by L B Winter
All good points, but I was just not in the mood to hear them. “I know, but…it’s complicated.”
“Not bailing after you sleep with somebody isn’t that complicated,” he countered.
That was fair, but I felt like in my case, it was warranted. I said, “It’s starting to sound just a smidge like you’re on his side instead of mine.”
“No,” Tay said, “look, I didn’t know there were two sides until just now. I thought you were on each other’s sides.”
I sighed, shaking my head. “I know. Sorry. I just…really don’t want to talk about this right now.”
Just then, Tessa’s door opened, and she walked out in a bathrobe and slippers, arms folded over her chest. “Paul,” she said quietly. “Is this him?”
Him? Oh, Jamie. “No,” I said, “sorry, no. This is my roommate. Taylor, the one I told you about who’s premed and always busy, except when he needs to berate me for my bad decisions.”
She raised her eyebrows as she looked at Taylor, and to his infinite credit, he immediately said, “Hey, Tessa. I’ve heard a lot of great things about you—but I know you don’t like dudes in your room, right?” He smiled and said, “I’ll take off. Just send Paul back in one piece, okay? I’m not done berating him yet.”
Then he slipped out the door, leaving me smiling behind him, thinking all of a sudden that maybe somebody like Tessa might be a perfect match for somebody like Tay. And Tay would sure as hell be better for her than this clown Daniel.
“Sorry,” I said, turning to Tessa, “and sorry for sleeping here. I didn’t think I would.”
“No, that’s fine,” she said, her voice a little higher than usual. “I did offer, in the first place. You can always crash here if you need to.”
“I hope I don’t need to too often,” I replied, looking down at my hands. “I guess I should go downstairs and face the music.”
“Okay,” Tessa said. She hesitated for a moment, then lunged forward and wrapped me in a hug. I closed my eyes and let it be for a minute. “You’ll figure it out,” she said. “Just remember—he can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do.”
I nodded, trying to smile—but inside, all I could think was, what the hell did this bastard Daniel do to her? Jamie might have weirded me out with some of the things he said, but he definitely hadn’t made me do anything I didn’t like. The opposite, in fact. He’d been amazing—and that just made my angst now even more confusing.
I went back to my room, but the confrontation I was expecting didn’t happen. Jamie wasn’t there; after he’d learned I was in Tessa’s room, he’d headed straight out for his morning run. The sun was shining for the first time in days, so I wasn’t surprised, but I was a little disappointed, oddly. After avoiding him all night, it would have been a relief to get our next inevitably awkward meeting out of the way. But he wasn’t there, and who knew where I’d be when he got back, or what we’d say to each other? It was all such a mess.
Did I want to tell him I was angry? Did I want to work through this with him? Or would it be better to just let it be?
It was a question I couldn’t answer, and didn’t answer all week. We saw each other in passing, but we never really talked—at least not beyond a simple hello and goodbye. I wanted to talk to him, to tell him about my day and hear about his. I wanted to ask him to come with me on Thursday when I went for a run and it was freezing rain again. I wanted to stop being such a dick to him, because I knew I was, but after everything that had happened, I just didn’t feel like I could.
“You,” Steven said when he called me the next Saturday morning, “have been impossibly hard to reach this week.”
He was right. I hadn’t called him or texted like I usually did, and when he finally wrote to me to ask where I’d been, I answered his texts with only a word or two. A week ago, I’d been eager to tell him everything that had happened with Jamie, but after the dust settled, I felt like talking about it as little as possible. Even Tessa, after seeing me in Spanish class all week, had learned to avoid it. Tay was too busy with his own stuff to follow up on his threats of hashing it out with me, and Jamie just stayed away altogether. But I couldn’t hide from the truth forever.
“Yeah,” I said. “Sorry. I—I had something that I wanted to tell you, but also didn’t want to tell you.” I was biding my time, introducing the subject like that, but Steven jumped on it.
“What, Paul?”
“Something with Jamie…” I said vaguely.
