Less than a month after Cleo and Frank’s wedding, Quentin and Johnny broke up. Cleo had stopped spending all her free time with Quentin, which meant he suddenly had a lot of extra energy to focus on Johnny—and find him wanting. Johnny, it turned out, was just another Irish Catholic queen with a drinking problem. He had Republican parents that he secretly adored, and the kind of body hair that could be described as a pelt. Quentin was better off without him.
Now that Johnny was gone and Cleo was always busy with Frank, Quentin had time to do whatever he wanted, like stay up all night watching anime, or chain-smoke in bed, or go to invite-only orgies—which was exactly the plan for that night. The invitation had been slipped inside his locker at the gym: “We Want You. Private Event. Email for Details.” He’d heard about these parties before, run by an underground network of gays whose mission was to bring back pre-AIDS-era group sex in safe yet glamorous environments. This was his first invitation, and the knowledge that he had been watched, been chosen, sent a ripple of pleasure through him.
Johnny would never have allowed this. He was too staid, too judgmental. Quentin had only ever meant to sleep with him once or twice anyway, but Johnny had ingratiated himself into Quentin’s life with his aggressive helpfulness. For Quentin’s French Revolution–themed birthday party, for instance, Johnny bought an antique French cookbook and offered to make Quentin any cake he liked. Quentin picked a pear tart comprised of hundreds of individually folded and glazed pastry petals, not because he particularly liked pear tarts but because it had looked the most labor-intensive. Johnny had made it for him without complaint, and when Quentin stood over the amber glow of his twenty-six birthday candles, staring down at those hundreds of individually folded and glazed pastry petals, he felt certain that the tart was evidence of a love so pure, so dutiful, that he would never find its equal.
But ever since admitting to Cleo that Johnny was stealing from him, he’d become increasingly suspicious that perhaps it was he, not Johnny, who was being taken advantage of. It had all come to a head a few days earlier when Quentin, who liked to keep his large brownstone apartment at a frigid sixty-five degrees during the summer months, went to put on his favorite orange featherweight cashmere sweater. After searching in vain, he’d traipsed downstairs to find Johnny wearing it.
“That’s my sweater,” he said.
“So?”
“You know it’s my favorite. I got it at the Barneys Warehouse sale with Cleo.”
Johnny rolled his eyes. “You’re a little obsessed, dear.”
“With Barney’s?”
“With Cleo.”
Quentin exhaled a soft snort caught somewhere between disdain and embarrassment. “She’s my best friend.”
“Shouldn’t that be me?” asked Johnny.
He took a bite of Quentin’s organic chocolate cereal from Quentin’s ceramic bowl. A trickle of brown milk dribbled from his chin down the front of Quentin’s sweater. Johnny licked his fingers and stabbed at the stain. Quentin flinched. Johnny’s finger had only succeeded in grinding the milk further into the fibers of the fabric. A faint brown drip was still noticeable against the orange cashmere. Quentin could feel heat building behind his eyes.
“Take it off,” he said.
“What?” Johnny laughed. “No.”
Quentin raised his trembling hands to his temples.
“TAKE IT OFF!” he screamed.
Johnny’s mouth momentarily hung open. Brown flecks of chocolate had built up at the corners. He leaped up and ripped the sweater off to reveal his soft, freckled belly beneath.
“Jesus, Quentin!” He hurled the orange blur toward him. “It’s just stuff. Does it matter? Does it make you happy?”
“It doesn’t make me unhappy,” said Quentin.
“Things are not people, Quentin,” said Johnny with the smug satisfaction of the truly obtuse.
“Things don’t treat me like an idiot,” said Quentin. “Things don’t steal my identity.”
“Steal your identity?” Johnny clutched his bare chest and cast his eyes beseechingly around the room, as if performing for a daytime talk show audience. “Did Cleo tell you that?”
She hadn’t, in fact—she had always been diplomatically tight-lipped on the subject of Johnny—but it felt satisfying to make Johnny think she had.
“She’s just trying to protect me,” said Quentin primly. “That’s what best friends do.”
Johnny pinched his face into an unattractive scowl.
“British bitch,” he sneered.
“Would you like her better if she was from Ohio like you?” snapped Quentin.
“For the one hundredth time, Quentin, Cincinnati is one of the most European cities in America.”
Quentin could not contain his scoff.
“See!” Johnny exclaimed. “You’re a snob, just like her. The two of you left me alone for like an hour at her wedding. It’s obvious she doesn’t think I’m good enough for you.”
“Maybe that’s because you’re not,” said Quentin.
Johnny gasped dramatically. “All I ever did was love you,” he said. “You’re just too fucked up to know what that feels like.”
“Maybe,” said Quentin. He stooped to pick up the sweater and draped it over his shoulder, gathering all his pride with it. “But I’ll settle for knowing what Italian cashmere feels like.”
Quentin was proud of this line, which he thought sounded like something out a movie, striking just the right timbre between resignation and hope. He was proud of it right up until Johnny took a step toward him and smacked him square across the jaw. It felt like a firework going off in his face.
“You and her deserve each other,” he said.
Ordinarily, Quentin would have scornfully corrected him (you and she deserve!), but he was too stunned to say anything as Johnny proceeded to storm, still shirtless, out of the house. At the sound of the door slamming, Quentin surprised himself by bursting into tears. He cradled the side of his face with one hand and waited for them to pass. When they didn’t, he called Cleo.
Within half an hour, she was in his kitchen. She was wearing a traditional Mexican embroidered dress, her hair pulled into two long fishtail braids down her back and tied with white ribbons. He found her style too bohemian for his taste, but he appreciated that she always made an effort with her appearance. She put a bottle of his favorite Japanese soda and a packet of Advil on the kitchen table in front of him, inspecting his face with a look of concern.
“You’re bruising,” she said. “What happened?”
“He was wearing my sweater,” said Quentin sulkily. “And he’s a psychopath.”
“Do you have any frozen peas?”
She opened the freezer door to reveal a large frosted bottle of vodka and three cartons of Polish cigarettes. She raised an eyebrow at Quentin. He shrugged.
“Keeps them fresh.”
Cleo removed the bottle and wrapped it in a dish towel. She sat down across from him and held it gingerly to his jaw. His eyes would not stop leaking.