Chapter 10
ELI
Atlanta is below me. The city does its thing: traffic, light, the specific hum of a place that is alive at a frequency I am still learning.
Nikolai is inside, reading on the couch, his reading glasses on because the reading glasses go on for books.
The glasses-on-for-books is different from the glasses-on-for-film.
The book glasses are softer. Less defensive.
The book glasses are the glasses of a man who is not analyzing but receiving, and the distinction took me three weeks to identify and is now one of the things I track without deciding to.
Ava answers on the second ring. "You said you'd call immediately. It has been four days."
"I was busy."
"You were chickening out."
"Those aren't mutually exclusive."
"Talk."
Ava Mercer is twenty-five and in her second year of law school at Georgetown and she is the person in my life who has never required the grin.
When I grin at Ava, she looks at me the way a teacher looks at a student who has submitted the wrong assignment: with patience and the expectation of a correction.
"I'm seeing someone," I say.
"A boy," Ava says. Not a question. A statement delivered with the flat certainty of a woman who has been waiting for this phone call since her brother was fifteen and who is not going to pretend the information is new.
"Yeah. A boy."
"Tell me everything."
"He's Russian. Thirty. A defenseman. He folds his T-shirts like it's a competitive sport and he cooks pasta at ten-thirty at night and he looks at me like I'm a structural weakness in his moral code."
"Is that a compliment?"
"I genuinely don't know. With him it might be."
"Name?"
"Nikolai Sokolov."
The pause that follows is Ava processing. Ava processes the way she argues in moot court: quickly, comprehensively, with the full awareness that every piece of information has a secondary implication.
"The shutdown defenseman," she says. "Two All-Star nods. Russian mother, American father. I googled him when you texted."
"Of course you did."
"He's hot in a terrifying way. Like a man who could end your career and then cook you dinner."
"That is the most accurate description of Nikolai I have ever heard."
"How long?"
"Three weeks. Since camp. He was my temporary housing and then he was my... not-temporary housing."
"Eli." Her voice shifts. The shift is from the sister-voice to the Ava-voice, the one that is careful without being cautious. "Have you told him you're bi?"
The question lands on the balcony with the weight of a thing I have been not-thinking about.
The not-thinking is its own kind of thinking.
The awareness that the word "bi" has not been spoken out loud in Nikolai's apartment.
The word exists in my head. It existed in the search results I scrolled through at sixteen.
It exists in the handful of conversations I've had with Ava over the years, conversations that were quiet and careful and conducted in the specific register of a brother telling his sister a truth that the rest of his life has not yet caught up to.
The word has not been spoken to Nikolai. Nikolai, who is gay. Nikolai, who is out to the team, out to his parents, out in the specific way that a man who controls everything can be out: on his terms, in his language, within the architecture he built.
Nikolai assumes I am gay. Nikolai has not asked because Nikolai does not ask questions when he believes the answer is already evident. The answer, to Nikolai, is evident: I am a man who is attracted to him, therefore I am gay. The logic is clean. The logic is wrong.
"Not yet," I say.
"Why?"
"Because I don't know how to bring it up without it sounding like a correction. Like I'm saying: actually, the thing you think I am is slightly different from what I actually am, and the difference matters to me even if it doesn't change anything about how I feel about you."
"The difference always matters. The word is yours, Eli. Don't let someone else's vocabulary define you."
The sentence is the Ava sentence. The one that cuts through the noise and arrives at the thing.
The word is mine. Bisexual. It means I am attracted to more than one gender, and the attraction to Nikolai is not the whole of my sexuality, it is a part of it, and the part is real and the whole is also real and the two things are not in conflict.
"What if it changes things?" I say. The question is quiet. The question is the fear underneath the not-telling: the fear that the word will make me less, that the bi will be heard as confused or temporary or half-of-something rather than a whole thing that is its own thing.
"If it changes things, that's his problem. And if it's his problem, you need to know that now."
"You're ruthless."
"I'm a lawyer. Same thing, better suits."
"You're in law school. You're not a lawyer yet."
"Tell him, Eli. The word is yours. Use it."
I stand on the balcony for ten minutes after we hang up.
Atlanta hums. The apartment is warm behind me.
Through the glass door I can see Nikolai on the couch, the reading glasses on, the book in his hands, the specific stillness of a man who is absorbed in something and who does not know he is being watched.
I watch him. The watching is not the grin-watching, the performing-watching, the watching that is designed to be seen.
This watching is private. This watching is the underneath watching the underneath: a man on a balcony looking at a man on a couch and feeling the full weight of the word he hasn't said and the weight of the word he has been carrying since he was fifteen and the weight of the truth that the word is his and the word is real and the word needs to be spoken to the person on the couch.
Not tonight. Tonight the word stays on the balcony with the city noise and the Ava-voice and the fear.
Tonight I go inside and I sit next to Nikolai on the couch and he puts his arm around me without looking up from the book and the arm is the first domestic gesture he has performed that is not coded as care-through-action (cooking, film, hockey advice) but is simply contact.
