Philadelphia

by L B Winter

  “Dude, I don’t know how I’m gonna get through this,” he whispered to me on Tuesday as the professor laid out the five essays that we were expected to compose over the course of the semester.

  “Come on,” I replied, “it’s not that bad.”

  “When will I have the time?” he answered. “I have to go tonight to the lab, and tomorrow, and the next day.”

  “Do you have any days off?” I asked, surprised that his schedule was so demanding. His first day had been Monday, and I hadn’t had the chance to talk with him about it yet.

  “Friday through Sunday,” he answered. “Just in time to do homework until my eyes bleed.”

  “Is there a kind of homework that makes eyes bleed, Doctor Reese?” I asked.

  He said, “Yes, thank you for asking, it’s called General Writing.”

  I cracked up, and he added, “But can I just say, when I’m a real doctor, you’re gonna have to call me Doctor Reese all the time, because I love the sound of that.”

  I laughed harder, and the professor actually stopped talking to glare me into silence.

  “Sorry,” I said, and Taylor echoed, “Yeah, sorry.”

  Business classes were fine—not too difficult, and pretty interesting. Writing was a little bit more fun because I got to see Tay, but Spanish was easily the worst. Our professor continued to recommend study groups all week, and after reading my preliminary Spanish essay, seemed to look at me in particular as she suggested peer-to-peer tutoring. I don’t know why it was so hard for me to jog my memory about Spanish; I used to be okay at it in high school. This just felt a little bit more advanced than I was prepared for, and a bit of help would have been great. I glanced at Tessa, who was staring at an essay on her own desk and seemingly wasn’t too pleased with the grade she saw written on the top, either. Huh—how about that?

  “Hey,” I whispered. “Want to do our homework together over the weekend?”

  There was an essay due Monday, plus a quiz that I had a feeling I would struggle with if I didn’t refresh my rusty Spanish skills, ASAP. She looked up at me just long enough to say, “Sure,” before looking at her essay again.

  “Okay,” I said, “I’ll text you.”

  She nodded but didn’t reply, and I thought for a second that she was so upset about her grade that she might cry. She got over it eventually, but I was pretty curious to find out what her grade could have been, since she was so upset about it. I mean, I’d gotten a C-minus, so I wasn’t thrilled, but I would never cry about it. After all, it was only the first week of classes. But when Tessa slipped the paper into her bag at the end of class and I got a glimpse of the grade, I decided she was officially crazy. She’d gotten a B-plus. My study partner was almost in tears over a grade that literally means better than good. This was really going to be a long semester.

  Saturday morning, I woke up a little later than normal after staying up with Tay to work on our writing assignment. I came out of my room just as Jamie was standing up from the couch.

  “Hey,” he said, smiling at me. He’d been like this all week—always smiling and friendly when he saw me. No more of the morose looks, no more avoiding me, no more accusing me of whatever evil thing he was always accusing me of. It was like for once, our talk had finally gotten through to him. He seemed sincerely glad to see me, and he had to know that I was always happy to see him.

  “Morning,” I said. Then, noticing his clothes, I asked, “Are you on your way to work?”

  “Yeah,” he nodded, “Trent asked me to help with some inventory stuff this morning. I’m glad you woke up,” he added. “I thought I might miss you if you didn’t get up soon. Trent just texted me that he’s downstairs.”

  “Oh,” I said, instantly disappointed not to see more of him. Jamie had been really busy with helping Trent and Lynn lately. I mean, I know technically it was his job and they were paying him, but it still seemed like he was working an awful lot of hours.

  “I might go by their place later,” I said, “if you want to come. Tay wants to see everybody.”

  He nodded, but said, “Yeah, maybe. I’m not sure they’re around, though. Trent said something about driving to Pittsburgh later. If they’re around, though, I’ll go with you. I mean, after my run.”

  “Okay,” I said. I hadn’t known that Steven and Trent were busy; I’d told Steven that I planned to hang out with Tay that weekend, and he’d said he didn’t have any plans. I guess that had changed.

