Wouldn’t Give Him

Gavin met someone at the print shop.

He told me over lunch a week after Halloween, trying to sound casual and failing so badly I almost hugged him.

“He asked if I wanted coffee,” he said.

“Scandalous.”

“He was waiting for a binding job. We talked for, like, twenty minutes.”

“Did you say yes?”

“Yes.”

“Then why do you look like you’re awaiting sentencing?”

Gavin threw a napkin at me.

I helped him choose a jacket that afternoon. He tried three, rejected my favorite, then chose it five minutes later as though it had been his idea.

While he looked for his wallet, I took off my beanie. My ears ached after a long lecture in an overheated room.

Gavin looked over.

“Have you told him?”

“Not yet.”

He nodded.

“Miyu thinks I should.”

“What do you think?”

“I think about it every day.”

He sat beside me.

“If things are good, you don’t have to rush.”

“How long did you wait with your ex?”

“He found out by accident.”

“And he was okay?”

“Eventually.”

I looked at him.

Gavin rubbed his thumb over a loose thread on his jacket.

“He got quiet. Said he needed to think. It wasn’t terrible, but waiting for him to decide how he felt was.”

“I’m sorry.”

He shrugged.

“I know Micah’s trying. But he’s known you, what, two months? You’re happy right now. Maybe let it stay good a little longer.”

His advice sounded so much like my own fear that I wanted to accept it as wisdom.

I pulled the hat back on.

“Maybe.”

Back at our room, Micah was trying to mend the hinge on his laptop with the intense concentration he usually reserved for food.

“Where’ve you been?”

“Helping Gavin get ready for a date.”

“Poor guy.”

“Gavin?”

“The date. Your fashion advice is ruthless.”

I kicked off my good shoe and sat down.

“He’s nice. From what Gavin says.”

Micah set his screwdriver aside.

“You two seem good again.”

“We didn’t fight.”

“I meant after you told him about us.”

I glanced at him.

“He took it pretty well.”

Micah went still.

“Took what pretty well?”

I realized, too late, what I had assumed he knew.

“That we wouldn’t be doing anything anymore.”

His eyes stayed on me.

“You and Gavin were sleeping together.”

It wasn’t a question.

“Before you and I got together,” I said. “Not since. I told him the next morning.”

He stood, walked to the window, and turned back.

“You never said.”

“You didn’t ask.”

“I didn’t know I needed to.”

That stung.

“I haven’t lied to you about being faithful.”

“I didn’t say you had.”

“You’re looking at me like I did.”

He dragged a hand through his hair.

“I’m trying not to.”

The honesty briefly disarmed me.

Then he looked at my hat.

“Does he know?”

I didn’t answer.

“About the thing you can’t tell me.”

“Yes,” I said quietly.

He nodded once. His mouth tightened.

“And that’s why you’re different around him.”

“Micah—”

“I’ve been telling myself not to notice.”

I stood up, awkward in the boot.

“You told me I could take my time.”

“I know.”

“That was real, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.” His voice rose, then he stopped and lowered it. “It was real. So is this.”

I wrapped my arms around myself.

He looked at the bed, then away.

“I’m not asking you to prove anything by letting me touch you. I know that’s not how it works.”

My face burned.

“But you let me get close, then you look terrified. And I ask what happened, and you tell me nothing. Then you go to him and come back looking like you can breathe again.”

“He understands something.”

“Something I don’t.”

“Yes.”

We stood there with the word between us.

“Then help me understand,” Micah said.

I wanted to.

I wanted to pull the hat off and let the worst thing happen while I was still standing up. I wanted to stop arranging my whole body around being someone easier to love.

But his face was already hurt, already angry, and I couldn’t make myself place another impossible thing in front of him.

My hand rose to the hat.

He watched it.

I lowered it.

“Not tonight,” I whispered.

He closed his eyes.

“Okay.”

It sounded nothing like the other times he had said it.

He picked up his jacket.

“Where are you going?”

“Jamil’s. I need to calm down.”

“Are we—”

I couldn’t finish.

He turned at the door.

“I’m upset, Loui. I don’t want to say something I can’t take back.”

Then he left.

At eleven, he texted.

Staying here tonight. We’ll talk tomorrow.

I read it until the words stopped looking like words.

I wrote Okay.

Then I wrote I’m sorry.

I deleted the second message before sending it. I didn’t want him to think I was apologizing for having a body he hadn’t seen.

I didn’t know what else I was apologizing for.

In the bathroom, I took off my hat and stared at myself. Two dark ears stood among my messy hair. One turned toward a footstep in the hall before I could stop it.

They were just ears.

They had also become every reason I believed people might leave.

I put the hat back on.

The next morning, I attended class, wrote down almost nothing, and checked my phone until the battery warning appeared. Micah had an afternoon lab. I knew because his schedule was pinned over his desk, where I had helped him arrange it.

Our talk would have to wait until evening.

Outside the education building, I called Miyu. She answered between classes, breathless from walking uphill.

“He wants to talk tonight,” I said.

“That sounds like a good thing.”

“What if it isn’t?”

She stopped walking. I could hear the wind against her phone.

“Loui, I can listen to you worry. I can come over afterward. But I can’t find out what he’s thinking for you.”

“I know.”

“Do you want me there?”

I looked at the students crossing the courtyard, carrying books and coffees and entirely private problems.

“Not yet,” I said. “I need to talk to him myself.”

I meant that when I said it.

By five, waiting felt unbearable.

When Gavin asked whether I wanted to go out with him and some friends, I said yes before thinking about what I actually wanted.

I wanted one evening inside my own head to be quieter.

I knew a club wouldn’t fix anything.

I went anyway.