Out of My Mind Read online

  “What happened?” Even while asking this, Gideon had a feeling what the answer was.

  “I can’t move in with you.” Her voice cracked. “It’s over, Gideon.”

  Gideon needed to sit down. Too bad his only option was the toilet, which felt about right.

  “I’m sorry I’m doing this now, like this. I’ve been thinking about it all summer.”

  “Way to wait until the last minute.”

  “There was never a good time.”

  Gideon sat on the polished hardwood floor. The world around him went mute, all except for Beth, who remained standing.

  “I’ve been wondering if this really was the best next step for us, moving in together. I felt nervous. At first, I thought it was because I was moving in with my boyfriend into my first apartment, and the natural butterflies that come with that.”

  “Maybe it is. I’m nervous, too. We’ll adjust.”

  “But I realized that I didn’t want to adjust. Something seemed off, Gideon. Between you and me.”

  This was news to him.

  “You never felt it?” She asked.

  “What?”

  “The distance.”

  “You mean because your internship was in Midtown and mine was on Wall Street?”

  Beth shook her head no, her hair flinging out to the side. “There’s always been this distance between us. No matter how close I thought we were, there was this wall. And it wasn’t just me. I saw it with your other girlfriends.”

  That was the problem with dating a girl you had been friends with. She knew Gideon when he was dating around, so she thought she really knew him. He wasn’t in the mood to be psychoanalyzed.

  “You would start dating a girl, then they’d want to get serious, and you would break up with them. You have a typical playboy pattern, one I thought I could break.

  “But once I started dating you, I saw how much you refused any type of intimacy. We would have these long talks, but it would feel like chatting with a stranger. Or after sex, you wanted to jump into the shower right away. You never wanted to cuddle. I thought it was because of your OCD.”

  “I don’t have OCD.”

  “You had the cleanest dorm room of any guy I know.”

  “Since we’re listing faults, can I start on you yet?”

  “Don’t be petty, Gideon. I’m trying to be honest with you.”

  “Great timing.” He thought about the plush armchair they had picked out, that he would never get to sit in now. “You waited ten months to lay this all on me.”

  “I thought you would come around. I liked the challenge.”

  “I’m not a project, Beth.”

  “And I’m not a prop,” she said back, her voice thick. “I think that we wanted to look like the perfect couple rather than actually be a good couple.”

  Gideon stood up. Therapy session over. “I already signed a lease.”

  Beth hadn’t put her name on the lease, only him. Her end of the deal was getting the furniture. Gideon wondered how long this really had been on her mind.

  “You can break it.”

  “Not without forfeiting first month’s and security.”

  “My parents can pay you back for first month’s rent. You can talk to the landlord in the meantime. I’m sure he’ll find somebody to fill this place in no time. He’ll let you break the lease.”

  Gideon studied all the details of the apartment. The enclosed porch, the molding on the borders of the off-white walls. That dishwasher. Beth seemed to read his mind.

  “If you don’t want to give up the apartment, you can try and find a roommate. I can ask around.”

  The last thing he wanted was help from her. “It’s okay. I’ll be fine.”

  “I know you’re hurt, and again, I wish my timing was better.”

  He didn’t feel hurt or heartbroken. He was angry. At her, and at himself. Because at this moment, a voice in his gut was saying he should’ve been the one to do this first.

  Beth gave him a hug, which because he was a nice guy, he accepted. He breathed in her perfume one last time. She clicked the door shut, leaving Gideon alone with his fireplace, dishwasher, and in-unit washer and dryer.

  Φ

  A few hours later, Gideon’s best friend Seth came over with an air mattress and a pack of gluten-free beer. Seth didn’t follow the whole gluten-free craze to be cool. He had a gluten, tree nut, and peanut allergy. When they met as freshmen, he told Gideon that if he had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, he would die, which Gideon thought made him sound bad-ass.

  Seth kneeled on the bedroom floor and inflated the air mattress.

  “Women,” Gideon said. “They appear so soft and innocent, but they can destroy you.”

