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 Posted: Thu Aug 23, 2012 6:35 pm
Chris was puppeted in these with Guine’s permission! <3 Word Count: 1063
Monday
College wasn’t really all that different from high school—or at least that was Paris’s first impression of it.
The campus was arguably less like a prison than Hillworth had seemed to him when he’d attended, and the student body seemed somehow more mature than they had at Meadowview, even though the youngest students here weren’t any older than the oldest students had been there. Paris thought it might have been the lack of uniforms, the notable absence of the stuffy green plaid of Hillworth and the juvenile orange of the school he’d attended before it. He saw a bit of silver here, a splash of purple there, on hoodies and t-shirts and jerseys, but there was a laxity and an openness to the campus that he’d noticed upon first arriving that morning.
There was a sort of freedom that came with being in college, much different than the lack of parental supervision that came with time spend at boarding school. Here his choices truly were his own. He could come and go as he pleased, with the only consequence being a lower grade. He felt more adult here, more in control of his life and his future than he had in either of the previous establishments, where confinement had made him bitter and the utter monotony of it all had made school seem like a chore and a waste.
But there were still some things that remained the same. Doors burst open and slammed shut all around him; professors began the day with droning lectures on subjects he doubted would ever prove useful; students flooded the halls between classes, slinging bags, shuffling papers and books, checking their phones for messages, some stopping to chat with friends and others rushing out to make their way to their next class on time.
Paris felt lost among it all, sitting on a bench with Chris outside of a door labeled 108. One of his legs bounced gently up and down in a nervous rhythm, the high heel of his shoe clicking against the floor as a few other students passed by on their way into the room. In a bag on his back he had a five-subject notebook, a case of pens and pencils, and his day-planner. In his hand he clutched a sheet of paper that read:
‘M/T/W/R – 8:00-8:50 – Intro to Math – Sawyer – XXXXX Hall, Rm. 108
M/W/F – 9:00-9:50 – Expository Writing – Clark – XXXXX Hall, Rm. 103
M/W – 11:00-12:15 – Intro to Art – Richardson – XXXXX Hall, Rm. 207
T/R – 9:30-10:45 – American History – Donahue – XXXXX Hall, Rm. 1128
T/R – 11:00-12:15 – Ballet I – Sanders – XXXXX Gymnasium, Rm. 102’
‘Intro to Math’ stood out among it all, making his insides screw up with something that was almost like fear.
“You’re going to do fine,” Chris said.
“I’m gonna fail,” Paris replied.
“It’s your first day. You’re not going to fail.”
“I don’t know why I thought I could do this,” Paris continued without yet acknowledging his boyfriend’s reassurances. “This was a terrible idea. I should just go home and not even bother-”
“Paris,” Chris stopped him, grabbing one of his hands and loosening Paris’s death grip on his schedule.
Paris glanced over at him and found himself settling somewhat at the look of determination in Chris’s eyes. That was something he should be feeling for himself, he knew—and it was there somewhere, buried beneath his jumbled nerves—but it had more of an impact on him when he saw it being returned.
“I’m going to throw up,” Paris intoned mindlessly.
“Paris,” Chris said, his expression growing more serious.
Paris winced. “Sorry,” he said, “I didn’t mean it like that. I just-”
He was beginning to second guess himself again and he hated that. He was normally a very decisive individual. When he wanted something, he went for it; when he made a decision, he stuck with it until the end. To come all this way, to have worked so hard to get here, only to freak out and begin down the path of self-defeat before he’d even really gotten started was not what he wanted his college experience to be like.
“You’re going to do fine,” Chris told him again, his gaze a little harder, his voice a little more firm. “All you have to do is show up, pay attention, and do the best you can.”
“But I was never very good at-”
“You’ll never know unless you try.”
Chris was right about that, of course. There wasn’t anything Paris could say to argue against that logic. The truth was he’d never really tried before. He’d done well in Elementary school when there’d been just enough fun and games to keep him entertained in the process of learning. If he looked back and analyzed himself better, high school had only been terrible because he hadn’t cared anymore, because of where he’d ended up. He’d spent most of his time focusing on what he wasn’t allowed to do and staging his pitiful attempts at rebellion, and he’d let the actual educational aspect of it all fall by the wayside.
Mind-set wasn’t everything, but it could prove to be a fairly big part of it—the part that ended up making the difference.
“I have a class down the hall at nine,” Chris told him, gently squeezing Paris’s hand. “I’ll wait here until you get out.”
Paris straightened his shoulders on an inhale and tried to dredge up some confidence from within. “Okay,” he agreed.
