18
Nick couldn’t sleep. It had started worsening a few weeks back, and he had no idea what to do about it. His mom once told him that even as a baby, he wouldn’t go down easy, but this was getting ridiculous.
He blinked and tried to focus in on the digital numbers glowing around the vicinity of his desk. He thought he could make out a three. Nothing good ever happened at three AM.
When they’d first moved to Ann Arbor and he and Zoyka were still sharing a room, she would talk him through it. She’d made it sound so reasonable. What are you worried about right now? Okay. Think about the worst that could happen. It probably won’t, right? Can you deal with it in the morning? Good. What’s next?
He kicked off his covers and attempted to breathe in deeply a few times. His heart was beating hard. His throat was dry. He needed water. His pillow was thin. He needed another one. He could solve one problem by padding into the bathroom and drinking from the faucet.
The cold water on his face woke him up further.
Irritated, he climbed back into bed and pulled the covers over his head. The air was too warm and smelled too much like him.
What are you worried about right now?
I think it’s true.
What’s true?
Even to the Zoyka in his head, he could not say it. She’d always been the one he told things to. She’d always kept his secrets.
But she wasn’t actually here. Not now. It was just him under his duvet, and this room, at least, knew. It had witnessed it, been part of it.
What if I am?
What. Just say it. Why are you so fucking scared?
What if I’m gay.
He ripped the duvet away and sat up, attempting to dislodge every thought with a shake of his head. If only it were that easy. He breathed. It was no good, his heart was too fucking fast. The cycle fed itself, his heart sped up his breathing, his breathing forced his pulse to flutter like a trapped moth. His gut churned.
When he closed his eyes, he pictured his mom. His aunt. His uncle. Zoyka, Jake. His grandparents.
Dad.
You’re what? Mom would say. What are you talking about? You’re Russian. Ty-zhe nash. Don’t talk nonsense.
She had a trembling crease between her eyebrows when she was really upset. In the last few years, she had developed a slight tic in her mouth that preceded her laying out the worst thing he and Zoyka could ever hear. What would your dad have to say about this? She didn’t trot it out too often.
She would trot it out for this.
He told himself firmly he had to go to sleep. He had class at nine o’clock. He was always a zombie if he got less than seven hours’ sleep, and it was much, much less than that now.
If you go to sleep in the next twenty minutes, you’ll have just over four hours.
Time continued to drain, and he fell asleep with the sky slowly washing out to gray behind the half-closed blinds, his pillow jammed beneath his neck, his hands clammy and hot.
There were times when Zoyka was wrong. Nick didn’t feel better about his worries in the morning. At three, his anxiety had been a shapeless thing, with weight and texture, but part of dreams. A sort of terrifying unreality he had to breathe through.
At eight, as his alarm shrieked at him to wake up, the shapeless, textured thing coalesced into something more terrifying than the nightly ghosts.
He wanted men. He hadn’t really wanted Lena in all the years they’d been together. He hadn’t really wanted Ashley during sophomore year when they’d kissed in the art classroom, her hair tickling his palms where his hands had trembled on her shoulders. Fruitless humping in her sunroom, sweaty and shaky and half hard.
He wanted Dex. Of all people, of all the people he had met, he wanted him so much his hands ached with it. Nick was past denial. Truth frightened more than denial.
He brushed his teeth, and past the bags under his eyes and morning stubble he saw Dad’s young face looking back at him in the mirror.
He went to class. He looked at the other students, watched them respond to the tutor’s comments, give theories, write notes, and he wondered, What must it be like? What must it be like to know yourself and to like what you know? To take up space the way they did and not feel strange or ragged around the edges? To know that you belonged somewhere, inside and out?
He’d watch Dex sometimes and marvel. He seemed to have no fears. At least none that Nick could see. He moved in a way that assured the world had room for him, and it did. He had family he didn’t seem to hide things from. Alex had once made an offhand comment that Dex had gone through hoards of boys his first few months at college, and Nick had thought about it ever since.
It seemed so impossible—sex that satisfied, sex that felt the way others made it sound. He couldn’t, and yet he couldn’t stop trying to picture Dex with all those faceless, joyful boys. He had no idea what it would even look like. Physically, he couldn’t picture it. Maybe if he couldn’t picture it, that meant he could never do it. Did it work like that? If you wanted something badly but could not shape it with your mind, did it exist at all?
He’d started asking himself why so long ago, it felt like a part of him. At thirteen, he had been just as desperate to have the answer as he was now, at twenty. Why me? Why couldn’t I be normal?
He’d run four thousand miles from home, but all he’d done was get closer to the question. Why had he thought England would be neutral ground? If anything, it was like a conductor, and Nick was standing on it, entirely exposed.
