Where We Left Off (Middle of Somewhere 3)

“It’s strange watching these now,” I said when we’d finished one branch of the extras tree. I hadn’t seen them in a few years and the first time I saw them I’d been a kid. “The way they make all new friends and they’re far from home and everything—it’s like college.” I ducked my head, embarrassed to admit it. “I actually hoped it was what college would be like.” Will raised an eyebrow. “That sense of becoming part of a group, mostly. Of making a place feel like home because of the people there. Well, and, you know, I hoped it would be like the Shire.”

“And does it?”

“New York, not quite yet. But, school? Yeah. And here.” I gestured around his apartment.

He smiled. “You gotta give New York at least another year. Takes that long for the shock to wear off.”

I had been waiting for the right moment—a good opening or the perfect segue, but this wasn’t an essay for school and it was bound to be a hard conversation whenever we had it, so I let the idea of the right moment go. I slid closer to Will and took his hands in mine, the haunting menu screen music hiccoughing momentarily, then the loop restarting.

“Listen,” I said. “I have things. To say.”

Will was immediately on guard, and I squeezed his hands and moved closer.

“No, no, I don’t want to fight, just talk, okay? We’ve kind of been… you know, doing our thing, but we’ve both been so busy we haven’t really talked about what it is.”

“How about we just make out instead?” he offered, but I could tell he knew it wouldn’t work.

“I need to explain something,” I said. “I’m not quite sure how to say it and I don’t want you to get mad, so just listen, okay? Because it sounds wrong if I can’t say the whole thing.”

Will gave me a whatever eyebrow raise and waved me ahead.

I cleared my throat nervously, still unsure how to say everything I wanted to say even though I’d rehearsed it on the subway coming here.

“Okay, so. This thing happened where I was at sunrise yoga—” Will snorted. “No, yeah, I know, anyway, and it was kind of part of my physics project because I was realizing that I could try and measure effects instead of the thing itself, and so I had to convert it to entropy and like what is the flavor of love and then when I was looking at you the other day it was like your… your whole… gorgeousness became this other thing, and I realized what you’d been saying about its effects, and then that made me think about the laws themselves, and that to be laws they have to be applicable for always, but in this scale that’s so massive that it almost doesn’t matter anymore, like the sun kind of massive, and really that’s not the level of constancy that any relationship demands, you know? Or any person. And you’ve been right to say that I don’t know for always, but then the point is that always isn’t the scale that makes any sense to use given where we are right now. So Tonya was right too about it being about the present moment and things are always shifting and changing and there’s no law because the second you learn something you’re changed forever, and then everything’s different anyway, you know?”

Will was silent for a beat and then he nodded. “Yeah, totally.”

“Yeah?” I let out a breath of pure relief.

“No! I have no fucking clue what you’re talking about! Key terms I heard: sunrise yoga, which I really want to refer to a cocktail; flavor of love, which I think was a reality show on VH1; entropy, which I know is a band; and changed forever, which is what I hope this topic is about to be.”

I giggled nervously. That did not go well.

“Can I get like even a Jeopardy category idea of what this conversation is about?”

About fifteen cute, cheesy, romantic answers popped into my head that I knew I could use to change the subject or alleviate the awkwardness. A hundred ways I could give up. And then we could go back to watching the extras, cuddling on Will’s couch, which was pretty perfect just the way it was. But I didn’t.

“The Jeopardy category is ‘Our Relationship.’”

“Ugh, is there anything less than a $100?”

I shook my head. “They’re all Daily Doubles.” I pushed the blanket aside and kind of clambered into his lap. “Will, kiss me.”

He kissed me tentatively, like maybe there was a catch.

“Okay, now lemme try again.”

Will’s sigh was long-suffering but he ran his fingers through my hair. I hadn’t cut it all year and it had gotten pretty long.

“Babe….”

“No, let me. Okay. You tease me about being a romantic. And you’re right. I like to imagine that things make sense. That everything isn’t just chaos and meaninglessness. That things are predictable, or knowable.”