Exactly one year later I passed Jason in the lobby of the graduate library. He was leaving. We nodded curtly in passing.
I said, “Hey.”
He stopped.
“I need you to be tall,” I said.
He walked with me into the stacks to pick up a book I needed. It was on a high shelf and he reached for it and as he did his shirt rode up revealing the hem of his boxer briefs and the curve of his spine. He handed me the book and we looked at each other.
“Thanks,” I said. There was a thin, hot film over my eyes.
“Are you okay?” he said.
“I’d be more okay with a drink,” I said.
“Okay,” he said.
In a few years, after neither of us live in Texas anymore, there will be a shooting on the same floor of the library. It will be of little consequence, as these things go. Some kid will shoot off a few rounds of an AK-47 in the stacks but won’t hit anyone. His heart won’t be in it. To be fair, I don’t know where exactly it will happen, but when I hear about the shooting, I will decide it is on the same floor. When this story breaks I will be working for a Condé Nast ASPIRATIONAL LIFESTYLE MAGAZINE, profiling a San Francisco–based designer in a hotel bed with floor-to-ceiling windows over the bay and another irrelevant man on the other side of the bed because I will not be able to think of a lonelier situation than spending an expense account alone. I will read the story which will have been sent to me by a couple of former classmates and I will think of the hem of Jason’s boxer shorts and the curve of his spine, and of Hogwarts, and the distinguished tradition of the mother institution of which Hogwarts is part of—sad young men announcing their grief with guns—and all the hurt in the world will seem mysteriously and incontrovertibly fucked, and I will close my laptop and look out the window and start to cry, wondering how many Condé Nast girls there are at that moment looking out the window of a hotel room and crying over a man she can never get back.
Jason and I went to a fratty sports bar just off campus that was close and cheap and sat in a corner booth with whiskeys and ice. I took a big swallow.
“There it is,” I said.
“There what is,” he said.
“The click in my head that makes everything feel more peaceful,” I said.
We drank fast, saying little. I put my hand on the table. He put his hand on mine, once again running his finger on the indenture of my injured thumbnail.
“Let’s go somewhere,” I said.
“Where?” he said.
I didn’t know. We had changed locations once already. But it felt like being on a bicycle, drunk, and the only imperative was to stay in motion.
We took a shuttle up to north campus, stopping at a 7-Eleven and got a very cheap wine with a screw-off lid, and from there he walked me to a fenced-in field with a few scattered dark oaks. He passed the bottle through the bars of the fence gave me a boost to climb over and then followed. He wanted me to notice his effortless physicality as guys do climbing fences, but I looked at the sky. Sunsets in Texas look like every kind of heartbreak you’ve ever had, one on top of the other. We walked to an oak on the outskirts of the field. I noticed rows of markers in the ground, only a handful and off-center, like an afterthought.
I said it looked like a cemetery.
“It is,” said Jason. “It’s where they bury the John Does from the mental hospital.”
“How many nineteen-year-old communications majors have you finger-banged here?” I said.
“Shut up,” he said.
Pleased, I unscrewed the cap from the bottle and took a drink.
“Tell me everything you like about me,” I said.
“You have probably the prettiest eyes I’ve ever seen,” he said.
I scoffed. “Everyone has pretty eyes.”
“Is there a right thing for me to say?” he said.
“No.”
He gestured for the wine and took a pull. “I think about you all the time. When people say your name it makes my stomach hurt. The other day I ran into Mark when I was getting lunch. We got a bagel together and had a completely harmless conversation. Every time I opened my mouth I just heard static. I can’t even make myself jealous of him. All I felt was sorry.”
“Why?” I said, irritated he wasn’t jealous.
“Because he followed you down here and you don’t love him anymore.”
I got up.
“Where are you going?” he said.
I walked to the fence. He followed, repeating the question.
“I’m leaving,” I said.
I looked at the fence and realized it was too tall for me to climb without his help.
“Help me up,” I said.
“Tell me what I said.”
“We’re all at Hogwarts because we’re insightful people,” I said. “But you having insights into this that make it real, and you have no business making this real, you fucking idiot.”
He was quiet. “What’s Hogwarts?” he said.
“Help me over the fence,” I said.
“No.”
“If you don’t I’ll scream.”
He stepped forward and reached past me with both arms and grabbed the bars of the fence, boxing me in.
“Scream,” he said.
I wrapped my arms around his waist and lay my head against his chest. His heart was beating fast. He didn’t know how fast my heart was beating, the advantage was mine. He stroked the top of my head. It was the first time I’d been touched like this by a body that wasn’t Mark since I was nineteen. I could smell his underarm mixed with his deodorant, the dank sweetness. I found his nipple with my lips and bit hard enough for him to gasp. He gripped me by both shoulders and said, “What is wrong with you?”
“I hate you,” I said.
He looked at me, afraid, the way men do sometimes when they don’t know if it’s normal female stuff or if you’re actually dangerously crazy. I have always enjoyed that look, probably the way boys do when they are holding guns. He lowered his face to mine. I turned my head and walked back to our tree and sat, picking up the wine. He sat next to me and we passed the bottle back and forth. He put his hand to the back of my neck and tried to kiss me again.
“Jason,” I said, averting my face.
He pressed on. I put my hands to his face, pushing him off.
“Jason.”
“You bit me,” he said.
I laughed. Was that possibly true? We drank some more wine and he didn’t make another move so I rubbed his thigh and left my hand there. He tried to kiss me again, and I resisted. I could feel him physically shuddering with frustration. It was very satisfying.
“Jason, no.”
He pulled back, breathing heavily through his nose.
“What?” I said.
“You said no,” he said.
“I thought you were fun,” I said. “I should have called Harry.”
He put his hand on my face. It felt like sheet lightning spreading inside the skin of my cheek.
“Please come back,” he said.
I pulled his arms around me and shook for a while, then it passed.
“My mother died a year ago today,” I said.
He reached for the wine.
“When a thing like that happens, a thing like your mother dying, people expect you to feel shitty about it,” I said. “This is the convention. And I do, I do feel pretty shitty about it. But I haven’t told anyone the real reason why, not even Mark. At first I thought my reaction was numbness and that once I’d processed it, the things you’re supposed to feel would kick in. Then some time passed and I realized that what I was numb to wasn’t pain, it was relief. I didn’t love her anymore. I hadn’t loved her in years. My own mother. And her being gone felt like being set free, like some kind of permission for my life to really start. I haven’t told anybody this so when they look at me they can see what they want. They have no idea what a monster I am on the inside.”
His expression was blank, almost like he hadn’t heard me. He drank again.
“I was being fancy earlier,” he said. “I also like your ass.”
I took him by the ears and pulled his face close to mine.
“I’m going to tell you something else, and it’s very important, okay?” I said. “You have wings. You have a beautiful pair of wings; they are made of light. But they are broken. Your wings are broken. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
The sun was gone. The sky was all shocks of reds and pinks like we were inside of something alive.
“Okay,” he said.