Page 59 of We Could Be So Good
“How good do you think you need to be?” Nick asks, faintly stunned. “I was going to come in about two more minutes of that, so you can’t be that bad.”
Andy whines. “You know how I am with new things. Remember that first time we went bowling?”
“Gay sex doesn’t have so much in common with bowling. You’d be surprised.”
Andy swats Nick’s head. Nick wants to tell him that he’ll be careful and patient, wants to tell him that they’ll figure this out together, that maybe that’ll be half the fun. But he knows Andy, and knows Andy won’t believe a single word of it. So he pokes Andy’s shoulder. “Afraid you’ll sprain your ankle?”
Andy coughs out a startled laugh. “Oh fuck off.”
Nick takes Andy’s hand, looks deep into his eyes, and says, “Afraid you’ll slip on a banana peel?”
“Oh my God, please go to hell.”
Andy is fighting back a smile, and even though Nick knows he hasn’t exactly set Andy’s mind at ease, he thinks he’s done some good.
***
After that, the rest of the day should have been awkward, Nick is sure of it. Instead Andy makes coffee (“I know it’s four o’clock, Nick, shutup”) while listening to the tail end of a baseball game on the radio. Nick irons his shirts, cursing his decision not to have them sent out. It’s so normal, it’s almost anticlimactic.
But when Andy has to squeeze past Nick to get to the radio, he puts a hand on Nick’s waist and lets it linger there. Nick nearly drops the iron. And then when Nick walks past where Andy sits on the couch, he bends down and kisses the top of Andy’s head.
Andy doesn’t even blush, the fucker.
“How are you so calm about this?” Nick asks. “I once saw you almost hyperventilate when the supermarket was out of your favorite brand of applesauce. But having a gay affair doesn’t even ruffle your feathers?”
Andy snorts. “A gay affair. I mean, when you put it like that, it sounds alarming.”
Before Nick can ask what on earth he’d call it instead, Andy goes on. “Besides, I’m not calm at all. It’s just that you’re clearly about to lose your marbles and there really can be only one crazy person at a time here.”
Nick opens his mouth to deny it, but Andy is right. “Fair.”
“What has you so agitated, anyway? I know you’re, um, experienced.”
Nick aggressively irons a wrinkle out of his shirt. “You’re not some guy I picked up in the park and took home to fuck over the back of the couch.”
Andy stares, his mouth slightly open, his eyes unfocused, as if he’s picturing that. And excellent work, Nick. Great job coming up with a scenario that will put Andy right off the idea of sex.
“This couch?” Andy asks eventually. He looks accusingly at it, as if it’s made a lot of mistakes in its life.
“Usually their couch, actually.”
“Hmm.” Andy swallows. “I’m not sure I’m game for that. At least not at the moment.”
Nick can’t look at him. He becomes fascinated by the cuff of his shirt, which he’s ironed about fifty times in the last five minutes. “God. I wasn’t going to suggest it. Give me some credit.”
Andy goes back to listening to the game and Nick resumes ironing his shirt, thinking the conversation is done.
When the game is over, Andy flicks off the radio and wanders over to the bookcase. He does that all the time, taking a book out and examining the cover, flipping through a few pages and leaving it in some insane place, then reading a magazine or a detective story, so Nick only pays attention to him out of the corner of his eye.
But then he sees Andy’s hand on a familiar blue book.
“This is the book Mark Bailey gave you,” Andy says.
“It is,” Nick says, hoping he sounds normal, then realizing that he never mentioned that it was Bailey who gave him the book. Nick probably should have realized Andy would figure out who it was, and now he feels guilty in addition to all the other useless things he’s feeling.
Andy curls up in the corner of the couch and begins to read. Nick’s palms are too damp with sweat to hold the iron, so he unplugs it. Burning the building down won’t help anything.
Watching Andy with that book is like watching a kid play too close to traffic.
