by Laura Stone
“God.” He scowled at her. “I never even thought about him like that, which is exactly what I said to him last night.” He leaned back in his chair, rubbing his knuckles over his lip as he thought. “I’m looking forward to the break. I’m going to see some old friends, and I just made the plans this morning. That’s all it is.”
“Mm hmm. Not buying it, Ollie. He’s got a name, and I’m going to figure it out one way or another. You’ve been warned, boyo.”
She flashed him a huge grin. Oliver shook his head. Why did he think she was so much fun to be with?
Moira went back to entering data at a fast clip. She said, “Let’s go out for a gargle tonight. I’ll buy you a pint or nine in exchange for the story.” She turned slightly and cast him a sweet smile, all teasing gone. “You look like you need to unload on someone that will tell you that you’re fabulous and worth your weight in gold. I just happen to be that someone; would you look at that? Convenient, aye?”
Oh, right. That was why.
* * *
Moira teased him for the rest of the day, trying out names for his “mystery man” to see if they’d get a reaction. “Barnaby Rumplenutz, Esquire” was his personal favorite. He was able to actually focus on work with her teasing him; it seemed like any other day.
With her backpack slung over one shoulder, she asked, “Meet you at the pub later? Now that you’ve broken that footie’s heart, do us a favor and bring him along, and let me ease him through the rough times that no doubt lie ahead, aye? There’s a good lad.” She chucked him on the chin, grinning hugely, and sailed out of the room—no small feat for such a tiny elfling.
As he logged off the university’s computer and headed home for dinner, everything that work had pushed out of his thoughts came rushing back.
He didn’t know what he’d do when he saw Seth. Yell at him? Cry? Babble like a moron and come off like a lovesick stalker?
But that was stupid, because he wasn’t going to talk to Seth. What would they have to say that they’d not said already?
Oliver shrugged his shoulders up to his ears to try to keep the wintry chill from blowing through him and ducked into a café for some takeaway. The smell of curry and cinnamon dominated the room, making him feel homesick, somehow. He stared up at the board willing something delicious to make itself known.
* * *
FALL, FIVE YEARS AGO
“… I never thought I’d like curry, Oliver. I mean, please. You’ve seen the options available back home. But Geoffrey took me to this one place last night, and it was amazing. I hate admitting I’m wrong, because—as you know—I never am, but I practically moaned an ‘I’m sorry’ around the most delicious bit of saag paneer I’ve ever had in my life.”
Oliver blinked rapidly, holding his phone with both hands. “You were with Geoffrey last night? You told me that you had to study, so that’s why we’d talk today?”
“Oh! Well, I was. I did study, I mean. Geoffrey just came in and made me stop. He said I was working too hard, and we went out for a quick dinner. Is that a problem?”
Oliver bit his lip. He wasn’t going to make a mountain out of a molehill. He knew better than anyone how hard Seth studied. That made sense. “No, sorry. Just…I’ve missed you, that’s all.”
“Mm, I miss you, too.”
Oliver sighed on his end of the line. Seth sounded distracted.
“Hey, if this is a bad time, or you have too much work, I’ll understand.”
He could hear Seth shifting.
“Oliver, I just—I really miss you. There are so many things that happen every day, and I want to turn to you and tell you all about it, but you’re not here, and it’s just hard. And then I get onto myself for being melancholy when we promised each other we wouldn’t mope, and then I feel guilty if I’m not thinking of you.”
He needed to be glad that Seth was sticking to the plan. Oliver didn’t need to feel depressed just because there were times when Seth didn’t think of him. That was insane. He was being insane.
“I want you to be happy, Seth. I want you to enjoy this… this experience. My God, you’re in New York! You’re doing it; it’s happening.” Oliver sighed into the phone. “I just wish I could be there with you, that’s all.”
After a moment, Seth said softly, “I really love you, you know.”
They could do this. They could make it work. All they needed was to remember that they were in love and were destined to be together, no matter what people said about high school romances never working out. Oliver knew they would beat the odds, knew it down to his core.
Oliver smiled against his phone. “I love you, too.”
