Chapter Text
Blue. That’s the color of my alarm clock as it clicks itself on 10 seconds before it starts blaring out some electronic cacophony. It’s also the color of the light that faintly peeks its way around my blackout curtains. It’s also the color of the shirt he was wearing when I last saw him.
The last few weeks of our senior year are a blur in my mind, a noisy saturated blur, with flickers of overexposure. Thomas was my best friend, handsome, charismatic, deeply devoted, but also impulsive, a little bit of an asshole, and now he’s gone. We both started to lose each other a little just in the sheer amount of things happening, especially after he met Teresa. One night exactly a week before graduation, we ended up at a Burger King, at the edge of town near the highway, across from the movie theater that we snuck into to see It Chapter 2. We had just dropped off Teresa at her house, and I’d tried to ignore their lingering goodbye kiss.
In the cooling evening of that June day, with the buzz of cicadas faintly rising over the din of fluorescents and the slight sizzle that emerged from the kitchen, we talked about everything, from childhood to the precipice of an apparent adulthood, from the past until the disconcerting presentness of that very moment; I fidgeted with the glow stick bracelet he had given me.
I told him that I would see him soon after graduation, and he told me to stop lying. I told him that we could easily maintain contact, it’s not like we’re going to just disappear as the caps leave our heads, he shook his head, it doesn’t matter he said, it will be different. It’s only different if you make it different, I countered. He looked up from the crumbs on the plastic tray, and said that it was inevitable that we would drift apart, and he thought it best for both of us, for me, if we just pulled the band-aid. I said that I didn’t think there was even a band aid to pull and he just shook his head, and told me to stop. A clean smooth break is easier to clean up, he said. And I asked if that’s what he told Teresa too, and he sighed and looked away. He had never done that to me. I stared at him and tried to record him in my mind, and keep every detail of that moment locked into my head. He asked why I was staring at him, and I shrugged, and screamed (silently, out of respect for the minimum wage fast food employees) that I was pulling the band aid.
When we stood up to leave I watched a car drive in circles outside the cinema parking lot across the street. The sunset looked like a Photoshop default gradient and I almost said something but when I turned to him he just told me he was going to run to the bathroom. I nodded. I walked to the door, glass smudged and dirty, the vinyl sticker advertising a limited time meal peeling at the edges. I pushed it open the metal cooler than expected and stepped out into the heat, the cicadas becoming much more present in my ears. I stepped across the parking lot, the stones and cracks under foot, and stopped outside of my car, and looked back. I watched the cars drive by on the highway through the windows of the Burger King. Every car and person didn’t know I was watching them, and yet they got to be a part of my life, even if it was just through noise and sunlight reflecting off their windshields into my eyes.
Thomas didn’t live far, only one neighborhood over. If he wanted a clean break, I could easily give it to him right now. I didn’t get the same heartfelt goodbye as Teresa, and I told myself I didn’t care. And maybe I felt petty or angry or maybe just a little sad, because I started the car and drove away right then. I have a memory, real or something my mind fabricated to pull me back, of him coming out of the store and me watching him get smaller in my rearview as he stands stark in a blue t-shirt and dark jeans against a sunset, a Burger King and a highway.
And he got what he wanted. That night,I fell asleep staring at the pale greenish hue of the glowstick, and watched it slowly fade in the corner of my room for the next few nights. We both went to college, ghosted each other, but then still ended up in New York City at the same job. Some people might say it was fate, but those people probably didn’t have a forced clean break.
The first time I ever went to Queens, I remember finally understanding what people liked about cities, the constant motion, the compression and expansion of city streets, the millions of stories and people everywhere all the time. I watched two young kids carrying groceries with their mom into a big brick apartment building, while an elderly woman sat in a walker and smoked a clove cigarette, and a man in a tweed business suit yelled into his phone. And somewhere in my romanticized brain, the city somehow fell into place as my second love.
I got the job through a connection, and walked in to find a cubicle with my name on it, and only two cubicles down, there was Thomas, chatting with a coworker. I just know he saw me then, and recognized me and felt that weird pull in your gut when you see that person you thought you’d left 500 miles away and 5 years ago. We didn’t speak for a week though.
I pretend like I just shut up and moved on but I never stopped thinking about him. It became a pastime of mine, to replay and reflect on our friendship in its entirety, from start to finish. I treated it like a dissection or an autopsy. I convinced myself it was healthy self reflection, I knew it was obsessive.
I always end up thinking about him when I look out my apartment windows, which sucks because I’m lucky enough to have a lot of them. I check the clock, and sigh, the rain will informally not be stopping before I have to walk to work.
It’s humid outside, the light drizzle painted the city in a thin sheen of water, everything has a new dimension of reflection, lights and colors streaking across the concrete, pavement, and wet dirt. Perfect weather to take a dissociative walk in a black windbreaker with noisy music blasting in my ears.
talk to me in french, talk to me in spanish, talk to me in your own made up language
I treat my morning walks as a time to lock away every interesting part of my personality, and turn myself into a perfect corporate worker, something I’ve become skilled at through 22 years of pleasing people. My mom used to joke that I apologized to the doctors for not cutting my own umbilical cord.
