Page 77 of Wingmen

“Okay,” said Drew. “Well, I’m leaving. And you know–”

She stopped. He looked over his shoulder and she was standing at the sliding door, looking like she was about to say something huge, and trying to decide if she wanted to say it.

Elliot felt his stomach sink.Oh God, she was pregnant. Virgen fucking Santa, he’d gotten her pregnant and this was his life now.

“Never mind,” she said. She turned to go and he said, “What?” but she didn’t stop.

“No – wait.” He stubbed the cigarette out on the rail and went after her. “What were you gonna say?”

“It doesn’t matter! I’m just gonna go.”

“Are you pregnant?”

“Pregnant?” She halted and turned around.

“Just tell me,” he said. “So I can do the right thing. Because I have money, at least, so–”

“No, Elliot.” She shook her head, frowning in disbelief as she looked around for her underwear. “I am definitely not pregnant. We used condoms. I told you I was on birth control.” She located the underwear and snatched it up, snapped it on, then looked around for her shirt.

“Okay…” Elliot frowned across the room. “So what were you gonna say?”

She got the shirt on and looked for her jeans.

“I’m going back to Carolina,” she said, after she’d shaken them open and put one leg in. “But it doesn’t matter. Just forget it, I don’t even know why I’m telling you. Because I’m never gonna see you again, I guess, so I figured I should let you know why.”

“Never gonna see me again?”

“I’m getting booted from this internship.” She hopped the other leg in. “Like this week.”

He watched her. “Why?”

She looked embarrassed and kept her eyes on her fingers as they zipped up her fly. “I don’t wanna talk about it. It doesn’t matter.”

“You’re leaving?”

“Yes, Elliot. I’m pretty sure the internship’s gonna rescind my stipend. So I can’t make rent on that apartment.”

He caught her arm as she finished the jeans and went for her jacket. “They’re kicking you out?”

The sigh she uttered was exasperated this time, but she stopped and let him turn her around. He positioned her by the shoulders and held onto them and looked at her.

“No, they’re not kicking me out,” she said. “But I have a living stipend through the internship, and it’s dependent on performance. And I can’t afford to stay here without that, so…” She tried to shrug her shoulders out of his hands. “God, why am Itellingyou this? I haven’t toldanyone.”

The weight of that sank into him as he watched her eyes looking anywhere that wasn’t him. “Why haven’t you told anyone?”

“Because it’s fucking embarrassing!” She tried to get his hands off her shoulders and he didn’t let go, and eventually she sighed and stopped trying to escape. They stood there in silence while she fiddled with her nails. Elliot let go of her and stepped back.

“But you loveclams.”

She laughed, bitterly. “Yeah, well unfortunately loving clams doesn’t help you with spatial analysis operations. You need a harder science background than I have. It’s fine. I should’ve been better prepared. I got in on a good application and enthusiasm, and I’ve been, like,pretendingI know GIS mapping, but there’s all this SQL querying that I don’t actually know how to do, and I don’t really understand the coordinate reference systems, and I’m too scared to ask, because then they’ll know I don’t know how to do it, so I’ve been trying to learn on my own in the evenings, but it’ssocomplicated – if I had a tutor, maybe, but that’s just more money and the stipend definitely won’t coverthat–” She caught her breath and met his eye, looking suddenly, openly lost. “So I don’t know. Maybe leaving is the right thing to do anyway. I don’t belong there. I feel like a fraud. And I’m fucking exhausted.”

The silence that settled between them this time was different. They sat in it together, rather than on opposite sides of it. It seemed to grow as they stared at each other in the wake of Drew’s revelation, getting louder and more unignorable, until eventually, Elliot said, “I think I’m gay?”

Drew’s eyebrows shot up. She looked like she was about to laugh…but then stared at him and said, “Oh my God. Youare.”

He laughed, and felt relieved, and then dizzy, and went to sit on the bed. “It’s exhausting,” he said.

She watched him from the middle of the room. “Being gay?”