Manties in a Twist

by J. A. Rock

  I was a lot like that for the next couple of days, as my panic about the idea of moving fought with these random bursts of Yeah, I do want to do this. ’Cause maybe my destiny is waiting for me in some city I’ve never thought about, and maybe I will become a famous singer. Maybe I’ve been holding myself back for a long time.

  The day of the concert, I threw myself into a city search. Ryan was at work for a half day, so I spent five straight hours on the computer, only getting up to walk Collingsworth.

  I looked up Austin. Holy elephant fuck, no. Shitty apartments were, like, thousands of dollars. Seattle, I decided, was too rainy. And Pittsburgh was too . . . Pittsburgh.

  “What about Cleveland?” I asked when Ryan came home at lunchtime.

  He walked to the back of the couch and leaned down to kiss the top of my head. “Cleveland?”

  “Yeah. It used to be a joke, but I’ve been reading about it. They’ve made tons of renovations over the past few years. And now they have a good music scene.”

  He paused. He’d been kind of skittish around me since that vigorous juicing session. “I’d be down for Cleveland. It’s not too far away. And probably, like, half an hour closer to my family than I am now.”

  Not too far away.

  It was like four hours from my friends. But that was okay. Because the whole point of moving was to find out who I was when they weren’t, like, factoring into everything I did in life. And if I needed to see them, I could make weekend trips. Take a couple weeks off in the summer and visit for longer—if the guys even still wanted me around, since apparently I’d fallen in love with a monster who failed to weep every time we brought up Hal.

  “I even found some places near Cleveland State that are pet-friendly. So we could get a dog. Or a cat, whatever. And I could work at one of the restaurants that does mad student business. And if you decide you want to go to law school, there’s Case.”

  He patted my shoulder, staring at the screen. “This is awesome. Get ready, Cleveland.”

  “You don’t sound excited. Why aren’t you excited?”

  “No, I’m excited. I’m just surprised you suddenly want to do this.”

  “Well, you’re the one who gets freaking alerts on your phone about apartments.” I couldn’t keep the irritation out of my voice. “I’m just getting on the train. The moving-forward train.”

  “Did something happen?”

  “No. Nothing happened. God.”

  “Well, this is gonna be a fun concert, huh?” he said dryly. He went to shower, closing the bathroom door way too hard. I stayed at the computer, staring at the tabs for Cleveland apartments.

  The concert was a fucking bust. I couldn’t really focus. I imagined the others eating gluten-free cake downtown, and drinking beer, and then going back to Dave’s to watch whatever stupid shit was on Netflix. Imagined them being fine without me.

  Ryan was in a freaking great mood. He sang the whole way home. But I think that was less of a for-real great mood and more a way of digging at me, since I was being a dick.

  I went over to the duplex the next day after pony practice, where I’d managed to get actually zero dressage moves right. I wanted to wish Gould a happy birthday and apologize again for not being there, since it wasn’t his fault that Dave was a bastard and that I’d gotten myself into a whole big moving-way-too-far-forward mess.

  Gould was gone, but Dave was there, and we were super cold to each other, which— Good. Just a few more months of not talking, and then I wouldn’t even have to worry about him anymore.

  Except I couldn’t exactly keep my mouth shut. “Ryan and I are gonna move to Cleveland,” I said, with an I-give-zero-fucks shrug.

  He gave me a real kind of, you know, death stare. “What?”

  “We’ve been thinking about it a lot. And when our lease is up next year, we might want to try something different.” Dave was looking at me like he wanted to put a grappling hook through my face. “He wants to be closer to his parents. I want a change of pace. So we’re moving.”

  “To Cleveland?”

  “It’s turning into a really nice city now.”

  “Cleveland.”

  “Yeah.”

  “River-on-fire Cleveland.”

  “That was decades ago.”

  “The city that regularly lets LeBron James jizz on its face.”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Fucking West Sixth Street.”

  “Yeah, man. Cleveland.”

