What It Takes (6 page)

“This is not the point.” Andrew crosses his legs. “The point is it is a thing we don’t speak of for fear of hurting your delicate feelings about your complete, furniture destroying, inability to dance—”

“Mine! Oh my go—”

“You’ve always been so shy about your skills,” Andrew says, gasping for breath. “Oh god, you have to stop; I might cry.”

They trip over each other’s words and laughter. Milo’s smile is face-splitting—not just from one of his favorite memories, but because this moment is shimmering; it’s perfect. It’s them: Andrew catching the giggles the way he does, and Milo holding back his own laughter over a memory of a day no one else would see the humor in.

“Given your unfortunate skills, dancing was not what I expected. Ow!” Milo rubs his arm where Andrew poked it. “You are a menace!” He grabs Andrew’s knee and squeezes hard, making Andrew squeal and flail.

“Stop!
Stop,
stop
. I’ll pee.” Andrew laughs. Milo stops, finally. “Oh my god, Milo, you can’t tickle someone while driving; we’ll end up dead!” Andrew says, catching his breath.

“Not my fault,” Milo singsongs.

“Uh…”

“Well, maybe it would be a little my fault.”

Andrew opens the car window, letting cool air rattle in suddenly, then closes it just as quickly. “I wanted some air,” he explains when he sees Milo’s look. His cheeks are red from laughing.

“All-righty then,” Milo says, shrugging. They drive quietly with the low hum of the radio in the background.

“How are we getting in anywhere?” Andrew asks.

“Fake IDs!”

“How old did you make me? I have a baby face.”

“Twenty-one,” Milo replies. “I’m hoping they won’t be too picky, though.”

“If you say so.” Andrew shrugs.

The quiet in the car lingers, and Milo gets the strangest feeling that the laughter and ease of a moment ago is unspooling behind them along the highway. It’s overcast, the sun has set and the quiet in the car has become too still. When he looks at Andrew, he’s doing that thing he does, where his thumb picks at the nail of his index finger. It’s his thinking tell. No, not thinking. Mulling. Milo resists the urge to sigh. He knew Andrew would support him, but he also knew it would be hard for him.

°

Provincetown is... not what Milo expected, mostly because it’s so busy. The streets are full of people walking the sidewalks and down the middle of the road, laughing and weaving their way through traffic. It’s almost insane, trying to navigate and find a place to park.

“There, there—” Andrew points to a meter. “Wait, I don‘t know if I have change for a meter.”

“I brought money, no worries.”

“Wow, you really planned ahead.”

“Well, you know me—”

“Cross your t’s and dot your i’s,” Andrew finishes for him, and they share a smile.

Milo fishes the IDs he’s had made for them out of his wallet as soon as they’re parked. “Here.”

“How did you get these? I had no idea you were such a deviant,” Andrew teases. The truth is Andrew might be the only person in the world who really knows how deeply rebellious Milo wants to be, and when the timing is right, is.

“Secret’s in the sauce,” Milo says and winks. He’s feeding coins into the meter.

“This is a prime example of how I should have known you were gay,” Andrew says with an eye roll.

“What?”

“You can quote from
Fried Green Tomatoes
without blinking an eye.”

Milo laughs and bumps against him.

“We’ll have to come back and feed the meter in two hours if we aren’t ready to go.”

“Cool.” Andrew sets a reminder on his phone and nags Milo to do the same.

°

Milo gives him the names of a few places they can go, but Andrew tells him to pick; he’s not paying much attention. Instead, he absorbs it all, the myriad faces and the noise. There is a festival atmosphere, without the garish lights or the fried sweet smell. He watches a drag queen handing out fliers and a girl in a
Rocky Horror
costume teasing a group of guys gathered with arms slung over shoulders and hands slipped into back pockets. The air is buoyant. Andrew feels he could fit in perfectly. It’s a place for adventure, so far from his life that he feels as if he could slip out of his skin at any moment and become something new, brilliant and unfettered. The thought makes him hungry.
I want to do it all.

“I think we need to go this way,” Milo says, pointing past a row of shops: crafts and sex toys and a hamburger joint. Several pride flags flutter in the breeze. Two gorgeous men pass by, holding hands. Andrew laughs for no reason.

“I’m just happy,” he says, when Milo gives him a curious glance. Milo smiles in return; not his fullest, but a real one—the proud one that appears when he knows he’s made Andrew happy. It’s a look Andrew knows is only for him; it’s a scrap he holds around his heart. It’s hope without hope. It’s enough, mostly.