* * *
Someone behind him gave him a nudge; he realized he’d been standing in line, not ordering.
“Right. Sorry. Um, paneer, the cumin lamb chops, uh, two, please. And lentil cakes, thanks.”
He stood off to the side while he waited for his order to be boxed up. He hadn’t thought about him in years until yesterday, and here he was thinking about him again. Geoffrey. He sighed to himself. Geoffrey hadn’t been the real problem with Seth, but Oliver’s reaction to him hadn’t helped their relationship, either.
Oliver had gotten pretty sick of hearing about Geoffrey that first semester Seth was away. Geoffrey was an amazing singer, had taken dance since he was a fetus, was so graceful, wore haute couture. And he always seemed to be wherever Seth was. What a dick. Oliver knew that he could trust Seth; that hadn’t even been a question. He just hated the thought of this flashy dancing jerk fawning all over his boyfriend. It was clear to Oliver that the guy was into Seth. But then, why wouldn’t he be?
“Paneer, lamb chops?”
Oliver looked up and stuck two fingers in the air. “That’s me.” He laid the money on the counter, said, “Keep the change,” and grabbed his food. He crossed over to the rail station for the short ride back to his neighborhood and walked the last two blocks at almost a trot.
Oliver fumbled at the door for his key, jostling his packages and messenger bag, until he was able to wedge his foot in the gap of the door and slither through. The heavy wooden door closed behind him with a solid thump. The house was completely quiet; Janos wasn’t home yet.
Sighing, he unpacked his dinner. Which was already cold. He turned on the stove—the cooker, he reminded himself—and went about transferring his food to a pan. What a day this was turning into! While his food heated up, he unpacked his messenger bag and organized his papers for the next day. Tonight would be a good night to go for a drink with Moira; he could really use the distraction. Tonight she could be the perfect lifeline to pull him from the abyss of his painful memories. As he waited, he felt the draw of the worst of them, dragging him down into the dark.
* * *
MAY, FIVE YEARS AGO
“You live near Little Italy, but you want to go to Tony’s Italian Palace in Topeka? Really?”
Seth laughed as he finished lacing up his boots. “For old times’ sake. I’m feeling strangely nostalgic this weekend.” He waved his hand in a flippant manner. “Now that I’ve had authentic Italian food, I want to see how it measures up.”
Grinning, Oliver said, “It will be like comparing Boone’s to a Rothschild.”
“Well, aren’t we the little bon vivant?” Seth’s phone pinged with an incoming text, cutting off his laugh. He made an apologetic face at Oliver, who was trying to control his blooming irritation.
“Can we just have one night without him constantly interrupting?”
“Don’t be like that, Oliver; he’s my friend. Give me two seconds to tell him that my gorgeous boyfriend is taking me to dinner.”
Oliver finished tying his shoe and tried to ignore the knot in his stomach, the one he named “Geoffrey.” He just didn’t want to share Seth. Not this weekend. He’d shared enough. “He does this on purpose, I swear.”
Seth rolled his eyes, his thumbs flashing across the screen as he wrote out a reply. “Are we really going to have this conversation ag
ain? It’s not like that. And every time you insinuate that it is, I feel like you’re saying that I’m encouraging it. The ‘it’ that isn’t there.”
“I know. You’re right. Just… I want you all to myself,” Oliver said, smiling shyly. “And I don’t want to talk about him, or whatever amazing thing he’s doing in the Hamptons.”
Seth finished his message, hit send, and raised an eyebrow. “Oh? And what do you want to talk about? What color we’re going to paint the main room of our apartment? If you should bring those six hundred thread-count sheets of your mother’s? Because the answer is yes, Oliver. The answer to that is always yes.”
Oliver smiled, grateful for the levity. “That’s kind of what I wanted to talk about tonight. Well… we haven’t really talked about things since you got here. Future things. We’ve kind of been avoiding it.”
His eyes flicked to the ground, a nervous habit he couldn’t shake. It was the conversation he’d been dreading for weeks now, the one that he and Seth had been skirting anytime it came up. Well, Oliver was skirting it; Seth didn’t actually know the topic was constantly being avoided because of an eight hundred-pound gorilla named Oliver’s College Choice.
