Scott leaned in and hissed, “I fucking felt you feel it.”
“Prove it,” Carver said, his voice raw.
“Oh, my God,” Scott muttered, gripping the edge of the bar and squeezing it in his fists. “Fucking forget it, you’re just — forget it.”
Carver snorted again. “So you were willing to fight for me for about, what, five seconds?”
“You don’t want it. You don’t.” Scott felt like he had a big hole through his chest that was sucking the rest of him in. He couldn’t believe how stupid he was being, yet he also couldn’t bring himself to believe he was being stupid. There was something real here, there had to be. “You’re playing around. You wanted to fantasize a little, then go right back to your miserable life. You can’t let yourself imagine happiness because you hate yourself so goddamn much.”
“Likeyouactually want it?”
“You know what I want,” he snapped.
Carver blinked more, then swallowed and shook his head. “I do?”
“Fuck you, dude. You know I — you know I’m the —” The bartender started coming back over with Carver’s drink, and Scott cleared his throat and tried to act natural.
She passed the glass to Carver on a napkin and said, “Keep the tab open or close it out?”
“Keep it open,” Carver said. To Scott, he said, “You sure you don’t want anything?”
“No,” Scott snapped, sounding strangled. The bartender raised her eyebrows at them and went away again.
Carver drank half of the vodka soda in one sip, then set it down hard. “I know you’re the what?” he whispered to Scott.
“You know I’m the one who wanted it,” Scott whispered back, feeling hot across his entire body now. “I askedyou.You dumpedme.”
“I didn’t fucking dump you. You gave me an ultimatum.”
“No, you made your choice. What, I was gonna live under your bed at Duke?”
“Was I going to live under your bed at yourflophouse?” Carver hissed.
“I was thinking we’d both get jobs!”
“What kind of job was I gonna get with no college education?”
“They have colleges out there!”
“Out-of-state tuition until I established residency, my parents would have figured out what was going on and cut me off —”
“— you don’t know that —”
“— as if you’d have wanted to compromise anyway, as if you’d have wanted me to have a normal college student life while you were busking, as if you’d want me going home for Thanksgiving and living a double life and hiding you —”
Scott scrubbed his hand down his face. “We’ve already had this argument, we had this argument eighteen years ago. I don’t want to go through this again.”
“I don’t want to either!”
“And we’re having it for the same reason, do you get that?”
“What reason?”
“Because I was inside you last night,” he hissed, fed up and stung. “And you don’t want to believe it meant what it meant, you didn’t last time either —”
“— oh, please —”
“— but we’re not kids anymore, alright? Now you have plenty of other fucks to compare me to, so can you still look me in the eye and tell me we don’t have something real?”
