He cannot bring himself to initiate contact with Willem, nor ask for it, but he waits for it, for every time that Willem grabs his arm as he passes him in the living room and pulls him close to kiss him, or comes up behind him as he stands at the stove and puts his arms around him in the same position—chest, stomach—that he does in bed. He has always admired how physical JB and Willem are, both with each other and with everyone around them; he knew they knew not to do it with him, and as grateful as he was for their carefulness with him, it sometimes made him wistful: he sometimes wished they would disobey him, that they would lay claim to him with the same friendly confidence they did with everyone else. But they never did.
It took him three months, until the end of August, to finally take off his clothes in front of Willem. Every night he came to bed in his long-sleeve T-shirt and sweatpants, and every night Willem came to bed in his underwear. “Is this uncomfortable for you?” Willem asked, and he shook his head, even though it was—uncomfortable, but not entirely unwelcome. Every day the month before, he promised himself: he would take off his clothes and be done with it. He would do it that night, because he had to do it at some point. But that was as far as his imagination would let him proceed; he couldn’t think about what Willem’s reaction might be, or what he might do the following day. And then night would come, and they would be in bed, and his resolve would fail him.
One night, Willem reached beneath his shirt and put his hands on his back, and he yanked himself away so forcefully that he fell off the bed. “I’m sorry,” he told Willem, “I’m sorry,” and he climbed back in, keeping himself just at the edge of the mattress.
They were quiet, the two of them. He lay on his back and stared at the chandelier. “You know, Jude,” Willem said at last. “I have seen you without your shirt on.”
He looked at Willem, who took a breath. “At the hospital,” he said. “They were changing your dressings, and giving you a bath.”
His eyes turned hot, and he looked back up at the ceiling. “How much did you see?” he asked.
“I didn’t see everything,” Willem reassured him. “But I know you have scars on your back. And I’ve seen your arms before.” Willem waited, and then, when he didn’t say anything, sighed. “Jude, I promise you it’s not what you think it is.”
“I’m afraid you’re going to be disgusted by me,” he was finally able to say. Caleb’s words floated back to him: You really are deformed; you really are. “I don’t suppose I could just never take my clothes off at all, right?” he asked, trying to laugh, to turn it into a joke.
“Well, no,” Willem said. “Because I think—although it’s not going to feel like it, initially—it’ll be a good thing for you, Judy.”
And so the next night, he did it. As soon as Willem came to bed, he undressed quickly, under the covers, and then flung the blanket away and rolled onto his side, so his back was facing Willem. He kept his eyes shut the entire time, but when he felt Willem place his palm on his back, just between his shoulder blades, he began to cry, savagely, the kind of bitter, angry weeping he hadn’t done in years, tucking into himself with shame. He kept remembering the night with Caleb, the last time he had been so exposed, the last time he had cried this hard, and he knew that Willem would only understand part of the reason he was so upset, that he didn’t know that the shame of this very moment—of being naked, of being at another’s mercy—was almost as great as his shame for what he had revealed. He heard, more from the tone than the words themselves, that Willem was being kind to him, that he was dismayed and was trying to make him feel better, but he was so distraught that he couldn’t even comprehend what Willem was saying. He tried to get out of the bed so he could go to the bathroom and cut himself, but Willem caught him and held him so tightly that he couldn’t move, and eventually he somehow calmed himself.
When he woke the following morning—late: it was a Sunday—Willem was staring at him. He looked tired. “How are you?” he asked.
The night returned to him. “Willem,” he said, “I’m so, so sorry. I’m so sorry. I don’t know what happened.” He realized, then, that he still wasn’t wearing any clothes, and he put his arms beneath the sheet, and pulled the blanket up to his chin.
“No, Jude,” Willem said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was going to be so traumatic for you.” He reached over and stroked his hair. They were quiet. “That was the first time I’ve ever seen you cry, you know.”
“Well,” he said, swallowing. “For some reason it’s not as successful a seduction method as I’d hoped,” and smiled at Willem, a little, and Willem smiled back.
They lay in bed that morning and talked. Willem asked him about certain scars, and he told him. He explained how he had gotten the scars on his back: about the day he had been caught trying to run away from the home; the beating that had followed; the resulting infection, the way his back had wept pus for days, the bubbles of blisters that had formed around the stray splinters from the broom handle that had embedded themselves into his flesh; what he had been left with when it was all over. Willem asked him when he was last naked before anyone and he lied and told him that—except for Andy—it had been when he was fifteen. And then Willem said various kind and unbelievable things about his body, which he chose to ignore, because he knew they weren’t true.
“Willem, if you want out, I understand,” he said. It had been his idea not to tell anyone that their friendship might be changing into something else, and although he had told Willem it would give them space, and privacy, to figure out how to be with each other, he had also thought it would give Willem time to reconsider, opportunities to change his mind without fear of everyone else’s opinions. Of course, with this decision he cannot help but hear the echoes of his last relationship, which had also been conducted in secrecy, and he had to remind himself that this one was different; it was different unless he made it the same.
“Jude, of course I don’t,” Willem said. “Of course not.”