Page 85 of We Could Be So Good
“Christ, Andy. You should be.”
“We’re careful.”
“Come on, Andy. There are going to be rumors. The two of us living together? Neither of us dating women? What happens when those rumors start?”
Andy doesn’t have an answer. “I’ve been trying not to think about it,” he admits. When he does think about it, he reassures himself that people have brazened out all kinds of rumors. His parents both have. Plenty of people still think his mother was a Soviet spy, for crying out loud, and that never stopped her.
For a minute he lets himself imagine the worst—if he and Nick are exposed, if rumors start to fly. Andy has connections, a little money, an entire fucking newspaper. He can leverage that into some kind of future. Nick has none of that. He’s still starting out and has no resources to fall back on. Brazening it out isn’t an option. “I want you to be safe. Do you want me to start taking girls out to dinner?”
“No,” Nick says darkly. “I just thought—what was Emilysaying to you out on the fire escape? Was she— Is she—” Nick doesn’t seem to be able to get the words out. “Does she want to try again? With you.”
Andy can’t help the laugh that forces itself up from his chest. “Um, no. She told me that if I hurt you, she’d break my kneecaps.”
Nick looks appalled. “Why would she say that?”
Andy can’t very well tell him that it’s because she believes Nick has been in love with Andy for a year. And he certainly can’t say that he’s starting to think she’s right. “Honestly, I think she just enjoys threatening violence.” He tips Nick’s chin up. “I don’t want to get back together with Emily, you jackass,” he says gently. “Tell me you know that.” Nick looks away and grunts noncommittally. Andy rolls his eyes. “I’m with you. Aren’t I?”
He means for it to sound rhetorical, but the question comes out too earnest, a little desperate, every bit of doubt in his mind finding its way into those few syllables. It’s one of his worst qualities, this need for reassurance, this fear that he’s not wanted. But they are together, aren’t they? Nick could just confirm it, couldn’t he?
Nick doesn’t do that. “I keep thinking that whoever you date next—whoever you marry—won’t like me half as much as Emily does. I would have still—if you and she had gotten married, I’d still have gotten to be around you.”
It takes Andy a minute to realize what Nick is saying and when he does, he slides onto the floor beside him. He’s not the only one in this room who needs reassurance, apparently. “This is all my fault,” he says, wrapping his arms around Nick’s neck. “I thought you understood. But I forgot that you’re a goddamnidiot.” He kisses the corner of Nick’s stupid mouth. “I love you. I love you and I’minlove with you. I don’t know how to make this clearer. I’m not biding my time here. I’mhere.”
“But you shouldn’t be,” Nick mumbles into Andy’s hair, but then pushes him down onto the kitchen floor, kissing him and kissing him.
“Are you going to be this brainless after every time you fuck me?” Andy asks, a little breathless. “I just need to know so I can plan in advance.”
Nick doesn’t answer because he’s too busy shoving Andy’s shirt up and unbuckling his belt, and the linoleum is hard against Andy’s back but he doesn’t care, he doesn’t care at all.
Chapter Twenty-One
On Monday morning, Andy gets off the elevator with Nick in a sad attempt to put off going to his too-quiet office upstairs.
He misses the newsroom, not only the things he likes—the noise, the constant sense of things being discovered and history being written—but the things he actively hates—the cigarette butts and pencil stubs that litter the floor, the overhead light that flickers, that one copyboy who seems to function as the office bookie. Being here now, he feels homesick.
When he gets to Nick’s desk, he really ought to say goodbye and go upstairs, but he hangs around. There’s an envelope on Nick’s desk—it’s not an interoffice envelope, but it hasn’t gone through the post office, either. There’s no stamp, no address, just Nick’s name written in blocky capitals. Nick rips the flap open and peers inside, then dumps the contents onto his desk. It’s a pile of photographs.
Nick seems frozen in place, so Andy fans the photographs out, spreading them across the desk. They’re all photographs of Nick. There he is lighting a cigarette outside theChroniclebuilding, andthere he is leaving O’Connell’s. There’s a picture that’s obviously shot through the window of a luncheonette of Nick sharing a table with a blond woman Andy recognizes as Nick’s source at the Property Clerk’s Office.
There’s a picture of Nick and Andy carrying groceries two days ago. One of Andy letting himself into Nick’s building carrying an armful of sweet peas. Another of Nick and Andy sitting on the fire escape just last night.
“Shit,” Andy says.
“There’s nothing incriminating,” Nick says—whispers, really. “We weren’t doing anything wrong.”
“It’s a threat.”
“A threat to do what, expose that I buy groceries? I’ll stop meeting with that secretary, though.”
It’s true that there isn’t anything explicit in those photographs. Looking at them, Andy can’t tell if he’s standing too close to Nick, if that expression on his face is too fond, if there’s anything inherently queer about goddamn sweet peas.
“It’s a threat,” Andy repeats. “They’re letting you know that the minute you do anything, you’ll be exposed.” The minute Nick goes to a gay bar, the minute he talks to the wrong man in public, it’s over for him. Nick effectively has no privacy now and neither does anyone he’s with. They’re careful in public; of course they are. And since they’ve been together, Nick hasn’t gone to gay bars or anyplace like that. Otherwise, these pictures could very well be in front of a judge, not on Nick’s desk.
It’s a threat, and not just to Nick. Andy’s in more than ten of these photos. He can’t believe Nick doesn’t see it—Nick, who only yesterday was worried about rumors.
“Who’s ‘they’?” asks Nick.
“You can’t be serious. The police. We already knew they were angry about that evidence story. There’s been a cop outside our building for weeks, ever since—shit.”
