Page 45 of We Could Be So Good
When the volume of people leaving the stands slows to a trickle, they get to their feet and make their way out to the street and toward the subway station. Andy hasn’t, despite his threats, hired a car, and so they have a friendly quarrel about what subway line to take home.
“Actually, you’re right,” Nick says.
“What?”
“We should take the IND, because any train we get on will bring us to West Fourth Street.”
“Did I... did I just win an argument about the subway? With you?”
“Shut up, will you.” At some point in the last few weeks, Andy has gone from barely being able to use the subway unsupervisedto having a pretty good sense of how to get where he wants to go. Also, he hasn’t lost his keys, not once, since moving in with Nick. Nick hardly knows what to make of it.
“Wow, what’s next. Have you heard the good news about extra base power?”
“Oh boy, here we go,” Nick grumbles, and settles in for a lecture about the superiority of some crackpot theory Andy has about batting averages or something.
Nick kind of loves it though. He loves that Andy cares about statistics, of all the awful things, and he loves that Andy wants to talk about it. Nick will never understand more than four consecutive words that Andy says when he’s on this particular tear, but he can see the light in Andy’s eyes, the way he waves his hands around when he’s excited.
The platform is still crowded as they wait for a train. Standing near them is a teenage girl in a summer dress, her hair in a ponytail, and beside her is a boy who looks like he’s been scrubbed and combed into an uncomfortable degree of presentability. A scorecard sticks out of the boy’s back pocket. There’s a shy six inches of space between them, but they’re holding hands. They must have been to opening day as a date, and based on the hand holding and a couple of bashful glances, Nick has to guess that it’s been a pretty good date.
He looks at Andy, who’s flapping his hands a bit in his enthusiasm over—Jesus Christ, it’s long division, isn’t it. Nick smiles without meaning to. Andy catches his eye and smiles back, never interrupting his own monologue.
Nick absently raises his wrist to check his watch, and when he drops his hand, he catches Andy tracking the movement. Even when Nick sticks his hand in his pocket, Andy keeps looking. It’shot, and Nick’s sleeves are rolled up, and Nick might think Andy was judging him for being scruffy except for how Andy’s sleeves are rolled up, too, and also he knows perfectly well by now that Andy doesn’t give a shit about that sort of thing. Without thinking, he steps a little closer to Andy, shuffling along the sticky cement of the platform.
When Andy glances up, he catches Nick’s eye and immediately looks away, the tips of his ears going pink. And, sure, the subway station is hot, everyone’s a bit flushed, but Andy’s blushing. He’s seen Andy blush every day for over a year now and he knows what it looks like. Andy’s blushing because Nick caught him looking.
Standing there on the crowded platform, watching Andy’s Adam’s apple work as he swallows, Nick has to acknowledge what he’s looking at.
His mind starts to reel, his view of the situation shifting a full ninety degrees. At first he thinks he’s losing his balance because of the train arriving in the station, that’s how unsteady he feels. He goes back over the past few weeks, seeing all their interactions through a new, possibly demented, lens.
In the morning, when Nick only has on his undershirt and shorts, Andy sometimes looks a little too long, particularly at his arms and his chest. Nick chalked that up to Andy having some kind of WASPy aversion to people walking around their own homes in their underwear. Or maybe he just thinks Nick is hairy. Or maybe he isn’t thinking at all, because they both know Andy’s brain doesn’t do much of anything until tena.m.Who knows.
But there have been other times, now that Nick thinks about it. Whenever Nick rolls up his sleeves or loosens his tie, Andy’s gaze immediately goes to the exposed skin. Again, Nick has assumed Andy thinks even partially disrobing is scandalous.
What if Andy meant what he said outside that bar? Not because he was offering a favor, not because he was curious or confused, but because he wanted to.
There’s a chance— Nick stops himself short.
He glances at the couple.
This outing isn’t a date. In order for it to be a date, they both would have had to agree beforehand, right? Nick has never been on a date, unless you count the times Andy and Emily brought him along as a fourth. He never contemplated the possibility that he might go on a date. Dates exist in the same universe as Sputnik: he’s aware they exist and are important to a lot of people, but he’s never expected them to factor into his own life.
Nick hasn’t ever considered a future beyond sex with anyone. He isn’t a fool; he knows that men can settle down together. He just can’t imagine that happening to him; he’s reluctant to give his last name to anyone he goes to bed with, for fuck’s sake, let alone be open enough to actually get close. The degree of healthy paranoia that colors most of his life is a real check on anything like romance.
Anyway, this isn’t a date. He doesn’t know why he’s even thinking about dates. Except—of course he does; it’s because dates are what people like Andy do when they want someone. Even if Andy wants to—Nick doesn’t know how to finish that sentence, even in his head—then it isn’t going to be anything like getting off in the subway men’s room.
Nick wants that—that thing that exists between people who are together for more than a night. And he’s never going to have it, not with his head screwed on the way it is, but he at least wants a chance to go to bed with someone he cares about. He doesn’t dislike the perfunctory, transactional sex he usually has, but sleeping with Andy would be—more. It would be more inways that would result in Nick’s heart getting broken at the end of it, but he wants it anyway.
And he wants Andy. God, he wants Andy. He’s been trying not to think about it, but there’s really no avoiding it, not with Andy there every morning and every night. His heart’s already a little broken, so why not break it all the way through.
***
That night, when Nick is scrambling eggs for dinner and Andy is making a nuisance of himself by asking what every spice in the cupboard is for, Nick tries to figure out what to do. He’s always done his best thinking when his hands are busy, and now is no exception. He chops some peppers, smashes a clove of garlic, and tries to think, rationally, logically, about what to do next.
But he can’t. There aren’t any logical thoughts to be found in the tangle of Nick’s brain. It’s all a soup of feeling. He’s—fuck it—he’s crazy about Andy, has been for a while. He’s not even trying to pretend to himself that he isn’t.
If Andy wants him in any way, Nick is going to take him up on whatever he’s offering, and if what he’s offering is nothing, Nick’s going to be fine with that because he already is. All Nick has to do is figure out what Andy’s offering.
He could, in theory, just ask, but that’s a lunatic idea and he’s having none of it. But whatcanhe do? In the middle of supper, lean in and ask if Andy wants to revisit the topic of hand jobs?Pass the salt, and have your attitudes toward jerking me off altered in the past few weeks?
