by Roan Parrish
It was strange to be reminded that once Will was just a kid from small-town Michigan who’d never been to the city either. That however far away from me he sometimes seemed now, we’d come from the same place.
“But he was manipulative as hell too. Talked me out of using this one idea I had for a design and then used it himself. And when I called him on it, he told me that I hadn’t known what to do with it so it couldn’t’ve worked; that knowing how to use a design is just as important as the design itself.”
My arms started to shake, and I moved through a few vinyasas, my attention always on Will.
“Hell, he even manipulated me into thinking that I seduced him.”
I dropped to my hands and knees, breathing deliberately, like his words hadn’t knocked the wind out of me. As I moved into plank pose, out of the corner of my eye I saw him twisting the hem of his shirt between his fingers.
“Anyway, what did I know? I was a baby. If he told me I was good, then I was good, period. I didn’t know myself, really. I cared too much what he thought of me so I ran everything through this filter of what he’d think of it before I decided what I thought of it. It became automatic. That’s the worst part—way worse than him stealing my design, or the rest of it.”
Will’s voice had gone bitter, cold. Like he was still chastising the version of himself who’d acted that way. And the description was so far from the person he was now that I could almost imagine it as someone else entirely. I wanted to go to him, touch him, but I knew he wouldn’t want me to. Not in a mood like this. He shook his head and turned away from the window, hands in his pockets.
“Anyway, whatever. He was a shithead who made me care about him and then fucked my head up and dumped me at the end of the year. I heard he did the same damn thing to someone the next semester. Sociopath creep.”
My legs were shaking, my arms were burning, and my stomach was trembling. Tonya said that you should be able to sink into each pose. Hold it and relax and breathe, and that was the challenge: to push your body only so far as it could go without causing agitation for your mind. But now it wasn’t the pose that was agitating me.
Will took a deep breath and turned to me.
“Look, college is great and everything, just don’t make the mistake of thinking those fuckers are magical founts of wisdom or anything, okay? Take everything you can get from it and don’t put up with any of the shit that isn’t useful.”
Okay, that was officially a subject change if I’d ever heard one.
“That sounds like your personal philosophy in a nutshell,” I said, collapsing out of plank in a totally un-flowy way. Tonya would not approve.
“I don’t have a damn philosophy.”
I rocked forward into child’s pose to wait him out. Will might be feeling snarky with himself, but he was still the most honest person I’d ever met.
“But okay, fine, if I did, then, yes. People have a terrible habit of not separating things out into their component parts, you know? They think if they accept one part of something, then they’re under some obligation to accept it all, as if there’s no in-between. As if it’s more important to agree than to be accurate.”
And there it was again. A reminder of one of the reasons I loved spending time with Will. No one had ever made me feel so comfortable just saying whatever I thought before. I didn’t have to worry that disagreeing with Will would hurt his feelings or piss him off. I mean, he might be pissed because of my opinion, but not because it was different than his.
I had grown up constantly trying to blend in with people at school so they wouldn’t notice I was gay. Constantly trying to find common ground with my family so I could feel like one of them. Always sure that it was because I was weird that I didn’t really have many friends in Holiday. To be able to simply speak my mind and know that Will was speaking his… it was a sweet relief.
That didn’t mean I didn’t still enjoy messing with him a little, though. I flopped onto the couch next to Will.
“You never agree with anything, asshole.”
“It doesn’t make me an asshole that I actually listen to what people say and address the points where my thoughts diverge instead of ignoring the parts I don’t agree with.”
“Oh yeah?” I nudged him with my shoulder. “Then what makes you an asshole?”
Will grinned. “A lot of other things.”
“Well, why focus on the things you disagree with rather than the ones you agree with?”
“I don’t focus on them. But if someone says, ‘I like peanut butter, cheese, pickles, caramel, and taking it up the ass, don’t you?’ and I just say yes, then they’d assume that I agree on all counts, which is inaccurate. So if I want them to know what is accurate, I’d have to clarify the place where we diverge.”
