Platonic (8 page)

Mark wanted to say no, but he couldn’t. It ached: just the idea of pretending this wasn’t all going to be over any second now made him feel sick. Mark couldn’t even make sense of it and when he did speak he said, “Of course.”

***

Mark hadn’t laid eyes on Daniel’s bedroom for two months. Not since he’d slid out of bed early that August morning after Daniel finished drawing him and hugged him goodbye.

It didn’t look much different from the last time. Some of the pictures had been moved around, Mark thought, and instead of the two big suitcases Daniel had packed for New York there was now only one small case pushed into the corner. The sheets were a different shade of blue, and the bed was unmade.

An eyebrow arched before Mark could stop himself: He didn’t think he had ever seen Daniel’s bed unmade—unless they were in it, of course, or just getting out of it.

Daniel darted past him, wringing his hands, grabbing the sheets and flicking them out quickly, letting them gently float back onto the mattress. He blushed; he knew exactly what Mark wasn’t saying.

“I slept in this morning,” he mumbled. “And technically I’m on holiday.”

Mark laughed. “I wasn’t judging.”

Daniel turned on him, defensive, with his chin stuck out. Mark had
missed
that. “Yes, you were.”

Mark laughed again. “Not in a bad way, though.”

Daniel just clicked his tongue and fluffed the pillows but, Mark noticed, didn’t move to tuck the sheets in properly. Mark wanted to run almost as much as he wanted to stay, wanted this whole year to be over and forgotten, and being here, with Daniel, reminded him that it wasn’t even nearly finished. It reminded him that in a few days he would have to start again: stop himself from messaging and calling and answering every email with long, detailed paragraphs full of in-jokes and questions and endearments.

He was astounded that they had clicked as if it hadn’t been months.He had expected awkwardness and distance on every level; he hadn’t been prepared for any sort of closeness. Now he didn’t know whether to talk to Daniel about what was happening or not, whether or not he needed to push Daniel away again to make sure he went back to New York and kept living.

It was still only November.

“Can I kiss you?” Daniel asked. He sounded shy but his eyes were set and determined.

No.

He was standing so close, though, and Mark could smell him and see the flecks of gold in his eyes, could feel the butterfly-soft brush of Daniel’s fingertips up his forearm and hear the hope in the shallowness of his breath.

Daniel’s eyes flickered down to Mark’s lips for a second and then he licked his own and Mark’s face automatically tilted down in the smallest acquiescence.

The last two inches between them disappeared and Daniel kissed him, soft and tentative, as though he had almost forgotten how, both boys conscious of how their caress of lips on lips was barely more than a light pressure.

But Mark’s hands came up and grasped at Daniel’s hips, digging in and feeling more bone, less softness than he remembered, and Daniel’s fingertips kept tracing faint, easy lines over the exposed skin of Mark’s arms. They held each other like that for as long as they could bear it.

Then they broke apart, hands still against each other as their eyes met and they breathed.

Something he saw made Daniel ask, “Is this okay?”

And Mark shivered and gave in, choked and begged and fell forward once more: “
Please…”

***

When Mark snuck out an hour later it was still midafternoon and Daniel was snoring softly. He looked beautiful against the sheets, only his underwear pulled back on after they’d finished, his hair still mussed and twisted from where Mark’s hands had been. He was smiling and he hadn’t stirred.

Watching him felt wonderful until it felt the opposite, and then Mark scribbled a note only because he thought he had to and left it on the pillow that smelt like them.

Had to get home. I’ll see you for Christmas. I love you. —M

He hoped Daniel would wake up and be okay with it; he even hoped Daniel would be a little angry because perhaps that would make going back to New York easier. In his car, Mark put on a playlist of his favorite instrumental pop song covers and drove for hours and hours until the low-gas light came on and it was dark out.

Sitting in the driveway of his parents’ imposing two-story Victorian, Mark finally checked the text that had pinged onto his phone hours before.

I love you and I’m counting the days.

He read it and then read it again and felt like throwing up, though he wasn’t prepared to think about why. His fingers itched with the need to respond, to say
I love you
back, to thank Daniel, to beg him to leave, then to wait, then to forget him again.
Just a little bit longer.

