Chapter Text
One
It happens on a Tuesday.
Damen is half-asleep on Nikandros’ couch, sprawled over the mess of decorative pillows, wondering if he should order pizza for dinner. It’s his first cheat day of the month, and he deserves the indulgence only carbs can give him. He’s been on Tinder for twenty minutes, swiping left consistently. There are no real complaints he can think of, just the low and petty hum of jumbled critiques: too thin, too tall, too many pictures with the Eiffel Tower in the background, too wrong.
And then Damen’s thumb freezes, his whole hand going rigid.
He knows that picture, has stared at it a hundred times in a hundred different places—at Kastor’s house, at the gym, at work. He knows that t-shirt because he was the one who bought it, an early Christmas present two years ago. Those black jeans cost six hundred euros, and Damen knows this because he had to listen to Laurent rant about it for three weeks last spring.
Laurent, 26, the profile reads. 6 kilometers away.
Damen sits up straighter on the couch. The inner walls of his throat feel dry, sand-papery. He reaches out for the beer on the coffee table before realizing halfway through that the can is empty.
His screen goes dark, and Damen panics. He taps it what feels like a hundred times before it lights up again, picture-Laurent staring back at him with the faintest of smiles on his face.
The bio is short, flirty enough to contrast with the sober pictures, and it doesn’t sound like Laurent at all, which brings Damen so much relief he can barely breathe through it. Looking for some fun, hit me up xo is not something Laurent would write. Ever.
Ancel, then.
Damen’s thumb thaws and moves on its own, swiping right. It takes his brain an embarrassingly long time to realize why that was a terrible idea.
A small part of him—the ones Laurent liked to laugh at—tells Damen that it’ll only be a few seconds before they match. It’s a matter of common courtesy, a nod to familiarity. Exes always reconnect through dating apps.
But the seconds turn into minutes, and soon those turn into half an hour, and then Damen is still staring at his home screen, waiting for the It’s a match! sign to pop up.
He locks his phone and gets up to grab another beer from the fridge. He takes his time in the kitchen, counting tiles and dirty dishes, which he should have done by now. Nikandros is very fastidious about cleaning, a quality that had come in handy when they shared an apartment in college and has now turned Nikandros slightly sour. Damen likes his socks where he can see them, and that sometimes means a mess. Nikandros, the perfect embodiment of an architect, wants everything to look spotless and unused. Dirty dishes in the sink and socks over the arm of the couch are not, according to Nikandros, signs of a well-adjusted adult.
Laurent would agree.
When he can’t stand it anymore, Damen gulps down half of his beer and strides back into Nikandros’ living room, picks up his phone, unlocks it, and—
There is no match.
*
“He doesn’t know I’m calling,” is the first thing Nicaise says. He doesn’t sound hesitant or shy. He sounds perfectly normal. Like calling Damen at the office is part of his daily routine. Like this isn’t the first time they’ve talked in months. “I passed my driving test.”
Despite everything, pride blooms inside Damen’s chest. He tried to teach Nicaise how to drive almost a year ago and, when that did not work, paid for the first ten driving lessons. When Damen left, Nicaise had been about to reach lesson number eight. He still hadn’t known how to parallel park.
Damen says, “That’s—”
“There’s going to be a surprise party. At Berenger’s.”
“It doesn’t sound like it’s a surprise.” Damen shifts in his chair, the new leather squeaking under him in protest. “I don’t think—”
But Nicaise, of course, cuts him off. “It’s on Friday and it starts at seven,” he says, voice sharp and cold and too much like Laurent’s. “Bring me a present.”
“A present?”
“A present.” The line goes quiet for a moment. Then Nicaise adds, “It’s the least I deserve, after putting up with you all these years.”
There are too many things Damen wants to say to that. He wants to reassure Nicaise that he does deserve a present, that he deserves, in fact, all the presents. He wants to tell Nicaise that he won’t be able to make it to the party, that he’s too busy, that it’s inappropriate, that he and Laurent didn’t match on Tinder three nights ago.
“I’ll see what I can do,” Damen says, closing his eyes and leaning back into his chair. He won’t go—he’s not that much of a masochist, no matter what Nikandros tells him—but he’ll make sure Nicaise gets his present. An Uber, maybe? “Do you want anything in particular? You can use the credit card extension I—”
“I don’t have it anymore,” Nicaise says. Did he cut the plastic card into pieces? Did he lose it? Damen does not dare ask him. “I’m sure you’ll think of something.”
“Okay,” Damen says. There’s an awkward pause that lasts far too long. Still, Damen doesn’t want to be the one who ends the call. He never wants to be the one who turns Nicaise away. “How are things? At home. With…”
“Horrible.” And then, just when Damen is opening his mouth to ask him if he truly means that, Nicaise says, “We’re fine. It’s—fine.”
Damen hears two loud knocks and startles, looking up from his papers only to see that there’s no one at the door. The line goes very quiet again, and Damen knows this time Nicaise is pressing his phone against his chest to silence the mic.
“I have to go,” Nicaise says. “Don’t tell him I called.”
“You know we don’t—” Talk, Damen is about to say, but the sighing sound of the call being disconnected shuts him up.
Damen puts his phone face down on his desk and, suppressing the irrational urge to do something stupid, turns his attention back to the case in front of him.
It’s a messy divorce, two young kids caught in the middle.