“Um, you don’t like….”
He raised his eyebrows at me and smirked.
“Taking it up the ass?” I asked at the same moment he said, “Peanut butter.”
“You don’t like peanut butter? That’s outrageous! Peanut butter’s—” Then my brain caught up to the actual content of what he said. “Oh,” I said.
AGAINST WHAT felt like all odds, I’d finished everything, Will’s blocky letters in their perfectly ordered blue boxes guiding my way through finals.
I was ready to collapse on my bed and sleep for the foreseeable future, but when I got to our room I found Charles packing and ranting because apparently there had been some kind of electrical problem in the dorm designated for the people enrolled in January term classes, and res life had temporarily reassigned them to the rooms on our floor. So now Charles and I, and anyone else on our hall not signed up for January term classes, had to clear our stuff out and store it in basement storage until spring term started.
As Charles explained, gesturing vaguely toward his computer monitor at an e-mail I’d clearly missed in the hustle of finals, total panic set in. Because I realized that I hadn’t even thought about what I was doing for January term. Or, I’d thought about it in the vague way that happened when my mom mentioned something about Christmas or people in the dining hall talked about plans for winter break. But I had failed to actually do anything about it.
Which is why instead of being facedown on my bed, I found myself knocking on Will’s door with my fingers crossed, my heart in my throat, and my duffel bag over my shoulder.
“Did you finish?” he asked, not seeming surprised to see me as he waved me inside.
“Yeah. Um. Haha, about that. Funny story.”
I told Will the situation, my panic mounting as I got to the part about how I’d totally fucked up and forgotten to make plans.
Will looked at me skeptically.
“I was just so stressed about all the finals stuff, and stuff with physics. I didn’t even notice the e-mail, I swear!”
Suddenly it was less important that I find somewhere to stay for January term. I mean, really, I could go back to Michigan if I needed to. I could take the bus again, or my mom would probably be able to scrape up plane fare for me. It was more that, standing here in Will’s apartment after spending the last week so close to him, the idea of leaving him for a month—of not getting to hear him make pronouncements or bitch about things, of not smelling him fresh out of the shower, of not feeling his eyes on me—was unbearable.
“Jesus! Fine, just stay here,” he said. “Holy puppy dog eyes, Batman.” He shook his head at me and took my duffel bag, putting it next to the couch.
“Wait, really! Oh my god, Will, thank you! You won’t regret it, I swear! I’ll do the dishes, I’ll do… um, you know, other chores. Thank you, thank you, thank you!”
I flung myself into his arms, intensely relieved, and now thrilled to have my life unavoidably intertwined with Will’s for the next month.
Will fell backward onto the couch, and I landed half on his lap and half on the floor with an “Oof.”
“Ouch, Jesus!”
“Sorry, sorry.”
Will dragged me up and kind of
wiggled over at the same time, and I ended up lying on top of him. God, he smelled amazing.
“Thanks for letting me stay,” I said softly, our mouths an inch apart. His lips were parted, and he was half smiling at me. I wanted him so badly. Wanted to absorb him into my skin and get under his. To feel every inch of him welcome me. I slid my hand to his jaw, leaned in slowly, and kissed him.
His eyelids fluttered shut as his mouth opened to mine. There was the slick heat of his tongue and the rasp of his stubbled chin, and my brain short-circuited in like point five seconds. I could feel his pulse speed up against my fingertips and I pressed against it, the line of his jaw sharp beneath soft skin. Everything about Will was sharp wrapped in soft or vice versa.
He groaned and grabbed me by the biceps. “Saying you could stay was not the same as saying we were going to—”
“No, I know that. I know.” But I ran my knuckles over his cheekbone and kissed him again, and he didn’t stop me.
WE FELL into a rhythm, orbiting around each other like twin satellites. Whether we were cooking, eating, showering, watching TV, or just coexisting, I was always aware of Will. Always attuned.
