What It Takes (10 page)

But it would be impossible. Andrew doesn’t need sex from him—he’s not shy about getting it where and when he wants. And while Milo knows he wants it, and that it would be different between the two of them, the thought of letting this friendship with it’s too-much intimacy slide into something else terrifies him. Milo isn’t the one Andrew deserves, someone clean and capable of healthy love.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, because Andrew deserves to know. He tries to tell himself he can’t feel the pain radiating from Andrew. “All I do is drag you down. You deserve better.”

“I wish you wouldn’t say that.” Andrew’s voice breaks, and, deep inside, something breaks in Milo as well.

“I wish I could give you what you want,” Milo whispers. “I’m going away in a few weeks. I can’t make promises, and I don’t want to break
this
. You’re my best friend, Drew.”

Andrew tips his forehead against his. Everything they should say to each other smothers them both. They don’t speak again.

° ° °

Fall comes
with a new room, one not wallpapered with breasts or heavy with the weight either of homophobia, or of the stifling loneliness that plagued him the first year. It will take a few weeks to begin to feel like himself—the new him—again. Milo’s new roommate, Paul, and suitemates, Dave and Will, are a welcome change from Shane. The whole floor is, of course. Milo’s never experienced this level of automatic understanding and community. He doesn’t expect to be best friends or close to anyone just because they all live on Rainbow Floor, but his room is laid out well, and he loves that it’s in an apartment. He shares the space with three other men he doesn’t know, but he likes them all immediately. His first instinct upon moving in is not to try to hide a panic attack. That’s progress.

Once he’s settled in, he organizes his desk, memorizes his schedule and plans a trip to the bookstore. He knows he’ll have to explore the new building soon. For now, though, what he wants is to stretch out on his bed and call Andrew. He rolls onto his bed and thumbs over Andrew’s number, but doesn’t call.

Milo’s first summer home from school passed in a dizzying blur and ended on such a bittersweet note; he wonders how long it will take him to integrate it all and digest it. He plays the best of his summer on a loop, rifling through memories like snapshots—not to find the spaces where he let his father break him down, but to find things to hold on to so far from home.

Lucy and Ted in June, bold in the yellow light of a too-bright bonfire, cajoling everyone out of their clothes and into the water in a blur of Cuervo and laughter. He tries not to remember the long line of Andrew’s spine or the way his skin glowed, because he wasn’t meant to look.

In July Andrew promised to make up for their awkward trip to Provincetown. This time they went with friends. Ted laughed from the backseat at every song Andrew picked as Milo drove. In the rearview mirror he could see Sarah and Lucy squashed next to Ted, one blonde and the other brunette, heads bobbing in time to the music. As they went from one club to club to another, they’d all loosened up, and through the whole night, Andrew stayed with him. By the time they got to the last club, they were all raucous and sweat-dewed from dancing. Milo’s hair began to fall from its hold, and Andrew’s hands were blazing hot, urging him to dance when “Shut up and Dance” came blaring on. A long time ago, when they were kids, Andrew was obsessed with that song with its catching loops and lyrics he couldn’t help but dance to. He remembers the lamp they broke when Andrew turned the music up and forced him to his feet, and laughing the whole time. It was little more than jumping around gracelessly, bumping into each other and laughing loud enough to draw Andrew’s mom up to see what the racket was. She turned the music up louder, kissed them both and went downstairs.

Provincetown that night was like that. Laughing and brave. He danced with Andrew, with his friends and strangers, as if the strings that tied him in his father’s grip, a helpless marionette caught in webs of pain, had been cut. That night he pretended they had.

In August, when even the trees seemed to sweat, he forced Andrew into the woods with planks of plywood and a bag of nails and screws, and a tool belt Andrew cracked up at immediately, to go fix up the old fort. In the winter he’d seen what a wreck the snow and a year of neglect had made of it. Seeing something so important falling apart settled, aching, in his chest and nagged at him until he had to fix it. And fixing it wouldn’t have been the same without Andrew there to complain and swear at him. When the sun dappled between the shifting leaves, trailing shadows over Andrew with his lightened hair and his skin an unbroken smooth tan from days in the sun and in the water, Milo knew he loved this boy so deeply that it seemed impossible to hold it back.