  Dave turned away and gave this incredibly derisive snort.

  I glared at him. “What do you have against Cleveland?”

  “My God, Kamen, Cleveland is the Cobalt of cities!”

  Ouch.

  Dave took a deep breath. “My Megabus broke down there once, and a tramp tried to take my gas station grab-n-go sandwich.”

  “Well, that’s where we’re moving. So deal with it.”

  He shook his head in disgust. “I’ve already dealt with it. Like you said: other people’s lives are none of my business.”

  I hated this. But I didn’t know how to make it better. So I said something really, like, not at all a comeback, like, “See you around.”

  And I left.

  The next day was even worse. I was doing dishes when Ryan came home from work, and I couldn’t get all the damn plates into the dumb-fuck dishwasher. I was getting frustrated enough to want to throw shit.

  “Hey!” Ryan called from the living room. I listened to him hang his keys on the key hook, which for some reason made me feel even worse. Why did we have a key hook? Who the hell was I?

  I didn’t answer.

  He came into the kitchen. “How was your day?”

  I forced another plate into the lower rack. Were we even gonna have a dishwasher in Cleveland? Where would we live? How long would it take me to make new friends? Would my old friends ever call me? Or was it gonna be, like, texts every day . . . then once a week . . . then every couple of months . . . then never?

  I tried to keep my voice normal. “Stupid.”

  “Stupid, huh?”

  “Worked the lunch shift. Which is stupid.”

  “Got ya.”

  “My car needs new brakes. And I can’t fit all the plates in here.”

  “So leave some in the sink.”

  I straightened. “It’s not that simple!”

  “Eaaaaasy. What the hell has been up your ass the past couple of days, buddy?”

  That was almost too much, him using names my friends had always used with me. Big guy. Buddy. Condescending fucking nicknames. I wanted this life with him. I did. I wanted to be independent and push myself and not always make safe decisions. I wanted to—I don’t know—have this relationship be the most important thing to me. Wanted Ryan to be my family.

  But I also wanted what I’d always had. Because even if my friends and I weren’t perfect, I loved them so much that it, like, physically hurt, and being part of that group was an opportunity beyond what most people were given. Maybe that sounded stupid, since pretty much everyone had friends. But not like mine.

  Ryan stepped around me and picked up the stack of remaining plates. Started washing them by hand in the sink. “Sorry about your car.”

  “It’s a piece of shit anyway.”

  “When we move next year, we can get a new car. One of those tiny ones. With three wheels.”

  “With what money?”

  He turned. “Come on. Don’t be like this.”

  I tossed some silverware in the dishwasher basket. “I might not even want to move to Cleveland.”

  “It was your idea.”

  “Well, maybe now I’m changing my mind! Is that okay? Am I allowed to change my mind? You change your mind all the time.”

  He stared at me. “Dude. What is going on? If you tell me, maybe I can help.”

  “Don’t call me ‘dude.’ We’re not sixteen.” I grabbed another plate and stuffed it in the rack. “Dave’s Megabus broke down in Cleveland and a hobo took his sandwich.”
/>   He turned off the water. “What kind of sandwich?”

  “Does it matter? Cleveland hobos are relentless. They’ll take anything!”

  He stepped behind me and wrapped his arms around me. Oh my God. Why was he trying to be nice to me? Why did he not want to throw the plates too? Was I completely fucking alone in my need to just destroy something? His hands left wet patches on my shirt. “We have hobos here.”

  “Not like Cleveland hobos.”

  “What do you know about Cleveland hobos?”

  I shrugged him off and put the plate in the dishwasher. “I’m just not sure we’ve thought this through.”

  “You know Dave has a tendency to exaggerate to try to get you to—”

  “No. Don’t say things about my friends. You don’t know them like I do. You don’t know what we’ve been through. You weren’t there.” I was fucking this up so bad. Like, possibly worse than anything had ever been fucked up in the whole history of the world.

  Ryan was silent.

  I took a deep breath. “Sorry. I just . . .”

