Two
The record cover was a late-afternoon blue with abstract orange clouds and no text at all—no title, no band name.
I went over to the stereo, slid the vinyl from its sleeve, and, holding it carefully by the edges, set it on the platter.
I'd been trying to describe it to Nathan for weeks—the way Liz Fraser's voice layered over itself, the way the final track tore me up every time I heard it. He'd asked why I didn't just play it for him, and I'd had to admit I didn't have it anymore.
I’d told him the short version of how I’d given that asshole Tyler the most important piece of music I owned, and he’d broken it. I hadn’t mentioned how stupid I felt for going after these guys who acted like I didn’t matter.
I definitely wasn’t going to be sharing Love's Easy Tears with just anyone anymore. And Nathan wasn't just anyone. He’d never made me feel like that.
He was perched in the window now, one foot up on the sill, the other leg stretched down to balance on tiptoe, leaning back against the frame.
With his face in the sun, staring out at the cemetery, he looked like he was waiting for something.
He did this all the time. I'd told him once he looked like a Spiegel catalogue model, and ever since, he'd kept perfecting the pose.
I lifted the arm of the record player and paused, needle hovering. I said, “Prepare yourself.”
He turned his head and grinned.
I set the needle down.
The first crackle of static, and then—
The sound filled the room like water, like light, like something that had always been there but we'd only just learned to hear.
I turned from the dresser and watched Nathan's face.
His grin of anticipation faded. He gave himself over to it—eyelids lowering, lips parting, just breathing. The sunlight caught in his lashes, turning them gold.
It seemed almost a shame I’d have to darken them with mascara later.
I looked away and dropped onto the edge of Nathan’s bottom bunk. The old steamer trunk we used as a coffee table was right in front of me. I grabbed my bag of DRUM tobacco from it and opened a rolling paper on my knee.
I'd only recently switched to rolling my own cigarettes. I knew it was a totally poser thing to do, especially since anybody who watched me for five seconds could tell I wasn’t very good at it.
Nathan didn't give me shit about it.
I tried to focus, but I kept fucking it up. Strands of tobacco spilled onto my jeans, and I had to keep pinching them out to start over.
The song ended.
He turned from the window, that dreamy expression shifting back to a grin, and he said, "Holy shit."
“It’s amazing, isn't it?"
"It’s unreal."
I grinned. "This next track wasn't on the original UK release."
The second song started. It was more like an underwater waltz, full of sweet, woozy guitars.
I returned my attention to the cigarette, fumbling with the paper. My hands were shaking slightly—too much coffee, or maybe I was just excited. I managed to finish it, but when I held it up, it was a lumpy mess.
I groaned. "This looks like shit."
Nathan winced at my attempt and shook his head like he was mortified by what he'd just witnessed.
He fell out of the window position and sat down quickly and heavily beside me on the bed.
His weight made the mattress bounce. I fell against him for a second—shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip—and then we were sitting too close, the sides of our thighs pressed together.
He snatched up the tobacco and papers and started rolling on his knee, his wrist resting lightly on my leg. Unselfconscious. It could have been purely innocent.
I watched his hands.
His fingers were calloused and too big for the delicate paper, but they were steady. Confident. No trembling. His tongue came out to wet the edge of the paper, and then he twisted the end with a little flourish.
Quick and precise. No struggle. Like someone who'd rolled hundreds of the damn things.
He had a smug expression. Proud of himself.
I felt shown up. This clean-cut guy who rarely smoked could roll better than anybody I’d ever seen.
He held up the perfectly beautiful cigarette—the end pinched tight like a joint—and presented it to me.
I took it carefully. Our fingers touched.
The music faded. The arm lifted with a soft mechanical click and settled back into its cradle.
Side A was over. The sudden silence made the room feel smaller.
"Hey, now." I was trying to tease, keep it light. "You’re either gonna need to slow down and teach me how to do that, or else you're gonna have to roll all my cigarettes from now on.”
Nathan shrugged, blushing slightly. "I've always liked rolling joints."
Damn. I wondered how many joints he’d actually rolled to get that good. It was a side of him I hadn't expected.
