22
If there was ever a time to curse LA traffic, it’s right now. I lay all my weight on my horn. “THE. LIGHT. IS. GREEN!!!!!!”
Now that the fog in my head is subsiding, I’m starting to see things clearly. Since making my list, I’ve been so worried about myself, about my future, that I’ve completely missed what’s been going on right in front of me.
Like Jonathan suggested I do in the first place, I’m taking a step back.
Finally, I’m getting a glimpse of the bigger picture.
I think Sandy was right. All the time and energy I spent throwing myself into my list and obsessing over Finn was just my way of avoiding the things that scared me: the shift in my relationship with Jonathan and the feelings I
have for Matthew.
Matthew.
I can think about him later.
Because as I pull up to the corporate office building just shy of downtown, all I want to do is make things right with Jonathan. There are still some hurt feelings that I need to work through, but they’re overpowered by a fierce need to tell him that I love him and I can’t bear the thought of losing him. I’m sure there’s more to say than that, as well as questions to be asked, but for now saying those two things feels like the only thing that really matters.
I loop around the block twice, frantically searching for a parking spot,
with no success.
This could take an hour.
I don’t have time to waste; the workday is almost over and Jonathan could leave any minute. I certainly can’t afford to miss him. I pull my car up
to the red curb in front of his office and cut the engine. I’ll gladly go into debt paying off a parking ticket if it means getting to Jonathan even a second sooner.
I run past the elevators and throw open the door to the stairs, sprinting to the seventh floor with a speed I didn’t know I possessed. My legs scream at me to slow down when I round the corner to floor six, but I keep going, practically crawling by the time I emerge from the stairwell. Having been here only once, years ago, I find myself lost in a sea of cubicles and closed office doors.
I turn right, colliding with a leggy blonde who seems to materialize out of thin air. I recognize her immediately. Sydney.
I was entirely wrong about her involvement in all this. Part of me wants
to apologize to her.
But then she opens her mouth.
“Can I help you?” Her tone is sharp. I catch her glaring at my massive T- shirt, probably noting the way it clings to my body with a layer of sweat.
I straighten up. “Yes, I’m looking for Jonathan Cooper.”
She looks me over with determination, like she’s deciding whether to let me pass. Finally she steps aside, pointing to a closed door at the end of the hallway. “Johnny’s the last door on the right.”
“Thank you,” I offer through clenched teeth as I brush past her.
As I approach the door to his office, I can feel my hands begin to shake slightly. I hope that I don’t say the wrong thing. I peek through the window, and what appears through the cracks in the blinds clamps a vise around my heart. Jonathan’s slumped over his desk, resting his head in the crook of his left elbow. His hair is unruly, curls flying in every possible direction. With his right hand, he pokes at his keyboard with his index finger. He never wears his glasses, but he has them on today. I wonder if the effort of putting contacts in felt like too much. I would understand.
I knock.
He startles, eyes darting to meet mine through the window. I smile awkwardly, folding my fingers into a weak wave.
He jumps up from his chair, shuffling to the door and yanking it open.
“Phoebe.” He blinks rapidly.
“Can I come in?”
“Of course.” He gestures to the small loveseat in the corner of the room as he closes the door, and we both sit down. I don’t waste a second.
“I love you,” I say at the exact same time as he says, “I’m sorry.”
I wrap my arms around him, burying my face in his neck. He squeezes me tightly.
“I’m sorry, too,” I say at the exact same time as he says, “I love you, too.”
We stay like this for a minute, unmoving, until Jonathan sighs into my ear. “You’ve smelled better.” I push him away, burying my nose into my own armpit. My eyes water.
“Wow,” I admit. “You must really love me if you let me hug you for that
long.”
“I must,” he agrees.
“So…”
“So.” He clears his throat before taking my hand. “I need to tell you something.”
“You don’t need to tell me anything,” I say. “Last night…I shouldn’t have confronted you like that. I didn’t know what I was doing. I don’t want you to feel forced into telling me something before you’re ready.” I cast my eyes downward, embarrassed by my own behavior. “That’s the last thing I would ever want.”
“Well, I want to tell you something,” he responds. “I’ve wanted to tell you something for a while, but I just…I was scared of things changing.”
I can understand that.
