Where We Left Off (Middle of Somewhere 3)

“Having sex?”

“Yeah.”

“Yes,” Will said, and he wrapped the word around his tongue like a caress, like maybe he thought he was about to distract me from this discussion.

“Right, well, I love when you do that. When you tell me what you want, what you like. Even if I don’t… give it to you right away, I always want to know it. I like knowing where we stand. I feel—I don’t know, free when I don’t have to wonder. I don’t have to worry about whether I’m pleasing you or question where we stand. I’d rather fight with you than not know what you think.”

Will looked uncertain. “But you do know me, that’s what I’m saying. You know me better than… anyone. I mean, hell, you’re a scientist, you collect data. You’re great at figuring it all out.”

“I don’t want to have to conduct a science experiment to know how you feel! Do you know how shitty it is to say that to me? Like it’s one hundred percent my responsibility to… study you? That I’m supposed to look at everything you do and draw my own conclusions and act based on them with no confirmation? Why? Why would you want it to be like that?”

And it hit me with a twist of nausea that this was how Will thought things had to be. That he’d grown up watching for signs of what things might mean. Clues. Were his parents going to be distracted enough with each other that he could take money from them to go buy whatever he wanted at the grocery store? Was Claire in a mood where he needed to tell her this thing or that one in order to handle a situation? Was someone giving him something because of how he looked or on his merit?

Will had become so adept at reading the signs that it never occurred to him to say something if he thought he’d already communicated it in another way. With a gesture or an eye roll, a pattern or a habit. Words were just a redundancy to him. Like the time I pointed out that there were bananas and he got pissy because he could see them.

And maybe there Rex was right again. If I took away what Will had never said as well as what he had, I was left with someone who hung out with me, had sex with me, hugged me, joked with me, ate with me, slept with me, and told me about his day. I was left with… someone who acted like we were together.

I took his hands and pulled him back down on the couch.

“Okay, so, it’s not about me being dumb or oblivious. It’s not that I don’t notice things about you.” I rolled my eyes at myself. “I basically notice every stupid little thing about you, so. But sometimes things are complicated and they mean different things to different people, and I don’t want to assume that I know something about you just because I think I do, you know? Because sometimes I’ll get it wrong. Sometimes you’re not as obvious as you think you are, or sometimes my perception of stuff is more about me than about you, honestly. Like, if I’m feeling shitty about stuff, I might read something you did differently than if I’m feeling great, you know?”

“Yes, I understand. I’m not a sociopath. Even though you’re basically making me feel like Patrick Bateman over here.”

“Okay, good! See? Great example of how sometimes people feel things differently.” He glared at me. “I just mean, I wasn’t trying to say you were a sociopathic serial killer—although actually that scene with the business cards I can totally see—”

He snorted a laugh.

“But that’s what I’m saying, Will. I wasn’t trying to be patronizing, I was trying to explain how there is no, like, truth that we both share or anything. There are just so many ways it can go wrong to assume that we know what each other are thinking.”

“God, did you read Nietzsche this semester or something?”

“Um. No? Okay, but so the point is that even when you think you’re communicating something, I might not get it. Also, though, I just….” I twined our fingers together. “I want to hear you say things. Like, I know I’m a dork or whatever, and I’m skinny and clumsy and you think I’m all overenthusiastic or not cool enough and stuff. So maybe sometimes when there’s something about me that you do like, you could… I dunno, tell me. Just to balance things out a little bit. Maybe.”

I looked down at our hands, Will’s beautifully proportioned and nimble, with neat, clean nails, and mine, long fingers interrupted by knobby knuckles and various nicks and smudges from being clumsy, fingernails bitten down roughly.

“Leo.” Will said my name in that way he had that felt like a whole conversation in one word. And, shit, how had I not noticed how eloquent he sometimes was without saying anything at all.