet!’ but my folks were all, ‘Well, we can’t call him Boot Cut, it’s not black enough!’”
I started giggling a little, and we both jumped up to sit on the side of the wall.
“It’s Milton,” he said.
“Whoa. Heavy name.”
He grinned at me, then pulled out a flask. It was silver, and not the cheap, plain kind you can get at a gas station. Ornate, with filigreed cuts that shone in the moonlight like it was bejeweled.
“So, you were sad-drinking over whatshisname before. Now you’ve gotta happy drink with me over being here instead of in whereverthefuck Michigan, and making friends with magnificent me, and all the hot guys who’re gonna be psyched to jump the bones of a cute little white-boy skater with serious face.”
Whatever was in the flask burned going down but tasted of nothing.
“Just vodka, same as in the Jell-O shots, so you’ll be fine,” Milton said.
After a few mouthfuls, he pulled me down from the wall. “Just to be safe,” he said, and after a few more I was sure that he was going to be the best friend I’d ever had. I was warm in a good way, and the tension seemed to have seeped out of my shoulders.
When I looked out into the night, the lit-up windows twinkled like imperfect stars, waiting for the hand that would extinguish them. Then I was on my back looking up at the real stars, trying to pick out constellations like I had at home, but there was too much light pollution and probably regular pollution, so I couldn’t see anything.
Milton was talking about the boyfriend he’d had last year—he’d gone to some school here in the city that he kept calling by name, but I didn’t know what it was. Sounded fancy, though. And he talked about all the cute guys he’d already seen.
I guess it was the spirit of confessional that Milton mentioned—or maybe it was the vodka—but I found myself telling him that I’d never really had sex. That Will’s kiss hadn’t just been the best kiss of my life but also my first. That since then I’d briefly messed around with a guy in my statistics class at Grayling, but it had been… well, awkward would have been an understatement.
“Well, do you want to?” Milton asked, matter-of-factly.
“Ummm, yeah?”
He leaned over and touched his lips to mine softly, his kiss a question. The warmth of him next to me, his smell, the brush of his hand against my face. It didn’t feel scary or intense like Will or overwhelming like this city. It just felt comfortable. Welcoming. Like someone actually appreciated me for once. Wanted me. Not out of pity or because I wore them down, but because maybe he actually liked me.
I sought his lips again, pulled him down next to me until we were facing each other. Then he gave me this grin—this bright grin full of joy, and went for it, lips and tongue and hands everywhere. Every time we pulled apart for breath, Milton smiled at me, like he was happy to be there, with me, right then. Until I pushed my hand up the back of his stupid T-shirt and rested it between his shoulder blades, holding him to me. Then his smile turned wolfish, and he tangled our legs together, so we were locked up tight.
I froze when the bulge in his tight jeans ground against my answering hardness. At my stuttering breath, Milton kissed me deeper and rolled his hips into mine. The pulse of pleasure washed through me like a stone dropped into still water and heat crept down the backs of my thighs and up into my stomach.
Milton’s groan was unguarded appreciation, and he kissed my neck. I was light-headed with sensation, and I didn’t know what I was supposed to do, really, so I just ran my hands over the smooth skin of Milton’s back. His kisses canted my head back, and I found myself straining to see the stars like I could at home. It seemed like they should be there, clear and bright, standing witness.
But then Milton went for my zipper and I didn’t give a crap about the stars anymore because his hand felt amazing, his grip firm as he started to stroke me. I struggled up to my knees, almost falling on my face because of the tangle Milton had made of my pants, and pulled him up, unzipping him and trying to pull down his jeans. They were so tight I ended up with my face level with his crotch, trying to yank at the fabric.
I was swearing at his pants and kind of laughing, too, because my dick was sort of just bobbing between us. Milton had his lip caught between his teeth, silently cracking up at me.
“Too tight,” I complained, and he just laughed harder. Finally he took pity on me and slid his jeans down gracefully, like a snake shedding its skin. We were kneeling, facing each other, and I was appreciating the first hard-on I’d ever seen in, you know, context.
“You want me to shine my flashlight app down there or something, bro?” he asked, and I realized I was basically just staring at his dick in the dark of the rooftop with my junk hanging out like a total fool.
“No, it’s okay.”
He chuckled and pulled me upright, pressing me against the wall when I lost my balance, my pants still rucked around my ankles, and licked a slow line up my throat. My heart was beating wildly and I grabbed at his shoulders to keep steady.
With his face buried in my neck, he started stroking me, slow and hard, until I was pushing my hips toward him and squirming to encourage him to go faster. His breath against my wet skin was warm, and the smell of his cologne was intoxicating.
I wanted to make him feel as good as he was making me feel, but my hands were shaky and useless. I pulled at his ass, trying to get him closer and, with a groan, he palmed his erection and started stroking us together. He was hard and slick, and we strained together.
