Where We Left Off (Middle of Somewhere #3)

SOMETHING HAD shifted. We teased each other more. We talked more. Touched more.

Will was still Will—he’d tell me that some innocuous thing I did was annoying him, I’d tell him that sometimes you just had to deal with people doing things like eating, brushing their teeth, and breathing in your space, and he’d say, “Not if you live alone, you don’t.” I’d say, “Well, I’m here too, now, and you’re being a dick,” and he’d snap, “Yes, I’m an asshole. True facts.” And he’d grumble about it and then wander away if he couldn’t deal with the sound of me eating, brushing my teeth, or breathing. But I wouldn’t become immediately convinced that he hated me and wanted me to leave. Mostly.

We even wandered slowly through MoMA, like we were on a real date (though I made sure not to use the d-word around Will because I knew he’d cancel our plans). I was fascinated by a special exhibit on the fonts and design of the subway maps, and Will kept sneaking away to go stand in front of his favorite piece in the museum, Christina’s World by Wyeth, hung, strangely, I thought, just outside the elevator.

“What do you think?” he asked. It felt like some kind of test, since he’d said it was his favorite.

“I don’t really know much about art,” I hedged.

Because I didn’t really get it. The colors were ugly and it was kind of boring. But I wanted so badly to see what he saw in it.

“Um, well, it seems peaceful, I guess? Calm. Like she’s just hanging out in that field relaxing and looking at her house, but she doesn’t have to go there….” I trailed off because Will was looking at me strangely.

Suddenly, he leaned forward and kissed me. On the mouth. In public.

I pitched forward in surprise and grabbed his shoulders to keep from falling into the painting.

“What was that for?” I asked when he leaned back, but he didn’t say anything. Just shook his head and leaned close enough to the painting that I worried he’d set off some kind of alarm. But there was nothing between him and the canvas at all. He could have reached a hand out and touched it.

He studied it closely, one hand on my wrist. “What do you think that is?” He pointed to a tiny gray splotch between the house and the barn that I hadn’t even noticed.

“Um, a bird, I guess?” I said. I had no clue.

Will just looked at me, but when he led me into the next room to look at the Picassos, he didn’t let go of my arm right away, just held it like it was natural that we should be connected.

IN HIGH school, the week before winter break was a strange animal. The energy would become more and more frenetic, then explode into temporary cross-clique camaraderie on the last day of the semester, everyone bonding over the one thing we all had in common: excitement about getting the hell out of there.

I felt it too, but whereas it seemed like everyone else had plans for break—ski trips with their families, basketball training, group sledding, shopping trips in Detroit—I… didn’t. I liked the time off, of course, but it wasn’t really that much different than the rest of my evenings or weekends when school was in session.

When I was younger and Carter and I were still friends, it was our prime time for movie marathons. Rewatching all the series we’d grown up with. X-Men, Harry Potter, Underworld. And without fail, we watched Lord of the Rings and our favorite DVD extras. Carter’s favorites were always about the sword fighting or hand-to-hand combat in the battle scenes. I loved the ones where they showed how they actually created the Shire—seeding it a year before shooting so that when the actors and crew showed up there was an actual world there. (I didn’t tell Carter my other favorite extra: when Viggo Mortensen kissed Billy Boyd on the mouth.)

I was captivated by the idea that this epic series had an equally epic parallel story. That they created a world for themselves at the same time they were creating a world for us to view.

Maybe that’s why, after Carter had dumped me as a friend, I still spent my winter breaks watching the Lord of the Rings extras. Yeah, I probably should’ve been out trying to make new friends, like my mom and Janie always told me to do. And I tried. Kinda. At first it was mostly just that I had nothing in common with the other kids I went to school with.

Later, once I sort of accidentally outed myself during biology class, it was a combination of people keeping a bit of distance and macho fuckwads deciding that I’d given them an excuse to pick fights.

So I watched DVD extras. Like, all of them. I fell into the world so hard that it started to seem like a movie in its own right. Or a reality TV show where I got to watch these people’s lives unfold. I felt like I knew them—knew what they would say or what their reactions would be. Okay, I was a little obsessed. But I didn’t have that. Friends, a purpose, a… world of my own.

When I came to college, then, a part of me held that out as the model. I loved getting to know Milton well enough that I could predict which parts of Felicity he’d think were funny. Or knowing the sound of Gretchen’s breath on the mat beside me in yoga, distinct from anyone else’s. Being able to anticipate the way that Thomas would weave bits of what was going on into the comics he drew during class. Knowing that when Charles started to bounce his knee up and down while he looked at the computer, it meant he was reaching the part of whatever he was reading that really convinced him—the part that made him believe there was truth to the conspiracy, no matter how farfetched.

