11

Nico

By the time the seminar ended that afternoon, Nico’s head was pounding. He followed the other students out into the blustery gray, the sky full of scudding clouds, leaves whipped up into tiny whirlwinds that spun away and died. One more day, he told himself as the breeze raked his hair. One more day. He could do one more day.

It wasn’t simply the amount of new information he was learning from the professors—and, he reluctantly admitted, from the other grad students. It was the questions. The on-demand critical thinking. The passages of text presented and then, after barely a moment to read (or, if Nico were lucky, re-read) them, the dissection, anatomization, analysis. The fact, at the bottom line, that the whole thing was such a fucking performance.

Gio always had something brilliant to say, of course—a grudging admission, but one that Nico couldn’t avoid. As did Clark. Between the two of them, they probably answered sixty percent of the questions. But Kaylee, when pressed, came up with excellent answers (for which she would then, every single time, apologize profusely). And Ridson had a trick of staying silent until delivering a bombshell response. Maya, of course, was crushing it—sliding in after Gio and Clark had blathered on to say something incisive and succinct. Nico tried to say something when he could, but that was becoming less and less frequent.

And, of course, it didn’t help that he was supposed to present his paper tomorrow, on the final day of the seminar. It was probably a good thing. Probably a great thing, actually. Because it would be Saturday, and the seminar would end, and he could go get tanked and forget about how he had epically failed at this big opportunity.

Because the reality was, Nico wasn’t going to finish his paper. He had drafts, sure. He had ideas. And now, after three days of pounding his head against indecipherable glosses of Augustine and Plotinus and Hegel and Nietzsche, he realized he had nothing. Scrap. Shit.

Maya elbowed him, and Nico brought his head up. He opened his mouth to ask what she wanted. And then he saw Jadon.

They hadn’t seen each other since the fumbling awkwardness of the dorm showers, where they had cleaned up after the run. To Nico’s simultaneous relief and disappointment, the showers featured private stalls, and he’d gotten no closer to seeing Jadon naked—not that he wanted to—than his silhouette through the thin curtain. Now, seeing him again in the navy suit and the garnet-colored tie, with his hair back to its sandy-dark perfection even after a day spent in trainings and round tables and whatever else police officers did at a symposium (maybe talk about their favorite time they handcuffed someone?), Nico forgot what he’d been about to say.

Laughing, Maya gave him a push toward Jadon.

“What—” Clark said behind Nico. And then, “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Hey,” Nico said.

“Hey yourself,” Jadon said as he stood. “How was the seminar today?”

“Oh my God, I don’t want to talk about the seminar. Also, it was great. And horrible.”

“That is a confusing series of words.”

For some reason, that was enough to make Nico smile. “How was the symposium?”

“Oh, that’s easy: super boring.”

Nico laughed.

The cluster of grad students was already moving off again, talking in low voices, and Clark called, “Nico, we’re not waiting for you today.”

Nico gave a wave without glancing over.

“You can go with your friends,” Jadon said. “I told you, I’m not trying to mess up your life.”

“Jesus, no. I’ve spent all day with them. If I hear Gio say one more time, ‘Yes, but have you considered—’ I’m going to blow my brains out.”

“Well, we don’t want that.”

“Besides, I have to work on this paper. Which I will not finish. Which means tomorrow, I will give a live performance of complete academic self-destruction. And then I will blow my brains out.”

“I liked the first part, but you lost me at the end.”

He was still laughing as Jadon chivvied him toward the library. When the door to Eldridge Hall opened, Nico glanced over out of reflex. Dr. Meza stepped out, and his sharp, inquisitive eyes landed on Nico. It was different from how the professor had looked at Nico in the seminar, and Nico recognized that look. He’d seen it across a lot of bars, in a lot of clubs. He’d seen it on runways, at photoshoots, in agencies. His mouth did what he’d trained it to do a long time ago: a perfect smile that wasn’t a promise but that…suggested.

Interest quickened in Dr. Meza’s face.

And then Nico realized what he’d done. His cheeks heated, and he turned away and walked faster.

“Everything okay?” Jadon asked.

“Yeah.”

“Did you know that guy?”

“He’s a professor.”

Jadon didn’t say anything, and his silence grew as they crossed the quad. The sounds of traffic filtered in from Kingshighway—horns and engines and tires and, of course, ambulances. A group of men and women emerged from Waverley, two of the men shouting over each other about where to get the best wings while the rest of their group was engaged in the kind of collegial conversation that meant none of them knew each other. A girl pushed a cat in a stroller, occasionally stopping to bend and say something to the cat. The sky had deepened to the color of old ash, and for an uncanny moment, it was the same color as the campus’s stained limestone, and Nico couldn’t tell where stone ended and sky began.

He told himself not to look back, but of course, he did. No Dr. Meza. Relief loosened Nico’s body, and then he told himself he was being silly. Nothing inappropriate had happened. Dr. Meza had looked at him, and Nico had smiled back. That was all. It wasn’t like they’d been flirting in class. It wasn’t like Dr. Meza had shown any kind of interest at all.

Not unless you counted the way he looked at Nico. Not unless you didn’t know what that kind of look meant.

And what was he going to do, anyway? Follow Nico into the library and—what? Flirt with him some more? Make a pass? Demand sex in exchange for professional favors? Nico shook his head at himself. The whole thing was ridiculous.

