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If anyone asks, Foggy says that they became friends that first day, buddies right off the bat. It’s true, mostly. They eat together and walk to class together and Matt laughs at all his jokes, or at least he does that ducked-head grin of his that somehow seems more sincere than the laughing.
The reality, though? They hardly know a thing about each other. Both pre-law, both from Hell’s Kitchen, sure. Foggy read a news article about Matt back when they were kids. That’s about it.
But they’re fast learners. Foggy learns that Matt wants—or needs, he guesses—a neat floor, so he keeps his dirty clothes properly in the hamper and always jams his backpack under the bed, out from underfoot. Matt learns that Foggy needs to be completely left alone while he’s working on a paper, even to ask if he wants to order Chinese food, or he will snap.
At one point Foggy comments on the lack of posters on Matt’s wall. “I mean, I get it,” he says, “duh. Like I understand why you wouldn’t put anything up ’cause you can’t see it, but it just. I dunno. It makes the room seem unbalanced?” He shakes it off. “Forget it, sorry, man. It’s your side of the room.”
Two days later, Foggy gets back from lunch to see three posters of his favorite bands plastered up on Matt’s side of the room. When he asks, Matt just shrugs and says he’s heard him listening to them, which is the weirdest part because Foggy always wears headphones, volume down low. He’s considerate like that.
That’s not to say they don’t fight. “Squabble” might be the more accurate term. Foggy chews “like a damn garbage compactor” and Matt gets “way too judgy, you’re not my mom.” Foggy needs “to stop eating those sour cream and onion chips in the dorm because it’s killing me” and Matt needs “to stop leaving stubble hair all over the sink, okay, we get it, you’re a grown-up who shaves.”
Foggy is “the grossest cesspool of a college student in this hemisphere” and Matt’s “so tight that if you stuck a lump of coal up his ass, in two weeks, you’d have a diamond” and Foggy “steals all his insults from crappy eighties movies” and Matt “has no appreciation for Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, one of the greatest cinematic classics of our time.”
And then one day Foggy gets back a zero—not even just an F, a straight up zero—on an essay he spent a week in the library working on, and he just kind of curls into himself on the edge of his bed, the paper shaking delicately in his hand. Matt opens his mouth like he might say something—maybe “grades don’t matter” or “it’s just one paper” or “fuck it,” but he changes his mind and just goes to sit beside his roommate.
Foggy’s not crying, but he seems kind of stunned. Deflated. Matt rests a hand on his shoulder, just lightly enough for Foggy to feel it, to know he’s there. It really is just one paper. It isn’t the end of the world.
But it’s probably going to ruin his week. And no one deserves that.
“Come on,” Matt says, snatching the paper out of his hands and dropping it on the bed behind them. “We’re going out.”
“Out where?” Foggy says, sounding dazed.
“Wherever you want.”
Things get better after that. Matt still gets pissed at Foggy for popping his gum too loudly and Foggy still gets pissed at Matt for taking forever at Starbucks, but it does get better. They can laugh about things now.
For Christmas, Foggy’s mom sends Matt a hand-knitted scarf, and Foggy compares the two of them to Ron Weasley and Harry Potter, and Matt’s confused, and then Foggy has to get him the entire Harry Potter series in braille as a late Christmas present.
By summer break, the two of them have a stockpile of inside jokes between the two of them. Matt has several of Foggy’s CDs. Foggy has a crush.
Matt spends the summer working at one of the school’s libraries and Foggy spends the summer driving around his hometown and hanging out with his high school friends and trying not to think about Matt.
In the fall, they room together again and it’s just like last year.
It’s nothing like last year.
Mostly, it’s better. All the little things that used to annoy both of them are homey and familiar. Instead of accusing Matt of stealing his clothes, Foggy notes how cozy his roommate looks in the Columbia hoodie that’s too big for him. When Matt slides into the room after a long day, instead of getting assaulted by all the individual smells—Cheetos and Head & Shoulders shampoo and deodorant and cotton—his brain just tells him, Foggy. Homey. Familiar.
On New Year’s they drink too much and kiss at midnight and Foggy panics and Matt knows, so he laughs it off. “Crazy night,” he says the next day, acting like his hangover is marginally worse than it really is. “I don’t even remember the countdown.”
Foggy throws back some Advil. “Me neither,” he says, but his heartbeat jumps and he sounds a little disappointed.