I pushed further. "You wanna just follow me around and roll one for me whenever I snap my fingers?"
He shrugged again and softly said, "If you want me to."
I stared at him. I cleared my throat. "Where'd you learn that, anyway?"
He paused and looked at the floor. “Well, for as long as I can remember, my dad’s always grown a shit ton of weed. So…” He said it fast, like ripping off a Band-Aid.
I blinked. “Shit."
“Yeah. He's in prison now."
“Fuck.” I didn't know what else to say. I didn't want to act shocked. I didn't want to make him feel bad about it.
He kept talking, like he needed to get it all out. “That’s why my mom’s so stuck on me doing pre-med. She thinks if I become a doctor I’ll turn out to be everything my dad wasn’t." He laughed, but it didn't sound happy.
He brushed past the moment. He took the cigarette back from me—fingers touching mine again—and grabbed the lighter off the trunk. Then he lay back on the bed against his pillow, scooting over close to the wall, obviously leaving room for me.
He lit the cigarette, took a drag, and held it out like a joint. Like he was expecting me to lie down beside him and share it.
I stood quickly, almost tripping over my own feet, and went over to the turntable. I flipped the record to Side B and set the needle down. The second I heard the first notes, I hurried back to the bed.
I scooted in beside him, our heads on a single pillow.
It was a twin bed. We were touching all down our sides—arms, elbows, hips, thighs.
We lay on our backs in matching poses, one arm behind our heads.
Nathan passed me the cigarette. I brought it to my lips—the end still wet from his mouth—and inhaled. When I handed it back, his eyes met mine for a second—just a second—before he looked away and took a drag.
We didn't talk. We just shared the smoke in silence, watching it curl up toward the bunk above us.
We were touching the same paper with our lips, over and over.
The light in the room was fading. Gold rectangles still stretched across the floor, but here on the bottom bunk, we were tucked away in the shadows.
A cool cross-breeze drifted through.
A door slammed somewhere above us, and footsteps pounded down the stairwell.
It all sounded a thousand miles away.
The song playing now was slower, more hypnotic.
Nathan reached across me to stub the cigarette out. I stayed perfectly still as his chest brushed my arm. For that one second, the scent of peppermint and citrus filled my head and his body heat pinned me to the mattress. He settled back into his pillow.
The song ended.
The silence lasted only a heartbeat before the final track took over.
This was my favorite—“Those Eyes, That Mouth."
I almost announced the title like a radio DJ, but my throat was too tight. When I listened to it alone, it always made me tear up. Any attempt at a "cool" introduction would have ended in a cracked voice.
I said nothing.
The song began with a sharp, insistent beat—drums like a march with bright guitar notes ringing in rhythmic pulses. Then Liz Fraser's voice came in, low and full-throated, chanting in that hypnotic rhythm. Something between nursery rhyme and incantation.
The lyrics were unintelligible, but the title alone said everything it needed to.
I barely heard the music anymore. My heart was beating so hard I was sure Nathan could feel the bed vibrating. Every point of contact between us felt amplified—shoulder, hip, thigh.
The cigarette had burned down fast. The song was already half over.
I felt like I should ask about his dad. About the pot and him being in prison. Find some way to bring it up that didn't sound like I was judging either of them. But I couldn't think of how to word it.
I couldn't focus on anything except Nathan beside me.
The smell of him—peppermint and something citrusy. I had this sudden urge to roll toward him, bury my face in his armpit. He had these deep pits with gold hair, and I—
Stop.
The song shifted. Suddenly soared. The guitars opened up and her voice climbed higher, and it sounded like she was singing now we are angels, even though I knew the words weren't real words at all.
It gave me chills. I didn't let myself tear up this time, but I could have.
I looked over at Nathan to see if he felt it too.
He was grinning like someone who'd witnessed a magic trick for the hundredth time and still couldn't believe it.
I was smiling the same way.
He turned his head on the pillow and caught me watching. Our faces were close. Closer than they'd ever been.
He didn't look away.
His mouth was slightly open. He had a faint crease in his bottom lip. Even in the gloom between the bunks his hazel eyes glowed with their own light.
