Page 68 of Poetry On Ice

“Thanks, Stace.”

“Seriously, if I didn’t know you from a bar of soap and ran into you in a deserted alleyway on a dark night, and you looked like that, I’d only be a tiny bit frightened.”

We’re both quiet for a while, content to listen to each other breathing. I know there’s a question coming my way, though, and I know what it is.

Why are you calling now?

I answer without waiting for her to ask it. “There’s a guy, Stace.”

“Oh, fucking fuck!” I hear her moving, probably swinging her legs out from under herself to get into a more upright position. “It better not be a guy threatening to out you again, Ant. I swear to God, if it is, I’ll rain hell—”

“It’s not that.” I suck in a deep breath and slowly release it. “It’s worse. Way worse.”

Stacey has known me since we were teens. She was the first person I came out to and knows better than anyone how much I can’t fucking stand people being overly interested in things like who I like to fuck. She’s silent for two or three beats as she wracks her brain, trying to think of something that could be worse than being outed.

When she comes up with nothing, I sit in silence with her, pressing the phone hard against my ear until I know there’ll be a light imprint of it on my cheek by the time I hang up.

And then I whisper, “I think I might like him.”

Her gasp is audible. I know if I was sitting next to her now, her dark eyes would be enormous and her mouth would be pulled in two different directions—shock and amusement. “But, but, does he know you’re not a relationship guy?”

“Yeah, I told him.”

“What did he say?”

“He said, ‘We’ll see about that.’”

“No!”

“Yep, and when I said we should keep things casual, he said that if I didn’t cuddle him, I’d have to sleep in the wet spot, and, and, when I had to take him shopping ’cause I lost a be— You know what, the reason isn’t important. When I had to take him somewhere, I told him explicitly it wasn’t a date, and he said it was, and I think he might have been right.”

“Oh my God, Shithead.”

“Yup.” I sniff, fully sorry for myself and ready to wallow in my best friend’s potent brand of sympathy. Abrand of sympathy that usually involves threatening to take out a hit on someone on my behalf.

Stacey whistles long and low. The sound warbles as she shakes her head from side to side. “He sounds completely impossible.”

“Oh,” I agree glumly, “he absolutely is.” Unfortunately for me, Stacey is one of those people who considers “impossible” to be the highest form of compliment, so I don’t feel particularly buoyed by her use of the word. “Want to know the worst thing?”

“You know I do.”

“He was in my car yesterday, and when I left his place this morning, I turned on the ignition, and it fogged up, and, and he’d drawn this little heart on my window.”

Stacey is dumbfounded. She’s well and truly aghast by what I’ve said. Either that, or she’s laughing so hard she can’t get any sound out.

“I don’t even know where to start with that,” she says when she can. “I mean, we’ve got the fact you slept over, the fact you let him in your car, and now you’re telling me you’re letting him draw hearts on your fucking windows…I feel like I don’t know you anymore.”

“It’sstillnot the worst thing,” I wail.

“There’s more? Ant! You should’ve warned me this would be a conversation that needed wine.”

It’s quiet for a while as I amp myself up, bracing myself for the inexplicable stupidity of what I’m about to say. “It’s still there, Stace. The heart. It’s still on my window.” I whimper from shame. “I didn’t wipe it off.”

26

Ant Decker

Robbie McGuire is insome kind of mood. He’s been messaging me incessantly today. The fact he’s not my boyfriend has gone right over his head. The messages started before I got out of bed this morning and have continued unabated. He messaged me at the airport. On the plane. On the bus. In the lobby. His messages started out sweet, so sweet they made my ass sweat, but they turned filthier with each passing hour, leaving me no choice but to be whipped into a frenzy.

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