As soon as Oliver had mentioned the smaller university outside of Boston as a possibility back in February, the discussion about when Oliver was going to come to New York had become an “if.” Oliver simply hadn’t wanted to add to Seth’s stress as his freshman year came to a close at Juilliard by hashing out pros and cons, so the topic had been dropped all spring.
Seth switched off his phone and set it on Oliver’s dresser, whose edge he held as if to steady himself. His voice was quiet as he asked, “You’re taking the internship this summer, aren’t you?”
Oliver closed his eyes. He couldn’t stand to see that look of impending doom on Seth’s face, not after the amazing day they’d had—a day when they pretended that nothing mattered beyond them being together, touching each other again. Seth looked wounded, as if he’d held his hand out only to have it slapped away. Which, Oliver realized, was what he’d done. In a manner of speaking.
“It’s an amazing opportunity, Seth. One I can’t pass up.”
Seth fussed with the cuff on his shirt, not looking Oliver in the face. “Which means you’ll be going to Massachusetts in the fall, correct?” He looked up, then, and the last tendrils of warmth and security Oliver felt from the day faded at the enormous hurt in Seth’s eyes.
“We talked about how this might happen.”
“No, we glossed over it, once. Because I was led to believe that nothing would keep you from New York. Or from me.”
“It’s not about me staying away, Seth, or wanting to. You have to know that.” Oliver blinked, trying to control his own emotions. He still wasn’t ready to accept that they couldn’t make it work. Deep down, he wondered if he were fooling himself just so he wouldn’t have to face it dead on. “Look, I don’t have the pick of schools I thought I would. Brandeis is amazing and they have staff that is at the forefront of the research I want to do. I—I have to go there. Columbia didn’t want me.” He smiled lamely, going for self-effacing but ultimately just feeling pitiful.
“I want you. But God, Oliver. Am I always going to have to work so hard just to have you?”
Oliver took a step forward and grasped Seth’s bicep loosely, unsure if Seth would allow it. Seth didn’t move closer, just kept his arms crossed and his eyes downcast. Oliver dropped his hand and pleaded, “You have me. You always will. We can… we can still get together on the weekends. We didn’t have that before; we can—”
“And what about when I have a performance on the weekend? Or a project I have to work on? Or you have projects and research and whatever else it is that you end up doing? We’ve been drifting further and further apart for months. We keep pushing off Skype dates; we text on our way to other places with other people, and Oliver, I just can’t keep doing this. It hurts too much.”
He sounded so tired. Oliver wanted nothing more than to pull Seth to him, to rewind the conversation and make none of this happen. “I didn’t want to bring any of this up until dessert. At least. One last dinner before—”
Seth looked up, his face stricken with grief. “Last? One last?”
“I didn’t mean it like that! I meant one last meal before we talk about where we’re going,” Oliver said. “I have this week after graduation before I head out for the summer. I had plans for us, you know. Things we could do together before we have to, well, wait again.”
“Plans I knew nothing about. So I don’t even get this summer with you? The thought of that was all that kept me—” Seth dropped his head, his voice choked as he said, “I can’t keep waiting for you to come to me, Oliver. To figure out that you should be with me. Do you remember Bakerfield? How many months I waited for you to just go out with me? To stop being afraid of your dad knowing you liked another boy? I’ve been waiting all year for you to get to New York, and now you’re not even coming? Is it settled? Like you went ahead and registered? I told you about the place on Washington Square just three weeks ago, and now is when you’re telling me this?”
Seth stared at the ceiling; Oliver fixated on how Seth’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he fought back tears.
Oliver’s voice, choked with his own unshed tears, was almost a whine. He needed Seth to understand, to forgive him. He said, “A recruiter came out to meet with me when you were in the middle of rehearsals. They all but begged me to reconsider. I didn’t want to upset you when I knew how stressful your class load was. I just—couldn’t find the right time. Seth, it’s—they have everything I want.”