Four thousand miles, and nothing was getting easier.
It was getting worse.
+
Once again, Nick used a big paper as an excuse to hermit himself back into his one-man existence, but when Izzy texted him and asked for the second time if he was up for a coffee, he couldn’t find it in him to say no.
He told himself it was because Izzy needed a friend despite the fact that she had better, more helpful friends than Nick, told himself it was because he wanted to know how she was, told himself it would have been plainly rude to refuse.
It was all of those things. But it had also been five days since Dex had come over for the cooking lesson. Five days since Nick had stupidly, thoughtlessly, and in a fit of delirium said yes to another one—and exactly as many days since he’d heard from Dex at all.
He and Izzy had agreed to meet up at the same greasy spoon where Izzy had dropped her bombshell on everyone, and when she came in this time it looked like she was still feeling the effects of it. She smiled as wide as always, but Nick could see the shadows beneath her eyes. He kicked himself for not seeing her the first time she’d asked.
“Hi, babe.” She plonked down her bag on a chair across from his. “Back in a tic.”
Nick sipped his giant coffee, looking around. The place was hopping, noisy with the sound of cutlery and conversation, orders being called out, shit getting dropped. It wasn’t exactly conducive to conversation, but Nick relied on Izzy being her usual exuberant self.
“So, how have you been?”
“I feel like I should be asking you that.”
She made a face. “I guess I’m all right. You know.”
Nick waited.
“Just sort of thinking about shit. A lot of thinking.”
“About what?”
“How weird are humans, you know? What the fuck? I thought I knew myself.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I’ve not exactly been hiding secret thoughts and desires.” It took a lot of Nick’s strength to nod nonchalantly. “But at the same time—so you’re kissing a person you really like, and they’re not a terrible kisser, so it feels nice, really nice.” She cleared her throat. Nick liked kissing. Kissing was nice. To this much, he could relate. “It feels natural. Good, you know?” She paused, and Nick looked up. “Sorry, is this TMI? Should I stop?”
“No, no, it’s fine.”
She gave him a tiny smile and focused on something beyond the window. It was a grey day, which made her hair look just a tad muted. “Well, then. Basically, when Ruby and I—kissed, it felt just as good as kissing a guy. I don’t know, it just surprised me, I suppose. I’m still—I just can’t believe I never knew.” She cleared her throat again. “And then I thought, well, kissing is kissing. Kissing is—almost safe, you know? ’Cause there’s the other, uh, stuff. And—oh God, am I completely embarrassing myself?”
“Not at all.” She eyed him with suspicion. “I promise.” He reached out in a fit of bravery and grabbed her finger. “Pinky swear.”
She squeezed back. “Well, if it’s a pinky swear. Everything else also felt natural, it turned out. But that’s not even the part that I’ve been obsessing over, not really.”
“Natali?”
She sighed. “Yeah. Like, sexuality is fucking weird, and I’m still getting used to the idea that I like women apparently the same as I like men, that I’m bi, but I think—what if it cost me a friend? Was it worth it, to find out?”
When their gazes met, Nick saw that the tip of her nose and her cheeks had grown pink. Nick panicked. Would Izzy cry? Did Izzy cry? “Has she talked to you?” he asked carefully.
“No. Well, I mean. She says morning and Can you pass me the sugar, but she barely spends time at home anymore. Even Jonny and Dex seemed surprised.”
“I’m sorry.” It was so inadequate, but he didn’t know what to say. It sounded awful. Was it worth it to find out? What a good question.
“It’s been two weeks, and she’s still shutting me out, and I don’t know why. Why? Shit, I even went home and cried to my mum.”
Nick startled at that. Had she told her mom—everything? He had no idea what that would even be like. And she’d gone home? Where was home for Izzy? She hadn’t told him, and he hadn’t asked.
“It’s such shit. At first, I’d text her, try to get her to talk to me. I tried in person, everything. Fuck, I almost asked Beth, one of her baby dykes, to help me out, but I’m pissed off now. If she won’t talk to me, I’ve got to stop chasing her. It’s shit. It feels like shit.” She sniffed. “I did nothing wrong.”
“Yeah.” He was out of his depth. “I mean, you didn’t. Nothing wrong.”
“I miss her.” Izzy went on as if he hadn’t spoken. “She’s one of my closest mates. And she’s shut me out.”
The next minute was spent in silence as they both sipped their drinks. Nick briefly pictured what the two of them must look like. The saddest date in existence, probably.
“God, sorting out your own crap is annoying, isn’t it?” Izzy mused after a while. “I dunno. Sex is such a fundamental part of the world, why do we have so much bullshit associated with it?”
Nick managed a nod.
