“Ah,” he says with a nod, his face clouding over again. “ ‘Preoccupied’ being a fancy way of saying I’ve had my head up my ass?”
I shrug. “You said it, not me.”
“You didn’t have to.”
“I’m sorry,” I say again. “It’s just…this isn’t you. The way you’ve been acting ever since all this happened. It’s just not.”
Teddy’s jaw twitches. “God, Al, of course it is,” he says, his voice filled with frustration. “This is exactly me. Iamthat guy. I mean, look where I live. You give me a truckful of money, andof courseI’m gonna go buy a robot and a house and a new car and everything else I’ve always wanted. Andof courseI want to go on talk shows. Are you kidding? I’d be amazing on TV. And you know what? There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s what pretty much everyone would do in my situation. Everyone butyou.” Without warning, he picks up an empty cardboard box and flings it against the wall. “Thisisme, Al. You just don’t want to believe it. You never have. You always want me to be something more, something better. But maybe I’m not.”
He stops then, breathing hard, and we sit there in silence, staring at the mess of papers between us, instructions for how to build the flimsiest of boats.
“I’m sorry,” I say after a few minutes, so softly I’m not sure he hears me. “It’s just that…you promised.”
He’s sitting with his head bent, but I see his shoulders rise as he takes a breath, and then he drags his eyes up to meet mine. “What?”
I’m almost afraid to say the words. “You promised that nothing would change.”
Teddy shakes his head, then rises to his feet, scattering the papers between us.
“You know what your problem is, Al?” he says, and there’s a look of great disappointment on his face. “You think that change is automatically a bad thing.”
And then he walks out of the room.
The next morning, Teddy flies to L.A.
I don’t hear about it until lunchtime, when Leo slides into the seat beside me and starts to assemble his usual meal: two slices of pizza smashed together to create a thoroughly disgusting sort of calzone. “Can you believe it?”
“What?” I ask, lowering my turkey sandwich.
He frowns. “Didn’t he tell you?”
I don’t have to ask whoheis; I know instinctively that this is about Teddy. Lately everything is about Teddy.
I’ve had a knot in my stomach ever since I left his apartment last night. It wasn’t just the fight, although that was awful, the worst we’ve ever had. It was the way he looked so panicked when I asked him about the kiss. The way he dismissed it as meaning nothing at all. The way he so efficiently punched a neat little hole in my heart.
“He went to L.A.,” Leo says, and I frown at him.
“What?”
“I guess he’s doing a couple interviews out there.” He grins at me. “Looks like our Teddy’s gonna be a star.”
I watch as he begins to eat, tomato sauce dribbling down his chin. I was with him the first time he made one of his pizza sandwiches in front of Max, and I couldn’t help laughing at the expression on his new boyfriend’s face. But to his credit, Max immediately set to work making one of his own, and when he took a huge bite, their eyes met across the table and a smile broke across Leo’s face.
“So when’s he coming back?” I ask as he mops at his chin with a napkin.
“I think he’s going straight to Cabo from there. Not a bad life, huh?”
I nod, but I feel suddenly exhausted.
“What?” Leo asks.
“We got into a fight last night.”
“You and Teddy?” He shrugs. “It’ll blow over.”
“I don’t know,” I say, and it takes a great deal of effort not to cry at the memory of it. “It was a really big one.”
“What was it about?”
