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If you asked Ryan Ross when he fell in love with Pete Lewis Kingston Wentz III, he wouldn’t be able to tell you. He could tell you what he was wearing, where he was, what exactly he was doing when he realized he was in love with Pete Wentz, but never when the actual deed was done. It was almost as if he woke up one morning and just… was. He didn’t know how, and he didn’t know why, but he was. And the realization was terrifying and enthralling all at once.
They had met by chance at a party at Psi Upsilon. Ryan was dressed as he usually was on the weekends that he ventured out--smudged eyeliner, red eyeshadow, a vest, boots, the tightest pants he owned. If someone didn’t know who he was, he could pass as a striking girl with short messy hair. He also made a damn pretty boy. In the cellar of the frat house, though, with the flashing colored lights and thumping bass, no one could really tell, and no one really cared.
Ryan didn’t drink. It wasn’t something he’d done before college, and it wasn’t something he ever planned on doing. He didn’t need alcohol to make him brave, just anonymity. Instead, he threw himself into the middle of the crowd and moved like he’d lost faith in everything else. He danced with pretty girls with long blonde hair, he danced with guys with shirts for shitty local punk bands, he danced with anyone and everyone, pretending that with his eyeliner and vest, he wasn’t Ryan Ross from Summerlin, Nevada. He wasn’t anyone. He was everyone and no one all at once.
He’d lost track of the friends he’d come with. Kept dancing anyway. Felt a pair of hands on his hips. Smiled and turned around.
And there he was. Long black hair, dark eyes, dark teeshirt and the beginnings of sleeve tattoos on his upper arms. He was a little scruffy looking, and he was exactly what Ryan didn’t know he was looking for.
“Hey,” he shouted over the music. “You’re cool if I dance with you, right?”
“Yeah,” Ryan replied, grinning. “Dance with me all night, if you want.”
The dude grinned widely, looking vaguely like a wolf with long sharp canines and a toothy grin. “Cool. I will.”
“Good.”
And they fucking danced. The DJ played a remix of some song by the Faint and Ryan lost himself for a little while; the hands on his hips felt nice, the bass thudding in his chest felt nice, the “boots-n-cats-n-boots-n-cats-n” of the music felt nice, everything just felt so fucking good. Despite Ryan having a couple of inches on the other guy, they fit well together; the music pulsed heavy and their hips came closer and closer together until they were grinding on one another in the middle of the party.
“You wanna get out of here?” the dark-haired guy asked, leaning in as close to Ryan as he could get. His hand crept around and slid into Ryan’s back pocket, tugging him closer.
“Yeah,” Ryan said, nodding. “Go. Lead the way.”
They ditched the party. Ryan didn’t bother telling his friends where he was going or who he was going with; they were probably too trashed to remember he was there anyhow. Now that he thought about it, this dude was stumbling a little bit, too, as he led him upstairs and out of the frat house onto a quiet street lit up with orange streetlamps.
Ryan tried not to let his heart beat a little faster when the dude grabbed his hand and intertwined their fingers. This was just some guy from a party. Ryan had done this plenty of times with plenty of people and he’d never gotten this antsy over it.
“What’s your name, man?” the guy asked, grinning like a Cheshire. “I’m Pete. I go to school here.”
“Ryan. Same.”
“Far out.” Pete nodded and laughed. He had a nice laugh, Ryan decided. It wasn’t tinkly, like the laugh of girls he’d slept with before, but it was still melodic, charming. His eyes crinkled a little bit when he smiled real big, too. Altogether, this guy’s happiness made him look like an angel with tats, and frankly, it was kinda hot.
Ryan couldn’t help but smile back.
They didn’t hook up that night; Ryan was surprised, but Pete never pushed it, and Ryan was alright with that. He handed Ryan the keys to his Jetta (the fact that the guy even drove a Jetta made Ryan want to laugh), saying that he’d had a little too much to drink but he knew this part of the state better than even some of the locals. Pete gave directions and Ryan drove, front windows down despite the chill of it being only October, stereo cranked and playing some Boston band that Ryan didn’t really know.