I had my eyes squeezed shut so tight I saw starbursts of white before I felt the explosion. Milton’s hand took me over the edge, and it was like everything was collapsing. A sky folding in at the edges and buckling like paper crumpled in the hand.
My thighs were trembling and my stomach was clenching and my breath was coming short as I collapsed against the wall, pulling Milton closer. This time when I reached for him, he pressed himself into my hand and both our fists slid over his dick faster, faster, until he swore and came, biting my earlobe hard enough to sting.
He didn’t let me feel awkward or weird about being slumped against a total stranger, half-naked, slick with sweat and tacky with
come. He just snaked back into those damn jeans and dragged mine up by the belt loops, zipping me back up carefully and kissing me once more on the mouth.
“We’re going to be friends,” he said and gave me the same warm smile he’d given me before.
I’M LYING in bed with another guy’s come all over me, I texted Will once I was back in my room, tipsy with alcohol and overwhelmed by the night, the only light my gently glowing phone screen. Still no sign of my new roommate, and I was glad I’d have a little time by myself. As freaked out as I’d been before, and as lonely, I didn’t think I could’ve stood facing a stranger while trying to strip off come-stuck clothes.
It was a lie. My text. I’d taken a shower as soon as I unstuck myself. But still.
I stared at the screen as it dimmed halfway, any hope of a response fading with it. Fuck, I couldn’t believe I actually sent that text. I didn’t know what I was hoping for. That it’d make him jealous? Punish him for not wanting me? Both were ridiculous in light of our earlier conversation. God, there should be a function where you can unsend a text for thirty seconds like there is in e-mail.
Just as I buried my head under the pillow, my phone chimed. My breath came quicker as I looked at Will’s text.
That’s exactly what you should be doing in college. Play safe, kiddo.
I squeezed my eyes shut as if I could unsee the words. Obliterate them. But the hollow feeling gaped in my stomach, and I curled around it, pulling the covers up though it was warm in the room.
The extra-long jersey knit sheets from the bookstore smelled of the plastic package they’d come in. Not comforting at all. No history of sleep or relaxation in their fibers. Just the reminder that they were brand-new, with nothing to make them inviting except time.
Chapter 3
September
I STARTLED awake to the train whistle blowing and wondered for the millionth time why I’d chosen that as my alarm and yet, like always, was too asleep to do anything about it.
Charles was perched on his desk chair, muttering furiously at his computer as usual. For the first week or so that we’d lived together, I’d never seen Charles sleep. I assumed that he just went to bed after me and got up before me, but I legit had a moment once, waking in the middle of the night to find him pacing his side of the room restlessly, where I’d wondered if he had some kind of never-sleeping vampire shit going on.
His trackpad clicks got increasingly more aggressive, and his bony shoulders hunched closer to the screen.
“Are the interwebs hurting you again?”
He wheeled around like he was shocked to see me there, though my alarm had blasted a train whistle through our room not thirty seconds before. He did that a lot: seemed to forget I existed. But it was kind of nice. Like he was so used to me he could forget I was there and just be. I, on the other hand, never forgot about Charles because he practically vibrated this manic energy, and I could feel it from anywhere in the room.
He’d blustered into the dorm room the day after I’d met Milton, a huge lumpy duffel bag strapped to him and four boxes stacked on the seat of a wheeled desk chair that he was pushing like a dolly. He’d stuck out a hand to me, nearly overbalancing the chair and boxes, and introduced himself, explaining that he was supposed to go to MIT but had changed his mind at the last minute—for some reason I’ve never fully understood—and now he was here, only yikes, he didn’t have a room and so they’d put him with me.
The whole explanation took place while he was holding my hand, like he’d forgotten we were touching or that hands even existed. He made the kind of eye contact that would’ve been creepy if he’d seemed douchey, or intimidating if he’d seemed overconfident, but was just intense in the way that everything about Charles was intense.
He was tall and far too thin for his frame, bony shoulders poking at the seams of his T-shirts and knobby spine perpetually bruised from sitting folded into lecture hall seats. His hands and feet looked disproportionately large and his Adam’s apple tested the boundaries of his skin when he swallowed. When he gestured, his long arms and bony hands looked skeletal and precarious. But in front of the computer, hunched and intent, he looked completely at home, just as he did walking down the streets in expansive, long-legged steps, his clothes billowing around him like some kind of Arthurian cloak.
His curly brown hair was always frizzy and mussed because he pulled on it, and he had these permanent dark smudges under his eyes, but when he talked he was animated, and I had the suspicion that he might be some kind of secret genius. He’d said he wasn’t uncommonly smart, he just went to a good high school, had basic reasoning skills, and didn’t allow his personal beliefs to get in the way of reason, which made him seem smarter than most people. But I didn’t know. All that seemed pretty uncommon to me.