  “Just like almonds,” Seth said. He was from Rye, a few towns over from Gideon, but managed to have a Brooklyn accent.

  “It’s never enough. You want to have fun and see where things go; they want a committed relationship. You give them a committed relationship, but it’s not the right type of committed. It’s never enough.” Gideon gagged on the beer. Gluten was apparently the magic ingredient.

  “Plenty of fish, Gid. Plenty of fish.” Seth disappeared behind the growing air mattress. “And plenty of dating apps, too.”

  Gideon had done his fair share of swiping left and right before Beth, and he would go back to that well soon. But now, he just needed to vent.

  “What kills me is that as she was breaking up with me, I kept thinking how I wanted to do it first. I wasn’t crazy about her, and I know things weren’t perfect.”

  “Then why’d you keep dating her?” Silence took over the bedroom. It was a valid point, but Gideon waved it away.

  “I was being the good boyfriend. I was giving her what she wanted.” Gideon flopped onto the air mattress. It was far more comfortable than he was expecting. “Are you sure you want to live in the dorms for another year?”

  “I finally got a single! No more awkward conversations with roommates about not keeping crackers and trail mix in the room. I already installed my dehumidifer.”

  “Fair enough.” Gideon smirked. Seth had no shame in being excited to install a dehumidifer.

  “I’ll ask around my dorm and my other friends to see if anyone is looking for a last minute apartment.”

  “Whoever moves in here would get half the living room as their bedroom. Not exactly the best deal.” Gideon didn’t want to give this apartment up. He doubted he could find a quality apartment at an affordable price this late in the game. His only other option was to go back to the dorms. No offense to Seth and his single, but to Gideon, that was like taking a giant step back.

  “You never know. There are a lot of students on campus. Undergrads, grad students, transfer students, even new professors. Browerton is a big place.”

  As he promised, Seth put the word out. And it just so happened that a kid in his dorm had a friend who was friends with someone who knew a Browerton student from his Intro to Classics course last year who was in desperate need of an apartment. The news passed back through the chain to Seth, who told Gideon the student would stop over Monday night, after the first day of classes of the new school year.

  In that time, Gideon scrambled to find decent furniture from Goodwill and Craigslist. His apartment had the bare essentials of a living space when his buzzer rang. Seconds later, the prospective roommate knocked on his door. Gideon recognized the short brown hair, twinkling eyes, and wide smile in a heartbeat.

  Only that smile quickly turned into a scowl.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Mac

  Mac should’ve known that out of all the Gideons at Browerton (which, to be fair, were probably less than ten), this one would need a roommate. He held out hope as he walked up the stairs that it would be someone else.

  Nope.

  “Hey.” Gideon put on his best polite smile. It was a crime against humanity that he was still attractive. He hadn’t been cursed with a beer gut like so many straight upperclassmen guys on campus
.

  “Yeah. A blast from the past.” Mac had spent his time at Browerton avoiding Gideon and pretending like that night never happened. But seeing him again brought back the memory in crystal clear Technicolor.

  “You’re looking for a place to live?”

  “Yeah.” Mac peeked behind Gideon. He loved the color of the walls. And was that a fireplace he saw in the reflection of the window?

  “Here, come in.” He stepped aside.

  The apartment was already leaps and bounds better than what Mac had seen in other places he looked. Most of the apartments he’d seen were either too expensive or barely acceptable for human living. Mac took full scope of the place. Like his friend had told him, it was a one-bedroom with a large living room where he’d reside. He pictured winter nights curling up with a book next to the fireplace. But then he remembered Gideon would probably be there, too.

  “Are you still studying sociology? Like patterns and stuff?” Gideon asked.

  Mac raised his eyebrows at the polished wood shelves on the fireplace. He couldn’t believe Gideon remembered that. “Yeah. And you still want to be Patrick Bateman, right?”

  “Right. Minus the homicidal tendencies.”

  “What’s the rent on this place again?”

