***
June 2025
“You must know every quiet restaurant in Lower Manhattan.”
“Huh?” Cole looks up from his bowl of spaghetti carbonara. We’re sitting next to the window on the second floor of a no-frills Italian restaurant in the East Village, in our own little nook away from the other patrons. “Oh, yeah — it’s kind of on purpose. And I like it too, when I don’t have to shout at you.”
“It’s really nice of you to pay attention to that.”
I go back to my chicken parmesan, and Cole’s eyes drift out the window. He seems like he has a lot on his mind, but I’ve noticed he can get like that sometimes when he’s been in his studio all day. His hair is pulled back, and I can see a streak of bright blue paint above his left ear.
A little while later, I open my mouth again. “Is it weird being back in the city?”
“Hmm?” Cole’s eyes are fully focused on me this time.
“I mean — at the engagement party, you said you’d been in Italy and that was why you never met Seth. I was just wondering if, I dunno, you miss it or anything.”
Cole looks down, twirling a strand of spaghetti around his fork. “Not really. I had an artist residency in Rome for a couple of months over the winter, and then when I was done I still wanted to stay, so Bree set me up with a couple of her friends who have a villa on Capri. It was great, but — I dunno, it was time to come home. I was glad Bree gave me the excuse.”
I frown. There’s something about Cole’s affect that seems off. “Did something happen?”
“Not really, it was just —” He looks at me and shrugs. “You know me. I get in too deep, and then people find out what I’m really like.”
“I don’t have a problem with what you’re really like.”
Cole smiles at me, and then pops the bite of carbonara into his mouth. We eat in silence for a few minutes, and it’s nice, being able to share space with someone else so comfortably. I’m about to start a story about a student in one of my summer classes, but Cole gets there first.
“Hey Ezra, can I ask you something?” He’s looking at me intently, and I nod.
“Sure, go ahead.”
“I was wondering — and you don’t have to tell me unless you want to — did you ever date women? Like, after I left. When you went to college. Or — after.”
“Um —” I pause, considering my answer. “I did — but it never really went anywhere.”
Cole leans forward, his eyes piercing mine. “Why not?”
It’s hard to find the words to explain. “It was just — there was so much I didn’t understand. Like, what was I supposed to say at dinner? Was I talking about myself too much? Did I ask the right number of questions, or too many questions? When was a date a date, and when was it just hanging out? How many times would we have to hang out before we could have sex? Why was sex okay sometimes, but not other times? No matter what I was doing, I always felt like I was doing the wrong thing.”
Cole looks amused. “And it’s not like that with guys?”
I shrug. “It could be, but not as much. I mean, if you meet someone on an app that’s just for hooking up, and you get together specifically to hook up, you know how your night is going to end. It’s much easier. Nobody gets hurt.”
“You make it sound so simple.”
“It is simple!” I agree. “I mean, just look at you and me. You always tell me exactly what you want, and so I know what page we’re on all the time. You make it so easy.”
“Do I?” Cole cocks an eyebrow. “What do I want, then?”
I tick the points off on my fingers. “You want to have a lot of sex, so we have a lot of sex. You want to go to quiet restaurants and take me to museums. You don’t mind if I nerd out about history, because you’re a nerd too, even though you look much cooler than me. But you don’t want to talk about yourself, so we don’t. And you want this to be casual, so it is. It’s like I’ve found my best friend again, but it’s this other thing too. And it’s great because it’s not complicated.”
“Oh.”
The word sounds hollow, so I look up sharply. But when I meet Cole’s eyes, he’s smiling at me, smoothing back the hair on the top of his head. “I’m glad it’s not complicated, Ezra. I — I really like spending time with you.”
“Me, too.”
I change the subject to work, and Cole leans on his hand to listen. On the street below us, I can hear a blast of music from a car stereo, the insistenttat-tat-tatof a jackhammer a few streets away. But Cole’s eyes are on my face, and for once I feel like someone understands me.