“Come on.” Andrew looks up at him and links their arms. “Let’s go do something wildly uncharacteristic.”

“You’re gonna do your homework?” Milo jokes.

“Oh, aren’t we the comedian.” Andrew follows when Milo tugs him along. The streets are haphazard and crowded enough that it’s a little confusing. In a store window Andrew sees the most neon orange T-shirt he’s ever encountered with the words DICK DOCK emblazoned on it. “What is that about?”

Milo glances up and twitches and looks away. “I have no clue.”

“I’ll ask someone. Maybe. Get a drink in me and we’ll see.” Andrew winks, and Milo offers him a shy smile. They’re both doing a marvelous job avoiding any undercurrents from their conversation. Definitely. Thinking about it doesn’t count as not avoiding, does it?

The club is moderately busy. Andrew can only imagine what it must be like at peak season. As it is, it’s crowded, hot and full of men in all states of attire. There’s a five-second period when he suffers the extreme self-consciousness that comes from wanting to look at something and thinking he shouldn’t. He has the sense that he’s been dropped into a really bizarre episode of
Queer as Folk
.

Unless it’s Milo-related, Andrew’s never been the martyr type. Fleeting seconds of doubt skitter into the dense air, and then he looks. He follows Milo to the bar and looks. He makes eye contact with some men. Not with others. He looks again. The whole goddamned place is a fucking feast for his eyes. It’s the land of honey. The floor is literally vibrating with the force of the music, through Andrew’s boots and body and coming out in a primal, unconscious movement that he thinks might soon end in a disastrous attempt at dancing.

At the bar, Andrew lets Milo order him a drink. Everything is sticky and glittering and fabulous, except for maybe Milo. He’s beautiful, yes. He’s beautiful everywhere. In the strobe lighting his hair could be any color, a dark, empty palate, and his skin is a series of shadows, beautifully stretched over perfect bone structure. But he’s obviously uncomfortable.

Andrew leans to shout into his ear. “You wanna leave?”

Milo is sweating a little: Andrew can’t see it, but it is a scent he knows by memory: visceral, scorching memory. Heat rises through Andrew’s face.

“No, no.” Milo shakes his head. “Getting my bearings. I’m feel a little zero-to-sixty right now.”

I bet
, Andrew thinks, not as kindly as he should, maybe. Milo hands him his shot glass and they clink them. “To dick docks,” Milo says, making Andrew almost choke on his shot.

“What?” he finally says, wiping tequila residue from his lips and shuddering through his laughter.

“I don’t know, it felt like it needed a toast.” Milo giggles. It’s a
thing
, for Andrew, seeing Milo like this. Robust, publicly stoic and possessor of classic good looks, he looks both completely out of place and totally natural, laughing boyishly, nose scrunched and eyes squinting.

“Another?” Milo holds up his empty shot glass with its desiccated lime wedge.

“No, let’s give it a second.”

Milo leans back against the bar and watches the crowd; he seems to be thawing to the environment by degrees. His leg bounces in time to the bass-heavy club mix.

“You gonna dance?” Andrew shouts, shoulder-bumping him.

“No. You know what that looks like. Disaster.”

“Ohh, honey you definitely have it in you,” Andrew says, low and flirting and joking. Only he’s not, a little bit. Sometimes, there’s a tiny thread of honesty to his interactions with Milo that he can easily convince himself doesn’t mean what he pretends it means.

“You sure know how to make a man feel good,” Milo plays back and then laughs when Andrew does. “At what point in our lives will it not be weird to call ourselves men instead of boys?”

“I don’t know. Maybe you need someone to make a man of you,” Andrew lobs easily, eyes still on Milo’s. It’s this crazy discordant note, the way they are carrying their usual banter, only now it feels thicker because.
Because
. Because of the car and that hug, because of the shots and the press of beautiful, queer, sensual men around them. Milo doesn’t say anything, just looks, looks at Andrew, and he could swear his skin throbs.

“Excuse me,” a voice shouts directly behind Andrew, scaring him out of whatever the fuck that moment was. “I’m Mike.” He holds his hand out for Andrew to shake, and, caught off guard, Andrew does. Mike squeezes it for a beat too long; his lips are quirked as if he’s got the best secret. As if he knows Andrew’s secrets.

“Uh, um. Andrew,” he finally says. He gestures to Milo. “Milo.”