“But I’ve had enough,” he continues, squeezing my hand. “I’m ready now. Phoebe”—his voice is surprisingly steady—“I’m gay.”
I squeeze his hand back.
I rest my head on his shoulder, angling my eyes upward so that I can look at him. “Thank you for telling me. How do you feel?”
“Good,” he answers quickly. “I mean, I could throw up at any moment, but besides that, I feel good.”
“Well, you’re in good company.” I lightly kick my tote with my foot.
“Let me know if you need a barf bag.”
“Will do,” he replies with a nod. I feel his shoulder tense under my cheek.
I sit up. “What’s wrong?”
“I really am sorry,” he says, sighing. “About how I handled…things.” He doesn’t need to say his name for me for me to know he’s talking about Finn.
“Don’t be.” I brush away his apology with a gesture. “I actually feel like we both handled things pretty perfectly.”
That makes him laugh. A big, booming laugh. It feels so good to joke with him again.
“There have been so many times over the past few weeks I’ve wanted to tell you,” he starts. “I think the closest I came to actually doing it was when I was putting that Band-Aid on your ass. I thought maybe not being able to see your face would help.” That explains the shaky hands. “I tried again a few days later, the night Finn was there for trivia. I went to the bar hoping a few shots would loosen me up. But again, I…I couldn’t get the words out.” I nod, looking back at everything with a newfound understanding. “And during our fight, I think at that point, I just wanted you to figure it all out already. I got mad at you for not seeing everything, which wasn’t fair. I’m sorry.”
“Quit apologizing,” I tell him. “I can’t help but feel like a terrible friend for not picking up on it,” I admit.
Jonathan shakes his head. “Don’t. I spent a lot of time and energy making sure no one would.”
I look into his tired eyes. “You must be so exhausted.”
He shrugs, and I reach out to wipe a loose tear from his cheek. “Can I… ask you some questions?”
“Please,” he says. “I’m an open book.” Before today, the proposition of me grilling Jonathan on his love life would have sent him reaching for his phone, suddenly caught up in a wave of emails that couldn’t wait. But now he just leans back on the couch, looking relaxed for the first time in a long
while.
“When did you know?”
He squints, lost in his thoughts for a moment before answering. “I guess on some level, when I was young. Probably the first time I saw John Travolta
in Grease.” He smirks.
Ohhh.
“But where I’m from…being gay wasn’t really a thing, as ridiculous as that might sound. I had no reference point.” He shrugs again. “I knew there was something different about me, though. I was never interested in girls the way my friends were. But I just figured I hadn’t met the right one yet. I didn’t start to put the pieces together until I moved out here for college. I hadn’t had any gay friends before, and then we met Alex, and I was so jealous of him.”
Ironic, considering how jealous Alex has always been of Jonathan. “It took me a while to figure out where that was coming from, and once I did, I refused to acknowledge it. I just kept convincing myself I was waiting for the right girl.” He huffs a laugh under his breath. “So I kept dating girls, never really feeling anything. There was even a time when I convinced myself that you had to be the one.”
“Me?” The admission makes my stomach drop.
He nudges me with his knee. “Don’t act all surprised. You’re my best friend, we get along so well, you make me laugh…I could very easily spend the rest of my life with you.” He looks at me with a tenderness that makes me ache. “You’re my soulmate, Pheebs. The only problem is, I don’t want to have sex with you.”
I can’t help but laugh. The thing is, I think I understand exactly what he’s saying. I’ve had the exact same thoughts. When it comes down to it, I’ve never really been able to picture having sex with him, either.
“Oh god.” I bury my head in my hands. “My parents are gonna be crushed.”
“Ha! Well, they can get in line,” he jokes, but I can’t help but frown, knowing how difficult things will be with his family.
“One step at a time,” I tell him.
“Right,” he agrees. “I guess my next step would be telling our friends.”
“Does anyone else know?”
“Just you.”
I nod. “Well, I’ll be wherever you want me to be, whenever you want me
to be there. If you want.”
“I want.”
I smile reassuringly. “So…” I gear up for the question I’ve been dying to ask. “When did everything start with Finn?”
The corner of his lip curves upward into a faint smile at the mention of Finn’s name. “Have you heard of the app Hanger?” he asks.
“I don’t think so?”
