Look Both Ways(78)

“Aw, thank you. You’re amazing, too.” I put the flowers down so I can hug him. He holds on to me a little longer than I expected, but it makes me feel calmer to be held so tightly. I close my eyes and lean my cheek against his crisp white shirt. “Thank you for everything,” I say. “Working with you has been the very best part of my summer.”



“Me too,” he says. He pulls back a little bit, and I’m about to ask whether his parents are here to see the show, when my friend cups my face in his hand, leans in, and puts his lips on my lips.

I stumble back a few steps. “What are you doing?”

Russell stares at me in horror, like he’s just realized he’s naked in a room full of people. His hand still hovers in the air where it was resting on my cheek. “Wow, I’m so sorry,” he says. “I thought…Did you get back together with your boyfriend?”

“My…what?”

“The guy who…You said someone broke up with you earlier in the week?”

“It wasn’t a guy,” I say, because I’m too shocked to keep my filter in place. “It was Zoe. I was dating Zoe.”

“What? Didn’t you say she had a boyfriend?”

“She did. She does. It’s complicated.”

Russell blinks a bunch of times. “So, wait. You’re gay?”

“No,” I say. “I thought for a while that I might like— I mean, I tried to— No. I’m not gay. But I, um, I thought you…”

I didn’t think his eyes could get any wider, but they do. “Are you serious? I’ve had a crush on you the entire summer.”

“But…I thought you and Olivier…”

“Olivier? He’s, like, fifty! That’s disgusting!”

“But you always seemed so happy whenever you were with him, and you said that thing about how you wanted to staple yourself to his side and how you’d die to get inside his studio. You complimented his hair. You have a picture of him in your phone.”



“The other person in that picture is my sister,” Russell says. “He spoke at her school, and she went and got his book signed for me.”

“Oh.” I feel unbelievably stupid now; it’s not like Russell ever said he had a crush on his boss. “Sorry. It’s just…you’re always talking about how great he is.”

“He is great. That’s why I want him to give me a job. My career has a crush on Olivier. The rest of me likes you. I thought you knew that.”

“No,” I say. “I had no idea.” But now that I’m looking back on my interactions with Russell, I can’t believe I didn’t figure this out sooner. He wasn’t even subtle about how much he liked me. I was just too preoccupied with Zoe to notice.

Russell runs his fingers through his gelled hair, and the left half sticks straight up. “I mean, you never pulled away when I put my arm around you, and you, like, cuddled with me on my bed, and I guess I thought—”

“Everyone here touches each other like that,” I say. “Tons of gay guys like to snuggle with girls. I thought you were one of those.”

“Oh. I…Wow.” Russell looks around the empty theater, like he’s trying to find a solution scrawled on the wall. “So you don’t…I mean, you wouldn’t even consider…” He makes a vague gesture at himself.

I look at him—really look hard at that face that’s become so familiar and comforting to me—and I try to figure out if I could have the sort of feelings for Russell that I thought I had for Zoe. But it’s not something you can pinpoint like that. Attraction’s not like a Breathalyzer test—blow into a tube, and you know if it’s in your system. It’s more like an unpredictable pet. Sometimes it plays dead at your feet when you expect it to jump up and lick your face. Sometimes it wakes you up in the middle of the night when all you want is to be left alone.



“I don’t know,” I say. “I like you so much, Russell. But I’ve never really thought about you like that, and I need to take a break from dating right now, anyway. I need some time to get over all the stuff with Zoe.”

“What exactly happened with you guys?”

I shrug. I don’t know how to talk about any of it yet, so I go for the simplest possible explanation. “We tried to be together. It didn’t work out.”

“Because you don’t like girls.”

“Well, yeah. I mean, I don’t know. I didn’t like her the way I thought.”

“So you dumped her? I thought you said she broke up with you.”

It’s so obvious, but somehow, I haven’t thought about it that way until right this minute. I’ve been waiting for Zoe to tell me she was wrong for yelling at me, that she was sorry for the way things turned out between us. But I’m the one who ended things. Of course she’s not going to apologize to the person who rejected her and made her feel worthless. If I ever want her to speak to me again, it’s my responsibility to make things right. Playing a subtextual song about Macbeth in her vicinity doesn’t count. It’s not even a good start.



“Yeah,” I say. “I guess I did.”

“I get that you need some time,” Russell says. “But maybe someday, when you’re feeling better, we could give this a shot?”