by Roan Parrish
“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.
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 some 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.
“Tell me what you need to do and how long you have to do it, and we’ll figure it out.”
I held my planner out to him, now a crumpled hank of paper worried into a smeary exclamation-point-riddled mess. He held it between his thumb and forefinger then put it on the coffee table like an undetonated bomb.
“Why don’t you take me through it.” He patted my back. “One sec.”
He came back with a
pad of graph paper and a pencil from his drafting table and sat beside me on the couch.
“Okay. Go class by class and tell me what you have left to do and when the deadline is.”
I shook my head. “My physics TA is trying to ruin my life. I should just go back to Holiday and rot.”
Will snorted. “You gonna work at Mr. Zoo’s for the rest of your life?”
“Yes. Someday maybe I’ll take it over and rename it Mr. Leo’s.”
“Great plan, kiddo. Come on, sit up. Tell me what you have to do.”
“I can’t.” I knew I sounded childish and petulant and I just couldn’t care. I was too tired, too overwhelmed. “Will,” I groaned. “Can’t I just drop out and come live here?”
“Christ on toast, Leo, you’re fucking depressing me. Sit up.” He dragged me up by my sweatshirt hood. “Now tell me what the deal is.”
I laid it all out for him. How Clark, my physics TA, hated me. How I’d done everything he asked us to do in terms of the proposal for the final project, but he kept forcing me to redo it because he said it wasn’t in compliance with one thing or another. And how, even though I’d asked Professor Ekwensi after class, and she’d mentioned that my project sounded great, Clark still made me revise it again, and when I’d mentioned Ekwensi’s approval, Clark had glared at me and gotten all pissy, accusing me of going over his head by talking to her.
“Let me see these e-mails.” Will’s tone was murderous, and even through my stress and agitation, the warmth of his anger on my behalf settled comfortingly in my stomach.
I showed Will the e-mails, in which Clark had sent comments on the drafts of my proposal where he asked questions that I was really sure most students in an introductory class shouldn’t be expected to know the answers to. And I showed him the comments Clark had written where he gave me totally contradictory feedback. I started to get freaked out all over again, and Will squeezed my shoulder as he peered furiously at the screen.
“I’m gonna kill this fucker! This petty, ineffectual little limp-dicked asshole has nothing better to do than lord his power over students like that makes him someone.” He devolved into muttering and then flopped back. I smiled at him and kissed the corner of his mouth where his lips turned down in a scowl. To my surprise, he flushed a little and shrugged like his shirt was suddenly too tight.
“Okay. Okay, tell me the rest, and then we’ll get back to that fucking guy.”
I walked Will through my whole schedule and he wrote it down on the graph paper in that neat all-caps handwriting I associated with architecture schematics. Even rendered in neat rows and tidy handwriting, it was a lot.
“I don’t think I can—”
“No, no commentary yet. Commentary is the seed of doubt. Doubt is the breeding ground for wasting time.”
Will tore off the page and recopied everything on a fresh sheet of paper, every task with a bullet point, every deadline in order of the date it was due, the chaos of my entire finals schedule neatly organized by the calming blue lines of the graph paper as if there weren’t a single thing that couldn’t be contained, ordered, made achievable. He outlined a box to the left of each task to check off when it had been completed. At the top he wrote Leo’s Guide To Kicking First Semester Finals In the Ass, which made me crack up to see in his neat handwriting.
It’s possible that my laughter was somewhat hysterical because the next thing I knew, Will was squeezing my shoulders and rubbing a hand up and down my back calmingly.
“Okay,” he said finally. He pointed to the schedule where he’d put a 1, a 2, and a 3 next to my tasks for the evening. “You start on this stuff.”
He pulled me up from the couch, sat me down at the desk, and tacked the schedule to the wall in front of me. While I was still trying to figure out how I’d ended up with a life coach and also wondering how I could make him do this every finals period, Will put a glass of water and a bowl of cashews on the desk.
“Protein. Good for energy. Stay hydrated.” Then he squeezed the back of my neck and left me to it.
Later, Will showed me the message he’d drafted to Clark from my e-mail account. It clearly laid out the work I’d already done, the changes he’d requested, and asked for clarification about several points, all of which were numbered. It was written so incisively that I couldn’t imagine how anyone could read it and not just agree to everything it said.
“Oh my god, you’re a genius.”
