Chapter Twenty-One
Y OU CAN’T REALLY GET SOMETHING out of your system, can you? Because the second it becomes forbidden again, you want it even more. That’s why diets don’t work. Your mind may have some distorted idea of what you’re allowed to have—half a cupcake, a stupid serving size of fries, some small tease of something meant to be enjoyed freely. But the body doesn’t care. The body finds a way.
Because you’re supposed to enjoy it freely. It’s a lesson my mind has never learned.
Alone, waking up with Kacey fast asleep in her own bed beside mine, my body wants one thing. And that’s the staggering weight of Will on top of me, under me, behind me.
After he left last night, I spent an hour alone in bed replaying everything we did together until Kacey came home and I closed my eyes, pretending to be asleep like a kid on Christmas morning.
Even now, spurts of last night fizz to the front of my mind. The soft hold of his hand on my throat. How dark his eyes were as they grazed over me in the mirror. The low sounds he made in my ear as I tipped him over the edge.
Could we even make this work? I grab my phone off the nightstand to text Gen. Instead I see a text from Will, sent an hour ago while I was still asleep.
That’s not going to be the only time.
Fuck. The words flip my stomach upside down. I don’t respond, though; just initiate a conversation with Gen.
What would you say if I said Will and I had sex last night
Within thirty seconds, Gen responds:
BITCH! I would tell you that my co-worker now owes me 20 bucks because she lost a BET
I suppress a laugh. Of course Gen had a bet going.
“What are you smiling at?”
I jump at the recognition that Kacey is now awake and grinning at me.
“Oh, good morning.” I roll over to face her. “Just texting Gen. When did you get home last night?” An Oscar-worthy performance if there ever was one.
Kacey appears to buy it. “Maybe one a.m.? We ended up at a bar in Georgetown and once Houston threw up on a street corner, it just sort of fizzled out. Didn’t want to be too hungover for the keynote today.”
“Mhmm, same.”
Kacey smiles. “So you had a good night?”
Based on her tone, she clearly knows something happened. My eyes do a quick scan of the room, looking for an errant sock that’s giving me away.
“There’s a condom wrapper in our trash.” Her face is pure grin.
God. I feel my cheeks heat. “Please don’t tell anyone yet. Will and I haven’t really discussed… what we’re going to say, if we’re going to say…”
“Yeah, yeah, of course.” She sits up in bed. “Though honestly I don’t think it’s going to come as a shock to anyone. There’ve been vibes since day one.” She laughs.
I pull the covers over my face and groan. It’s not like I’m embarrassed—if anything, it’s the opposite. I want everyone to know. But I still don’t see a sustainable future here and I don’t want it to crash and burn in a public way.
“I don’t want anything to be weird.” I pick up my phone and there’s an additional thirteen unread texts from Gen.
“Hazel’s gonna be devastated,” Kacey quips. I send her a glare. “Kidding.”
I take my phone into the bathroom, along with a new set of clothes for after my shower. I stare at Will’s text again. My shower is longer than usual.
We pile into the conference center auditorium for Erica’s keynote. I narrowly avoided Will at the hotel breakfast, but not because I didn’t want to see him. I just didn’t want to see him with Kacey or Morris or any of the rest of the cohort who might be lingering. I wanted to see him myself. To see how we’d negotiate this strange new thing.
We make eye contact immediately, as if he was waiting for me. He’s wearing brown wool trousers with a sharp crease down the front, some cream knit, black boots, and a neat jacket over it all. As usual, it’s too damn much.
He waits for me to catch up to him before we sit in a row. Kacey is on my other side and I can tell she’s making absolutely no effort to not watch our interactions.
“Sleep well?” he asks in a low voice that’s just for me.
I nod. “You?”
He nods back and then runs his hand lightly over my knee. “You look nice,” he says, like it’s simple. Like we’ve been dating for years. Out of reflex, I look around quickly to see if anyone saw.
His lips curl up slightly and he leans his mouth into my ear. “Relax.” His breath against my neck leaves a warm trail that envelops my entire body.