“It’s pretty new. Basically, it’s a way for guys in the closet to hook up without having to worry as much about your profile getting out. If you take even one screenshot, you get kicked off the app. And every message
disappears after a minute.”
“Wow,” I marvel. “That’s intense.”
“I downloaded it about five months ago. I thought maybe, if I got it out of my system once, I could forget about the whole gay thing.” He scoffs at himself. “It had the opposite effect.”
“You learned just how gay you really are?”
“Exactly,” he responds before I have the chance to cringe at my word choice. “So I kept doing that for a few months. Finding guys on Hanger and sneaking out once you were asleep. I met up with Finn for the first time in July. He was the first guy I really had any interest in seeing more than once
because, well, you know….”
“He’s perfect.”
Jonathan nods.
Finn is perfect. But the more I think about it, the more I realize he isn’t perfect for me. He’s never made my breath hitch in my throat the way it did when Matthew reached out to steady me. He’s never made my stomach turn to jelly the way Matthew did when I first saw him playing with his camera.
He didn’t light my skin on fire when our arms brushed together. He’s never made me playlists that add up to the exact length of my flight.
Finn is my work friend. Matthew is more than that.
“Yeah, that,” Jonathan agrees with my sentiment, pulling me out of my own head. “We met up a few times over the summer, we had fun, but it was
never anything serious. We were both pretty guarded, so we didn’t share many personal details. Not even what we did for work. Maybe if we had, then I could have been better prepared for what was coming. The second you said the name Finn, I had a sinking feeling in my gut. I just knew it was him. I knew it before you even sent that picture of the two of you on the playground.”
“Whoa.” I haven’t been more riveted by anything since the season six finale of Law & Order.
“So I ghosted him. I completely stopped answering his texts.”
My hand flies to my open mouth.
“I know, not my finest moment,” he continues. “I was living two lives, and I panicked at the thought of them intersecting. It ended up happening anyway, though, that night at Jeffery’s. I’d been dodging him for about a week, and then suddenly, there he was.”
I replay the whole scene in my head. Jonathan’s panic when I mentioned Finn was coming. His bizarre behavior that I had mistaken as jealousy. Finn’s stoicism when he saw Jonathan sitting in the booth.
“That was the first time I had seen Finn since I stopped responding to him. I didn’t know how to handle the situation. So once everyone left the bar, I went over to his apartment to explain myself. And that is the night when things really started. I told him all about you, how close we are. We started talking all about friends and family. He comes from a conservative family, too, you know. He’s been putting on the same show as me, dating girls and feeling nothing. It felt so good to talk to someone who got it.” He exhales, running a hand through his curls. “And so I kept going back.”
“I’d go back, too.” I smile softly. “I really like him, Jonathan.” He frowns slightly at this. “No, not like that. And I…I don’t think I ever really did.
Honestly, I think projecting all my affections onto him felt safer than acknowledging whatever was going on with Matthew.” Jonathan nods assuredly, like this is something he knew all along. “I meant that I like him for you. He’s smart, funny, kind, and so, so cute.”
Finn really is all those things; but despite that, he was never the one I really wanted. No matter how good I was at convincing myself of the
opposite. “Plus,” I continue, “the woodworking? Hot.”
“I know.” Jonathan blushes. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen him do that, and I smile so widely it hurts. “It’s funny,” he muses. “He reminds me of you.”
“Huh?” I cock my head to the side. “I’m not a woodworker.”
“No,” he says, chuckling. “But you’re both hyper-organized elementary school teachers. It’s a pretty distinct personality type.” I think back to the neatly organized stacks of books on Finn’s bookshelf and his immaculately clean room. We definitely do have that in common. “But,” Jonathan says with an air of sadness, “if this whole ordeal has taught me anything, it’s that I don’t want to keep living two lives. One is hard enough. I think maybe I’m ready to really give this a try. And I don’t think Finn is there yet. I don’t want to keep sneaking through the back door of his apartment.”
I try to think of something encouraging to say, but as usual, I fall short.
Jonathan continues. “I just…I wish I hadn’t wasted so much time. Your twenties are supposed to be the decade when you figure your shit out, and I spent it pretending to be someone I’m not. It almost feels too late now, starting over at nearly thirty. I waited too long.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” I swat his words out of the air. “There isn’t a timeline for these types of things. And thirty is so young! Your life is just starting.”