When September called them both away, he mourned his discretion. It hurt them both, but it was better than the hurt he’d inevitably inflict if he took Andrew’s face in rough hands and kept kissing him as sweetly and helplessly as he loves him. When he woke the next morning after that ill-advised kiss, Andrew was boneless and tangled with him, warm and soft and heartbreaking. Staring at the ceiling and feeling too much roiling in his stupid body, he wished for once that Andrew would get mad at him. Because he deserved it, and Andrew’s unwavering forgiveness and understanding seemed like pity for the broken boy he’ll always be.

° ° °

“I know
I promised not to judge,” Nat says late one night, “but you’ve been extra…” She’s on Andrew’s beanbag chair with a hand mirror, plucking her eyebrows. The tips of her black hair are white, styled in crazy spiked tufts. Her lips are still stained from the blood red lipstick she wears whenever she leaves her room.

“Extra?” Andrew tries to control the edge in his voice.

“Active? Sad?”

Andrew stops tapping his fingers against her desk and looks at her carefully. She’s watching him with unusual kindness. Nat’s a fun friend, but not a soft person by nature. He sighs. The weight of what passed between him and Milo sits so heavily, crouching at all times, ready to steal his breath with its strength.

“Maybe I am.” He lifts a shoulder and wills a familiar sting from his eyes. “Maybe it’s okay for me to do whatever I have to do to forget some things.”

“Andrew…” She puts down the mirror and moves as if to come closer, but he shakes his head. “What happened? What’s going on?”

“I don’t really want to talk about it.”

“Can you tell me why you think what you’re doing is going to make you feel better?”

He stares at the assortment of pens and paper and sticky-notes littered on her desk. Studies the laces of his shoes and the rough texture of the cheap carpet she’s covered the linoleum dorm floors with.

“Are you getting what you need?” Nat asks.

“Maybe one thing.” A door opens and slams shut in the corridor, and the sound of chatter and laughter slinks in from the hall. It’s almost dinner time.

“You’re in love with him, and he’s not in love with you, so you sleep around?”

“No,” Andrew snaps.

“No, you’re not in love with him?” Disbelief is clear in her voice.

“No.” His voice cracks with tears. “He
is
in love with me. I told myself for a really long time that he wasn’t, even when I thought maybe he was.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“He won’t,” he says. It’s simple to him because, intellectually, he understands. He understands Milo’s fear, yes. But also he knows, even when it makes him feel helpless and angry and resentful, that Milo doesn’t trust it will work, that either of them is capable of making a relationship last.

“So this—” She waves her hand. “Is what, sloppy seconds?”

He winces at her words. “No, not exactly. When I’m with him, there’s something I don’t want from anyone else. A way we’re close, and how comfortable it is to be with him, or next to him or holding him.”

“So let me get this straight. What you’re saying is you get your cuddle on with him, but fuck other people because you can’t get that from him?”

Andrew lets her words sink in, because so baldly put they are like a hit to his stomach.

“I never would have put it that way. It’s… the thought of being really intimate, like that, with anyone else, is—” He bites his lip and searches for the words. “It makes my skin crawl.”

“But you’re a horny nineteen-year-old who has to hump like a rabbit?” Nat jokes. She’s trying to lighten the mood, but he doesn’t appreciate it.

“You make it sound gross. And it doesn’t feel that way to me.”

“Explain.”

“I mean, the sex. I don’t know. It doesn’t feel like anything wrong, and I don’t like the way you judge me for it. Or anyone else. Sex is sex to me. I enjoy it. I don’t need or want extra strings attached.”

“You don’t want those together one day? If he really can’t love you like you want him to?”

Andrew realizes suddenly he’s clenched his fists hard enough to hurt. “It’s fucked up when you put it that way,” he admits. She doesn’t say anything, but stands and pulls him into a hug. “I can’t stop hoping that one day…” He sighs. “Why can’t I make my heart behave and understand and be patient or kind or realistic?”

“Because we can’t make our hearts do everything we want.”

chapter seven

H
is mother’s voice is wavering over the phone line and Milo has to duck his head and cover his ear to hear her. It’s loud in Claire’s apartment; the blare of TV and shouted conversation overpower the sound of his mom’s voice.