Simply: I am reading and you are here and my arm is around you because my arm wants to be around you.
I lean into him. His body is warm and solid and the book is something Russian that I cannot read and his reading glasses are on and the glasses are the soft ones, the book glasses, and I close my eyes.
"How is Ava?" he asks.
"Terrifying. Brilliant. Wants to meet you."
"This is a threat."
"Yes."
"I accept."
Later. The bedroom. The light is off except for the city glow through the window and the amber lamp on the nightstand that I bought last week because the overhead was too harsh and because I needed one warm thing in this room that was mine.
The sex tonight is different from the first time.
The first time was the control detonating. The first time was the kitchen fight and the counter and the hallway and the pushing and the frantic, urgent, I-cannot-contain-this energy that produced something explosive and honest and that ended with the word "mistake."
Tonight is not frantic. Tonight is slow.
Nikolai's hands move over my body with a deliberateness that is new.
Not the precision of the first time (which was the precision of a man whose hands were free for the first time and who was using the freedom desperately).
This is the deliberateness of a man who has decided to be slow.
Who has chosen the pace. The choosing is the difference.
The choosing says: I am not losing control.
I am applying the control to a new purpose, and the purpose is you, and the application is careful.
His mouth follows his hands. The mouth is warm on my throat, my collarbone, the dip above my hip. Each kiss is placed. Each kiss says: I am here and the here is not an accident and the here is not a mistake.
I am quiet at first. The quietness surprises me because the first time I was loud, the loudness involuntary, the hiding gone.
Tonight the quiet is different. Tonight the quiet is the receiving.
The receiving requires silence the way listening requires silence: you cannot hear if you are making noise, and Nikolai's body is telling me something and I want to hear it.
His hands find my face. His thumbs on my cheekbones.
His eyes open and his eyes are on mine and the looking is sustained in a way that the first time's looking was not.
The first time, the eye contact was brief, interrupted by the urgency.
Tonight the eye contact holds. Tonight we look at each other and the looking is not avoidance and the looking is not urgency. The looking is presence.
"Eli," he says.
My name. Not Mercer. Eli. Said during. Said with the accent thickening around the vowels, the Russian mother's language wrapping around the American name, and the wrapping is the tenderest sound I have heard from this man's mouth.
The first time he said my name during sex it was a crack in the wall. This time it is not a crack. This time it is a door.
I pull him closer. Not the desperate closer of the first time.
The settle-in closer. The closer that says: stay here.
The pace that says: we have time. The having of time was missing the first time.
That was stolen time, crisis time, the time of a man who believed the wanting was a mistake and who was acting before the belief could stop him.
This time the wanting is not a mistake. This time the wanting is a decision.
Afterward, he does not say "mistake." He does not say anything.
He lies on his back with my head on his chest and his hand in my hair and the hand moves in slow, rhythmic strokes that are not the strokes of a man managing a situation but the strokes of a man who is comfortable.
The comfort is new. The comfort is the variable that changed.
First time: frantic, free, mistake. Guest room.
This time: slow, chosen, comfortable. Staying.
I stay. The staying is the second time I have stayed in this bed after sex and the second time is different from the first time the way any second time is different: the surprise is gone.
The surprise has been replaced by something steadier.
Something that has a shape and a weight and that I can hold without it burning.
In the morning, he makes coffee. Two mugs.
The two mugs are the loudest thing in the apartment.
The two mugs are the revision of the morning after the first time, when the coffee was for one and the one was the control and the control was the cruelty.
Two mugs says: you are here and the here includes the morning and the morning includes coffee and the coffee is for both of us.
I sit at the counter. He hands me the mug. Our fingers brush on the ceramic and the brush is the first touch of the day and the first touch is casual and warm and ordinary and the ordinary is the thing I have been wanting since the booth.
"Morning," I say.
"Morning."
"Two mugs."
"Yes."
"That's progress."
"It is coffee."
"From you, it's a declaration of intent."
His mouth does the thing. Not the fraction-of-a-smile.
The actual smile. Small, brief, gone before it fully forms, but real.
The real smile is the rarest thing in Nikolai Sokolov's repertoire and I have just produced one over coffee mugs and I am going to be insufferable about this for the rest of the day.
"Don't," he says.
"Don't what?"
"Whatever your face is about to do."
"My face is about to be smug. You can't stop it. It's happening."
He takes his coffee to the couch. I follow him.
We sit. The morning is quiet. The quiet is the shared quiet (from the video room, from the bag-move, from the staying) except the shared quiet now includes morning light and coffee and the unremarkable, revolutionary domesticity of two men on a couch at 7 AM who are not performing for anyone.
On the balcony last night, Ava said: the word is yours.
The word is mine. The word is bisexual. The word is the thing I have not told the man sitting next to me drinking coffee from the second mug.
I will tell him. Not this morning. This morning the two mugs are enough. This morning the real smile is enough. This morning the ordinary is enough.
But the word is coming. The word is mine and the word is ready and the word will arrive when the morning is strong enough to hold it.