Page 28 of We Could Be So Good
“Why are you apologizing?” Andy asks, slightly hysterical.
“I must have hurt them when I fell.”
Andy repeats the process of cleaning the scrapes and covering them as best as he can. “Well, I don’t think you’ll die of sepsis. At least not tonight,” he says when he finishes.
“Thanks, Andy.”
“Nothing to thank me for.” The idea of not having been here—of Nick going to sleep with grit from the street still in his skin—makes Andy unaccountably furious. “This shirt is coming off now. No, don’t you dare try to unbutton it with your hands in that state.” He loosens Nick’s tie and pulls it over his head, then undoes the top button, then the next, all the while trying not to think about the fact that he’s undressing Nick. Which, he tells himself, is what he’d do for any friend in this situation. Hell, he’d probably do it for a stranger. But he doesn’t think it would feel this way with anyone else. He doesn’t think he’d be so conscious of their breath against his cheek as he bends to unfasten the buttons at their cuffs. He doesn’t think that with anyone else he’d have to suppress the bizarre urge to kiss their temple when he finishes.
He balls up Nick’s shirt and puts it to soak in the bathroom sink. Then, remembering the bloodstains on his own sleeve, he quickly strips off his shirt and puts it in there, too.
He braces his hands on the edges of the sink and looks at his reflection, surprised to see that he looks normal, almost calm. He feels as if he’s been turned inside out, as if he just learned that a part of his heart is on the outside of his body, in the possession of somebody else entirely.
***
When he goes back out to the kitchen, Nick is still sitting on the edge of the table, staring at an empty spot on the wall. “Did you at least have dinner?” Andy asks.
Nick cracks a smile, but stops with a wince. “No. I’m not hungry anyway, and I don’t think I could eat without messing my mouth up even more.”
“Do you want to tell me what happened?”
“Not really.”
It looks like Nick’s mouth hurts when he talks, so Andy doesn’t pursue the topic. Instead he gestures to the couch. “Television?” He checks his watch. “TheTonight Show’s on.”
Nick sits on the couch while Andy looks for an ice tray in the freezer. There isn’t one, which stands to reason since he doubts any part of this refrigerator gets below freezing. He takes out a cold bottle of beer and hands it to Nick. “Put this on your face. You’re already going to have a black eye and a fat lip.”
Again, Nick does as he’s told, almost as if he’s glad to have someone fuss over him and boss him around a little. Andy likes it himself when Nick looks after him, but the shoe has never really been on the other foot. He doesn’t think he’s ever looked after anyone in his life, probably because someone who needed looking after would go to anyone in the world before they went to Andy.
After turning on the television, Andy sits beside Nick. Usually he keeps to one side of the sofa, because it isn’t terribly large and it seems only polite not to crowd its actual owner. But today he plants himself right next to Nick, maybe because he wants to reassure himself that Nick is all right, maybe for other reasons. Maybe he just isn’t going to look too closely into any of his thoughts right now and instead watch some television.
Nick falls asleep almost right away, promptly tipping over onto Andy’s shoulder. That can’t be comfortable, so Andy tugs him lower, until Nick is using Andy’s lap as a pillow.
Andy doesn’t even try to pay attention to what’s happening on the television. Instead he brushes Nick’s hair off his forehead, andthen—God, he hopes he isn’t being a creep—combs his fingers through Nick’s hair.
Nick’s eyes blink open and Andy goes still. “No, keep doing that,” Nick mumbles into the fabric of Andy’s trousers. “Feels good.”
And so Andy keeps doing it, careful to avoid any cuts or bruises, and lets his other hand rest on Nick’s bare shoulder.
***
When Andy wakes up, there’s nothing but static on the television screen and the sort of silence from the street below that means it’s after foura.m.last call. Nick is still asleep, his head in Andy’s lap, one hand hanging off the edge of the sofa and the other on Andy’s leg.
He slides out from under Nick and gets up to turn the television off, then fills a glass with water and puts it on the end table within Nick’s reach. He sets a bottle of aspirin beside it, then takes the blanket off Nick’s bed and covers him.
He tells himself that the ache in his chest is what anyone would feel when a friend is injured. But Andy has dozens of friends and has never felt the urge to curl up beside them on the sofa. There’s no need for him to stay near Nick. Nick’s asleep, and he isn’t so badly injured that he needs someone to hover over him all night.
Still, before stepping into his bedroom, he glances back for one last look.
Chapter Six
When Andy wakes up on Saturday morning, Nick is standing in the kitchen, looking blearily into the refrigerator.
“Sit down,” Andy says. “I can make coffee and toast.”
Nick grunts and slopes off to the sofa. Andy tries not to wince when he sees Nick’s face. One side is mottled with purple bruises mingling luridly with the lingering orange of the Mercurochrome. He’s halfway to a black eye and his lip is puffy and red.
“You can tell me what happened now,” Andy says as he measures out the coffee grounds. “Because what I’m imagining is probably worse than the truth.”