Chris’s mouth quirked lightly. When he leaned forward to kiss him, Paris let his eyes close to bask in Chris’s nearness and remind himself that this was real, that no matter what happened in that classroom over the next fifty minutes, this would be right here waiting for him at the end of it.
“Love you,” Chris said when he pulled away.
Paris found that it was a bit easier to smile when he opened his eyes again than it had been before he’d closed them.
“Love you, too,” he said.
He repeated that to himself as he entered the classroom and took a seat in the third row, fortified himself with Chris’s reassurances and told himself over and over again that he could do this.
College wasn’t going to be like high school. He could make it work this time; he could make it better.
All he had to do was try.
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Posted: Thu Aug 23, 2012 6:37 pm
Word Count: 1023
Tuesday
Dinners with his mother proved to be much less tense these days than they’d been a year ago. Paris was sure their new found ease with one another had a lot to do with the fact that they’d overcome their differences—and if they hadn’t overcome all of them, then they’d overcome most of them, and that, for now, seemed good enough to maintain the peace and move forward. Forgiveness went a long way. His mother was no longer wary, Paris himself was no longer as obstinate. They could talk to one another now, discuss recent events or go over the course of their respective days without wading through a bitter divide.
It was comforting, sometimes even relaxing on an especially good day, but Paris would never admit to anyone but himself (and maybe his therapist) that he liked it.
“How are your classes so far?” his mother asked the obvious question over a dinner of pork, asparagus, and seasoned red potatoes, one of their increasingly common attempts to spend time together as a family.
Paris figured the question itself needed to be voiced. His mother had spent so much of her time worrying about him and fretting over a future he must have seemed as if he were just carelessly throwing away before to let that particular conversation go without comment.
“They’re alright, I guess,” Paris replied. “We haven’t done much except go over the syllabus in each class. We didn’t even change in ballet today. History’s the only class I had to take notes in. We got out early in all my other ones.”
“No homework yet?”
“Not really. I think we’ve got the rest of the week to get our books or something.”
The last two days had proven to be stressful, but much less so than he’d originally thought. Most of his classes operated under a relaxed atmosphere. There were still rules, and there would be work and deadlines, but it wasn’t as rigid as high school had been. His professors weren’t always the most interesting lecturers, yet Paris found them tolerable if not nice. Maybe his attitude would change after the first couple of tests, or when assignments started piling up, but for now he was feeling a little better about his choice to return to school than he had the previous morning.
“History’s boring, though,” he said, mindlessly pushing his potatoes around his plate. “I think that’s going to be my least favorite class after math.”
His mother watched him from across the dining table, occasionally glancing down at his plate to check the state of his meal. “I studied history in school,” she said.
“I thought you studied law.”
“I did history for my undergrad.”
“Oh,” Paris said, spearing a wedge of red potato onto his fork to pop it into his mouth, which seemed to satisfy his mother only slightly. “Well, it’s still boring. Especially American history. It’s all the same stuff over and over again. Columbus, the pilgrims, a couple of witch hunts, the American Revolution-”
“The American War for Independence,” his mother corrected him.
“Whatever,” he replied with a roll of his eyes. “The point is I’ve heard it all before. When I was, like, five. Remember? I made that paper pilgrim hat back in kindergarten and we had a Thanksgiving feast in class.”
“What they taught you in elementary school was really superficial stuff, Paris.”
“But they repeated it all every year. Even in high school that was all we talked about. The only really cool thing I ever did was write some bullshit paper about how the French Revolution was more badass than the American Revolution.”
“The American War for Independence,” his mother repeated.
Paris rolled his eyes again.
“You could have written about the differences in each event that made the French Revolution a true revolution.”
“That would require me to actually give a s**t,” Paris pointed out, “but I’ll keep that in mind for future reference.”
His mother sighed and ended the discussion with a shake of her head. She put her fork down once she was done eating, tossing her napkin next to her plate before leaning back with her hands on a stomach that seemed overlarge. Paris lowered his eyes to his plate in an effort not to end up staring at it, but that only brought into view the half-eaten dinner he was sure his mother was closely scrutinizing.
Sure enough, once the silence had stretched on too long, his mother said, “Baby, you need to eat more.”
“I know, Mom,” Paris replied.
“How was your last appointment with the nutritionist?”
“She said I’ve gained five pounds.”
“That’s all?” his mother asked.
“It’s better than nothing,” Paris said.
“You should be gaining more.”
“I know, Mom,” Paris said again with more annoyance.