  He waited a second, and when I didn’t continue, asked, “So where do you want to move?”

  “Maybe nowhere! Maybe I never freaking wanted to move anywhere! But you—”

  “So what, it’s my fault? I forced you into this? We hang out with your friends and go to your dungeon and get the painting of the animal you want—”

  “You wanted the hare too! Don’t even act like you didn’t want the hare!”

  “I wanted a megalodon! You know what I think this is about? Your friends dictating your life. Everything you do, you have to think about how they’ll feel or what you’ll tell them—”

  “They don’t dictate my life!”

  “Then why can’t we do this one thing I want?”

  I turned to him and continued, my panic rising. “Do you really want it? Or is this like what your parents were talking about? Where you work really hard for a while to build a perfect life here and then leave it unfinished?”

  He stared at me. Not even a glare, just, like, this shocked, almost blank expression.

  “Ryan. I’m s—”

  “No.” He looked away. “Don’t.”

  He stalked to our bedroom. I listened to him slam around in there for a while. I wasn’t sure what to do. I pretty much didn’t fight with anyone. Like, once in a while I had to check my friends if I thought they were being too dickish about something, but I didn’t even know how to fight with Ryan. We’d always been best buds.

  Best buds was not a relationship.

  Best buds was not adulting.

  I went to the front hall and leaned beside the well-dressed hare. Collingsworth followed me and watched as I tried to calm down.

  I couldn’t talk to Dave. Miles would be nice to me, but he was the most likely to secretly judge. I took out my phone. But Gould . . .

  One time, last year, I was kinda mad because I thought Dave and Miles weren’t taking me seriously. And Gould took me aside and was like, “You know what’s up better than any of us. We could all learn a lot from you.” And that made me feel way better.

  Gould answered on the second ring. “Hey, Kamen.”

  “Hey, um . . .” I took a breath. “Can I come over?”

  “Sure. What’s up?”

  “I just . . .” I glanced over my shoulder as though I expected Ryan to be right there. “I need to come over. As long as Dave’s not there. Please?”

  “He’s out with Maya. Come on over,” Gould said calmly.

  When I got to the front porch of the duplex, it hit me that I shouldn’t be bothering him with this. If he was really having a shitty time like Dave had said, he probably didn’t want to hear about me having a fight with Ryan. Plus I’d bailed on his birthday to go to a friggin’ Rob Thomas concert, so I probably wasn’t his favorite person right now.

  But he let me in and sat on the couch with me and asked, “What’s up?”

  “Uh. Ryan and me had a fight.”

  “About what?”

  I took another few seconds to try to calm down. “About moving to Cleveland.”

  He nodded. “Dave said you were moving.”

  I looked at him and wanted to basically beg him to tell me what to do. Because he had a really nice face—everyone always talked about his nice face and how it made you think he could solve any problem. “I just get so confused sometimes about whether I’m doing adulting right.”

  He smiled and shook his head. Put his arm around me. “Come here.” He pulled me against his shoulder.

  I blinked for a moment. “You smell good.”

  “Thanks.”

  I tried to look up at him. “And now I’m fighting with Dave because he thinks I abandoned the group because I didn’t come to your birthday and I’m always with Ryan and Ryan doesn’t know anything about Hal. And I think maybe that’s why I told Ryan I’d move, because I was mad at Dave. But now I’ve got all this shit running through my head, like if Ryan does want to move, then don’t I have to respect that? We can’t just stay here forever because I want to, right?”

  “I think—”

  “But I don’t think he really does want to move. I think he just has one of those brains where he thinks that whatever he’s doing, he should actually be doing something else. Like he second-guesses all his decisions. Except when we do pony play, and then he’s super focused, and he’s an amazing handler.”

  Gould nodded.

  “I think he’s really happy here. With me. Mostly. But I don’t know. And how do I know I wouldn’t be happier somewhere else? I don’t think I would, but I’ve never tried it.”

