Real Life(54)

“You didn’t do anything wrong. Besides, I guess I’ve been walking around waiting for someone to ask.”

“Have you?”

“Maybe so,” Wallace says. “Maybe we all are? I don’t know.”

“When I told you that stuff about my mom last night—I didn’t know about your parents, about what he did. I feel pretty stupid,” Miller says.

“Oh,” Wallace says. “That’s what this is about. You feeling stupid. I see.”

“Jesus. That isn’t what I meant at all, Wallace. That isn’t what I meant. What a thing to say.”

“It seemed like that’s what you meant,” Wallace says because he cannot stop himself and because he is familiar with this version of things between them. The scolding, halting nature of their relationship is a comfort to him in this moment. Miller clenches his jaw and breathes heavily out his nose. Wallace sees a cluster of tiny blackheads at the corner of his nose.

“What do you want from me?” Miller asks.

“Nothing. I don’t want anything from you.”

“Okay, right, all right, then,” Miller says, nodding stiffly. He puts his head flat back against the low counter. He closes his eyes. “You are exhausting. You are completely exhausting.”

“Then I should go home.”

“If you want me to tell you to go home, I’m not going to do that. If you want to go, go. Stop trying to make excuses.”

“You just called me exhausting.”

“Because you are,” Miller says. His eyes are squeezed tight. Wallace presses his thumb to the wrinkled surface of Miller’s eyelids. He’s warm. Damp from the cool air coming in through the open door, but he’s warm. His chest is broad. Wallace’s hand slips down to his throat. The low, steady rhythm of Miller’s pulse. Wallace should know better. He knows that. Picking fights over petty things, over invisible things.

“If I’m so exhausting, then why don’t you kick me out?” he says as he straddles Miller’s lap. He lets his weight rock back against the tops of Miller’s thighs. “If I’m so exhausting, then just tell me to beat it.” Wallace presses his thumb into the smooth, firm cartilage below Miller’s Adam’s apple. The silvery surfaces of Miller’s eyes pass along the creases of his lids, which have now slit open as if released by the pressure of Wallace at his throat. Like a tiny machine. Like a toy. Press one place and see another pop open. Miller wets his lips. His face comes close to Wallace, but Wallace pushes him back, flattens his palm against his throat, so that Miller encounters the resistance of Wallace’s body. The more Miller pushes, the tighter Wallace’s hand cinches around his throat. They’re caught this way, separated by sharp, angular distances. Miller grunts under him. Wallace feels him swallow.

Miller relaxes. The tension in his body goes slack, and for just an instant Wallace fears he’s done something horribly stupid. He lets go, and in that instant, a span of time like the head of a pin, Miller snatches his wrists and drags Wallace’s hands down to his stomach to bring the two of them as close as possible. Wallace blinks and suddenly there they are together, faces close enough that their noses touch, their lips touch, their cheeks touch. They’re so close that Wallace feels he can see the red crescents of the insides of Miller’s eyelids, so close he can hear the blood rushing in Miller’s body, so close he might mistake that rushing blood for his own.

“Cheap,” Wallace says, but he can’t get his wrists loose. Miller’s got him cinched up tight. Wallace struggles a little harder, but Miller will not let him go. He pulls back and away, but he goes nowhere. Miller is stronger than he is. It isn’t fear that Wallace feels, exactly, in this moment. It doesn’t have that wild, gamy taste. There’s something else, regret, in its place.

Miller watches him from beneath his heavy eyelids. “Ask for what you want,” he says.

“Fuck you.”

“Be a good boy.”

Good boy.

“I was never good.”

“Me either,” Miller says.

“Yeah, right,” Wallace says, but then Miller’s expression goes a little sad and Wallace remembers what Miller told him. About his mother, who had died, and how things had not always been easy and good between them. “Oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.”

“Sure you did. Of course you did.”

“We were just talking.”

“Just talking,” Miller says a little meanly. “That’s what we’re doing. Who knew?”

There’s a little more give to Miller’s hold on him, so Wallace takes his chance and gets himself free. His wrists burn from the tension of Miller’s hands, from the structure of his grasp. On the undersides of Wallace’s arms, where he’s palest, he can see the dark red afterimage of Miller’s palms. He slips from Miller’s lap back to the floor. Miller has closed his eyes again. It’s as if the past few minutes never happened.

Wallace wonders if this means that he should leave. He presses his thumb down against the back of Miller’s hand, where it rests on the floor. He digs at the skin with his thumbnail, and Miller jolts again, jerks back to life. It’s like before, with Yngve. What is this part of him, Wallace wonders, that makes him provoke people this way? What is it in him?