Page 97 of We Could Be So Good
“Smooth,” Sal mutters.
“I brought coffee,” Nick says, holding up the cup that’s ninety-nine percent sugar. “And a bagel. From the good bagel place.” He’s brought Andy coffee so many mornings. He hopes Andy will see that he’s trying to preserve their morning ritual even if they didn’t sleep in the same apartment.
The goofy look is back, so Nick guesses that he was successful.
“Why don’t you sit down,” says Mr.Fleming. “I have a phone call to make. Good to see you, Mr.Russo. You’ll have to come for dinner sometime soon.” He makes his way out of the room, one hand on his cane and the other braced on the furniture he passes.
They sit around a surprisingly normal-looking kitchen table. There isn’t much Nick can say with Sal there, but he thinks that maybe he said all that he needed to by showing up like a lunatic at nine o’clock on a Saturday morning.
They manage a three-way conversation about baseball, and it isn’t until Nick is finished with his coffee that he realizes Sal and Andy have been doing most of the talking. Andy’s going on a tear about goddamn slugging percentages and Sal is listening with the zeal of the newly converted.
When Sal excuses himself to go to the bathroom, Nick talks asfast as he can. “Sal’s going home tomorrow night. Do you want to come back? It’s okay if you don’t. We can still—if you want. I mean, the ball’s in your court.”
“Yes,” Andy says simply. “Yes to everything. I’m sorry about yesterday morning. I was out of line.”
“You had me worried,” Nick said. “You were so worked up. I didn’t know what to do.”
“I— What? Why aren’t you mad at me?”
“I was, for maybe thirty seconds. I mean, I don’t ever want you to be upset, but you wear your heart on your sleeve. It’s sweet.” Nick can’t believe he said that out loud and meant it. “But even if I were still mad, you’d still be you. And I’d still be—” The most unhelpful part of his brain wants to finish that sentence withcrazy about you, but Nick can’t say it. Not in Andy’s father’s kitchen, maybe not anywhere. And, also, that’s not the point. “We’d still be friends. You’d still be my best friend.”
Across the table, he can see the tension leak out of Andy like a deflating balloon, so he guesses he got that right.
“We’refriends,” Andy says. And it doesn’t feel like an understatement or a euphemism; it feels like the bedrock of the truth, the inescapable fact of who they are.
“If I leave theChronicle, it doesn’t mean I’m leaving you.”
“I know that, I swear. But in that moment, I didn’t.”
In that moment he had been like a kid who lost his mom at the zoo. Total panic. Nick had wanted to hold him, but they hadn’t been in private. And they still aren’t in private, not private enough for Nick, at least, but now he can squeeze Andy’s hand, so he does.
“I’m not leaving you,” Nick repeats. “Maybe theChronicle, but not you. Never you.”
“Want me to go to the bathroom again so you can keep talking?” Sal asks from the doorway just as Nick and Andy let go of one another’s hands.
“Jesus Christ, kid,” Nick grumbles. Andy laughs.
“You know,” Andy says, “the Yankees are playing the Senators this afternoon. We could see if we can get tickets.”
“We all hate the Yankees here,” Nick clarifies, seeing the mildly horrified look on Sal’s face.
“I wonder if some clothes of mine will fit you,” Andy says to Sal. “Even if they don’t, they’ll be more comfortable than a school uniform, I think.”
Sal winds up wearing thirty-dollar trousers from Brooks Brothers to sit on the bleachers at Yankee Stadium. Between them, Andy and Sal lose three pencils while attempting to fill out their scorecards. Andy gets a sunburn across the bridge of his nose, Sal eats four stadium hot dogs, the Yankees lose miserably in a shutout, and it winds up being one of the best days of Nick’s life.
“Want me to come with you when you bring Sal back home tomorrow night?” Andy quietly offers on the subway back to Manhattan. Sal is across the car, half asleep from the sun and the gluttony.
Nick does. Of course he does. Andy’s presence is always an improvement. “No,” he says. “I need to have some words with my brother.”
Andy bumps his shoulder against Nick’s. Nick, holding his breath, lets his knuckles rub against Andy’s, a silent promise.
He has no idea how they’re going to manage to make it work, but they have to find a way because Nick has never, in his whole life of wanting things that were just out of reach, wanted anything so bad.
Chapter Twenty-Five
When Nick and Sal get off the subway in Bay Ridge, Nick’s stomach drops the way it always does. He never especially wants to talk to Michael, but today he wants to even less.
“You sure you did all your homework?”
