Chapter Text
He finds Pop where he always finds him: the second bench, in between the fountain and the chess players, close enough to hear both, far enough to still be detached. Today, he's reading Orhan Pamuk's My Name Is Red, the library's clear cover protecting the novel from the wind and the leaves.
"Victor," the man says, not looking up from his book, "surely you aren't here for more relationship advice."
"Guilty," he says, trying to enunciate like an American would. The one-word answer is more of Steph's thing, his quietness more reserved, more guarded. Vic's own quietness comes from holding back, he thinks, holding back in favor of listening, observing, not letting himself get angry. Anger leads him to elbows and awkward, almost-confrontations at work.
One day, when he was controlled, quiet, not-angry, he had said hi and Steph, who had been Stephon then, no nicknames yet, had said hello and on and on it went, down a straight path, something expected, until the road had curved, right underneath him, so gently he hadn't noticed, and Vic had ended up somewhere unexpected after all.
I don't know what it means, to like another man, he had told Pop once. Pop had been trying to start Ulysses, his fourth or fifth time, he said, but the words were difficult, a challenging book. Often, Vic felt the same about himself—difficult, challenging, hard to read.
It means that you are still you, Pop had said. Nothing has to change.
"What's going on?" Pop asks, sliding his bookmark in between the pages. Some days, he will use his finger to hold his place, letting Vic know that he has ten, fifteen minutes before Pop returns to the pages. Today, Vic has all the time in the world.
"There is someone new at work," Vic says. "At the cafe."
"A boy?" Pop asks. "Or a girl."
"Another boy," Vic says. "A man."
"I see." Pop thumbs the spine of the book, the library's plastic cover cracked along the edges. He won't check it out, no, but he'll come and read a few more chapters tomorrow, sit in the sun. Manu will save his copy under the desk, mark it as on-hold. "You're over the first one, then?"
"No," Vic admits. "But he said—he said it is okay."
"I have to admit, this is a new one for me," Pop says, scooting over on the bench so Vic can sit. "Not a common thing, liking two people at once."
"I know," he says. He feels almost childish, like a boy in grade-school ranking the girls in class by who'd he like to kiss the most. There was a nursery rhyme for this feeling, too, Carter had sung it to him once. Steph and Vic, sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g. Steph-and-Vic-and-Devin, sitting in a tree, but then the rhyme was off, and it was a silly thing to get upset about, a song meant to tease other people, but he was upset because he wondered who didn't fit, and then he wondered if it was him.
"You live in your own head too much," Pop says, right on time. "If your boy is okay with it, then you have nothing to be afraid of. Liking other men was new, and so it was scary, but you got through it. This is just another transition in life that you'll have to adjust to."
"I worry that he is not okay with it," Vic tells him.
"He knows how you feel about him?"
"It's pretty obvious," Vic says. "Everyone at work says so." Pop lets him sit with this, sweat building on the back of his next from the impending summer head.
"You're the only one you can control," Pop eventually says. "If that's his answer, then that's his answer. Don't try to move mountains, kid."
"I don't want to lose him," Vic admits.
"You can only trust that he's telling the truth," Pop says, drumming his fingers on the cover of his book. Time's up, he's saying, in his own way, in the silent language that exists between them. Maybe Vic won't listen, but there isn't more to say, and Pop won't repeat himself.
He leaves Pop to his book, and the wind and the trees, the fountain and the chess tables, heading back inside the library.