With Will’s eyes on me, I clicked the Send button without changing a word and closed my laptop in relief.
“Thank you.” I twined my arms around his neck, holding on tightly. Will’s arms tightened around me and he sighed deeply into my hair.
“You can’t let people push you around,” he said.
“Except for you, right?”
He huffed a breath out against my neck, but didn’t disagree.
OVER THE next five days, I only went back to the dorms once, to grab a bag of clothes and the rest of my books. I told Charles I was staying at Will’s, and he barely spared me a glance, just muttered something about the role of local politics in the Salem witch trials and nodded at himself as he typed furiously.
When Will went to work, he left me a pot of coffee on the counter and a Post-it note reminder to FOLLOW THE SCHEDULE AND DO NOT PANIC. Even on a Post-it, his handwriting was perfect.
He brought Thai food with him when he came home from work and we ate on the couch. The spicy smells of curry, peanut sauce, and ginger combined with the musky smell of Will’s body wash and the clean, bright smell of his shampoo and I wanted to stay here forever.
He was wearing a white T-shirt and gray sweatpants, but they weren’t normal—they were some kind of perfectly fitted versions of these staples, just like all his clothes, even the most casual ones, looked like they’d been tailored to fit him. When I asked him about it, he looked at me strangely and said they were just white T-shirts, but it seemed impossible.
Will was inhaling his food at a speed that seemed potentially hazardous for a wild dog, much less an average-sized human, when my phone dinged with an incoming e-mail. I grabbed for it, and when I saw it was from Clark, I almost dropped the phone in my Tom Kha.
“Omigod, he actually answered all the things!” Relief washed through me as I stared at my phone, and the weight that had been hanging around my neck like that damn albatross we read about in Great Books disappeared. I tossed the phone on the couch, and Will put his plate down just before I threw myself into his lap, wrapping my arms around his neck, and hugged him tight.
“Thanks,” I said in his ear.
His arms came around me and squeezed me tight, one hand moving up to stroke my hair.
“Sure, babe,” he said, and my heart practically stopped from joy.
LATER, I was taking a break, running through some easy yoga sequences. As often happened, after a few minutes of me doing something else, Will started to talk to me.
Initially, I’d thought this tendency was just Will being perverse. Like he was only interested in me when I wasn’t interested in him. After it happened a few times, though, I realized it wasn’t true. It was that Will felt most comfortable talking about some things when all my attention wasn’t on him. So, though my instinct was to pay attention when someone was talking to me, I’d learned it was best to just keep doing whatever I was doing and listen.
So I kept moving, keeping my breaths deep, in through the nose, out through the nose. Move and breathe. He watched me, perching on the arm of the couch so he could look out the window behind me at the same time. Will looked out the window a lot. The view was the main reason he’d taken this apartment, he’d told me once.
“You can’t get caught up in that kind of shit like what happened with Clark again,” Will was saying, staring past me into the dark city outside. “You’re too smart. You shouldn’t let people have that kind of power over you.”
This was pretty laughable coming from the guy who had such incredible power over me. But I didn’t say that.
It was best to just let Will say his piece before responding.
“I know he’s your TA, so he does technically have actual power over you. But you have to remember: NYU is providing a service, and you’re the customer. They’re there to educate you. To make sure you learn the material. Not to make you feel like shit, or like you’re not good enough. Not to try and control what you do with your life.”
That gave me pause since Clark had never tried to control anything about my life.
“Did that happen to you?” I asked carefully, pitching my voice softly so it sounded offhand. I moved into downward-facing dog like I was barely listening to the answer.
Will said nothing.
I pressed my thumbs firmly into the carpet, turned my elbows out to protect my shoulder joints, and moved my shoulder blades together on my back, bending into my knees and then pressing my thighs up to straighten my legs. I could practically hear Tonya’s voice in my head whispering adjustments.
“What happened?” I asked, and then I just breathed—in through my nose, out through my nose—and waited, not sure if Will would answer or not.
“There was this TA for my Intro to Graphic Design class, second semester freshman year.” Will ran a hand through his hair, still looking out the window. “Or, I guess he wasn’t technically a TA, since he wasn’t a grad student; he was a senior graphic design major, but whatever. He was really talented and really harsh. You could tell he kind of hated doing teaching stuff and thought he was too good for it. But he liked me. Said I had potential. He helped me out a lot—helped me with my designs and with adjusting to school. To the city.”