But when he checked behind them again, he saw Heeley. The security guard was skulking in a narrow passageway between two buildings, but Nico was sure it was him. Although—Nico frowned through the gloom, trying to make out what he was wearing. Dark clothes. But they didn’t look like the uniform he’d been wearing the other day. But that could have any number of explanations. It might be the gloom, playing tricks on Nico’s eyes. It might be that Heeley had ended a shift, or was about to start one, and he was in his civvies. Did security guards call them civvies?

“Everything okay?” Jadon asked.

Nico whipped his head forward and managed some sort of noncommittal response. He could have told Jadon about Heeley. He could have mentioned, in passing, that it was strange. But what if it wasn’t strange? What if Heeley had a perfectly innocent explanation for following them?

Nico dragged his gaze forward again, his mind racing as he tried to keep his body language normal, his stride smooth. They reached the edge of the quad, and when he looked a third time, Heeley was still back there. Moseying along, yes. But there. And this time, Nico was sure he made eye contact.

He opened his mouth to tell Jadon, and before he could say anything, he thought of how, only a moment before, he’d been worried about Meza. And how there were a million reasons Heeley might be crossing campus right then. He might be going to the gym. He might be going to meet a friend—he was young, the right age to have friends on campus. Hell, he could be a student here, and he was going back to his apartment or dorm. Nico wrestled with a nervous giggle. He could be going to the library. Maybe he and Nico could be study buddies.

At the glass doors to the library, Jadon paused, studying Nico’s face in the panel of light that fell from inside. Then he said, “Are you sure everything’s okay? If you want to go with your friends—”

“They’re not my friends. Well, Maya is. And no.” Nico softened his voice. “Thank you, but I’ve got to get this paper done. Or, at least, I’ve got to print it off so, after they massacre me tomorrow, they can shred it and bury me in the strips of paper.”

Jadon nodded. “Like a giant litter box.”

For a moment, Nico forgot about Heeley. “What is wrong with you?”

Jadon opened the door, grinned, and made a courtly, after-you gesture as Nico stomped past.

This time, Nico waited while Jadon got a pass, and they went up to the fourth floor together. Instead of the large, open study space, Nico made his way through another fire door and into the stacks. This was the heart of the library, where the collection was housed. The floor was sealed concrete. The walls were concrete too. The shelving units were a dull, serviceable gray that probably would have brought fond memories to the heart of a rear admiral. Fluorescents buzzed steadily overhead, their light sterile and strangely depthless, and even with the HVAC system circulating air, it smelled of moldering cloth bindings and old paper and something else, a smell Nico associated with freshmen dorms and finals week and unbrushed teeth.

Carrels were spaced throughout the stacks, and Nico found one close to the section of books he needed. He slung his backpack from his shoulder, pulled out the chair, and made quick, efficient work of laying out pencils, notes, his laptop. When he looked up, Jadon was grinning.

“Message received,” Jadon said.

“What message?”

The grin got bigger. “I’ll let you work. Let me know if you need to go anywhere.”

“Yes, Dad.”

“You know, I like it when guys call me daddy,” Jadon said. And he did some sort of stretch, arms over his head, that pulled his shirt tight against his chest and made Nico think wet, thirsty thoughts. And then, still grinning, he sauntered off.

“Asshole,” Nico said by the time he recovered the power of speech.

But Jadon was gone, and it was too little, too late.

Nico set to work. None of the farting around that—if he were being honest—typically took up ninety percent of work sessions. He didn’t check his mail. He didn’t look at campus news. No scrolling the New York Times. No checking JSTOR “just one more time” to see if someone had miraculously published a new article since yesterday. No phone.

It was hard. And tedious. And it was probably why so many people, grad students among them, had such a hard time finishing what they set out to do. But deadlines had always been a motivating factor for Nico—lose five pounds by Friday or don’t come back; complete your thesis by December or be asked to leave the program; finish this paper or be a laughingstock on the final day of the seminar, kiss this golden opportunity goodbye. And then what? Get a real job? Spend the rest of his life mastering the ever-evolving intricacies of the Emery Hazard filing system (patent pending)?

He was still working when, unmistakably, he smelled smoky, savory meat. He lifted his head and glanced around. The stacks were silent. Then ductwork boomed as the HVAC came on again, and Nico startled. People brought food into the stacks, of course. They weren’t supposed to, but until the university started employing a dedicated task force of police librarians (which, Nico thought with the typical mixture of fondness and low-grade annoyance that accompanied every thought of the man, was probably the job Emery Hazard had been born for), students were going to do what they wanted. So, someone had brought their meal into the stacks so they could keep working. Nico’s stomach grumbled. It wasn’t a bad idea.

Then someone whispered, “Boo.”

Nico jumped in his seat. He twisted in the chair: the shelving units, the long empty aisle, fluorescents streaking the concrete—

“Dumbass!”

Jadon had shifted the books on the shelving unit and made an opening to stick his head through. He looked both amused and incredibly self-satisfied as he put a finger to his lips and—a tad dramatically for such the butch cop type—whispered, “We’re in a library.”

“I know we’re in a library!” It wasn’t exactly a yell—more like a whisper if somebody had it by the balls. “Do you know how I know? Because I’m working. Here. Silently. Studiously. In the library. Not—not screwing around scaring people half to death! You almost gave me a heart attack!”

Jadon’s smile was big. And silly. And bizarrely confident. And in the light of all those late-night texts, Nico suddenly understood what he was seeing: Jadon Reck, the man, the one who wasn’t dragging around whatever had made him decide the only fit punishment was working himself to death. It surprised Nico, how young Jadon looked, and it surprised him again that Jadon was young—that he was, in fact, almost a year younger than Nico.