He shook his head to try to clear it and then deleted the message from his phone forever. Inside, he didn’t bother turning on any lights, just stole a beer from the fridge, put his McDonald’s on the coffee table and settled in front of the TV.

Daniel didn’t send him another message until after he’d flown back to New York.

***

The weeks after Thanksgiving were harder than the weeks before. His classes seemed pointless and he couldn’t make time for his friends. His father was suddenly home all the time, watching him work at the big wooden desk in the second study and constantly correcting his college admissions essays and applications. He was applying to too many schools, but that was the one thing his father wouldn’t critique. He had to keep his options open because he hadn’t lived up to expectations, and his father was no longer sure he would make the cut for Stanford or Harvard or Yale.

He kept working, though, rewriting rewrites of essays for schools he didn’t care about and swallowing any emotion his father elicited. He had a stupid fight with Rita Sutherland, one of the few friends he still had, and that spilled over until all his friends were keeping their distance. He dropped out of every single club and team he was on because he didn’t have time and saw no point. And then suddenly all his college applications were in.

He had time to breathe but couldn’t, and Daniel was calling and leaving messages, emailing and wanting to know what was wrong. Mark had no idea how Daniel had even noticed anything was wrong; he never had before. So he sent Daniel a long email, too many feelings spilling onto the computer screen in justifications of and allowances for his behavior and for his pain, for screwing everything up, thoughts that all contradicted each other and wouldn’t make sense. Mark wrote things he hadn’t said since the night before Daniel went to New York.

Don’t wait for me.

New York is more important than me.

Enjoy it.

And then:

What happened over Thanksgiving was a mistake. It hurts so much.

He sent it and cried, and when he got to school the next day Rita slapped him across the face so hard that it should have hurt. Rita was still Daniel’s friend too, even though she was stuck in Illinois and Daniel was off in New York. She was a fiercely intimidating woman, physically tiny but voracious for life. She kept her olive skin flawless and her black hair up in a tight bun at all times, came to school every day of the week wearing red lipstick, with her eyes darkly made-up, and she was passionately protective of her friends. She planned to go to New York the following year and she still spoke to Daniel every day, listening to every story he had to tell with eager anticipation.

She slapped Mark in the hallway, making a scene, and demanded, “What is wrong with you?”

Defeated, all Mark could offer was, “I’m trying to do what’s best for him.”

Mark didn’t think too much about any of it after that, and Daniel didn’t send him another text or email until the lead-up to Christmas. Then an onslaught of messages from Daniel, texts and emails and voicemails begged him for some sort of contact, but Mark couldn’t give him any.

He drove to the O’Shea residence one day after school, a week before Daniel was due back, and knocked on the door with his head already hanging. Daniel’s father Greg answered, surprised to see him, his voice just as gruff and standoffish as ever.

Still, when Mark explained that he just wanted to collect some of his old books, he was allowed inside and told to help himself.

He walked up the stairs as slowly and quietly as he dared, able to smell Daniel’s mom, Molly, a hint of her perfume and something cooking in the kitchen; and if he really concentrated, he thought perhaps he could still smell Daniel. In his room, the bed was stripped of its sheets and many of the shelves were bare.

He found the books he’d lent Daniel over the summer, pushed them into his bag and stood there for just a moment’s reprieve.

“He misses you, you know?”

Mark jumped to hear Molly just behind him. She was leaning on the door, her arms crossed and her face grim. “He doesn’t know why you stopped talking to him.”

“Mrs O’Shea,’ Mark stuttered. “I’m really sorry, but—”

“Are you okay, Mark?” she asked. He could tell she meant it as more than a footnote to her son’s well-being. “You look tired.”

As he exhaled, Mark felt everything inside him threaten to break. So he collected his thoughts, hugged his backpack tighter in his hands and mustered a smile. “It’s been a hard year, so far.”

She nodded as though she understood.

“I have to go,” he said.

