I shook my head, struck by two things. In the first place, it was depressing that my own boyfriend didn’t know how I drank my coffee. When you only see someone in the dark of night, these are the little details that go missing. We had the relationship of a pair of vampires.
Even worse, I’d made it to age twenty-one without ordering a cappuccino. Because at some point during my ignorant youth, I’d heard somebody say that it was a girly drink. And I’d crossed cappuccinos off the list without a second thought. That’s how I’d always done it. There were athousandlittle decisions I made in service to hiding something big. All my clothes were blue or gray or black. (Except my hockey jacket. And there could hardly be a manlier piece of clothing.) My backpack was a plain color. My bedspread was regulation navy blue. I lived by a weird, self-imposed aesthetic, focused on never appearing gay.
The result? Not only did Rikker not know my taste in coffee, I didn’t either.
Rikker made himself comfortable on my beanbag chair, and sipped his coffee. “How are you feeling?”
I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes. “Today I feel a little better. Finally.”
“Glad to hear it,” he said, kicking off his shoes. “What were you supposed to read next? I’ll take a shift, if you want.”
I swirled my excellent coffee, so that none of the foam would be left behind in the cup. “My mom would be pumped if you read a couple chapters of Roman history. She hates that book.”
“Pass it over,” he said.
With his feet propped up into my lap, he read to me for over an hour. Listening to the rough, warm sound of his voice, I felt happier than I’d been in a week. I’d needed this — a few casual hours with him. Just having Rikker in the room with me was like medicine.
Unfortunately for him, Mom was right — Rikker was reading from the least interesting book on earth. Eventually he let it fall into his lap. “Fuck, G. Aren’t there any naughty bits in here?” He’d just read another stifling paragraph about Roman wall painting. “Can we skip to the part about the orgies?”
“I wish.”
“I’m pretty sure the Romans liked to get it on. What chapter is that?”
Pulling one of his feet into my hands, I gave the arch a squeeze.
He closed his eyes. “Do that again,” he demanded. Rikker was kind of a sensualist. He liked to be touched, even if it wasn’t sexual.
Maybe I’d be a sensualist too, if I weren’t so goddamn uptight.
I massaged both of his feet. And after a time, he picked the book up again and kept reading. I did a decent job of paying attention, closing my eyes to try to picture the ancient buildings that Rikker described. I didn’t think anything of it when he removed his feet from my lap mid-paragraph. He kept reading, though, as my room door opened and my mother walked in.
“…in contrast to the three-dimensional Second Style. Yada yada yada,” he finished. “Hi, Mrs. G!”
“Johnny Rikker!” she said, walking over to kiss him on the cheek, before doing the same to me. She was holding a bag from the Chinese restaurant. “Have you eaten dinner?”
“Actually, I’m on my way to the dining hall,” he said, standing up to stuff his feet into his shoes. “My Spanish class has a language table once a week. And thanks to hockey, I’m usually a no-show.”
I hoped to God that Rikker was telling the truth about his dinner plans. Because I suspected that he ate alone a lot of the time. Apart from his peculiar relationship with me, and the rest of his somewhat-friendly teammates, he didn’t have a social life.
Rikker pulled on his jacket. He’d just spent five hours with me, and I still had to stop myself from begging him not to go.
“Thanks for taking a shift with the history book,” Mom called after him as he went the door. “The psych class has been fun, but that one is killing me.”
“Yeah? I’m going to borrow that book next time I can’t fall asleep.”
Laughing, Mom wished him a good night. After the door closed on Rikker, she opened the bag of Chinese food on the desk. “What a good friend he is to you,” she said, pulling out a white cardboard container.
That was the moment when I was supposed to say, “yeah,” and then change the subject, like I always did. But just then, my head gave a lurch of pain. Because it just felt sowrong. Every time I ducked the truth, it was like betraying Rikker all over again. Not to be dramatic, but I kept thinking about Peter’s denial of Jesus. Except I was worse than Peter. Instead of denying Rikker three times, I denied him every fricking day.
I put my hands to my temples.
“Michael?” my mother asked. “What’s wrong?”
I was too caught up in my own misery to answer her.
Worried, Mom abandoned the take-out order to come over to me. She sat beside me on the bed and cupped two hands under my chin. “What is it?”
I’d finally reached the point where I didn’t want to lie anymore. But I wasn’t capable of speaking the truth, either. So I was just stuck there, the words choking me.
