Unraveling Josh

by Edie Danford

  I turned to face Josh. He was watching me, still wearing that concerned look. He was older and smarter and nicer and more mature than me. This was proven when I walked by him on my way toward the stairs. I was going to leave without saying anything. Not so much because I was trying to be cool, but because I was afraid if I opened my mouth I’d scream or cry.

  He grabbed my hand. I didn’t look at his face. His thumb brushed over the ring on my forefinger, the one he liked to play with. “You take care, okay, Nick?”

  I nodded, keeping my gaze fixed on our hands. I didn’t want to see his eyes. “You too,” I mumbled. I wrenched my hand away and booked down the stairs, traveling more by feel and muscle-memory than sight.

  I didn’t do as well on the exterior stairs. Halfway down I fell on my ass. Hard enough to knock out my breath. I’d smashed my phone—there’d been a telltale crunch as I’d landed. Good, I thought. That’s actually very, very good.

  For a few moments I lay sprawled on the damp, mossy surface of the stairs. I stared up at the stars. They seemed so close tonight. As if they were crystalline drops of dew that had formed on the leaves and branches above me, and every time a breeze blew, the drops got sprinkled across the sky.

  I thought about spending the night there, letting my bruised mind and heart and ass drift on thoughts of the stars. But I was worried Josh might see me or somehow sense I was still around. So I got up and limped back to Vegan House.

  Later I would realize that my fall on the steps was significant. It had jarred loose the heart Josh had tried to give back to me. And it also seriously fucked up my knight’s armor. As I entered the next phase of my life, I quickly discovered both my heart and my silvery protective suit had stayed there, broken and battered at the base of Torvek Tower.

  PART THREE

  “This is the pathetic yet hopeful part of the story in which our lame-ass hero must prepare to be snubbed, turned down and rejected like no boy has been snubbed, turned down and rejected before.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Josh

  I WAS FEELING nervous as I set down my bag by the podium in the front of the room. I knew the subject matter for the seminar well—I’d been writing and researching “Topics on Eastern European History” for the last several years. But a seminar was always a bit different than a lower-level class. Ellery students were smart. There would be lively discussions and tough questions. And hopefully I’d have the kind of answers that inspired and didn’t bore or shut down.

  My intro class earlier in the morning had gone well and there was no reason why this class wouldn’t too. Students had smiled at my jokes—even my uncool puns—and there had been no eye rolls or whispers or other obvious signs of disappointment about my presence. Both classes were three hours every week. Pearlstein taught the first two hours as lectures and I took the third as discussion.

  As students began to trickle in to the room, my nerves gave way to plain old excitement. It was the beginning of a new quarter, everyone was refreshed from a long holiday break and—I glanced out the big windows—there were six inches of fluffy, new snow on the ground and more fat flakes were falling. When class was over in two hours, I was gonna go home, gear up, clip on some skis and go gliding.

  “Hey, you’re Josh, right?” A familiar-looking woman approached me with a smile on her face. “I’m Emma Strom. We met back at the beginning of fall quarter. At the library.”

  I tipped my head, trying to remember. Usually I was good with names and faces. “Nice to meet you, Emma. I’m afraid I don’t—”

  “We were with Nick McQueen. You two seemed…surprised to see each other?”

  “Ah.” I exhaled a laugh and tried to fight heat from rising up my cheeks. “Right. Now I remember.”

  Her smile got bigger. “I heard great things about the discussions you led last quarter. I’m looking forward to this class. It’s gonna be great. Especially with Nick—he makes discussion groups a blast.”

  I leaned too hard against the chair beside me. It made a wrenching shriek against the tile floor. “Nick?” I practically squeaked the word. I cleared my throat. “I, um, didn’t see his name on the class list.”

  “Oh, I think he’s in the process of adding it. I’m trying to talk him into it anyway.”

  I cast a quick glance at the circular seating arrangement. Half the chairs were occupied. None of the students was Nick.

