Page 71 of We Could Be So Good
This, minus the running in circles, is how Andy feels when Nick comes home. Because, in addition to being happy to see Nick, which he always is, Nick brings the certainty of hair-stroking and cuddling. Andy can’t believe how utterly weak he is for hair-stroking and cuddling.
“Shh,” Nick says into Andy’s hair, even though Andy hasn’t said anything. Nick still has on his coat and shoes, just dropped his bag by the door and immediately went to Andy on the sofa. “You feeling any better?”
“Yeah.”
“Really?” Nick leans back to regard him skeptically, which is fair since Andy would probably have said he felt better even if he were on fire.
“I don’t think I have a fever anymore.”
Nick puts a hand to Andy’s forehead and must be satisfied by whatever he finds there, because he doesn’t press the point. They have more soup for dinner. Andy is coming to realize that Nick believes that soup is basically a prescription drug designed to cure all illnesses and also, probably, bad moods. He doesn’t protest.
Later, when they get into bed, Nick pulls Andy against his chest. Andy drifts off, then wakes when he feels a familiar hardness against his back.
“Had no idea that wheezing did it for you,” Andy manages. “Or is it the snot?”
“Fuck off,” Nick says gently. “It’s a Pavlovian response or whatever you call it. It’s never had a chance to be this near to anyone unless there’s a very specific agenda. Ignore it.”
Andy thinks about that as he drifts in the space between asleep and awake. Does Nick do this with the men he sleeps with? Doeshe hold them in bed or pet their hair? Is Andy the only person Nick’s been with like this? The idea makes him feel greedy, smug with satisfaction. It’s pathetic, but he wants to know that he’s special, that what they’re doing is new for Nick in some way. He definitely shouldn’t mention this to Nick.
“Do you not cuddle the men you fuck over the back of the sofa?” Andy asks, because he’s hopeless.
“Jesus, Andy.” Nick’s laugh is soft and warm on the back of Andy’s neck. “No. Definitely not.”
“Not even afterward?” He feels his cheeks heat and he blames the flu for all of this.
“Not like this,” Nick says, and it doesn’t even sound like an admission, just a fact freely offered up for Andy’s satisfaction. Surely Nick knows what Andy was getting at with his questions, but he let Andy have it anyway, held out his own morsel of vulnerability in exchange for Andy’s.
***
By the second full day of being stuck at home, feverish and achy, with no company but soap operas, Andy’s well enough to be bored beyond belief. When he turns off the television and switches on the radio, he’s rewarded with the dubious pleasure of listening to a Yankees day game. He lies on the sofa eating burnt toast and cursing the Yankees bullpen. His brain is melting inside his congested head. He drifts off sometime in the seventh inning.
When he wakes, the phone is ringing and the light coming in from the window is already faded with dusk.
Before this week, the only time he’s been in the apartment alone is when Nick is out running an errand—and even then, Andy usually goes along. He’s never needed to answer Nick’s phone and he isn’t sure if he should. But he supposes it’s technically his phone, too, even if few people know it—just the other day he gave Nick forty dollars for his half of the rent for May and a few dollars for the phone and electricity. And besides, it might be Nick calling to check on him.
That last thought settles it. Andy levers himself off the sofa, switches off the radio, and answers the phone. “Hello?”
The line is silent for a beat too long. “Is that—” A pause. “Andy?”
Andy puts out a hand to lean against the wall. “Emily?”
“I was calling Nick. Just to—never mind. I’m sorry. I’ll call back when he doesn’t have company.”
“Wait! Don’t hang up. Nick hasn’t gotten home yet.”
The line goes silent again. “Then why are you there?”
“I’ve been staying here ever since—since March,” he says, as if alluding to the breakup might be rude.
Emily doesn’t say anything for a moment. “He didn’t tell me. I mean, not that we talk a lot. Or at all, really,” she adds hastily.
“Emily. It’s fine. It’s good. You’re friends. I’ve told him the same thing.”
She’s quiet again. “Thanks.”
It annoys him a little that she’s thanking him for allowing her to be friends with Nick, who was her friend before either of them met Andy. “Stop,” he says, and hopes she understands.
“You sound awful.”