  “See you later,” he smiled again, waved, and was out the door—but I stared after him for a while, jealous of Trent, who got to drive him to work, and Lynn, who would get to see him all day, and really anybody who ever spent any time with him, because I had plenty of friends, but he was the only one I wanted to be with.

  I texted Tessa a little after lunch, and she said to meet me at her dorm. When I got there, though, the door was opened by a tall, glasses-wearing girl who instantly said, “Hey, I just wanted to get something out of the way, Paul. You are Paul, right?”

  “That’s me,” I said, trying to glance past her. “Is Tessa here? Is this—” I poked my head around at the doorplate. “Room 319?”

  “This is her room, but I just wanted to make sure you know that Tessa isn’t looking for a boyfriend right now. Or a date, or someone to fool around with, or anything. So if that’s what you wanted, you should back off. She just wants to study.”

  “Did I—I’m sorry, is Tessa actually even here?”

  “Yes, she’s here.”

  “Okay, well then she knows that I’m here to study. I texted her about it and she said to meet her here.” This poor girl must have been confused, and I was in a pretty good mood—Jamie had been so cheerful before leaving for work—so I thought I’d give her the benefit of the doubt.

  “Oh, you can’t study here,” she answered. “There are no boys allowed in our room.”

  “What?”

  “New rule, effective immediately.”

  “Okay, fine,” I said. “You can have whatever rules you want.”

  “I know we can.”

  “I don’t care about getting in your room,” I said, talking louder so maybe it would get through. “I just want somebody to help me with my Spanish homework, and we’re partners, so she’s stuck with me.”

  “Well, you’d better find a neutral location where you can partner.”

  “Fine,” I said, “but in that case, she should have just texted me to meet her somewhere else. Why would I want to come to her room if we weren’t going to study here?”

  Looking me up and down, the girl said, “Guys usually do.”

  I mean, how arrogant can a girl get? I was ready to turn around and go back to my own dorm room, and maybe find some online study guide to help me instead—but then Tessa came out, dressed casually in a t-shirt and jeans, hair wet, clearly fresh from the shower and embarrassed that her roommate was basically acting like her bouncer. She grabbed her bag off the floor and slipped on a pair of shoes, but as she stumbled into the hallway with me, she said, “I’m sorry about that. Michelle’s really protective.”

  “No kidding,” I said. “Look, I don’t know what I did to give you the impression—”

  “Nothing!” she said quickly. “Honestly, it’s nothing. Michelle didn’t realize I was studying with a guy, and she got worried, that’s all. I didn’t expect her to be the one to open the door. You were early.”

  “By, like, two minutes.”

  Tessa was blushing, and she was so apologetic that she seemed more like the sniffly girl who didn’t like her essay grade than the stuck-up one I’d met on Monday. “I know,” she said. “Sorry.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Fine, whatever. It doesn’t matter. So where do you want to study?”

  “Cafeteria?” she suggested.

  That sounded loud and distracting, but I was too worn out with being annoyed at these girls to argue. Besides, there was a café side with some tables and chairs that we thought would be quieter than the rest of the common
areas in the dorm. We were wrong, though. It turned out they were doing remodeling work on it, and the half of the room where we wanted to sit was closed for the next month or so.

  “Oh, no,” Tessa said softly.

  “Want to study at the Athletics Center?” I offered. It was the place where I’d played basketball in the fall, and there were lots of tables below the track that were never used for anything, as far as I could tell. Besides the occasional sounds that carried from the gyms, it was pretty quiet. Plus, if we studied there, we could do it right before I would have taken my daily run, anyway.

  Tessa agreed, and we each ran up to our rooms to put our coats on and, since it was unseasonably warm that day, walked to the AC together. Once we were there and seated, things weren’t nearly as awkward. We agreed to study for an hour, and forty-five minutes had passed surprisingly productively, considering how things had started. Tessa gave great feedback, and I felt less rusty by the second. She even thanked me for finding something in her essay that she hadn’t realized was a mistake, so I was feeling pretty confident about myself when I glanced up toward the gymnasiums and saw Zeke the hairdresser, of all people, standing with a group of guys outside of one of the basketball gyms.