He tries—and fails—not to draw any parallels. Nicaise isn’t a kid, not anymore, and Laurent has always been a firm believer that marriage is the ultimate bourgeois trap and, as such, should be avoided at all costs. Between them, there aren’t half a dozen properties to be divided, assets to fight over. There’s only an almost finished house, big enough to host a family of five, and it’s all Damen’s. If they’d gotten a divorce, Damen would have come out of it unscathed. They didn’t even have a joint account.
A knock on the door. For a split second, Damen forgets he’s not on the phone with Nicaise anymore.
Pallas is there, a steaming cup of coffee in his right hand and a folder full of papers in the other.
“Kastor sent me to let you know he’s having a last-minute meeting with Makedon. Something about the Garnier case?”
Damen nods. He gets up and purposefully leaves his phone at the desk, telling himself it’s for the best. Eyes on Pallas’ cup, he says, “Is that for me?”
“Black, no sugar.” Pallas hands him the cup. He pauses, hesitant, as he watches Damen take a sip. “I forgot something, didn’t I?”
“No,” Damen lies. “It’s good. Thank you.”
Before, Damen used to take his coffee like this—no sugar, no cream, no artificial sweeteners—and he liked it well enough. Four years of drinking sickly sweet coffee with Laurent shouldn’t have changed Damen’s taste buds. He can still enjoy this, maybe even more than the sugary concoction Laurent and Nicaise used to force down his throat every morning for breakfast.
To prove his point, Damen downs the whole cup in three gulps, burning his tongue in the process. He throws the empty cup in the trash as he makes his way to Kastor’s office, barely repressing the urge to pat himself on the back.
Progress.
*
The meeting lasts two hours and forty-six minutes. By the time Makedon is done explaining to Kastor why it’d be unwise of them to take on Garnier as a client, Damen’s head feels like it’s about to explode. He powers through it, straight-spined and blank-faced, and doesn’t complain when Kastor spends another hour arguing that the firm can and should take risks, and what’s riskier than the Garnier case?
Damen glances at his wristwatch just when Makedon starts talking about the difference between taking risks and sinking into a swamp of shit. It’s seven-thirty, which means Damen has been at the office for exactly ten hours.
“I have to go,” Damen says, cutting through Makedon’s second monologue of the day. He feels rather than sees Kastor’s eyes on him. “But I think Makedon’s right about this. We should let Torveld handle this case.”
Makedon lets out a happy sigh. “This,” he says, waving his hand in Damen’s direction, “is why you’re my favorite nephew.”
Kastor doesn’t look offended. Yoga seems to be working fine for him these days. “It’s early. Where are you going?”
Damen gets up from the Swedish-style office chair he’s been lounging on for the past four hours and stretches, grimacing when he hears a loud pop coming from his lower back. As he tugs on his tie, he ponders on what the appropriate response to Kastor’s passive-aggressive comment should be.
I got here at nine is redundant. Kastor already knows this anyway; he was there when Damen arrived. I’m going home would be a lie. I need to buy Nicaise a present is definitely not acceptable either.
“I have a headache,” Damen settles for saying. His temples throb as if eager to confirm his statement. “We can discuss this again in the morning, but you already know what I think.”
Kastor’s gaze is still accusatory as Damen makes his way into the hall, but it’s been such a long day Damen can’t bring himself to care. At last, freedom.
*
The sweatshirt is a bubble-gum pink color, its cuffs a silver mess of sequins. It’s expensive enough to make Damen frown, which doesn’t happen very often. Usually, when he’s shopping for clothes he barely glances at the tags—a nasty habit he picked up from Hypermenestra—but even when he does look, prices never surprise him. This time he pauses, staring at the red BUY NOW button for what feels like an hour.
He remembers the argument they had over this sweatshirt because it was one of the last ones. It’s too much, Damen had said, standing in the kitchen where he was sure Nicaise could not hear him. Laurent had put the dirty dishes in the sink, turned to him, and said something vicious. Damen doesn’t remember Laurent’s exact words, but he remembers how they made him feel like a punching bag.
Laurent’s words often made him feel like that.
In the end, Damen had won that battle. The pink sweatshirt became something Nicaise stopped asking about, something Laurent did not mention. Damen bought Nicaise the latest iPhone, gave him an extension to his credit card, and that had settled the matter. For a while, at least.
Damen buys the sweatshirt, pays the extra money it costs to have it delivered within the next twenty-four hours, and then hides his phone under one of the sofa cushions.
He tries to imagine what Laurent’s face will look like when Nicaise takes the sweatshirt out of the gift bag. It shouldn’t matter to him, and it doesn’t—most of the time anyway—because this is Nicaise’s gift. Damen is buying this for Nicaise. Damen is buying this because he doesn’t care that it’s pink, that it’s girly, that it’s too much. Damen is buying this because he knows it’s what Nicaise wants.
It’s a nice gift. It’s also a fuck you note to Laurent, which is always a bonus.
*
“You can’t be serious,” Nikandros says from the doorway, watching Damen fumble with the buttons of his shirt. “Damen, this isn’t—people don’t do this. They really don’t.”
“I’m not staying,” Damen says. “I’ll drop his gift off and then leave. It won’t take me more than ten minutes.”
“You could send an Uber. You could even mail it, for fuck’s sake.”
“I could.”
“But you won’t,” Nikandros says, “because you think you owe it to Nicaise to show up.”
