“Well, I guess I better get going,” Wallace says, lightness in his voice. Miller’s hand finds his under the blanket.
“No, you should stay. It’s already late.”
“My walk isn’t that long,” Wallace says. “I’ve already put you out.”
“You haven’t.”
“I have—and I don’t want to. I don’t want to be a hassle.”
“I wish you would stay,” Miller says firmly. “I want you to.”
“You’re being nice. You don’t have to be. It’s fine.”
“I’m not,” Miller says. “I’m being selfish. I want you to stay.” Miller is looking at him now. Whatever the silence might mean, there is such sincerity in his voice and his gaze that Wallace relents. Miller kisses him.
“Okay,” Wallace says. “I’ll stay.” Miller takes his hand, and Wallace enjoys the lovely weight of his fingers, their warmth, their texture. He puts his head against Miller’s shoulder. He wants to sleep, could sleep.
“If you’re tired, we can go upstairs.”
“This is fine.”
“Are you sure? You don’t have to stay down here because of me.”
“Didn’t you just say to stay?”
“I did, but—”
“Okay, then,” Wallace says, cutting him off. Miller laughs at him. The nervousness abates, and so does the nausea, the churning sense of being gossiped about. You have to learn to trust people, to believe that they mean you no harm, Wallace thinks.
“I’m sorry,” Miller says after a few moments. “For before, for not knowing what to say.”
“It’s okay,” Wallace says. He’s already forgiven whatever harm the silence did. He’s already over it. He will survive.
“I’m sorry all that happened to you, that I made you tell me.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong. Besides, I guess I’ve been walking around waiting for someone to ask.”
“Have you?”
“Maybe so,” Wallace says. “Maybe we all are? I don’t know.”
“When I told you that stuff about my mom last night—I didn’t know about your parents, about what he did. I feel pretty stupid,” Miller says.
“Oh,” Wallace says. “That’s what this is about. You feeling stupid. I see.”
“Jesus. That isn’t what I meant at all, Wallace. That isn’t what I meant. What a thing to say.”
“It seemed like that’s what you meant,” Wallace says because he cannot stop himself and because he is familiar with this version of things between them. The scolding, halting nature of their relationship is a comfort to him in this moment. Miller clenches his jaw and breathes heavily out his nose. Wallace sees a cluster of tiny blackheads at the corner of his nose.
“What do you want from me?” Miller asks.
“Nothing. I don’t want anything from you.”
“Okay, right, all right, then,” Miller says, nodding stiffly. He puts his head flat back against the low counter. He closes his eyes. “You are exhausting. You are completely exhausting.”
“Then I should go home.”
“If you want me to tell you to go home, I’m not going to do that. If you want to go, go. Stop trying to make excuses.”
“You just called me exhausting.”
“Because you are,” Miller says. His eyes are squeezed tight. Wallace presses his thumb to the wrinkled surface of Miller’s eyelids. He’s warm. Damp from the cool air coming in through the open door, but he’s warm. His chest is broad. Wallace’s hand slips down to his throat. The low, steady rhythm of Miller’s pulse. Wallace should know better. He knows that. Picking fights over petty things, over invisible things.
“If I’m so exhausting, then why don’t you kick me out?” he says as he straddles Miller’s lap. He lets his weight rock back against the tops of Miller’s thighs. “If I’m so exhausting, then just tell me to beat it.” Wallace presses his thumb into the smooth, firm cartilage below Miller’s Adam’s apple. The silvery surfaces of Miller’s eyes pass along the creases of his lids, which have now slit open as if released by the pressure of Wallace at his throat. Like a tiny machine. Like a toy. Press one place and see another pop open. Miller wets his lips. His face comes close to Wallace, but Wallace pushes him back, flattens his palm against his throat, so that Miller encounters the resistance of Wallace’s body. The more Miller pushes, the tighter Wallace’s hand cinches around his throat. They’re caught this way, separated by sharp, angular distances. Miller grunts under him. Wallace feels him swallow.