Pete had directed him down 13 to 101, all the way into Manchester, and off to the west side, overlooking the city. Manchester, Ryan thought, wasn’t a glamorous city, wasn’t an exciting city like Las Vegas. But when Pete told him to pull off the road, he did, staring out at the lights and buildings over the Merrimack River.
The two of them stayed like that, parked on the side of a residential road overlooking Manchester, talking until Pete started nodding off and Ryan realized it was almost 2AM, and he still had to get back to campus.
And that was how it started. October, and subsequently November, was a whirlwind of dinner dates and powerful kisses and Ryan and Pete earning their fair share of disgusted and confused looks around campus, all washed and forgotten with the rain. Nights spent in at Pete’s apartment getting high and listening to cassettes from bands in Pete’s hometown outside Chicago, lunches at the diner (where Pete never ordered fries, insisting he didn’t want them, and then promptly ate all of Ryan’s), naps on Sunday afternoons under the willow in the cemetery, and more importantly every weekend going to shows.
Pete took Ryan everywhere he could. Burlington, Portland, Boston, Hartford, even as far as Providence once to see every band he could think of--every indie group, every ska band, every post hardcore group, everything. If there was one thing Pete and Ryan both loved, it was music, and so each weekend, Pete and Ryan would hop into Pete’s little black Jetta and go.
In all honesty, Pete was the person who made Ryan realize he wanted music. Not just wanted to see bands, or listen to albums, (which, granted, he did want to do) but actually make music, write music, perform music. The anxieties his home life gave him for the past eighteen years could be worked out in a song.
He mentioned it once, briefly, to Pete, who grinned and the next day, met him at Morris Hall after his political philosophy class and shoved a brand new leather bound journal and pen into his hands.
“What’s this?” Ryan asked him, raising an eyebrow as he examined it.
“For lyrics,” Pete said excitedly, “and chords. Everything you want to write. For your songs and stuff.” The guy was practically radiating beams of light, he was smiling so widely.
A tiny little scoff of disbelief escaped Ryan as he stared at the notebook in his hands. “You’re nuts. This looks expensive, Pete…”
A shrug. “Doesn’t matter. You got a lot to write about. I’ve read your poems, you’re good, Ryan, you just gotta put it to music.”
Pushing the hair out of his face, Ryan spun in circles, sputtering. “But--Pete, I--what, I mean--words and--music-” He stopped, eyes wide. “Peeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeete!” he whined dramatically, leaning forward and bending with exasperation.
“Ryaaaaaaaaaaan,” Pete mimicked with a snicker, then reached up to plant a kiss on Ryan’s lips. He grabbed the younger’s hand and started off towards the door to the stairwell. “Come on, let’s go get your guitar. We’re gonna do some stuff. Music stuff.”
As it turned out, Pete Wentz was not a gifted composer, but he was a gifted lyricist. Apparently, he knew Ryan’s friend Patrick and sent him lyrics to be put to music. Pete knew all the intricacies of writing good lyrics.
That afternoon, they visited the cemetery again and camped out under the willow, right beside the mausoleum. Pete solemnly handed Ryan a nondescript brown journal, silent, and had laid back and stared at the sky while Ryan read through it, absently tracing circles on the back of Pete’s hand with his thumb.
Page after page, line after line, Ryan felt tugging at his heartstrings. These words were Pete. They were his boyfriend. They were the moments when he couldn’t sleep at night, the drives he took after they fought, the skyline of Chicago he could see from his front porch in Illinois, every moment Ryan never saw. All in these words. All in these lyrics.
“If I left tonight, would they even bat an eye?”
“One long note hanging high above the rest, I think that’s how it is in death.”
“She sings and it’s like angels, like it’s all that she can do.”
“Brick and mortar topple to the ground in the November rain that’s falling now.”
“One more drink and maybe I’ll forget to call and want you back.”
“But there’s a light on in Chicago and I know I should be home.”
It was like they weren’t even lyrics; Ryan felt like it was Pete’s diary.
Eventually he laid down, scooted closer to Pete and started playing with his fingers. “Pete,” he said, “you’re an amazing writer, I mean it.”
