When a door closes
Forget what I need
Give me what I want
And it should be fine
-- Allie X, Prime
The walk to Emily and Ryan’s apartment was anything but quiet. Justin buzzed with excitement, talking the entire time. Despite his feelings, he was still very aware that Jessie was Theodore’s friend first and made sure to tell him he wouldn’t pursue anything if Theodore didn’t want him to. That line of reasoning didn’t make any sense, though; Jessie was her own person. If she wanted to fool around with Justin, then who the hell was Theodore to object to it? That should be her decision to make. The fact that Theodore had introduced the two of them didn’t change anything; she owed him nothing. Justin’s argument would’ve only held any water if they were together. “You know you don’t have to ask my permission to date her, right? That’s weird.”
“I just don’t want things to be weird between us. Like, if you don’t feel comfortable with this, I won’t even text her. You’re my main guy, you know that. Your friendship means everything to me.”
“So do you have a crush on her or on me?” he joked, squinting.
That put a big grin on Justin’s face. “I love you, man.” A hand ruffled Theodore’s hair, which he reacted to by shoving Justin on the side, all in jest. They both laughed as Justin tripped, stumbling drunkenly.
“When’s the last time you got laid, bro?” Laith’s question was friendly, despite its contents.
“Ah, man, it’s been a while. Months, at least.”
“Hope you didn’t forget how to do it.”
Justin tutted and shoved Laith on the arm, face red with embarrassment. Laith’s sobriety kept him from stepping into the street.
“Can you guys shut the fuck up?” Emily called from up ahead, whipping around to glare back at them. “You’re acting like fucking idiots.”
“Sorry, Em.” Justin’s voice was small, eyes down at the sidewalk.
During the rest of the walk, the three of them kept to a different topic—a conscious decision. It was clear that Emily didn’t like the previous discussion, a little too jealous of her friends, even if she didn’t openly say it. Justin had claimed she wasn’t possessive, but Theodore had to disagree; her behavior was crystal clear. As much as she didn’t trust anyone with or around Laith, she didn’t seem to trust anyone with or around Justin either. It could be because she felt something for them, but it could just as well be her fear of losing them. She was very similar to Ryan in that way, treating her friends as family.
Back home, she told everyone she’d only be a moment and entered the building. The three of them ended up hanging out at the entrance, talking on the sidewalk while waiting for her.
As soon as she was gone, Justin brought Jessie up again, how funny she was and how much fun he’d had at the party. Laith teased him for it, the way anyone teased a friend over a new crush, in good fun. Justin teased him back a bit, poking at his involvement with Theodore, careful not to take it too far. He was gracious, of course, which turned it into a nice time; they talked and laughed as if resuming the antics from the party, only without Jessie now.
Laith casually slung an arm across Theodore’s shoulders and pulled him close. He did it as they talked, without so much as a glance, eyes fixed on Justin, who went on and on about a funny joke or a silly anecdote—Theodore wasn’t sure. The moment Laith pulled him in, his ears popped and his lungs froze.
The first thought that crossed his mind was a still from last week, when Hwan had done the exact same thing to Marquis. He remembered just how much he’d yearned for that, a nonchalant move that meant absolutely nothing, but had the potential to mean everything. Playing Marquis, he hugged Laith around the waist, arm loose and casual despite his heart rate. He could barely believe this was happening. The incident in the subway had been much different than this, Laith sticking around to make him feel better before a crowd, but maybe not completely unrelated. They must’ve been growing a lot closer than he’d thought. Certainly not close enough that he could take Laith’s hand whenever he wanted, but that he could half-hug him in public and it’d be okay. He had to fight back the urge to snuggle into Laith’s side, leaning against him instead, lungs brimming with amber.
“Are you actually gonna call her?” he asked. His question ended whatever topic the other two were talking about; he didn’t know what it was and didn’t care to know.
Justin glanced at him with a big grin on his face. “Yeah, yeah, of course!”
“I thought you said you were shy. You don’t seem very shy about that.”