His mother momentarily shut her mouth at the tone of his voice, though she kept her eyes on him, watching as he viciously speared another piece of potato.
He didn’t like talking about it any more now than he had before. He still found it a difficult topic to discuss even with his therapist, who had done more in three weeks to get him to open up about his problems than anyone else had been able to manage in eighteen years. He was making progress, but slowly. Some things came to him easier than others. Structuring his life around a schedule was something he could do well enough on his own. He could appreciate that stability.
His appetite was another story. It wasn’t something he could so easily control. He could schedule snack and meal times. He could plan what he wanted to eat and make his lunches ahead of time, bring his own food to campus when he didn’t feel like relying on the cafeteria, but he could not make himself feel hungry. He could not look at his dinner and force a desire that wasn’t there.
He could only battle through it—and he was.
The stress of the day just made it more difficult.
“Alright,” his mother said once she’d watched him long enough. “Alright, Baby. Just take your time.”
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Posted: Thu Aug 23, 2012 6:38 pm
Word Count: 1273
Wednesday
Wednesday turned out to be the worst day of the week, not because it was halfway between him and the freedom of the weekend, and not because a few of his classes continued to prove tedious, but because it was the day his emotions ended up in the worst state of upheaval, his slowly growing confidence momentarily plunging back into the overwhelming grief he was only just beginning to overcome.
And it was all because of something so simple as a sketchbook.
Most of his school supplies had been purchased during his mall excursion with Penelope—pens, pencils, notebooks, clothes—but there were inevitably a few items that he’d forgotten or couldn’t find, or that his professors had neglected to add to the many lists and syllabi he’d carried with him while out shopping.
So it was that he spent the hour between his writing and art class making the trek to the university bookstore with Chris to pick up a few last minute items.
He had the aforementioned sketchbook and a pack of drawing pencils in hand when the thought hit him, and he realized that had circumstance been different he wouldn’t have had to rely on overpriced art supplies at the university bookstore. He could have easily waltzed into his father’s shop and taken what he needed—likely with some muttering and cursing on the part of his father—or even tossed the list of necessary supplies at his dad and asked him to bring it all home after a day at work.
Even though he knew that could never be the case, that his father’s house now belonged to some other family and he could never walk int his father's store again without being crushed beneath the weight of sadness, having the two items in his hands and remembering something that was still really quite recent made the reality of his father’s death and the differences in his life between then and now hit home all over again.
“Paris,” Chris said quietly, taking his arm and guiding him off to the side where they couldn’t be in anyone’s way. “What’s wrong?” he asked. The look on his face, however, showed that he already suspected what the problem was.
“I just…” Paris began, but he couldn’t explain himself without choking up. “I just need to sit down.”
“Okay,” Chris agreed, his voice low and comforting. “Okay, go sit down.”
“Can you finish getting all this?” Paris asked.
He passed the supplies and his list off to Chris, unable to look at it anymore—at least not for the time being. Later he could have to if he wanted to be able to complete his assignments, but for now he needed to take a moment to separate himself from it and come to terms with his situation and his father’s absence from his life, as he had many times before now, and as he’d probably do many times again.
Once Chris nodded and relieved him of his burden, Paris left his boyfriend there to pick up and purchase the remainder of his required supplies while he found some place to rest and wallow. He ended up commandeering a reasonably comfortable couch nestled in a window embrasure, and had hardly even dropped his bag to the floor and sat down before raising his knees to his chest and resting his head on top. He made himself as small as possible, curling up as he hid his face from passing strangers and the warm sunlight that shimmered though the window beside him.
His therapist told him that this was normal. In their weekly sessions since their first uncomfortable meeting, they’d discussed his father quite a bit, and all of the intense feelings his death had left Paris to wade through. On some days Paris could talk about his father relatively easily. He shared memories, discussed his father’s reactions to his behavior, explained some of their more tense encounters, and talked about what he could remember of his father during childhood, before the rift had grown and his mother had left them.
On his bad days, Paris could hardly talk about his father at all. Trying to examine the day his father had passed away always brought him to tears. He had no words to describe how he had felt at the time beneath the numbness that had held the grief temporarily had bay. He didn’t even know when the grief had truly started or if it’d always been there somewhere, only that he would rather run from it than face it, because when he ran he had control over it and when he didn’t he was at the mercy of emotions that might never have been stable.
Those days he closed himself off and barely spoke at all, and his therapist had to find some other method of cracking through those walls and bringing them down again.
Frequently he wondered what his life would be like now if his father had lived. It wasn’t always a safe path for his thoughts to follow, but they inevitably did anyway. His therapist told him that was normal, too—painful, yes, but not an uncommon process. It was not such a strange thing to wish and dream of a different reality.
