“So can I get in too?” Zane said, but then he looked disappointed. “I guess there’s not much room left for me.”
“There’s room,” Melanie promised. “Griff and I will make room right here.” She moved her legs. Zane stepped out of his clothes and into the tub. The hair under his belly button looked like black cotton candy. I was afraid it would melt in the water.
“Um, let’s see.” He stepped around our legs like we were playing a soggy game of Twister. “Well I can just sit on the side. Although that will pretty much put my junk in Melanie’s face.”
If I put my tongue against Zane’s cotton-candy hair, I wondered, would it be sweet? Would it be sweeter if Melanie put her tongue there too?
“Griff I really need that facecloth again. Look. See? I need it.”
“Wow, you do,” Griff said. “Here, take it—cover that guy up. And Zane, dude, you can have my seat.”
“Really?”
“Griff, you’re leaving?” I covered myself with the facecloth again. “But you should stay. We can make room—”
“Nah, it’s cool. I’m starting to prune up anyway. And Zane needs room.”
When Griff stood up he bonked his head on the showerhead. It lurched and shot water at the ceiling.
I gasped and thumped my head against the tile, and opened my eyes. The water had gone cold. How long had I been in here?
I stood up and turned it off and pulled back the curtain. With a goosebumpy arm and blue fingers I reached for the towel. The house was silent.
Huddled in the towel I called for Griff, but there was no answer.
Every few minutes I checked for a sign of his car in the driveway. It was after eight now. I was clean, dressed, and my chin glistened with antiseptic. I ate a grilled cheese and paced.
I paced down the cellar stairs and put a load of laundry in, including my bloody shirt and the sheets and blankets Griff had bought for the new bed. While I was doing that I paced around the idea of calling Zane, of telling him I was sorry and asking him to come over.
I paced into the spare bedroom. The closet door was open and some of Griff’s shirts and jeans hung on coat hangers. His backpack leaned against the wall, hanging on its aluminum frame like a scarecrow on a post.
This was my first taste of him not being here and it made me feel antsy, distracted, alone. How had I come to rely on him so quickly? Was it just a relapse? A return to my natural state? A week earlier it never would’ve occurred to me to have someone living in my house, let alone Griff, but now— I didn’t know what I’d do when he was gone.
When there was no place left to pace I went to my room and laid on the bed. Floaters in my eyes crawled like spiders across the white ceiling. I put my hand on Griff’s pillow. Touching it felt like something I could get caught at. I pulled it toward me and put my nose against it and felt some relief over how things had gone with Zane the past two days. I was embarrassed, of course, for having yelled at him during lunch for no real reason at all, and for freaking out over what had been the most innocent sofa-bed advance known to man. But anger, real or imagined or dredged up like muck from a settled lake, just made things easier. All Zane had to do was supply the catalyst and I’d take care of the chain reaction—a chain reaction of justification. I’d had to yell at him, right? Yes, of course. So now there was a reason to avoid him, a reason to schedule him on days I wasn’t working. A reason why I was perfectly right to have turned him down. We wouldn’t have worked out anyway, because Zane was the kind of person I had to yell at. The Halloween night on the beach was not a mistake, it was foresight.
I rolled back the covers and got under, smelled Griff all around me.
Griff.
***
Our dorm room door was unlocked. Surprised, I pushed it open. He was at his computer; his monster-size monitor displayed the front elevation of what looked like an office building.
“Oh—hey,” I said. If I’d known the door was going to be unlocked before I tried it, I would not have gone in at all.
“Yo.” He turned around and noticed Andy beside me.
“I thought you were going to BU to see what’s her na— Denise?”
“Didn’t work out.”
“Oh.” I wanted to leave, wanted to turn on my heels and run away. He wasn’t supposed to be here. They weren’t supposed to meet. Not yet at least. Not by accident.
“This is Andy,” I said, almost pushing him toward Griff so I could hide behind him. He was stocky, had played football, provided cover.
Griff shot a confused glare at me. “Like, Andy Andy?”