Damen checks his pockets for the third time, trying to locate his car keys and wallet. It’s a fifteen-minute drive. Maybe on the way back he can stop by the gym. He keeps a duffel bag there with a change of clothes, and he knows the place will be deserted on a Friday night. It’s exactly what Damen needs to feel centered again.
Nikandros is still talking. “But you don’t. You don’t owe either of them anything.”
“I know I don’t,” Damen says. When he goes to check his hair in the hall mirror, Nikandros follows him. “I might hit the gym afterward, so don’t wait up for me.”
“Yeah, right,” Nikandros says. “The gym.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“I’m not an idiot, Damen.”
Damen doesn’t know what to say to that. He stands in the hallway for another minute, staring at himself in the mirror. He’s not wearing anything Laurent may recognize. Even his watch is new, a fancy replacement to the Rolex Makedon convinced him to buy for the office party. Damen looks fine. A little stiff, maybe. A little too much like himself.
“Whatever,” Nikandros says, slipping back into his room.
Later, in the car, Damen stares at the gift bag through the rearview mirror. It’s a subtle shade of baby pink, the name of the brand written in cursive, elegant letters. It looks out of place against the black leather seats, too-obviously there, too hard to ignore.
It’s too much, Damen thinks, and wishes he’d bought Nicaise the Balenciaga baseball cap instead.
*
Berenger and Ancel live in Privé, a neighborhood that consists of preppy houses, white picket fences, and an alarming number of Audis. It’s the sort of place Laurent used to make fun of, partly because it’s exactly like the neighborhood Damen grew up in, and partly because making fun of rich people had always been Laurent’s favorite pastime. Maybe it still is, but Damen doesn't want to make any assumptions.
Laurent always hated that about him. You should be a writer, he’d told Damen once, since you’re so good at making up stories in your head.
Damen had driven them around in circles the first time they came here, under Laurent’s orders. He had laughed as Laurent pointed out what was wrong with each front yard and why, his fingers hidden away in cozy red mittens.
Now Damen drives straight to Berenger’s house, not letting himself be distracted by the ridiculous decorations or the bizarre flower arrangements. It’s easy, mechanical. He parks the car in their driveway, grabs Nicaise’s present from the back seat, steps out of the car, and walks to the front door. All on autopilot.
Standing on their sparkly Welcome! rug, Damen doesn’t let himself hesitate as he rings the doorbell. He knows if he does, if he so much as stops to think about what he’s doing, he’ll turn around and escape.
Berenger opens the door. By the look on his face, it’s clear Nicaise hasn’t told anyone he invited Damen. Despite it all, Damen is ridiculously glad to see Berenger and not Ancel. The last time Damen saw Ancel, things got sour really fast.
“Is Nicaise here?”
“He is,” Berenger says. He doesn’t move away from the door or invite Damen inside, which doesn’t really surprise Damen. Berenger is Laurent’s friend, not his. “Is that for him?”
Damen looks down at the bag he’s holding. The back of his neck burns. “Yes.”
“I’ll give it to him then.”
Nicaise appears behind Berenger as if magically summoned. He’s still too short for his age, too skinny. His hair is the longest Damen has ever seen it, curls bouncing around his face like chocolate springs. Fancy, his green t-shirt reads.
“Hi,” Nicaise says. Then, to Berenger, “Ancel’s looking for you.”
“Is he?” Berenger asks dryly. He doesn’t move an inch from the door, blocking the way so Nicaise can’t get closer to Damen. “You should go and tell him you’ve found me.”
“Aren’t you going to let Damen in? He’s my guest.”
“It’s my house.”
“It’s my party.”
“Nicaise,” Berenger says. He sounds weary. Everyone always sounds like that after talking to Nicaise for more than ten minutes.“He can’t be here.”
Nicaise shrugs. “Fine. He’ll go after giving me my present.” He ducks under Berenger’s arm, sneaking out of the house and advancing towards Damen. When Berenger tries to grab him, Nicaise moves away. “Fuck off, Ber. This will only take five minutes.”
“Don’t—”
“Five minutes.”
Berenger sighs and closes the door. The last thing Damen hears from him is a loud Ancel.
“I didn’t think you’d come,” Nicaise says, not unkindly. It makes Damen’s chest ache anyway. “Did you really buy me something or were you—” He stops talking, something that does not happen often. His eyes are on the bag, on Damen’s face, on the bag again. “Oh.”
“I can take it back if you don’t want it. Or if it doesn’t fit.”
Nicaise takes the bag from Damen. He dumps the tissue paper on the ground and steps on it to keep the wind from taking it away. Once the sweatshirt is out, Nicaise drops the bag as well.
Damen looks away, suddenly terrified of Nicaise’s expression.
After a moment, Nicaise bends over to pick up the mess on the ground, stuffing the sweatshirt into the bag once more. He doesn’t say thank you or you shouldn’t have bothered. He doesn’t even tell Damen that he likes it.
“There’s angel cake,” Nicaise says. “It's from Aimeric’s shop, but it’s edible.”
Damen feels his throat closing, growing tighter. “I can’t stay.”
“It’s not that you can’t, it’s that you don’t want to.”
“You know that’s not true.”
“Do I?” Nicaise's face blanks out for a second. He’s back to scowling in the blink of an eye, but Damen has caught the stutter in his expression. “You’re such an asshole. Are you really not going to come in?”
Language, Damen wants to say but doesn’t, because he doesn’t think he’ll be able to take Nicaise’s reply. He feels exhausted and it hasn’t even been five minutes since he stepped out of his car.