Before Nico could process the thoughts, plastic rustled, and Jadon pulled his head back enough to display a bag through the opening.

“You’re not allowed to have food in here,” Nico said, but his stomach rumbled so loudly that he was pretty sure Jadon heard. “And you have to put those books back.”

Jadon did something with his eyebrows, but he put the books back. Plastic rustled a few more times. The smell of meat and wood smoke grew stronger, now mixed with something else—something, Nico’s body told him, undoubtedly fried. Nico’s stomach decided to try to turn itself inside out in anticipation. And still Jadon didn’t appear.

“Jay?”

No answer.

Nico heaved himself out of the chair, his joints crackling from the time in the chair—God, had it really been three hours? He pushed aside the irrelevant, impossible, ludicrous thought that maybe he was getting old.

He came around the corner of the shelving unit into the next aisle, and then he stopped. Jadon had spread a tablecloth on the floor, and he sat there, takeout containers dotting the pristine white fabric. Paper plates. Eco-friendly disposable utensils.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Nico said. “If that’s a beer, I will love you forever.”

Laughing, Jadon popped the top on a can of—well, Nico hadn’t heard of Schlafly Summer Lager before, but it did taste a little like summer, bright and citrusy and refreshing. Like it wasn’t October, with the dark and the cold clenched tight around everything.

“We can’t do this,” Nico said. His stomach gurgled a protest.

A tiny smile hooked the corner of Jadon’s mouth. “I can pack it up.”

“No! I meant, we can’t do this again. Just this once. That’s it.”

Jadon nodded.

“Because this is wrong.”

“So wrong.”

“There are rules.”

“That’s what makes it so exciting.”

“Stop!” Nico laughed. “You’re making it sound porny, and this is a library. It’s a sacred space.”

“You’ve never read Shaw’s stories about Emery,” Jadon asked drily, “have you?”

“God, why did you bring that up? It took me months to use a self-checkout again.” Nico lowered himself to sit cross-legged on the tablecloth. He touched the fabric, and then he looked up at Jadon. The detective had lost his jacket, and the white broadcloth of his shirt had ridden up from his waistband to expose a hint of skin as he leaned back on his hands. The top button of the shirt was undone too, and Nico realized that, in a weird way, the hollow of a throat could be muscular—defined, anyway. And it was patently unfair that Jadon could even be buff in his neck. Where his collar lay open, it exposed a patch of paler skin, where most days it must have been hidden. That seemed unfair too. Nico took another drink of the beer. You need to eat something, a voice in his brain told him. You’re drinking that too fast.

“All right,” Nico said, gesturing with the can. “How?”

“A magician never reveals his secrets—ow!” With a laugh, Jadon pulled back the leg that Nico had kicked. He rubbed his shin and gave Nico puppy eyes. Then it was gone again, and the young, bright, smiling Jadon was back. “You wouldn’t believe what you can get away with if you’re a cop.” Then he held up three fingers like a Boy Scout. “But I promise to only use my powers for good.”

“Requisitioning the college’s table linens,” Nico said with raised eyebrows. “And don’t give me that line about being a cop; I saw the security guard when you tried to get a pass tonight. He wanted to strip search you.”

“But he was much friendlier after I gave him fifty bucks.”

“Jadon!”

“Are you going to yell at me every time I tell you something?”

“Very possibly.”

“So,” Jadon said, “this is the place I was telling you about, before I changed my mind when I saw you looking at the Walk of Fame.”

“Before I was a colossal brat, you mean.”

“Before Saladgate. It’s my favorite barbeque in the city. And these—” He held up what Nico now knew was a toasted ravioli. “—are toasted ravioli stuffed with brisket, so basically, they’re the food of the gods.”

Nico reached to take it from him, and at the same time, Jadon held it out, and somehow, instead of taking the ravioli, Nico found himself opening his mouth and accepting a bite. Jadon’s knuckles dusted his chin, and the dark, dark sandiness of his eyes was so unbelievably…calm. Nico chewed mechanically, with absolutely no idea what the ravioli tasted like. It could have been delicious. It could have been school paste.

“Well?” Jadon asked.

“It’s good, but I think I like the regular ones more.”

“Try it with this sauce.”

Nico did. And now that he wasn’t—what? staring into Jadon’s eyes, his whole body responding to that casual brush of skin on skin like it had been an electric current?—he could taste the brisket, the smoke, the vinegar and garlic. He nodded. “It’s growing on me.”

“And I got all the best stuff. They’ve got popovers, and pulled pork, and oh God, I’m going to have to run a marathon to burn off this mac and cheese, but it’s like crack.”

“What’s a popover?” Nico asked, grabbing a plate.

The conversation moved easily after that—although Nico still didn’t have any idea what a popover was besides buttery, airy, carby goodness. Nico asked about Jadon’s day. Jadon asked about Nico’s. Nico surprised himself by talking about his frustrations with the seminar, and it was oddly gratifying to make Jadon laugh. And when Jadon talked about how frustrated he felt, unable to make progress on his investigations while he was stuck at the symposium, Nico nodded and made understanding noises and, before he realized what he was doing, put a hand on Jadon’s leg, the muscle warm and firm under his touch. And Jadon didn’t even blink; he put a hand over Nico’s, like it was supposed to be there, and kept talking.

This is the place I was telling you about. Jadon’s words echoed in the back of Nico’s head. And then, a voice like Nico’s saying, This is a do-over.

This is a date.