I learned things about Will by living with him that I’d only seen hints of before. Will could be easygoing and fun, but hated to be scrutinized, so the second I drew too much attention to him, his defenses would snap into place. Sometimes it was sharpness, sometimes silence or irritation. Sometimes it was bravado or flirtation. Sometimes teasing. Whatever the patina, though, it was a cover for the Will that I was getting to know in the times when he wasn’t self-conscious. It was like his apartment was his haven, and when I paid too much overt attention, he acted like he did when people stared at him on the streets.
I learned that he was an amazing problem solver, able to look at a complex system and sort it out easily. He was extremely visual, so he solved those problems by writing things down or drawing them out, unraveling things and putting them in an order that was most logical (not to mention aesthetically pleasing) as he’d done with my finals schedule. Every endeavor, no matter how insignificant, was driven by that same logic of optimization. From the way he did laundry to the order of how he gathered the trash, it was a ballet of economy and grace, never a wasted gesture, always the shortest distance between two points.
I’d already known he was passionate about his work, but I hadn’t fully grasped how many of his coworkers depended on him to be their second set of eyes. How often they e-mailed him looking for help or a reality check. And, for all that he was brusque and honest with them, they respected him for it. One night he’d gotten an e-mail from his coworker Joanne with a cover design attached that she wanted notes on.
“Christ,” he’d muttered, squinting disgustedly at the screen, “that’s horrible.”
“Oh no, what are you going to tell her?” I asked. That was my worst nightmare, basically—being put in the position of having to lie to someone. No one ever believed me, so it always got awkward.
“Uh, I’m going to tell her it’s horrible.”
“What? Oh my god, you can’t say that; it’s so mean!”
Will snorted. “What are you, six? It’s not mean. This is our job, and Joanne’s asking for notes. What good would it do her to tell her it’s good when it’s not?” He said this like it was just that simple and dialed before I could respond.
“Joanne, hey.” He peered at the screen as he talked. “Yeah, I got it. It’s… well, it’s not working at all, huh?” I gaped at him, but his expression and his voice were totally neutral. “Well, yeah, that’s why you sent it to me instead of that ass-kisser, Adamson. So, let’s fix it.”
And he sat at the computer helping her redesign it for two hours. Before they hung up, he said, “I think it looks great, how about you?” And though I couldn’t hear Joanne’s response, Will smiled broadly—a sincere, tired, thoroughly satisfied smile—and simply said, “Good. Night,” before wandering away to shower. He looked more than just proud; he looked… intoxicated. High on being able to have solved a problem, fixed an error, turned something from bad to good.
I was getting pretty good at reading Will’s moods, too, even though I still couldn’t predict them. Sometimes he was grouchy and short for no reason that I could tell. Other times he was upbeat, chatting about his coworkers or telling stories about what he’d seen walking home that day. Sometimes he had bouts of being furious with the world, ranting about everything from health care reform to e-mail etiquette. Other times he was quiet, almost meditative, moving through his own apartment like a ghost.
Sometimes he watched me. I’d look up from doing yoga or pouring coffee, feeling his eyes on me. Half the time he’d keep staring until I flushed with self-consciousness or arousal, because when he looked at me like that, it felt like I belonged to him somehow. The rest of the time he’d look away, scowling, irritated at me for catching him, or irritated at himself for looking in the first place, I couldn’t tell. At other times it was like he forgot I was even there. He’d come around the corner and look genuinely startled to find me there.
And all the time, between us, the air grew thinner.
I could feel it when we stood close, him pouring coffee and me stirring eggs. The way the hairs on my arms stood up when his sleeve brushed mine. The way the back of my neck tingled when he stretched a casual arm behind me on the couch. Sometimes, it was as if he did everything he could to make sure we didn’t make contact. Other times, he’d throw a leg over my knee while we talked like it was nothing, or run his fingers through my hair absently. His touch was electrifying and capricious, and every time it came, the intensity of my reaction startled me.