Where would he be now if his father was still alive? Would he be living at home, in the house he’d done most of his growing up in? Would he have moved in with Chris at all, or would their relationship have continued to progress slowly? Would there have been another reason for him to move out?
Would his father be working normally again? Would his parents have talked at all after his mother moved back? How would his father have felt about his mother’s second child when he would’ve actually had to see it? Would his relationship with his father have improved? Would his father have joined him at the Gallos’ for brunch or dinner, made the effort to get to know Chris’s family when it became apparent that their relationship had turned serious?
Would his father be proud of him for going back to school? For continuing to dance? For making something out of himself?
Paris liked to think he would be.
Fifteen minutes later, Chris found him sitting there, having hardly moved an inch, though Paris was so lost in thought he didn’t notice his boyfriend had rejoined him until he felt a hand thread through his hair and Chris’s voice softly call, “Baby…”
Paris gave a start and lifted his head from his knees to look up. He found Chris standing beside his seat, looking at him sadly.
“Sorry,” Chris apologized, brushing some of Paris’s hair out of his face. “Did you want to sit here longer?”
Paris considered getting up, wondered if it would be a good idea to head to class early and triple check that he had everything he needed, but staying here for a little longer appealed to him far more. Besides, he had at least twenty minutes until he needed to go, maybe half an hour if he was lucky. He could afford to take his time for now. There wasn’t any rush.
“Sit with me,” he requested.
Chris nodded, setting his book-bag and their purchases on the floor beside the couch before joining him. Paris scooted over a bit to give his taller boyfriend some room, but as soon as Chris had settled Paris shifted closer to nestle against his side.
“Are you going to be okay?” Chris asked once he’d wrapped Paris up in his arms.
Paris closed his burning eyes and breathed.
“Yeah,” he said.
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Posted: Fri Aug 24, 2012 7:40 pm
Word Count: 2842
Thursday
Work was a much more manageable arrangement for Paris. For the entirety of the last year, when he wasn’t making use of leisure time or chasing monsters around the city, he had spent a good portion of his days working. He was not one of those kids who had been employed since the day he turned sixteen (at that point he hadn’t needed to care about such things), but once he’d gotten himself out into the world and jumped head first into the daily grind, Paris had discovered that work suited him very well.
Upon his acceptance into Destiny City University, Paris had looked into any on-campus employment opportunities he could find. He knew that school itself would be a challenge, that having classes and homework after a year without either would require a period of adjustment, and he looked to a job as a means of balancing out his days—after the stress of class, the consistency of a regular job was a means of comfort to him. He liked to keep busy because it kept him from vacillating between any number of terrible or depressing thoughts. Instead, he could remain focused and decisive because he needed to be.
He ended up landing a job through the DCU ticket office, selling tickets for the university’s variety of performances, shows, and sporting events. It was steady but pleasantly unhurried work, and the sort for which he could make use of his knowledge and talents. Through the Department of Dance, he was already decently well-informed about upcoming theatrical events and could discuss their merits with customers and potential guests, and with his boyfriend being a jock and therefore interested in sports and the university’s division standings, Paris generally had a pretty good idea when upcoming games would be taking place and who said games would be played against.
Monday through Thursday, after his last class ended at 12:15, Paris had forty-five minutes in which to each lunch and change into his work uniform. This turned out to be nothing more scarring than a nice pair of jeans (“no rips and tears, please”) and a purple DCU t-shirt with his nametag pinned on the right-hand side. Then Paris made the short trek to his place of employment and settled himself behind the ticket desk to put some work in on his homework during the regular lulls in activity—which happened to be quite frequently, as most people tended to come between classes.
On Thursday afternoon, he worked the desk with a Junior girl who, upon first meeting him, had taken to looking at him oddly every ten minutes or so. He had first encountered her on Tuesday when they’d worked together for two hours before her afternoon class, at which point he had learned practically her whole life story. He knew her major (Management and Hospitality), he knew she entered beauty pageants (which Paris found to be rather vapid but which she seemed to think made her the greater beauty), he knew she was in a sorority and was already very tired of hearing her chatter away about recruitment (which, he learned, she shouldn’t be talking about in the first place), and he knew that she was on the university’s cheerleading squad. This led her to talk way too much about football and other things Paris had absolutely no interest in (the sorority, for example), but she was friendly enough when she wasn’t doing that (and when she realized her staring was really rather rude).
