Chapter 16 #2
Chris set his glass down. "Right, so she managed to tell you that you need to lose weight and that you're emotionally constipated in the same sentence."
"She said it nicely," Adriel said. "That's the thing. She always says it nicely."
"That," Chris said, pointing at him, "is what makes it worse. If she were just horrible you could write it off. But she says it like she's doing you a favor."
"Exactly."
"It's bullshit, by the way," Chris continued. "Complete and total bullshit. You are one of the least off-putting people I've ever met, and I have met some genuinely off-putting people, including my own brother, who once…"
"Chris," Jenna said.
"I'm just saying."
"You're rambling."
"I'm contextualizing."
Adriel almost smiled. The corner of his mouth moved involuntarily, and Chris caught it and pointed again.
"There it is. See? Charming. Completely charming. Your mother is wrong."
"She's not entirely wrong," Adriel said. "I do hold back. I know I do."
"There's a difference," Jenna said carefully, "between holding back because you're broken, which you are not, and holding back because you've been taught to expect the worst, which you have been. Those aren't the same thing."
Adriel said nothing.
"Speaking of which," Jenna said, and something in her tone shifted, lighter now. "Are you going to tell him, or am I going to have to?"
Adriel looked up. "Tell him what?"
"About the situation."
"There is no situation."
"Adriel." She tilted her head. "You have had a situation for approximately three months and you have told me approximately forty percent of it and I have told Chris approximately thirty percent and he is now deeply invested and has opinions."
Chris raised his hand. "I have opinions."
"I don't… it's not…" Adriel stopped. Looked from one of them to the other.
He picked up his beer. Took a long drink. Set it down.
"His name is Landen," he said. "He's my boss."
Chris closed his eyes briefly. "Of course he is."
"He kissed me. In the archive at work. I panicked and ran.
He'd called me pretty and I…" He stopped.
"It's a thing. The word pretty. It's a whole thing.
" He gestured vaguely. "And then he came to my apartment.
And we…" Another gesture. "And then he stayed.
He stayed the whole night and in the morning he made coffee in my kitchen like he lived there and kissed me goodbye and went to work, and then at the office he walked past my desk and handed me a file and his fingers… "
He stopped.
The bar carried on around them. Someone at the counter laughed at something. The jukebox shifted to a new song.
"His fingers?" Jenna prompted.
"They just lingered. For a second. And he sort of looked at me and it was…" He pressed his lips together. Felt his face go warm. "It’s stupid, I know..."
The silence lasted approximately two seconds.
"I'm sorry," Chris said, "he made you coffee. In your apartment. In the morning."
"Yes."
"And kissed you goodbye."
"Yes."
"And then the fingers." He turned to Jenna. "He's in love with him."
"I know," Jenna said.
"I'm not…" Adriel started.
"He's absolutely in love with him," Chris said, with the satisfied air of a man confirming a long-held theory. He raised his glass. "Congratulations, mate. That's awesome."
"It is terrifying," Adriel said, and the honesty of it surprised him a little, coming out that easily. "I keep waiting for it to go wrong. I keep thinking… my mom said people can sense when someone doesn't believe in themselves. And maybe she's right about that part. Maybe he'll eventually…"
"Stop," Jenna said.
He stopped.
"He tracked you down even after you ignored him," she said. "And he stayed. And he made coffee." She held his gaze. "Zach never stayed."
The table was quiet for a moment.
Then Chris topped up all three glasses from the pitcher he'd apparently ordered at some point without Adriel noticing, and raised his.
"To bosses who stay," he said.
"That's a terrible toast," Jenna said.
"I'm aware." He clinked Adriel's glass anyway. "Drink."
Adriel drank.
The evening stretched on. They ordered food; Chris's fries disappeared faster than seemed physically possible, Jenna stole half of Adriel's and denied it, someone played a song on the jukebox that made Chris stand up and insist they all sing.
They didn't, except Jenna, who knew every word of everything and sang them without embarrassment while Chris gazed at her with an expression Adriel recognized, though he would have been hard pressed to say from where.
It was late when they finally spilled out onto the sidewalk.
Cold air. The city at night, impersonal and bright. Chris pulled Jenna into his side and she went without looking, the ease of two people who had learned each other's gravity.
Adriel stood on the sidewalk with his hands in his pockets and looked up at the orange wash of the city sky, and thought about his childhood bedroom. About the lavender. About his mother's careful voice.
Then he thought about the jukebox. About Chris's fries. About to bosses who stay, which was a genuinely terrible toast, and about the way it had made him laugh, really laugh, helplessly, until his eyes watered.
He thought about the glass whale, wrapped carefully in an old sweater at the bottom of the keep box now sitting in his room.
"You alright?" Jenna asked.
He looked at her.
"Yeah," he said. And meant it, mostly.
She searched his face for a moment. Then nodded. "Text me when you're home."
"I will."
He walked to the subway.
The city moved around him, indifferent and alive. The cold bit at his ears. His chest felt different from how it had felt standing on his mother's sidewalk. Like something that had been held very tight for a very long time had been given, for one evening, permission to breathe.