Instead of the rush of dismay or panic or, frankly, annoyance, Nico found that it didn’t seem to change anything. He was here. He was sharing a meal with someone who was funny and generous and kind. And, with a kind of wonder, Nico realized he was happy. It was like something loosening inside his chest. It wasn’t the kind of manic restlessness and hilarity he remembered from his undergrad days, when everything had been going a hundred miles an hour, and happiness had seemed to mean something like screaming with laughter and drinking and parties and yes (he sounded a little defiant as he addressed the inescapable Emery-voice that had taken up permanent resident inside his head), even a little coke. This felt more like what he had with Emery, when things had been good. This felt—it came with a wave of heat that rose in his body—better.

Nico’s phone buzzed, and Jadon stopped in his description of a woman he’d had to arrest for taking a dump in the middle of a Dollar Tree.

It was a text from Clark: Whare are you?

Nico shook his head, and Jadon started to speak again.

The phone buzzed again.

“Sorry,” Nico said.

Jadon opened his mouth, and the phone buzzed again. With a sheepish smile, he said, “Are you sure you don’t need to handle that?”

Nico shook his head, but he did check the phone:

Where are you/

Where are you??

He stared at the screen, his heart hammering in his ears. And then he silenced it and turned it facedown on the tablecloth.

“Everything okay?” Jadon asked.

Nico gave a frustrated toss of his head. “Clark.”

“Ah.”

“We’re not together. Or hooking up. Or anything.”

“You told me.”

“We did hook up. Once. It was over a year ago. And it was stupid, and I’ve regretted it ever since. I mean, God, I don’t even like him. And now this bullshit.”

“Nico, you don’t have to explain yourself to me.”

“No, I’m sorry. I—we were having such a nice time, and now it’s ruined.”

“I’m still having a nice time.” Jadon leaned back on his hands again. The darkly sandy eyes made Nico think of water, the sound of the surf, the way the sun caught grains of mica and spent them like matches. “Tell me about this big paper you’re working on.”

“Working on might be a loose description,” Nico said. “I don’t know. At this point, I might be banging my head against a wall.”

“It’s a big deal?”

“It could be. I mean, if I want to get into a good doctoral program, this could do it. I’d love to have a solid publication when I apply. And maybe a letter of rec from one of these professors.”

“What’s the paper about?”

“Kierkegaard,” Nico said with a lopsided smile. “It’s so boring; you don’t want to know.”

“Didn’t we go over this?” Jadon said, and his tone was still gentle, but there was steel there too—a reminder that Jadon was, along with whatever else he was becoming for Nico, still a detective. “I asked you a question. That means I want to know.”

“Okay. Um, so, let’s see.” Nico worked to sort out the threads of the argument in his head; he’d been living inside the paper for so long that it had become a jumble. “So, my research is about Kierkegaard’s role in developing an aesthetics of Christian existentialism.”

“Aesthetics like, what? Why things are beautiful?”

“Mmm, kind of. Why is part of it. But it’s broader than that. What it means for something to be beautiful. What beauty means in the larger framework of Christian existentialism.”

“Truth is subjectivity.”

Nico gave him a startled look.

“Okay, that’s a little insulting,” Jadon said, eyebrows curved to take the heat out of the words.

Laughing, Nico shook his head. “No, I—oh my God, I’m sorry.”

“Well, it was only this morning, Nico. I’m not a genius, but I can remember that far back. Keep going.”

“Right. Well, the question of aesthetics and subjectivity is a huge one, way beyond Kierkegaard, and that’s partly what I’m interested in. But for this paper, I’m interested in a different side of his work. Kierkegaard is…um, complicated? I mean, that’s a way of saying his writings are convoluted, and sometimes they seem contradictory, and in general—”

“It feels like pounding your head against a brick wall?”

“Pretty much. But one of the questions that comes up is the way Kierkegaard uses the language of the aesthetic to talk about love, which again, isn’t exactly unique—I mean, most of the Western tradition has some conflation of love and beauty—but the way Kierkegaard does it is fascinating.”

Jadon’s smile was like something Nico had drawn as a child, his best, most determined efforts to capture the essence of a smile, and somehow getting it right even though all he’d managed were the lines of it.

“Sorry. You’re—”

“If you tell me I’m bored,” Jadon said, “we’re going to have a fight. What does Kierkegaard say about love?”

“The problem with the aesthetic—with beauty, for Kierkegaard—is that it’s sensual, it’s unstable, it’s often selfish, and it’s right now, a pleasure that distracts us from what matters, which is the eternal. And if we’re caught up in the aesthetic, and aesthetic love, which a lot of people take to mean sexual love, or love with a sexual component, then we’re not going to make that leap of faith that takes us from reason to beyond reason.”

“Because we already have something we want, something here.”

“Exactly!” Nico sat up a little straighter. “So, Kierkegaard says there’s ethical love. Because loving our neighbor is a commandment in the scripture, so he can’t say love in general is a problem. Ethical love is a duty. It’s an obligation to care for people, and it transforms love from something based on feelings, which are sensual and changing, to a commitment. It’s also something we choose, which means that even though it’s an obligation, it also emphasizes our moral freedom. True love is freely given and freely chosen.”

“But no sex?” Jadon said dubiously.

“I heard that.”

“It’s a philosophical question.”

“Sorry, Kierkegaard didn’t cover being called daddy.”

“Hey!”

Nico shrugged and spread his hands.

“Hey,” Jadon said again, and this time he laughed. “So, that’s it? Ethical love? A moral commitment to care for the person you choose to love? That seems kind of…I don’t know. Cold.”

