Page 80 of We Could Be So Good
“That’s because you don’t know anyone at all who can cook,” Andy points out.
“I can cook,” Linda interjects. “I mean, I don’t, but Ican.” Linda’s family is relatively normal, compared to the Warburtons.
“Don’t tell me you helped,” Emily says, looking at Andy.
“Oh, no,” Andy says seriously. “I’m not allowed.”
“I let you chop the eggplant!” Nick protests.
“When he’s doing serious cooking, he sends me on errands to keep me out of his way,” Andy says.
“Well, you’re a menace,” Nick says, utterly failing to keep the warmth from his voice, and Andy doesn’t dare so much aslookat him.
***
After dinner, they sit around in the living room and Andy opens the windows to let out some of the heat. The sounds from the street below—the occasional honking car horn or person hollering—drift up and mingle with the music from the record player and the hum of conversation. They’re well into the third bottle of wine, not counting whatever Nick put into the stew, and everyone is pleasantly loose.
Emily moves toward the open window and gestures for Andy to come over.
“I want some fresh air,” she says. “Let’s sit on the fire escape.”
Nick coaxed Andy out there a few days earlier on one of the first genuinely warm evenings of the season, insisting it was safe, telling him stories about sleeping out on the fire escape during the hottest part of summer when he was a kid. They sat side by side, watching the people in the building across the street and down the block doing the same thing, cigarettes lighting up the night like fireflies.
Andy climbs out first and automatically offers Emily his hand. Her hand feels small and strong in his own, at once strange and intensely familiar. As she lowers herself to sit, he crouches down and feels around in the potted basil plant and finds a pack of cigarettes with a lighter tucked inside. He holds it out to Emily, then leans in and lights it before lighting his own. Nick has lit almost all his cigarettes for nearly two months. It’s a meaningless statistic—Andy hardly smokes in the first place—but it pleases him anyway.
“You look good,” she says.
“So do you. You look happy.” He realizes as he says the words that he hasn’t seen her happy since before she went to London.He’s glad she looks happier now, and his gladness is the relief of a friend; if her former unhappiness had anything to do with him, that’s over and done with. The engagement feels ancient, almost irrelevant, a funny thing that happened to them on the way to friendship.
“I think I am,” she says.
“I’m glad.” He leans back, the stone of the wall cold and rough through the fabric of his shirt. “Do you want to tell me why we’re out here?”
She breathes out a puff of smoke. “Maybe later. First we have the customary death threats.”
Andy coughs out a lungful of smoke. “What have I done to deserve the honor?”
“You know how when someone begins dating your sister, you have to say something about how if you hurt her, you’ll break their knees?”
“You’ve been spending too much time at the movies.”
“Well, I doubt Nick has anyone to threaten you. Or, rather, I doubt anyone knows that they ought to. Which is where I come in,” she says cheerfully. “If you hurt Nick, I’ll break your knees.”
Andy has no idea what to say. He knows that Nick told Emily about that night outside the bar, but how does she know that anything actually happened between them after that? Did Nick tell her? Or is this another instance of Emily’s irritating ability to see these things? Is the woman some kind of dowsing rod for homosexuals? Secondly, acknowledging out loud that he and Nick are... whatever they are, is terrifying. He remembers when Nick had joked about worrying that vice police might appear out of thin air. Now he realizes that it hadn’t entirely been a joke. He swallows. “How did you know?”
“Oh,Andy.”
“That obvious, huh?”
“Maybe not to people who don’t know both of you.”
Andy puts his head in his hands and moans.
“The point, darling,” Emily goes on, “is that you had better not hurt Nick, because I know how he feels about you.”
Andy goes still. “He said something?”
“No, no. Andy, keepup. I’ve seen how he looks at you.”