Miller relaxes. The tension in his body goes slack, and for just an instant Wallace fears he’s done something horribly stupid. He lets go, and in that instant, a span of time like the head of a pin, Miller snatches his wrists and drags Wallace’s hands down to his stomach to bring the two of them as close as possible. Wallace blinks and suddenly there they are together, faces close enough that their noses touch, their lips touch, their cheeks touch. They’re so close that Wallace feels he can see the red crescents of the insides of Miller’s eyelids, so close he can hear the blood rushing in Miller’s body, so close he might mistake that rushing blood for his own.
“Cheap,” Wallace says, but he can’t get his wrists loose. Miller’s got him cinched up tight. Wallace struggles a little harder, but Miller will not let him go. He pulls back and away, but he goes nowhere. Miller is stronger than he is. It isn’t fear that Wallace feels, exactly, in this moment. It doesn’t have that wild, gamy taste. There’s something else, regret, in its place.
Miller watches him from beneath his heavy eyelids. “Ask for what you want,” he says.
“Fuck you.”
“Be a good boy.”
Good boy.
“I was never good.”
“Me either,” Miller says.
“Yeah, right,” Wallace says, but then Miller’s expression goes a little sad and Wallace remembers what Miller told him. About his mother, who had died, and how things had not always been easy and good between them. “Oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.”
“Sure you did. Of course you did.”
“We were just talking.”
“Just talking,” Miller says a little meanly. “That’s what we’re doing. Who knew?”
There’s a little more give to Miller’s hold on him, so Wallace takes his chance and gets himself free. His wrists burn from the tension of Miller’s hands, from the structure of his grasp. On the undersides of Wallace’s arms, where he’s palest, he can see the dark red afterimage of Miller’s palms. He slips from Miller’s lap back to the floor. Miller has closed his eyes again. It’s as if the past few minutes never happened.
Wallace wonders if this means that he should leave. He presses his thumb down against the back of Miller’s hand, where it rests on the floor. He digs at the skin with his thumbnail, and Miller jolts again, jerks back to life. It’s like before, with Yngve. What is this part of him, Wallace wonders, that makes him provoke people this way? What is it in him?
Ask for what you want, Miller said. It makes sense to Wallace now. It’s his way of asking. He can’t just say what he wants. Because he doesn’t know what he wants.
“Wallace. Don’t start with me,” Miller says. “You won’t like it.”
“I’m not,” Wallace says, but he’s already humming inside. He can barely contain the warm, rushing sensation inside him. “I’m not starting anything.” This feels essential somehow, that he say this to Miller, though he suspects that he is. He puts his lips against Miller’s neck, and breathes. He feels Miller swallow. The heat of his skin. The rhythm of the muscles rising and falling. The softness of his hair against Wallace’s nose. The fur of some tender animal. The skin pimples under his breath. The shiver of life. He sinks his teeth against Miller’s neck and shuts his eyes against the white jolt of being shoved back and pinned against the floor. Miller is sitting on top of him. His hands are pi
nned above his head, in which swims his brain, a yolky mess. This too feels necessary. Miller leans low over him.
“I told you not to start with me,” Miller says, but his voice is shaky, uncertain. Something catches in it. Wallace’s head aches, pulsates. “I told you.”