  “So you think—”

  “And there’s all this stuff I never really thought about in terms of relationships, because I was too freaking in love to care. But what if we do break up, and I don’t have anywhere to live. And if we had a dog, who would get the dog? And do I get to keep the ‘Snow Wanderer’ drawings? Because those were a gift, but they’re also his greatest creation.”

  “Slow down,” Gould said gently.

  I clutched at him, thinking suddenly about my parents. “Gould. Why does anyone get married?”

  “Whoooooaaaaa, Kamen.”

  That was a command I’d gotten real good at responding to.

  He clapped me on the back. “No one’s getting married. There is no dog. I’m not sure what ‘Snow Wanderer’ is. Take a couple deep breaths.”

  I did. Raised my head from his shoulder and looked at him. “I’m sorry I didn’t come to your birthday party.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “I didn’t know the concert was on the same day.”

  “I know.”

  “I was drunk when I bought the tickets.”

  “It’s cool.”

  “And then I got mad at Dave, and I hardly ever get mad at anyone.”

  “It’s gonna be all right.”

  “Are you sure?”

  He nodded. “Very sure. It’s okay to tell Ryan you don’t want to move right now. All you have to do is talk to him, and I’m sure you’ll work it out. And then talk to Dave.”

  “He’s pissed at me.”

  “He misses you. So much. Believe me.”

  I didn’t answer. I believed him a little because of the nice face.

  He glanced at the door. “What if I went to get milkshakes? And alcohol? And then we can talk all evening?”

  Milkshakes and alcohol did seem like they’d make everything better. But I didn’t want to be alone yet, so I made him spoon with me on the couch for a solid half hour.

  ’Cause everyone needed spooning sometimes.

  While I was waiting for Gould to get back, Dave came home. He had a Styrofoam mannequin head under one arm.

  He did kind of a double take when he saw me, which made me feel like a trainload of suck, because it used to be totally normal for him to come home and find me in his house.

  “You okay?” he muttered. “You look kinda pale.”

  “I came here to talk t
o Gould about, um, how Ryan and I had a fight. And he went to get milkshakes.”

  Dave didn’t say anything. He set the mannequin head on the coffee table.

  “I don’t think I want to move to Cleveland.”

  Dave shook his head. “You’ll probably change your mind as soon as you and Ryan make up. Just like you’ll change your plans if Matchbox Twenty comes to town—”

  “Fuck off. Gould said it was fine I wasn’t there.”

  “Well, you know he doesn’t exactly speak up when something bothers him.”

  “So you have to do it for him?” I shot back.

  “I try to look out for him. Unlike some people.”

  “There you go trying to choreograph other people’s lives again.”

  “Choreograph? Where’d you pick that one up? Ryan?”

  “I know what ‘choreograph’ means. You know, I don’t want to say this. But you’re being a real Kristy right now.”

  “Yeah? Well Kristy got shit done.”

  “But she was insufferable about it.”

  “Insufferable? Seriously, what’s happened to you?”

  “I know what words mean, Dave! Why do you think I don’t know words?”

  “I know you know words, I just think that ever since you’ve been with Ryan, you’ve been totally different, and I fucking hate it.”

  We both stared at each other for a moment.

  I focused on the mannequin head. “This is so stupid. We’re not in eighth grade anymore.”

  “Really? Because you just went to a Matchbox Twenty concert.”

  I almost laughed.

  Dave stepped closer. “I just don’t get it. You’re gonna move? Is that something you want, or something he wants you to want?”

  “I want it. Maybe. Why is that so hard for you to believe, that I could want to leave here? I’ve always wanted to see other places.”

  “So go see them!” Dave’s voice broke slightly, and he hesitated. “And then . . . come back.” He had kind of a pre-crying face going on, and it surprised me.

  “Hey . . .”

  He mumbled something and put his hand on the mannequin head.

  “What?” I asked.

  “I feel like he’s taking you away from us. I don’t want to feel like that, but I do. That’s why I . . .” He let out a long sigh.