“So you’re gay or straight or bi or what have you, why’s that so bloody fucking important? Have you ever thought about that, really thought about it?”
He was shocked to hear his voice come out even when he said, “Not really.”
He was an awful liar. Izzy could tell. He couldn’t move a muscle. “Really? But I thought—” She stopped.
Nick was caught in the moment. He had no idea how to stop or reverse it.
“Sorry, that was so fucking rude of me. Nick, I’m so sorry if I made you uncomfortable, that was—shit. Shit. I’m so sorry.”
Nick barely managed to unstick his tongue from the roof of his mouth. “No, it’s—it’s fine. You didn’t.” Had he just inadvertently come out? Or could he make her believe she’d thought wrong? His heart hammered.
If Izzy could tell, who else could? Every single interaction he’d ever had with a human being flickered through his mind. All but with his family. It would never have even occurred to them. Lena, though? What about everyone here? Steph, Alex, Natali, Dex.
Fuck.
Dex.
“Nick, babe. Nick. Breathe.” When she reached out and touched his hand with her fingers, he jumped. She retreated. “Christ. You okay?”
Nick had no idea. Thoughts jumbled in his mind, bouncing against one another like marbles. So much clatter, so much noise. “Izzy,” he choked out. “Izzy, please don’t say anything.”
She was looking at him with so much concern. He was close to breaking down.
He made himself continue. “Please, don’t tell. Promise.”
“I promise, I swear to God.” She hooked her pinky over his. “Pinky swear, all right?”
He kept hold of her pinky. For a long moment, he did his best to breathe.
“So you’re not out then?” She sounded so careful. Nick shook his head. Words would probably be good, but he had none. He felt numb. His head was filled utter stillness. It wasn’t calm. It was just there. “I’m so sorry I put my stupid foot in it. Do you need to get some air, maybe? What can I do?”
Nick managed to breathe. “I don’t know.” He put his hands over his flaming cheeks, shut his eyes. The smell of grease and coffee clinging to his hands made his stomach recoil. He dropped his arms on the table, then his head. “Fuck.”
“Look at me, I just word-vommed all over you about this stuff, and I’m … dunno. I’m lucky. I took it in stride. You know. For the most part.”
Nick wondered which part she meant.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Did he? He no longer had any idea what he wanted.
“You don’t have to. It might help. Just to. Share or whatever. You got pretty upset. This seems big.”
Nick nodded.
“C’mon.” She patted his elbow, all business. “For once, it’s not pissing down, so let’s go find a bit of green to sit in and air out. D’you have anywhere you have to be?”
Nick didn’t.
“Good. Let’s go.”
+
They wound up in the sculpture garden where he’d poured his heart out to Dex. Why was he only here post–panic attack? And why did he keep having those in front of people?
Izzy was silent as they walked up to it. Last time, the trees had leaves on them, and it had been dark. Nick was surprised to see the park so sparse now. So much less mysterious in the gray light of day, with weak sunlight streaming through the bare November branches. He’d barely even noticed there was some sort of building at the end of it all—a typical brown London brick with bright blue railings on the steps and the walkway.
When he gingerly lowered himself onto the rocker, he didn’t fall. Izzy followed suit, and together they swayed for a bit, quiet amid the city traffic noise.
He was with Izzy, so the quiet didn’t last for long. “So, you’re gay, then?”
What a question to lead with. “Honestly? I don’t know. But I think I might be. I mean. Probably.”
“You’ve never been with a bloke?”
Nick shook his head. His feet were cold. He probably needed to invest in something other than Chucks, now that he thought about it. He’d left his winter boots back home.
“What about a girl?”
Nick finally looked up at where she was watching him, bouncing slowly up and down on her own weirdo bench. “Yeah.”
She nodded like that explained it, even though it explained absolutely nothing to Nick. “And you just didn’t … sorry. This is so completely none of my business.”
“It’s okay. Honestly, I don’t know.” He looked up at the sky, the sunlight was diffused by low-hanging clouds. He’d forgotten his scarf, and now he shivered in the chill. “I can’t. Not with my family.”
“Would they be very angry?”
“I don’t know how to explain. It’s never been an option. Not how I grew up.”
“Why?”
“It’s how they grew up, too. Back there, it was not talked about. If it was, it wasn’t good.” How to truly describe the insular circle of friends his parents had surrounded themselves with? Jewish intelligentsia who feared much and talked largely of high art, or science, and only sometimes of politics—in hushed voices and in vetted company. Their kitchen table was always crowded with makeshift dinners and discussions of how cultural standards had fallen along with the government and taken intellectual thought with them. Queerness would never even enter into such conversation. Once, Nick remembered someone mentioning a particularly flamboyant pop star. Mom had wrinkled her nose. Distasteful. In her reality, being gay was like being a wizard. Outside her realm.
