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“What does it feel like?” David remembers Laura asking him that once. “What does it feel like?”
David says it feels like he was made in a lab. Like some fucker in a lab coat called Victor Frankenstein decided to take his flesh and play. But it was wrong. He made him wrong. And it was up to David to fix it.
And how crazy is that, he adds, that in the end they all take Frankenstein’s side? And me—I get called the monster. How fucked is that. I’m just trying to undo his mess.
—
David see The Boy in the hallway. Dirty-blonde hair, dirty sweater. The softest pinkest mouth. David wants to push his thumb between those lips. He wants to draw them with his finger; he wants to draw them with a pen. Pale throat he wants to kiss. Soft blue bedroom-eyes.
The Boy keeps his locker unlocked. The Boy never looks at his friends. The Boy falls asleep against walls and desks and the crook of his arms. The Boy hugs himself, as if he doesn’t even know he’s doing it.
David sees him everywhere.
—
The Boy has a girlfriend.
—
“Are you gonna talk to him again?” says Laura.
“No,” says David.
He runs until he forgets the Boy. Three miles, then four, then six. He’s boneless when he gets home, but he still manages to get through his push-ups. A cold shower. He watches a movie with Laura, her head on his shoulder, and falls asleep.
He wakes up three hours later.
Matteo. His name is Matteo.
David can’t go back to sleep.
—
David can’t believe how long he fucks with that ticket attendant. What can he say? He’s a sucker for a boy that needs saving.
Matteo’s soft voice. Matteo’s laugh. His pink cheeks. Matteo doesn’t live with his parents, and he barely has any food in his fridge. He wonders how Matteo came to live here. Who pays for it. David wonders if anybody ever takes care of him.
He shows Matteo his art. But only the safe ones. Matteo flips past the Frankenstein drawing; if he notices it, he doesn’t ask.
Matteo has the most kissable mouth David has ever seen.
He leaves.
—
“What’s wrong?”
Laura knocks on his door a few seconds after he closes it. David drops his bag to the floor. He sinks down onto his bed, scrubs a hand over his hair.
His beanie. He left his beanie.
“David? What did he do? Did he say something to you?”
David puts on his headphones. He closes his eyes. Behind his eyelids is the face of the boy he left.
Matteo didn’t do anything. Matteo didn’t say anything. He is a stupid dorky boy who made David a terrible sandwich. He is an awkward messy boy who doesn’t know what he wants, now or ever. He smells like weed and teen-boy body spray. His teeth are a little crooked and he has spots on his chin. He’s the prettiest fucking thing David’s ever seen.
David falls asleep with his headphones on. In his dream he is still in Matteo’s kitchen. In his dream he follows Matteo into his room. In his dream he holds the boy who so badly wants to be held—the need wafts off Matteo like an aura, visible, like tendrils of smoke. Hungry boy. In his dream David is Frankenstein in the lab, and he builds himself. Piece by piece, the way he wants.
—
“He’s being such an asshole,” says Sara.
“So break it off,” says Leonie, “You deserve better.”
David puts his headphones on as he packs up his gym bag. He doesn’t want to hear anymore. Leonie smiles at him over Sara’s shoulder. She’s a cute girl. She likes him.
But David has already seen Matteo, and there is no room for anybody else.
—
“So that’s him,” says Laura, eyeing Matteo across the crowded room. A pink and yellow stripe on his cheek. Matteo’s head bows. His hair falls into his face. He looks miserable.
David uncaps his beer. That’s him.
—
David takes the drink from Sara, as gently as he can. Leonie makes eyes at him and gives a grateful smile.
A loud boy enters the apartment, followed by a trio of others. The bass drops. David watches them from the corner, helpless to look away. One of them takes Matteo by the hips.
David stands up so fast the blood rushes from his face. He can feel Laura’s eyes burning into the side of his face. He needs to leave. He goes outside, thinks about bumming a cigarette, downs another beer on the stoop outside Matteo’s building. He wishes he brought his headphones.
By the time he returns to the party, Matteo is nowhere to be found. He runs into Jonas, from math class.
“Have you seen Matteo?” Jonas asks.
David shakes his head. He watches Jonas go down the hallway to another door and knock. Jonas shouts Matteo’s name.
But Matteo never comes out. The other two, who David doesn’t know, bang on Matteo’s door, shouting “Luigi!” until the party dies down.
The music cuts. Everyone stumbles towards the door, bottlenecks hanging from fingers, laughter echoing from the corridor outside.
“Are we going?” Laura asks, taking his hand.
David turns back to the hallway. Matteo’s door is still shut. He remembers the miserable look on Matteo’s face.
“You go,” says David. “Give me a minute.”
The final partygoer leaves. David exhales into the silence. He picks up an empty beer bottle, idly, then another. The apartment is trashed.
He goes to the kitchen and turns on the faucet. A door opens, tentatively. Halting foot steps.
