Platonic (11 page)

“Mark Savoy,” Daniel eventually says, sounding pleasantly surprised. “Finally made it to New York City.”

Mark laughs, awkwardly, blushing even though he doesn’t know why. Ben is watching. “Daniel O’Shea,” he returns. “Exactly where I left you.”

He regrets it the second it’s out. But all three of them laugh anyway.

***

They get coffee at a little café just around the corner. Daniel seems to know the man behind the counter and speaks quickly to him, securing them a table out in the sun. They order their coffees, and Mark declines when Ben offers to split a slice of chocolate cake with him.

Mark still can’t stop staring at Daniel. He waits for the reunion to punch him in the gut and leave him sobbing. He remembers having his heart broken when he was barely eighteen years old, and he remembers how many months it took to stop crying at night. He expects it all to come back but instead he just feels awkward, sitting between his ex-high school sweetheart and the man he’s about to move to New York with.

Picking up on at least some of what is transpiring, Ben laughs and introduces himself, talks for both of them and answers Daniel’s polite questions about what they’re doing in New York.

Eventually, inevitably, Daniel turns his eyes to Mark. He sips his latte and says, “I thought you were going to work at your dad’s firm?”

“How did you know that?”

“Rita,” is all Daniel says, and tilts his head as though that’s explanation enough. It’s true: Everything Mark knows about Daniel has come through his very rare social media interactions with their one remaining mutual friend.

“Ah,” Mark acknowledges and smiles. He thinks Daniel would be so proud to hear the full story, to see how far Mark has come; it was always a small bone of contention between them, the way Mark let himself be treated by his family. At the time Daniel didn’t get it. He couldn’t empathize when he had things so good at home. But now the story feels complete and Daniel looks older, wiser.

“A big-time law firm just wasn’t for me,” Mark says.

“No kidding,” Daniel interrupts with a smile. Ben looks back and forth between them.

“All the suits and the multibillion-dollar cases and the faceless corporations as clients.” Mark shrugs. “I’m too much of a people person. Working for the state makes more sense. It’s what I want.”

“You’ll still have to wear suits,” Daniel points out, and Mark shrugs as he smiles. Daniel’s expression turns almost wistful and his fingers flex around his coffee cup. “You sound so sure.”

“I interned with them last summer, so I kind of am.”

Ben hears the surprise in Daniel’s voice as he speaks suddenly and a little too loudly: “You were here last summer?”

“And the summer before, interning at Whitney & Tomlins,” Ben provides. He watches Daniel’s face and sees the disappointment.

“You should have told me,” Daniel says, not looking away from Mark for even a moment.

And now this is even more awkward than stories of teenage love and stupidity. Mark takes a long swallow of too-hot coffee and shrugs, then lies: “I wasn’t even sure you were still in New York.”

There isn’t very much to say to that, and Ben is there, changing the subject and directing the conversation until they’ve drunk their coffees and Daniel looks at his watch.

They say goodbye and Ben watches; they do not exchange numbers.

***

Mark’s phone buzzes that night while they’re sitting side by side on the hotel bed trying to agree on a movie to watch. It’s a text from Rita—he has no idea how she got this number.

It’s Rita. I hear you bumped into Daniel today. Shame on you for not telling anyone you were going to be in New York.

Mark looks toward Ben, who isn’t paying attention, and then sends a quick reply.

Making the move permanently in a few weeks.

Another text comes back immediately:

We should catch up. All three of us, just like old times.

Mark sighs loudly enough for Ben to look over at him and the phone still lit up in his hands. “What’s up?”

“You remember I told you I went to school with Rita Sutherland?”

“Yeah.”

“She wants to catch up; she’s heard I’m in New York.”

“That’s awesome.” Ben stares at him a little longer, taking in the frown and pushing anyway. “Actually, she’d be a fantastic contact for me.”

Mark controls his face to avoid showing disappointment and just nods. “I said we’d organize something when you and I have everything set up.”

“That’d be great.”

Mark makes a noncommittal noise and drops his phone into the bedside table drawer.

