We Could Be So Good

by Cat Sebastian

“Stop looking at me like I’m about to peel off my false mustache and reveal that I’m three KGB agents in a trench coat.”

please this had better not be the trope of the girl who gets broken up with but she’s not mad because she’s an # ally like come on

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?

Nick begins to unlace Andy’s shoes, muttering something about animals who wear shoes indoors. Andy can’t imagine why animals would wear shoes anywhere.

“We’re friends,” Andy says. And it doesn’t feel like an understatement or a euphemism; it feels like the bedrock of the truth, the inescapable fact of who they are.

If anyone asked him whether he’s afraid of nuclear war, his knee-jerk response would be yes. Of course he is—everybody knows that any attack on America would hit New York. But if he starts thinking about it—his mother hurt, Sal frightened at school—he won’t be able to do anything else. He can’t contemplate nuclear death and also go grocery shopping and leave milk on the fire escape for the idiot cat and make sure Andy has clean handkerchiefs.