Page 56 of We Could Be So Good
“Okay,” Andy finally says, a bit like he’s soothing a scared animal. “Okay.”
Nick clenches his fist around the crumbled paper bag his knish came in. “Does it mean—do you want—shit. I don’t— Why are we having this conversation in public, for fuck’s sake?”
“What would you do if we weren’t?”
Christ, what wouldn’t he do. “I’d try to—” His gaze drops to Andy’s lips, pink and a little parted.
“Would you try to do that thing with your eyeballs again?” Andy asks. “Because that’s a dealbreaker.”
Nick lets out a startled burst of laughter. “Oh fuck off. I hate you.”
“No, you don’t,” Andy says in a singsong voice. “You really don’t,” he adds, sounding awfully smug. Nick makes himself look away.
***
In an effort to avoid Michael, they walk straight around the outside of the house to the backyard and play bocce with the old men. Conversation is minimal. They roll the ball, they drink some beer, and it’s probably the best half hour Nick has ever spent at this house. Even dinner passes without much grief. He makes it through the usual questions about girlfriends and settling down, and manages not to look at Andy while he does so.
Andy gets abducted by the aunts again while Nick washesdishes, and when Nick finally dries his hands on the dishrag, he finds Andy and his mother talking on the other side of the room. He can’t overhear what they’re saying and kind of wishes he could, because Andy’s nodding along as Nick’s mother delivers what seems to be a monologue. Next to Andy, his mother seems old. Sheisold, Nick knows, and he feels like an asshole for not visiting more often.
Andy must notice him watching, because he flicks a glance over Nick’s mother’s shoulder, a half smile and a raised eyebrow:You okay?Nick looks pointedly at the door:Time to leave.
When they’re saying their goodbyes, his mother corners Nick in the kitchen. “You’re getting skinny. Take some leftovers.”
Nick isn’t getting skinny. “I can cook, Mama.”
“But do you?” She turns to Andy. “Does he?”
“Not as well as you,” says Andy, diplomatically.
“You’ll take the sauce.”
“No, Mama. I don’t need any sauce.”
“You can boil pasta, can’t you?” Again, she turns to Andy. “Can’t he?”
“Yes,” says Andy, with the look of a man who very much hopes he’s giving the right answer.
“Then you’ll take the sauce,” she tells Nick, as if this settles things. “Otherwise it’ll go to waste.”
“Send it home with Mr.Esposito.” Mr.Esposito is a widower and therefore regarded by the entire neighborhood as in danger of imminent starvation.
“He doesn’t appreciate good things.” She turns back to Andy. “I know! You take the sauce.”
It isn’t until they’re on the subway, Andy holding a quart jar of Bolognese like it’s a newborn baby, that Nick realizes that thesauce was his mother’s ploy to figure out whether Andy is still living with Nick.
He tries to tell himself it’s funny, that his mother is harmless. The fact of Andy living with him wouldn’t even matter if Nick hadn’t been so secretive about it in the first place, if he had just come out and told her at the beginning. But he had reacted with an instinctive if misguided sense of protectiveness over Andy, and now it’s too late. He tells himself that it probably wouldn’t even occur to her to mention his living arrangements to Michael. That even if she does, Michael won’t jump to conclusions. That even if Michael does jump to conclusions, he won’t tell their mother or use his pals on the force to make Nick’s life hard.
And with Andy sitting beside him, cradling a stupid jar of sauce, occasionally flicking pleased, shy glances in his direction, he’s almost prepared to believe good things, however far-fetched.
Chapter Thirteen
Nick goes straight to the icebox to make room for the jar of sauce. “Where does she even get jars this size?” he grumbles. “And how are we supposed to eat it all before it spoils?” He shoves aside a carton of eggs and leftover pizza and pushes the sauce to the back.
When he turns around, Andy is there, his hands in his pockets. He’s loosened his tie and undone his top button. “So,” he says.
“So,” Nick agrees.
All day they’ve carefully preserved a few inches of space between them, but now Andy is close enough that Nick can see the pale tips of his eyelashes.