A boy stands dumbfounded in the doorway. The only boy David wants to see. A dozen micro-expressions cross Matteo’s face, and David wishes for the hundredth time that he had his camera with him, so he could film everything Matteo does and slow it down. He wants to study his face in freeze-frame. He wants to know every expression Matteo’s face can make.
“You looked good today,” David says.
Now he knows what Matteo looks like when he’s shocked. Now he knows what Matteo looks like when he’s relieved. He knows what Matteo looks like when he doesn’t have the energy to keep his guard up. He knows what Matteo looks like in microscopic detail—wet eyelashes, bloodshot-blue, chapped mouth—when he is about to be kissed.
—
Matteo still has a girlfriend.
—
David spoons his pillow to his chest. He stares at Matteo’s Instagram. He exits. He looks again. He throws his phone across the bed. He wants to cut Matteo from his brain, like a malignant growth.
He can’t. Matteo is like a weed that won’t stop growing, little petals flowering between David’s ribs and fingers and heart-strings. David is good at pulling weeds. He has made an art of being rootless.
But these weeds grow deep. And every time he thinks he’s removed them all, another one grows.
David picks up his phone again. Fuck it.
Buongiorno, Luigi.
—
“You should ask him out,” says Laura. “For real.”
David already knows what he would do. He would bring Matteo food for a picnic, since he was pretty sure he didn’t get enough to eat. He’d take Matteo to the abandoned theater, and they’d eat right there on the floor. They would lie on their backs and listen to their voices echo. He would take Matteo’s face in his hands and kiss him, and it would be like one of the drawings from his notebook brought to life.
“No,” says David.
“Why not?”
David goes to his room. He shuts the door a little harder than necessary, because Laura knows why not.
—
David’s phone lights up before bed. He checks it.
Leonie.
Instead of answering, he traces his finger along that goofy little gif again. Adam and Eve.
—
Sometimes when David can’t sleep he goes to his closet and puts on a suit. It’s a tailored suit, grey with white cufflinks that he likes to polish when he’s bored. He puts on his black leather shoes and stands in front of the mirror.
The reflection is alive—in fact it is more alive than him. Reflection David moves and sounds the way he does in his dreams. He looks right.
But David is on the wrong side of the mirror.
—
David wants to get through Abi without any distractions. All he needs to do is show up, pass, and leave. Onto the next. Film school, Detroit, anywhere he wants, because that’s what it means to be rootless.
He goes to the bathroom during his exam. When he leaves Matteo is outside the door, in that same fucking sweater. He stutters out something sweet. David hates that Matteo is sweet. Hates him standing there in that fucking sweater. He wants to pull down that collar and kiss the bow of his collarbone, the hollows of his throat.
Rootless.
David walks away.
—
“Wanna come? You’ll know most of the people there.”
Leonie plays with a lock of her long hair, a little nervously. A pit opens in David’s stomach. He should walk away. He should say thanks, but he’s got other plans. He should go home to Laura and work on his film school application. He should stay as far away from Matteo Florenzi as possible.
“Yeah,” says David. Leonie smiles, and the pit in David’s stomach grows. “Sounds fun.”
—
They run away.
David doesn’t take Matteo to the abandoned theater.
He takes him underwater.
—
They float. They float past heaven, past the good place, the clouds, the angels, whatever bullshit you call it. They float even higher than that.
—
Matteo’s lips get thoroughly kissed, until they are as tender as a bruise. They tumble in and out of sleep, until the sun begins to rise. David presses against the long, bony line of Matteo’s back, feels the fragility of his spine under his fingers, slings an arm over Matteo’s waist and holds him close. Tangles their fingers together. Kisses the back of Matteo’s neck and feels the boy shiver.
It should be hard. It isn’t hard. Being with Matteo is the easiest thing he’s ever done.
They sleep, they kiss, half-awake, they sleep some more. They kiss again. Matteo rolls over, burying his head in David’s chest.
Matteo tells him some things. Half-answers with faint, gauzy edges, little details David tucks away. And when it looks like Matteo might ask David about himself, David pins his wrists against the bed until Matteo is red with laughter, until Matteo forgets whatever question he might have asked.
—
Matteo looks so lonely, curled up in his sheets all by himself. David tucks the blanket around Matteo’s shoulders and stands beside the bed. He leaves his drawing on the mattress. The sun is about to rise.
He would kiss him one last time, but he doesn’t want Matteo to wake up.
It’s raining a little when David walks home. He hangs up his coat and walks as quietly as he can to his room. He doesn’t want Laura to wake up. He puts on his headphones, drowning out the noise of his brain.
He sleeps an hour. Maybe two. Fitful, terrible sleep. He dreams of Matteo in a storm, a hurricane, with no one to go to and no one to come for him.
David rips himself from the terrible dream. He is surprised, when he wakes, to see sunlight spilling through the window. He sits up and looks down at his pillow. His phone lights up. David throws it across the room. He needs to leave. To go for a run, or a drive. Anywhere.
He stands up. Something falls from his hair. Something else falls from his sleeve.
David picks them up. Petals.