So quietly it was almost a whisper, Oliver heard him say, “No, they don’t.”
“Oh, no. No, I didn’t mean it like that. Oh, please—”
Seth shuddered out a sigh. “I can’t keep doing this. I can’t keep waiting. I’ve waited my whole life in this fucking town to be free, to be myself and to be able to love you without worrying about getting beaten up for it, and I can’t keep doing it.”
“Yes, you can. We can. I mean, it’s going to be hard, sure, but—”
“You don’t know how hard it’s going to be, Oliver.” Seth wiped at his face, twisted with grief. “You’ve had your family and your things and your friends all year. You didn’t have to find your way all over again, try to force people to take you seriously. Lie alone in bed every damn night, dreaming of a few more months down the road when your boyfriend would finally be there with you. And then your dream life of living in New York could finally—finally—begin.”
Oliver didn’t really know what to say. He stared at a spot just to the left of Seth’s head, unable to make himself see what this was doing to Seth, to accept that he was responsible for the pained noises being wrenched from Seth.
“This can’t be how I live my life.” Seth yanked a tissue out of the box on the dresser, pressed it against his face and took a few breaths. “I’m not going to keep feeling this way, Oliver. It’s not fair. Not to either of us.”
Oliver’s mouth was dry; he swallowed a few times. He noticed his hand was shaking. “Seth. What—what are you saying?”
“I’m saying that I can’t do a long-distance relationship. It’s awful wanting you and not having you. You can’t keep doing this to me.”
“I’m not trying to do—Seth. And—you left me! I was left here in fucking Kansas without you. Shit. I’m not upset you went to New York. Obviously that was the right choice for you.”
“Just not for you. All of a sudden. After two-and-a-half years of building this dream together, since we first started dating, Oliver.” Seth buried his hands in his hair as if he thought of tearing it out. “God. You… You just can’t make me keep waiting. I can’t keep feeling like this; you can’t keep making me feel like this.”
“This isn’t happening.” Oliver covered his face with both hands. He felt completely drained. They’d fought in the past: sometimes good-naturedly, sometimes not. But this was different. Seth sounded
so resigned. This was why he hadn’t wanted to bring it up. He couldn’t stand the thought of causing this pain, not to Seth. But he knew it was a good decision for his future career, even if it was destroying his heart and Seth’s.
“No, but—Seth, Boston isn’t that far. We can do this. We can! It’s so much closer than Kansas; it’s just a few hours by train.”
“It may as well be the moon. It’s not New York. You’ll get busy—you don’t even know what it’s going to be like. You promised me. Oliver, you promised me.” Seth’s voice broke.
Oliver looked up to see Seth, shaking, begin to cry; Seth looked as if he’d been betrayed, adding another layer of guilt and anguish to Oliver’s shoulders. He reached out to pull Seth into his arms; this wasn’t how it was supposed to be. Seth twisted out of his grasp. “Please don’t touch me right now.”
“Seth, I love you.”
“I love you, too. But I don’t love us. Not like this.” Seth wiped blindly at his face. His chin jutted out, and his eyes were red and swollen. “Tell me you do. Tell me that you love this. You love the thought of four more years of nothing but emails, hurried phone calls, texts here and there.”
It was as though the light was going out of the world; he couldn’t breathe, this hurt so much. “Boston isn’t—” Stubbornly, he huffed out a breath. “Seth, I can’t go to New York. Not for the degree I want. Not for the career I want. NYU just isn’t the school for my undergraduate work. I need—it’s just not the right fit after all. Things just… changed.”
“I can see that. And now is when you tell me, when you’ve decided everything without me.” Seth’s face closed down, and Oliver wanted nothing more than to apologize, to take Seth back to his bed, where they’d spent the day, and never let go.
Oliver knew that he was begging Seth to refuse to see the inevitable. He was begging himself not to see it. “My feelings haven’t changed. I love you. I want to be with you.”
Seth’s laugh sounded hollow, like a clap in an empty room. “If you did, then you would.”
“It’s not that simple!”
“It is. It is for me, at least. You could be in New York going to a great school, but you won’t—”