Paris had decided that it would be in everyone’s best interests if he were to be upfront with his co-workers, but his scheduled company on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons occasionally had him wondering if they all would have been better off if he’d left them to come to their own conclusions. He could ignore her when she didn’t speak, but the minute she opened her mouth he sometimes felt the need to bash his head against the desk.
Luckily, he was able to resist the compulsion.
“What do you think of a zebra print couch for my living-room?” she asked him that afternoon, voicing her question completely at random.
They’d been sitting there for nearly an hour already, Paris reading through some history text or another while she flipped through a couple of magazines or chatted with a few of her sorority sisters and their frat-boy friends who happened to stop by just to see her.
She was lucky they didn’t have a lot of people coming by the purchase tickets that day, or else he would have had a lot to say about her lack of attentiveness.
“Anna Leigh,” he said (and it had taken him a couple of tries to get her name right, not because it was a difficult one, but because he kept wanting to call her “Cindy Lou” or “Sally Anne” or “Kaylie Dee” or some other name that also screamed Southern Belle), “just because I dance and wear cute shoes and like the color pink does not mean I know anything about decorating a room.”
His idea of interior design was a coat of bright paint with movie posters scattered around the walls and glass or porcelain figurines cluttering random surfaces. He could dress a person fairly well, but a room? Not in a million years. He left decorating to Momma Gallo and stuck with the fail proof plan of following her every instruction when he helped her around the house.
“But you can still have an opinion,” Anna Leigh argued.
“My opinion is that a zebra print couch is tacky,” Paris said upon deciding that Momma Gallo would likely find the idea absolutely repulsive.
Or maybe she wouldn’t. She could be fun, spontaneous, and quirky with her decisions sometimes.
Anna Leigh clucked her tongue in displeasure. “You don’t have any tastes,” she said.
“And you’re trying too hard,” Paris countered.
“How am I trying too hard?”
“Everything you do is to bring attention to yourself.”
“No, it isn’t,” she denied.
Paris rolled his eyes as he said, “Tell that to someone who believes you.”
It wasn’t a particularly heated debate. It was obvious to him that neither of them were ever going to agree on the topic, but their comments had more of a tone meant for banter than one meant to insult or anger. Most of their stilted conversations had passed in the same way: she would ask him a question pertaining to some superficial aspect of her life, and he would give an honest answer in as patient a voice as possible.
It wasn’t that he was necessarily annoyed by it. He liked being able to talk to his co-workers, and sometimes it proved to be a nice distraction from his daunting stack of books and growing sets of notes.
It was just that, with Anna Leigh, it all seemed so shallow and juvenile, and he was reminded of a time when his concerns had been more in line with hers.
Not only that, but she always seemed about two seconds away from being unintentionally offensive when it came to his choices and his identity—or perhaps it wasn’t unintentional at all. He could honestly never tell with her. Even when she was being purposefully insulting (she had the terrible habit of saying horrible things about her sorority sisters behind their backs) she managed to do so in the same high, sweet, girlish voice she used when she was being genuinely nice.
Paris didn’t really understand her at all.
“And anyway,” she continued,” aren’t you just bringing attention to yourself when you-”
He was saved from having to answer that potentially offensive question when he noticed someone drawing closer to the ticket desk out of the corner of his eye. Glad for the chance to drop that conversation before it could even begin, Paris turned to greet their approaching customer. He had every intention of smiling brightly and responding with his usual “Hi, how can I help you?” but while his smile was definitely bright upon seeing the new arrival’s face, what came out of his mouth was certainly not an immediate offer to assist in the purchasing of tickets.
“What are you doing here?” he asked instead.
Chris stood tall and handsome on the other side of the ticket desk with his book-bag on his back and his gym bag slung over one of his shoulders. He smiled one of his typical warm smiles, eyes so soft and kind Paris nearly melted in an instant, looking bright and fresh in his customary summer combo of shorts and a polo. In one hand he carried a plastic fork and a paper plate from the cafeteria where a piece of red velvet cake sat beneath the protection of saran wrap. In the other hand was a cup Paris recognized as having come from one of the nearby cafes, a straw already unwrapped and sticking out of the plastic lid. “Straw S + Pro” was written on the side of the cup in black sharpie.
“Heading to the gym for a while,” Chris said before moving to pass the cake and smoothie over the counter. “I picked up a snack for you on the way.”
“Oh, I was just going to get something out of one of the vending machines,” Paris said as he stood to accept both items.