“He has been weird at the shop all week, according to Trent,” Steven answered. “I knew something was going on. Now you have to tell me everything.”
I was in my bedroom, and it didn’t seem like the best place for this chat. Jamie might have been out for his morning run already, or he might have been still next door, able to overhear anything I said. “Can I come over?” I asked.
“Yes, of course,” he said simply. “The answer to that question is always yes. Need a ride?”
“The answer to that question is always yes,” I said, and he laughed.
“Great. Be there in fifteen. And Paul.”
“Yeah?”
“You’d better have a good excuse for ignoring me all week.”
I ended the call, feeling annoyed. Steven had “ignored” me, if that’s what we were calling it, for weeks now—he was never around when I wanted to hang out, and if we ever did talk, I always initiated it. Why, now, was he suddenly blaming me for basically acting the way he’d been acting for a month and a half? I mean, I understood that he was busy, and I wasn’t trying to be a bad friend, but to be told I was the problem in all this felt completely unfair.
I didn’t want to be fighting with him, though. I felt like it was important to erase the distance that had been growing between us. So when the car pulled up, I hopped inside and instantly blurted out, “I slept with Jamie last Saturday.”
Steven said nothing.
“Uh…” I said after a pause. “Did you hear me?”
“Yes,” he answered. “I’m processing.” Another pause. “I need more information.”
So I told him everything I’d told Tessa, with a thank-you for my Christmas present added in there, and when I finished talking, we were parking on the street near his apartment, and Steven still hadn’t said a word in reply.
“Let me…let me digest this,” he said as we got out of the car to walk into the building.
“Okay?” I did not attempt to hide my confusion.
He glanced at me and rolled his eyes. “Look,” he said, “you’ve wanted Jamie forever. Like, as soon as I met you, practically the first thing I learned about you was, ‘He loves this really fucked up man-candy named Jamie.’”
I chuckled sadly. “Yeah.”
“And now, I kind of know Jamie, too,” he said. “And baby, I don’t mean to sound crass, but what a tall drink of water that boy is, and what a shame that his gayness was going to waste thanks to all this reorientation nonsense.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“If you two are together now, and happy together, I don’t think you need to be ashamed of that,” he said softly, “and never under any circumstance do I think you need to hide anything from me.”
“I…” I sighed. “That’s just it. I wasn’t hiding anything from you. There’s nothing to hide.” Then, I explained what had happened afterward—how I’d panicked, and we hadn’t talked, and how awkward it had been.
“That’s nothing, my little baby bird,” Steven said as he unlocked the door to the apartment. “You forget that the first time is always awkward. It’s negligible.”
But it wasn’t nothing—it was much, much more than nothing. I just didn’t know how to put it into words. Besides, it was our second time, not our first—and that, I suspected, was the real problem.
Then we were inside the apartment, and it seemed there was nothing more we could say about it—even though I had at least a million things left that I needed to talk through. That I was still angry with Jamie, for a
start. That I wasn’t sure I could trust him. That maybe, years after he’d used me and left me for his sham of a marriage, and then after months of bad treatment when all I’d wanted was to help him, now maybe I could punish him for a change.
I’m sure that would have gone over great with Steven.
In the apartment, though, Lynn was there with Trent, and when they saw me, they both hopped up and gave me big hugs.
“Paul, I miss you!” Lynn said. “We get to see Jamie all the time, but never you. How are you doing?”
I told her a bit about my classes, enjoying the way she beamed with pride when I described my business workload.
“You know, this summer is the perfect time for an internship,” she said. “You can figure out exactly what your skills are and where you want to focus.”
I knew she was right; a lot of the people in my program were getting internships. Even Zeke had mentioned it to me. “Is now the time to look?” I asked.
“Past the time,” she said, “it’s almost March. You want something set up in May, right?” She tapped her wrist, though it had neither a watch nor a calendar on it. “Time’s ticking!”