Pete chuckled softly. “I’m okay. But I know they work. The words. For lyrics, that is. You can do it too, Ryan. I’ve listened to you ramble when you’re stoned. Those words are sober thoughts, you know. And they’re good. You have a way with words, man.”
“Shut up,” Ryan said as he pulled himself over and up. “You’re amazing,” he said again and kissed Pete to shut him up.
A couple afternoons a week, they’d plop down next to the mausoleum. Pete would sit cross-legged with his journal, and Ryan would start strumming his guitar, trying to work his words into a song. Usually, it resulted in a few bars of melody, mumbled just loud enough for Pete to hear and furrow his brow at. “What’s that one about?” he asked one afternoon, and Ryan nearly forgot to breathe, because sometimes, Ryan forgot that Pete didn’t know anything about his life in Summerlin.
Sure, Pete knew some things about Ryan’s pre-college experience. He knew about Ryan’s best friend Spencer, and he knew about Brent the bassist and Trevor the guitarist and the dumb garage band they’d had where Trevor’s god-awful lyrics made Ryan want to puke every time he sang them. He knew about Ryan’s first concert in the basement of some bar away from the Strip. He knew about the time Ryan realized that, hey, boys are almost as cute as girls and he knew about the first time Ryan kissed someone, the first time he killed a squirrel in his beat-up red Honda Civic, getting his dog Portland (named after the city in Maine, not Oregon, because the one in Maine was like the Oregon one but smaller and on the Atlantic, which totally trumped the Pacific in every way, shape, and form), his jobs at Hot Topic and at the local animal shelter. But Pete didn’t know anything about the other stuff.
Pete didn’t know about Ryan’s family, for one thing. He didn’t know about how Danielle (Ryan refused to acknowledge her as ‘Mom’ anymore) walked out on him and his father on his third birthday and got hitched as soon as the divorce papers went through, had her two replacement sons, bought her dream house with the picket fence because the life that Ryan and his father offered weren’t good enough. Pete didn’t know about Ryan’s two younger half-brothers, Adam and Ian, who Ryan wanted to know better but would never get to because Danielle was determined to cut her eldest out of her new life entirely. And Pete most certainly did not know a thing about Ryan’s father, George Ross II. Ryan intended to keep it that way.
But when Pete was watching him with that furrowed brow, it was so hard not to say something. Cause maybe, just maybe, Pete cared.
Ryan stared determinedly down at his pick. “It’s nothing. Just a song.”
“Bullshit it’s nothing.” Pete scooted closer and grabbed one of Ryan’s hands. “What’s it about?”
“Not important.”
Pete narrowed his eyes and leaned in close to Ryan’s shoulder, his brow furrowed and his lips in a concentrated pout. Ryan tugged his hand out of Pete’s grasp. The whole situation might have been funny, but Pete was genuinely concerned, and Ryan was a kicked puppy, and the words he’d been singing hung in the air like the mist that rose from the Souhegan in the mornings, leaving lingering lines about linoleum floors and lifeless eyes.
“Ryan.”
“No.” His fingers started plucking at random, and the song he created was atonal and messy and made no sense, but it was enough to end the nonexistent conversation.
Pete kept frowning, but backed off and went back to his own notebook. “Sometimes,” he said softly, “I feel like you’re on your own little planet, and I’m just your moon in orbit.”
Ryan didn’t reply. But it was at that moment, as his notes became something of a melody, with brown and green grass tickling his left ankle and his jacket falling off his shoulders, next to the mausoleum beside the tree, that he realized he loved Pete Wentz.
As Pete shot him furtive little glances over the top of his journal, Ryan smiled. It was 2:38 PM and the sun was shining dappled through the leaves of the tree and the cars were humming along Rt 13 and Pete was wearing a bright blue blink-182 tee shirt and big chunky black sneakers that made his feet look too big and Ryan was completely, totally, butt-crazy in love with him.