“What?” Laith practically spluttered. “You said you were shy? You’re the most outgoing motherfucker I know!”
“I’m shy sometimes.”
“No, you’re not!”
“I’m shy with people I like, okay?”
“No, you—I’ve literally seen you walk up to a girl, hit on her and come back very satisfied with yourself. You’re the opposite of shy. I don’t even think you know what that word means.”
“Yes, I do! You don’t, but I do. I get shy when… things get serious.”
Laith stared at his friend, eyebrows furrowed.
“Oh.” Theodore’s thoughts left him sans filter. “You’re shy in the bedroom.”
“It’s not that bad,” Justin quickly rebutted. “I just get self-conscious about what I’m doing. I worry too much that they’re not gonna like it.”
“Do they usually like it?”
“Yeah, but I’m always worrying about it!”
“Then stop,” Laith suggested. His tone was so matter of fact that it could only be a joke.
Justin stared at him. “Okay, I’ll stop. Thanks a lot, bud.”
“Don’t mention it, friend.”
“I think…” Theodore’s thoughts slowly came together. “If you ask them to tell you when they don’t like something you do, that’d probably help, right? Then you know you’re doing well.”
Blue eyes glanced off to the side, eyebrows furrowing the slightest bit. “You have a point, but I don’t know if I can tell them that. Let me know when I fuck up. Like, that’s weird.”
“No, don’t say it like that. Maybe… ask them to tell you what they do like. That way, it’s more reassuring, I guess.”
“I mean…” Justin shrugged. “I just don’t wanna make things weird.”
“Make it hot, then,” Laith proposed. “Turn it into a kink. A validation kink. Tell them it gets you super turned on when they tell you shit like that.”
“What if they think it’s weird?”
“They won’t, if you’re not weird about it. If you think it’s hot, they’ll think it’s hot too. If you think it’s weird, they’ll think it’s weird. It’s all about confidence.”
Justin hummed pensively.
“Plus, you can usually tell when they don’t like what you’re doing, anyway. You don’t need them to spell it out for you,” Laith continued. “It’s night and day. Figure out what she likes and stick to it.”
“I just get in my head, bro. It’s been this way forever.”
“Then let her lead you.” The suggestion left Theodore on impulse, thoughts bouncing back and forth. “You can’t fuck up then.”
“If she’s into it,” Justin mumbled.
“It’s Jessie. You might need to guide her a bit, but other than that, she’s a free spirit.”
The arm around Theodore’s neck shook him a bit, pulling him further into Laith’s wing. “He knows what he’s talking about, so you should probably listen up.”
He yanked the back of Laith’s jacket in response, staggering him backwards. “That was literally two years ago! Can you let it go!?”
“Wait, you fooled around?” Justin asked.
“I don’t even consider it anything at this point. It was nothing.”
“She blew him.”
Theodore stared into the side of Laith’s face, wide-eyed. “Did she tell you that?”
“Yep.”
“Was she good?” Justin cut in.
“It was—I don’t know! I have no idea. It’s literally been way too fucking long. Just—don’t even worry about it, okay? Nothing even happened.”
“So was she good or not?”
“Why don’t you find out for yourself? It’s been two fucking years!”
“Okay, okay.” Justin held his palms up. “I’m sorry.”
“No, I don’t—I’m not upset, I just…” He breathed in. “We’re just a guy and a girl who are friends. There’s nothing there, I promise.”
“Oh, sure.” One of Justin’s shoulders raised for a half-shrug. “I was just curious.”
“You’re a pig, is what you are.” Laith smirked. “I bet she’s better now, after two years of practice.”
“I mean, yeah.”
“I don’t think she’s been doing it for two years,” Theodore argued. “We’ve only been partying and stuff for a couple of months. If she’d blown anyone in school, I feel like she’d tell me.”
“Shit, I keep forgetting how young you guys are. I’m so fucking old.”
“Don’t girls usually like older guys, anyway?” Laith asked.