“I didn’t,” Wallace says. Miller is straining against himself, fighting something. Wallace has never witnessed this part of him, though now that he’s close enough he thinks he may have caught glimpses of it. There was that time in their first year, when Wallace had accidentally let the door to the ice machine snap shut just as Miller was reaching in to fill his bucket. It had been a true accident, a minor miracle of bad timing and misread intentions. Wallace was scooping out some ice, door propped on his hip, when Miller came jogging up and said something to him just as he was looking away, and Wallace had let the door swing shut and it almost cut Miller’s hand off. Miller stood there stunned, staring down at his hand as if it had been cleaved clean off. Wallace was terrified. Then, slowly, their eyes met, and Wallace saw that Miller had every intention of punching right through his face. He watched the fingers curl. He watched the fist rise with slow solemnity, like a head bowing in prayer. But then something changed. Instead of him, Miller threw his punch at the slanted door of the ice machine and let out a curse. Goddammit, Wallace, he said. Then he kicked the machine. You are so fucking selfish. Another time, one lunchtime in second year, they were sitting in twos on a maze of stone walls—Miller and Yngve, Cole and Wallace, Lukas and Emma—when Miller and Yngve started to fight about something. It looked like a playful skirmish, but then, after some moment of pride bruised, Miller suddenly pushed Yngve, hard, and Yngve went flailing back off the wall onto the concrete below. For a moment Miller sat there looking at him, his posture rigid, head high, as if he were proud. And then, quick as anything, he jumped down after Yngve, and the rest of them came running after. Yngve was all right. He went home with a concussion that day. And Lukas stayed with him. Wallace wondered if that may have been the start of things between those two. Now, in the kitchen, Wallace is not surprised to find himself pinned by Miller. He’s not shocked. This is something he’s been after, isn’t it? Why else goad him? Wallace lifts his knee until it’s against Miller’s chest.
“Why are you pressing me, Wallace?”
“I don’t know,” Wallace says. “So you’ll tell me to leave, I guess.”
“I won’t,” Miller says.
“Not even after all that?”
“It barely hurt. You’re a baby.”
This stings Wallace’s pride, a pride he did not know he possessed until this very moment. With some embarrassment he realizes that he thought himself capable of dealing Miller harm. Didn’t he hurt Miller by telling him all that stuff about himself? Isn’t that why he did this here, to bring Miller’s anger upon him? Because he thought himself capable of doing harm, of taking something from Miller? And to be told now that he was nothing more than a baby.
“Tell me about your damage,” Wallace says.
“You don’t need to know my damage.”
“I think you want me to know,” Wallace says. “That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? You want me to know about it.”
He shifts under Miller. His back hurts. His head hurts. The world is still uneven, jagged. Like bits of a mirror fit unevenly together. Miller is kaleidoscopic in gray and black and silver, his face a shadowy hall of mirrors, a riot of shapes.
“I hurt someone, Wallace. Really fucking bad,” Miller says.
Wallace breathes through the dull shock of the words.
“My parents sent me away, after. Some kind of camp, I guess it was. But that kid—his heart stopped. That’s what people said, back home, anyway. His heart stopped three times in the ambulance.”
“Wait, Miller . . . Why?”
“I don’t know—it’s like that, I think. With trauma, arrhythmias. His brain bled where I hit him. He had deficits for a long time.”
“No,” Wallace says. “I meant—that’s not what I meant.”
Miller retreats. Wallace follows. Miller stands. Wallace stands. He takes Miller’s elbow, tries to get him to turn.
“Why did you do that to him?”
Miller’s eyes are sad and downcast. He turns from Wallace. Knocks into the glass. Cold water on their feet. On the floor. The glass cracks, but doesn’t break.
“Shit,” Miller says. Wallace breathes. The wind pulls back through the trees. The air is cold and dark. “Shut that, will you?”
Wallace nods. He slides the door shut as Miller picks up the glass. The room is suddenly, with the door closed, quiet.
“Is that your answer?” Wallace asks.
“I don’t have one,” he says, resting against the counter. “I don’t have an answer, Wallace. He was this kid from home. He followed me and my friends around. It wasn’t like it is here. I’m not like Yngve. Or Lukas or Emma. I’m not from this.” He gestures broadly, taking in the house and the yard and their neighbors who sleep soundly, deeply, encompassing the capitol and the square and the lakes and the trees and the whole bright world. “Anyway, his dad was an engineer at the plant where my dad worked, and all this kid could talk about was going to Purdue. Early decision.” Miller’s face is knit tight. Closed, like he’s seeing it all again. “He was just this little pissant kid, Wallace. He was just so sure.”
“You attacked someone because they were sure?”