  “Your share would be $600, which includes all utilities.”

  Mac hung his head. He wished he hadn’t heard that number. That was lower than anything he could get on his own.

  “I’m meeting with a few more people this week. I’ll email you either way,” Gideon said, a little too eagerly.

  And that’s a no. Mac rolled his eyes to himself. There was no way he was getting this apartment, no way Gideon wanted him as a roommate. And the feeling was extremely mutual. He took a quick stroll around the apartment before circling back to the door. He just wanted to be fully aware of what he was missing out on. Mac realized he made a terrible mistake when he walked by the kitchen. His breath caught in his chest.

  This place has a dishwasher, too?

  He was being messed with. Terrible guy, fabulous apartment. Somewhere, someone was laughing.

  “You know, you were a real asshole,” Mac said. He’d been thinking about that night for years. Knowing that Gideon was going to have a dishwasher and he’d be forced to live in a dilapidated shack at this point sent him over the edge.

  “Are you talking about when you…”

  “When I kissed you.”

  “I’m straight, Mac. I told you that.”

  Mac’s eyes narrowed into slits. He wasn’t getting off that easy. “Only after I made a move. You didn’t say anything the whole time we were talking.”

  “I didn’t know I had to.”

  “You were flirting with me!” Mac’s voice echoed on the walls.

  “No, I wasn’t. We were just talking.”

  But Mac remembered every detail from that night. He could give minute-by-minute analysis. “You were smiling at me.”

  “People smile at each other when they’re making friends.” Gideon’s calmness drove him crazy.

  “You tapped my chest, like this.” Mac demonstrated on himself, which Gideon found humorous. “It’s not funny.”

  “I did? I was being friendly, I guess.”

  Mac crossed his arms. He had the trump card. “You went up to my room with me. That’s the international symbol for hooking up.”

  Gideon took a step closer and crossed his arms right back at him. “If I recall, we weren’t able to get on the Wi-Fi, and you said your dorm was just across the street. I pulled up a picture of a matzo ball, and then you were on me.”

  He was so fast with excuses and rationale. He spat them off like an automatic pitching machine.

  “You really didn’t know what was going on?”

  “No. It was my first time away from my family. I was a naïve freshman, I guess.”

  It was just one night, but one Mac wasn’t able to forget. Like all embarrassing, soul-crushing moments, it loved popping back into his mind at the most random occasions, usually when Mac was already feeling down on himself. It was the cherry on top of a crappy mood.

  And then there were those times when Mac thought about that night, but with an alternate version that didn’t have them stopping. In fact, this version had them doing more than kissing…

  But that was fantasy, starring a Gideon who wasn’t an asshole, who didn’t make him feel like shit. Fantasy and reality never intertwined.

  “I won’t forget what you said to me. In the stairwell.” Mac shook his head. Are you out of your mind? The words, and Gideon’s look, still gave him a chill.

  “I didn’t think we could be friends, not after that. It would’ve been supremely awkward.”

  “We could’ve worked past it.”

  He seesawed his head. “You say that, but I’m not convinced.”

  “I guess we’ll never know. You ran down those stairs like you were Forrest Gump.”

  “I’m sorry.” Gideon knocked a knobby fist against the wall, being all smoldering without even realizing it. “It wasn’t my finest hour. I freaked out.”

  He gave this hangdog shrug and his eyebrows sloped and his eyes went wide and that made it really hard to hate him.

  “It’s a nice place,” Mac said, giving the apartment one more look. Because he was an idiot who enjoyed torture, he opened the door off the living room to ogle the spacious closets this place probably had.

  Mac’s jaw hit the floor. “You have an in-unit washer and dryer?”

  “Yeah, it’s pretty sweet.”

  “I didn’t know college apartments had them. I thought it was an urban legend.”

  Mac dragged a yearning hand over the washer’s surface. He was officially in a desperate time, and it called for a requisite desperate measure.

