Page 73 of We Could Be So Good
And maybe part of his reluctance to think about any kind of future at theChronicleis because it depends on his father leaving. Lately he’s been all too conscious that he has one remaining parent and is pathetically invested in keeping him.
His father has spent the last year trying to teach him the business and Andy would still be just as ignorant after another year or two or ten. Give him maybe another decade of experience and he’d probably make a decent features editor; he could probably take over the sports section in even less time. But he’ll never be his father.
Except—there’s business, meaning ad revenue and what to do if the delivery truck drivers go on strike again, and then there’s the business meaningnews.
Andy’s pretty sure he knows the latter. He isn’t confident about a lot of things, but he’s sure of that. News was the only way he ever had of reaching either of his parents. It’s his first language.
That night, while Nick’s cooking, Andy pours an extra glass of wine and knocks on his neighbor’s door.
“What paper do you read?” he asks Linda, handing her one of the glasses.
“Is that a trick question?” Linda beckons him in and gestures for him to sit on an overturned milk crate.
“Nope. Call it market research.”
“Honestly, Andy, if there’s big news, I’ll see it on television or my mother will call me. I pick up theJournal-Americanevery now and then.”
“Why?”
Linda shrugs. “I like their funny pages. But listen, Andy, what good is a newspaper ever going to do me? If a bomb is coming, I’d rather not know. And so much of the rest of it makes me miserable. There isn’t much I can do right now about schoolkids in Alabama or pogroms in Russia. I want to know what’s happening, but not every single day.”
She addresses the words to her wineglass, a bit of an edge to her voice, as if she thinks Andy is judging her. And she’s kind of right: the idea of not wanting to know the news is vaguely shocking toAndy. He has to remind himself that not everyone was raised the way he was.
Linda is an outlier. Just look at her: today’s work must have involved paint—at least, he hopes it did, because her dungarees are covered in crimson splotches and the only other explanation probably makes him an accessory after the fact to murder. Her hair is tied into a long braid that looks like it fell in the paint pot a few times, she has not a speck of makeup on her face, and he’s pretty sure that’s a men’s shirt she’s wearing. Nobody should care what papers she reads or doesn’t read because, as she said herself, she doesn’t read the newspaper.
He changes the topic and finishes his wine while listening to Linda talk about some gallery opening she went to. As she talks, he scans the apartment. It’s the mirror image of Nick’s but missing the wall that creates the second bedroom, and consequently is a bit brighter. There are makeshift shelves cobbled together from planks of wood and cinderblock, and crammed on the shelves are jars of paintbrushes, a basket of apples, a variety of objects that he can’t identify, a slew of paperbacks, and stacks of magazines.
Which—there has to be something to that, right? She doesn’t read newspapers but has a stack of magazines. There’sLife,The NewYorker, theAtlantic, and something arty he can’t make out the title of.
He crosses over to the shelf and picks up a magazine at random. It’s out-of-date by several months and it’s good to know Linda’s just as bad as he is about getting rid of back issues. He flips through it, already knowing what he’ll see: short fiction, theater reviews, long-form reporting, a couple of essays that probably could have been published at any point in the past three years. The publication seems to be financed entirely by ads for whiskey, cruises, and expensive shoes.
He thinks about thatVillage Voicearticle and wonders if something like it could appear in any of these magazines. Definitely not. Perhaps an essay on the ethics of police entrapment? Probably not even that. Maybe, though. Maybesomething.
He makes a note to ask his father if they have numbers on whether magazine ad sales have tanked as badly as newspaper ad sales. There’s probably not anything he can do with that information—after all, he’s not running a magazine.
But when he goes back next door, Nick looks at him and raises an eyebrow. “You seem pleased with yourself.”
“Just a little bit,” he says, and presses a kiss to Nick’s jaw.
***
“I swear to God, Andrew Fleming, if you use the wordcanoodlingone more time, my dick will never get hard again.”
“I wasjustpointing out that I’m not sneezing every five seconds anymore, so I think we can dothatagain.” It’s Friday night, and they’ve been reading in bed, sitting up against the headboard, their shoulders pressed together.
“That, huh?” Nick’s tone is faintly mocking, and Andy knows he deserves it, but before he can complain, Nick is swinging a leg over his lap and Andy is already tilting his face up for a kiss.
He’d never have guessed that this would be the easy part, that sex, of all things, and with aman, no less, would feel easy and natural. But everything with Nick always feels right. From the beginning, all the things that usually are jagged and dangerous have been smoothed down, like rocks after centuries on a riverbed, like something he can hold safely in his hand. It’s never hard to ask Nick for help or to let him see the frightened and awkward parts that Andy usually keeps hidden away.
Maybe that’s why it feels so good and safe and right for Nick’s hands to be on him. There has to be a reason. Two months ago he hadn’t even let himself imagine touching a man, and Andy is, to grossly understate the case, not what you’d call easily adaptable. He isn’t sure why he isn’t having a crisis about this. Maybe he’s just full up on crises and doesn’t have time for another.
He rubs his cheek over the stubble on Nick’s jaw, then presses his lips to the spot where his neck meets his shoulder, because that always makes Nick groan. “Lie down,” he whispers. “Let me.”
Nick lies down and tugs at the hem of Andy’s pajama top. Andy takes the hint and pulls it over his head. As usual, Nick is already mostly naked. The undershirt, it turns out, had been a concession to modesty, because ever since they first got one another in bed, he’s been walking around utterly shirtless. Andy is not complaining.
Andy bends down to kiss Nick and Nick’s hands slide down his back, sure and firm. Andy starts to shuffle down the bed and pull Nick’s shorts off, but Nick holds him in place.
“I was going to—” Andy hasn’t gotten to the point where he can sayblow youwith any sense of composure. “I was going to use my mouth,” he says, rolling his eyes at his own prudishness.