I nodded.
He shook Andy’s hand. “Delighted. Any friend of Vince’s... and all that.”
“I’ve heard a lot about you,” Andy said.
Oh, I bet you have, Griff said in my head. I just bet you have heard lots about me. I’m sure he’s told you everything. You must know about my relationships, about how realistic my farting sounds are. You must know about how hard I laugh at night and what kind of tattoo I want to get.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know you were going to be here.”
“Nah, it’s cool. Don’t mind me. Or I can go chill in Beth’s room if you guys were planning on—?”
“No! No, we were just going to watch a movie or something.”
“You do CAD?” Andy said to Griff. He dropped his jacket on my bed and went and stood beside Griff’s desk.
“I’m trying to learn it. I like drawing better,” Griff told him. “This is my final project.”
Andy put his hand on the back of Griff’s chair. “I was thinking about changing my major to industrial design for next semester,” he said. “Didn’t get around to it in time, though.”
“It’s fun.”
I looked at both of their backs, one wide, one slender, as they looked at the monitor, pointing to various menus and icons. The building rotated 360 degrees. Griff, explaining things, pressed a few keys and reduced the elevation to a floor plan.
Which of the two boys in front of me felt more familiar, I wondered. Which one was truly mine? Which one belonged to me in that special way we look for people to belong to us? Seeing them together made me realize that Andy, my boyfriend, whose body I had been inside, was the stranger here. Andy was the third wheel. Everyone else was always the third wheel when Griff was around. How could I reduce him to what he was supposed to be? Just a buddy, just a roommate, just an open-mouth chewer of pizza.
What if I couldn’t?
Andy and I lay side by side on my bed watching Batman Returns on the little TV. Griff landscaped his building with clip-art trees and then laid down on his bed and turned the pages of a sci-fi paperback. There were things we would have to talk about. He knew it. Twice I noticed him looking at me, his dark eyebrows low and confused.
Halfway through the movie he put the book face-down on his bed and pulled open the bottom dresser drawer and got out his electric razor. The black cord uncoiled and snaked down to the carpet.
“Mind giving me a hand for a second, Vince?” he said, holding up the razor and winding the cord around his other hand.
“Now?”
“Yeah, now,” he said. “It’ll just take a minute.” Andy looked bewildered and so Griff rubbed the back of his neck, beneath the longer hair that covered it. “I hate that hair-on-hair feeling of neck stubble, you know? Gives me the willies. Brrrr.”
“Want me to pause this?” Andy said as I got up.
“No, I know what happens.”
I let the door close softly behind me and followed Griff into the bathroom. He plugged the razor into the outlet beneath the row of bulbs on the medicine cabinet and took his usual seat on the edge of the tub. I took the razor from him and he held up his hair.
“Why did you lead me to believe Andy was a girl?” he said, looking down at the white tile floor between his feet.
I switched the razor on; the buzz vibrated my fingers, made them numb. I touched the blade to his neck.
“I don’t k
now.” I ran the razor over his skin, lifting hairs with its vibrating blade. The hairs were soft and fine and almost invisible.
“Come on, don’t pull the I don’t know, Vince.”
“...”
“Don’t pull the silence either. Did you think I’d never meet him?”
“I knew you were going to meet him.”
“Wait,” he said, leaning up with a jerk that only by luck did not liberate a patch of hair from his scalp. “That’s not even why I’m fucking confused. I already know you like guys too, Vince. Why lie when you finally start dating one?”
I didn’t say anything, just kept trimming. I finished one side of his neck and moved the razor to the other side. He rolled the cord between his fingers.
“I mean, what’s it like? This is a major life experience for you. Don’t you want to tell me about it?”
“No, Griff, I don’t.” I rubbed my thumb over the shaved places. “I don’t at all.”
His neck was smooth. I blew on it once, twice. I stepped out of the tub and put the warm razor on the toilet seat and went back to our room. A moment later he came in. He got his toothbrush from the plastic basket of toiletries on his dresser, went back to the bathroom. The door clomped shut behind him.
