“I’m working on a paper. Recall? The phone conversation we had fifteen minutes ago?”
I glance up at a clock in the hall, and then back at his smart-ass mouth.
“It was twenty minutes ago.”
“I need coffee,” he says, and why is he being such an adorable dick, still smiling at me like that? “Want to walk up to Dunkin’ Donuts?”
“What about Millie?” I say.
“What about her?”
“Does she want any?”
“Should we call her and ask?”
“Isn’t she upstairs?”
“How hard did you hit your head last night?”
Well, now I’m pink in the cheeks and I guess I’m the asshole because nobody is here but us. Travis grabs his jacket and we go back out the door and walk up the hill to Dunkin’ Donuts. He’s talking about this paper he’s writing about Bob Marley and he’s acting fairly normal and I’m so glad because things, for the first time since sexageddon, aren’t feeling all that weird. I hate when it’s weird with Bean because aside from Sonia, he’s my best friend, and by definition a best friend is someone you never have to feel weird around. I start to think, yeah, maybe I haven’t fucked all of this up between us. We can be—hell, we are being adults. We’re adults! We had sex, fine, and it was incredible, yeah, but it’s just sex. We can still be normal. It doesn’t change anything. Not changing anything is good, because things are really pretty great right exactly how they are.
As I’m watching Travis pay for my iced hazelnut coffee (and I don’t know if this is a Nebraska manners thing, but he never lets me pay for anything, unless it’s guitar gear, because that shit’s expensive), the only problem I’m having now is that I can’t seem to take my eyes off his mouth. His lips, in particular, and his tongue when he darts it out to lick the wayward icing from his lips after he takes a bite of his coffee roll. I want to lick those lips myself, see if I can taste the sugar left on them. By the time we walk back down the hill and he’s got his key in the door, that’s all I can think about. I’ve already sucked down half a large coffee, thinking about how much I want to suck on every part of him.
“Do you want me to take a look at your paper?” I say.
“I’m only halfway done with it,” he says. “I was going to ask you to proof it tomorrow while I’m at work.”
“Oh.” Well, then.
I don’t go, even though I know I should since things are so nice and normal again, and he’s got work to do. Instead I linger there as Travis puts his jacket on the coatrack. He turns around and studies me for a minute.
“Come on upstairs,” he says. “You can read what I’ve got so far and let me know if it makes any sense.”
This is a terrible idea. A terrible, wonderful idea, because we just got things back to normal, and if I go upstairs with him now, something is very likely going to happen here that falls well outside the realm of normal and inside the world of awesome, but that awesome world, let’s be real here, is a little bit too much for me. It’s like winning a rocket trip to a different star system and I forgot my space helmet.
I go upstairs anyway.
Travis is one of these rare guys who’s not a slob. He’s not exactly a neat freak, but he’s organized. We’re in his room and his bed is made. (Seriously, what twenty-two-year-old guy makes his bed?) There are no dirty clothes anywhere except a few things in a laundry basket sitting on the floor of his closet. The closet door is open and his shoes, of which he has exactly three additional pairs (a pair of black Converse high-tops, a pair of black dress shoes, and a pair of Adidas running shoes), are all lined up on the floor. His guitar sits out in its stand in the corner, like it’s watching me. Judging. Stop that, Les Paul. Cut it right out.
There are books on the desk—actual books about international political economy. They’re stacked up with Post-it notes sticking out where he’s marked passages. He’s actually read these books. There are also well-notated photocopied articles and a handwritten outline for his paper and his father’s old Apple PowerBook with a blinking cursor right in the middle of