--
Winter break passed in a flash and suddenly he was back on campus again, waiting for Pete’s class to let out so they could walk to the Union Coffee Company on Elm Street together. Ryan couldn’t help but feeling like he’d had everything right where he wanted it. He had a boyfriend, the best boyfriend on the planet, who had driven him all the way into Boston to see Skinny Bones play the first weekend back on campus. He made dean’s list first semester. He managed to make it through his month-long stay at home without any huge fights with his father (and speaking of his father, he was doing much better, didn’t need the oxygen tank as often anymore). Managed to avoid his mother and somehow managed to see his half-brothers. Played with his dog a lot. Felt the warmth of a Nevada Christmas and basked in the meager sunlight far more than someone so pasty probably should have.
And now he was back in Assfuck Nowhere at Frost State College, hopping from foot to foot to stay warm outside the Joyce Building for the Humanities on a Thursday afternoon.
Pete’s sure taking his sweet-ass time, Ryan thought, furrowing his brow and sticking his lower lip out in a sullen pout. HIs roommate, Gabe, had gone home for the weekend--something about a cousin’s bar mitzvah or something--and Ryan had his room to himself. Himself and Pete. That was, if Pete ever got out of class.
Ryan had been thinking about it a lot over winter break. He’d been with Pete for a while, he had needs. He wanted the tiny energetic lyricist in every single way--he had since he’d met him at that dingy basement party--and he was so tired of waiting for Pete to make a move. On the plane ride into Logan International, Ryan resolved that he was going to make the move--he was going to woo the fuck out of Peter Lewis Kingston Wentz III and finally get laid.
Ryan’s lips turned up at the corners as he thought of it. He dipped his head instinctively, as if someone could hear his thoughts, and let his hair flop over his eyes.
“Oh, are you a blushing innocent princess today?”
Ryan startled and whipped his head around to see Pete standing there, a wide grin adorning his face. Snow stuck to his hair and his beanie and stood out against the black of his peacoat and Ryan swore he’d never seen anything more enchanting. Instead of greeting Pete, he leant in and cupped the back of his neck, planting his lips soundly on top of Pete’s.
Pete froze for a moment, unsure what to do, but after a moment regained his senses and grabbed at Ryan’s scarf, tugging him further down. Snow fell, people shuffled past, and cars whipped by on the main drag, but neither boy noticed, too wrapped up in the warmth of each other’s mouths.
Ryan finally pulled away, cheeks red from a combination of the kissing and the cold. He kept his hand on the nape of Pete’s neck, stroked the edge of his hairline with his fingertips. “Hi,” he whispered.
Pete brushed some snow off of Ryan’s bangs. “Hi, yourself. Can you pick me up like that every day after class?”
Ryan gave a soft “heh” and smiled wider, if it was possible. “I guess I’m just excited to see you, is all.”
“Hey, I’m not complainin’.” Pete grabbed Ryan’s hand and pulled himself out of the taller boy’s grasp, leading him down the sidewalk towards the dining commons. “Let’s get dinner, I’m starving.”
Ryan followed him, squeezing their hands. Already he could tell this was going to be a good weekend. “After dinner do you want to watch a movie with me?” Damn that sounded childish, he thought to himself, but Pete didn’t seem to notice.
“Yeah, man. I mean, I told Patrick I’d meet him and go over some songs at like 7:30, but I’m free after.”
Ryan stopped in his tracks, tripping Pete a little bit. He opened his doe eyes and raised the corners of his lips just a little bit, tilting his head in a what he hoped was seductive manner. “Pete, why don’t you just tell him you’ll meet him tomorrow or something? Gabe’s gone for the weekend.”
Pete furrowed his brow. “Wait, what does Gabe have to do with anything?”
“He isn’t going to be home. It’s just going to be us. All weekend. Us.” Ryan stepped closer and put his hand to the back of Pete’s neck again, playing with his hair. "A-lone."
His eyes widened. “Oh,” he said, understanding.
Ryan laughed. “Yeah, oh.”
Pete cleared his throat nervously. “I mean, I’ll bring wine. Like, good wine, not that shiraz shit you always buy.”
“That shiraz ‘shit’ is only twelve bucks a pop.”
Pete tugs Ryan’s hand and leads him towards the dining commons again. “I’ll call Patrick. Don’t worry.”