When I initiated touch with him, I eased into it slowly. I’d pass him his coffee and continue the movement of my hand up to rest on the back of his neck. I’d flip his collar down and keep contact, slowly moving to rest my chin on his shoulder.
One night, when he was standing looking out the window, I tucked my chin into the crook of his neck and he sighed and relaxed into me. I could feel the heat of his body through the fabric of his shirt, smell the scent of his skin and his hair. He reached a hand back and threaded it through my hair, keeping me there. We stood like that for what felt like ages, and just when I was about to blurt the question that felt like it was bursting to get out of me—that I knew he said he didn’t want a relationship, but why the hell weren’t we together when we so clearly worked?—I caught a glimpse of him in the window.
He looked vulnerable, his light hair a halo against the night sky. His eyes were closed and he was leaning into me like I was the only thing keeping him upright. When I opened my mouth to ask, I felt rather than saw his reaction. His shoulders tightened, and he shifted the balance of his weight away from me, as if preparing to support himself any second. And I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t shatter the spun-sugar moment, especially as I noticed how tired Will looked.
He had been up late the night before talking on the phone and pacing. So I just nuzzled the side of his neck and snaked my arms around his waist, taking his weight onto myself again.
“Hey, who were you talking to last night?” I kept my voice quiet.
“Hmm? Oh, my nephew.” He sighed.
“You talk to him a lot, huh? Something up?”
“Uh, Claire. My sister. Sometimes she… leaves without telling Nathan and Sarah where she’s going.”
His weight against my shoulder grew heavier.
“She leaves?”
“Yeah.” He sighed, and I tightened my arms around him. “She’s bipolar—well, she hates that term, thinks it’s bullshit, but she was diagnosed just after high school.”
“Sorry, I’m not sure I know what that means, exactly.”
“Well, it varies a lot. But for Claire… she always had these periods of being really manic. Not sleeping, planning these grand projects or adventures. Her teachers used to send notes home that said she should be checked for ADHD, but my parents never paid attention. When we were younger, she’d do all her
school projects for a month in one week, or clean the house from top to bottom. Once, she borrowed a friend’s car and drove to Kansas without sleeping because she was obsessed with The Wizard of Oz. Then, when she got back, she slept for like forty-eight hours straight and wouldn’t come out of her room for the next week. Stuff like that.”
“Oh man. That does sound like it’d be really hard for kids.” I made sure to keep my voice calm and low so Will wouldn’t move out of my arms.
He nodded and sighed. He sounded so tired, and I wondered how many times this had happened before. I kind of couldn’t believe he’d never mentioned something so huge.
“Sometimes she’ll go to the store and buy hundreds of dollars of groceries and cook for days until she has so much food it won’t even fit in the freezer. And sometimes she takes off and doesn’t tell Nathan and Sarah where she’s going. So, they call me and I call around and try and track her down, but really she just comes back when she’s ready. She leaves them food and money. But, you know. They’re kids. They get scared.”
“Yeah, of course.” Nathan was ten and Sarah was only eight. “Can anyone help out? What about Nathan and Sarah’s dad?”
“Dads. No. There’s no one else.”
“Your parents, maybe—”
“No.” Will’s voice was poisonous and his whole body tensed against me. He’d never even mentioned his parents before. “They couldn’t be fucked to take care of their own kids; they certainly don’t give a shit about their grandkids. Besides, they’re useless. They’re worse than children.”
I started to ask about his parents, but Will pulled away and went to the kitchen, taking a beer out of the refrigerator. He held it up to me on offer, but I shook my head. I still didn’t like the taste.
“Then sometimes… she does other things. Like….” Will bit his lip and sat down on the couch, tucking his knees up. It made him look uncharacteristically young. Uncertain. I sat down, folding my forearms over his knees and resting my chin on them.