“You heard Berenger,” Damen says. “It’s his house and he doesn’t want me in it.”
Nicaise rolls his eyes. “This is Berenger we’re talking about. What is he going to do? Call you a fucking pillock?”
“Ancel knows karate.”
“First of all, it’s kung fu, not karate. Secondly, he fucking sucks at it.”
Like a throb, Damen thinks again: language. “I have to go,” he says. “Call me if—”
Nicaise shoves the bag into Damen’s chest, hard enough to make him take a step back. He holds it there as if daring Damen to complain.
“It’s too small,” Nicaise says, unblinking.
“You haven’t even put it on, Nicaise. How can you possibly know that it doesn’t fit?”
“I just do.”
Damen takes the bag. He’s about to open his mouth to congratulate Nicaise on getting his driver’s license when Nicaise turns around and walks back into the house, making sure to slam the door behind him.
Damen stands there for a while, in the middle of the driveway, and stares at the two-story house with a white picket fence, flower-covered window sills, and perfectly trimmed green grass. Even the sparkly rug a few meters away seems to be mocking him.
His phone pings in his pocket, vibrating softly against his thigh. Damen takes it out, heart beating in his throat because he knows that sound, knows what it means.
Congratulations! You have a new match!
Damen waits until he’s in his car to open the app. Slowly, he puts Nicaise’s present on the back seat, lets the car start purring. Only when he’s done with his seatbelt does he allow himself to look at his phone.
It’s a girl named Kyra. Blonde, pretty, twenty-seven years old.
They text for a while. Damen’s replies are slow because he’s driving and there are only so many red lights to stop at. Ten messages later he has Kyra’s phone number and Instagram handle. He follows her without giving it too much thought, already bored of her eagerness by the time he’s made it to the gym.
Three sets of abs later, Damen pauses the song he’s had on repeat for twenty minutes and texts Nikandros. I have a date tomorrow. Are you going to be at your place?
Nikandros’ reply is emoji-less, as usual. Depends on whom you’re planning to come over with
It’s a euphemism for no, as long as it’s not Laurent.
*
Kyra is a nice girl. She shows up at the restaurant on time, looking prettier than she did in all the pictures Damen saw of her online, and orders the most expensive bottle of red wine available in the restaurant.
It’s nice, drinking with someone again, not having to worry about his breath smelling like alcohol afterward or his limbs being slightly uncoordinated. Damen has missed how electric sex feels after a few drinks, how easy it is to laugh and flush and thrust with the added layer of fuzziness alcohol provides.
Damen fucks Kyra on Nikandros’ couch, both of them too impatient to make it to the guest room. He tries and barely manages not to feel like a twenty-year-old that’s still living in his parents’ house.
The sex is good. A little sloppy, thanks to the wine, but good nevertheless. Kyra is unexpectedly wet, but she doesn’t moan loudly or writhe too much under him, which Damen appreciates. He’s never liked histrionics. When they’re done, she gets up from the couch and slips her black dress back on, already wearing heels. Apparently, she never got around to taking those off.
“This was fun,” she says. She’s not smiling, and so Damen doesn’t know exactly how fun it was for her. “I have a pilates class in the morning.”
Damen thinks that is supposed to mean something. “Okay,” he says.
“I’ll text you.”
She’s gone before Damen can offer her a glass of water.
*
It takes Damen a week to send the sweatshirt back to the deposit and get a new one. A woman at the store demands to see it, inspecting the sleeves through thick glasses to make sure there are no stains, no holes. Damen thinks of telling her that there ought to be an alternative online option to this—driving all the way to the store, standing in line, being interrogated—but decides not to at the last second. It’s not as if he has anywhere else to be.
On Wednesday, he uses his lunch break to deliver the gift a second time. Nicaise hasn’t answered his texts, but when Damen pulls over at their usual parking spot, Nicaise is already there, waiting.
Nicaise gets into the car, drops his bag under the glove compartment, and twists around to close the door before Damen can even say hello.
“Aren’t you supposed to be at the office?” Nicaise says, staring at his phone. “It’s, like, three p.m.”
“It’s my lunch break.”
“Oh, that’s great. I want sushi.”
Damen frowns, watching Nicaise push all the buttons of the stereo at once. “We’re not—”
The loud music cuts him off. Damen winces, touching his ear to make sure it’s not bleeding, and then mouths at Nicaise to turn it down. The song is outrageous— I sent her back to her boyfriend with my handprint on her ass cheek —and it makes Damen feel very old. It doesn’t even have a melody.
“Alaska rolls for me,” Nicaise says as soon as the music isn’t deafening anymore.
“You don’t even like cucumber,” Damen says. Then, a second too late, “And we’re not getting sushi. I have to be back to work in thirty minutes.”
“You’re your own boss. You can do whatever you want.”
“That’s not how jobs work, Nicaise.”
Instead of getting angry, Nicaise shrugs. “Fine,” he says, eyes glued to his phone. The brightness of the screen is blinding. “Where’s my present?”
Damen reaches for the bag in the backseat and hands it over to Nicaise, who doesn’t even bother looking at the sweatshirt inside. Just two seconds later the bag is in Damen’s hands again.
“Doesn’t fit,” Nicaise says.
“Try it on.”
“Here? In your car?”
“You don’t even have to take your shirt off,” Damen says. “And the windows are tinted. There’s no one watching.”
“No,” Nicaise says. “But I’ll definitely do it for twelve Alaska rolls. Without cucumber.”