  “Cool,” I said, even though my blood was pumping hot and my face was now most definitely on fire. “Yeah. It’ll be a great class.”

  I watched Emma take a seat and wondered how I could possibly run a seminar group with Nick as my student. The class I’d taken over for Sheree fall quarter hadn’t ended so well. He’d missed all my discussion groups and assignments. He’d made special arrangements to take the final and turn in his final paper after the quarter ended. Pearlstein had handled all the details.

  I’d made a few careful overtures related to coursework—a text to check in on an assignment he was supposed to have gone over with me, a couple invites for coffee at the library café—but I’d received Not in Service messages after every attempt. Finally, I’d used my status as a TA to check with the registrar. Honestly, I’d been worried as hell about him and it had been more than a little pathetic how relieved I’d been when I’d found out he was still on campus and enrolled.

  It hadn’t been easy for me to reach out to him. Shoving away my anger and depression long enough to compose those few short sentences had taken a bizarre amount of strength.

  Turned out it had been a big step toward moving on. After weeks of doing nothing but working, working out and wallowing in numb misery, I’d finally felt ready to talk about my woes with other people.

  Over break, I’d admitted to my mom that I’d been in a relationship but that it had ended badly. She’d taken the news surprisingly well. I think the idea I’d actually had a relationship—with someone who wasn’t Zachary (she’d finally realized he’d moved on after I’d shown her pics of the apartment he shared with Kirby in Cali)—was enough to make her think my mope-dog face and my willingness to sit through a holiday movie marathon were hopeful things.

  “This is part of growing up,” she’d said. “You figure out when someone isn’t right for you and it hurts like hell. Sometimes it takes a while, but eventually you must move on. And you find someone who is good for you.”

  Yeah, obviously she was a woman familiar with betrayal.

  Telling her that I’d fallen for a bad-boy type who’d posted pics of my ass on his Internet sex log wasn’t going to happen for lots of reasons.

  But telling her the basic details of being an idiot about love had been an okay thing—I’d felt slightly better just getting it off my chest, she’d felt good about giving me advice, and she’d gifted me airfare to California for New Year’s. When Kirby and Zach met me at the airport they both were shocked to find me—a guy they’d never witnessed being depressed—acting all down and out and exhausted.

  Kirb weaseled the whole sordid story out of me. It had been gratifying and kind of hilarious when both guys—with grave sincerity—volunteered to come back and kick Nick’s “immature little player ass” for me. Threats out of the way, they’d both given me good counsel. “Some guys are only good for sex,” Kirb had said. “You take your pleasure and you fucking forget about the rest.”

  Zach’s advice had been more pointed: “He’ll probably come crawling back. He’ll realize what he’s lost. It wouldn’t be a bad thing to forgive him if you feel the need. But I know how important trust is for you and I don’t know how he can win that back. There are so many great guys—guys who would appreciate you for you. Get your fellowship done and move out here. Kirb and I could likely introduce you to ten amazing men the first week you’re here.”

  So as I’d rested next to Kirb on Stinson Beach, watching Zachary fly a kite and letting the tepid sun and the cool wind wash over me, I’d decided to take their advice and let my anger go.

  Nick had probably ch
anged me in more good ways than bad. He’d been young and stupid, but, in a lot of ways, I’d been young and stupid too. Now I knew what happened when “fast and dirty” and “not exclusive” met up with “slow and clean” and “too fast to fall in love”.

  When I’d arrived back at Ellery last week, I’d scrubbed the hell out of the tower and I’d felt a prick of pride (a small prick) that I’d been able to think of him with a few smiles and some forgiveness in my heart.

  My gaze skittered around the classroom. Okay, so I might have mustered up a smile when I’d found one of his dragon doodles in the margin of my textbook…or realized he’d snuck a wretchedly bad glam-rock song on my fave playlist. But that didn’t mean I was prepared to see him a couple hours a week. Or grade his goddamn papers objectively.

  Why the hell was he thinking he wanted to take this seminar? He was only a sophomore. He had plenty of chances to take this class with someone else TAing—when I was gone, for example.