The whole deny-deny-deny schtick doesn’t last. Like a resolution to go to the gym more, it doesn’t even last until Valentine’s Day.
It’s the night before, and the two of them are in their room, sitting cross-legged on the floor and recounting their worst V-Day encounters and drinking whiskey and apple juice out of plastic cups, and Foggy’s telling the story of Monica Carruthers who shot him down in the ninth grade with a point-blank “you’re ugly.”
Matt looks personally affronted. “That’s—who does that? What the hell?”
“High school’s harsh,” Foggy shrugs, taking a sip. “You don’t have any horror stories like that?”
“Please,” says Matt. “I was the handsome disabled kid. I got crowned homecoming king.” He sighs. “Granted, nobody actually knew me or spoke to me, but I got crowned homecoming king.” He gulps his drink. “You’re not ugly.”
“I know,” Foggy says, puffing up his chest with mock-confidence. He hesitates. “You don’t know.”
Matt considers that for a long moment. No, he doesn’t know what Foggy looks like. But… “Do you want me to?”
It’s as if all the air in the room gets sucked out at once. “What?” Foggy says, but he knows exactly what Matt means.
“Well, it’s… if I touch your face, I can get a better idea of what you look like.” He sets his cup down, lifts his hands up carefully. “Do you want me to?” he repeats.
Foggy’s breath catches in his throat. “Yeah,” he manages, squirming a little. Matt reaches out, arms extended, moving closer. His fingers are inches away when Foggy jerks back, and Matt’s hands freeze.
“What is it?”
“I just,” Foggy says, and his chest feels tight and his face feels hot, and Jesus, it had to be the night before Valentine’s Day. “I, um. I need to ask you something? And I just—I wanted to before you knew what I looked like. Because, um. I’ve been… And look, I don’t think you’re vain or fickle or anything, I know you’re not, but I’ve had bad experiences. Um. Monica Carruthers. You know. So I. I just need to ask before you know. So I’ll know.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I like you,” Foggy blurts out, heart pounding a mile a minute. “Like, a lot. You’re… awesome. And nice. And really, really good-looking and you’re my best friend and I kind of want to do not-friend stuff with you. Um. Do you? Want to do, um, not-friend stuff?” This is brilliant, Nelson, Foggy thinks to himself. You should write for Hallmark. “Matt?”
Matt looks like a VHS tape on pause, not just frozen but pale, grainy, like he might fizzle out any second. “I…” he starts, wishing he could articulate what’s going on in his head, which is mostly a loop of Hell yes. Except between those intermittent confirmations, there’s a louder thought echoing around, reminding him. Stopping him.
Foggy hates lying. For someone who doesn’t mind jaywalking or swiping silverware from the dining hall, it’s one moral ground he has a firm stance on. Foggy hates lying. And Matt’s been lying to him since the day they met.
What’s he supposed to say now? I’ve got these freaky supersenses. Also, I can tell when you’re lying. Also, I’ve known this whole time how you felt about me.
“Foggy, um,” he starts, but he honestly doesn’t know what’s going to come out of his mouth. Truth? Lies? The dinner he ate two hours ago?
“It’s cool,” Foggy says, and it’s definitely not. “It’s—forget it. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t’ve… I’m sorry.”
“Hey, no need to apologize,” Matt says, trying to sound like a sympathetic but definitely-not-interested roommate and friend. He feels like he’s suffocating. “I’m sorry.”
“Guess there’s another shitty Valentine’s story,” Foggy laughs, his voice way too high, and he finishes his drink. There’s a long, awful silence and then he says, much more quietly, “Listen, we’re still-”
“Of course,” Matt says quickly. “We’re friends. Always.” Or at least until it kills me.
They studiously avoid each other all during Valentine’s Day, and the day after that. By the weekend things are pretty much back to normal, but every topic of their conversation steers toward the superficial and superfluous.
Matt calls him dude and buddy and pal, and hates himself.
About a month after the Valentine’s incident, Foggy invites Matt to come with him to his aunt’s beach house in Florida over spring break. “It’ll be great,” he says while they’re waiting in line for coffee. “We can sit out on the sand, I’ll watch girls in bikinis, you’ll… probably be doing homework.” He laughs. There’s a jagged edge to Foggy’s voice, these days, every time he speaks to him.
