Like a Love Story(26)

“I wish you hadn’t said anything,” I say.

He looks at me for a long time, as if challenging me. Then he says, “Me too.” After a short silence, he adds, “I’m sorry. I guess I . . . I don’t know what got into me.”

“No, I’m sorry,” I say.

And then he says, “Don’t tell Judy about this, okay?”

“I thought you could not lie to her.”

“That was when I thought we might be a thing. But if we’re not a thing, then why would we tell her?” His voice shakes. “To humiliate me more?”

He walks in front of me. I don’t know what else to do but to follow behind him.





Art


What the fuck? No, honestly . . . WHAT THE FUCK? I know I read the signs right. MADONNA! The posters, the T-shirts. Then I second-guess myself. Maybe straight men can like Madonna. I do some quick math in my head. Like a Virgin was the first album by a woman to sell five million copies in the United States alone, and is close to ten million now. How many people live in this country anyway? Could all ten million people be queens and women? Maybe, or maybe not. And I know he was flirting with me. It couldn’t have been a coincidence he was outside the stock exchange. And he let me put my hand on his. Well, okay, it was just a finger, but I know he felt the electricity. He didn’t pull away like a straight dude would. But maybe men from other countries are different. Stephen told me once that in Cuba, men hold hands all the time. The irony of José’s life in Cuba was that all the straight men would hold hands with each other, and the gay men were too afraid to. Maybe it’s a cultural thing.

He’s walking behind me. I thought he’d run away. But he’s still walking behind me. He’s so proper and polite. I’ve figured it out. He wasn’t flirting with me. He was just being POLITE!

I turn around just before we get to the apartment. “Why don’t we go in separately?” I say. “It’ll be less weird.”

“Oh, okay,” he says.

“Okay,” I say.

“Okay,” he says.

“So I’ll go in first, and you wait a few minutes.”

“But it is rude to be late,” he says.

“Judy and her uncle aren’t like that,” I say. “I’ll see you in there.”

I want to go in first. I don’t know why, but I just need to be in Stephen’s apartment. It’s my favorite place in the city. I love everything about it. I love all the pictures of him and José. They give me hope that someday I’ll find someone to fall in love with. And yeah, maybe that person will die, or maybe I’ll die, but isn’t that better than never loving? I love the black-and-white living room, his colorful collection of jelly beans that represent all the friends he’s lost, the framed pictures of old movie stars, and the record collection.

It’s Judy who opens the door, and the minute I see her face, I want to punish myself somehow. I don’t deserve her. She looks fabulous. She’s in a sunflower-yellow outfit I’ve never seen before, and then I remember her buying that fabric. We were together. She said something about how it was too special for her life, and I said something about how she could make a cute dress for our daughter out of it. I hate that joke now. I hate that we acted like our getting married and having children was a thing. Why did we think being each other’s consolation prizes was okay? I deserve more. She deserves more. She certainly deserves a much better best friend than me. And maybe she deserves Reza.

“Hey,” she says. “Where’s Reza?”

“What do you mean?” I ask evasively. “I’m sure he’s on his way.”

I go inside. I can smell something Stephen is cooking in the kitchen. He calls out, “Hello, my beloved Art. Just you wait till you see what I’m making.”

“I thought you two were coming over together,” Judy says.

I sit on the couch. “Um, no, Frances,” I say. “Why would we come together?”

Shit. I shouldn’t have called her Frances. She knows I only do that when I’ve royally messed something up.

“Um, because I called his place,” she says. “And his mom said you stopped by to pick him up.”

Double shit.

“Oh, yeah,” I say. “I actually just went to pick something up, not pick him up.” But I did try to pick him up, as in hit on him. I’m an asswipe. I’m a traitor to my best friend. I’ve inherited my father’s complete disregard for others.

“Right,” she says. “A backpack.”

We make eye contact. She seems to know too much. What else does she know?

“I left it there when I was studying with his stepbrother,” I say. “You know Saadi won’t even sit next to me when we’re studying, even when we’re both looking at the same notebook. It’s like he thinks I’m a leper or something.”

“So did you see Reza?” she asks pointedly.

“Oh,” I say. I try to think fast. What do I say? “Yeah, he was getting ready.”

“Did he seem excited?” she asks.

“I think so,” I say. But what do I know? I thought that I could see colors and auras around people and that Reza was emitting a beautiful pink glow. That’s why I got him a pink rose. I was dead wrong.