“Did you trim him?” Andy said as I maneuvered myself into the small vacant space on the bed.
“Yeah.”
“He’s weird, huh?”
“...”
Griff came back into our room, stuck a marker in his book, turned off his little desk lamp, and got under his covers. The movie ended soon after, but not soon enough to save me from fearing that it was keeping him awake. I imagined him quietly seething in the dark.
Hours later I lay in bed spooning Andy, who was by that time long asleep. In the street light that came through the window between the beds I could see Griff sleeping six feet away. His eyelids fluttered; he was dreaming. I lifted my head slightly off my pillow and closed my right eye. Andy disappeared from view and Griff came into place, his forced-perspective image superimposed over where Andy had been. I hugged Andy’s body, clutching him tight, and left my right eye closed until the other one followed it.
*
I woke up when the icy facecloth touched my mouth. Griff was sitting Indian-style on his side of the bed, his iPod and its earbuds tangled in his lap.
“It’s cold,” I said.
“That’s the point.” He smiled. He fished my hand out from under the covers and raised it to my face, pressed it against the facecloth, which I realized was full of snow. “Hold this here—your chin’s all puffy.”
“How’s the car? Did you buy it OK?”
“I bought it,” he said. “It’s in your driveway. Feeling all right?”
“Eh.” The waves of pain had downgraded to ripples but they flowed down my spine and tickled my stomach too.
“You’ll heal.”
“I don’t know if I will.”
“Vince, so dramatic.”
I wiped water off my chin with the edge of the cloth. “Your stuff is still in the Jeep.”
“I brought it in.”
“The mattress—”
“I put it in the garage. We’ll set it up tomorrow.”
“Laundry—”
“In the dryer already. Dude, relax. I’ve taken care of everything.” He wound the earbuds around his iPod and reached across me and put it on the night table. “Push over, I’ll be in in a minute.”
“OK.” Did he have any idea what those words meant to me? What I wanted them to mean?
He left the room and I listened to him rummage around for half an hour in the boxes of things he’d put in the spare bedroom. Then the water ran in the bathroom, his toothbrush clicked against the sink, the toilet flushed. I felt the air change when he came into the room. It felt more comfortable somehow, like I could relax, the feeling I’d been waiting for all evening, the simple feeling of Griff. It took me out of myself, out of the pickle juices of my own mind, and gave me something else to focus on. The blankets lifted off me as he got under. They settled around us both. He did not put the pillow between us tonight.
“You still awake?”
“Yeah.”
He didn’t say anything for a moment, and in the dark I felt him fidget uneasily. “Was that a stupid thing I did today?”
“What?”
“Buying a car like that.”
“I don’t think it was stupid. You should have a car. It’s a good thing to have. It was a responsible choice.”
“It was a lot of money. It put a big dent in my money.”
“Not compared to what you have.”
“Twenty-five grand is a lot no matter what. I could’ve lived for a year on that. Two if I was careful.”
I moved my hand to straighten the hem of the blanket that was tickling my chin; when I pulled it back under the covers my fingers touched against his bicep. I didn’t move them away.
“But live and do what?” I said. “Stay in the house and eat store-brand cereal for the rest of your life?”
He sighed, smoothed his hair.
“You had your fingers in my mouth,” I said.
“My fingers? Oh. I wanted to make sure you didn’t knock out any of your teeth. We would’ve had to look for it. They can put those back in, you know.”
“It felt funny.”
“They’re just fingers, Vince.” He exhaled. “Funny the things you’ll do when you’re panicked, I guess.”
“Yeah.”
“What a rough couple of days, huh?”
“You seemed OK.”
“Most of the time it was fake. Most of the last couple of hours I’ve felt like sobbing.”
“Yeah. Me too.”
“We’re such a couple of sensitive pussies,” he said. He turned his head to me, flashed a quick smile. “Aren’t we?”
“I’m half gay. What’s your excuse?”
