“Yeah, if I ever finish it.” I scuff my toe against the sidewalk. “I always thought more of us should know about this era because it really resonates with so muchtoday. But with all the classes I’m teaching, I just don’t have the energy to work on it when everything else is done.”
“That really sucks.” Cole crosses his arms over his chest, hugging himself. “I bet a lot of people would be interested in what you had to say.”
“They probably wouldn’t get to read it anyway, though,” I shrug. “Odds are, I would publish it with an academic press that would produce a shitty little book with shitty typeface and tiny margins, on ugly paper that feels horrible against your fingertips, and they would charge $150 for every copy, and the only people who would ever buy it would be university libraries. So I’d do all this work, and all I would earn would be the competitive edge to apply for a tenure-track job at the University of Bumblefuck, Alabama, where I would teach four classes a semester and probably wouldn’t get tenure because my entire department would be defunded in my third year there. You know, living the dream.”
“Fuck, dude.”
Cole is silent for a long time, and I wonder if after all these years, I’ve finally managed to say something so shitty that I’ve put him off completely. Then he draws in a breath, and speaks.
“You know what I see when I look at this thing?”
It’s my turn to study him. “What?”
“Round surfaces. Masses and voids and shadows.Really fucking excellent anatomy. I’m looking at that dude on the left, sitting down next to the standing lady, and I want to have my charcoals in my hands so that I can draw that torso. Or this old guy over here, some kind of water god I guess? It’s cloudy today, so the lights and darks wouldn’t be so dramatic. But I can already see how I’d do it, how I’d put them on the page.”
I’m chewing over this, thinking about what it must be like to see the world through Cole’s eyes, when the first few drops of rain splat onto the ground in front of us.
“Oh,shit—” Cole swears, and the skies open up above us. “Come on — the subway entrance is across the street —”
He grabs my hand and drags me into the intersection. When we reach the opposite corner, I balk at the elevator in front of us.
“It’sdefinitelygoing to smell like piss in there.”
Cole rolls his eyes as he punches the down button. “Babe, this wholecitysmells like piss.”
The elevator doors open, andof courseI’m right, because there isn’t a transit elevator anywhere in the world that someone hasn’t used as a urinal. But Cole grabs me by the back of the neck and folds my face against his shoulder, and I have to admit that wet Cole is a huge improvement over the alternative. It’s sort of nice, breathing him in as we descend.
The subway station beneath Columbus Circle ispandemonium with New Yorkers trying to get out of the rain, and it’s a good thing Cole knows the way to our platform, because I’m a little rattled by all the noise, the wet T-shirt sticking to my back, the squeak of my shoes on the tile floor. He leads me onto the C train, and we end up in the center of the car, nearly chest to chest as we hold onto the bar above our heads, other passengers packing in around us.
“You okay?” Cole asks, and his free hand is warm on my waist, one finger pushing the hem aside to brush my skin.
I hate it when the subway gets like this, but I nod anyway. “Yeah, it’s just a couple of stops.”
“Good, because I want you to tell me everything else you know about that monument we were just looking at. Go on, we’ve got time.”
I take a deep breath to begin, and we’re at 23rd Street before I know it.
As we push our way to the turnstile, Cole turns back to look at me. “Hey, maybe we’ll get lucky and the rain will be over! It seemed like one of those summer storms that comes and goes.”
We aren’t lucky. The stairs up from the platform are wet, and when we get back up to the street level, it’s pouring so hard that I feel like I’m standing in the shower. So we make a run for it, splashing through the puddles on our way to Cole’s apartment. It’s only a couple of blocks, but by the time we arrive, we’recompletely drenched, water streaming down our faces and soaking our clothes. I hate being wet, and I’m miserable, but Cole is laughing hysterically, pushing his dripping hair out of his eyes.
“Oh god, youhaveto see yourself —”
We step into the elevator, and when I catch a glimpse of my reflection in the opposite wall, I can’t help cracking up too. My curls are plastered to my forehead, and I look like a drowned rat. My glasses are starting to fog up, but I don’t have anywhere to dry them, so I take them off, holding them carefully as we ride up to the fourth floor.
When we reach Cole’s apartment, he stops me just inside the door. “Okay, strip — everything off, now —”
I start to laugh. “I mean, if you want to get into my pants that badly, you could just —”
“Well, if you’re offering —” Cole wiggles his eyebrows. “But no, I just want to throw your stuff in the dryer so you have something to wear home later.”
I hand him my clothes, and he walks off towards the kitchen. When he returns, he’s wearing nothing but his briefs and carrying one of my T-shirts.
“Where did you get this?” I ask as I slip it over my head.
“You left it behind the last time you stayed over here —” Cole begins, but stops, blushing deeply. “Okay, I snuck it out of your bag. I’ve been wearing it to bed.”
“Huh.” That’s — weird. But it’s nice, because itsmells like him, and the crawly feeling shivering across my skin is starting to dissipate now that I’m warm and dry. And he’s walking ahead of me toward the bedroom, giving me alookover his shoulder, and nothing could stop me from following him.
