Where We Left Off (Middle of Somewhere 3)

For all these reasons, spending winter break with Will was—possibly to a humiliating degree—basically heaven. The awesome sex didn’t hurt either. Even though he went back to work while I was still on break, just being in his space felt like I was connected to him. I spent a lot of time reading—Will had similar taste in fantasy, but also a lot of science fiction I hadn’t read—and I started writing. Just absently scribbling about New York and my friends. Not for anyone to see, just to remember everything.

I wrote about Will. Things I noticed about him, questions I had. Stuff I wanted to do to him.

I found myself writing a lot about yoga too. I wrote down things Tonya said that resonated with me, feeling ridiculous at first, like I was in some kind of self-help class or something. But I figured if it was a practice that had been around for like five thousand years, they’d probably figured some shit out. And I wrote down the ways that those things changed my perspective. Tonya always said that only ten percent of yoga happens on the mat; the rest of the time you’re out in the world, so the trick is to apply the principles more broadly so we get the benefit of them in the world as much as we do on the mat.

Sometimes I’d wander around Will’s neighborhood, getting food from La Fonda Boricua or Taqueria Guadalupe and walking through the Vanderbilt Gate and the Conservatory Garden into Central Park to sit by the Untermeyer Fountain or the Burnett Fountain. Sometimes I’d stop at the bodega a few blocks down and get groceries to make simple dinners, so aware always of how different this neighborhood felt than the West Village.

The smell of spilled coffee and the churros for sale on the subway platforms. Tiny old ladies making their way to the bodegas with wheeled carts to do their weekly shopping. How the snow was only shoveled in a thin, perilous strip in the center of the sidewalk so you had to pick your way around people, puddles, and menacing dark patches.

The whole city seemed that way. Each neighborhood—sometimes even just a several block radius—felt unique, and yet there was some essential quality, some… New Yorkness that asserted itself at every turn.

Now it was the last weekend of break and I had talked Will into staying in with me, ordering food, and having a Lord of the Rings marathon. We couldn’t watch the extras because he didn’t own the DVDs. (“I hate clutter,” he’d said when I’d asked why. “And DVD packaging is terribly designed. Everything from the shape of the box to the art is an aesthetic abomination.”)

We ordered Thai, eating ourselves into a stupor and getting tipsy on Singha beer as we watched. I was coming around to beer. A little.

“You look like Legolas,” I told him seriously, knowing it would piss him off because he thought Legolas was prissy and self-satisfied.

“Well, you look like Pippin,” he shot back, opening another beer and arranging me on the couch so he could lean into my shoulder, grumbling about how I didn’t have enough padding to be comfortable, as usual, but settling in against me nonetheless.

All in all, it was probably one of the best days I’ve ever had. Of course, when I told Will that, he snarked about how pathetic my life must have been up to this point. He was worse at taking compliments than anyone I’d ever met.

THE NEXT night was my last night at Will’s before second semester began, and I was moping around the apartment as I gathered my stuff to go back to the dorms. Finally, I plopped down on the couch next to Will, in a full-on sulk. It was the Sunday night to end all Sunday nights, not just the end of break but the end of my time in the fantasy that Will and I lived here together.

Will had been moody all day, and more irritable than usual, less open to being touched, so I should have known better.

It was the desperate desire to shore up the fantasy that made me stupid enough to say something to Will about it. I wanted some assurance that this month had meant something to him too. That, in the end, it had turned out to be more than just him doing me a favor after I fucked up. That it portended something real.

That things were different now.

We’d had sex the night before, languid and ponderous from our movie marathon, and I’d fallen asleep all tangled up in Will and the covers, his chest against my back, his legs threaded lazily through mine. I must’ve turned over in my sleep because I woke up facing him, our bent knees touching, our faces close together on the same pillow, my hand on his wrist, resting like twins in the cocoon of blankets as if we’d woken up that way a thousand times.