It’s good, but not great. He tries too hard. He’s still wearing his socks. He picks me up and carries me over to the wall, but it’s cold stucco. The bumps scratch my back.
“Remember last time?” I whisper in his ear. “On your desk?”
“Yeah,” he whispers, and carries me to his desk. He keeps holding me while he throws notebooks on the floor. I wrap my arms around his neck even tighter and think about what it would be like to stay with him.
When he sets me down gently on the desk it doesn’t take him long to finish.
We make goal by morning.
* * *
“Stay another day,” he says when we wake up.
I nod and kiss his face. There’s barely any stubble.
“No, I mean it. Don’t say you will and leave while I’m in the shower. Stay for real this time.”
I kiss him hard, running my finger along the bottom of his lip and the dent above his chin, memorizing the way his lips feel. I wait for the panic I always get when I think about staying in one place for too long, the electric itch in my veins. It doesn’t come.
“Short shower. So short. Don’t go,” he says, rolling over me to get out of bed. He pulls on his boxer shorts and leaves the room.
I look around, taking quick inventory of where my stuff is so I can exit efficiently. I can’t stay. Keep moving or get stuck. Those are the only options. If I go for breakfast with Justin, before you know it, I’ll be living here, working for Arnie, falling completely and totally short of every fantasy Justin has ever had about me. The whole reason people like me is that I always leave a little too soon.
I hear the whine of the shower starting. I have ten minutes at most. My limbs are leaden, lazy, brain full of fuzz. I can’t get up. It’s cold and lonely out there. I pinch the inside of my wrist with my other hand, hoping I can snap myself out of it, but my eyelids feel heavy. I don’t have any fight left.
And then Justin is back. Body on mine. The wet towel wrapped around him falling to the wayside.
* * *
“Where are you headed next?” Justin says after, rolling on his side to look at me.
I shrug. “My plans got pushed around.” I was going to book more gigs from Red Bank. It’s the first time in a long time with a big span of empty in front of me. I should have called places from Arnie’s but it felt nice to just be there.
“So you can go anywhere? Like whenever you want to?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Mostly. I mean, I have to fund it, so there’s work involved.”
“God, you’re so lucky. Even on spring break I’m supposed to be home going to interviews for a summer internship I don’t even want.”
“So why go?”
“My dad’s making me. I want to intern in New York or Washington, someplace real, you know? But I have to spend the summer in Rochester. He won’t pay for me to live anywhere else. He hates the idea that I might actually have fun at some point in my life.”
Justin looks so defeated. It’s real hurt that his dad won’t pay for him to have fun. I can’t imagine his world. He probably can’t imagine mine either. But I do understand feeling stuck and misunderstood.
“What would happen if you came with me instead?” I say. It’s hypothetical. A gift to him, so he can feel like he has choices. It’s safe. He won’t take me up on it.
Justin laughs. “My dad would shit himself.”
I laugh too and run my finger along his arm. “See, technically, you could, though. You have more than one narrow path.”
“Yeah,” he says. “Technically, I could.” The gears are turning. He might actually be considering it. I wait for the fear to hit, but it doesn’t. Instead, he wraps his arms around me and I can still breathe all the way in and all the way out. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I learned not to travel with people. I know better. But this is different. It’s Justin. He’s the first person I met after I left Ithaca. I’ve known him for a long time. I run my finger along his forearm from one freckle to the next, like I’m connecting stars.
* * *
Over hash browns and coffee at a diner on State Street, we start plotting. We’ll go south until it gets warm enough to swim in the ocean. He has a ton of mixtapes. I’ll pay for gas. He’ll pay for rooms. He has his dad’s credit card. For emergencies. “This is an emergency,” he says, halfway between funny and earnest. “It’s my junior year, and I’ve never even gone anywhere good for spring break. At some point I have to live my life, you know?”