“Milo…”

“Mom, is everything okay?” Milo half shouts. His mother calls him once a week, dutifully, Wednesday evenings at seven. Gives him boring town gossip and pretends her calls will keep him tethered to her.

Love can’t save someone who won’t be saved, and it’s taken Milo a while to figure out that no matter what he says, she’ll never leave his father. The crushing guilt of leaving her alone with him almost killed him that first year at USC. It’s easier to forget that her acquiescent silence was as damaging as his father’s special brand of abuse. His summer at home made so many things clear to him. With the bond between him and Andrew slackened, Milo feels less and less responsibility to care about the place that used to be home. California might never feel like home either, but it certainly doesn’t hurt the way Santuit does.

“Your father is in the hospital,” she says. “He had a massive heart attack; he’s been on life support, but they don’t think he’s going to make it.” Tears; he definitely hears them now. He doesn’t feel anything.

“Okay.” For a moment he’s completely blank, and all the noise of the room falls away. He should offer condolences? Offer to come home? Feel bad?

“Will you come home?” She makes it easy, because he doesn’t have to make an empty offer. “Help me say goodbye?”

Milo closes his eyes. He’s made his way out of the room and into the hall. He pinches the bridge of his nose and swallows shouts of frustration. Her persistent invention of a life where he’d
want
to say goodbye frustrates the shit out of him. The pretense that must have sustained her through years of enabling his father in demeaning and abusing him with words and sometimes hands makes him sick. Loving her makes him sick too because, like everything else, he can’t help it.

He doesn’t yell though, because that won’t change anything. “Sure, Mom. I’ll find a flight.”

None of his dorm mates are home, which is fantastic news, because Milo is on a single mission: Book a flight and then get shit-faced alone.

It doesn’t take him long to do either, and soon enough everything is a surreal, nauseating blur that begins to sit on him heavily, while his thoughts careen beyond his control. He isn’t numb at all; he’s brought on helplessness. The specter of his father, a man much bigger in Milo’s memory than in real life, nags him. The secrets he keeps locked away begin to rise.

He throws up once and then puts his too-hot forehead on the floor and tries to breathe, but he can’t slow his brain and his lungs. Despite the unspooling of the tie that’s bound him to Andrew, there’s only one person Milo depends on when panic and fear hit him like this. His face is wet with tears he hasn’t registered, whose origin—panic or fear or grief—he can’t name. They leave wet splotches on his shirt when he wipes them away, but the screen of his phone still blurs when he calls Andrew.

“I’m sorry,” is the first thing he says when Andrew’s concerned voice prickles through the line. Shit, it’s one a.m. “I always call when I’m a mess.”

Since the summer, this is what they’ve reduced themselves to. Texts, sometimes, because longing and frustration are easier to handle like that, and phone calls when he’s in a panic. Milo realizes more and more that he should erase himself from Andrew’s life, because Andrew’s hurt is so clear. Although he tries to hold out, whenever things are at their worst, he can never stop himself from calling Andrew to help him get through it.

“Milo, what’s going on, you sound awful, are you drun—okay, Milo, you need to take a long, slow breath.” Andrew’s voice immediately goes into calming mode. That sound is enough to slam Milo into that ugly, scared and weak place, which is also that space that’s so safe.

“M-my dad…” He hiccups. “My mom called and he’s in the hospital. He’s dying.”

“Oh my god.”

“She needs me to go back. To help. Or something. She said she wants me to say goodbye.” He ends the sentence feeling a bitter anger that burns up his throat and into his mouth.

“You don’t have to, you know,” Andrew says. “You don’t have to go back, you
don’t
.”

“You know I do. Of course I do.”

“No, no.” There’s a rustling in the background and Milo can hear Andrew whispering something.

“God, fuck, have I interrupted something?”

“Nothing more than my sleep, dummy.”

“Sorry,” Milo says lamely. He knows Andrew isn’t alone. The only time he ever experiences Andrew’s anger is through texts he gets late some nights. It’s not vicious, but it’s bitter, because they both know Milo doesn’t need to know about the boys Andrew sleeps with.

