Chapter 40
Lennon
“Lennon,” Anna says in a no-nonsense voice I’ve come to admire and fear in equal measure. “May I see you in the small breakout room, please?”
There’s an energy of extreme professionalism about her that gives me pause. “Uh, sure. What’s it about?”
She smiles tolerantly. “I’ll tell you in the small breakout room.”
Bev is absorbed in a phone call with her husband, Mal, and Blake wouldn’t give a shit if someone dropped a bomb in my lap, so I don’t even bother looking to him for help. Left without a better option, I get up and follow Anna to the meeting room.
She closes the door, professionally, and spins around to face me. There’s a wild-slash-unhinged flare in her eyes that’s worryingly triumphant. It alerts me to the fact that I’ve walked into a trap.
She pulls out a chair for me, sits down herself, and says, “Spill.”
“I, er, what do you mean, Anna?”
“Lennon,” she says with a firm head tilt that lets me know there’s no way out of this room that doesn’t involve me telling her what she wants to know, “you look happy. What in the world have you been up to?”
It’s nice of her to put it like that. I appreciate it, especially since how I really look is wrecked.
I look sleep-deprived, cum-drunk, and dehydrated.
There’s a dopey expression on my face I can’t work out how to erase, and when I went to the restroom earlier, I noticed a bright-pink stubble rash on my chin.
I look exactly like what I am. A man who’s had his life turned upside down by another.
“I’ve been kissing Connor,” I say in a rush. To my endless surprise, the words pour out of me. Not only because she asked and I’m not thinking straight, but rather, I realize, because I want to say them. I want to hear my voice saying those words. “That’s it…that’s what I’ve been up to.”
Her face changes. Stern to infinitely supportive in a split second. “I didn’t know you were bi, Len.” I hate it when people call me Len, but I decide to let it go because of the confessional tone of the meeting and all that. “But I’m here for it obviously.”
“I, um, I’m not. Or, I wasn’t… What I mean is, I am, I definitely am bisexual. I just didn’t know for sure that I was until I met Connor.”
What’s interesting about the conversation is that Anna and I are both finding out things about me at the same time.
“Oh my God. Sorry! I didn’t mean to bully you into coming out. I’d never want to do that to anyone. That’s your story to tell whenever you’re re—”
“No, no,” I say. “I don’t mind.” As I say it, I discover I mean it.
I don’t mean it a little. I mean it from the bottom of my heart.
I wasn’t bullshitting when I said I’m not homophobic, and my feelings on the topic extend to myself as much as they do to others.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being attracted to a man.
Not for others, and not for me either. “It’s not a secret.
I might not have known it for sure, but now that I do, I don’t feel any need to hide it. ”
“Well,” she exclaims, “I for one, love that for you. Connor is such a sweetie pie. I can totally understand what happened there. Oof, he’s so cute, right?”
I think of the way he looked when I left home this morning, standing on the balcony watching me walk to my car.
He had his hands on the railing like a man looking out to sea.
Looking at something vast and endless. He wasn’t though.
He wasn’t looking at the horizon or at the ocean.
He was looking at me. He was wearing a hoodie and sweats, and his hair was a mess, and he looked fucking gorgeous.
“Yeah. God. He really is. He’s…one of those guys that gets hotter every time you look at him. ”
“Mm,” Anna agrees, bobbing her head. “You know who else is like that?” She doesn’t bother to wait for me to answer. “Blake.”
“Blake?” My top lip pulls up in confusion. “Our Blake? Serial-killer-eyes Blake?”
She rolls her eyes and waves me off. “He doesn’t have serial killer eyes, Lennon. He’s just very, very sensitive, that’s all.”
I search her face for traces of taking the piss, and find none. Instead, I find a pair of baby blues that are slightly widened and notice a slight tension in her fingers as she clamps them together.
Jesus. She’s serious, and not only that, she’s plagued by the nerves and self-doubt that typically accompany a crush on a nonhomicidal person.
“I can’t believe this,” I splutter. “How long have you felt like this?”
“Oh.” She rests her chin dreamily on her knuckles. “I saw him come in for his interview, and that was it. That black cat energy hit me like a ton of bricks. I begged Bev to hire him.”