“I can’t just ask them not to put—” Damen stops himself. He’s the adult here, not Nicaise. He needs to control the situation, get Nicaise to put the sweatshirt on, and then go back to work. Kastor was in a shitty mood this morning, and Damen doesn’t want to add fuel to that particular fire. “Okay. I’ll give you money for sushi. Please, try it on.”
Nicaise pretends to think about it. He strokes his chin with his thumb, clicks his tongue against his teeth, and says, “No.”
“I’ll drive you there,” Damen tries.
“It’s a twenty-minute drive. You might as well stay and eat with me.”
It’s moments like this when Damen wishes he’d listened to Nikandros when he told Damen to run after meeting Nicaise for the first time. It’s a bittersweet feeling because no matter how annoyed Damen is right now, it feels good knowing that Nicaise wants to hang out with him. A tiny scoreboard lights up in Damen’s head: D-1, L-0.
“I also want spicy shrimp,” Nicaise says. “Or maybe some mackerel, I don’t know.”
“Do you promise to try the shirt on after lunch?”
“Yes,” Nicaise says.
It does not sound very convincing, but Damen starts the car anyway. The ride to Sakae is quiet, the car filled with awful music Damen doesn’t even know the genre of. Nicaise plays Candy Crush and huffs every time he levels up.
The restaurant is deserted because it’s a Wednesday and, apparently, no one goes out of their way to eat sushi on Wednesdays at three-thirty p.m. Their waitress is a girl named Madeleine who smiles a lot and nods at everything Nicaise asks from her. It’s a relief to see her instead of Nina, their usual waitress.
This has always been one of Nicaise’s favorite restaurants. Damen and Laurent used to bring him here at least twice a month when they were still together, even more often if he was doing well in school. The last time Damen was here, Nina had asked Damen if she should set another plate for Laurent or if it was just going to be him and Nikandros that day.
Damen had not had the heart to tell her they’d broken up. Nikandros had laughed at him for it.
Nicaise ends up ordering seventeen Alaska rolls and enough wasabi to land himself in the hospital. Damen doesn’t comment on it, sipping his water in silence as he watches Nicaise dissolve a huge ball of spicy green paste in a tiny puddle of soy sauce.
“Buy your own,” Nicaise says when Damen reaches out with his chopsticks to steal a piece of sushi from his plate. His mouth is full and the tip of his nose is red, the wasabi most likely burning his nostrils to cinders. “Don’t be stingy, Damen.”
“I’m not being stingy, I just know for a fact that you’re not going to eat all that sushi in one sitting.”
“I’ll stand up after the first six, don’t worry.”
Damen laughs. He’s tried not to think of Nicaise over the last few months, but now that he’s sitting in front of Damen it’s hard not to want to ask him how he’s doing, what his classes are like. It’s hard not to feel as though he’s been missing out on important things.
Nicaise shoves another sushi piece in his mouth, chews it for exactly three seconds, and says, “There’s still a box of your shit at home.”
“There isn’t,” Damen says. He hands Nicaise a paper napkin and gestures for him to wipe the soy sauce off his chin. “I’m not missing any clothes.”
“I never said they were clothes. I said it was shit, which is an umbrella term for clothes, souvenirs, books, a nail clipper—”
“I didn’t leave my nail clipper at home.”
Nicaise is polite enough not to point out that the apartment he and Laurent live in isn’t Damen’s home anymore. “He’ll throw it out if you don’t come to get it.”
A big part of him thinks Nicaise is lying, but Damen hasn’t checked his boxes since he put them into Nikandros’ storage unit, and so he has no way of knowing if anything valuable is missing. It’s not the nail clipper that worries him, but rather all those photo albums with pictures of his parents’ wedding day and fifteen-year-old Kastor with temporary tattoos on his face.
He wonders if Laurent will go through his things before throwing them out. He wonders, too, if Laurent will be cruel enough to throw them away knowing what those photos mean to Damen. Doubt begins to creep in.
“Okay. When—”
“This Friday,” Nicaise says. “He’s going out, I think.”
Damen frowns. “You think?”
“Ancel has been pestering him to go out more. He said he would, but you know how he gets.” Nicaise rolls his eyes. The gesture looks annoyed, but Damen sees right through it. There’s a warmth there that is absent when Nicaise talks about other people. “I’ll text you when he leaves.”
Damen pushes away the first half of Nicaise’s answer. He knows Ancel, knows what going out with him means. It’s easy to see Laurent at a bar, all blonde hair and tight clothes, coldly flirting his way through every interaction with strangers. Something tugs at Damen’s chest.
“I don’t want to drop by if he doesn’t know about it,” Damen says eventually. “It’s his place.”
“It was your place too.”
Damen feels fifty-eight years old instead of twenty-nine. “It’s not anymore, which is why I can’t drop by unannounced. Ask him if he’s okay with it first.”
“Fine.”
The question hangs between them, heavy and unasked. Damen tries to ignore it, watches Nicaise try to ignore it too, but eventually it feels like there’s nothing else to talk about but this.
“How is he?”
“Good,” Nicaise says. Damen hates how careful he sounds. “He’s doing fine.”
“That’s good. It’s good that he’s—you said he’s going out with Ancel. That’s… nice.”
It’s, evidently, the wrong thing to say. Nicaise grows tense by stages: his hand turns into a fist around his chopsticks, his back straightens, his eyes narrow. He looks like a panther preparing to pounce.
