Where We Left Off (Middle of Somewhere 3)

“Okay, sorry, but… are you like a licensed therapist or something? A professional philosopher? Sorry, never mind, go on.”

Layne shook her head seriously.

“These are all things that I think a lot about,” she said. “In my community, among my friends and lovers, nonmonogamy is the norm, so we talk about it a lot, and I have a lot of experience with different ways it can play out. I know some of the questions you need to ask, that’s all. And stripping away the narratives—whether of romance or of fear or whatever—that culture has manufactured and perpetuated is at the heart of my political work. You can’t have any hope of working toward social justice until you cultivate the ability to see the realities of what you’re working with.”

JUST AS Charles’ philosophy project had taken over his life, he had taken over our room and turned it into something that looked like that dude’s office in A Beautiful Mind. He restructured his schedule so that each day lasted for thirty-six hours instead of twenty-four. He was still abiding by the whole wake up, eat breakfast, then lunch, then dinner thing. But it was difficult when some of his classes now occurred in the middle of his night. His working with the lights on at all hours of the night—excuse me, of my night—hadn’t been too bad, but in an attempt to make sure he didn’t accidentally sleep at the wrong time, Charles had taken to putting a file cabinet that he found in the basement on top of his bed so that he couldn’t go to sleep without wrestling it off his bed—and into the middle of the room, where I inevitably tripped over it or stubbed my toe on it.

But tonight it was our turn to host movie night—which we should just start calling Felicity night—so we really needed to move the damn filing cabinet.

Gretchen showed up early with snacks, and I related some of what Layne had told me, because it seemed like stuff Gretchen would be interested in.

I had thought about Layne’s words a lot in the last few days. When Will called me a romantic I’d thought of it in contrast to him and his total resistance to romance of all kinds, but to hear it in the context of what Layne said put it in perspective.

She was right that I saw the world as having a kind of meant-to-be. Without many friends or much to see, I started to make a game of seeing things through the lens of the books I read or the movies I watched, imagining drama where there was none, or turning the drama to a different plot.

My parents’ dull relationship seemed depressing as a model—certainly nothing to aspire to. Even my sister, who was pretty and popular, mostly seemed dissatisfied with the boys she went out with.

So when Will showed up, looking so much the part of the hero, interesting and cultured and living in New York City… well, I guess I’d cast him as exactly that.

But everything was different now. Now I knew him. Knew him, I got the sense, in a way that other people really didn’t.

And Layne was right: the truth was that Will didn’t want the kind of relationship I was used to seeing. And that wasn’t bad, it was just true for him.

“Layne’s basically a philosopher,” I told Gretchen, Charles’ head popping up at the word “philosopher,” tuning in for the first time in hours, then immediately turning away again when he realized we were just talking about our actual lives.

“Yeah, she’s pretty great,” Gretchen said.

Since Gretchen had been hanging out at Mug Shots doing work, she and Layne had spent some time together, I knew, and there was something in Gretchen’s voice that sounded strangely….

“Uh, Gretch,” I said carefully. “Are you like… into my boss?”

She shot me a way-to-make-it-all-about-you look. But then she bit her thumbnail and nodded.

“Kinda. I’ve seen her a few times. We hit it off, so.”

“Whoa. I didn’t know you were….” I was going to say I didn’t know she was into girls, which was true, but mostly it was that I’d never thought of Gretchen as being into anyone. She never talked about having crushes on anyone or finding people attractive. She never talked about sex or mentioned people she’d dated in the past. I’d kind of assumed she just wasn’t particularly interested.

Gretchen shrugged. “I don’t know. I just like her.” And that was Gretchen, as straightforward about her feelings as she was about everything else.

I smiled at her and she smiled back, seeming to shed any uncertainty. “We’ll see how things go. She thinks I’m too young, I think.”

“God, what’s up with that?” I said, thinking back to Tariq’s comment in the park.

“I get where she’s coming from, though, I guess,” Gretchen said, calm logic firmly back in place. “It’s not a personal indictment. But we are at different places in our lives. We’ve had different experiences. We know ourselves differently.”