Real Life(52)

“Wallace,” Yngve says brightly. “Come smoke with us.”

“He doesn’t smoke,” Miller says with some stiffness, not quite formal, not distant, but tight. Wallace crosses the kitchen, collects a glass from the cupboard.

“I’ll sit with you,” he says. He fills the glass near-full, and this reminds him of the previous night, when he filled the glass and made Miller drink from it. His face grows hot at the memory. The inappropriateness of it. The subtle way they have been drawn into re-creating it, except that when he looks to Miller he sees no recognition on his face. The moment passes, which is at once a relief and a disappointment. Wallace sits next to Yngve. Yngve draws the blanket around himself; their elbows and shoulders touch. He is cool from sitting near the open door. Miller sucks off the end of the gray vape. His eyes close. Yngve snaps quick and hard.

“Come on, come on,” he says, motioning back toward himself. Wallace can smell the vapor on him and the beer. Something else too, darker liquor, maybe. Yngve is sour from sweat. Miller is wearing a yellow sweater with exposed stitching. Wallace watches the blunted ends of Miller’s fingers, their thick knuckles. Yngve crosses his legs. A white sickle-shaped scar across his knee, faint railroad track scar. Wallace reaches down, presses his thumb to it, can feel the tension in Miller’s gaze as surely as if it were a thread caught to his hand. Yngve gives a little involuntary shiver under Wallace’s thumb. Miller gives the vape back to Yngve. The coarse blond hair of Yngve’s leg. He traces the scar; Yngve shivers again.

“How did this happen?” Wallace asks.

“I’ve had that for years,” Yngve says. “I got it right before I came to grad school. It was from soccer, all those years. Junky joints.” A silver shred of vapor from the corner of his mouth. He rests the back of his head against the wall. “They went in and cleaned it out for me.”

Wallace is still stroking the scar when he looks up, spots Miller staring at him. Wallace takes his hand away. Yngve passes the vape to Miller.

“Does it hurt?”

“No,” Yngve says. “It doesn’t. Before, that’s when it hurt like hell. But now, nothing.” Yngve presses his palm flat to his knee, and Wallace watches as he gives it a squeeze as if to emphasize his point. Wallace drinks.

“Some night tonight,” Miller says.

“Some night,” Yngve says. It’s Wallace’s turn to shiver.

“Is that what you were talking about before? When I came in?”

“No,” Yngve says quickly, but then he laughs. “Yeah, I guess we were.”

“I didn’t know all that about Cole and Vincent,” Miller says.

“Me either, but maybe we should have guessed.”

“I mean, they fight, but not like this,” Miller says, frowning. “But I guess you can’t know what other people are doing. Or feeling.”

Yngve nudges Wallace’s side, and Wallace cannot tell if it is because Yngve is saying that Wallace is the one who started it all or if he is saying that he suspects something is going on between the two of them, Wallace and Miller. Either implication leaves Wallace feeling cold and afraid. So he shrugs, and Yngve laughs again. It’s not a mocking sort of laughter, glinting and ferocious. Nor is it entirely insinuating, winking. After a few moments, Wallace realizes that Yngve is just laughing at Miller.

Yngve says, “Listen to him over here. Real wise guy.”

“Shut it,” Miller snaps back, but there’s a crooked grin on his face.

“Do you think they’ll split up?” Wallace asks, out of guilt more than anything. “Do you really think they’ll break up over it?”

“No, it was dumb,” Miller says. “I’m sure they’ll be fine. They went home together.”

“They did? When?” Wallace asks. “God. Fuck. I wish I’d gotten to say something before they left.”

“You said enough,” Yngve says, still smiling. He puts his arm around Wallace’s neck and pulls him close. “Little Wally got himself into enough for one night, I think.”

Miller hums in assent, and Wallace feels a quick pulse of hurt. But they are right, he knows. Nothing he could have said would have made them feel better. And yet he went off with Miller instead of cleaning up after himself. He let himself be drawn away and comforted. But was it comfort? Talking to Miller, feeling a little worse with every word he said? That’s the strange thing about it, he thinks. That he started that story in order to feel better or to feel clearer, started it because it seemed a thing within his grasp and Miller had asked him to and it felt good to give Miller something he wanted. But Wallace does not feel better for having told Miller all that. He does not feel happier or comforted. Perhaps it was right after all, he thinks. A kind of justice.

“When did they leave? When did everyone go?”

“A little while ago. You were asleep.”

“You two did vanish, that’s true,” Yngve says.

“I got sick,” Wallace says.

Yngve does not look at Wallace. He looks at Miller.

“Is that so?”

“And I owed him for last night. Helping me.”

“You two are so chummy these days,” Yngve says.

“I hate him,” Wallace says. Yngve pinches the side of Wallace’s neck.