Milo waves awkwardly; Mike barely spares him a glance. There’s a long moment when nothing happens.

“So you wanna dance or what?” Mike finally says.

“Oh.” Andrew bites his lip, unsure. “I don’t—”

Andrew looks at Milo for a clue; other than looking Mike over carefully, he betrays nothing. What might have been a thread stretching between them, maybe too taut and sudden, starts to shred.

“Unless your boyfriend minds?” Mike slides a smile toward Milo that’s not entirely kind.

“
Not
his boyfriend,” Milo says. “Go ahead; have fun.”

Milo gives a one-shouldered shrug that reads indifferent and dismissive. It’s not. Andrew knows it’s not and for a second he’s really quite blindingly furious. That shrug is all he needs to confirm that Milo felt exactly what was happening between them a moment ago. That’s his pretend
I don’t give a fuck
shrug. That’s a shrug for everyone else. That’s the shrug that sheds his father’s words and hurt, dismisses expectations, gives the finger to things Milo might have to care about but isn’t up to coping with.

Andrew isn’t sure if Milo was toying with him, if he’s being jerked around, or if Milo’s fears are speaking louder than the undercurrents Andrew is sure he felt. But that other undercurrent Andrew’s been dismissing since Milo came out to him and friend-zoned him clumsily flares up, too. Fine.
Fine
. Milo can fuck off. Andrew sends him the bitchiest, most obviously annoyed smile he can. Milo’s not stupid. It’s incredible, the two-gesture conversation they’ve had that no one else in the world would understand.

Andrew turns to Mike, puts on the most innocent air he can, bites his lip in a totally different way, and nods. “I’ve never done this before,” he says into his ear. “You’ll be gentle, right?”

Mike laughs, a shocked little noise, and pulls Andrew onto the dance floor with two hands around his waist. “Only if you really want me to be, honey.”

°

Milo tries not to watch, but for the first torturous thirty minutes, he does anyway. Andrew dances with Mike, and with another man, although still with them both; he’s boyish and awkward angles, but also so much pent up sensuality Milo hadn’t expected that it’s impossible to tear his eyes away. Every now and then their eyes meet and Andrew’s lips press into that little
fuck you
smile he gets, and it twists hard into Milo’s gut.

He comes back with Mike and they all do another round of shots. Milo and Andrew do a marvelous and simultaneously shitty job of ignoring every bit of subtext. Milo sets his glass down on the damp table and breathes through the burn. Mike and Andrew do another, despite the look Milo gives Andrew, and then Andrew’s face flashes into a falsely, dazzlingly coy smile, looking right at Mike, letting himself be led back onto the floor. It’s definitely more crowded now, and they’re quickly swallowed by the throng of bodies. Milo tries to track them over the heads of the crowd, but it’s hard in this light. He checks his phone. The bar closes in an hour or so. He’ll check in on Andrew in twenty minutes.

“Not having a good time, honey?” A tiny slip of man sidles up next to him. There’s no doubt he’s old enough to have earned that
man
title, despite being about two-thirds of Milo’s size. He doesn’t seem to be hitting on him—not that Milo would know if he were. At the very least, it didn’t look a thing like that guy Mike’s blatant approach.

“Not especially,” he admits.

“Saw you with that boy,” the man says. “I’m Roger, by the way.”

“Milo.” He does that awkward hand wave thing again. He has
got
to stop doing that.

“So what’s your story?” Roger gestures to the dance floor and Milo understands he’s referring to him and Andrew.

Milo shrugs. “Best friend.”

“Oh, it’s
that
thing,” Roger says, laughing. Milo feels a surge of annoyance.

“No, not that thing.”

“Oh honey.” Roger pats his shoulder. “Who do you think you’re fooling?” Milo feels himself turn a furious red. “I’m not trying to pry or anything. Just saying, one old queer to... well, you’re so fresh.” He smiles. “It’s gonna be okay.”

Milo looks down at the sticky table, then up into the blinding lights. “I don’t know about that.” He doesn’t just mean Andrew.

“Sad puppy.” Roger pats his shoulder. “Come dance. Nothing funny. Have some fun.”

“I don’t—” Milo hangs back, feeling uncomfortable. Andrew is still somewhere out there, invisible and lithe and sweetly caustic. Milo’s made his bed, and it’s for the best. The alcohol and buzz of tonight’s confession, and how he’s fucking everything up, is messing with his thoughts enough that it doesn’t sound like the worst idea. “Okay. But I’ll suck.”