We lay there, not moving, barely breathing. The smoke from the cigarette still hung in the air above us.
I thought about the first time I'd met him. How disappointed I'd been that my randomly assigned roommate was wearing a rugby shirt. How I'd been ready to tolerate him at best.
And then I'd realized he was listening to Love and Rockets. And I'd seen the stereo—that beautiful, expensive tower on the dresser—and I'd thought Okay. Maybe this won't be so bad.
I'd brought my own turntable—a shitty little bookshelf stereo that sounded tinny as hell—but after hearing Nathan's system, I'd left mine in the closet. I'd take it home at Thanksgiving.
I'd learned later that he’d worked a construction job all summer to buy it. His mom had been furious. She’d wanted him to save the money for his college expenses. But he’d bought it anyway.
It was the one thing he'd chosen entirely for himself.
Nathan had been cool with me putting up my giant Smiths poster. I'd pointed out that we now had a shirtless man taking up half the wall, but he didn't blink.
He said, "I like The Smiths.”
A straight boy who at least liked Love and Rockets and The Smiths. I could deal with that.
That first weekend, we'd gone out with my new friend Alexandria and her roommate Kelly to a dance club downtown called 527.
The girls had been asking about our dating histories, and I'd just…
blurted it out. That I was gay. Nathan had flushed, but he'd acted nonchalant. And when Alex had asked him if he’d dated anyone in high school, he'd said no. Never. Not once.
I'd gotten the feeling he was a virgin, and that he probably wouldn't want the girls digging for more about that.
So I'd changed the subject.
Since then, he and I had become… something.
Best friends, I guessed. We talked about music constantly.
He knew bands I'd never expected him to know—Dead Can Dance, The Creatures, This Mortal Coil. Seriously goth shit. And he had books I loved, too—Anne Rice, especially. We’d obsessed over Lestat for hours when we first met.
It was the first time I realized his taste went deeper than whatever he was wearing.
Three weeks ago, we'd driven down to Athens with a bunch of friends to see Throwing Muses at Uptown Lounge.
The car had been packed, and I'd ended up sitting on Nathan's lap—his thighs solid beneath me, his breath warm against my neck when he laughed at something someone said.
He hadn't complained or acted weird about it at all. And we’d spent the return trip in the same position without question or comment.
He was impossible to read. He liked bands that frat boys were usually blasting—R.E.M., INXS, The Cult—but he also knew obscure 4AD stuff. He never did that bullshit locker-room talk that guys usually did, even the ones who were supposed to be "alternative."
But he'd also never given me a reason to think he wasn't straight.
I'd promised myself a long time ago I'd never crush on a straight guy. I'd watched a friend in high school do that over and over—falling for guys he couldn't have, demeaning himself, getting his heart broken by the type who might make out with you when he's wasted enough.
I'd vowed I'd never be that pathetic.
And I didn't want to be somebody's experiment. I'd been that already—three different guys in our friend group, all obviously gay, all still closeted, had drunkenly messed around with me in the first few weeks of school. I was tired of being these boys' first time.
I wanted to actually date someone. Someone who was out. I wanted to hold hands walking across campus. Be a couple.
I'd said as much to Nathan a few weeks ago.
He’d been quiet for a moment. And then he'd said, "You could do that here. Hold hands, I mean. Kiss in public. You'd never get away with that where I'm from—the rednecks would beat the shit out of you—but you could here."
I'd said something about how I thought I'd be a cool boyfriend, if I ever got the chance.
He’d just looked at me, dead serious, and said, “You would be.”
The two vocal parts began to ring around each other in rounds, a dizzying climb that finally broke and faded, trailing off into the distance like a disappearing light.
The turntable cut off.
Silence.
Nathan didn't move. He stayed there, his shoulder a steady, burning weight against mine. I waited for him to say something—that he loved it, or that he'd never heard anything like it—or, hell, that he hated it.
I searched his face for a sign that the song had affected him the way it did me.
He turned his head and looked at me. He swallowed, and licked his lips, and for a beat, I wondered if I’d been reading everything wrong. If maybe—
Someone pounded on the door.
A voice called out, "We're coming in!"
Before either of us could move, the door swung open.