Chapter I
Yash never did look for a sublet. We bought king-sized sheets for the pushed-together twins and I raced home at night after work to join him on that big bed.
Every night was hot and we slept without clothes or covers, our bodies close, our skin steaming.
He got a job as a prep cook at a diner two doors down from High Five and if our breaks lined up, we’d meet out back and make out.
For my birthday in July he brings me breakfast on a tray: scrambled eggs, sausages, a biscuit, and a little fruit garnish like at the diner.
My mother has sent me a package and after breakfast I open it, a thin cotton bathrobe that goes on then comes off quickly.
He climbs on top of me and slides inside and we move together.
I’m watching him, watching his face start to flush, start to lose control of its expression, and he looks down at me watching and it seems like he’s in pain when he says, ‘I love you. I know it’s too soon, but I do. I love you so much.’
We don’t just have sex. We read The Aeneid out loud to each other.
We read Yeats and Auden. We read Proust in French because we both studied it in high school and we talk about moving to Paris.
But Proust in the original is difficult, and we’ll read him in English in Gastrell’s seminar in the fall, so we read Camus in French instead.
And we make up a version of Sir Hincomb Funnibuster that you can play with two people.
It’s like honeymoon bridge, he says, which I’ve never heard of.
Honeymoon Hincomb, we call it. Then we start calling each other Hincomb. Then Hinkie. Then Hink.
In early August I have to have my wisdom teeth out.
My teeth are so impacted that the doctor has to crack apart all four teeth and take them out in pieces.
I chose local anesthesia so I am awake for the whole thing.
Afterward my mouth aches and bleeds but I don’t care because Yash, after a trip to Claudette at H?agen-Dazs, comes dancing through the door, a pint in each hand, singing ‘Strawberry Sorbet’ to the tune of ‘Raspberry Beret.’
Ivan comes back from Ireland and stays with Brent for a few days. Before he comes over, Yash moves his bag and books back out to the living room.
‘Brent’s futon is a lot better than this,’ Ivan says to Yash when he sits on the couch.
‘It’s only a few more weeks.’ He’s found a room to rent for the school year.
We go to a diner. Yash and I sit on the same side of the booth, knees touching under the table.
Ivan tells us tales about Bloomsday in Dublin, about meeting Joyce’s grandnephew in a barber shop in Mary Street. ‘At the barber’s, man. Like Buck Mulligan shaving on the roof. ’Twas mystical. What? What’s going on? You guys have not stopped laughing since we got here.’
Then he tells us about the landlord’s daughter, the ferryman’s sister, and a pretty French girl on the flight home who told him in a sexy accent if they didn’t hold hands during takeoff the plane would crash.
‘Best come-on line ever. I’m using that one.
’ But once they were safely in the air she let go and refused to speak to him for the rest of the flight.
He is amused that everything he says delights us. ‘Whatever you guys are on, I want some.’ he says, which only makes us laugh harder.
‘Sam should be getting back soon, right?’ Ivan says to me.
‘No idea.’
‘He hasn’t been in touch?’
‘We broke up before he left.’
‘Heard that before.’
‘Definitively this time. Very mutual. Fini.’
Yash presses his leg against mine.
‘?a suffit?’ I say.
‘Yup, we got it, Hink,’ he says and we freeze.
‘Hink? You two have gotten super weird,’ Ivan says.
The next night Yash goes out with him alone while I’m working. He comes back later than me and flops on the bed. ‘The guy has no clue. Picked up on exactly nothing. This might be easier than I thought.’
‘To hide it forever?’
‘Not forever. I just want Sam to hear it from me first.’
The week before classes start, he moves into his room on MacDougal Street. It’s bigger than mine, the bathroom is cleaner, and there is AC. It’s like going to a hotel. I stay there many nights in a row.
One morning, early, the phone in the kitchen rings. One of his housemates knocks on the door. We’ve been messing around. ‘Please don’t move,’ Yash says.
He comes back so grave I think his father has died. ‘Sam is coming for the weekend.’
We leave no trace of me in his room. He borrows a mattress and I help put the sheets on it. We sleep separately that night. Sam is coming early the next day.
I work lunch at High Five and an evening shift at Bubble Time.
I jump every time the phone rings, hoping for an update.
He was planning to tell him straight off, get it over with.
By nine I’ve heard nothing. Claudette wants me to go out, but I can’t risk running into them.
I go home. Yash is in my room, sitting stiffly on the bed.
He looks at me and shakes his head.
‘What happened?’
‘He got here and I showed him my place. We went out for lunch. I knew you were at High Five so I took him the long way around. It was bad. Even before I said anything it was bad. I kept feeling like he knew. But at lunch he talked all about some girl he’d met in Berlin, and then about you and how the breakup had been for the best. And I’m thinking, this is going to be fine.
’ He laughs. ‘I’ll just tell him and it will be okay.
But I can’t seem to do it. We go over to see Cole and have some beers with him and that guy Lonnie from Pike, and they’re both surprised I’ve been in town all summer and haven’t come by or been out at the bars and as we’re walking out of there Sam asks me if I’m seeing anyone.
And then I’m sure he knows. Maybe Ivan did say something? Shit, I don’t know, but I say it.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I said I’m thinking of taking Jordan out.’
‘Thinking of taking me out?’
He drops his face into his hands. ‘It’s all I had the courage for. And he flipped on me. Said I could never ever do that, that it would be reprehensible, unforgivable. He told me to swear to him that I would never do that. And I could not. I have no idea where he is now.’
‘Maybe he went home to Atlanta.’
‘No. He’s here. He’s not through with me.’
‘You’re going to have to tell him the truth.’
‘I know.’
I walk him downstairs. Hug him at the door. Watch him move slowly up the hill to MacDougal Street.
I have the house to myself. Everyone else is out. I knew Sam would react that way. Yash will lose him if he chooses me. I will lose Yash if he chooses Sam.
I’m in the bathroom when I hear knocking at the front door.
‘Jordan,’ he calls.
He must have followed Yash here. Fuck. I move slowly to my bedroom. The light is on, the window open. I sit on the floor so he can’t see me. The knocking continues. The door is unlocked. He doesn’t come in. I hear steps going back down the front porch.
‘Jordan.’
He must be standing directly below my window.
‘I just want to talk to you.’
A long time later he walks away.
I don’t hear from Yash for the rest of the weekend.
On Sunday evening he comes into Bubble Time with his laundry.
After he gets a load going, we sit together on the patio.
He reaches in his pocket and pulls out a small figurine made of blue glass.
He gives it to me. It’s a dolphin, back arched, about to surface for a leap.
‘It reminded me of you.’
‘I didn’t take you for a tchotchke giver.’
‘It’s an aberration.’
‘That bad?’
He nods. ‘I told him. That it had already started. With us. It was bad. He was so angry. I get it.’
‘You get it? When exactly does his owner’s warrantee on me run out?’
He bends his head over so far I can’t see his face. ‘I don’t know how to do this.’
He gets up and goes back into the building and out to the street and disappears. His clothes are still swishing around in the washer. I leave them there when my shift is over.
At home my bedroom door is closed and there’s a note on the nail.
I’m in your bed. Wake me up so I can apologize all night.
— (the real) Heart the Lover