***

Ben doesn’t mention Daniel and their impromptu coffee for a few days. Instead it seems he has chosen to dwell on it privately and attempt to work out what he observed alone. Mark is just fine with that, putting off what suddenly feels inevitable even as he works to ignore it. He knows it was obvious that there are still feelings, something strange and complicated under the surface that wasn’t love or longing at all. He wasn’t lying when he said that it had been over almost a decade ago.

When Ben does casually bring it up, he compares Daniel to his own high school relationships. Ben had kissed three people during high school. Two boys and a girl, he tells Mark. He remembers her name, and the boy he lost his virginity to, but not the other one. And if he ran into any of them there would be no tension; it wouldn’t be weird like it was between Mark and Daniel. Mark can tell that Ben wonders if he’s lying, and after three tense days, Ben asks him point-blank for an explanation their first night back in California.

Mark just shrugs it off, though he knows that isn’t what Ben wants. He says simply that at the time it had hurt to break up with someone he was so committed to.

Sure enough, Ben pushes for more and asks Mark what he isn’t saying. He gets angry, and in turn Mark gets defensive. He hardly ever fights with Ben, and never ever like this. So while Ben yells at him, Mark just grimaces and nods along with every accusation, unwilling to admit to the truth—not out loud, not to someone else, not when he has pushed it so far down inside him for so long. Not when he hasn’t admitted it to himself in almost a decade, even when Patrick asked and probed and made him think.

He won’t say it, and then Ben is threatening to kick him out, and Mark feels his heart clench. But it is nowhere near as bad as heartbreak felt when he was young, and that terrifies him.

So, he tells Ben all of it: that he and Daniel were soul mates and somehow they lost each other.

“Do you know how scary it is to see him again and feel all of it come back? For it to still hurt this much?”

Ben stares at him, gobsmacked and unable to speak.

“I fucked it up, and it was so long ago that I can’t even blame myself anymore because I was a fucked up teenager, fucking up a relationship I didn’t even really comprehend and that I sure as hell didn’t have the capacity to be realistic about. It was just this idealized thing and when it fell apart it was like waking up from the very best dream, except it went on hurting so much.” Mark sighs and pushes his fingers through his hair, trying not to get angry because that won’t help anybody. “It was an unrealistically perfect teenage romance, but I still think maybe I fucked up the very best thing I was ever going to have in my life. Seeing him the other day…” He trails off and doesn’t tell Ben he hasn’t been able to stop thinking about Daniel.

“Do you love him more than me?” Ben asks.

Mark has to laugh. He shakes his head and settles his hands on his hips. “I don’t love him; I barely know him.” He shakes his head again and stares at the floor. “I love you. This is completely separate from us, this is… I fucked up something years ago, and because of that I missed out on having something magical that probably could have lasted forever... probably. I mean, who knows. That’s what matters here, isn’t it? The fact that somehow Daniel and I lost each other.”

Ben looks as if he’s been slapped, so he stops. Ben is standing at the foot of the bed with his arms crossed. He stares at his boyfriend, at the way Mark’s cheeks flush red and tears spill over when he blinks and he sighs. “You’re supposed to feel that way about me,” Ben says, and his voice cracks hard at the end.

“Yeah.” Mark continues. “Except I haven’t lost you; I don’t want to lose you. And soul mates are meant to find each other when they need each other, when they’re ready, and sure, maybe I needed him in high school, and I think he needed me, but…” Mark trails off, opens his eyes and feels the room spin. “Now I need someone for forever because I am ready for that. I am not some seventeen-year-old kid who doesn’t know how or what to want for myself, let alone how to get it. Now I am so, so ready. I’m ready for the next step. I want the forever, the kids and a house and a family and a future. I want
you
.”

He crosses the room, moving closer to Ben, who is staring at him as if he doesn’t know him. Mark pulls his arms uncrossed, wraps both his hands around Ben’s and stops himself from saying Daniel’s name out loud again.

Mark does want Ben, and he wants everything he just said. But that day in New York, having coffee with Daniel, he realized that Daniel, right now, would be perfect. The Daniel he used to know, but grown up and still in love with him, a fantasy; instead he has Ben, who is great, who is everything, but isn’t quite the Daniel that Mark imagines fitting him perfectly. Mark doesn’t even
know
the real Daniel anymore, but he can’t stop thinking about him.

