“He left for college and I never really saw him much. There’s a whole side of him I don’t really even know.” I found myself leaning forward toward Hayes’s friends, feeling comfortable, wanting them to give me a little tiny piece of him I could tuck away, something new and special.
“I guess you could say the same thing about us. He never talks about home, and even though he only lived two hours away, he never took any of us there to meet his family,” Bryan said, all this while spinning his empty beer bottle on the table. “But that never really bothered us because Hayes is pretty much the best guy we’d ever met. He’s loyal, smart, fun, but he’s also the one person you know you can always count on. He’d sacrifice everything for someone he cared about.”
That I knew. I loved that about him. I nodded, giving them a smile that probably said, “Gosh, what a nice thing to say about my boyfriend.” But I felt more like, his greatest attribute might be his downfall. He’d sacrificed so much already.
As if on cue, Hayes returned to our table with three beer bottles and my water. He handed them out, took a pull off his own, then sat down next to me, and took my hand in his again. This time it was I who leaned over and kissed him. I was the one who showed him, in front of his friends and the whole world, that I had him, finally.
A few hours later when we made it to his apartment, I was incredibly nervous. We’d spent two nights together, but I knew that night was going to be different. In the timeline of our relationship, a big fat circle would mark this night as important, and I was trying to prepare myself for that.
He held my hand as we walked through the parking lot of his apartment complex, and something about being there with him made him seem older, or me younger. I couldn’t quite figure it out, but I definitely felt a shift in the dynamic between us. I was letting him lead, letting him be the one to teach me something new.
“So, you share this apartment with David?”
“Yeah. We moved here last year after a horrible apartment on the other side of town the year before. This place is cool, though. A little far from campus, but that also means there’s less loud college students out here.”
“And you guys aren’t loud college students?” I asked, bumping my shoulder against his.
“Not really anymore. I mean, sure, freshman and sophomore year we might have been a little reckless and rowdy, but that gets old after a while. David calmed down a lot when he and Kristen got together, and I was happy to leave the party life behind.” I thought immediately about how he was a whole year ahead in his schooling, how he was focused and driven, which probably left little time for cutting loose and getting loud.
He led me up a staircase to the second floor and stopped at a door toward the back of the building. He let go of my hand to unlock his door, then when it opened he motioned for me to enter first. I dropped my overnight bag inside the door and when he flipped on the light I was instantly transported into a weird alternate reality where Hayes Wallace was an actual adult, with couches and dining room tables and big-screen TVs. I’d never really tried to imagine where he lived because, in truth, I tried not to think much about him at all for self-preservation purposes, but the living space I was looking at in that moment was not how I would have pictured his apartment.
The living room, dining room, and kitchen could all be seen from the doorway, and all three rooms were tidy and clean. The furniture was used but nice looking, it all matched, and there was that same feeling of adultness. I turned to him.
“You’re like a real-life grown-up.”
He shrugged and gave a shy smile, shutting the door behind him, and turning the lock. He took my hand again as he walked past me, taking me on a grand tour.
“This is the living room, dining room, and kitchen, although I’m not sure how stocked the fridge is, so don’t yell at me if I’m out of everything. We’ll probably have to go out for breakfast tomorrow.” He led me down the short hallway, motioning to the first door on the right. “This is David’s room. He’s staying with Kristen tonight, so we probably won’t see him again before we go back.”
He let the words hang in the air and I immediately grabbed hold of them, turning them around in my mind and realizing what he was saying: we were alone for the night.
“Oh,” was my incredibly adult response.
His hand squeezed mine, but then he tugged gently and led me to the next door, opening it, and again motioning me in before him. When I walked through the door I knew I was entering Hayes’s room immediately because the smell of him moved over me. It was his own scent, nothing I’d ever smelled before, something dark and spicy, but not heavy. Just Hayes. The light came on and I took my time looking around, taking in this new Hayes’s room.
There was a desk in the corner that looked a little cluttered, but only because it appeared to be frequently used. There was a bookshelf that held what looked like a mix of textbooks and also books he might read for pleasure in his spare time. There was a closet I imagined you could just barely walk into and turn in a circle, and another door that I could see led to a bathroom.