Page 55 of We Could Be So Good
Nick’s already worn out from talking with his brother and it would be so easy to decide that he’s done with emotions for the day. Christ, he usually goes months at a time without having to say anything heartfelt and the idea of doing it twice in one day makes him want to go back to bed.
But even though Andy is sitting just inches away from Nick on the bench, even though his posture is loose, his legs stretched in front of him and his face turned up toward the sun, Nick thinks he can detect a strain between them. Maybe it’s all in his head—maybe Nick feels guilty and is seeing things that aren’t there. But he doesn’t want it to happen again, and the fact of the matter is that he’d rather have an unpleasant conversation than risk hurting Andy.
“I need to clear the air about what happened before you left,” Nick says, because he’s practiced that sentence in his head for days now. Immediately Andy tenses, but Nick pushes through. “Because I made you run away and I don’t want you to do that again.” He takes a breath, because this is only the beginning. He has to figure out how to apologize for trying it on with Andywithout either revealing too much of what he’s feeling or—even worse—making it seem like he thought it was a good idea to hit on his best friend just for fun. But he also wants to do this in a way that leaves the door open in case Andy might be interested in... something. He rubs the back of his neck.
But Andy speaks first. “I felt like you were toying with me.”
“Toying with you?” Nick repeats, baffled.
“Teasing me,” Andy says, an edge of frustration in his voice. “Letting me think I could have something I couldn’t.”
“I— What?” He can’t make Andy’s words fit into his understanding of what went wrong between them.
“God, Nick, don’t make me spell it out. You know how bad I am at talking about this sort of thing.”
Nick has no idea what’s going on, but Andy’s pleading with him and it doesn’t matter what he’s asking for; Nick will give it to him. “Okay,” he says placatingly. “Okay.” He keeps spinning the set of facts in front of him, as if looking at them from a different angle might reveal something that makes sense, but right now all he can see is that Andy thought Nick was... leading him on? There’s no way out of this without brutal, mortifying honesty.
“I was testing the waters,” Nick says, squeezing his eyes closed.
Andy is silent for a moment. “What does that mean?”
“I thought you might be interested. In, um. Well.”
“You thought Imightbe? Might?” Andy’s voice raises to an almost shrill urgency. “Itoldyou I was interested.”
“Wait, what?” Nick opens his eyes and looks at Andy. Andy isn’t looking at him, just staring straight ahead.
“That night outside the bar! I told you Iwanted—” Andy breaks off and Nick can almost hear the unspokenyou, unbelievable as it is.
“But when you said that, I—”
“You thought you knew better.” Andy is pissed now, his food abandoned, his fists clenched in his lap. “You assumed I didn’t know what I was talking about or that I was confused. You didn’t believe me! And kept on not believing me for weeks, apparently! Andthen, right when I get used to the fact that you don’t think of me that way, out of nowhere, you start making googly eyes at me! What was I supposed to think?”
Nick wants to protest that it would have been both delusional and dangerous for him to accept Andy’s words at face value, that doing so would have meant taking the feelings that he keeps packed away in a safe corner of his heart and putting them out there for anyone to trample on. Nick tries hard not to think too much about that sad little parcel of emotion. The idea of anyone else seeing it, of Andy seeing it, makes him feel almost sick.
But here Andy is, laying himself bare, and Nick isn’t sure he’s ever seen anything so brave in his life. This is a man who plays it safe, a man who orders the same sandwich every day for lunch. And now he’s taking a risk, and he’s taking it for Nick.
“And so you thought I was teasing you?” Nick asks. “I wouldn’t.” Whatever direction the rest of this conversation takes, he needs Andy to know that first.
Andy looks at him, his expression softening a little around the anger. “I mean, once I got to Washington and had time to think, I knew you’d never hurt me on purpose. I just didn’t understand what was going on. I couldn’t actually believe...”
Andy looks away, his cheeks pink, and when he looks back at Nick, it’s shy, almost embarrassed. His hand is resting on the bench now, six inches of green painted wood away from Nick’s own. Nick desperately wants to reach over, but they’re too exposed. His heart is beating so hard, he can barely hear the waves breaking on the shore, the cry of the seagulls, the distant hum of traffic.
“But, Nick, do you have any idea how rare it is that I actually know what I want? That I have any actual clarity?” Andy smooths out the fabric of his pants and Nick sees that his nails are bitten to the quick. “I go to law school because it seems like a good enough way to kill time, then I drop out of law school because it turns out I was wrong. I go to business school because I have to do something, and then I drop out because I’d rather eat myfootthan spend another day doingthat. I thought I wanted to get married, so I got engaged, but then when that ended, I wasn’t even awfully sad, so maybe I didn’t want that? I have no idea! I’ve been drifting, and—anyway, the one thing I do know is that I want to be with you.” He takes a deep breath. “And you didn’t believe me.”
At some point during the last minute or so, Andy’s anger has shifted into something else—determination, maybe. Nick knows what Andy looks like when he’s indecisive, when he’s filled with self-doubt, and this isn’t it. There’s a force underlying his words, a force Nick isn’t used to seeing in his friend. The fact that this force is all for Nick isn’t something he can begin to understand.
“I don’t know how to do this,” Nick says. “I’ve never—with a friend.” The fact that he can’t even get a verb into that sentence can’t be a good sign.
“We don’t have to! God!”
“I want to!” The words feel ripped out of him. “I want to. It’s not a... new thing. Not for me.” He doesn’t know how to say that he’s been crazy about Andy for the better part of a year; he doesn’t even know if he wants to. He doesn’t know whether he ought to explain that what he wants goes beyond sex and into places he doesn’t even feel comfortable thinking about. Maybe that can all wait, though; maybe he can get through this bit by bit.
Andy goes still. “Yeah?” His voice cracks a little on that single syllable.
“Yes.”Nick wishes there were a better word thanyes, but even if there were, he isn’t sure he’d have the guts to say it. “Fuck yes,” he adds.
Nick musters up some courage and turns his head and finds that Andy’s already looking at him, his face a little pink.