Suddenly, Justin pulled his phone out and checked it. He must’ve just gotten a message. “Uh.” Glancing up, he slid his phone back into his pocket. “Emily wants me to go up, so…”
“Is Ryan still up there?” Laith asked.
“Probably. Why? You’re not gonna talk to him, are you?”
“Of course I will. Everyone got the chance to, except for me.”
“You’re gonna fight.” That comment slipped past Theodore’s lips.
“I just wanna talk to him,” Laith defended.
“It doesn’t matter. You’re gonna end up fighting.”
“So are you two coming up with me?” Justin asked.
“I am.”
Theodore hesitated. “Yeah, I guess so.”
***
Up in the apartment, the first thing they heard was Emily’s disembodied voice announcing her location, muffled by the walls. While Justin closed the front door, Laith led the way, taking the first left into the living room. It looked exactly the same as it had a few hours ago, with no sign of Ryan that Theodore could see. He might not even have left his room at all.
The group found Emily alone in the kitchen, sipping on a glass of water. As soon as Laith realized that, he turned to leave. The decisive way he did it pulled Theodore to follow, not as a conscious response, but as a thoughtless reaction to his exit, always drawn to his side. His chest squeezed. He knew this wasn’t good.
Instead of leaving, Laith marched straight to Ryan’s room. He’d just mentioned wanting to speak to the guy, so Theodore had no idea why he’d even thought Laith would leave. His brain was broken. When Laith ignored the living room arch for Ryan’s room, an instinct inside Theodore pushed him to lean forward and take Laith’s arm, holding him back. Wide-eyed, he stared into Laith’s face. “I’m coming with you,” he declared, only half-aware of what those words meant. Right now, his head didn’t really work.
“No, you’re not. You already talked to him; now it’s my turn.”
His lips parted to protest, but Laith was faster.
“I’m not gonna fight him, Theo. It’s fine.”
“That’s not up to you.”
“Just trust me, okay?” Laith pulled his arm free.
Theodore didn’t necessarily want to let go of it, but it was very difficult to manage himself at the moment; the world wasn’t steady and his thoughts weren’t clear. His intention was to drag Laith back into the kitchen with the others, yet he ended up watching Laith let himself into Ryan’s room instead. Foreboding closed around his throat—nothing good could come out of this. Unable to move, he stood and stared.
Sherry came out of the room still dressed in her skin-tight jumpsuit, burgundy red with a jacket thrown over her shoulders. She always looked like she was about to jump on a runway, even if there was nowhere to go. Her sight was a relief; he had no idea she’d stuck around this long. Still, he would’ve liked her much better inside Ryan’s room with the other two. Somehow, he knew her presence would discourage Ryan from acting on his destructive impulses. Her eyes found him, hand closing the door behind her. “You seem troubled.” Her voice was low and smooth, unconcerned.
“They’re gonna fight.”
“That’s what you’re worried about?” Her heels clacked as she walked, hitting the hardwood floor. A hand touched him on the shoulder. It didn’t imply anything, but still he turned to follow her across the living room. “Tell me what actually concerns you, Theodore.”
“That…” His thoughts vanished, and in the vacuum that was his brain, a straight line between his heart and his mouth was created. “That Laith’s gonna do to him what he does to me. That he’s gonna hold Ryan the way he holds me.”
“Why would that be a problem?”
“Because I don’t want him to think of Ryan that way.”
“You know he doesn’t. The possibility that he’ll come out of that room in love with Ryan is zero to none.”
He turned to her. “How aren’t you scared that Ryan’s gonna develop feelings for somebody else?”
“That’s not something I can control. I know what I mean to him, and even if he does end up developing feelings for someone else, that doesn’t have to be connected to our relationship. He can sleep with Laith and still be in love with me.”
“Aren’t you afraid Laith’s gonna steal him from you?”
“People can’t steal other people; the only one who can push Ryan away from me is Ryan himself. What we have is a direct result of our actions toward each other, not what anyone else says or does. I’m confident that, if he did feel himself pull away from me, he’d tell me.”
