“Well then stop acting like I’m deliberately harming you by telling the truth when you ask for it. I’m not a monster! I’m not a terrible person or a mean person because I don’t want what you want. And I’m not a sad person or a cold person just because I don’t feel everything that you do!”
I was close enough to him to feel the breath of his exclamation on my face. I didn’t think he was a monster. I didn’t think he was terrible or mean. I just didn’t understand how it was possible to act the way he acted toward me and not have it mean something.
“I didn’t say you were deliberately doing anything,” I said, choked. “But it still hurts. Sorry.”
Will’s sigh was huge.
“Man, don’t apologize,” he said, tugging me a little closer.
I resisted, not wanting to accept comfort from the person who made me need it in the first place. Finally, though, I couldn’t resist Will’s hands on my shoulders. I slouched down against his chest with a sigh of my own, pathetically aware that I would take whatever he was offering as long as I wasn’t being banished from his presence entirely.
“Look.” I could feel the vibration of the word through his breastbone. “Leo, you’re my…. You’re great, okay? But I… the last thing I need is to be responsible for another person’s feelings right now. You’ve got your life, and I’ve got mine. We’ll still see each other, okay? Because we want to. If you still want to?”
I bit my lip against the bolt of hurt and frustration that tore through me. I had promised. I nodded. “Course I do.”
I knew I wasn’t imagining what was between us. That the way we were with each other, the way we touched each other had changed. Where once there was a clear divide between times when we were being sexual and every other moment, now the wall between the categories had eroded.
A hand on my hip as he moved around me in the kitchen to pour his coffee, fingers in my hair when he walked behind me. He touched my freckles sometimes, tracing them across my cheeks and nose with his fingertip. He’d lean his weight against me or drop his chin onto my shoulder to look at what I was doing. And every now and then he’d shove me against the wall and kiss me until I couldn’t breathe.
But if we weren’t dating, if we weren’t in a relationship, I had no context for understanding what those touches meant. Will didn’t seem to need containers for things like that, but I did.
When I’d gathered all my stuff, Will walked me to the door. I felt more like I was leaving home than I had when I left Michigan in the bus’ rearview mirror. Every atom in me was agitated toward Will, every muscle tensed to meet his. It was an actual physical wrench to make myself leave.
At the last minute, even though I felt raw and humiliated, I threw my arms around him.
“Thanks for having me,” I said.
He ran a hand up and down my back, under my backpack, and squeezed me, almost like he might, just the tiniest bit, miss me too.
“Later,” he said when I finally let go.
I turned back to look at his closed door as I waited for the elevator, then turned and took the stairs, bereft of the strength to stop myself from walking toward it again and knocking if it took the elevator more than five seconds to come.
I slouched down the fifteen flights slowly, biting the insides of my cheeks to keep from crying. Shoving my fists into my pockets, I traced the sharp ridges of the key Will had given me when I first arrived a month ago. I hadn’t given it back because it felt so final, and now I took a tiny bit of comfort in the fact that, at least, I knew I could come back. The flop of my busted shoes echoed in the stairwell, a reminder that I still needed to get new ones since the soles were coming off.
Chapter 10
February
“YOU SHOULD come out,” I told Charles as I tugged on the clothes I’d borrowed from Milton. The tight jeans hugged my legs and the artful layers of shirt, sweater, and jacket were nothing I’d ever have chosen, but I had to admit it all kind of worked. “We’re going to see Into the Woods at this high school—which, right, sounds like it’d be terrible because high school play, but Milton says it’ll be good?”
Milton came in without knocking and tossed a pair of pointy-toed shoes on the bed with a flourish, Thomas trailing in behind him.
“Here. You absolutely cannot wear those scrofulous Vans with my outfit.”
I thought about protesting, but the truth was, my shoe situation was actually reaching critical. I’d duct taped the soles back on when they started flapping when I walked, but in the cold the duct tape lost its stickiness and kind of sloughed off, leaving the rubber parts of my shoes gummy so that dirt and hair and dust stuck and crusted in the new layer of duct tape I’d added.