For just a moment Paris let himself be overcome with suspicion—did Chris not trust that he would eat if left to his own devices?—but he squashed that thought when he looked at the clock and saw that it read 1:58, just two minutes before the time he had allotted for one of his afternoon snacks in his day-planner, the schedule of which Chris had become rather in tune with over the last week. Besides, his boyfriend wasn’t usually the type to push. Chris was thoughtful and exceedingly generous. Therefore, Paris could only believe that Chris had brought him something with the best of intentions, not because of any issues with trust but because he didn’t want Paris to have to worry about finding something on his own.
It was terribly sweet, and Paris took the cake and smoothie gratefully, hardly even noticing that Anna Leigh was watching them with interest.
“Are you going home after you finish up at the gym?” Paris asked.
“No, I’ll wait for you to get off,” Chris said.
“I don’t get off until five,” Paris warned him.
“I know.”
It was on the tip of Paris’s tongue to say “you don’t have to do that,” but he stopped himself from voicing it. Chris already knew that, of course. It was a pointless reminder. Naturally, Chris intended to wait for him anyway.
“I’ll go do some homework in the library while I’m waiting or something,” Chris told him.
“Okay,” Paris said. “Then what did you want to do for dinner?”
“Your only class is at nine tomorrow, right?”
“Right.”
“You want to come to my place tonight? We can stop to eat somewhere on the way,” Chris suggested, with no sign or hint to show that the offer was anything but innocent, except that his smile grew a bit broader.
Paris figured that there was an obvious ulterior motive not-so-cleverly disguised in there. Perhaps an innocent bystander wouldn’t have been able to pick up on it, but then they weren’t aware of his and Chris’s current living arrangements.
Most of the week, Paris continued to reside in the room the Gallos had allowed him to use since May. Many of those nights Chris would stay over with him, and they would share a bed just as comfortably as they had before their break, though those sleepovers never resulted in anything less than innocent. Paris respected Chris’s parents more than any other adult in his life. He had no intention of taking their generosity for granted by being naughty with their son under their roof.
Well, alright, so he didn’t live by that notion as strictly as he should. There’d been moments of weakness, but they usually occurred when Chris’s parents and littler brother were decidedly absent.
Spending the night at Chris’s apartment thus had a different significance to it. Sure, there was a chance they might spend their time watching movies or talking about mundane things or getting a head start on whatever homework they might have, but there was also a very good chance that they might get side-tracked in the middle of it. Paris thought that the slight widening of Chris’s smile was evidence to the fact that Chris hoped that they would.
Admittedly, there had been a few times over the last month when Paris had balked. Especially recently, when he was still waiting on Chris to come to a decision about moving out and finding their own place together, Paris hesitated to spend too much time at Chris’s apartment lest Chris develop even more arguments to use against the idea when Paris seemed all too comfortable with making himself at home there. Staying over wasn’t an allowance Paris could always afford.
But it was the first week of school and it had been a long one, and Paris knew he was in desperate need of some alone time with his boyfriend, away from adult supervision or nosey younger brothers or the busy rush of campus, in a place Paris had always felt safe.
“Sure, okay,” he eventually agreed, unable to stop himself from smiling in return.
The expression on Chris’s face looked victorious. Paris was surprised he didn’t thrust a cheerful fist in the air to celebrate his success.
“I’ll see you at five then,” he said instead, surprisingly restrained for just having gotten his way. “Text me if you need anything.”
“I will,” Paris agreed.
For a moment Paris wondered if Chris was just going to go on his way. As comfortable as they were together, as much as they cared for one another, and as much as they got up to in private, they had never participated much in PDA. They weren’t necessarily against it. They kissed quite frequently in public, and they held hands, and they were known to sit rather close to one another when the situation called for it, but they never went to the extreme with their affections in front of other people. Paris saw no reason to be so showy. He was sure Chris felt the same way. They knew what they meant to one another. They didn’t feel any need to prove it to or showcase it for anyone else.
Of course, a quick kiss goodbye was nothing so risqué. When Chris moved to lean over the counter, Paris stepped forward to meet him. Their lips pressed together just long enough to get the point across before they were separating again, Paris to sit back down with his cake and smoothie, and Chris to depart with a nod of acknowledgement and a friendly smile for Paris’s co-worker, who had not attempted to say a word during the entire exchange.
Paris found her gaping at him once Chris had gone, her expression stuck somewhere between shock and confusion.
“Problem?” Paris wondered.
“Wasn’t that Chris Gallo?” she asked, idly pointing to the place where Chris had just been.
“Yeah, why?”
“He’s on the baseball team,” she said.
“I know.”
“And… and you know him?”
