by Roan Parrish
“Um, why?”
Will’s eyes narrowed, like he was seeing me in the outfit he’d chosen, and gestured me toward the dressing rooms.
“Because I want to see. Okay?”
And of course the idea that Will would want to see me in anything was so flattering that I immediately stumbled to the dressing room. Will hooked his thumbs in his belt loops and gave the dressing room attendant a look that said he had this and we didn’t need any assistance. She just gave him a bored once-over and raised one painted-on eyebrow, tapping at her phone where it rested on her slender thigh.
I hung the clothes on the back of the door, kicked off my ratty sneakers, and pulled off my jeans and T-shirt, letting them fall in a pile on the floor.
The mirror certainly didn’t do me any favors. In the direct lighting, reflected to myself from three angles, there was no avoiding it. I was… not much to look at. Skinny as shit, kind of tan, but it maybe looked more like I was just scruffy. Freckles across my nose and cheeks. Hair on my arms and legs but, for some reason, only a sprinkling of hair on my chest and a few under my belly button.
My shoulders and knees were bony—I mean, I wasn’t in Charles’ league, but he was about nine feet tall—and my shoulder blades poked out. Once, when he’d had a few drinks, Daniel told me that he thought I would be handsome in a few years. Something about growing into my face. But it had been over a year since he’d said that, and if it was going to happen, it certainly hadn’t yet.
My nose still looked like a little kid’s, and I had these deep dimples that my grandma used to touch whenever she’d see me and say, “God just took a little stitch.” Which was actually terrifying when I thought about it. My mouth was too big for my face. My eyes were… I dunno, they were mine so it was hard to tell. Okay, I guess? Mostly I just thought I looked startled all the time. And my eyebrows kind of didn’t go with my face or something. I looked nice, mostly, but my eyebrows were all über serious, like I was concentrating really hard or someone had just hurt my feelings.
Turning my back to concentrate on the pants wasn’t much better because even though they were, you know, pants, there was something weird about them, and I couldn’t figure out which way around they went. As I was pulling them up, the door opened, nearly pushing me into the mirror, and Will slid in.
“What the hell are you doing in here?” he asked.
He took in my state of half undress with a total lack of concern or interest, and I felt this particular kind of shame that usually comes when you give someone something that really matters to you and they don’t even notice.
“These stupid pants are like a puzzle,” I said. “I couldn’t figure out which—”
Will tossed me the shirt, which I pulled on—couldn’t mess up a tank top at least—and the second the fabric touched me he tucked it into the pants, and did something where he tied the fabric and engaged the suspenders in one easy gesture.
“Who could wear white pants anyway?” I muttered. “I’d sit down on a bench or something and be filthy in point five seconds.”
He didn’t respond, regarding me, leaning against the dressing room door, a hand on his chin like he was considering what he thought of me. And when he smiled it felt emptier than I’d expected, because it was like he was smiling at the clothes and not at me at all. Was this what he was attracted to? People who dressed like this?
Was this what he wanted me to be?
I looked ridiculous. Like I was trying really hard to be someone I wasn’t.
“You like this?” I asked Will.
He nodded.
“But, like, for me?”
“Well, you wouldn’t wear it, would you?”
His hands went to my shoulders to adjust the suspenders, and I shook my head.
“I don’t look like me.”
He shrugged like that was nothing.
“You get to decide what you look like. You get to decide who you are.”
“You don’t get to decide who you are,” I said. That was ridiculous. “You just… are who you are.”
Will’s hands, still hovering at my shoulders, tightened. I took a step toward him so we were almost chest to chest.
“Why did you really want me to try this stuff on? You know I wouldn’t wear it.”
“Just for fun,” he said, but his voice sounded like he was having the opposite of fun.
“I don’t believe you.” I stepped forward again, putting Will’s back against the door. “Seriously. Why?”
I could feel it again. That heat. That pull between us like it was taking more energy to keep our bodies apart than it would to allow their collision. How did that fit with your first law, Newton? We might’ve been at rest, but everything in us was straining together, like only this skin was keeping us from getting all messed up in each other.
Will’s breath came a little short as I stared at him. Somehow, looking at him this close up, his perfect beauty fell apart and reformed into something different. No longer was it about proportion and line and angle. Up close, Will was texture and shadow and something far more human. I could smell him. The familiar, slightly milky smell of the coffee shop. Beneath that, some subtle cologne that smelled like expensive suits and garden parties and maybe just a hint of leather. The slight sour bite of fresh sweat. And then his skin, like dust warmed in a beam of sunlight.
His eyes locked on my mouth and his hands came up like he wanted to put them on my hips but was stopping himself, so they just hovered there.
“See,” I said, and it came out as a whisper.
Will shook his head but his eyes didn’t leave my mouth. I tugged my bottom lip between my teeth and watched his Adam’s apple slide and catch in an audible swallow.
I wanted to press him against the dressing room door and kiss him until he actually talked to me, the way he’d started to do in Holiday. But it was like he’d gotten enough time apart from me for whatever spell Holiday wove to have fallen away. Or maybe it was as simple as he had needed someone to talk to in Holiday and Rex was occupied so it became me by default, and now that he was back in New York I was just… I don’t know.
But I could feel this—whatever it was—between us.
“Will.”
He was almost glaring at me, like a super turned-up version of The Look. And for some reason it made me ridiculously happy, because with Will, any response other than haughty neutrality was a step in the right direction.
“Hey, kiss me,” I said, nudging him, and watched his battle with himself play out over his face.
He stared at me, breathing through his nose, having come, apparently, to no decision whatsoever.
“Okay, I’m going to kiss you now if you don’t stop me,” I said, which actually sounded a little creepy of me.
But he didn’t stop me. And he didn’t seem creeped. He just closed his eyes and sighed a little and I didn’t know what he was thinking. Now that we were the same height, I just stepped into him and pressed our mouths together.
The second I kissed him he came alive, a sparkler touched by a match. He made a sound in the back of his throat and pulled me against him with a palm at the small of my back, just above those damn pants. His mouth was hot, and I could taste his coffee from earlier, a bitter note that gave way almost immediately to the sweetness of his taste.
I remembered it, even all these months later, and it tasted like home.
Will had his arms around me now, wrapping me up so tight I almost couldn’t move. He pushed one hand through my hair to hold my face to his while he—holy shit—while he kissed the hell out of me. One second I was kissing him, and the next he’d flipped me, slammed me against the dressing room door, and was basically eating my face. Only, you know, in a good way. An awesome way.
It felt nothing like my make-out session with Milton. Even when Milton had touched my cock I hadn’t felt as electrified as I did from Will’s kiss. I scrabbled at his back, trying to… something—to touch skin or trace muscle, but it was really all I could do to keep my
feet under me with Will’s mouth on mine. Finally, he tickled the roof of my mouth with his tongue, just gently stroked it, and I found myself so close to coming that it shocked me. I let out a groan and tried to grab for his hips, desperate to get some friction.
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.
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.