“Stop apologizing.”

“I don’t mean to only call you when I’m like this.”

“I know,” Andrew says softly.

“I do have to go home.” Milo is lying on the floor now with the fuzz of the bathroom throw rug scratching against his hand. “I can’t not. She needs me.”

Andrew breathes. It’s calming, and Milo can feel himself slipping into a near sleep.

“Well, I’ll see you there, then.”

“Andrew—” Milo whispers, wanting to protest because he should.

“Sleep it off. Call me in the morning to give me your flight details.”

°

“Everything okay?” Emery rolls over, eyes still mostly shut, hair a fucked-out mess, eyeliner smudged.

“No, I have to—you have to go.” Andrew trips over his own discarded pants, then pulls them up over his bare ass.

“Andrew, it’s one in the morning.” Emery sits up with the sheet pooling in his lap.

“I’m know, but I have to pack and find flights.” Andrew tosses Emery his shirt. The frown starting to build on Emery’s face clears.

“What’s happened?” Emery asks, hopping into his clothes. He’s still half drunk, too, so he almost falls over. “Fuck, I hope you aren’t planning on going anywhere right now.”

“No, I need to shower and get myself pulled together. My friend’s father is dying.”

“Who?”

“No one you know, from back home.” Andrew shakes his head as if that will clear it. He’s still tipsy, but also a little hungover, some sort of sick post-party twilight he’s never visited before. “God, fuck, what did we do?”

“You and I, or the party?”

“Har, har.” Andrew shoots Emery a smirk. “I remember what we did quite clearly, thank you very much.”

“You are so welcome.” Emery, dressed at last, leans forward to peck Andrew’s lips. “Can I do anything for you here, then?”

“No, I’m going to shower first and finish the sobering process.”

“Well then, until next time, and all that—”

“All that?” Andrew follows Emery to the door.

“You know, the next time you tell me you really aren’t going to sleep with me this time.”

Andrew laughs and pushes him lightly out the door. “I mean it this time.”

“I’ll believe that when I see it,” Emery calls out.

The laughter dies on Andrew’s lips as soon as the door is locked. His head throbs a little, and his body is layered in sweat and the scent of sex and smoke; his bed is a wreck, and his mouth tastes like garbage.

First things first: Andrew drinks enough water for three people, pops three Advil, and sets the shower to lukewarm. While he’s in the water, edging it a little cooler, he begins to feel clearheaded enough to plan the next few steps.

° ° °

Milo wanders
upstairs feeling as if his insides are expanding beyond the borders of his skin, as if the stifling gray he’s been swimming in since his mother called might roll out of him and spill throughout the house. The sound of people speaking in hushed tones
—
as if they care, as if no one knew what kind of man James Graham was
—follows him all the way to his room.

He barely remembers the last week: the redeye flight home; holding his mother in the hospital after she signed off on terminating support; pulling together a funeral whose details had already been planned. Of course James Graham would not trust anyone else with this. Even dead, he’s exerting his control.

The funeral reception is in full swing, if such a thing can be said of such a somber gathering. Downstairs, people tell stories that portray his father in much kinder light than he deserves. Milo spares a few moments to wonder what it is about death that makes people want to sanctify the person who passed. Milo stood with them as long as he could, biting back every wave of anger and urge to tell all the truths hidden in this house for so long.

His room is a refuge. Milo sits for a long time in a floating, almost unbearable space. He forces himself to breathe as Andrew coached him time after time. His eyes trace a scuffed mark along the baseboard of the far wall. He can’t for the life of him remember how that had happened. If his father ever saw it, Milo is sure he would remember, because there would have been hell to pay. The sight of a coffin being lowered slowly into the hard ground echoes in his head. His heart is cramping and he isn’t sure why—why it insists on feeling grief when what he should be feeling is freedom. No.
Nonono
, he cannot not afford to let his father’s memory in, not for a second. If it does, if he tears that thin membrane protecting the world from that turmoil inside, nothing will ever be put to rights again. For anyone.
He
will never be put to rights again.