  I chatted with a few more students, ignoring the clattering of nerves in my gut and keeping my eye on the door. At four minutes past the hour I decided to begin class. I didn’t have time to freak out about Nick.

  “Hi everyone,” I began, “glad to see you here. Hopefully you all received the essay I sent on Wednesday. I was thinking we could go around the room, introduce ourselves and then briefly discuss why you think I assigned an essay written by a man who may or may not be one of the most horrific perpetrators of genocide in the last generation as our first topic of discussion.”

  I started by introducing myself and telling them I’d give my opinion on Milosevic’s essay after they’d delivered theirs. We were almost all the way through the class of twelve—I was taking notes on the last guy’s comments because they made excellent points I wanted to emphasize later—when a familiar voice spoke up on my right.

  “I’m Nicholas McQueen. I’m a sophomore history major from Lake Woods, Illinois—”

  What the fuck? When had he snuck in? Or had he been sitting there the whole time and I’d missed him?

  I practically kinked my neck to try to oh-so-casually get a look at him. The tables were arranged in a D-shape and I was in the middle of the flat part. Nick was sitting in the chair right before the curve. And the two people directly to my right were in the goddamn way.

  “—and I’m interested in the intersection of art and politics,” he was saying. “Particularly in cases of violent conflict. I was fricking psyched to read the essay because I’d actually seen it before. Milosevic had a very interesting approach to dealing with art and the creative voice when he first came into power…”

  As he spoke, I eased my seat back, quietly, carefully, so I could see behind the students beside me. Nick’s chair was pushed all the way in to the table. He wasn’t in his usual ultra-casual pose—his back appeared perfectly straight. He was wearing some kind of hoodie. The fabric was thick and fuzzy and…purple? And a thick, slouchy beanie was on his head. Dark green. I thought I recognized the knit work of one of the guys at Vegan House—dude I’d met and chatted with that week Nick and I had done dinner for the house. I wanted to reach over, clench my fingers around the thick wool and pluck the hat off his head. I had the worst urge to see his face. It was January fourteenth and I hadn’t seen him since the beginning of November.

  I stared blindly at my laptop. God, just hearing his voice was incredible. I’d forgotten how much I loved that rasp. He played it up sometimes—he knew it was sexy as hell—but even his normal tone held more than a hint of gravel.

  And…his voice had stopped.

  The room was quiet. All eyes were on me. “Um, great.” I cleared my throat. My voice had squeaked embarrassingly again. “Thank you, Nick.” My palms were making sweat marks on the Formica table. I couldn’t comment on what he’d just said—not the way I’d commented on all the other students’ intros—because I hadn’t paid a damn bit of attention to the meaning of his words. “You’ve given us a lot to think about,” I said lamely.

  Thank Christ the next kid started talking. My brain had fizzled to functioning on only a few synapses. Also lucky—I’d taken notes regarding my own thoughts on the essay. So I used them extensively when it was my turn to express an opinion. Apparently they were coherent enough to inspire a discussion, because for the remainder of the class I only had to interject and steer a few times.

  I ended the class right on time and winced as I pushed my chair back too fast, eliciting another horrible shriek from the tile. As I put my laptop in my bag—my hands had an annoying little quiver—the woman who’d been sitting on my left struck up a conversation about potential themes for the first assigned paper.

  I was only half listening as my gaze kept darting to the right. Would Nick stop to talk to me? Or would he disappear from the room as covertly as he’d appeared?

  “Come by my office any time during my hours or email me,” I told the woman. I smiled, hoping like hell the response was appropriate for her question.

  The woman smiled back and nodded. As she shouldered her bag and headed for the door, I turned, hoping for a glimpse—

  He was standing between the table and the door, his back to me as he talked with Emma. He’d put the hood of his big anorak-style sweater up over his head. The sweater came down almost to his knees. I caught a glimpse of a few inches of faded jeans before a pair of huge, clunky snow-pack boots began.