He laughed, then sighed. “It’s just that for a long time there I really thought Beth was the One. I thought I’d found the One. I was going to marry her. And then, I don’t even know. It became more and more obvious that she wasn’t—and if I had any doubt, last night cleared that up. I mean, we were kissing and then we were fucking and I was like, What the hell am I doing? I don’t know what I was thinking, going in our room, going to the apartment even. I didn’t want to get back with her, I’m just—I don’t know—trying to be comfortable. And on top of it all I realized on the drive home—I mean, to here—that I’m not a step closer than I’ve ever been to finding the One.” He turned again to look at me. “You know, Vince? Not one fucking step.”
“You’ll find your other half,” I told him. “They say it always happens when you least expect it or something.”
“I keep telling myself that. And sometimes I wonder if— Or— I don’t know. It’s very complicated.” He sniffed hard and swallowed. “How was your ride back with Zane?”
“OK.” My fingers encircled his bicep now. In the space between his arm and his ribs he was soft and humid, like a mitten warmed by breath. And he wasn’t pulling away.
Now, I knew, was the time to lean over and kiss him—just one kiss, just once. I’d always felt that one kiss was all it would take to get him to feel for me what I felt for him. One kiss would demonstrate it, would wake him up like Sleeping Beauty to the happiness we could have together. He would feel on my lips everything he meant to me—and why would he not reciprocate? Because I was a guy? Only because I was a guy? How could something like that possibly spoil what we could have together? I was Vince, his Vince. Vince, his prince. This touch, my hand circling his arm, the tickle of my knuckles in his armpit, might be all it would take. Or maybe a hug tomorrow. Or a sympathetic glance next week. Or one kiss right now.
I was bi and my heart was off-limits to no one, at least not for any reason like what they had between their legs or whether their chests were flat or round. And maybe because of that I never really could believe or understand that Griff, or anyone else, could be det
erred from falling in love by such a trivial thing as gender. The idea of not being wired to love certain people had never made any sense to me, and did not make sense to me now. If I could just show him. If he would give me one chance. I would show him he could love me. Just one kiss. That’s all. One kiss, please God, and if I’m wrong I promise I’ll call it a day.
“Zane was really worried about you when you got hurt,” he said.
“But so were you.”
“If you had seen his face, you’d be a lot more willing to give him a chance.”
“Griff, you make it sound like I’ve ever once said I want to be with him.”
“Don’t you? He obviously adores you, Vince.”
“What do you mean, don’t I? Why should I— It’s not even— Just shut up. He’s just a kid.”
“He’s not a kid. He’s a man. You’re making excuses. And you’re overthinking. You overthink, Vince. You never just do.”
“And you underthink. You wouldn’t’ve half-fucked Beth if you’d thought a little bit beforehand.”
“That’s harsh. You should be glad I underthink. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t. And then where would we be?”
It was on my tongue to say that we’d be better off, that’s where we’d be, but of course I didn’t mean that, and I was glad it hadn’t slipped out.
He rolled over and his arm pulled away from my fingers. I wasn’t sure he ever even realized they were there.
“I miss college,” he said, and went to sleep.
T U E S D A Y
I put a spare set of house keys on the kitchen table and left for work without waking him up. The morning was cloudy and cold and on the ground was a dusting of new snow. Griff’s new Jetta was parked in my driveway, its charcoal paint shimmering through the snow. The license plate had a lighthouse on it.
The mattress was no longer against the garage—when I lifted open the door I found it inside. The plastic wrap covering it crinkled in the cold breeze.
The exertion of lifting the door reawakened the pain in my mouth. I spent most of the morning at Golden Age alternately rubbing my temples and adding letters to the crossword Zane had started days before. Simon had supplied a few answers too. I circled the counter, arranged the action figures in order of preference for character, Windexed the display case. When Marissa arrived at four to relieve me I could’ve kissed her, had her lipstick been a more appetizing shade of blue.
The Cranberry Hush: A Novel Page 17