“Someone on Wikipedia has written, ‘the tunnels beneath Paris are almost catacombic,’ which number one, is not a word, but even if it were, what would that ‘b’ be doing exactly—I mean, would it be said like cata-comic? Because that’s strangely the opposite. But mostly, they’re not catacombic. They are catacombs.”
Charles was a near-compulsive Wikipedia editor. His expertise was vast and shallow.
“Would you ever say ‘honeycombic’?”
“I wouldn’t, no.” He sounded disgusted.
“Well, how would you… adjectivize it or whatever? Honeycombish? Honeycombesque?”
“They just are catacombs. No adjectivizing required.”
Sometimes Charles was also super literal.
MILTON PUSHED our door open without knocking, took one look at me, and rolled his eyes, tapping his watch. We had Intro Psych lecture together, and he always came by to collect me because I sometimes fell back asleep after my alarm went off.
Charles ignored Milton in the passive way he mostly ignored everyone—as if they hadn’t quite intruded into his headspace yet—and Milton clapped him on the shoulder like he always did, and then left him alone.
Milton was good like that. He didn’t take shit personally. Lucky for me, because he was basically the best friend I’d ever had even though I’d acted like a total lunatic after we’d hooked up the first night here.
I had been all, Oh my god, Milton, that was amazing, but I can’t be your boyfriend because my heart belongs to another, and he’d been all, Omigod, Leo, I don’t want to be your boyfriend, I was just horny as fuck and wanted to jerk off with you on a roof under the stars and now we can be friends because we barely even have chemistry really, okay?
Well, maybe it hadn’t been in those exact words, but that was basically what had happened.
We’d tried an experiment of kissing once more a few weeks later in the library, and both started laughing. I didn’t really get it, because that night on the roof, I had been legit into him, and it was super hot, but now… I just didn’t think of him that way, I guess. He said that was normal, and I believed him because if I’d learned anything about Milton over the past month, it was that he was like a Sex + Love Genius. He just completely got it.
I dragged on yesterday’s jeans and a not-too-dirty T-shirt and jammed my feet into my Vans in about fifteen seconds, as Milton looked on, half amused and half silently judging me. He didn’t say anything, though, because my total lack of fashion meant we were on time for Psych and even had time to stop in at his preferred coffee shop.
I texted Daniel, like I did almost every time I was in a coffee shop, and told him I was ordering The Daniel, which is what the coffee shop in Holiday christened the drink he always ordered: three shots of espresso in a large coffee. He texted back a string of random letters that culminated in an emoji of a grimacing head making a thumbs-up sign. I suppose that meant he’d finally gotten a smartphone.
I saw the green ellipsis that meant he was trying to write something else, but after it stuttered a few times, it finally went away. I could practically see him, messing with the new phone to try and explain what he meant to type, making more nonsense, and finally giving up in frustration, mo
st likely throwing the phone down on whatever surface was nearest.
He’d probably forget where he tossed it and wander around later looking for it and pulling his hair out. Rex would ask him when he’d used it last, and he’d remember that it was texting with me and that he’d gotten pissed. Rex would go to wherever he was and pull it out of the couch cushions or the stack of books or wherever he’d thrown it and hand it back to him with that soft look he gets only for Daniel. That look that says I love all these small things about you that are just you but mean something to me. Maybe he’d slide the phone into Daniel’s pocket and kiss him.
Fuck, I missed them.
WE ROLLED into Psych just as Marin, the TA, was setting the professor’s notes on the lectern and adjusting the PowerPoint presentation. I was a little bit obsessed with her because she never smiled. Professor Ginsberg was pretty amusing and joked around, and Marin was just stone. I mean, maybe she’d heard all the jokes before, but still. Not even a polite, indulgent yes-I-acknowledge-humor quirk of the lips. She was totally nice in discussion section—even cracked jokes herself, so it wasn’t like she didn’t have a sense of humor. But still, no smiles, even when we laughed. It was like she was playing some kind of secret game and if she smiled it meant she lost.
Thomas waved us over excitedly, having saved us seats. Thomas was always early and liked to sit directly in the middle of the classroom, like it was a movie theater and he wanted the best view. I wasn’t sure why he bothered since he drew little comics in his notebook throughout the entire lecture.
“Hey, guys!” Thomas shuffled his stuff aside so we could sit down. “Did you see Marin’s shoes?” Everything Thomas said sounded like there was an exclamation point after it.
I squinted to see that stone-faced Marin was rocking some Vans with kitties on them or something.
“Are they cats?” asked Milton, also squinting.
“They’re amaze!” said Thomas, turning to his notebook where he spent the next fifty minutes drawing a comic about a cat that had wings like Pegasus as Professor Ginsberg talked about Emotions. She said “capital-E emotions” to designate it as a topic. Which cracked me up, because of course I knew emotion was psychology, but the idea that we were studying emotions—going to school to learn about feelings like some alien species studying how to be human—just tickled me.