Real Life(33)

“And then, we’re having coffee after dinner,” Cole continues, “and Roman turns to Vincent and says, ‘You know, nothing is better than fucking someone while my boyfriend watches.’” Cole’s French accent is terrible, offensive and hilarious. Wallace tries not to laugh. It’s bubbling up out of him. “Can you believe that? Can you believe that fucking homo said that to my boyfriend? In front of my face. He said that.”

“I wonder if that’s true,” Wallace says. “I wonder if he really feels that way.”

“I’m not letting someone fuck my boyfriend in front of me. I’m not letting anyone fuck my boyfriend at all. Except me.”

Wallace bites the tip of his tongue, which is already so raw today. He swallows down what he wants to say: that a person doesn’t belong to you just because you’re in a relationship, just because you love them. That people are people and they belong only to themselves, or so they should. Miller can do whatever he wants with whomever he wants, is the thought that flashes through Wallace. He has a jealous heart. Love is a selfish thing.

“What does Vincent think?”

“Well, after that fucker left, we talked about it. We’re doing dishes, and he turns to me and says, ‘Babe, what did you think about what Roman said?’ I lost it, Wallace. I fucking lost it.”

“But what does Vincent want?”

“So, I say, ‘I’m not a fan.’ Vincent has this look on his face. Just . . . You should have seen it, Wallace. He looked like he’d missed his bus or his train or whatever. He looked like he was standing on the wrong side of the lake trying to see if the boat was coming back for him.” The look on Cole’s face is sad but angry. He’s remembering it, slipping back to that night in their apartment. “And I just knew that he was going to do something like this. Get on that app, look for something.”

“But what did he say?”

Cole licks the salt from above his lip. He looks back out over the water, to the grass drifting, sighing in the wind.

“He said, ‘But don’t you want to know?’”

“Know what?”

“That’s it,” Cole says, laughing. “That’s it. That’s what he said. ‘But don’t you want to know?’ What the fuck are we missing out on by being together, Wallace? Can you tell me that? What are we missing out on?”

Wallace crouches low and sits on the grass next to the trail. His body is humming. Cole sits down next to him, but then he lies back and puts his arm over his face. The world in all its vastness is still and quiet. Even the birds sit suspended on their perches. A cricket crawls to the end of a yellow piece of grass and beats out several long cries. Then it’s swallowed by a heron. Wallace watches that bird’s enormous eyes as it bends its long neck down to see the bug on the grass. To the bug, the eye must seem so large, impossibly large. And the eye must see the bug as so infinitesimal as to be inconsequential and yet still be able to discern all its architecture. The heron claps its beak over the grass, taking the cricket into its body.

Cole sighs. “I just want things to be like they were. Like when we were at Ole Miss, making plans. This was never in the plan. We only ever wanted each other.”

“Plans change. That doesn’t mean they’re bad or broken. It just means . . . you want something else.”

“But I don’t want something else. I don’t want anyone else. I want Vincent.” Cole sounds petulant. Wallace is twisting green grass, making a tiny hole in the ground. Cole’s voice is riddled with cracks. The air is cooler by the water, but the heat of the day hasn’t broken open yet, is still present, gauzy on their skin.

“I know, Cole. But you haven’t lost him. You’re still together. You can still make it work.”

“But what if he doesn’t want me back? What if he’s found something else?”

“Don’t borrow trouble,” Wallace says, struck by these words because they do not belong to him but to his grandmother. He can hear her at the kitchen table, stirring the batter for corn bread, singing to herself. He feels momentarily ill, dizzy with memory.

“I can’t help but to, it seems. All I have is trouble.”

“That’s not true,” Wallace says as he sprinkles the blades of grass on Cole’s stomach. “You have a boyfriend. That’s more than some of us have.”

“My boyfriend is looking for a boyfriend.”

“You don’t know that. You haven’t asked him.”

“What are you on there for, on the app, I mean?”

“To pass the time, mostly. Curiosity, maybe?”

“Do you ever hook up with people from there?” Cole slides his arm down to look at Wallace, and Wallace shakes his head. That’s the truth of it. He’s never been with anyone from the app.

“Nobody’s barking up this tree,” he says.

“That’s not true.”

“Oh, be sure to send me their address, then.”

“I mean it. You’re good-looking. You’re smart. You’re kind.”

“I’m fat,” Wallace says. “I’m average, at best, on a good day.”

“You aren’t fat.”

“No, you aren’t fat.” Wallace drums his hand on the flat of Cole’s stomach, which is softer than he thought it would be. He leaves his hand there, startled. Cole does not push it away.