Page 15 of We Could Be So Good
“Come on.” Nick takes a drag from his cigarette. “You lead a blameless life.”
Andy doesn’t know how to answer that, so instead he watches Nick’s hand idly opening and closing his lighter. “I feel guilty forhaving slept with her. Is that strange? It was only after we were engaged, but now we’re not getting married and I feel like I did something wrong.”
Nick looks away and shakes his head. “Only you, Andy.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Only you would manage to make this whole thing into your own fault. Did you make it good for her?”
“Did Iwhat?” Andy sputters.
“I’m trying to figure out what you have to feel guilty about. Did you make it a pleasant experience for her?” Nick articulates these last words deliberately, as if otherwise Andy might not know what he means.
“Uh. Yes.” Andy and Nicknevertalk about sex, at least not any sex that either of them has. It’s a sort of conversational third rail that they’re very careful around. Andy thinks it’s probably best to steer clear of any topic that might make Nick feel like he has to either lie or sidestep the question of who exactly he sleeps with. Andy has seen Nick look at men, and he’d noticed that Nick never talked about women, but he didn’t put two and two together until Emily did it for him. Until Nick went home with that friend of Emily’s last fall.
In any event, Andy knows that Nick sleeps with men, and Andy’s pretty sure that Nick knows that Andy knows, but they sure as hell aren’t going to talk about it.
“And she wanted it?”
“Yes, Jesus, what do you take me for?” Andy sputters, coughing on the smoke.
“And you used protection?”
“Oh my God, yes.” Andy collapses to the side and buries his face in the couch cushions.
“Then I think you’re fine. Say ten Hail Marys, et cetera.”
Andy starts to laugh, the sounds muffled by the cushion. He knows it isn’t that funny, and that the combination of stress and alcohol has gone to his head, but the idea that Nick thinks sex is fine as long as you wear a rubber and everyone has a good time strikes Andy as the funniest thing he’s ever heard.
He feels a hand rest between his shoulder blades. “Hey. Hey now, Andy. You okay?”
Andy twists around so he can see Nick’s concerned face. “Yes?”
“You asshole, I thought you were crying.” Nick takes his hand off Andy’s back and flicks him on the ear.
Andy rolls over and puts his feet in Nick’s lap, watching a curl of smoke drift toward the ceiling. Nick begins to unlace Andy’s shoes, muttering something about animals who wear shoes indoors. Andy can’t imagine why animals would wear shoes anywhere.
He thinks about the handful of times he slept with Emily, furtive episodes when her sister wouldn’t expect her home, careful and maybe a little fumbling on his part. It was... good. Fun, even, after that first time. Actually, even that first time was fun, with both of them giggling over his total failure to get the rubber on, and then the giggles giving way to something else entirely. Emily was beautiful and a little bold and he felt so lucky that he got to be with her in that way, in any way. He always felt lucky around her, lucky that he was going to get to spend the rest of his life with someone he loved and who loved him back, because even if everything else was up in the air, at least he had that settled.
He wants to talk about it—wants Nick to reassure him that this will somehow end well, but there isn’t anything Nick can say, and he doesn’t want to bore Nick with his worries anyway, not when Nick is being so good to him. And honestly, he’d rather talkabout Nick. He’s always been curious, and alcohol has made him reckless enough to get awfully close to that third rail. “Did you ever sleep with a woman?” he asks, reasoning that he’s not asking directly about anything queer.
Nick lets out a choked-sounding laugh and pauses in unlacing Andy’s shoe. “Christ, Andy.”
“Sorry, you don’t have to answer that.”
“No, it’s fine. Yes, I did. Any chance I had, for a few years there. I kept thinking that it was something I’d get used to with enough exposure, like gin. It didn’t work,” he adds after a minute.
There’s a lot unsaid in between those words—how Nick must have felt about it in order to keep having sex that he didn’t particularly want to have. “Not everyone’s a gin drinker,” Andy says inanely.
“Made my peace with being a whiskey man,” Nick says, bringing his glass to his mouth and taking a swallow. “She was your first serious girlfriend?” Nick asks, not meeting Andy’s eyes. For a moment, Andy is confused, because he’s mentioned some of the women he’s dated. Nick knows that he came close to being engaged a couple of times. Then he realizes Nick is still talking about sex.
“Not in the way you mean,” Andy says.
“You’re good-looking and rich. You’ll find someone else in no time.”
Of course he’ll find someone else. Finding someone isn’t the problem. Keeping them is. “I’m not rich,” he says, because this is an old argument between them.
“Course not. You’re poor, with those fifty-dollar shoes.”