  “Look, I know this sounds crazy, us trying to room together. I’m not a fan of it either, especially because I still kind of don’t like you after what happened. But I need a place to live, okay? The only apartments that are available are ones I can’t afford, ones with legitimately weird roommates, and ones that should be condemned by the board of health. I’ve been looking for two weeks, and this is the only decent place I’ve found. I’m reasonably clean, I’m courteous, I pay on time.”

  Gideon hung in the hallway. He was the boy in the bubble. Mac would tell him that he wouldn’t catch his gay germs, but that’d probably freak him out.

  “Why are you looking for an apartment now?”

  “I just broke up with my boyfriend,” Mac said.

  “How come?”

  “Ask him. He’s the one who did the breaking.” Mac shut the closet door. Gideon had on an earnest expression, actually wanting to hear more. “We were all set to move in together, and he pulled the plug at the last minute.”

  “No warning,” Gideon said, as if he understood. “You know this isn’t a decision they came to lightly. You’d think they could’ve planned ahead, before you signed a lease.”

  “Seriously! I paid for a credit check.”

  “Beth said her family was getting us furniture. I didn’t budget for it. I had to buy this living room furniture from a guy whose grandmother just passed away. And rent a U-Haul to move it.”

  “Davis was the person I was closest to in this whole world, not counting my Aunt Rita. It was so unexpected, and so…”

  “Inconsiderate!”

  “Yes! Inconsiderate is the perfect word.” Mac tucked his hands into his jeans pockets. “Look, I need a place to stay, and you need a roommate. It won’t be awkward.”

  Although saying that made things awkward. Nice one, Mac.

  “We’ll give this a two-week trial,” Gideon said. “If it’s weird, you’ll have time to find a new place.”

  “Fair enough.” It would give Mac just enough time to see how awkward things might get. “I love social experiments.”

  They shook on it.

  Φ

  Two days later, Mac moved into his new apartment. He didn’t have any furniture, so Gideon
let him borrow his friend’s air mattress. Mac enlisted his best friend Delia to help him lug up boxes on what turned out to be the last gasp of a brutal summer.

  “I am sweating everywhere. In every crevice and fold and—”

  “I get the picture.” Mac also saw the picture, with the sweaty tips of her thick brown hair.

  He pushed open the door with his butt. He instructed her to put all of his stuff in his bedroom. Gideon had picked up some freestanding room dividers from Ikea and cordoned off Mac’s bedroom. It looked wonky, but it worked.

  Delia stopped in the middle of the living room to marvel at the fireplace and the fine touches.

  “Unpack first. Ogle later.”

  They went three more rounds with lugging boxes and bags up the stairs and into Mac’s room. Soon, his room was packed tighter than a basement closet.

  “You have a lot of crap,” Delia said. Mac couldn’t take two steps in his new bedroom thanks to it. He didn’t know where it all came from, but he didn’t want to throw any of it out.

  “Is there anything in here that belongs to Davis? I’ll happily throw that out, or set it on fire.”

  Mac wasn’t going to show her the crate with the last remnants of his relationship. They’d been together for almost two years. He couldn’t completely block out that period of time.

  “Let’s move some stuff into the sun porch.”

  “I moved it into the apartment. That’s where my friendly duties end.” Delia lay on the couch and scrolled through her phone.

  Mac carried crates and bags to the sun porch and stacked them against one wall. Sweat made his shirt cling to his chest. The pile wobbled, but Mac wouldn’t have to touch it until he got some furniture.

  He went into the kitchen and poured them glasses of water. He joined Delia on the couch and rested his head on her lap. They met at a Rainbow Club introductory meeting freshman year. Right off the bat, Delia told him she was straight but a strong ally for LGBT students. In her hometown of Needham, Massachusetts, they had LGBT equality and protections for all minority groups. So there was nothing for her to do. “Can you imagine what it’s like living in a town where the establishment is already on your side?” Mac kept his opinion to himself, that she should be so lucky. He was grateful to have anyone fighting for his rights. After the meeting, he chuckled to himself that the one friend he made was a straight girl.