Ryan’s face grew warm and he quickly synched his step with Pete’s. “I love you,” he said quietly.
Pete squeezed his hand. “Love you too.”
---
The beginning of the end came just after Valentine's Day.
Pete and Ryan had made their weekly adventure to the record store on their Friday afternoon off. The store was absolutely dead, except for one other girl examining a shelf of cassettes near the back, which was exactly the way Ryan preferred it. Ryan let go of Pete’s hand, wandering to the corner with the dollar singles while his boyfriend made a beeline to the stacks of local bands’ records.
The paper sleeves bent easily, so Ryan took extra care as he looked slowly through them, keeping an eye out for the Smiths or the Kinks. Sometimes, the record store owner would keep some good stuff behind the counter for him if it ever came in; he’d have to ask the clerk when he saw him.
Speaking of the record store clerk, Ryan hadn’t seen Bob at all since he walked in, which was odd. Bob Morris always worked on Fridays, always the 2-8 shift. Where was he?
Ryan looked up from the singles and craned his neck slightly, trying to see behind him.
He caught a glimpse of a navy polo, which was standard record store apparel, but he didn’t recognize the face it was attached to. Narrow nose, long eyelashes, glasses, beanie pushing sandy hair into the guy’s face, wristbands, long fingers tapping the case of a Frames CD, thin lips smiling bashfully as Pete leaned across the bins with a smug grin (probably from his own joke, too).
Ryan felt something jerk in his gut. It seemed awfully familiar.
Pete glanced over and saw his boyfriend staring. He looked a little startled, but quickly caught himself and waved. “Ryan, come meet the new clerk guy!”
Frowning, Ryan placed the singles in his hands back into the basket and manouvered around the CD bins to stand next to Pete. He subtly put his hand in the elder’s back pocket and rested his chin on his head. “I thought Bob worked Fridays.”
“He asked me to cover him today. His girlfriend’s got a gig in Concord he wanted to go see,” the new guy said, shrugging. “I’m Mikey. I usually work mornings. Hi.”
“Hi.”
“Mikey is Professor Way’s little brother. You know, the crazy motherfucker in the music department with the hair.” Pete gestured vaguely in a halo around his head and stuck his tongue out in a crude imitation of whatever Way’s insanity was supposed to be.
“Yeah, I see him sometimes after my lesson with Toro.”
“Ah, man, you take lessons with Ray? He’s so fucking cool,” Mikey said, his face lighting up. “He helped me learn guitar when I was in high school.”
“Ah.” Ryan literally could not possibly care any less about what Mikey fucking Way had to say about his guitar professor.
Pete, however, seemed to care a lot, and he knocked Ryan’s chin off his head as he draped himself across the CD bins, his hand absently finding Ryan’s belt loop. “Bro, you play guitar?”
Mikey smiled a little wider. “More like the bass now. But like. Yeah.”
“Holy shit, I play the bass too! What do you play?”
"Ah, I used to play a Fender, but I've been saving for this one really nice Squire that Jack from that place in Nashua is selling..."
Ryan tuned out the conversation, just watched helplessly as this pretty new clerk sucked his boyfriend into an in depth conversation about instruments.
The knot in his stomach tightened.
---
Afternoons with Pete by the mausoleum were cut shorter and shorter each week until one afternoon when Ryan showed to find the cemetery devoid of life, save for one man with a mop of dark hair on the other end by the river who looked suspiciously like Professor Way. Ryan didn’t think anything of it; sometimes Pete just ran late for whatever reason. Instead he took out his guitar and started playing, scribbling words into the journal Pete had given him.
Filling the pages were words he hadn’t read since he scribbled them onto the paper, haphazard phrases about books he’d read and the way the trees looked against the sunset from the top of Mount Monadnock and the way Pete’s hands felt on his skin--poetic and soft and hellfire, all at once. The words had been picking up steam, been erupting into flames, finally sunshine where there used to be nothing but his baggage and misery lingering from Las Vegas.
Ryan found himself smiling as he hummed little notes, muttering here and there as his fingers stumbled over chords.