I work at a big office company, well that’s what I jokingly tell people I meet, because as soon as I say something more specific, like how I work in communications or how my company specializes in multi medium brand rollouts , I watch their eyes glaze over, and see them quickly trying to escape the conversation. I’ve gotten unhealthily good at separating my work and home life, I forced myself too,especially after he showed up.
As I step into the lightly air conditioned and heavily perfumed air of the office lobby, and unzip my windbreaker, my senses are awash with sandalwood, mahogany, big plants that long for home in the jungle and brass sconces that Architectural Digest would gush over. I nod to the receptionist, somehow it’s a different person every time, and walk over to the elevator, glancing down at my phone as I step in, not noticing the other presence within as the doors close. I look up and see Thomas.
I nod, in the way you would a coworker and in no way further or deeper than that. Does the angle of your nod betray your inner monologue? Does he know all from the tilt of my head or the way three strands of my blond hair seem to refuse to stay in place on my head?
I guess not. All he does is nod back, his face staying blank except for maybe a slight tinge of corporate mandated neutrality-with-a-hint-of-professional-polite-ness. It always feels like we are going to talk when I see him, like we are both itching to say something, and then never do. I always feel stupid after perking up, like a teenage girl seeing her crush, when I see him, only to be met with nothing. I think it’s a cruel joke delivered with first class postage from the universe itself, I’m right back in high school, social politics and all.
We stand in silence as we are whisked away into the sky. The elevator is playing Patsy Cline instrumentals, which is a weird choice. I can smell his cologne, it smells blue. And then I can smell its absence when the door opens and he’s gone immediately. I take a deep breath, clear my head, plaster on a smile and step out in the office.
I nod to all the people on my route to my desk, as I do everyday, then drop my stuff off at my desk, and start up my laptop. I check my email, and then do the Wordle. And on my 3rd attempt, Minho pops in my cubicle, “Hey Newtie!!”
I look up at him dryly, “Morning,” he’s the only person in the office I’m actually friends with, so I let a little bit of real me slip out around him.
“The word is flare by the way,” he said with a smirk.
“Thanks,” I say sarcastically, closing the tab.
“Oh, and Alby wants to see you!” he says, as he walks away with a smile and a wave.
I take a breath, great.
Alby’s the manager of our department, and he’s great, but he’s very to the books when it comes to rules, which isn’t always great. I stand up from my desk, and walk down to his office, I walk past Thomas' desk, and see him with his phone cupped to his ear, and his black Corkcicle tumbler in his hand. All I hear is a flicker of his conversation as I walk by
“She only likes white roses-”
I don’t know who she is, but I don’t want to know. We aren’t friends, why would a coworker want to know who She is, it would be weird for me to know She. I nearly walked past Alby’s office while lost in thought. and knock on the door, it’s wood, not mahogany like the lobby but a lighter airier color, just like all of our offices up here. I like it better, it feels less like I’m being smothered by rich people and more like I’m in a frutiger aero utopia of plants and iMacs.
“Come in!” Alby says from inside.
I open the door and he gestures to me to sit down at the chair in front of his desk, “Good morning, Newton!”
I smile, and say things about the weather, things I can’t remember, meaningless things to fill the time before we decide to say things we actually need to say.
“Anyways,” he says, “I’ve got a new project for you, I know we’ve just had you on some filler work last week, but I think you’ll like this!”
I actually do enjoy the filler work, it’s smaller design elements, stuff the senior designers don’t like to do but I love to fill in, but it does get boring after a little while.
“Plus, you’ll get to work with another one of our junior designers that you’ve never worked with!”
I smile, “Great!!”
“I think you and Thomas have met, right? I think you’ll work great together!”
He doesn’t know our history, I don’t think he even knows I’m gay, but he must know something from the way my face looks, as he quickly adds, “If that’s okay with you…”
I nod, “It’s fine,”
He smiles slightly, “Great! You’re some of our best designers and this client is so important! I’ve scheduled you guys a meeting room for later so you can get started,”
I nod again and give my best corporate smile, though maybe it comes out like a corporate grimace (most commonly seen on the faces of billionaire CEOs when they meet their entry level employees), “That sounds great!” I squeak out.
He hands me a file and sends me on my way, and I sit down at my desk.
I’m panicking and so happy at the same time. I don’t know what to do. I check the schedule from the file Alby handed me, we have to meet in 30 minutes. I decide to do what I do best: distract myself with planning. I throw together an organizer, project timeline template and create a shared digital whiteboard for us to workshop on, and when I check my watch next, it’s time to go.
I grab my laptop, water and a notebook, and walk down to meeting room B. I can see the outline of him through the frosted glass, I grab the door handle, cold metal centering me a little. I take a breath and turn the handle and walk inside.