She moved out of his way, out of Daniel’s room and watched him brush past her and start down the stairs. “He’d be happy to see you over Christmas,” she called after him. “And you’re welcome here any time.”

Mark didn’t look back, just raced out the door and into his car and drove straight home.

They didn’t see each other once over Christmas even though Daniel sent him a handful of messages before he went home to New York.

Somehow Rita forgave Mark, hugged him the week after New Year’s and seemed to understand the things Mark still did not. He wouldn’t talk about it though, just offered her a weak smile and a tight hug back.

***

“What the fuck?” Patrick interrupts the story.

“Yeah,” Mark concedes.

“You just stopped talking to him?”

“I was really confused.”

Patrick sighs heavily, levels a hard stare at Mark and says: “My ass is really numb.”

They find their pants and move to sit side by side on Patrick’s bed.

“So was that it?” Patrick asks. “You just never spoke to him again? Because if that’s what happened, that would be really—”

“No. I saw him again.” This last bit, Mark knows, is the bit he deserves to be judged for: the hope he let himself feel when he hadn’t been able to recognize how much was already lost. But for once it doesn’t ache the way it used to; it just feels like some silly teenaged star-crossed fuckup. He has a career ahead of him that he is actually excited about and he’s surrounded by friends he cares for, that he knows care for him. He has managed to escape from the shadow of his father and get past so many of the issues he considered unsolvable when he was a teenager. So, he figures, telling Patrick about the last moments of the demise of his high school romance won’t hurt the way it had back then, not the way it still might if he didn’t have so much good in his life now.

***

By the end of February, Mark had offers from a half-dozen colleges and admissions deadlines loomed. The first letter had sparked something in his heart. It had taken him days to recognize the feeling was hope. All the offers were for good colleges, all of them with undergraduate majors tailored to feed into the very best law schools the country had to offer. His father, he thought, was almost proud of the lack of rejection letters, even if he remarked that standards were obviously slipping.

His father, of course, was livid when Mark chose Columbia and began the paperwork before the letters for Stanford and Yale had even come.

Hope blossomed; and suddenly New York was real, it was there, and in a couple of short months all the waiting would be over and his life would really start. High school and his year of hopeless pining would be but a blip in a lifetime of happiness.

Daniel, he knew from Facebook, was coming home for spring break. He would tell him the good news then, in person. He would apologize for being distant but argue forever that it was for the best; and then everything would change for the better, finally.

***

“You are the dumbest fucking fuck.” Fair enough that Patrick judge him. Mark rolls his eyes with the predictability of it. “For a top student, I sometimes find your vocabulary lacking.”

Patrick stares back at him until Mark sighs and admits, “I was eighteen and yeah. I was a dumb fucking fuck. But—”

“But he probably shouldn’t have fallen in love with New York so hard? Forgotten you so easily?”

Mark’s never heard anyone say that before. He’s thought it, but no one else has ever said it. Then again, the only people who have been in a position to comment were from high school, and that was years ago. Now, it’s shocking how deeply it resonates with the bitterness he feels over Daniel. Because Daniel was always the selfish one; they both knew it. And in all the little ways it didn’t matter. Daniel took and Mark found pleasure in the giving. Except during that year apart Mark sacrificed so much and thought Daniel didn’t give even a little bit back—not that he had ever been able to pinpoint what Daniel could have sacrificed for him. He’ll always hate that Daniel managed to forget him some of the time, especially before Thanksgiving. He’ll always know that the barrage of attempted contact afterward wasn’t really for him, but for Daniel, because Daniel wanted something. Still, he makes Daniel’s excuses for him.

“He was wrapped up in his own stuff.”

“Somehow, reading between the lines, I’m thinking Daniel is a bit of a self-centred prick?”

“Hey!” Mark knows just how stupid he sounds defending nineteen-year-old Daniel. “You’ve only got my side of the story; there’s unavoidable bias.”

“If you weren’t sitting on my bed right now, I’d be angling for this story to end with the pair of you making out during spring break and then sashaying off to New York together to have boring married-people sex for the rest of your lives. Two kids, white picket fence—can you get white picket fences anywhere around New York?”