“Kierkegaard isn’t a straightforward writer. He talks about romance and the reality of human relationships that begin in the aesthetic mode. But he believed that ethical love was higher, and he tried to live that way. Struggled with it. He was engaged, and he broke off that engagement, which was a big deal for him.” Nico was silent for a moment. “Anyway, I’m writing about the absurd and the leap of faith, kind of this mixture of ideas, playing around with how Kierkegaard’s ideas on non-rationality might actually resolve some of the contradictions in his ideas of aesthetic love.”

“That sounds so interesting.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

“Yes, it does. And it’s intimidating. Here you are, you speak five languages, and you read like twenty more, and you’re writing this paper about stuff I can barely wrap my brain around, and it’s—it’s incredible.”

Nico tried not to. Then he smiled. He shrugged.

“This is going to sound so stupid,” Jadon said, “but how did you get interested in this stuff? I mean, how did you even learn about it in the first place.”

“Like, when I was a braindead model, how did I ever manage to stop doing coke and blowing agents to start a rigorous investigation of Kierkegaard’s theory of the aesthetic?”

Jadon’s face closed.

“I’m sorry,” Nico said. “I didn’t mean that. I—it’s automatic.”

“It’s all right.”

“Jay, I’m super sorry. I hate doing that, the knee-jerk response. It’s so immature. It’s a good question.”

“I know you weren’t braindead.” Jadon’s expression softened. “For God’s sake, you were at Columbia.”

“Yeah, well, that doesn’t always mean as much as you think it does,” Nico said with a grin. “But thank you. I guess I was…I guess I was in a bad place, actually, although at the time, I didn’t realize it. I was in my second year. At Columbia, that’s when you have to declare your major. I had no idea what I was going to do. I was picking up modeling jobs as fast as I could, convinced that was…I don’t know, the right thing to do. My parents.” He stopped. He felt hot, and he found the tab of the zipper on his sweater and clutched it. Stop, he told himself. This isn’t cute, not on anybody. So, stop right now. But the words kept tumbling out. “I’d moved off campus and into an apartment that the modeling agency provided. Three of us to a room. In bunk beds, my God. And it was a shithole. And I never knew when I was going to get paid, never knew when I was going to have money, and the other guys were such bitches, and I got so weird about food, which, yeah, it was definitely the start of an eating disorder, even though the other guys made it all seem so normal.” He stopped. Tried to. It was like trying to brick up a dam as the water came pouring through. “One time, I heard one of the guys say we were just hangers for the clothes, and that’s right. You’d show up for a shoot, and they’d take one look at you and send you home. Or you’d wait hours to be considered—because for that job, they couldn’t go by the agency photos—and they’d say, ‘Too brown.’ Or ‘Too tall.’ Or, I swear to God, ‘Too skinny.’ And I started having these epic meltdowns. It was this vicious circle, because then I’d be nervous the next shoot, or I’d make myself sick, or God. And then one day—” Stop, he thought. This is when you have to stop. “—one of the assistants for the photo shoot took out a measuring tape and started checking my wrists and ankles and calves. I shit you not. And they had this whole discussion while I was standing there about the ratios, calf to ankle, wrist to ankle, if they could find a way to make it work because I wasn’t what they wanted. And I stood there, listening to them, already starting to meltdown. They sent me home, and I stayed in bed for two days. And there was this voice in my head, telling me how shit I was, how worthless, how ugly.”

“Nico—” Jadon began.

But Nico spoke over him. “But this other part of me, this part of me that was trying to stay alive, was reminding me that at one point, I’d been proud of the fact that I was smart, that I did well in classes, that I had goals and ambitions that had nothing to do with whether my fucking calves were too big for my fucking ankles.” He shook his head. “Thank God I hadn’t dropped out of school. I’d been going to classes, although I was doing terribly in most of them, and I decided I was going to start getting good grades again. It was a lifeline; I can see that now. I took fewer jobs. I stayed in the library as long as I could because I didn’t want to go to that apartment. I was in a philosophy elective, and we were reading Kierkegaard, and it was like he was talking to me. Despair and angst, being confronted with your failure to live up to your potential.” Nico waited until his throat relaxed enough for him to continue. “At semester, I moved into the dorms, which felt great as a sophomore. I declared a philosophy major. I kept taking modeling jobs, but it was a job now. And holy shit, I cannot believe I said all of that out loud. If you need to run for an exit, I think there’s a fire escape that way.”

Jadon didn’t smile, though; he watched Nico with an unsettling intensity, the silence growing until it prickled. When he spoke, his voice was rough, “I am so sorry.”

“It’s okay. It’s fine, actually. I’m fine. I’m here now, and I’m happy—well, I’m not unhappy—and I learned some heavy shit about myself, which is apparently the whole fucked-up purpose of life.”

“But I’m sorry you had to go through that. I’m sorry you were alone. And I think it’s amazing that you took all that pain and suffering and found a way to use it to make yourself stronger.” His voice softened. “I think you’re amazing.”

“You should think I’m crazy,” Nico said. “Or nuts. Or psycho; a lot of people like to tell me I’m psycho.”

The only answer was more of that intensely earnest study.

“Now you’re supposed to tell me the tragic secret of your childhood,” Nico prompted.

Jadon laughed quietly. “No tragic secrets, unfortunately.”

“Bullshit.”

“Scout’s honor.”

“God, of course you were a Boy Scout.”

“Actually, I wasn’t. My moms wouldn’t let me.” His voice took on an amused note as he added, “Trust me, I asked.”

