I have no sense of direction. Thomas once joked that I could get turned around driving down a dead end street with no turnoffs. But even I know that once you realize you're going the wrong way, you need to retrace your steps back to where you were really sure you were on the right track.
It's not that simple with relationships. What if the problems between Thomas and me didn't lie in the recent past, in what had occurred directly before my decision to move out (or his decision to cause me to move out, depending on which way I looked at it), but in our beginnings, even in who we were in the first place? What if, like Columbus, we'd set off on the wrong journey and had landed, without realizing it, on a completely different continent neither of us had ever intended to discover?
"When are you going to come get the rest of your stuff?" Thomas asked me, interrupting my philosophical ruminations and jerking me back to the present.
I shrugged. I wondered whether his and my definitions of 'my' stuff were even the same. The painting he'd chosen for our bedroom but I'd paid for, was that his or mine? What about the cheesy refrigerator magnets we'd bought in places across the world, each one picked by one of us not because we knew the other would like it, but because we knew he'd hate it and half of the fun would be negotiating the sexual favors that would lead to its proud display?
"I don't exactly have much space here," I pointed out.
I recognized the sounds of his frustration, the heavy sigh and the finger-tapping. At one point in time I'd have done pretty much anything to avoid his being angry at me, not because the emotion itself bothered me so much – I'd had enough faith in both of us and in the strength of what existed between us – but because I couldn't stand the sound of it, all those sighs and taps and too-quiet clicks of doors shutting between us. I'd always wished he'd just yell at me (or whomever, it wasn't always or only me that irritated him) and get it over with, but he hadn't been brought up that way. Open displays of any kind of emotion – even of the simple affection that might lead parents to call their son Tom instead of always Thomas – hadn't been part of his upbringing; in fact they'd been actively discouraged.
"I guess I can come over later today with some boxes, pack it all up," I said, relenting. "If that's okay with you."
He didn't respond, but the tapping stopped. I twisted around on the couch so I could look at him over its back. He was polishing his reading glasses on his shirt and didn't raise his head.
"I don't know if you want to be there. It's probably best, in case..." I had to stop and clear my throat. In case what? In case I forgot something of mine or accidentally tried to pack something of his? In case he stopped me, and told me that none of all this was necessary, that we'd both made a mistake, and that we should just go back to right before things had fallen apart and take it from there?
Just because nobody has ever seen a pig fly doesn't mean it's never happened, right? I mean, surely at least one pig has been in an airplane somewhere in the world since the Wright brothers took to the skies.
********************
I didn't see much of Thomas between Thanksgiving and Christmas break. Despite the fact that I'd chosen my side of the room with some half-baked idea of studying on my bed in a bar of sunlight, I'd discovered the first week that if I lay on my bed I fell asleep within seconds and the second week that I didn't have enough will-power in the world to stop that from happening. So I'd moved my studying to an uncomfortable chair in the library carrells and end-of-term papers and tests pretty much kept me nailed there. I only returned to our room to sleep and by that time Thomas was either asleep himself or out somewhere. I told myself that we weren't avoiding one another, but had to admit that we were when I came back to our room after my last test to pack for home and realized that his ditty bag wasn't in its usual place on his dresser and that he'd already left. For where, I had no idea.
I arrived back on campus late in the afternoon of January 2nd. I dropped my stuff off just inside the door of our room, then rushed to the dining hall to work my shift. It was pretty quiet, just a couple of varsity teams and even they weren't quite as boisterous as usual. I was wiping down the salad bar for the zillionth time, when I became aware of somebody waiting beside me, and I turned around to face him.
"Hey, Scott. Happy New Year."
"Happy New Year."
Thomas had a skiing tan: sunburned nose and cheeks with pale patches on his forehead and around his eyes and on the temples, where his cap and goggles had covered his skin. He still had his post-Mohawk buzz, but he'd grown out the last of the red dye. He'd replaced the ring in his nostril with a small stud and, except for his Doc Martens, I'd never seen him dressed liked that before, in threadbare blue jeans that were surely too thin for the minus zero degree weather outside and a dark blue LL Bean Norwegian sweater that looked brand spanking new. He looked like a preppy skinhead, if such a thing existed.
"Your parents?" I nodded at the sweater, trying not to smile. I knew Thomas held a pretty low opinion of LL Bean clothes and those who wore them. "What's next, duck boots?"
"My grandfather," he said with a scowl, but then he smiled and I realized that I'd missed him like crazy, and that it was completely irrational to feel that way, but that I didn't care. Suddenly it bothered me that he was seeing me in the stupid white paper hat and ugly polyester shirt I had to wear for work.
"When's your shift up?" he asked me and I checked my watch.
"Another half hour."
He slid his eyes left and right, then leaned forward in an exaggerated caricature of someone imparting a state secret he shouldn't be. "I smuggled in beer," he whispered in my ear. His breath tickled and I shivered.
"What, here?" I asked worriedly. Bringing beer into the dining hall meant an automatic suspension, if caught.
"No. Back at the room. We can ring in the new year and term in style."
"With beer?" I asked sceptically, and he grinned.
"Imported Belgian Trappist beer. Trust me, you've never had anything like it."
About an hour later I found out that you didn't drink Belgian Trappist beer, at least not the one Thomas had brought, out of a bottle. That you couldn't pour it too quickly and that you needed to leave the last bit in the bottle, because of the yeast. He'd been right, this was ringing in the New Year in style. We sat on the carpet across from each other, backs braced against our respective beds and toasted one another with the weird glasses he'd also brought back especially for the occasion.
Thomas told me with an extraordinary lack of enthusiasm that he'd been to Aspen with his mother's parents for a week, and that he'd then met up with his parents in Detroit for a couple of days. I told him about my own holidays, purposely making them sound even more boring than they'd actually been, and still could see that he was sure I'd had a better time. We were on our third bottle each – and Belgian Trappist beers pack the kick of a mule – when Thomas dropped his head back onto his bed and stretched his long legs out, until his crossed bare feet lay next to my left hip. One of his hands was curled loosely around his glass, which balanced on his flat stomach, and the other lay palm up on the carpet.
"It's good to be back," he mumbled fuzzily, and I grunted in agreement. He raised his head and smiled at me lazily, his lids at half mast. "Is your schedule as crazy this term?"
"I guess so. Not classes so much, but swimming. I'll be busy. You?"
He shrugged. "I don't know. There's some off-campus stuff I might be interested in. We'll see."
He looked embarrassed and it intrigued me.
"Off-campus? Like what?"
He cleared his throat. "Ah. You know. Volunteer work. That kind of thing. I don't know. It's just a thought." He took a drink and let his head drop back again, breaking eye contact.
I leaned my head back as well, staring up at the ceiling. I felt his feet bump against my hip as he adjusted his position slightly, and I dropped my hand on his bare ankle.
"Your feet are cold," I said. I flexed my fingers, massaging the fine bones and tendons.
"Are they?" he asked. "I'm not really feeling them right now. Or my cheeks."
I rubbed the top of his foot to warm it, then let my hand slide under the cuff of his jeans to his shin. I caressed the fine hairs there with my fingertips and his leg jerked.
