Chapter 24
Andrew
The furniture is rented, so the packing goes quickly. It’s unsettling how few boxes it takes to close up one chapter of my life and start another. It’s almost like that last chapter didn’t count. I didn’t bring much with me when I moved out a year ago. I’m not bringing much back now.
I’ve been thinking about Kevin again. They’re not happy thoughts, and I wish Maya hadn’t mentioned his name. Because hearing his name means living it all over again—the desperation, the heartbreak, the shame.
When we were in high school, Maya and I used to sit on the fluffy pink throw on her bed and talk about boys. Who was cute. What it would feel like to actually kiss one. What it might feel like to fall in love.
That didn’t change when we went off to college together and moved into dorm rooms.
Maya is incredibly beautiful. She had lots of potential suitors, but she always found fault in them. For me, it was all about just one guy. Kevin McPherson.
I had this romantic idea that the fact that our last names both began with Mc was a sign that we were destined to be together. Kevin was a grad student, some five years older than me. He was a teaching assistant in charge of my biology lab.
I remember the way my eyes used to follow him around the room, like Robert’s eyes followed me, the way I lingered behind after every class, helping put away lab materials, straightening stools, anything to be alone with him for a few minutes.
A month or so into the school year, he asked me to help him take some trays into his office. He locked the door behind us, calmly set the trays on a counter, then backed me against the door and groped at my crotch. I was so excited he was paying attention to me, and I was finally going to find out what sex was all about, that it didn’t occur to me that something was wrong when he pushed his jeans to his knees—“Is this what you want?”—then pushed me to mine.
It escalated from there. By the end of the semester I had made five visits to the university health clinic—abrasions that bled and scared me to death, hemorrhoids that itched and made going to the bathroom painful—each visit more humiliating than the last.
But here’s the thing that causes me such shame: I actually thought he cared about me. How stupid is that? It didn’t matter what he told me to do; I did it. Then I told myself it was because he wanted me so desperately.
But Maya, she knew something wasn’t right. She begged me to quit seeing him, but even when the semester ended and he cut me loose, I continued to call, text, show up at his apartment, plead, beg.
I didn’t get it.
One day when I knocked on his apartment door, desperate to see him and find out what was wrong, he invited me in. I was hopeful that maybe we could work this out, until I saw the guy sitting on his couch. He was wearing a mesh T-shirt, a massive hard-on, and nothing else. He stroked himself as Kevin introduced him as his new friend, Sam. Then Kevin gave me a slimy smile as he dropped to his knees and took that prick in his mouth. I remember being rooted to the spot, unable to move, unable to breathe.
It took me more than a year to get over the humiliation and self-loathing.
It took Kiki.
I heave a box into the small U-Haul trailer. There’s enough room left for double my possessions, but they are what they are.
I’ve tried not to think too much about moving back in with Maya. The biggest plus is that I’ll be with Kiki now every day, not just Wednesday nights and every other weekend. The second is that I won’t have to pretend that I want to date Jennifer anymore.
But I am worried. I love Maya; that much is true. But I know it’s hard for her to separate her feelings for me. Friend, lover. She wants both, even though she pretends only one is enough. But I’ve made a commitment.
It took only minutes this morning to complete the forms in the management office, pay the last month’s rent, and make arrangements to return the keys and have the furniture picked up. The U-Haul was easy too. Apparently there’s not a lot of moving in January, and I had my pick of trailers. I chose the smallest one—a four-by-eight cargo trailer.
I finger the carnations Robert brought me. They are still on the kitchen counter where I left them last night, now dry and wilted. I regret not putting them in water.
I’ve left the bathroom for last. I take an empty box and set it on the counter. Then I look at Robert’s note again. He wrote it on a small whiteboard I suctioned to my bathroom mirror when I moved in to remind myself of meetings and appointments. I never used it.
But Robert did before he let himself out last night.
You lied too.
I’m not sorry.
I tried all night to think what he meant, what I’d lied to him about. But mostly I was thinking about the way he felt, the way I felt when my skin touched his.
I didn’t mean for this to happen. But am I sorry it happened? I don’t know the answer to that.
I pull the whiteboard from the mirror and lay it gently on top of the hand towels and toilet paper and toiletries and fold the cardboard flaps over it. I tape the box closed, then mark it personal with a Sharpie.
Then I sit on the toilet and read his texts one more time. There are thirty-seven, the last one sent at one o’clock in the morning when I finally blocked his number. My heart aches for him as I read through them, deleting each one as I go. I know what that hurt feels like, because I’m feeling it too.
Robert
Hey, Nic. Can we talk?
Sorry. I’ve got my girls over.
I need to talk to you. I’ll come over there.
Um, no.
Too damn bad. I’m coming anyway.
“Why are you here?” he asks, like he can’t believe he had to leave his girls, walk down the stairs, and open the damn door for me. He’s leaning against the door frame, dressed in cut-off jeans and a tight, sleeveless Nike wick-away T-shirt. He doesn’t sweat. And he doesn’t have any muscles to show off. But that doesn’t keep him from showing off.
Why am I here? Maybe I’m trying to salvage something with Andrew—make things right with Nic so he can relax and quit being so fucking afraid. Or maybe I want to know why our relationship stalled at Boys ask me out. But now, seeing that mixture of irritation and boredom on his face, I’m angry at myself for all the time I’ve wasted on him. And I’m just angry.
“I have something I need to tell you.”
He rolls his eyes dramatically. “What?”
“You’re an ass. Get yourself another boyfriend.” I start to turn away, then stop. “Oh, and you look like an idiot in those shorts.” Then I do go. I’m halfway down the sidewalk when he catches my elbow.
“You’re just jealous of my girls, aren’t you?”
“Yep. That’s it.”