Page 42 of We Could Be So Good
“Oh, so we’re Rockefellers now, are we?” Nick narrows his eyes. “Where are these seats? Why do I have the feeling that they aren’t going to be up in the nosebleeds?”
“They’re behind home plate.”
Nick whistles. “Never tell me what they cost. Promise me that much.”
“Think of how much I’m saving on rent!” Only the twitch in his lip gives the slightest clue that he’s joking. Andy’s apartment, the one with the bad plumbing, had been his mother’s. He owns it outright and occasionally mentions that he ought to sell it.
“You’ve never paid rent in your life.”
“You’ll come with me to the game, right?” Andy asks.
Sometimes, for a smart person, Andy is incredibly dense. “Yes, I’m coming with you to the game,” Nick says patiently. “You’ll need someone to be your bodyguard.”
For some reason, that makes Andy blush a little and shove his hands in his pockets and then make an excuse to go somewhereelse. That’s been happening a lot in the week since what Nick is coming to think of as the Proposition. As best as Nick can guess, Andy’s embarrassed. He probably can’t believe how narrowly he avoided having regrettable gay charity sex.
Approximately seven trillion times a day Nick remembers Andy’s words:I could take care of you. And he remembers Andy’s voice—low and shaky and a little terrified butfond.Nick doesn’t doubt, hasn’t once doubted, that Andy meant what he said. He’d have taken care of Nick. He’d have done his best. The trouble is Nick can picture it—Andy, fumbling a bit like he always does when faced with a new task, but catching on, maybe even a little eager—
Christ. This is perverse, fantasizing about his friend. It’s a waste of energy, too, because Nick can’t have this. He can’t even have anything like it, not with anyone, so he shouldn’t let himself think about it.
It’s just, when Andy blushes, Nick can almost imagine—
The thing is that Andy has no poker face. His thoughts are right there on the surface for the world to see, and since his thoughts are usually perfectly respectable, it doesn’t do him any harm.
Except—sometimes when Andy blushes, he bites his lip, he looks away and then back, he stares at Nick’s mouth. It’s almost enough to convince Nick that there was something behind Andy’s offer, some tiny spark—
But he can’t let his thoughts drift down that path. He can already sense the easy equilibrium of their friendship tipping out of balance, something steady and fundamental slipping away.
Andy’s probably just reacting to having his heart broken. He’s been living in the Village, queer people around every corner, and his imagination has gotten the better of him. He looks at Nick, sees someone reasonably attractive, and wonders if he’s feelingsomething queer when really he’s just lonely. That would explain the blushes, the furtive glances. He’s embarrassed and curious, that’s all. Maybe he’s even worried that he’s secretly queer.
That feels plausible to Nick. God knows he looked at plenty of women when he was trying to figure out whether he was attracted to them. He did more than look.
It doesn’t usually work the other way, though, not in Nick’s experience. Men don’t mess around with other men in order to rule out queerness. Apart from some pretty limited exceptions—the army, the navy, fourteen-year-olds out of their minds with hormones—men who screw around with other men are doing it because they specifically want to screw around with men.
But it isn’t like Nick’s an expert here. Maybe people like Andy—people who went to fancy boarding schools and were raised by card-carrying Leninists—have a more experimental approach to figuring out what gets their dicks hard. Maybe they don’t have as much invested in the gender of who they fuck or something. Good for them, Nick supposes, even though it feels like cheating, because it took Nick most of a goddamn decade to get there.
***
The coffee maker in the grubby little kitchen next to the newsroom makes some of the nastiest swill anyone could ask for, but when deadlines are creeping closer and nobody, not even the copyboys, has time to run downstairs to get coffee from the deli, it’s better than nothing. Until, one afternoon, it breaks.
“Fucker’s busted,” says Eugene from the sports desk, grimly standing over the defunct percolator.
“Did you try the fourth floor?” Nick asks.
“Their machine broke two days ago. I think it’s ritual suicide, and they’re all going to go off, one by one, until someone starts buying decent beans to put in them.”
“Isn’t there a jar of instant around here somewhere?”
“Fifth floor stole it. Their machine broke, too.”
There’s nothing for it but to go to the fifth floor and steal back the jar of instant coffee. It’s an emergency. Besides, the fifth floor is mostly empty, only half its offices nominally occupied by a motley crew of editorial writers, columnists, and other people who can seldom be bothered to show up. Nick thinks his chances are good that he won’t meet anyone before absconding with the coffee.
He doesn’t bother with the elevator, just runs down the single flight of stairs and is immediately reminded why he never goes to the fifth floor.
“Kid,” calls a gruff voice from inside one of the offices. “Who the hell is chasing you?”
It’s just Nick’s luck that Mark Bailey, who only comes into the office twice a week, tops, has to be here today. “I’m looking for coffee,” Nick says, hoping he sounds normal. “Newsroom coffee maker’s broken.”
Bailey raises an eyebrow and gestures toward the kitchen with a single finger.