Paris snorted. “He’s my boyfriend,” he said, pausing to take a sip of his smoothie before carefully unwrapping the piece of cake.
“Since when?” Anna Leigh demanded.
“Since, like, last April,” Paris replied. He figured there wasn’t any point in going over the whole long story. They’d begun testing the dating waters with one another soon after they’d met, and Paris hadn’t really bothered to see anyone since, even when he’d had the chance.
“Why didn’t you say that?”
“I didn’t think it was really any of your business who I’m dating.”
“But he’s Chris. Gallo.”
“So?”
“So… he’s on the baseball team!” she said, as if she hadn’t just observed that very thing moments before, and as if Paris hadn’t already been aware of that fact.
Apparently being on the baseball team meant something to Anna Leigh. It probably meant something to a lot of people, but Paris wouldn’t have cared what team Chris played for or if he was even on a team at all so long as he was still Chris. Those sort of superficial things didn’t really matter to him anyway—not the way they used to. The important thing was that they loved one another, and that they were happy.
While his co-worker continued to stare at him as if her eyes had just been opened to some never-before-seen truth of the universe, Paris went about eating his cake and returned his attention back to the book he’d discarded earlier.
He’d let her stew on that for a while.
And while she was busy doing that, Paris pretended to be interested in history while he pondered what he and Chris might get up to later that night.
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Posted: Tue Sep 11, 2012 5:43 pm
Word Count: 1654
Friday
Friday dawned too early for Paris.
Despite being a naturally early riser, he nevertheless found it difficult to pull himself out of the familiar warmth and comfort of Chris’s bed to prepare himself for what would likely prove to be another long day, short as his time on campus was scheduled to be that morning. He made the effort only because it was necessary for him to be up anyway, as Anna required her regular morning walk, which Paris had always seen to before moving out of Chris’s apartment and which he’d fallen into the habit of resuming whenever he and Chris spent the night together.
Paris therefore passed the morning as he would have done before. He went to the bathroom to empty his bladder, quietly found his shoes and pulled them on, then grabbed Anna’s leash to hook her up and head outside to circle the block. When they returned he made breakfast, woke Chris up with coffee, and slipped back into the bathroom to shower, change, and prepare himself for another day of his return to academia.
“I don’t know what to write about,” he complained, as he was wont to do when feeling lost and confused.
The bathroom door was open to facilitate conversation, which Paris had always encouraged and which Chris had seemed to resign himself to months ago. Paris stood in front of the bathroom counter, patiently taming his otherwise unruly curls with expensive products and the aid of a hot iron, while Chris remained lounging in bed, sipping at his coffee and fiddling around on his iPad.
“Huh?” he asked.
“I don’t know what to write about,” Paris repeated, and then added in explanation, “in my writing class. We get prompts every week that we’re supposed to respond to in our writing journals, but the rest of the time we’re supposed to be working on our paper.”
“You have a paper due already?”
“It’s for the whole semester,” Paris continued, releasing one section of hair only to work on curling another. “Our professor wants us to pick a topic, like an issue or something, and then spend the whole semester structuring a research paper around it. Next week we’re supposed to have a topic picked out and then write an explanation about why we picked it.”
“There’s plenty of stuff to write about, isn’t there?” Chris wondered. “Just look on the news.”
“I don’t like the news,” Paris said. “It pisses me off.”
“Write about the war,” Chris suggested next.
Paris shut off his curling iron and yanked the cord out of the wall, leaving the device to cool on the counter while he went to stand in the doorway, frowning severely.
“Why would I want to write about the war?” he demanded.
Chris shrugged. “Because it’s an issue and because it’s something you know about?”
“Yeah, but that’s not really something I want to admit to a professor and a class full of college kids.”
“Then write about it from the prospective of a normal person. Talk about the social and economic effect it’s had on the city.”
“I’d rather not,” Paris replied. “Then I’d just spend the entire semester pissed off at something I don’t have any control over. That’s not exactly conducive to the whole healing process I’m supposed to be working on.”
“Okay,” Chris allowed, “but it’s always easier to write about something you’re passionate about than it is to write about some random topic you picked just for the sake of having something to work on.”
Pairs made a noncommittal sound and retrieved his shoes again, plopping himself down on the edge of Chris’s bed to pull them back on. The mattress shifted as Chris lumbered up behind him, circling his arms around him and nuzzling his recently styled hair.
“What about ballet?” he asked.
“What do you mean?” Paris wondered.
“Why don’t you write about ballet?” Chris suggested.
“Why would I do that?”