His heart ached. “I wish I was confident like you.”
She touched his chin. The smile on her face was joyless, somewhere between sad and condescending. “You know you’re more important to him than anybody else, right?”
“Am I?”
She nodded.
“Huh.” His eyebrows furrowed, gaze dropping. “I wish he’d tell me that.”
***
As it turned out, what Ryan had needed to tell Emily was that he’d be skipping town soon, or at least, that he’d been considering it. In his mind, that was the only way he could heal. That was what he’d told her, that he needed to heal. That was the exact word he’d used.
Staring at his bedroom door, Theodore wondered what kind of healing he meant. He felt trapped in this town, too close to his parents, crushed under Theodore’s presence. Yes, crushed—his own words. His family suffocated him. Theodore suffocated him.
When Emily said that, his first instinct was to laugh, but nothing came from the tingling in his throat. Suffocated. When had Ryan gone from pushing Theodore down the stairs for Carolyn’s attention to suffocated by it? He wanted to make a home for himself, to find a place where he belonged and that was fine, but making Theodore out to be some oppressive force in his life was just inaccurate. It wasn’t right. The only thing Theodore had ever wanted from him was his friendship; he’d never meant for things to end up the way they had. Still, learning that Ryan wanted nothing to do with him wasn’t surprising; he’d put that puzzle together a long time ago. It hurt, but didn’t fundamentally change anything. Ryan had never liked him, after all.
His friends talked, but he couldn’t really listen. His thoughts drowned them out.
Exactly twenty-one minutes after entering Ryan’s room, Laith came back out. The entire time he’d been there, Theodore hadn’t heard a single sound escape through the door.
He thought of that one time Laith had slept with Ryan, sneaking upstairs with him when he’d still lived with his parents. Had this been a rerun? He didn’t look disheveled or flustered, though, so maybe not. Actually, he looked exactly the same way he had going in.
Their eyes met as Laith carefully closed the door. “Theo, I’m dropping you off. Let’s go.”
It wasn’t nearly late enough for that, but he didn’t question it. As soon as he heard the words let’s go, he left the kitchen in Laith’s direction like a little soldier following orders. Laith’s voice startled the rest of the group, who approached the kitchen arch to ask him about what had just happened with Ryan. He told them he’d speak about it later and left the apartment.
The elevator allowed Theodore to run a test. It was small enough that if he stood right next to Laith, it wouldn’t seem weird, and with the doors closed, he could really assess all the fragrances in the air. Breathing in deeply, the only scent he found was Laith’s cologne, rich with spice, encased in amber—nothing else, not even sweat. So he really hadn’t slept with Ryan. Theodore touched his jacket sleeve. “Are you two okay now?”
“We’ve finally reached an agreement.”
The elevator chimed every time they passed a floor.
“We will no longer see each other.”
That sentence, as simple as it was, lifted a thousand pounds from Theodore’s shoulders, lungs free to breathe again. Relief almost buckled his knees and dropped him to the ground. He leaned a shaky hand on the wall. “Are you serious? Why?”
“I’m done trying to reason with him. This is one of those things we will never agree on, apparently. He thinks being close to you is a personal attack, that I can’t be both your friend and his, and since I’m not giving you up, I’m essentially picking a side. I’m not, obviously, but if that’s the way it has to be, then fine; he’s not gonna see me anymore.”
“You…” Laith chose him? That didn’t make sense. His brain couldn’t process it at all. “He wants to skip town, you know,” he spoke on auto pilot, vomiting the information he’d been given a minute ago without giving it any thought. “He wants to leave.”
“Yeah, he told me.” Laith shook his head, eyes set straight ahead. “Whatever. I’ve done all I could, tried everything I could think of, but he just refuses to meet me halfway, so we’re done. This is it.”
“Are you still friends?”
“No.” Laith pushed the elevator door open, passing him a brief glance. “He’s cutting me off.”
