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I give it a thought. “Nah. I was thinking I’d just head back.”
“Dude. You brought us to this damned party, and now you’re ditching us?”
“Well, the original plan was to have Richie with me, but since he isn’t, I’m kinda the third wheel.” I glance back at the party. “I’m just surrounded by lovers and couples and … frat bro husbands … or whatever the hell it is Brett and that Skylar fellow just became in there.”
“No one knows,” Mack utters, lost in thought for a second. Then he has a belated reaction. “Lex and I are not a couple. I heard your implication there. Look, will you at least stay for the thing? For, like, moral support or some shit? I mean, they are your hall mates, and it might go really bad …”
I blink and turn to him. “What thing?”
Fast-forward ten minutes, and Mack has talked me into returning to the party—where we are put in the kitchen, and right in the middle of a heated (I think) confrontation between Brett and Connor.
And it’s Brett who appears angry. “You won’t just tell me what it is, bro? You tell me everything!”
Connor, who holds a pair of martini glasses crisscrossed in one hand and a shaker in the other (I think he was about to pour a couple glasses of something), sighs with frustration. “I know I’ve been off. There are a lot of reasons, actually, but—”
“You’ve been home once this week. I thought you were busy with that big article you’re writing about Holton Kalister and his big gay opening on Broadway with that hot-shit Wade-what’s-his-name for your internship thing, but you leave behind your laptop half the time, and what self-respecting writer does that?? I notice these things!” Brett adds in an exasperated hiss. “I’m not dumb!”
Every time Connor tries to awkwardly hug Brett with his occupied hands, Brett backs away, not having any of it without an explanation. “I was going to wait until the right time to tell you, Brett. Not here during your and Sky’s big bro-posal party thing. Not here with a whole dang audience …”
“Just say it!” Brett pleads with him. “Just fuckin’ say it, bro!”
Connor fumbles with his martini glasses. One of them drops—Crash! Shatter!—and then as the whole kitchen falls silent from the noise, Connor shouts: “I’m moving out! I’m leaving Piazza Place!”
All of the breath leaves the room.
Brett stares at Connor, expression unchanged, as if nothing was said at all. He’s frozen in place.
Connor, collecting himself, swallows hard. “I’m going to be …” He speaks quietly. “I’m going to be moving in with A-Alan. I … I was offered the … offered a position at Wales Weekly. A permanent one. I got the job I’ve been working all summer for. My dream job. I’m moving out next month.”
After a moment passes, Brett squints. “That’s it? That’s the big thing?”
Connor blinks. “Yes.”
Brett lets out a long, arduous breath and shakes his head. He frowns at Connor. “Damn, bro … You could’ve just told me.”
Connor lifts his eyebrows. “You’re not mad?”
“Mad?” Brett wipes a hand over his face, then gives his roommate a look. “I’m about to lose the best roommate I ever had. No, I’m not mad, bro. I’m … I’m sad. But I’m happy, too. You’re …” He forces a smile. “You’re leaving the nest, my man.”
Connor’s face warms. Then after what feels like a century of silence passes, the two embrace each other in the middle of the kitchen, their shoes crunching on bits of glassware. After a while more, Connor glances over at Skylar, calm, and offers a grimace. “I’ll pay for the glass,” he whispers sweetly.
17
The train is quieter on the way back home, and far less crowded. We nearly have the entire end of the car to ourselves.
It’s just me and Mack. Lex stayed behind to help lick Brett’s wounds, I guess, or else to mourn the life of a senselessly shattered martini glass. I stare ahead at another poster for Club Copper by Dante with his lover-boy model, posted on the wall among all the other less colorful advertisements. The model wears a black harness, smirking cockily.
“Y’know, when you said all that shit about fate and destiny and all that,” mumbles Mack, slumped tiredly on the bench next to me and slouching so far, his ass is hanging off the seat, “it really got me thinking about where I’m supposed to belong …”
“Dancing,” I answer for him dryly. “Stripping. Making it rain until you’re ninety.”
Mack scoffs at me. His scoff turns into a laugh. “Yeah, probably. But I can’t help feeling like there’s something more for me out there. Like how you got your whole animal doctor thing.”
“Veterinarian thing.”
“I feel like maybe I should hit the books, or … be more studious … like you. You’ve inspired me, Zak.” He eyes me. “I dunno if you know that. Or if you care. But you make me wanna be better.”