An entire hour passed, and still no Pete. In fact, Ryan sat for three hours alone with his guitar before packing up his guitar and trudging back towards the main road. As the sun disappeared over the trees lining the street, he felt a knot in his stomach. Idly, he wondered if it was because Pete never showed up, then thought that maybe he’d eaten something weird for lunch. He shouldn’t worry about Pete. Pete was good to him, held him close when his father relapsed and called him slurring apologies, when Danielle called asking for money, when his history professor scoffed and called him a faggot when he objected to being called “queer” in class. Pete loved him. He just… forgot.
Halfway down the road, something told him to stop. He paused midstep, almost stumbling over his boot, and looked around. Cars passed, a dog was chained to a bike stand ahead of him, the lights from inside the coffee shop lit up the sidewalk, he heard Pete laughing from inside--
Ryan looked over his shoulder to find Pete with the record store guy, Mikey, through the window of Union Coffee, sitting knee-to-knee on the sofa and guffawing at a joke Ryan would never hear.
The slight chill in the April air had no effect on the tiny boy on his walk back to his dorm. There was a warm image burned into his retinas, a picture he couldn’t shake. Laughter and warmth and smiles and companionship and a brown leather couch inside the coffee shop while Ryan was cold on the sidewalk on his own.
He walked straight upstairs when he got in and buried his face into his pillow. His fingers curled into his bed sheets; he felt numb.
“Brother, you good?” Gabe asked him, glancing up from the magazine spread out on his knees.
Ryan didn’t answer.
---
It was another three weeks before Pete pulled up in front of his dorm, leaning against his Jetta, looking serious.
The whole conversation was like a scene from one of Ryan’s pretentious indie films. Pete held his hands and furrowed his brow, looking genuinely concerned as he gave the “it’s not you, it’s me” speech. Ryan stared at the ding in the passenger door from the time Pete’s friend Joe opened it into a fire hydrant. “We’re in two really different places right now.” There were still tiny traces of red paint in the dent. “I just can’t right now.”
Ryan nodded. He didn’t say a word, just listened, just nodded, just kept his mouth shut.
“Ryan… I love you.”
He nodded again.
“Please just say something.”
“I love you.”
“Ryan….” Pete reached for Ryan’s hands, which had been awkwardly hanging at his sides. Pete intertwined their fingers and leaned forward, pressing his lips to Ryan’s jaw. “I’m sorry. I can’t. You know I can’t right now.”
No, Ryan didn’t know that, actually. But he knew better than to say anything and for the third time during their conversation he nodded, wishing he actually could understand.
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”
Pete kissed him, pushing a stray tuft of hair behind Ryan’s ear. Ryan thought he tasted like Marlboros instead of American Spirits, smelled a little less like Old Spice than he had the night they met. His hands were softer, gentler; Ryan wondered, was Pete afraid of hurting him? It was a little late for that.
“I’m sorry,” Pete whispered into Ryan’s neck.
“Just go.”
Their eyes met and Pete’s thick brows were furrowed so deeply Ryan thought he might age from this breakup alone. “Bye, Ryan.”
“Yeah. Bye.”
He didn’t watch as Pete climbed into the Jetta, didn’t say a word as he let himself back into his building, stayed silent as he let himself into his room.
Gabe, his stupid fucking roommate who was sprawled out playing Xbox in his bed, looked up and hit the X in alarm. “Shit, Ryan, are you okay?”
Oh God he couldn’t do this. Ryan leaned heavily against the doorframe and made a choked gasp. One hand reached across his torso to hug his middle, the other covered his mouth, and he scrunched his eyes shut, trying desperately (and failing entirely) not to shed a tear.
His roommate dropped the controller on his desk and scuttled off the bed, rubbing his hand soothingly on Ryan’s back in tiny circles. “Ryan, what happened?”
“I wasn’t good enough.” He couldn’t stop the tears running down his cheeks and he hoped to God Gabe wasn’t looking at the way his cheeks were probably turning blotchy.
“What?”
“Pete doesn’t want me.”
Gabe froze for a moment. “Oh.” And then he yanked Ryan into a fierce hug. “Ryan I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Yeah , Ryan thought. Me, too.