We Could Be So Good

by Cat Sebastian

He has a cluster of tiny freckles at the corner of his mouth shaped like a copy editor’s caret and, since Nick can’t stop looking at them, those freckles are going to ruin his career.

Nick has spent years making sure that when people look at him, they don’t see anything that sticks out like a sore thumb—they don’t see anything at all, they hardly even see a person, just a man in a suit.

Andy gives him this flat, disappointed look that Nick recognizes because Nick invented it and now he’s going to have to sue Andy for copyright infringement.

“And you called me because I’m the only person you’ve ever met who knows how to use a wrench.”

Nick tries not to think about the fact that he spends most of his life doing his best to avoid talking to his brother but would get him on the phone in a heartbeat for Andy Fleming’s fucking sink.

“I’m happy for you.” And Nick is. He really is. If he’s jealous, it’s probably only a faint pang, and he’s been through worse.

Is Nick so mired in gay paranoia that he can’t even admit to being friends with another man without thinking vice cops are about to crawl out from under the desks and arrest him? Is he so used to being lonely that even companionship feels dangerous?

He knows it isn’t that funny, and that the combination of stress and alcohol has gone to his head, but the idea that Nick thinks sex is fine as long as you wear a rubber and everyone has a good time strikes Andy as the funniest thing he’s ever heard.

it seems to Andy that if Nick deliberately chose his apartment for how inaccessible it is to and from his mother’s house, he couldn’t have done any better.

He knows why he’s this way and that doesn’t make it any less embarrassing.

He squeezes his eyes shut, hoping that when he opens them, he won’t be in a room where his father is accusing him of having a queer affair with his best friend. Or, not accusing so much as being blandly indifferent, which is even more rattling.

If anything is in his blood, it’s this. And the fact that it’s all going to go to hell on his watch keeps him up at night.

making Andy suspect that Nick secretly likes waking up early. This is the most disturbing thing he’s learned about Nick or possibly anyone.

cruising.” “Where did you learn that word?” Nick looks so aghast that Andy starts laughing. “I’m a man of the world.”

Everything is simpler and safer if he doesn’t think about that, and Andy has long since made peace with being the kind of person who doesn’t swim against the current.

Sure, he’s looked at men and felt the same thing as when he looks at women, but he’s always known he wasn’t going to do anything about it.

That’s what newspapers do, isn’t it? They make things concrete, they make it hard to look away.

It feels much longer ago than that, as if it happened on the other side of a divide, because then he was helping a friend, and now he’s helping—he’s helping Nick, and he doesn’t know what that means. He doesn’t want to know.

Nick looks stricken, like he’s never considered the possibility of anyone being sad about his literal murder.

She’s the second person this week to assume that he’s Nick’s—whatever—and the idea makes his face heat with something he tells himself is plain embarrassment.

Andy worries that it’s his lot in life to be mocked by elderly Italian women.

When Nick gets up to bring the dishes to the sink, he claps Andy on the shoulder and, Jesus Christ, Andy needs to get a grip.

Andy is depending on the correct adjective to act as a key to unlock the confusion in his mind, to open a door that doesn’t have “Congratulations, You’re Queer” printed in huge letters on the other side.

Something theoretical has become something altogether too real, too concrete, and there’s no wriggling away from the fact that this is very gay.

Christ. The fact that he still can’t think of how to end that sentence can’t be a good sign.

Have you lost your mind, Andy?” Well, probably, but he doesn’t think now is the time to say so.

The man Nick was talking to was good-looking and seemed nice enough, but Nick would rather have gone home with Andy and watched second-rate television.

He often wishes he could have more actual friends, but friendliness is a fine second best.

If he wants what that man had to offer, he can find it that very night, in one of any number of similar bars. But that isn’t what he wants, and that’s the problem.

But the knowledge that his belonging to that family is contingent on keeping a secret—on implicitly agreeing that a part of him needs to be hidden away—makes him feel fragile in a way he hates, and so he keeps his distance.

because apparently Bailey has taken it upon himself to be Nick’s personal sad gay librarian.

Andy cheers like he’s never heard of a jinx, like he doesn’t know what kind of a sorry deal optimism buys you.

Dates exist in the same universe as Sputnik: he’s aware they exist and are important to a lot of people, but he’s never expected them to factor into his own life.

He could, in theory, just ask, but that’s a lunatic idea and he’s having none of it.

But Nick’s tired of dead queers. Nick’s tired of people like him having to suffer in order to provide the right kind of ending. He’s done his time with shame and doesn’t want any more of it.

It’s something like kinship, a concept that he finds himself reaching for despite it never having done him any good.

Even the company of the world’s least competent cat is better than no company at all.

Every now and then he thinks that maybe it would be easier to tell the world, even though it would mean throwing away safety and saying goodbye to the life he’s worked so hard for. He’s always thought that this feeling is in the same category as standing at the top of a tall building and wondering what it would be like to jump off, a fleeting impulse of pure self-destruction that doesn’t really amount to anything.

It isn’t until they’re on the subway, Andy holding a quart jar of Bolognese like it’s a newborn baby, that Nick realizes that the sauce was his mother’s ploy to figure out whether Andy is still living with Nick.

with Andy sitting beside him, cradling a stupid jar of sauce, occasionally flicking pleased, shy glances in his direction, he’s almost prepared to believe good things, however far-fetched.

“I don’t fold my underpants,” he grumbles. “No, the ladies at the laundry place do.”

“Besides, I’m not calm at all. It’s just that you’re clearly about to lose your marbles and there really can be only one crazy person at a time here.”

“This couch?” Andy asks eventually. He looks accusingly at it, as if it’s made a lot of mistakes in its life.

The warmth of wanting and being wanted start to push away some of the fear and sadness.

His father is the only family he has, and while Andy isn’t sure he ought to care about that, the fact is that he does.

God knows she never cooked soup or anything else in her entire life and was hardly the kind of person who could be described as nurturing. She would have shot anyone who called her nurturing, and that thought only makes him miss her more.

“I swear to God, Andrew Fleming, if you use the word canoodling one more time, my dick will never get hard again.”

It’s never hard to ask Nick for help or to let him see the frightened and awkward parts that Andy usually keeps hidden away.

That’s the thing about walls. They don’t tend to appear for no good reason; they’re either closing something off or holding something up, and you can’t just wish them away.

“Do you have a copy of Phaedrus?” he calls out. “Do I have a what?” “Plato’s Phaedrus.” “Oh yeah. Sure, it’s right over by the— No, I fucking don’t have any Plato in my apartment, for fuck’s sake, Andrew.”