The director of AWP walks to the stage to introduce Erica, who’s wearing all-black with bright-pink heels. The room hushes before she speaks.
She begins her set of poems—a handful of ones she read last night in the bar, as well as longer ones I’ve only ever read in her collections. Her soft voice razes electric across the auditorium as she catalogs her childhood, her parents’ upbringing in Taiwan, how she wanted so desperately to be famous growing up. Each piece is personal and sharp. Sometimes, when she talks about the racism she’s faced, the poems are caustic. Other times, they’re meandering and romantic, or heavy with pop-culture references I barely understand but want to. She sounds like no one else.
She could help me be the poet I know I could be.
There’s a real gut-punch hearing her now that makes me feel restless. She sounds so open and free. She doesn’t write for toilet paper companies or Big Pharma. She writes for herself and for us.
I know here and now that I can never go back to Coleman + Derry. I want to do what Erica does, and she’s the blueprint I can use to get there.
At the meet-and-greet after the keynote, we flock to a long table for crudités and wine. Will’s next to me constantly, and it’s a comfort. It feels so normal, like we’ve been together forever, except more so than ever, I just want to touch him. I feel the subtle heat of his body when he leans in to make a comment and I accidentally make eye contact with Hazel, who quickly averts her gaze.
Erica moves through the crowd, mingling, shaking hands. Unlike last night, when she was in a more casual setting, today she’s got her professional cap on, making a performance of polite nods and soft smiles. There’s something recognizable about the way she moves through the world, and I wonder if she ever feels like I do, the relentless pull of orienting yourself toward the opinions of other people.
“Go get your book signed,” Will says into my ear, releasing a shiver across my body that I don’t think he intended. I wasn’t aware he’d watched my interaction with Erica last night. But of course he did.
“I don’t want to annoy her.” Even though Erica explicitly told me to come find her today, now that she’s in this environment, it feels like I’m doing something I shouldn’t.
Will pins me with a look, then runs his thumb across the front of my wrist. The touch is almost imperceptible, but from it, I feel just a little bit safer.
“Okay, fine.”
I meander over to where Erica is talking to Daniel and Paul. I don’t want to interrupt, so after pulling her poetry collection out of my bag, I pretend to get a plate of fruit, turning my back to them to look less conspicuous. I’ll wait for a more organic opening.
Will watches out of the corner of his eye from across the room. He’s now chatting with Kacey and Wiebke. I shoot him the smallest of smiles, his glance a Good luck .
Even with the din of voices in the hall, it’s easy to hear Daniel’s standard boom.
“We’re just so excited to have you this fall, Erica,” he gushes. “Really great class of poets, and I think you’ll have a great relationship with the student who wins the fellowship.”
Anticipation lodges in my throat, and I orient my back even more away from them, so they don’t think I’m eavesdropping.
“Fabulous, so you’ve announced it?” Erica says.
“No, not yet.” Daniel shakes his head. “We think we’ve narrowed it down to two students. This one student, William, is really special—a cerebral, intellectual writer, but with a real simmer of dark emotion underneath. But the other student we’re thinking of for this is a poet named Hazel.”
I feel the air sucked out of me. Even though he’s not talking that quietly, I stop chewing the strawberry in my mouth to make sure I don’t miss a word.
“Interesting voice. Plays with cultural and racial identity. Very fearless, a real firebrand in workshop. This may change, of course—there’s still the First-Year Reading Series, but regardless of outcome, we’re confident you’ll enjoy the fellowship. And, of course, teaching the second-year workshop.”
“I’m thrilled to hear it,” Erica says. “Let me know when you can send over work samples, and I can contribute my own thoughts.”
“We absolutely will do that,” Paul says.
I’m too frozen to turn around, so I pull out my phone and perform a sense of busyness until I know for sure they’ve moved on. For all they know, I came to get fruit. No other reason.
Will’s still chatting with our classmates, and I don’t want him to look at me again because I’m afraid of whatever expression my face is making. I hunt for the nearest bathroom or spare hallway in the opposite direction of Erica, Paul, and Daniel.