  I stood there waiting, wishing I could hear what they were discussing. Emma was smiling. Nick was gesturing. I caught the flash of a single ring on his left hand.

  Finally he turned around. He was wearing glasses. Not the hipster-style ones he’d worn occasionally last quarter. Well, these were kinda hipster. They had squared-off tortoise frames and they suited his sharp features. His chin was decorated with the beginnings of a beard and…something else seemed different. No piercings. The ear gauge he wore was tiny.

  Weird, but, yeah…he looked good. Softer. Definitely woolier. Touchable. Especially as he walked toward me and a very small, very cute smile began to curve his lips.

  “Hey there, Josh,” he said.

  He wasn’t playing up the whispery voice, but still—my goddamn dick twitched. No joke. Oh Jesus.

  I licked my lips. “Nick. How are you?”

  “I’m…okay.” His smile widened for a second before fading. “Do you, um, mind if I add this class?”

  I glanced at Emma who was standing beside him. Her brows were raised. Yes, this was a very curious convo. Not so much the words, but the vibe.

  “Pearlstein gave his approval already,” Nick inserted quickly.

  “No,” I said. “I mean, no, I don’t mind.”

  “Cool,” he said. “Thanks.” He gave me another small, cute smile and looked at Emma. “Coffee then?” he asked.

  “Sounds excellent,” she said. They took a step toward the door, and she stopped and looked at me. “Do you want to join us, Josh?”

  I glanced quickly at Nick. His smile had disappeared, his eyes carefully focused on the door. His top teeth bit quickly into his lower lip. I wrenched my gaze from his mouth and looked at Emma. “No,” I said. “I’ve got a date with some skis. Thank you, though. Raincheck?”

  “Sure.” She smiled and walked out the door with her wooly friend.

  I sat down hard in the nearest chair and waited for my heart to stop thudding and my dick to stop chubbing.

  Nick

  “SO THAT SEEMED…AWKWARD,” Emma said as we left the history building.

  “Yeah,” I agreed. We turned right and the snow blew in our faces. Emma cursed and I opened my mouth to catch some flakes. I needed some cooling power. I’d forgotten how Josh could make me hotter than hell in less than ten seconds. Sitting in a seminar room and listening to his deep voice say brilliant, witty things for an hour and half? Yeah. I needed more than a few flakes. I needed to plant my whole body in a drift.

  “Did you and Josh have a…”

  “A thing?” I laughed. “Yep. We did. A good thing. But I fu
cked it up big time. That’s why it was awkward just now. He hasn’t forgiven me. Yet.”

  “Oh-ho. Do I hear a man with a plan?”

  “A man with the beginnings of a plan. Maybe.”

  Emma laughed. “You don’t sound very sure.”

  I shrugged. “Maybe I don’t want to be sure anymore.”

  I held open the library door for her. She looked up at me. “Ah,” she said.

  I smiled and followed her into the entry. “Yeah. Ah.”

  After coffee with Emma, I headed over to the admin building and officially added the history seminar to my schedule. I’d been worried Josh might raise a fuss about me taking it, but that had been a stupid worry. The moment I’d seen his face again, heard his voice, I’d known he wouldn’t say no. Josh had a good heart and he was fair-minded. Two reasons why I was gonna try to get him back.

  The snow was really piling up and—as I turned down frat row—I noticed a bunch of guys at Fen House were building some kind of fort. Typically, the snow objects in front of Vegan House seemed to be peaceful souls. A penguin. And maybe a bear? More likely a dog.

  Kelsey had brought a puppy back with her after break and the house had gone dog crazy in the last week. The house had approved her request to keep him, no question—the administration was down with pets in campus housing if they fell under the realm of “wellness animals”.

  The pup was a total twerp—a puggle she’d named Todd Johnson after some obscure character in Adventure Time—but entertaining as hell. And during the last week as I listened to Kelse giggle and coo over him in her room and saw her take care of him using a time-management structure I would never have guessed she was capable of, I had to believe he was totally promoting wellness.