Theodore followed him out. “Is he gonna cut the others off too?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so.” A hand shuffled through Laith’s jacket as he walked, legs long and fast. He covered a lot of ground very quickly, making it difficult for Theodore to keep up. “I’m the problem, not them. Well, okay, they’re also the problem, but a different kind of problem, whereas I’m the worst-case scenario. I’m the devil torching him from the bleachers; they’re the crowd tossing tomatoes. It’s not the same.” Laith opened the cigarette pack. Glancing inside, he stopped walking. It was so sudden that Theodore almost ran into him. There was only one cigarette left. “I really need to quit.”
“So being close to me makes you the devil.”
“And a traitor.” Laith walked over to the nearest trashcan and threw the pack in along with the last cigarette. “And the worst friend in history,” he continued. “What I did was irredeemable, but still he gave me one last chance, ‘cause he’s such a good guy, Ryan. He’s so kind. He was willing to overlook all my faults as long as I promised to never see you again. You know what I told him?”
Theodore stared at him, heart beating out of his chest.
“I told him I’d take you home with me.”
Breath escaped him, eyes wide. What the fuck?
“C’mon.” Laith nodded at the street, starting down the sidewalk again. “You’re spending the night at my place.”
“I thought—” Holy shit, he could barely think. “I thought you were dropping me off.” His voice reached him from an incredible distance, quiet in his own ears. There was no empirical evidence to suggest this was a dream, but still, he couldn’t believe it.
“I didn’t want to start an argument with the others. It’s easier to break the rules and apologize later. I mean, I wasn’t even lying; it’s just that I’m not dropping you off at your place. Whatever they made of that is their own fault.”
Early in the evening, the street was dark, but not pitch-black; the blue of the sky was still light, flirting with purple, the moment right between day and night. A cool breeze swept past, ruffling Laith’s hair.
“Remember when I quit working for Stanley?” Laith’s voice was quieter now, far less enraged. “Before I did that, I’d been working for Burman, putting on a show, getting her to really like me. I wasn’t the top dog just yet, but I knew I meant something, that she liked my work and the way I carried out things, so I asked for a raise. She agreed and gave me some more hours, too. That’s when my name really started going around; I was assigned more jobs, so more people talked about me. A lot more people talked about me. It got to the point where I knew it’d get to them—Emily and Ryan—so I quit the record store and told them. Justin already knew, but he’s cool about that stuff; he’s always known a lot more than the others. He’s known my address forever; Ryan and Emily still have no idea where I live. I guess Ryan will never know.”
“But… Justin said you guys don’t really talk. That he doesn’t know a lot about you.”
“Sure, he does. We don’t talk as much as he talks to Emily, obviously, but he knows stuff. It’s just that different people know different things. He knows what I do underground as much as Emily knows what’s going on with me.”
“What do I know?”
Laith glanced at him. His throat moved with a swallow. “I guess you’re about to figure out everything.”
Theodore trailed beside him without a single word in his mouth.
“Then again, I think that’s what you want,” Laith continued. “I think that’s what you’ve been after. If not since the beginning, then at least since our first date. Tell me I’m wrong.”
“That was a date?” That question left him as if someone had manually pulled it from his throat. His involvement had been minimal—he hadn’t meant to do it at all.
“You literally asked me out. You said, and I quote, have dinner with me. That’s a date, my man.”
“I…”
Holy shit.
“If you didn’t want me in your bed, you wouldn’t have brought me to it. You cancelled my plans, paid for my beer and took me to your place. I’d never received such a crystal-clear message. It’s time I stopped fighting against it for your brother’s sake. He’s out of the picture now, so let’s fuck shit up.” Laith threw an arm across his shoulder and pulled him close, up against his side, nose buried into his hair. The next part was a whisper. “I’m gonna fuck you so hard you’ll forget your own name.”
All air left his lungs. He couldn’t even see straight, intoxicated by tobacco and amber, hand gripping the back of Laith’s jacket as if it were his only lifeline. “Promise?” That was the only thing that came to him. It put a big grin on Laith’s face.
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