  Zeke looked good, just more casual than he had when we’d gone out, though it was a little bit different checking out a guy’s abs through his shirt when I was intimately acquainted with what he looked like without one. I must have been staring pretty obviously because he turned his head after a moment and looked right at me. Before I could think twice about it, I smiled at him. Damn my friendly habits.

  He nodded to his friends, then turned and jogged toward me. Shit. I had not meant that I wanted to talk; when would I learn to be less friendly with everybody I saw?

  I looked down at my book once more, but Zeke was evidently not dissuaded. He strode right up to our table and said, “Hey, Paul, what’s going on?”

  “Nothing, man. Just studying. How’ve you been?”

  He glanced at Tessa for a moment, and I wondered for a split second what he thought. Maybe that after my traumatic reorientation experience and brief stint out of the closet, I’d gone right back in again? But then he looked up and said, “Fine. Spanish?”

  I nodded, wishing suddenly that I’d stood up and walked over to meet him. Somehow it just seemed like a better idea to catch up with my former date out of earshot of the really high-strung girl currently ripping my Spanish essay to shreds.

  “You gonna be busy long? I’m only asking because I’m here to play ball with my brother and his roommates, but our point guard has food poisoning. I remember you said you were a baller, though. You don’t want to play, do you?”

  I shrugged. Tessa and I would be done studying in fifteen minutes. “I can at four,” I said, “if that works.”

  “Yeah, dude. Awesome. I’ll tell the guys.” He turned and jogged away, and I turned back to Tessa, pleased with how easy that was and how well it had gone. It was almost like I’d never messed around with him on his couch, then left him with blue balls and a sob story about my truly fucked up past.

  “Sorry,” I said to Tessa after he was out of earshot. “I used to date that guy, and I haven’t seen him in a month, so I just thought it would be awkward if I didn’t say hello. I probably should have asked, are you okay getting back by yourself? There’s a bus right to the dorms. Or you could stay and watch, I guess, if you want.”

  “No, that’s fine,” she said, eyebrows furrowed. “I mean, I was planning on walking together, but it isn’t a big deal; it’s not like it’s dark out or anything. But did you just say you—I’m sorry, you used to date him? As in, you’re gay?”

  I loved being able to say that to anybody, anytime, anywhere. I loved being out and not ashamed of it. “Yep,” I said simply.

  “Oh, my God,” she said, face reddening. “And I made such a big deal out of not wanting to be alone with you earlier,” she said.

  “I don’t see what one has to do with the other. You don’t have to be alone with anybody you don’t want to.”

  She squinted her eyes at me, probably because she knew I was playing dumb on purpose, then said, “I know, I just—” she paused. “Why didn’t you say something?”

  “It never came up,’” I replied.

  She shook her head and rubbed her hands over her eyes. “Ugh, I’m so embarrassed!” she said miserably. “Wow. You have to think I’m such a bitch.”

  “Uh…” I mean, yes? What do you say when someone asks you that and the answer is yes? Do you laugh?

  She didn’t seem to need an answer, though. She closed her Spanish book and leaned toward me earnestly. “You have no idea how messed up my Christmas break was. I just got out of the worst relationship ever, and I was like, all men are trash, and then this cute guy in Spanish class wants to study with me, and I just did not want to deal with that…” Her voice got higher as she spoke, and her face redder. “I am just so embarrassed. Do I seem stupid? I probably seem stupid.”

  “No,” I said, though being called cute was making me feel sort of befuddled. Was she attracted to me all along, and that’s why she was acting so crazy? What in the world was the deal with girls? “I always thought you seemed smart. That’s why I wanted to study with you. Makes my life easier.”

  She laughed. “You know what I meant, so don’t pretend like you don’t. And you aren’t that bad at Spanish.”

  “I know I’m not! You were the one who said I was in the first place. I was just rusty.”

