13
“I’m a bit hungry after all that,” he said.
“You’re hungry?” I asked incredulously to disguise my relief. “I was the one who did all the work.”
He laughed. “Do you want to get dinner?”
“I was planning to make pasta tonight if you want some.” I walked over to my closet and fished out an old shirt and worn shorts for my pyjamas. After I’d changed, I turned around to see Leo had averted his eyes. It was sweet of him to maintain a facade of modesty despite the fact I’d fucked his thighs not fifteen minutes ago.
“Sure,” he said, still looking away. “Pasta sounds great.”
I instructed him to cut up some tomato and capsicum while I browned the beef mince on the stove. It didn’t take us long to make the bolognese, and after I made two bowls, we sat down on the couch. “Do you want to watch something on my laptop?” I asked.
Leo agreed, so I set my laptop on the coffee table and opened a piracy website because I was a cheap student.
“Any preferences?” I asked.
“Something funny,” Leo said. “Oh! I know.”
He leaned forward and typed something, and soon we were watching a British TV show about a group of people living in a disused hospital. I was always sceptical about shows and movies that claimed to be comedic, but this one was genuinely funny, and we laughed out loud several times.
The downside was that it only had six episodes. The upside is that we could finish the whole thing in one night.
“This is one of my favourite shows ever,” Leo said after the third episode, which had ended with Fleabag on the floor in a puddle of curry, talking to Anthony from Bridgerton.
“Is comedy your favourite genre?” I asked.
“I suppose so,” he said. “I don’t like watching sad stuff. Why would I want to make myself miserable on purpose?” He rubbed his stomach.
“Are you still hungry?” I asked. “There’s more pasta if you want it, and I think I have a frozen apple pie in the back of the freezer. Do you want that for dessert?”
He perked up. “Really?” A few seconds later, he dug out the apple pie and read the instructions on the back of the box. “I’m sorry I’m eating all your food,” he said after he stuck the pie in the microwave.
“It’s okay,” I said. “You can treat me next time.”
He grinned. “Deal.”
Once the apple pie was heated up, Leo served up a slice on two plates and handed me one. We finished the rest of the show and complained that there weren’t any more episodes. Outside, the sky was dark blue. It was night.
“Do you need to get home?” I asked.
“I probably should,” he said, “but I don’t want to.”
“You’re welcome to stay.”
“I’d feel bad.”
I poked him with my foot. “I’m sure you do after you ate all my food.”
“You said it was okay,” he protested.
“That was before I watched you devour my entire apple pie.”
“I gave you a slice, and you said you didn’t want any more. Besides, I need a lot of fuel to maintain this.” He flexed an arm.
I laughed and poked him with my foot again. He caught it, hand around the arch. “Do you want a foot massage?” he asked.
“I don’t think I’ve ever had one,” I said but didn’t protest as he pushed his thumbs against the underside. It felt nice, actually.
We were both quiet as Leo worked. He wore the same focused expression he had when making his model.
“Winnie,” he asked, “why do you want a boyfriend?”
Wasn't the answer obvious? Although, now that I thought about it, it wasn't easy to put into words.
“I want affection,” I said, eventually.
“But can't you get affection anywhere?”
Was he talking about hookups? “It's a different kind of affection. Yeah, some people don't mind hugging, cuddling, or kissing, but it still felt empty, or, at least to me, it did because I knew that it would end the next morning.” I paused. “I think every human being in the world wants love.”
Then I remembered our conversation in the Union House. The way Leo’s eyes had skittered away. It's complicated.
“Do you want that?” I asked.
He hummed noncommittally. “I think I’d mess it up. Most people get to practice in high school, but I didn’t.”
“Practicing dating?” I asked.
“Any of it. Dating, intimacy, dealing with how embarrassing all of it is. It freaks me out.”
“You didn't seem scared today,” I pointed out.
“That's because it was you, Winnie,” he murmured. “I’m not stressed when I’m with you because you make me feel like I’m okay at this kind of stuff. It’s easy with you.”
“It’s easy for me, too,” I said. “It’s always easy with the person you like.”
He didn’t reply but ducked his head the way he always did when he was shy and started massaging my other foot.
“In the past,” I began. I couldn’t help my curiosity. “There must’ve been people you wanted.”
“Of course,” he replied. “I’d just convince myself otherwise, and the fear would be way more powerful than the wanting. Maybe I would have gone along with it if someone had made a move like you did on our first date.”
We were referring to it as a first date now, were we?
“In my experience, normal people wouldn't be okay with someone just ‘going along with it,’” I said. “And people have made first moves. You told me about that girl who tried to kiss you.”
He was quiet for a minute. “When I say ‘go along with it’, I don’t mean unwillingly. I meant that I prefer someone else to take the lead.”
He was very obedient in bed, but I stopped myself from saying that. I already knew that it would make him flush, and I didn’t want him to feel insecure about it because I loved it.
“You have taken the lead before, though. You asked me to get HSPs.”
“As friends,” Leo said.
“Well, what about today, when you showed up at my door?”
“Like I said, I was jealous.”