Jadon wasn’t sure what had been most surprising, in those under-the-cover-of-darkness conversations via text: learning that Jadon had grown up on an organic farm outside of Iowa City with two moms, or that Jadon seemed so surprised by Nico’s surprise when he’d learned it. In hindsight, Nico recognized the hippie-ish thread to Jadon’s character—the quirky T-shirts about tea and beets and Santa Fe; the sneaking suspicion that Jadon aspired to drive a Subaru; the improbability of how well Jadon and Shaw had fit as a couple (which, yes, Nico had done all sorts of snooping about, to the point that Emery had started to get suspicious about all the questions).

“Why?”

“Why did I want to be a Boy Scout? Or why wouldn’t my moms let me?”

“Both, I guess.”

“My moms have strong opinions. I guess I should say strong beliefs. They’re the ultimate hippies—anti-war, anti-corporation, anti-government. As an adult, I can look back and see that they were two young women trying to figure out how to run a farm with zero experience, zero money, and a brand-new baby boy. I mean, it’s ridiculous; one of my moms was an honest-to-God debutante. What did she know about farming? And, of course, they were terrified about raising a boy.”

“Because they’re lesbians?” Nico asked doubtfully.

Jadon gave him a look.

“I don’t know,” Nico said with a laugh. “I’m trying to be an active listener.”

“Not because they’re lesbians. Because they didn’t know anything about boys, and because they were already overwhelmed, and because, if I’m being honest, they’ve got—”

“Beliefs?”

Jadon smiled. “Yes. They’ve got beliefs about men. So, when I was growing up, there was a lot of talk about toxic masculinity, although they weren’t calling it that back then. A lot of conversations about how to be a human being—not ‘a man’. And I love them for that; I’m glad they worked so hard to try to teach me to be compassionate, not to buy into stereotypes about gender.”

“Not to be another tool for the patriarchy.”

“Yep, not to be another tool for the fucking patriarchy.” A wry grin crossed Jadon’s features. “But at the time, it pissed me the hell off.”

Nico burst out laughing. “What?”

“Oh God, by the time I was a teenager, I hated it. Hated them, or that’s what it felt like. Because it was hard enough going to school and being the kid from the hippie-lesbian-organic farm commune, when everybody else had a mom and dad. And then, on top of that, I wasn’t allowed to do Scouts, wasn’t allowed to go camping, wasn’t allowed to shoot guns or bows or go hunting. They were hardliners about not letting any ‘masculine energy,’ as they called it, into my life.”

“Let me guess: good little Jadon Reck did exactly what they said.”

“Hard to remember since I was stoned from 2007 to 2013.”

Nico laughed so hard he had to lie down. Somehow, his head ended up next to Jadon’s leg. Jadon laughed too, although softly. When he drew his fingers through Nico’s hair, it was like someone tightened a wire that ran from Nico’s chest down, down, down.

“They actually didn’t care so much about the grass, as they called it, but God, when they found out I’d shot a turkey. One time in my life, my mom hit me. Once. She had this leather strap, God knows why. I didn’t sit down for a week. I heard them crying about it later, and now, it’s heartbreaking. At the time, though, it made me mad.”

“Please tell me more about rebellious Jadon. Please tell me you did something wicked like pee standing up or mansplain or use gendered language. Did you call a flight attendant a stewardess?”

Jadon tugged on his hair and, the next moment, ran a soothing hand over it as he said, “Smartass.”

“Did you hear a name like Dr. Murray and automatically assume it was a man?”

“Forget it. Never mind. I decided you are a brat.”

“No, please! You have to tell me how you went from stoner turkey-killer to the pillar of law and order.”

“Oh my God.”

“Please!”

It was, admittedly, too loud and too long for the stacks, and Nico could only giggle when Jadon put a hand over his mouth.

“No more beer for you,” Jadon said. “And no more toasted ravioli. They’re making you wicked.” He gave Nico’s head a little shake for emphasis. “Two things happened. One was Robbie. And the other was college.”

“Oh my God, Robbie.”

“Yes, Robbie. He was a college student interested in organic farming, and he spent a summer doing an internship—which mostly meant smoking a lot of ‘grass’ with my moms, providing free labor, and—” Jadon cut off.

“You had sex with him?”

“A little more quietly,” Jadon half-whispered and gave Nico another of those tiny shakes. “He was gorgeous. And bi. And yes. And if you laugh when I tell you our first time was in a hayloft, I’m going to leave.”

“I’m dying. I’m dead. I’m literally so happy that my body has perished.”

“Okay.”

“Tell me everything. Was he wearing plaid? Did he have a big—” The pause lasted long enough. “—belt buckle? What kind of boots was he wearing?”

Jadon pulled his hair again.

Laughing—and crying out in pain—Nico batted at his hand. When Jadon finally released him, Nico said, “Fine, fine. Tell me about Robbie.”

“I’m certainly not going to tell you about Robbie.” But his hand came back, stroking the side of Nico’s head again, and after a moment, he drew a deep breath. “I was in love with him, of course. I mean, he was gorgeous. And the sex was—I mean, I’d never had anything like that, although I’m guessing it was a pretty underwhelming fifteen seconds for him.”

Nico giggled into Jadon’s thigh.

“I was eighteen, and when he left, my heart broke. I honestly thought I was going to die. I didn’t, obviously. But when I could think clearly again, I remember—I remember thinking that I was going to have to leave. I hadn’t put it to myself that way before, but I knew. I wasn’t going to find someone to love if I stayed on that farm. So, I applied all over the place, and believe it or not, I got a full ride to UMSL. I started the next fall.”

“And you stayed in St. Louis?”