“He’s taking them,” Nicaise says. “That’s what you really want to know, isn’t it?”
“No, I—”
“Did you think he’d just stop because you two broke up? He wouldn’t put his life on pause for anyone, not even you.”
Damen thinks about those days he’d come home from the office and find their room exactly as he’d left it, curtains drawn, door closed. He thinks about Laurent, in bed, not having moved all day. He thinks about that emergency visit to Herode’s office because Laurent had run out of medication.
“I’m glad he’s fine,” Damen says, awkward and sincere at the same time. “I wasn’t implying anything, Nicaise.” Then, more hesitantly, “But if you ever need—”
“Don’t fucking say it.”
Damen doesn’t. He swallows his words back down, along with the scolding that was about to make it past his lips. Nicaise can swear if he wants to. It’s not Damen’s job to correct him anymore.
“Are you done eating?”
Nicaise stares at the last piece of sushi on his plate. Instead of answering, he stabs it with one of his chopsticks and brings it to his mouth so slowly Damen wants to snap at him.
“Okay,” Damen says once Nicaise has swallowed. He takes his wallet out, puts his card on the table, and stands. “Let’s go to the restroom.”
“I don’t have to use the—”
Damen all but shoves the pink bag into Nicaise’s hands. “You do. Come on.”
The restroom is as empty as the eating area. Damen counts tiles—black and white, with weird pink flowers on them—while Nicaise changes into the sweatshirt. The wall mirror shows him that it fits perfectly, something Damen had not been expecting. He’d thought it was too small, but then again wrist cuffs have always been hard for Damen to understand. They always look too tight.
Nicaise doesn’t look excited. He stares at himself in the mirror, studying the sweatshirt from all angles, tugging at it, stretching the neckline.
Pink looks good on him. The sequins too. Damen swallows past the newly formed lump in his throat, which he imagines is his solidified pride. You look nice, he thinks of saying.
Instead: “It fits.”
“It does,” Nicaise says, still scowling.
“Come on,” Damen says. “I’ll buy you ice cream if you stop sulking.”
Nicaise doesn’t look away from the mirror. “I can’t eat ice cream, it’s got dairy in it.”
“Since when are you lactose intolerant?”
“I’m not lactose—” Nicaise stops. He’s irritated, huffing as he takes off the sweatshirt. His hair is a mess afterward. “I’m going vegan.”
Damen frowns. Lately, it feels like that’s the only expression he can manage. “You just ate fish,” he says, slowly, afraid that the world has changed and now Alaska rolls are vegan. “And I’m sure I can find you dairy-free ice cream if you want it.”
“I just want,” Nicaise says, and pauses. He mutters something under his breath Damen doesn’t catch and stuffs the sweatshirt into the bag again, uncaring of the wrinkles it’ll show later. “You need to get back to work.”
Damen does. “I don’t. Let me drive you home.”
“I’m going to a friend’s.”
“Which friend?”
Nicaise stares up at him. This annoyance isn’t cute or feigned, and any moment now he’ll snap at Damen, or storm out. Or both. “You don’t know them.”
“Then you’re not going to their house,” Damen says easily. Too easily, perhaps.
This is one of the only rules concerning Nicaise he and Laurent never fought about. The memory of those early days when Nicaise would disappear for hours taught them both that some battles couldn’t be avoided for the sake of a moment of peace and quiet.
Nicaise relaxes at Damen’s words. If it was all a test, it seems Damen has passed it. “Fine. I want to try the Patran brownie flavored ice cream at Boules.”
“That’s not vegan.”
Nicaise rolls his eyes at him as they exit the restroom. “I said I’m going vegan, not that I’m already vegan. It’s a transition, Damen.”
On the ride to Boules, Nicaise forces Damen to listen to his new favorite song. Damen can’t prove it, but he’s certain Nicaise snaps a picture of him reacting to the lyrics.
*
Halvik is coming out of the building just when Damen is about to ask Nicaise to buzz him in. She’s somehow more in shape than the last time Damen saw her. Her arms and thighs are so bulky and toned that staring at them makes Damen uncomfortable. She looks less like a woman than the last time they saw each other, despite the red lipstick and fur coat she’s wearing. That, above everything else, is what has Damen averting his eyes.
“Kid,” she says, holding the door open for him. She does not move an inch to let him through, and so Damen has to awkwardly hover. “Haven’t seen you in a while. You in trouble?”
“I...”
Halvik narrows her eyes. “Is it drugs? I know a good lawyer if you—”
“I’m a lawyer,” Damen says stupidly. Then, when he remembers what they’re talking about, he adds, “And no, no drugs. I’m fine.”
“Ah,” Halvik says. Her smile is knowing, conspiratory. “Debt it is then.”
“No, I’m not in trouble. I’m just stopping by. Getting some stuff.”
Halvik coughs into her gloved fist. It sounds a lot like cock, but Damen lets it slide.
They shift, Damen holding the door for her as she walks out after giving him a little wave. The lobby is warm, and empty, and so, so familiar.
He’s not strong enough to ride the elevator today. It’s too cramped, too known. He’s irrationally scared that he’ll look into the mirrors and see all the times he kissed Laurent in there.
The five-floor hike leaves Damen breathless. He’s been slacking lately—going to the gym only once a week, drinking too much beer, not eating enough protein—and by the time he’s made it to Laurent’s door, he feels like his heart is in his throat, pounding.