It’s one of the most insane things I’ve heard. Even if you take murderous tendencies out of the equation, Blake is a confirmed geek and Anna is a borderline jock who is light-years out of his league. “Does he know how you feel?”
“No.” She sighs with the dejected longing of a heroine in a Jane Austen novel. “I don’t think so. I’ve tried dropping hints, but…”
“Hints? You’ve tried dropping hints?” That’s not like Anna at all.
In all the time I’ve known her, I’ve never known her to drop a hint.
She’s one of those people who tells everyone exactly what she wants, all the time, and thus, usually gets it.
She calls this particular brand of self-advocacy Girl Power.
Often. I’ve heard her talking about it more times than I can count. “But, but what about Girl Power?”
“I know, I know. Ordinarily, if I want a guy, I approach him… But the problem is, I really like Blake, and I don’t want to ask him out unless I’m sure he likes me back. I know I come across super confident, and I am, but I’m not that confident, you know?”
I bob my head encouragingly, trying to think how best to advise her.
I’m shocked by what she’s told me. It’s one hell of a conundrum because the only thing either of us can be absolutely positive Blake likes is true-crime documentaries.
Still, Anna has shown herself to be a good friend, so it’s only fair for me to have her back.
“Look, I’m going to level with you,” I say. “You’re so far out of Blake’s league, you’re going to have to be direct if you want him because there’s no way that man out there”—I point emphatically through the wall in the direction of Blake’s desk—“thinks he has a chance with you.”
Her jaw drops. “D’you think not?”
“I’m about a hundred percent sure he doesn’t.”
It’s not often one gets to experience being a hundred percent sure about anything, especially not me. Especially not when I’ve been the way I’ve been for the last while.
It feels good. Really good. Nice and uplifting.
Anna adjourns our meeting with a promise to check in with me again early next week, and I head back to my desk.
I can’t tell if I’m simply more aware of Blake, given the conversation I just had, or if he seems unusually interested in what Anna and I were doing in the small break room.
His shoulders rise microscopically, and though he keeps his head facing forward, I notice the glint of an inky black pupil glaring at me.
He seems prickly today, but again, it’s hard to say if it’s his baseline level of prickliness or if there’s something more to it.
“You good?” he asks, tapping at his keyboard in an unnerving way that doesn’t require him to look down at his hands.
“Yup,” I reply.
“I’m good too,” Anna interjects pleasantly. “I’m so happy it’s Friday.”
It’s not a question, but it sounds like one.
Not only that, there’s a whole part of the sentence that she didn’t say aloud, but now that I know it’s there, I can’t help hearing it.
It goes something like: Are you doing anything nice this weekend, Blake?
No? Me neither. Gosh, I wonder if we should do something together?
How the hell did I miss this? It’s so obvious.
I used to be pretty good at this shit. What the hell happened to me?
Oh.
Yeah.
That’s right. Connor happened, and shocked the shit out of my brain. He lobotomized me with a current of electricity he sent through my computer screen. That’s what happened. He did it again with the notice he put up in Crema, and again the first time we met.
He did it in the apartment, in the bar, and on the roof when we kissed. And he did it last night when he took me apart.
God.
He fucked me up good last night. He made me come so much and so hard that I’m pretty sure the collagen in my bones melted. I’m runny now where I used to be solid. I’m shaky inside today, and I think it’s because I’m here and he’s there.
All I want to do is go home so I can kiss him.
I spend the day drifting, thinking of Connor and replaying our kisses until it starts to feel like I’m an observer, watching a movie about two guys who can’t keep their hands off each other, rather than an active participant.
An old movie. A grainy, scratchy film that flickers in time with my heartbeat.
I replay everything. Every word. Every look we shared. Every kiss.
But mostly, mostly I think about the way he kissed me before I fell asleep last night. I think about the kiss that tasted like him and me.
I think about it and think about it until everything spins. My desk. My chair. The whole goddamn housing department. I think about it in a way that’s different from the way I think about our other kisses. They were whispered words and sweet things. Quiet murmurs and stolen glances.
The kiss that tasted like both of us was nothing like that. It was a promise. A portent. Salty and satisfying. A foreshadowing of what’s going to happen when I get home tonight.