“Sure,” Matt says. Water boils and paper cups slide together, rubber soles squeak on the sticky floor, the strong smell of hot coffee permeates the room. “Sounds like fun.”
Midterms suck. They always suck. Foggy falls asleep with a textbook in his hands twice and Matt has to put him to bed. A really horrible thunderstorm hits them and Matt’s awake all night, lying in bed like a corpse and willing his body to just shut down, let him sleep. Across the room, Foggy’s mumbling and twisting on the bed, evidently in the throes of a nightmare. Matt hears his own name and flinches, wishing more than anything that he could cross the room and climb into bed with him. Hold him.
Matt feels sorry for himself but he mostly feels sickeningly, overwhelmingly angry with himself.
Eventually, hell week ends and spring break serves as the light at the end of the tunnel. On the plane, Foggy sits beside him in a gaudy Hawaiian shirt and flips through SkyMall. Matt leans his head against the cool window and pretends he can leave all his problems behind in New York.
The beach house smells of salt and sand and sunscreen, the polish on the hardwood floors and the wicker of the chairs on the balcony. Matt breathes it in, none of the mildewed, rain-and-ink-and-coffee smell of college that he’s come to associate with stress.
“Let’s get our daiquiris on,” Foggy says, heading for the kitchen. Matt leans on his cane and wishes he could stay here forever.
At the same time, he wishes he were anywhere else in the world.
It’s late and they don’t make it down to the water that first day. Foggy orders them a pizza for dinner and doesn’t even make fun of Matt for picking off all the sausage because “it’s too spicy,” and then that’s it. That’s the last straw.
Foggy’s been walking on eggshells around him. And it’s probably more for his sake than for Matt’s, but either way Matt can’t stand it. No teasing, no poking and prodding. It’s no longer the comfortable familiarity they had in the fall, but a cold and distant politeness that makes Matt’s skin crawl. He misses getting bitched at for forgetting to lock their door. He misses Foggy.
And just like that, Matt knows. Matt knows he has to tell him. Even if Foggy hates him for it, even if they never speak again. Because anything’s better than this hell.
The next day, they grab towels and sunblock and head down to the shore. It’s a brilliantly sunny morning and the beach, fortunately, isn’t one populated by wild spring breakers. They set up near a moderately impressive sandcastle and Foggy starts in on his Doritos. Matt digs his bare toes into the warm sand. They make menial small talk that Matt won’t remember later. He can hear his own heart thumping faster and faster.
“Hey, Foggy?” Matt says finally, and he’s holding his breath and he can’t do this, there’s no way he can do this. “Can I… I need to tell you something. And it’s… it’s something I’ve never really told anyone before.” He waits, expecting Foggy to respond with “go ahead” or “of course, Matty.” Foggy says nothing. He’s stopped eating. “Foggy?”
“No,” Foggy says bluntly. The chip bag crinkles in his hand. “No, you can’t tell me anything.” Matt startles. “I can’t—look, okay? I know you want me to be that person you tell your deepest darkest secrets to, but I can’t. I can’t be that person. We can’t…” He trails off, and apparently gives up because Matt feels him start to stand.
Frantically, he reaches out and grabs Foggy’s arm. And then he gets it. This trip wasn’t supposed to be fun. Foggy planned this. This was one last hurrah before Foggy comes clean and admits that he doesn’t think they can be friends anymore, that it’s too rough on him. He was probably waiting until dinner tonight to announce that he didn’t want to room together anymore.
“Foggy, wait.”
“It’s not your fault, Matt,” Foggy says, sounding too kind and compassionate and Matt wants to throw up. “I don’t blame you. I just can’t… do this anymore. I’m sorry.”
“Foggy, it—it’s a twofold secret, okay?” he says, and he’s babbling. “It’s two. And the second part is that I think I’m in love with you.”
Well. That shuts him up. “What?”
“Sit down.” He does. Matt’s convinced himself he’s about to make some grand speech, but as soon as Foggy’s back sitting beside him again he loses all his steam. They sit there quietly for a moment.
Then—“You think you’re in love with me?” Foggy sounds like he’s choking.
“I mean,” Matt says, picking at his swim trunks, “I’ve never… been in it before. So I’m not totally sure what it feels like. But yeah, pretty much.”
