Page 33 of We Could Be So Good
Nick’s in the bathroom, shaving with the door open, while Andy blearily wanders around the apartment, putting on one sock, then another, then topping off his coffee. Their conversation meanders from Khrushchev to the movies to whether there might be another spring blizzard like the city had last year.
The problem, really, is that Nick shaves without a shirt on. He stands there in his suit trousers but with no shirt, not even an undershirt, and tilts his jaw this way and that, and Andy can’t help butnotice.
He tries not to notice. Damn it, he’s been trying not to notice, or at least not to notice himself noticing, for a while now.
Nick is... handsome. Everyone knows this. The fact that Andy is aware of it only means that his eyes work. But Andy doesn’t think that the word for Nick’s shoulders and arms, or—God help him and save him—the hair on his chest ishandsome. Nobody talks about chest hair being handsome. Attractive, maybe? Compelling?Andy is depending on the correct adjective to act as a key to unlock the confusion in his mind, to open a door that doesn’t have “Congratulations, You’re Queer” printed in huge letters on the other side.
But he doesn’t have an adjective. What he has, unfortunately, is the beginnings of a hard-on and the certain knowledge that he wants to touch Nick.
Maybe on some other day he might have been able to convince himself that this was nothing new. After all, he’s had these passing thoughts about other men and dismissed them in the same way he habitually dismisses any notion that will unduly complicate his life. But that cursedVillage Voicearticle is still under his skin, even though he’s crammed the newspaper itself under a stack of magazines that don’t contain the wordhomosexualin thirty-six-point Bodoni Black.
It’s one thing to know that he has this potential in him, a latent queerness that has no bearing on his life. It’s another thing entirely to be attracted to a man—to Nick—who’s standing right in front of him and who he knows is queer. Something theoretical has become something altogether too real, too concrete, and there’s no wriggling away from the fact that this is very gay.
He’s queer. The thoughts going through his head are inescapably queer, and so is he. Even if he never does anything about it, he’s still queer. When he looks at Nick, he’s consumed with a wanting so intense that it feels tangled up with the core of who he is. It’s in there with newspapers and loneliness in the package deal that is Andy Fleming.
He tells himself that he can still ignore it. He can put this newfound knowledge to the side, stowing it tidily away. It’s not like he’s going to do anything about it, so it hardly matters, right?
“Andy.” Nick waves a hand in front of his face. “Join us back on earth.”
“Hmm?” He makes an effort to look at Nick’s face, but can’t help but notice that water droplets still cling to his chest.
Nick rolls his eyes, takes Andy by the shoulders, and steers him out of the doorway that Andy has, apparently, been blocking. Andy resists the urge to press his fingertips to the places where Nick’s hands have been.
***
For the next few days, Andy is aware of having passed a point of no return, some kind of gay Rubicon. It’s almost as if once he applied the word to himself, once he acknowledged it, he can’t stop thinking about it. It’s like his brain and some even less responsible parts have a decade of queer thoughts to get through in the span of a couple days.
If his brain wanted to give him a break for once, maybe it would allow the stream of semipornographic thoughts and images to feature Marlon Brando or the handsome man from accounts receivable, but instead it’s Nick.
On the way back from lunch on Tuesday, Nick looks at Andy, sighs, and begins to rebutton Andy’s coat so the buttons line up. Andy silently loses his mind. Nick isn’t even touching him, just efficiently redoing the buttons on his overcoat as he’s done a dozen times before. All those previous times Andy didn’t think anything of it, except that it was kind of Nick to make sure Andy wasn’t walking around looking like an unmade bed.
On Wednesday, they go out for drinks with a bunch of other reporters, and he and Nick wind up squashed together on one side of a booth. Andy can smell Nick’s soap—the green bars of soap bought three at a time at the grocery store and which Andy now uses himself—and wants to press his face into Nick’s neck and breathe it in. Like amaniac.
Thursday, Nick comes back from an interview looking rumpled and harried. When he finds the sandwich and cookie Andy left on his desk, he gets all flustered and thanks Andy like nobody’s ever done him a favor, a rare blush high on his cheeks. Andy has to stop himself from buying ten more cookies.
On Friday morning, Andy is in the kitchen during that dismal period of time after getting out of bed but before the coffee is ready. When he stretches, Nick’s gaze drops to Andy’s middle, where the cold air of the kitchen hits Andy’s exposed stomach, where the pajama shirt rides up and the too-big pajama pants slide down. That look could mean “Why doesn’t Andy wear his own damn pajamas?” or it could mean something else. But even if Nick is looking at him... appreciatively, it doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Andy isn’t horrible-looking. He isn’t in Nick’s league, but who is? Nick can notice that Andy’s objectively non-hideous without it being a big deal.
However. The idea that Nick might be looking back is outright catastrophic to Andy’s peace of mind. It worms its way into his thoughts and infiltrates all his waking moments.
This is a problem. This isNick, his colleague and his best friend. He needs to do something about this, and clearly his own mind is beyond help.
It occurs to him that maybe Nick is only looking at him because it’s been too long since he’s had any sex—it’s been two weeks since Andy moved in, which isn’t any kind of dry spell for Andy but might be for Nick.
Andy comes up with a strategy. He hasn’t come up with a lot of strategies in his life, so it’s a new feeling. He probably should have known better.
“Let’s go out for drinks,” Andy says after work.
Nick raises both eyebrows. “We’re currently having drinks.”They’re at O’Connell’s, an Irish bar on Murray Street, along with a good portion of theChroniclenewsroom.
“I mean after we finish here. I was thinking,” Andy says, his voice low, “that we could go to one of your places.”
“What does that mean?” Nick’s brow is furrowed, and Andy cannot believe he’s going to have to spell this out.
Andy drops his voice to a whisper. “One of those places on Greenwich Avenue. Or Christopher Street, I guess?” he adds, as if geography is the real issue here.
Nick rears back so far in his seat that he almost knocks another reporter off the edge of the booth.
“Sorry, sorry, Andy startled me,” Nick says, apologizing.What the fuck?he mouths to Andy.