And then, America. A fleeting sense of freedom quickly replaced by the sharp edge of incongruence.
“I literally can’t imagine telling them. They’ll never understand. It’s like when my sister decided to be vegetarian for two years and every time my mom made dinner, she kept forgetting, because why would anyone be vegetarian? Does that make sense?”
“But America isn’t Russia, right?”
“My mom isn’t very American.” Ten years on, she surrounded herself with Russian friends, Russian books, Russian movies. “It was hard on my parents, leaving, and with my dad … I can’t imagine doing that to her.”
Izzy was quiet for a long time.
“Please don’t tell anyone else.”
Dex. He meant, don’t tell Dex. For some reason, the idea of Dex finding out, or figuring it out, or even knowing already but also aware that Nick was scared, made him feel panicked and sick. It fed on itself and dizzied him.
“I won’t, babe. I promised. I’m sorry it’s this hard, but I’m really glad you told me.”
Nick breathed in and out. “Yeah. I’m glad I did, too.” He was, he thought. Somewhere beneath the panic and the embarrassment, the banal tragedy of it all, he felt a sense of gratitude to no longer be the only person in the world to know that he was so far from a perfect son.
Back in his room, Nick waited for the walls to crash down around him. It was a shock that things looked exactly the same. His room was just as he’d left it to meet Izzy. Socks balled up at the foot of his bed, duvet sliding off, his glasses resting on the windowsill. Perpetually warm, the radiator blasting heat into stuffy air.
Everything was the same except his own perception. It would have been much easier if he felt a lightness in his shoulders, but he didn’t. Izzy was wonderful, but Izzy wasn’t his sister. She wasn’t his mother. She wasn’t the one he was scared to glimpse over his shoulder in case they guessed the truth. Izzy existed in a world where difference was only that—a difference. It wasn’t moral failing, grotesque disappointment. Difference wasn’t danger.
In his unchanged room, for just a moment, he wondered what it would be like. To stop being afraid. To accept the truth.
To look his mom in the eye and say it.
He plopped down onto his bed and mindlessly counted up the number of letters in all the words printed across his postcards. He knew they didn’t, but every time he hoped that all the letters would divide into three. He needed a word with five letters in it to make it work. He was still looking for one.
Impossible, that’s what it was. Literally. He couldn’t picture telling his family.
He could sooner tell them he was dropping out of school and becoming a construction worker.
You know. It’s 2014. Your mum might surprise you.
No, Nick knew better. The only Melnikov who could surprise anyone was him.
+
It was strange how time worked. One minute, Nick felt like he’d only been in London for a week at most, and the next, early December was knocking on his door and he was swept up in end-of-term mania along with everybody else.
Dex texted.
Haven’t forgotten about the cooking test :) got caught up in projects & fam stuff but mb next week sometime?
Nick had waited for it, despite himself. He barely had a moment to see anyone either, but every time his phone vibrated or lit up, he looked for Dex’s name. Every time it was someone else, he told himself that the churning in his gut was relief.
Nick shoved his phone under a pile of papers. Then he pulled it out again to look at the message. To see Dex’s name addressing itself to Nick. It wasn’t a mistake, either, no matter how hard it was to believe.
He pushed the phone away again, but his mind wouldn’t settle back into his reading. His eyes scanned the same paragraph about the War of the Roses again and again, the repetition of it droning in the back of his mind. The memory of Dex’s hand hot on his wrist intruded in the forefront.
Dex’s hand on his wrist, Dex’s body looming over his. His beautiful face with its wide brown eyes intent on Nick. If it wasn’t the most ridiculous idea in the world, Nick would have believed Dex had gotten close to him on purpose.
If Dex had a league, Nick would have been disqualified before even entering the competition. But he’d had to curl his knees up just to hide that he’d gone half hard at what had been perfectly regular, friendly sort of touching, and it had been humiliating. It had been electric.
He’d told Izzy he didn’t know for sure, and he hadn’t really lied. It was a real possibility that if, in some other universe, he got to kiss a boy, he wouldn’t feel a thing. But that possibility was harder to believe after Dex had crossed the few feet of bed between them and woke Nick’s body up in a shower of sparks.
Nick was busy. The coursework seemed almost overwhelming at times, and he was going to be damned if he fucked up in a way that didn’t land him the grades he wanted. He should have been telling Dex he didn’t have time for another lesson.
But he didn’t. I’m free Sunday the 13th. He hit send before he could change his mind.
A week and a half from now. Nick licked his lips and tried not to think about how that date was six days before he was due to fly back home for Christmas break. It barely seemed possible. He didn’t feel ready.