I wouldn’t let him.
Or so I thought.
It was late when I found him walking out of the bathroom, stumbling, glassy-eyed. After years of observation, I knew instantly something was wrong. He hurried upstairs and even pushed aside a friend who tried to tell him something.
I don’t know what made me follow him and knock at his door. I don’t know what made me go inside when he shouted that he wanted to be left alone. I don’t know what made me shut the door when he looked up from his bed. But what I do know is what I felt when I looked back.
“Hey,” I whispered.
His disgusted expression softened. “Are you okay? Do you need me to find Hoyt?”
“No. I just saw you come up here, and…I wanted to make sure you were all right. Are you?”
I leaned against the doorframe, aware that he was watching me.
He sighed and tried to force a smile. “I’m fine. Thanks for caring.”
I knew he was lying. His face was a kaleidoscope of emotions, none of them good.
“Sure. I guess I should go back downstairs.”
“No worries.”
I grabbed the knob. And inside I felt a tingle, as I always did when I heard his voice or saw his face or his perfect smile. There was a string that united us, and I felt it tense, making it impossible to separate.
In the middle of these chaotic thoughts, I heard him ask me, “Are you having fun? At the party, I mean. It’s different from high school, right?”
“Sure,” I said over my shoulder. “It’s not bad. But I’m getting tired, and if I hear five more minutes of techno, I think I’m going to lose it. My ears are killing me.”
He laughed, sounding more lively now.
“I know how you feel.” After a pause, he continued. “You can stay here and hang out with me for a while if you like.”
Without thinking, I replied, “Sure.”
He waved me over, and I walked slowly to the bed, sitting timidly on the very edge. I looked around at his things: his shelves full of books and comics, the flat-screen TV on his dresser, the video-game console and cartridges. There were drawing materials and a speaker playing music on his desk. Everything was clean and orderly, everything smelled good—citrusy, but also masculine. Next to the closet were suitcases and boxes, reminding me that he was leaving in a few days. The thought of it was painful to me, and I tried to ignore it.
“You must be excited that you got into MIT,” I said.
“Yeah, it’s a big opportunity.” He sat up on his pillow. “What about you—college, all that adult stuff?”
He was slurring and looked a little tipsy. I knew he’d been drinking. I now wondered how much. Not that it was any of my business. Anyway, he seemed relaxed now. The wrinkles were gone from his forehead, and he was more interested in me than whatever had caused him to run away from the party earlier.
I’d made him smile. That meant a lot to me just then.
I told him a bit about my new life in Toronto, my classes, and how happy I was to be newly independent. I told him about my little apartment and my neighbors. The older woman on the first floor who spent all day staring through her peephole. The piano teacher on the second floor who listened to blues until after midnight. The big family on the top floor whose children ran back and forth like crazy all weekend and had put any maternal instincts I might have thought I had on hiatus.
He grinned as he listened, especially when I laughed, and I couldn’t stop doing it, just as I couldn’t stop myself from talking. We had never talked that long and had never spent that much time alone. We’d never been just us, the people we really were, together.
It was like a dream.
My fantasies taking shape.
And I didn’t want to wake up.
“What about your friends?” he asked.
“I’ve made a couple, but I don’t have time to go out, really. I signed up for too many classes.”