  “You were struggling, Paul, especially on Monday,” she said in this teacher-y voice that again reminded me of Lynn. “But anyway. Wow. So you’re gay. This is…” she paused, sighing. “Such a relief.”

  I felt like I was missing something. “Why, exactly?”

  “I just…I didn’t want to deal with the whole, ‘Are we friends, are we more than friends?’ thing. It’s exhausting. That’s why I didn’t want any guy friends at all, after Daniel, but then you wanted to study together, and it really did seem convenient.” She had been gazing off into space as she spoke, and she looked back at me and winced a little. “Sorry,” she said, “you probably have no idea what I’m talking about.”

  “No, I do,” I said. “Even we gays have the ‘are we friends or more than friends’ thing. I…kind of have one going on right now, to be honest.”

  “Oh!” she looked across the room at Zeke and said more quietly, “Oh, with that guy?”

  “No,” I said, “not with him. We were never friends. We went out once and then I went up to his place and—” I started laughing, “I called my friend from the bathroom to pick me up. So, like, I get it. About not wanting to be alone with somebody. Like, I was never judging you for that at all.”

  She smiled. “So, who’s the guy, then?”

  “Oh, he’s—well, he’s an old friend from a few years back. With baggage. Like, he’s recently divorced, doesn’t have a job, crashing on my couch, technically still in the closet. But he also has the best heart, and he’s so amazing when we’re getting along. He’s beautiful, and we have a ton in common, and he just suddenly came back into my life—”

  “Oh, no, no, no,” she said, shaking her head. “Paul, that just sounds like trouble.”

  “What? I hardly told you anything about him yet.”

  “I know, but this does not sound good. At all. Okay, let me just ask you—he’s the like, the guy you could never get over, right? Like, the perfect, most adorable, sexiest, funniest, greatest guy?”

  That was odd; had she met Jamie? “Yeah,” I said slowly.

  “That’s Daniel!” she said emphatically. “You want him so much that you compromise to be with him, and then you aren’t happy, and he isn’t happy either, and when it all blows up in your face, it only hurts that much worse. Don’t do it!”

  I appreciated her concern, but she really didn’t know enough about Jamie to be weighing in on this, did she? She saw the skepticism in my face and added, “Or at least, if you do, don’t let him s
eparate you from all your friends and make you feel like you need to change everything about yourself.”

  For a second, I couldn’t think of anything to say. Then, “Daniel is a piece of shit,” I said decisively.

  Tessa laughed, though her eyes suddenly looked watery. “Yeah,” she said. Then she reached for her Spanish book and started flipping through the pages again, though seemingly without reading anything.

  “I don’t think Jamie is like that,” I said gently. “But I’ll look out for the warning signs. I appreciate it.”

  She nodded, though still looking down.

  “Hey,” I nudged her foot with mine under the table, and when she looked up, I said, “Want to see my decidedly mediocre basketball skills?”

  She laughed. “You know what, sure. Are these guys all gay, or just the one you dated?”

  “I’ve never met them before, but knowing Zeke, they’re probably a healthy mix. He’s kind of a man’s man, for a gay dude.”

  “So are you,” Tessa commented, again closing her book—but this time she slid it into her bag.

  “No, I’m not,” I answered.

  “I thought you were a total player when we first met,” she said. “Athletic, cute, funny, popular.”

  “Popular? How could you know that from one Spanish class?”

  “Not from Spanish,” she said. “From around the dorm. I’ve seen you. Everybody knows you,” she added. “You are friends with everyone, everywhere you go.”

  The echoes of Jamie’s words reverberated in my mind. I remembered, too, that I had been surprised when I met Tessa that we lived in the same building, because I couldn’t remember seeing her around. Now I was a little embarrassed that I hadn’t noticed that we had, in fact, crossed paths. “I just say hi to people.”

  “Whatever,” she said. “My point is—well. I guess I don’t know what my point was.”

  I laughed.

  “But I would like to stay and watch you guys. Thanks. Maybe afterward you can walk me home?”