I’m outside, he texts Nicaise, who reads the message three seconds later. The reply is a bunch of emojis Damen has never seen. Then, at last, ring ring!!!!
Damen, being Damen, doesn’t think anything of it until it’s already too late. He touches the doorbell twice, gently, and waits, phone in hand, making a show of going through his Instagram feed.
He’s about to like Kyra’s latest bikini pic when the door opens.
Laurent says, without looking, “Did you forget your—”
Their eyes meet. It’s so painfully awkward Damen doesn’t know what to do, and so he does nothing but stare at Laurent. Laurent, who’s wearing the fluffy yellow robe with bunnies that Erasmus gifted him for his last birthday. Laurent, who has his hair in a blue scrunchie that matches his eyes.
Laurent, whom Damen has not seen in almost four months but somehow looks just as casually pretty as the day they met.
“What are you doing here?” Laurent says, and he sounds both angry and indifferent. A second later his face starts to turn a pasty shade of yellow that matches his robe. “Is Nicaise okay? Did something happen?”
“I think,” Damen says, slowly, “that he set this up.”
They stand there for a long minute, pretending that they aren’t openly staring at each other. Eventually, Laurent opens the door wider and disappears inside, which could be read as an invitation, but Damen doesn’t know anything anymore. He has a vague feeling that asking will only make things worse.
Gingerly, Damen steps into the place he called home for four years and closes the door behind him. Laurent hates air drafts.
The living room looks exactly the same, except for the new throw blanket on the couch. It’s mint-green and draws Damen’s eye like a beacon. No furniture has been rearranged, no walls repainted. It’s a relief, although Damen can’t explain to himself why.
Even the papers scattered all over the coffee table look familiar, Laurent’s handwriting in blood-red ink. You enjoy this too much, Damen had told him once as he watched Laurent mark a poor soul’s paper. Telling people they’re wrong should not be so rewarding.
But it is, Laurent had replied, laughing.
Real, present Laurent is in the kitchen, whispering vague ultimatums into his phone that quickly escalate into precise and detailed threats. When those do not seem to work, Laurent starts to say Nicaise’s name with such intensity Damen’s skin crawls.
“—here now,” Laurent says. His eyes flicker to Damen for a second and then fix, resolutely, on the stove. “No, Nicaise. Now means now. Not when the movie is over, not when you feel like coming home. Now .”
Damen waits until Laurent has ended the call to speak. “I’m only here for my things. Nicaise told me I forgot a box full of…” Shit, his brain supplies. “Stuff.”
Laurent is standing against the counter. His knuckles go white around the marble edge. “Did he call you?”
“No,” Damen says. Not knowing what to do with his hands, he shoves them deep into the pockets of his jeans. “He told me the other day when I picked him up from school.”
“You picked him up from school.”
“I didn’t plan it,” Damen says. “I was just going to drop off his present, but then he refused to try it on, and, well, we ended up at Sakae.”
Laurent rubs at his eyes until they’re red. “You can’t do that, Damianos.”
The absence of a nickname makes Damen itch for something. It doesn’t hurt, not really, but it leaves him feeling annoyed. You’re not being very grown-up about this, he thinks of saying and doesn’t.
“He’s sixteen. Don’t you think he should get a say in who he hangs out with?”
Laurent laughs. It’s all sharp edges. “Right, because hanging out with you is so normal. You know how he gets about—”
“I thought you didn’t like that word.”
“What word?”
“Normal,” Damen says. He sounds bitter even to his own ears. The look that flashes across Laurent’s face makes him feel good for only a second. “Don’t worry, I won’t do it again. As I said, I’m here for my stuff.”
“What stuff? There’s nothing here that’s yours.”
“I just thought,” Damen says, and pauses.
Laurent, who has never in his life let anything go, says, “You thought what? That I was trying to keep your things?”
“I don’t know, Laurent. It was just a mistake, there’s no need to bite my head off.”
Walking out of the kitchen with Laurent on his heels feels like a rehearsal of all the fights they have ever had. The kitchen was the only place they fought in at first. After a while, their arguments filled the entire room and leaked into the hallway, the living room, their bed. Towards the end, they fought in front of strangers and friends alike, on the street, at birthday parties. With Nicaise watching.
Fighting with Laurent is one of the many things Damen doesn’t miss.
He has almost reached the door when Laurent says, “I saw what you bought him.”
“Oh.” Damen stops walking. He turns around and finds Laurent staring at him, close enough to touch. “It fits him fine.”
Laurent’s eyes do not get any warmer. “It wasn’t necessary. He’s not your kid. You don’t owe him child support or gifts or—”
“Right,” Damen says dully. “Of course he isn’t. It’s not like I drove him to school for years, made him lunch, helped him with his math homework.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I think it is.”
Laurent presses his mouth into a thin, pale line. It looks like a scar. “He needs to understand you’re not coming back. If you take him out for lunch and buy him gifts he’s never going to get it.”
“I won’t do it again.”
Damen’s hand finds the door handle and closes tightly around it. He considers saying something hurtful or sarcastic, just because he knows Laurent will say something worse back. In the end, he pries the door open and slips outside without saying another word, the way he did last time.
The stairs are waiting for him.
*
That night Damen does something he hasn’t in months: he checks Laurent’s Instagram profile.
The bed in Nikandros’ guest room feels infinitely big and empty. Damen stretches on it, starfishing, and finds that the mattress has no end. He remembers the first thing he thought of when Nikandros showed him the room, back when Damen’s bag had been small and temporary. Just for a day or two, he had told Nikandros.