“Because you’re passionate about it,” Chris said, “because you love it and you know what you’re talking about when you discuss it. Hell if I know half as much about it as you do. I can’t even remember what most of that stuff is called. Something about cheese dip…” he teased.
“Fondu,” Paris replied in the midst of rolling his eyes. “And it’s not cheese dip.”
“Right,” Chris agreed, hardly bothered to stifle a chuckle. “You could write about proper technique. There’s that ballerina from Russia you’re always watching videos of.”
“Svetlana Zakharova.”
“Or that Valentine choreographer guy.”
“Balanchine,” Paris corrected him again. He found he was unable to stop himself from smiling at Chris’s obvious attempts at encouraging him to do just that.
“Right,” Chris said. Paris could feel his corresponding smile when Chris pressed his mouth to his cheek. “Or pick an issue. There’s still plenty in ballet, aren’t there?”
“It’s expensive, for one,” Paris admitted.
“But there’s more.”
Paris grew silent as he thought over Chris’s comment. In truth, it didn’t require very much reflection at all. He’d spent his entire life, or at least as much of it as he could remember, dancing and immersing himself in the art of ballet. Perhaps there had been periods in which he hadn’t worked as hard or pushed himself as much as he should have, but it was his life—or at least a very large part of it. It was where he felt the most confidence in himself, and it was the only thing in his life that he had ever known himself to excel at, one of the only things that had ever made him feel good about himself, who he was, and what he could do.
He felt comfortable at the barre, on the floor, up on stage, as if his life had always been meant for that. He’d rarely felt that way about anything else. In fact, one of the only other events in his life that measured up, that rivaled it, was Chris.
There were still issues, of course. There always were. Paris couldn’t think of anything that was completely free of controversy, and ballet was no different. As much as he loved it, as hard as he tried to succeed in it, he wasn’t blind to the problems that remained. Expense was only one issue among many, body image another, both of which he happened to be familiar with in one way or another. All it took was a brief look into his background. But they were not the only issues he’d encountered in all his years of experience, they were simply the ones he knew about first hand.
“I should get going,” Paris announced before he could let his thoughts wander too deeply. He turned suddenly to grab Chris’s lips in a quick kiss, bringing their conversation to an end.
Chris neither argued nor attempted to continue it, and instead asked, “Want me to drive you?”
“Nah,” Paris replied, hopping up to find the school bag he’d discarded the night before. “You’re not even dressed,” he pointed out.
“It’ll only take me two seconds to pull some clothes on.”
“It’s okay,” Paris assured him. “I’ve got my scooter.”
Upon retrieving his school bag, Paris slung it over his shoulders before returning to the bedside to lean over for another kiss goodbye.
“I’ll be back later,” he said.
“You only have one class,” Chris reminded him.
“I’ll probably stay for a few hours and see if any of the studios are available for practice.”
“Do you want me to meet you for lunch?”
“Can you?” Paris asked. “We can find some place near campus before I have to see my shrink this afternoon.”
“She has a name,” Chris said, half amused and half exasperated, his mouth twisting into another smile.
“Yeah, but I like ‘my shrink’ better than ‘Cindy,’” Paris joked. “It has more of an impact.”
He watched as Chris shook his head, waiting until his boyfriend was done silently bemoaning his flippancy before stealing a final kiss and pulling himself out of arm’s reach.
“Love you, Pooh Bear!” Paris called as he made for the stairs.
“Love you, too,” Chris replied, and then added a peevish sounding, “Be careful!”
Paris shouted his agreement and was soon out the door.
He took the elevator down to the correct floor to make his way to the adjoined parking deck, where he’d parked his new and dearly loved scooter next to Chris’s car the night before, humming to himself and jingling his key ring as he went.
At the beginning of the week, just before his first class and for the remainder of that day, Paris had questioned his ability to see this semester through. He still questioned it. It hadn’t gotten any easier from there, though he’d since settled into the routine as comfortably as anyone who’d been out of school for a whole year possibly could. Yet, despite his reservations, as he made his way to the parking deck on his own, it didn’t occur to him that he could have easily skipped class when left to his own devices.
It was an old habit, one that had come to define his high school career, along with the poor grades and the refusal to conform to a strict set of rules and regulations he had seen as unfair. Fortunately, that part of his life was over now. In this as in other areas of his life, he was happy for the past to remain in the past where it belonged. He wanted to move forward, to be the best that his drive and his potential would allow him to be, and take control of a life that had often been out of his hands.
He wanted to succeed, to keep going, to keep rising, to keep getting better and prove his worth, to himself, to the world, and to anyone who doubted him.
He didn’t want to turn back.
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