“I did. I figured out a lot of stuff in college. How to dress. How to act. I found guys I wanted to be friends with.”

“And guys you wanted to fuck.”

“Them too.”

“So much masculine energy.”

“God, yes. And what’s the butchest job? I mean, the most macho, the most sexist, the most—”

“Guns?”

Jadon laughed. Nico could feel it reverberate through his body, into Nico’s body, and he thought, That’s a part of him that’s a part of me now. And he thought, We’re touching. And it sounded silly because of course they were touching, with Nico’s cheek against Jadon’s thigh. Of course they were touching. But that was the thought, as the laughter vibrated into Nico: We’re touching.

“Are you seriously telling me that you are the first person in the history of the world to become a police officer to piss off your parents?”

“Believe it or not, I’m not the first.”

“Jadon!”

Another easy chuckle passed through his body, into Nico’s. He stroked Nico’s hair. “I mean, the criminal justice major was to piss off my moms. By the time I was a couple years into it, though, I’d matured.”

Nico made a skeptical noise.

“But by that point, I’d also realized I didn’t agree with some of what my moms believed. They raised me with a lot of good values, things I’m happy they taught me. But I’m not a pacifist. And I’m not anti-government.”

“And you’re definitely not a vegetarian.”

The laugh, this time, was richer, deeper, and that wire running down from Nico’s chest drew tighter and tighter. “Definitely not.”

The silence that came after had a quality that Nico wasn’t used to—easy, comfortable, and yet also charged with a potential that he couldn’t quite name. Jadon was still stroking his hair, the movements slow and relaxed.

Nico was speaking before he realized he meant to say anything. Whispering, really. His eyes on the ceiling, because it felt like too much to look at Jadon right then. “I’m happy you are who you are, Jay. I think you’re a good person.”

“I’m happy you are who you are, Nico. And you are a good person.”

“I’m not,” Nico said. “But I want you to think I am.” Nico sat up, blinking his eyes clear, trying to draw a deep breath. He fought for a normal voice as he said, “And I’ve got to finish my paper, or we’ll be here all night.”

“Go on. I’ll clean this up, and when you’re ready, I’ll walk you home.”

“It’s late, Jay. You need to sleep.”

“Well then,” Jadon said from behind him, and Nico could hear the smile, “you’d better get to work on that paper.”

“You could come hear it.” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Nico decided the best and only option was to find a section of movable stacks, stick his head between two units, and become the first official library decapitation. “Never mind; I forgot you’ve got your symposium, and you’re too busy anyway, and it’s definitely not like anyone dreams of spending a Saturday talking about Kierkegaard.”

Jadon didn’t say anything.

Eventually, because no decapitating bookshelves appeared to be within reach, Nico craned his head.

Jadon wore a tiny smile. “That sentence kept getting better and better.”

Because he was full of toasted ravioli, Nico permitted himself an outraged noise.

“I’d love to listen to your paper,” Jadon said. “I didn’t know people could attend.”

“Ridson’s wife sat in when he read his the other day. Not that you’re my wife. Oh my God.”

Not quite laughing now, the sandy gold of Jadon’s eyes was definitely amused. “Thank you for inviting me.”

“It was an accident. I didn’t mean to.”

“Too bad.”

“You’re uninvited. I uninvite you.”

With a nudge to the shoulder, Jadon said, “Finish your paper so we can get out of here.”

To Nico’s own surprise—and, for that matter, the universe’s as well—he had a draft that was barely, marginally acceptable completed within an hour. The background noises of Jadon cleaning up their picnic in the stacks faded to nothing, and before long, he was sending the paper to the printer out in the study space. He packed up his laptop, collected his pages from the printer, and found Jadon lounging in one of the seating areas near the stairs.

“In case you tried to sneak out,” Jadon said without absolutely zero shame.

“Charming.”

For a moment, the flash of a grin lifted the mask of weariness and—what? despair?—from Jadon’s face, and Nico tried not to think about what it meant when he caught himself smiling on the stairs a few moments later.

They walked back to Harlow Hall under the hazy glow of the security lights and the scrim of thin, gauzy clouds. Their steps sounded louder in the stillness, the crunch of a brittle leaf, the snap of a dry twig that had fallen across the path. Neither of them spoke, and Nico found himself listening to the movements of Jadon’s body. Strange, wasn’t it, that already he could recognize the cadence of Jadon’s gait, the whisper of his breath, the way he took up space in Nico’s world. The universe’s default state, he had learned as an undergrad, was a vacuum.

Harlow rose ahead of them, the limestone cloaked with shadows, the neogothic adornments lost in the darkness. A few solitary windows glowed; everything else had given in to the night and disappeared. It took Nico a moment to realize what was different: the security light at the front door had burned out.

“Wait here,” Jadon said.

“You’re not serious.”

He put a hand on Nico’s arm, the touch firm, a silent command. Nico rolled his eyes, but he let Jadon stop him. After a moment, when Jadon must have felt sure Nico wouldn’t bolt, he drew back his hand and started forward again.

“You’re being silly,” Nico called after him.

A breeze picked up, sending more leaves skittering. Branches creaked overhead. Jadon didn’t respond, didn’t even turn to answer back, and Nico shivered and chafed his arms.

It was sweet, of course. But it was silly, too. Even if Jadon were right, even if, by some bizarre chance, someone had followed Nico across campus the other night, it couldn’t have been more than bad luck. Nico didn’t go to school at Chouteau. He didn’t know anyone here. And, therefore, he couldn’t be a target. For that matter, Nico would be gone in a couple of days, which meant—

Well, what did it mean?