Damen had thought of Laurent and his hatred of baroque decoration, of Rococo furniture and paintings. Laurent would have liked this room, its bare white walls and grey blankets. I was a child of sumptuosity, Laurent had once told Damen. He’d grown up surrounded by fifty-year-old family portraits, doorknobs made of pure gold, and toys that were updated before he could get used to them. Damen had grown up that way too, except he hadn’t hated it.
Now Damen opens the app under the covers like a child hiding a game console from his parents. He types in Laurent’s username, so familiar the pads of his fingers move on autopilot, and pretends like the letters staring back at him don’t make his stomach cower inside his body.
Laurent only ever posted one picture with him. Their second anniversary, the happiest one, where Damen took him to Karthas and they drank alcohol-free cider on the sand. The picture is still up—their intertwined fingers on the hotel’s sheets, sunlight, and a fruit platter. It’s sandwiched between one of twelve-year-old Nicaise staring cross-eyed at the camera and another of a bouquet of flowers, all different shades of yellow.
Damen stares at the most recent one, posted six months ago. There’s Laurent, smiling with his arm around Ancel, who’s wearing a green facemask. Sleepover fun, the caption reads.
Damen remembers that day because they had a fight right before Laurent left for Berenger’s house, something about how food was supposed to go into one’s body instead of being left to rot in the fridge. Laurent had called him a fucking asshole.
“Fuck you,” Damen says out loud. In this empty bed, it feels both liberating and alienating. There’s no one asking him to be quiet anymore.
It’s not supposed to be this way, he thinks. It’s been four months. Surely by now, he should have stopped caring.
*
Nikandros comes out of the shower earlier today, already dressed and with his short braids tied back by an elastic leather band. He informs Damen that he’ll be gone the whole day, because, apparently, that’s what people do during the weekend. They disappear to have wild sex, hit the gym, and eat lemony oysters with expensive white wine. Damen wouldn’t know; his weekends before Laurent are nothing but a hazy, blurred memory.
Once Nikandros has left, Damen sits for a long time on the couch, debating whether or not he should turn on his laptop. He wants to do this properly. He wants to do it without anyone watching. The thought is ridiculous enough to startle a laugh out of him. He sounds, to himself, like a teen who’s about to look up porn and jerk off without having to be quiet for the first time.
Despite what Nicaise may think and say, Damen is not a baby boomer. His father was definitely one. Maybe Kastor can fit into that category as well, considering he’s nine years older than Damen but acts like a sixty-year-old man most of the time. Damen, on the other hand, has an Instagram account. He doesn’t post blurry selfies in dubious, badly lit restaurants. He doesn’t update his Facebook status every week like Hypermenestra, who likes to inform everyone with eyes and a decent internet connection that her grandson is the most intelligent baby in the country. If not the world. He’s had over thirty matches on Tinder too.
Looking something up online should be easy enough for him.
In the end, Damen gives in. He shifts closer to the coffee table and turns on his laptop, trying to keep from fidgeting. Three clicks later he’s staring at the new Google logo: a penguin with a funny hat. It hides behind the yellow O when the white cursor tries to touch it.
It’s national penguin day, Google informs him.
The search box remains empty for another five minutes. Damen doesn’t know what to type in—he already looked up how to get over ur ex quick two months ago—and so he finds himself dithering, fingers hovering over the keys like they’re simply there to caress them.
Simple is better. He types am i an asshole and hits enter before he can talk himself out of it. The first search result is an article about a man who ran a lady over with his car in Patras and drove off, which thankfully does not apply to Damen. The second search result takes him to Reddit.
It seems there’s a lot of people in the world undecided about their asshole-ness.
The page description reads: A catharsis for the frustrated moral philosopher in all of us, and a place to finally find out if you were wrong in an argument that's been bothering you. It’s the second part of the sentence that catches Damen’s attention. He has never cared about philosophy—remembers vaguely a time when he tried to understand Plato’s cavern story because Laurent was into it—but the itch to know if he’s right is a different matter altogether.
And this seems like the perfect place to get that itch scratched. By multiple strangers.
Damen creates an account. He knows what Reddit is because Nicaise used to read funny stories from the site out loud to them on Fridays, the three of them sprawled on the couch waiting for the pizza to arrive. Laurent would pretend not to find them funny, but the twitching of his nose always gave him away.
AITA for , he types and stops. For not wanting to buy his not-kid a pink sweatshirt with sequins? For speaking his mind around his ex-boyfriend’s friends? For sometimes wishing his ex-boyfriend drank wine and didn’t keep everything about his life a secret?
The title of his post ends up being misleading— AITA for this breakup ? —but Damen doesn’t care enough to change it before uploading it to the page. It’s long, but not long enough that no one will want to read it.
He keeps it basic: four years together, a kid that wasn’t their kid living with them, a sad and pitiful past Damen wasn’t aware of for a long time, their fights, and, lastly, how it seems like when asked to describe Damen, everyone’s first choice is ‘asshole’.
It’s not poetic or even articulate; Damen has never liked writing. But it does make him feel better to have it out of his system, his throat less tight already. He leans back on the couch and waits.
Eleven minutes later Damen’s phone buzzes with a new email. Feeling stupidly giddy, Damen taps on the link to read the first comment.
CaptainNoodles says nta but go to therapy dude lol