“Ha!” Jonathan snorts. “You’re one to talk.”
I squint at him, confused.
“Phoebe…I’ve lost count of the number of times you’ve threatened to end it all if you’re still a virgin by the time you’re thirty.”
“Yeah, but that’s different,” I’m quick to reply.
“Is it?” he asks.
I don’t know. Is it? If there’s one thing I’m sure of, it’s that it’s not too late for Jonathan. Nothing strikes me as wrong about him moving at his own pace, even though it’s the very same thing I’ve beat myself up over for years.
Could it be that there’s nothing wrong with me, either? I can feel the seeds of an epiphany begin to take root.
For the first time in my life, I know exactly what to say.
“Do you think it’s too late for me?” I ask.
“Huh?” He looks at me, confused. “What do you mean?”
“Do you think it’s too late for me?” I repeat with conviction. “I haven’t dated anyone. I haven’t had sex. I’ve never been in love. I’m turning thirty in twelve days. Do you think it’s too late for me?”
“No! Of course not!”
“Right.” I nod slowly, a smile forming on my face. “So why would it be any different for you?”
I can see his jaw working while he thinks. “I guess you’re right.”
“We’re in this together.”
“We’re in this together,” he whispers.
The message that Sandy has been trying to communicate to me for years is finally starting to sink in. Maybe it’s not such a terrible thing to go through
life at your own pace.
There’s nothing wrong with me.
The thought startles me. It’s the first time I’ve ever believed it.
I jump at the chance to say the words out loud before they disappear. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with us.”
He looks at me, deliberating. “I don’t think there is, either.”
“We have time.”
“We have time,” he agrees.
When I breathe in, it feels like I’m inhaling new air. I feel lighter.
“What now?” I ask.
“Well,” he starts, standing up and offering his hand to me. “I should talk to Finn at some point. I need to figure out where his head is at.” I nod. “But that can wait. Tonight, I just want to hang with you. I hear there’s a new season of Love Is Blind.” He smirks as I jump up and down with excitement.
He reaches to open the door, but I grab hold of his arm to stop him. “Oh, one last thing,” I whisper, raising my eyebrows in the direction of the cubicles. “Sydney. Are you even friends with her?”
“Johnny,” he imitates in a mocking voice, rolling his eyes. “I can’t stand her.”
My mouth falls open. “Jonathan Cooper shit-talking. I never thought I’d see the day.”
He smiles. “I’ve always had this weird idea that saying something bad behind someone’s back would give them permission to do the same. And I never wanted anyone talking about me; I was too scared of what they might say. Now”—he shrugs—“I guess it doesn’t matter. I’m not that scared anymore.”
I mull his thought process over. “That makes zero sense.”
“Well, nothing you think makes sense, either,” he says matter-of-factly.
“That’s true.”
We walk out of his office building together arm in arm, and he drops me off at my car before heading into the garage to find his.
As soon as I get on the road, I call Nora.
“Hello?” Her voice is slightly clipped, and I know her well enough to sense that she’s annoyed with me for not responding to her announcement earlier.
“I know I’m late to congratulate you.” I’m about to white lie and tell her that I’m just now looking at my phone for the first time today, but I have a change of heart at the last second. It feels like it’s time to be honest, for a change. “I’m just now getting around to processing the news. I’m sorry it took me so long.” She lets out a small sigh on the other end of the line. “I’ll miss you, Nora. So much. But I am so proud of you.”
There’s a moment of silence between us before she responds, her voice much softer than I’m used to. “You’ll come visit, though, right? It’s only a six-hour drive to San Francisco.”
“It’s a good thing my Glee playlist is well over seven,” I tell her. “I’ll be there.”
—
After my call with Nora, I spend the rest of my ride home lost in thought, daydreaming about all the things Jonathan and I will do now that we know
we’re not running out of time.
The neon OPEN sign flashing above our local gas station snaps me out of my trance, and I decide to run in and grab some snacks for our Love Is Blind marathon. I load up on Jonathan’s favorites: Airheads Xtremes, peanut M&M’s, and honey mustard pretzels.
I don’t notice the ticket on my windshield until my walk back to the car. I can’t help but smile when I pick it up.
It’s the best fifty-four dollars I’ve ever spent.