Swallowing, Mark kisses Ben’s mouth. The kiss is messy and too wet with the few tears he couldn’t stop. It takes a moment too long, but Ben kisses him back.

Then Mark lies through his teeth. “Don’t ask me about him. He was just a silly high school boyfriend, and it hurts now because it hurt so much back then.”

Ben doesn’t seem as if he wants to agree, but he does anyway, and they drop into the bed and kiss and touch each other until neither one of them is thinking about Daniel.

***

It’s three in the morning when Mark slips from beneath the rumpled sheets and onto the floor. He sits with his laptop on his knees, his ears trained on Ben’s even breathing, and finds Patrick’s email address and types quickly. Patrick is the only one who knows the whole story, and Mark believes that he may be the only one who could understand even a small portion of what’s going on in his heart. Patrick will mock him, and it might take days to get a response, but Patrick watched him change in so many ways and Patrick is still his friend. In this moment, that’s what he needs.

Mark ends up on the brink of tears again, but manages to get his thoughts on the screen and out of his head and convince himself he is right. Because he knows that even if he had Daniel, if he had always had Daniel and Daniel hadn’t met someone else in New York and moved on because he thought he had to, if Mark had somehow managed to make it through the rest of his senior year and flown to Daniel’s side, he knows he wouldn’t be the same person he is today. If he hadn’t lost Daniel he would never have had his heart broken and he never would have learned how to slowly put it back together. He wouldn’t have the courage and the hindsight to know he should have told his boyfriend how much he missed him every day, that he wanted him back in Illinois and needed him to wait for Mark even though it would hurt. Everything happens for a reason, right? And he is stronger and better and happier because, at seventeen, he fucked up the best relationship he’ll ever have.

He is nothing like seventeen-year-old Mark. Seventeen-year-old Mark would not be going to New York to work in the D.A.’s office. He would not be
happy.

Not that any of it matters. He just gets the thoughts out and into the ether, hits send and then crawls back into bed and wraps himself tightly around the man there.

He has Ben. He loves Ben.

CHAPTER 6

Then he loses Ben. Or maybe he lets him go, he’s not sure which. One day he’s in love, properly, fully in love and he’s so sure Ben is as well because when it’s over, it is heartbreaking and angry and messy.

In the end, Ben cares more than Mark does—probably because he’s never had his heart broken, but maybe simply because it’s really nothing like the months-long destruction Mark went through in high school.

They scream at each other three nights in a row just weeks after they move to New York. Ben accuses Mark of being everything he isn’t. Mark stares back with empty eyes and wonders if he’ll ever find a relationship that truly works for him. Ben all but chases him out of the apartment on the third night, into the still-humid New York streets, and Mark wonders where to go.

He has a credit card and he thinks he could probably call his parents. He has colleagues that he’s only just beginning to get to know. He isn’t hopeless. But, he thinks, he’s now homeless in New York City, with work tomorrow, and he no longer has the means to rent any of the apartments he looked at a month ago. Certainly not the one Ben leased for them.

He sits in a diner and lingers over his food. He ends up shooting Rita a text because she’s the only other person in New York he really knows, even if he hasn’t spoken to her in person for almost ten years.

That’s how he ends up standing in the front hall of her Upper East Side apartment, dripping water onto her carpet and apologizing over and over because he had no idea the mid-fall storm was even forecast. Dressed in satin pajama pants and a tank top under her silk dressing gown, Rita looks him up and down. Then she drags him in for a hug, kissing him on both cheeks twice and laughing off the inconvenience as she leads him inside.

“It’s really good to see you,” is all she says once they’re settled opposite each other on chairs at the kitchen island.

She lets him talk until four in the morning and then gives him the spare room. He hasn’t mentioned Daniel at all, only Ben and Patrick and Stanford, but as she hovers in the doorway, checking to see that he has everything he needs, he begs her not to tell Daniel anything. She tells him Daniel hasn’t mentioned him since they ran into each other a month ago and that she’s not even sure he realizes the move has been made permanent. Mark sighs his relief, and Rita frowns at him.