Neither of us spoke for a few minutes as Leo massaged my foot with single-minded focus. It wasn’t sexual. More…loving. I was about to break the silence when my phone started ringing.
"It’s my mum,” I said, reading the caller ID.
“Do you need me to…” Leo made a loose gesture. I think he was asking whether I needed privacy, but there was nowhere to hide in my tiny studio, and besides, I didn’t mind.
I waved my hand, letting him know he could stay where he was, and then answered the phone. “Hi, Mum,” I said.
“Eunwoo-yah, what are you doing?” she asked in Korean. As usual, she was speaking right into the microphone, so I had to jerk my head back to prevent myself from being deafened.
“Nothing,” I replied in English. While I could understand Korean, I was terrible at speaking the language. Whenever I was forced to speak Korean, like when I visited relatives, my sentences were broken and I felt like a toddler, so now I almost always spoke English to my parents. “I’m just watching TV.”
“Why aren’t you studying?” Mum asked.
“Mum, it’s almost 9.”
“So?”
“So it’s relaxing time.”
I glanced at Leo. He’d long stopped massaging my foot and instead was sitting very still on the couch, inspecting the hem of his hoodie like he was trying very hard to seem busy and not like he was eavesdropping.
“You have to study hard, okay?” Mum continued. “Lygon University is very good and full of smart students. You have to get good grades to stand out. You don’t want to be unemployed, do you?”
“Okay, okay,” I said. “I’ll study some more.” I was definitely not going to do that.
“Have you eaten?” she asked.
“Yeah, I had pasta.”
“Do you need any money?”
“No, I’m fine,” I said.
“When are you going to visit me and Dad?”
“I don’t know, probably when the semester ends.”
“Okay,” she said. “Goodnight.”
“Bye,” I said and ended the call.
I looked up to see Leo watching me.
“Is everything okay?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Leo said quickly. Then: “Do your parents know you’re gay?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I mean, it’s pretty obvious.”
He nodded slowly.
“What is it?” I asked.
He hesitated. “You speak to your mum in a very…blunt way.”
“Oh,” I said after a moment. “Do I?” Thinking back, I guess my voice had been pretty monotone. “That’s the way I’ve always talked to them. I’ve never really thought about it. But my parents are the same — they just ask their questions and end the call.”
“They don’t say, I don’t know, ‘I love you’ or anything?”
I laughed. “My parents never say ‘I love you.’”
Leo widened his eyes.
“Not because they don’t love me,” I rushed to explain. “They do. I know they do. But they only say it very rarely. I think it’s a Korean or Asian thing.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, there’s a joke that Asian parents will never say sorry. They’ll just cut you fruit. That’s what my mum and dad did. They’d cut up apples or oranges and leave it on my desk in my room, then leave.”
“That’s sweet,” Leo said, then paused. “But I’d find it frustrating not to hear a real apology.” Once again, his eyes widened. “Not that I’m dissing your parents! Just — I — my parents never said sorry.” Then he looked away like he’d blurted the words out without meaning to.
“You’re right. It could be kinda frustrating that my parents don’t actually apologise,” I said, moving past the Leo’s-parents topic. “Especially because I do when I mess up. But they’re just acts of service people rather than talkers. Or huggers. Our family’s not really a hugging family.” I rubbed the side of my jaw. “Maybe that’s why I’m such a whore for affection.”
“I don’t think you’re…” he trailed off, which wasn’t surprising. He wasn’t the type to use the word ‘whore’.
I shrugged. “Well, maybe it’s another reason I want a boyfriend. It’d be nice for one person to smother me in hugs and tell me how much he loves me.” Suddenly, I realised it sounded like I was dropping the most obvious hints.
Also, I didn’t want him to get the wrong idea. I didn’t only want a boyfriend out of a narcissistic craving for attention. I’d be just as affectionate back. But if I said that aloud, it’d sound weird like I was over-explaining.
“Anyway,” I said, jumping off the couch and gathering the plates we’d used for the apple pies. “We should probably get ready for bed.”
I gave Leo the same set of clothes that he had worn as pyjamas the previous time. We brushed our teeth — or, at least, Leo did the best he could by washing his mouth out with toothpaste. I thought I should buy him a spare toothbrush if his staying over would become a frequent occurrence.
Once in bed, the blinds closed, so there was only the tiniest amount of light to make out his silhouette. We held our hands up, the fingertips touching. Leo’s hands were only slightly bigger than mine.
“My parents aren’t very affectionate either,” Leo murmured in the darkness.
“No?”
“No,” he said, curling his fingers and turning our joined hands into a fist. He brought it to his mouth and pressed a kiss to my knuckles.
“What are you doing this Saturday?” Leo asked.
We were in the Union House, eating HSPs again on a Tuesday. It had been a little less than a week since Leo had shown up at my door and admitted he was jealous, and since then, we’d hung out a lot.