The future was like a movie screen, images flickering across it: Jadon laughing, Jadon with his long legs kicked out in a vee, Jadon’s mouth twitching with amusement when he was trying to be professional and Nico got that obstinate itch to break the fa?ade. Jadon naked. The strong calves and thighs. The sculpted definition of chest that every shirt seemed determined to show off. Big arms—powerful and toned. He’d take up too much of the bed, Nico tried to tell himself, through the heat-shimmer of the fantasy. He’d elbow you in your sleep.

And then, clearer, a vision of the next few minutes: they’d walk upstairs, and they’d stop at Nico’s door, and Jadon would look at him, and Nico knew—because he could always tell—that something would happen. He didn’t know if he would move first, or if Jadon would, or if it would be both of them. He liked it best when it was both of them, when they both seemed to know. Last night, it had felt like that, but at the last minute, something had changed. Tonight, though—his lips, the taste of his mouth, and beer, and the leftover smokiness of the barbeque.

Oh my God, Nico thought with something like despair. I’m going to kiss him.

Jadon’s steps rang out against the brick pathway as he returned. “Sorry, but it seemed a little too convenient that the light burned out tonight.”

“Lights burn out, Jay.”

“Uh huh.”

“Does the eagle have permission to land?”

His hand settled comfortably on Nico’s nape, and he steered him toward the building.

At the door, Nico turned and planted a hand on Jadon’s chest. Dense. Warm—to his chilly fingers, in fact, almost hot. He gave a tiny push and said, “Thank you for dinner.”

One of Jadon’s eyebrows went up, but he said, “You’re welcome.”

“And thank you for being worried about me.”

“Of course.”

Nico shivered, and he wasn’t sure if it was the cold or the words, the way he had said them like he meant them. Of course.

“I’m going to go inside now,” Nico said, fumbling the door open with his free hand. “And I’m going to say goodnight to you right here.”

“I’d like to walk you to your room.”

“I’m giving my paper after lunch, around one. If you want to come.”

“Don’t be silly; I’ll go upstairs with you and make sure you get into your room.” A hint of a smirk. “I’m not going to try anything.”

“I’ve heard that before,” Nico said as he slipped through the door.

That brought a laugh. “Excuse me?”

“Goodnight,” Nico sang softly.

Jadon did a big production: arms across his chest, a pointedly unhappy look straight at Nico. Nico gave him a little finger wave. Jadon just doubled down, arms tightening, scowl deepening. Fighting a laugh, Nico blew him a kiss and headed for the stairs.

He caught himself thinking, as he took the steps two at a time, of how it had felt, his head resting against Jadon’s thigh. He shook that off, but on the next step, he caught himself thinking about strong fingers moving over his hair. The way it had felt when Jadon laughed, and the sound rippled from one body to another. It’s been a long time, Nico told himself. You’re going through a dry spell. Touch, anybody’s touch, is going to feel amazing because it’s been so long. He caught himself thinking of how Jadon had felt under his hand, of the rise and fall of his chest. Absolutely not, he told himself. And, with a kind of bumbling adolescent indecision, he thought maybe he should jack off.

When he reached his floor, the lights were off except for the lone EXIT sign at the end of the hall. Nico hadn’t known the lights turned off; he’d been vaguely aware, the last couple nights, of a strip of light under the door, like in a hotel. Someone bumped a switch, he guessed. Or the custodial crew had someone new on it, someone who didn’t know the dorm was in use during fall break. Nico reached for his phone to turn on his flashlight.

The EXIT sign shed a faint red glow, and something passed beneath it—only an impression of black against black, texture, like velvet rubbed the wrong way.

“Hello?” Nico said.

Nothing. The red glow of the sign was undisturbed now. Your imagination, Nico told himself. You’re tired. Your eyes are tired.

The whisper of a sole against carpet.

That had not been his imagination.

For one paralyzing moment, he was back in the sub-basement at Wroxall, the smell of damp, raw stone, the aching heaviness of his body as he fought the drugs, the disorientation as he woke to darkness. A serial killer who called himself the Keeper of Bees had kidnapped Nico. It had been easy for him; Nico had made it easy for him, because Nico had liked him, trusted him, had maybe even thought the relationship was going somewhere. He remembered the crushing silence, the way it had caved in on him until he wanted to scream just to hear something.

And then the moment broke, and Nico turned, trying to find the door to the stairs in the dark. He found the thin paneling. The whisper of steps came again, faster. Running. Nico’s hands slid over the door, trying to find the handle. The running steps were louder now, closer, closing in on him. A white fog of panic filled Nico’s head. Where the fuck was the handle?

Then the door swung open, and in the stairwell lights, Jadon stood there. He seemed to take in Nico, and he said, “What’s—”

And then his face changed, and he yanked Nico toward him. Nico stumbled down several steps, catching himself against the railing, as Jadon shot past him into the hall. Jadon’s shout rang out—“Stop right there!”—and racing footsteps hammered away. A door slammed, and it sounded like a gunshot. Adrenaline spiked, waves of pins and needles rolling over Nico, and too late he tried to remember all the self-defense he’d learned. He worked the keys through his fingers into an improvised weapon. He was shaking so badly that he leaned against the rail to keep himself upright.

It was hard to say how much time passed. Nico stayed where he was, under the dim glow of the stairwell’s emergency lights, until the door at the top of the stairs swung open again. Panic dug its claws into his guts for an instant. And then it was Jadon, his face contorted with fury.

“He got away.”