“No,” Miller says, shaking his head. “No, it wasn’t that. But it was, I guess. It comes down to that. He was sure. All I had waiting for me was some job making brake shoes like my old man. And this kid is just walking around like, I’m going to Purdue. I’m going to be an engineer! And I went around mad because nobody out there wanted me. Nothing I wanted wanted me back.”
“I understand that,” Wallace says.
“Do you? One day, we steal some cigarettes, right? And we’re out behind the old grocery store, smoking and talking shit. Usual stuff. This kid, five feet, no inches, leans over, and he just plucks the butt right out of my mouth.” Miller smiles as the memory surfaces, like he can taste the perfect, gritty flavor of his rage. He breathes deeply. “And he says, I’m really gonna miss you guys. Talking about missing us while smoking my cigarette. I’m like, This kid. This kid has got it coming. So I get even.”
Wallace feels a little dizzy. He wonders if he hurt his head. Miller, having given himself over to the story now, looks content. He wets his teeth and then his lips. There is the hint of a smirk on his face, as if he is enjoying himself, or he is inhabiting the version of himself who enjoyed hurting someone. Get even sounds like the rallying cry of weak people who have no other way to bargain with the world. What does that mean, Wallace wonders. There was no hurt done to Miller in this story. What score is he trying to even? Miller turns to him and his face shifts. His eyes widen slightly. Wallace feels a momentary chime of panic, that he’s been caught out, and that Miller can read his mind, knows what Wallace thinks of him. No, Wallace thinks. Miller is afraid. That’s what this is. He is afraid that he is bad and that no one wants him back.
“You wanted to get even,” Wallace says quietly.
“I just wanted him to feel like I felt. What else was I supposed to do?” Miller’s voice breaks as he says it. This is not from some long-ago memory, something reluctantly remembered. It’s been there near the surface this whole time. What else was I supposed to do? Anything else, Wallace wants to say. You didn’t have to hurt that boy. But Miller is not asking him to justify it. Not really. He wants someone to be on his side.
“It was impossible,” Wallace says. “You were in an impossible place.” What an ugly thing this is.
Miller turns to him then, fully. He draws Wallace close and puts his face against Wallace’s neck.
“I didn’t want to,” Miller says. “I didn’t want to do that. I try to be good. I try to be good. I try to be good.”<
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“You are good,” Wallace says, mildly alarmed at himself.
Miller laughs coolly. “I don’t know, Wallace. What I just told you makes me sound like a really bad person.”
“There are no bad people,” Wallace says with a shrug. “People do bad things. But after a while they’re just people again.”
“So I guess that means you’ve forgiven your parents?” Miller says, and a sharp streak of hurt flashes behind Wallace’s eyes. “I thought not.” He pauses. “There are bad people. I kept thinking about that kid’s face when you told me about what happened to you. I could feel his bones breaking. And my bones breaking. And I just kept going. Because I was mad. How sick is that?”
“You were trying to escape your life,” Wallace says.
“By tearing a hole in someone else’s.”
Wallace lets it lie. Whatever Miller wants from him, it isn’t this.
Miller takes his hand. “Let’s go to bed,” he says. Wallace nods and follows him up the stairs. There is so much trouble in the world. There are people suffering everywhere, at every moment. Who is happy, truly happy, ever? What is a person to do with it all? Except to try to slide laterally out of one’s life into whatever gray space waits for them.
Miller’s room is as they left it. He shuts the door, and Wallace climbs back onto the bed. Miller gets into bed with him, and they slide under the quilt. Soon it will be fall, too cold for just a quilt, but by then Wallace might be hundreds of miles away. He might be somewhere warm. He might be anywhere at all. And Miller will still be here, in this room, changing over his clothes and his bed for winter. The contrast makes Wallace uneasy—how unrooted he is in this place, how tenuous a grasp it has on him. Miller wraps his arms around him, and for a moment, at least, Wallace feels anchored, moored.
“I hope you don’t hate me,” Miller says. “Isn’t that stupid? To tell you what I am and then say, Please don’t hate me?”
“I don’t hate you,” Wallace says.
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