The door slides open a few inches; Andrew slips in and closes it behind him. No noise follows—Milo supposes enough time has passed that everyone has left. Andrew is all soft eyes and familiar smile; the collar of his soft lilac dress shirt is unbuttoned, his tie has been abandoned and his sleek black pants are losing their crease. From the moment he met Milo at the airport with a hug and a hand to hold, but offered silently, Andrew has been, as always, exactly what he needs.

“Hey,” Andrew says. Milo’s room is as it has been since he left for USC—mostly stripped, a sad shell of what was always pretty sad space. Andrew takes it in with a cursory glance. “Everyone is gone.”

“Thanks,” Milo says. He doesn’t look up. “Sorry, I just—”

“It’s fine.” Andrew sits next to him carefully. “Your mom went to lie down, so my mom and I put the food away.”

“God, I’m sorry. I didn’t eve—”

“Stop.” Andrew puts a hand on Milo’s knee and squeezes hard. “You don’t need to think about that stuff right now. That’s what I’m here for. What we’re all here for.”

“What you’re here for,” Milo repeats. His voice lifts a little and when he looks up at Andrew, his eyes are intense and bright. Andrew bites his lip and exhales through his nose. Milo could spend every moment of these few days together looking at Andrew and relearning every detail he’s missed in the last months, as well as the new ones. Andrew here today is both the same boy he’s known and altogether someone new.

The distance between them, like two sailboats slipped farther and farther from their moorings in the last few months, has never seemed so real or so scary. He regrets every time he wanted to call Andrew and didn’t, every new thing they’ve done and haven’t talked about and all the space they’ve pushed between them to avoid something he knows won’t ever change.

“What do I do now?” Milo whispers.

Andrew frowns. “What do you mean?”

Milo sighs and closes his eyes, then turns himself toward Andrew’s body. He pulls him in tightly; Andrew’s breath is hot against his skin.

“Who am I even, like this?”

“You’re you.”

“Andrew,” Milo says as he pulls back, his voice scratchy with tears, “my whole life, he’s been there. Sometimes, it felt like all my life
was
him.”

“But that’s not true.” Andrew kneels on the bed and puts his hands on Milo’s shoulders. “You’re so much more.”

“Drew, I’m not talking about how you see me or how you want me to believe in a greater future or anything like that. I mean that my whole life feels like it was centered on being scared of him. Of wishing,” he says, dashing tears away, “
fuck
, that I could fucking make him happy for once. Of working for his love and wondering how I could love him.”

“Milo,” Andrew says, but it sounds hopeless.

“He was the only thing, the only thing.” Milo moans, bent over and crying against Andrew’s knees. “I thought it would be over when I went away. I thought I’d break away from him.”

“I know,” Andrew whispers. “We both thought that.”

“I’ll always be stuck here, won’t I?”

“No,
no
,” Andrew says fiercely, fingers digging into Milo’s shoulders and pulling him up. “No, that’s not true.” He uses his thumbs to swipe at the moisture on Milo’s face.

“I’m sorry.”

“Oh my god,” Andrew says with a watery laugh. “Stop apologizing—”

“Ugh.” Milo covers his eyes. “I was barely holding it together, and then you came in. You’re always my emotional overload victim.”

“Well, I’d hardly say victim,” Andrew says with an eye roll. “Like I said, that’s what best friends are for.” He presses his lips together as soon as the words are out.

“I know you said not to apologize, but I
am
sorry things have been off for the last few months.”

“Well, that’s on both of us.”

Milo pulls Andrew’s hand from his shoulder and holds it between his own. “I’ve really missed you, though.”

Andrew’s fingers are warm. His face glows. “Good. Because I’ve missed you too.”

“Do you ever miss the way things were?” Milo pulls away and lies on the bed, pulling Andrew with him.

“What, before college?”

“Yeah,” Milo says.

Andrew shrugs. Their knees bump together. On his side and so close, Milo can see that the tan Andrew sported over the summer has faded. His face is beautiful: familiar and sweet and open and so missed. Milo hasn’t named his longing, but it’s a subterranean ache he’s carried around as he’s gone off into his new life. It’s not a best friend kind of longing, what he’s lived with since September. It’s a love longing: the one he’s talked himself out of for a ridiculously long time.