You’re not even in consideration , I tell myself and try to breathe through it. Reconcile myself to it. My favorite poet, my role model for over a decade, won’t be working with me. Instead, Paul and Daniel are considering the people profs always consider. The poets who write MFA poetry—the standard fare, the kind of writing that blends into one voice by the end of a two-year program. The ones who write about salt and ash and smoke and the fucking moon.
I should’ve known. Always, always, the professors go with Hazel—the one who takes up too much space in workshop, the one who read all the right books in high school and makes me feel like my girliness is incompatible with serious writing. Or they go with Will—the absolute embodiment of a white upper-middle-class straight male writer in his loafers and expensive glasses and New Yorker subscription, writing about how Daddy didn’t love him enough.
It’s that last intrusive thought that causes my mind to jump to What the fuck is wrong with you? And what is wrong with me? How can I be so insecure? I know they’re good writers. They’d deserve this. How can I even think such a thing about a man who, against all my better intentions, I’m stupidly in love with?
In love with. The phrase hurtles across my mind like a metal ball in an arcade game, hitting everything it shouldn’t hit by accident.
In the bathroom of this hotel, I stare at myself in the mirror and hate what I see. A vision of jealousy, of inferiority. I want Will to get everything he wants because he is perfect and the smartest person I know and because I know he’d want the best for me, too. I want him to get the fellowship.
But I also don’t.
And it’s that tiny, seething undercurrent that I worry could ruin everything.
I don’t tell him.
I don’t want his pity, first of all. To be any sort of reminder that I can’t compete with him. That I’m not on his intellectual level. I play the conversation out in my head— Of course you’re my intellectual equal, what an absurd thing to say —and I can’t explain why the logic doesn’t work. I just feel it in my bones. The powers that be looked at me and decided No, not good enough . And for my weathered brain, that’s more than enough to work with.
I also don’t tell him because why would I? We’re in this bubble now, some sort of honeymoon feeling, rose-colored glasses, et cetera, et cetera. When I left the bathroom after hearing Daniel and Paul’s talk with Erica, I went back to Will and the warmth of his hand across my lower back, our “secret” relationship be damned.
“Just couldn’t do it,” I’d said about getting the autograph, voice low and gravelly, the threat of crying lodged in my throat. “Didn’t feel like the right moment.”
He didn’t chastise me or say something useless like It’s never the right moment, you just have to do it . Something my mom would say, or maybe Gen. Something that doesn’t make you feel better, just inadequate. Instead he said, “Well, that’s just fine. Another time, maybe.” As if he trusted my diagnosis and handling of the situation.
It’s like when we were in the mountains around Christine’s parents’ house, and I didn’t want to cross the bridge. He didn’t push me to do it. He found an easy workaround without making it a huge deal or embarrassing me. Another friend or lover might have—under the guise of pushing me to face my fears and ascend to some higher plane of personhood. But Will understands that having a fear of heights isn’t a commentary on how whole I am, how useful, how fun, how wise.
At the same time, I shuddered slightly at his response to me not getting the autograph. His empathy, his no-big-deal of it all made me feel worse about my own mean thoughts. Because he has no idea how bitter and jealous some small part of me is. He’s smarter than me, and he’s a better person. Great.
The rest of the day plays out in slow-motion dissociation, like I’m watching myself and him and all of us from above. Will finds small ways to touch me—the gentle guide of a hand on my back, the brush of my forearm, a tap of the knee—and I know people see. I know Hazel sees, too, but it doesn’t feel like a trophy, just a consolation prize.
Kacey grins at dinner, sitting across from us. She texts later, You guys look right together .
I try to see it, and I only come up with the conclusion that I’ve somehow scammed my way into this, too.
We drive back to North Carolina together. Will puts on the new Taylor album without me asking. At a gas station in Virginia, I watch him fill up on gas and he presses my hips into the side of his car just a little bit rough because he knows I like that. He whispers Come home with me tonight , and a mountain range of goosebumps erupts across my arms.
So that’s why I don’t tell him. Because as much as I want the fellowship and the validation that comes with it, I want Will, too.
I’m just not sure how long those two competing thoughts can coexist in my brain.