This was so far from how Lynn normally talked, and I had to wonder for a moment if Deacon was having a bad influence on her. She used to be so carefree; I had gotten the career pressure from what felt like everyone else in my life until that point, but never her. Uncomfortably, I folded my arms in front of my chest. “I guess I can talk to my advisor this week,” I said.
“Perfect.” She smiled. “I always knew you’d find your path, Paul.”
There it was again—that unquestioning support. I smiled back, and Trent said, “Well, I suppose Steven told you this is Lynn’s last weekend in the apartment.”
My jaw dropped, and I looked from him, to her, to Steven. “What? No, I didn’t know.”
“Yep,” Trent said, looking fondly at his best friend. “We’re packing her up to move in with Deacon. Off to greener pastures.”
“It’s just a house with a yard,” Lynn said, smiling, “outside the city. If we want to have kids, we need a yard.”
The idea of Lynn having kids was too bizarre to wrap my mind around, and she must have noticed the expression on my face. Laughing a little uncomfortably, she said, “You can’t picture me with kids, can you? I’m not bad with them, though. I hope.” She laughed nervously again.
“I can’t picture any of my friends with kids,” I said honestly, “but almost the moment I met you, I thought you’d be a great mom, Lynn.”
She let out a soft, “aw,” and threw her arms around me in a quick hug. “You are the sweetest person on this planet, Paul Michael Garrison.” She kissed my forehead, then released me from her embrace. “I don’t know why the two of you can’t be more like Paul,” she said with a teasing glance at Steven and Trent, before returning to the kitchen where, I now noticed, sat a very large box.
“You’re taking the dishes?” I asked.
“Yes, and good riddance!” Steven cried. “Those dishes are so boring. I have a set of my own from Ohio in storage, and we’ll finally be dining in style again!”
Trent pulled Steven into his arms for a quick kiss, then looked up at me and explained, “Our dishes are worth more than I make in a year. I have no idea why he bought them, but if you ever break one, he may murder you.”
Oh, good lord. “What are you guys gonna do without Lynn?” I said.
Trent’s smile faded a little, and he said, “I know. But it’ll be okay. It’s been coming for a while now. We can’t stay roommates forever.”
“No,” Lynn agreed sadly, “but I’m excited that Jamie will be able to move into my room after all. I think it’ll be good for him.”
Wait. What? “He’s moving in here?” I said, again glancing back and forth between them.
“Yeah,” Lynn said, “didn’t he tell you? I prepaid my rent for the rest of the lease. I can afford it, since I’m just living in Deacon’s house and he won’t let me share the mortgage. He’s so old fashioned.” She smiled. “Now Jamie can live rent-free, just like he does with you guys, but with his own room. Paid until the end of July, and that’s plenty of time to get his finances back on track.”
It was an amazingly generous offer—and beyond that, it was the right thing to do, for everybody—but still, my stomach sank through the floor. He was leaving. He was moving on, and he hadn’t even told me. This person I’d mistreated for a week, slept with and kicked out and utterly ignored, was leaving before I’d ever have a chance to make it right—or even figure out if, and how, to make it right. I took a deep breath, unsure what to say. Unsure what to think, even, except that I already missed him.
“We just decided yesterday,” Trent said, “so that’s probably why he didn’t tell you yet.”
I nodded. “Yeah, no, I mean, that’s fine. He can’t live in our living room forever. He shouldn’t.”
Lynn said, “That’s right. Plus, you know, if he wants to enroll at Franklin next semester, he needs a real address to put on his applications. They’re all coming due this month.”
He was applying for college? What in the world? Why hadn’t he told me? Was that something he’d just decided now, too? Conveniently (almost) forgetting that I was the one who’d pushed him away this time, I stewed in my anger over his keeping all these things from me. The rest of my visit was spent carefully avoiding his name, and changing the subject whenever somebody else brought him up.
The store opened at noon on Saturdays now, since their business at the store front wasn’t all that great these days, and Trent left at about eleven-fifteen to open up. “I have to pick up Jamie,” he told me. “Want me to drop you off?”