We studied in the Arts library, my usual spot, but Leo had also taken me to the design building, which I’d never been inside before. Like Lygon U’s other buildings, it was old-fashioned on the outside, with red bricks and crawling vines, but inside, it was an explosion of glass and steel and abstract light fittings that reminded me of lava lamps. Leo gave me a tour of the place before we settled in one of the study spaces that looked like the interior of a spaceship, but with big windows that looked out at a lush green lawn and blooming flower beds.
We grabbed meals and beverages from Professors Lane in the Union House, and one time, he brought me along to the university gym, which was free for all students. I was reluctant, both because it didn’t sound particularly fun and all of the machines intimidated me, but I had to admit it was nice watching Leo’s muscles tense and his veins become prominent as he lifted weights.
I had known he was tall and strong, but it was all the more obvious in the gym, his shirt showing off strong arms and hints of definition in his torso. It was different when we strolled slowly through campus together or sat beside each other while studying, him leaning back in his chair.
We’d also had a lot of sex. Mostly, I fucked his thighs — there was nothing hotter than his head buried in a pillow as his entire body trembled — but I’d also given my fair share of blow jobs. It was always rewarding to make Leo feel good. Once, he’d grabbed my hair before immediately letting go and stammering an apology. I’d told him it was okay, as long as he didn’t pull too hard, and so sometimes he tangled his fingers in my hair or held onto my shoulder, or sometimes he just stared, his expression a mix of wonder and lust.
Leo hadn’t blown me or jerked me off. It felt petty to notice that, like I was keeping count and expecting him to reciprocate the exact same number of times. I wasn’t. He was probably nervous and maybe just uninterested in the acts, which was okay. Everyone was allowed their preferences. He barely even looked at my dick when we were naked, which I also could understand — cocks weren’t the prettiest thing in the world. I mean, I thought Leo’s was pretty great, but I didn’t think my own was a piece of art. And Leo did look at it, sometimes. When I was fucking him between his thighs, he looked down and saw it slide underneath his balls.
“Winnie,” Leo said, and I blinked.
“Huh?” Oh, right. He’d asked a question. “What am I doing on Saturday? Nothing, why?”
“My friend’s having a house party,” he said. “Do you want to come with me? You could meet some of my friends.”
“I’d love to,” I said. Despite how much we’d hung out, I hadn’t actually met any of Leo’s friends, apart from a few of his gym buddies. “Where is it?”
Leo mentioned a nearby suburb. A bunch of people were going, and I was free to invite some friends along if I wanted.
“Okay, I’ll ask around,” I said, “though I doubt anyone will want to come.” Rome wasn’t a big party person, and most of the friends I’d made last year would already have plans to go clubbing. I’d done the same almost every Saturday last year until I realised I was sick of getting drunk and hooking up with randoms.
I supposed I could ask Atticus and Elena, though I doubted house parties were their scene. If I had to guess what they did on their Saturday nights, it was probably going to watching documentaries and drinking expensive red wine.
“Or we could go together,” Leo said. “We can meet at my place and have dinner, then go.”
“Alright,” I said, smiling.
The Friday before the party, my good mood must’ve been more noticeable than usual because as soon as I walked into Intro to B Law, Rome took one look at me and said, “You look like you’re disgustingly in love.”
“It’s not disgusting,” I said, “and I’m not in love. I just really, really like him.”
“Things worked out then?”
I started to explain everything, but I had to stop when our tutor marched in and told us to “buckle our seatbelts because it’s time to talk about undue influence.”
After class, we slipped into a booth table on the ground level of Arts East because we’d been assigned some questions in class and decided it was better to get them out of the way immediately. Our laptops lay untouched on the table as I concluded my story.
Rome gave me one of his rare smiles. “So you’re boyfriends now?"
“Yeah,” I said, then paused. “Well. Kind of. We haven’t discussed it, but pretty much.”
Rome’s smile immediately turned into a frown. “‘Pretty much?’” He echoed.
“I mean, yeah,” I said, not sounding as confident as I would’ve liked. “We haven’t talked about it. But…he kisses and hugs me, and yesterday, as we walked through campus, he picked one of the flowers from the garden bed, which I’m pretty sure you’re not meant to do, and gave it to me.”
“That’s nice and all,” Rome said, “but I think you’re meant to have a talk.”
“A talk?” I said.
“I don’t know for sure,” Rome said, “but I’ve heard about it. People even make jokes about it. The whole ‘what are we?’ talk.”
“But shouldn’t it be obvious? It’s not like I have sex with my friends.” Even as I said it, I couldn’t help but feel like I’d been doing this wrong. I’d never had a relationship before, and with hookups, we never had to say, “Let’s agree to embark on a mutually beneficial sexual arrangement with no strings attached”. We just got to it.
Leo hadn’t said anything either, but maybe he was just as clueless as me.
Maybe, for us, the usual rules didn’t apply.
“I hope I haven’t worried you,” Rome said. “You know what, forget it. I have no idea what I’m talking about.”
I realised I was frowning and replaced it with a forced smile. “No, it’s all good. I’m not worried,” I assured him. We both started on the questions we’d been assigned and thankfully, by answering the legal hypotheticals, I was able to push the matter completely out of my mind.