“My grandma used to say that being in love was like being eaten by a shark,” Foggy says, a little lightheaded. “When it happens, even if it’s never happened to you before… you can tell.”
Matt smiles. “Your grandma is a smart woman.”
“What’s the first part of the secret?”
Matt sighs. “I, um. I’m not really sure how to…” His toes burrow into the sand like he can keep going until he’s completely buried. “Okay. Describe the beach to me.”
“What?”
“Tell me what you see.”
Foggy might argue, but he’s still too shocked from Matt’s declaration. “Uh, okay,” he says, swiveling his head around. “The water’s a little choppy. Not a cloud in the sky. There’s a family way on the other end of the beach. A sailboat kind of far out in the water. Um, and there’s some seaweed.”
Matt nods, takes a deep breath like he’s going underwater. “There’s a beached jellyfish,” he says, pointing. “There. That family? The daughter’s eating a hot dog with ketchup. The dad has a heart condition. The mom uses coconut scented shampoo. The couple on the sailboat is eating salt and vinegar potato chips and talking about getting a dog. You had peanut butter toast this morning before I woke up. And… your heart’s racing.”
It is. Foggy feels like he might pass out. “You could’ve made all that stuff up.”
“But I’m not,” Matt says. “You know I’m not.”
Foggy leans back on his palms. “Yeah,” he says. “I do.”
“My accident,” Matt says, rushing to explain. “The chemicals… they did something to me. They blinded me but they… enhanced my hearing, my sense of smell, touch taste.” He pulls in a shaky breath. “I can hear heartbeats. I can tell when you’re lying. And I’ve got this… radar sense? Sort of? I can tell what’s around me, shapes, no details or colors. That’s… that’s it, that’s the secret. I’m sorry.” Foggy’s heartrate hasn’t slowed, and Matt’s pretty sure he knows what’s coming next. “It’s—you can go ahead and walk away. If you want.”
Foggy takes a deep breath, and despite his racing heart, he sounds calm. “I’m not gonna walk away,” he says. The sea breeze whips his hair back.
“Then what-” And then Foggy’s mouth is on his, the sun is beating down and the waves are crashing down upon the shore and Foggy’s hands are knotted behind Matt’s neck. He tastes like nacho cheese and saltwater and sunlight, and Matt never wants to let go. “I’m sorry,” Matt says when they break apart. “I’m sorry. I should’ve told you earlier.”
“It’s cool,” Foggy says, breathing a little too hard. His face is splotchy with heat and he’s leaning over Matt a little. “I already knew you were weird. Wasn’t gonna guess ‘supersenses,’ but… everyone’s got issues, right?”
“Issues, yeah,” Matt laughs. A plane flies overhead. The girl on the other end of the beach shrieks at the sight of a seagull. The couple in the sailboat toss a chip into the water to watch the fish swirl around it. Foggy’s heartbeat thuds on, a little faster than normal but even, happy. “Just in case you were wondering,” Matt says, pulling him down for another kiss, “I do want to do not-friend stuff with you.”
It’s the best vacation of Matt’s life. They get back to Columbia sunburned and exhausted but grinning ear to ear, hands tangled together as they make the hike back to their dorm room with their suitcases in tow.
It’s almost too perfect. It probably is, actually. The other shoe drops in the form of finals, the stress getting to both of them and pitting them against each other. It’s like when they first met, except now Matt knows that Foggy’s purposely leaving his dirty socks on the floor just to get a rise out of him, and Matt’s purposely listening in to see if Foggy’s lying about how much time he spent studying, just to get the bitter satisfaction of calling him out.
They’re tiny problems, though. Molehills and not mountains, nothing that can’t be fixed by Foggy climbing into bed with him and taking off Matt’s clothes (and leaving them lying on the floor, of fucking course), or pissing off their suitemates by locking the bathroom door and taking hour-long showers together.
They both do summer semesters that year, spending long hours when they’re not in class lying out in the sun, traipsing around the city doing dumb couple things like going to bakeries and feeding each other tiramisu.
Thanksgiving comes, and Foggy takes Matt home to meet his parents. “These sweet potatoes are to die for, Mrs. Nelson,” Matt comments across the dinner table. He’s nervous, but not as much as Foggy, fidgeting restlessly beside him. “Is that nutmeg?”
“Sure is.” Foggy’s mom beams at him. “Family recipe. I’m glad you like it,” she says to Matt. Keep him, she mouths to Foggy.
