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We fell asleep on the couch hours later, and when I woke up in the middle of the night, all I saw was the lights Will had hung twinkling brightly around the windows and the faint answering glow of lights in the windows of the other buildings nearby.
A FEW mornings later, we were eating pancakes and Will was on an epic rant about his coworker Gus.
He’d been really stressed about work the past week, though, and his rant about Gus seemed less like an ad hominem attack and more like him spinning his wheels.
Finally, I couldn’t listen anymore.
“Gus is fine, Will. You’re the crazy one. You’re probably his nemesis because he’s acting normal and you respond like an insane person. He probably goes home and tells his friends or his wife or whoever about the psycho who hates him for no reason.”
Will sulked, shoveling pancakes into his mouth.
“Hey, what’s the deal with work, for real? You’ve been totally stressing about it.”
Will made a can’t-answer-mouth’s-full gesture, and I rolled my eyes at him and waited as he chewed.
He fiddled with his coffee cup and his fork and twisted the hem of his perfect white T-shirt. I leaned into his space and pulled him toward me a little, then I kissed him, licking the syrup from his lips.
Because we were kissing now.
“Well?” I sat back, and Will looked startled. He licked his lips absently.
“Gus asked me to go into business with him. To start our own graphic design company. Be co-owners.”
Will loved his job, but one thing he complained about all the time was having to work on other people’s schedules and play by other people’s rules.
“That sounds great,” I told him. “Especially considering that Gus sounds like a totally cool person.”
“He’s whatever.”
“So are you gonna do it?”
Will shrugged, going from rant-tastic to nonverbal in 4.5 seconds. I hadn’t seen this mood before, and I mentally labeled it “Petulant Child.”
“Oh, I know what you need!” I got up, and Will gestured toward the pancakes on the counter with a totally unnecessary since-you’re-up grunt.
I dumped more pancakes on his plate and brought his graph-paper pad and pencil over to the table.
“A pros and cons list.”
Will loved lists almost as much as he loved graphs and charts. I waggled the paper in front of him. He pushed it away and concentrated back on the pancakes, drenching them in butter and syrup and chowing down as he stared into space.
Well, a kiss had kind of worked before. I stood up and straddled Will’s lap, putting myself between him and the pancakes. I took the dripping fork out of his hand.
“You’re gonna make yourself sick,” I told him, eating the bite myself. When I kissed him, our lips were sticky-sweet.
Finally, after several more syrupy kisses and a lot of grumbling, I got the truth out of Will. That he valued the prestige of being with a Big Five publisher, which he wouldn’t have if he and Gus started over from scratch.
“But you could make the company whatever you wanted,” I told him. “You care about the work so much. What would be better than being able to do it the way you think is best?”
He looked surprised at my words and his expression softened.
“Yeah, maybe.”
It was the first time I felt like I had been useful to Will for more than just hanging out or doing my share of the dishes. For once, I had helped him instead of the other way around.
I WOKE up in the dark to Will talking on the phone in the bedroom.
“Where did you look already? … Yeah, I can call down there…. Once or twice…. It’s okay…. Yeah, let me know….”
Will came out of his room and wandered to the window in the kitchen, staring out at the gyro place, the Mexican restaurant, and the flower shop on the corner.
I slid a hand up his back and felt that every muscle was tensed.
“You okay?”
He kept staring out the window like I wasn’t there, but he didn’t pull away. When I started to rub his shoulders, though, he shrugged me off.
“Nathan and Sarah?”
Will nodded, but it clearly wasn’t an invitation for further discussion. He moved away and I followed him into the kitchen where he started to make coffee automatically, like he did every morning. Halfway through he seemed to notice that it wasn’t even 5:00 a.m. and it was Sunday, but he continued doing it anyway.
AFTER FOURTEEN days of living with Will, three things were quite clear.
First, that we were so different I never had a prayer of predicting how he would feel about or react to things.
One morning he came in and made coffee, and I pointed to the bananas I’d gotten at the bodega, saying “There are bananas if you want any.”
Will said, “I live here. If I wanted a banana in my own apartment then obviously I would get one.”