The neighborhood, with campus, the dorms, and the blocks surrounding Washington Square, was our own little Shire, and the city stretching beyond it Middle Earth. I was pretty convinced that the building that housed my Cultural Foundations class was Mordor, but when I told Will my analogy—thinking he’d laugh and call me a geek but instead being pleasantly surprised to find he was a fan too—he said, no, Times Square at peak tourist rush hour in the summer was absolutely the depths of Mordor. “One does not simply walk into Times Square!” he teased the next week when I told him about a harrowingly aggressive incident with a selfie stick outside the TKTS booth when I took an ill-advised shortcut.

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.

In that moment, winter sun streaming through the window, the bed warm and smelling of sex and us, the possibility stretched before me, luminous and full of hope, that maybe we’d wake up that way a thousand times more.

That tantalizing hope held before me, as gleaming and as fragile as a soap bubble, made me utter precisely the words that would point a needle at it: “We can still be together, right?” I gestured between us. “Once I go back to the dorms?”

And Will, with more kindness than I might’ve expected, given his mood, said, “Leo. We’re not together. You know that.”

Which hurt. Because of course I knew that. But he was choosing to split hairs about my terminology and ignore the feelings it described.

“Okay, sorry, sure, I mean, I know we’re not, like, boyfriends, but….” I bit my lip and looked up at Will. “But we’re… something, right?”

Will didn’t say anything.

I looked down at where my hands rested on my thighs. They’d gotten so much stronger since I’d started yoga. Now sometimes I pressed into the muscles as I walked or bent to sit down, feeling the tautness there, feeling the way my own body was pulling itself together to support me.

There were some things that no amount of effort could bring into being. Some poses that no gains of strength or flexibility could realize. But you made the effort anyway.

“I want us to be,” I said simply, moving my attention to my hands, looking at each bony knuckle, the folds in the skin that let them bend, the bitten nails with deep white moons.

Will sighed and scrubbed his hands over his face.

“I already told you. I’m not interested in monogamy. I’m not interested in playing house. It’s just not how this is gonna go.”

“I’m not saying I want to marry you. I just don’t understand why we can’t… date.” Saying it out loud, the word sounded petty and superficial.

“Man, come on! We talked about this.” He was pissed, but then his tone changed as he said, “You promised.”

And that got me. Because he was right. I had promised. I had made a promise that, if I were totally honest, I really hadn’t thought I would have to keep. God, that was terrible. I had promised Will that things were fine the way they were because I’d really believed that he just needed a… like a transition period. An excuse. A low-pressure way to give it a shot.

Wow, I was a complete and total asshole. My stomach turned with guilt and shame, but Will must have read it as hurt.

“Leo, you’re in college. You’re nineteen years old. It’s normal to date a lot of people, sleep with a lot of people—experiment. I know that you think you want me, but there are so many people you’re going to like or love or want. So many things you’re gonna want to do.”

Which was so completely beside that point that I got mad at him all over again.

“Is that what you do? Experiment?” My fingertips dug into the muscles of my thighs in an effort to keep my voice even.

“No, not really. I already know what I like.”

At that I totally lost my calm. Lost my pride. Lost even the fiery hook of guilt at secretly, internally breaking my promise. I couldn’t help it.

“But if you already know what you like, couldn’t I give it to you? I mean, couldn’t I be the one to—”

“No!” Will grabbed my forearms and pulled me closer to him on the couch. “No. You do not offer to turn yourself into what someone else wants. Ever. Do you hear me?”

“But I want to be with you. I don’t understand what you get from them—those men that you—like, the sex stuff…. I can do better. I just haven’t had much time, but….”

Will shook his head.

“It’s not that I don’t like sex with you.”

“Then—okay, well, that’s good. So then why do you have to—?”

“I don’t have to. I choose to. It’s not… pathological, okay, not some manifestation of whateverthefuck. It’s my choice to have the option to do whatever I want with whoever I want, whenever.”

“Well, something can be a choice, and there are still reasons behind it.”

“God save me from anyone who just took Intro Psych,” Will muttered. “I just told you the reason. Because I fucking want to.”

“And you don’t want me! That’s what you’re saying!”

Will put his head in his hands like I was the most exasperating thing that had ever happened to him.

“Look, I’m sorry that what I want isn’t the same as what you want. Wouldn’t it be so convenient if we all agreed about everything and wanted the same things?”

“Don’t! Don’t make it sound ridiculous that it hurts my fucking feelings to sit here on this couch with you after a month of basically living together and sleeping together and hanging out together and say that I like you and wish it could continue.”

“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.