After dinner, Matt smokes the Nelsons at Trivial Pursuit. Then Foggy admits that he’s been holding back and proceeds to annihilate him in a second game.
They’re housing Matt in Foggy’s old room while Foggy sleeps in the basement. When Foggy’s dad catches Matt sneaking back upstairs in the early hours of the morning, he just gives him a sly chuckle and keeps on walking.
Christmas is pretty much the same affair, except there’s cocoa and Matt kisses Foggy under the mistletoe. This New Year’s Eve is undeniably better than the previous year’s.
They spend that spring break back at the beach house again, except this time Foggy orders a pizza that’s half sausage, half without, and they make out on the beach a lot more and Matt doesn’t have any groundbreaking revelations.
Finals pass, and then summer, and soon the leaves are crunchy underfoot and they’re staring down the barrel of graduation.
“I’m so jealous of you,” Matt comments one night while they’re sitting side by side in bed, studying. “Your memory’s like a steel trap. You never forget anything.”
“Envious,” Foggy corrects, without looking up from his flashcards. “Envious is when you want something that someone else has.”
It snows a lot that year, and the two of them make snow angels before the fine white powder inevitably turns gray and filthy. Foggy helps Matt navigate through the drifts up until the point that Matt drags him down and pins him to the ground, smiling against his mouth, the flakes turning his hair white.
Foggy gets accepted to Columbia Law School about a week before Matt does, so Matt takes him out to a bar to celebrate. At one point, after he’s had a little too much to drink, he turns around and waves his arms around like he needs to address all the other drunk college students there. “I just want to say,” he coughs, “that I am… not jealous.” He shoots a confused look at Foggy. “The other one. Envious. I am envious of everyone in this bar who gets to see this fine, devastatingly handsome soon-to-be law student.” He giggles. “And I only get to go home with him.”
“Shh, Matty,” Foggy laughs, grabbing at Matt’s shirt and leaning into him.
“What? It’s the truth.”
“Yeah, okay,” Foggy says, plucking Matt’s drink out of his hand.
That night they fumble back into their room and collapse in bed, tipsy and tired. “I don’t know if you could tell,” Foggy grins, “but Marci Stahl was totally making eyes at me the whole night.”
“You trying to make me envious?” Matt says into his shirt.
Foggy just rolls his eyes. “Jealous, Matt.”
The semester ends too quickly. And hell, they’re not even leaving Columbia but it still seems like such an ending, a solemn finality. They pack up the dorm room, listening to Foggy’s iPod on shuffle. “Man, it’s gonna be weird not being roommates anymore,” Foggy comments.
“Something you’re not telling me?” Matt says, raising an eyebrow. They’re moving into a shoebox apartment together this summer.
“You know what I mean,” Foggy says, slumping down on the edge of his bed. “Living together is different than… living together, ya know?”
The room is too still, too empty. There are no socks on the floor, no posters on the wall. It may not be the same dorm room where they met, but these cramped prison cells are all the same anyway, so it might as well be. “Yeah, I know,” Matt says, taking his place beside Foggy on the bed. He slings an arm around him and it’s so much like that first time, that night Foggy came back with that disappointing essay grade. “Can I tell you something?”
“Mm.”
“I’m really,” Matt says, “really, really fucking glad that I met you.”
Graduation is a blur of sensations, the booming of microphones and various perfumes of Foggy’s aunts and grandmothers pulling Matt in for hugs, Foggy clutching his hand and the whoosh of caps being thrown in the air.
Their apartment is tiny, but perfect, and law school is grueling, but perfect. They’re getting older and the days are passing more quickly and then suddenly it’s graduation again. And suddenly they’re big-time (well, maybe not big-time) interns at Landman and Zack.
And then one night Matt’s lying awake in bed, one arm tossed lightly around Foggy, when he hears it. A cry for help. Maybe a block away, probably less. The unmistakable sound of someone being attacked. Something propels him upward, something tells him to act, and he listens.
“Hmm?” Foggy mumbles sleepily, rolling over when he feels Matt getting up. “Wha’re you doing?”
Matt pulls on street clothes, and then grabs one of Foggy’s beanies from off the floor and pulls it down over his eyes. “Shh, go back to sleep,” he whispers. “I’ll tell you in the morning.”
And he will.