We drove to the dorm together, and Trent, probably having heard a whisper or two of gossip from Steven and only half-understanding everything that had happened, took the opportunity to say, “You know, Paul, I really like Jamie. I wasn’t expecting to, but he’s very cool. I just…I wanted you to know that I fully approve.”
I tried to smile at him, but my mouth was dry. Approve of what? We weren’t anything right now, except awkward sometimes-lovers who were always misunderstanding each other and getting into fights. He was a liar, too—he was keeping everything in his life from me, still, after everything I’d done for him. Never mind that I’d given him no opportunity to tell me anything; I (even more conveniently) forgot that I was the one who’d put the awkward distance between us that we were currently hurdling over. I wanted to be angry with him, so I was.
CHAPTER 20
What It Feels Like
__________
Jamie moved out that week, and we didn’t make up beforehand. We barely spoke to each other when I got home on Saturday, and I heard from Tay that he planned to be out of our place by the next weekend.
“This is a good thing,” Tessa told me when I broke the news of his impending move to her in Spanish class. “It was weird living together, and having this whole uncomfortable dynamic. You’re going to be way happier after he leaves. I promise you, you will.”
“Then why do I feel like I’m about to have a root canal?”
She shrugged. “A root canal? Really?”
“Yes,” I said, “a painful solution to a series of bad decisions.”
She reflected for a moment, then said. “Yeah, a root canal. Sounds about right. Speaking of which, have you been seeing the dentist enough since coming away for college? My mom wanted me to make sure I asked you. She says boys never remember things like that unless someone reminds them. My brother was that way when he went to college, apparently.”
“Your mom knows who I am?”
“Sure, I tell my mom everything. Don’t you?”
I shook my head, but made a mental note to call my mom later. I’ll bet she would want to catch up, and maybe she’d make me a dentist appointment, too.
I went to my academic advisor’s office later on Monday to ask about internships with my last conversation with Jamie playing on repeat in my head. I c
ould hardly concentrate as Ms. Kesseler rattled off information about this internship and that, but then she said—“Oh, Paul, I was meaning to ask you if you knew anybody who might want to apply for the LGBTQ Center’s Liberty Scholarship. It’s a scholarship that was just created last year through a very generous endowment, and it’s going to enable us to provide funding for five students every year whose families aren’t able to assist them themselves.”
Huh. Odd timing on that one. “Financial hardship is a part of it?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said, and she blushed a little while adding, “so I’m afraid you wouldn’t qualify. I went ahead and checked your records. But if you do know anybody who might benefit from aid, this program is looking for worthy young people!”
“I…think I actually do know somebody, Ms. Kesseler,” I said hesitatingly. “Do you have, like, a brochure or something?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head, “but I have the paperwork for the application, and you can just take this copy for yourself and give it to your friend. Oh, how exciting!”
I took the papers and mulled it over while Ms. Kesseler continued to talk about it. Was I really going to bring this to Jamie and ask him if he wanted to apply for the scholarship? I mean, it was a pretty neutral topic, so it might be the perfect way to get back on speaking terms with him—which, oddly, I really wanted to do, even though I knew it was my fault things were weird in the first place. The idea of him moving out without at least fixing things a little made me too anxious to do nothing.
Armed with a huge stack of papers about internships, and the scholarship application on top, I left the Student Union and headed down the street toward my dormitory. I didn’t have any more classes for the day; my appointment had been at four, and I had nothing to look forward to but the quiet of my dorm room and the chaos of the cafeteria at dinner time.
I set the papers on the coffee table when I got in, thinking that when Jamie arrived—he usually got in between seven and eight—he would probably see them. Then I could explain about the scholarship and how I’d learned about it, and hopefully he would apply. It would be really cool if Jamie got into Franklin, I decided. He was so smart and talented; he really deserved an opportunity like this. Remembering what he’d said, too, about wanting to be in a position to help others—I was feeling better and better about bringing him this scholarship application.