I smile up at my ceiling.
"We're good," I say.
And then maybe the weirdest thing of all happens, and life is... normal. Sure, I'm dating someone who was shirtless on the cover of Rolling Stone, but I go to class, do my homework, and correct bad undergraduate essays until I think my eyes might bleed. Finals start in a few weeks, and even though I know I'm already pretty prepared and I'll be fine, I start worrying anyway.
Well, also, my parents need a place to live, and I still haven't told Gavin the whole truth.
And, some of my fellow students have started getting called for job interviews and I haven't. It's only one or two, but it still hurts. I wanted to be the first person called, at the top of every firm's list.
So it's not like my life is stress-free, but it's good.
We do normal couple stuff. I take him to a loud, crowded Oaxacan restaurant where we stuff our faces with mole, listen to a band play and no one even gives him a second glance. We go see a black-and-white movie at Grauman's Egyptian Theater and split a massive bucket of popcorn. I take him hiking in Griffith Park, up to the Observatory, where you can see practically all of L.A., and I point the city out to him and we stand there, looking over the Los Angeles basin, his arms around me and his chin on top of my head.
"You know I didn't like it here at first?" he says.
"And now?"
"I think I'm coming around."
I lean back against him. There are planes coming in to land at LAX, flying east to west, and I watch once as it lowers across the sky.
"Why?"
"Guess," he says, and kisses the top of my head.
A few girls in their early twenties look over at us, eyes narrowed in an is-that-a-famous-person expression, but they look away.
We spend a lot of nights at my place. I get used to studying while he lounges on my bed, headphones on, and reads. He starts with the books I borrowed about addiction, but moves onto the novels on my bookshelves. It's oddly relaxing and kind of intimate in a weird way, sitting together in silence for hours.
He stays over a lot, though I've still never been to his house. But all my school stuff is here, not there, so it really makes sense - besides, it hasn't even been two weeks.
My parents don't find a place. I'm on the phone with them every other day, with my sister, trying to figure out a plan. I can't believe this is happening - there are so many apartments in Los Angeles, how can we not find one?
But we can't. Not that they can afford. I start searching for apartments when Gavin's not around, doubling down on my determination not to tell him. I don't know why. Pride, probably.
The next Thursday I've got a test - cruel this close to finals, but not surprising - and then a paper due Friday, so I don't see much of Gavin for a few days. I feel bad, but this is temporary, and besides, he'll still be there this weekend.
Wednesday night at eight there's a loud knock on my door, and I jump in my chair, tearing my headphones off. My brain runs through all the bad scenarios that could be happening - landlord didn't get my rent check and is evicting me, police are here to tell me someone's dead, burglars, rapists - but when I look through the peephole, I see Gavin's grinning face.
He holds up a plastic bag.
I sigh and open the door, partly annoyed and partly thrilled that he's here. It's not that I didn't want to see him. Not at all. He's just a distraction, no matter how nice.
"You do need to eat," he says. "You like Thai, right?"
He looks over my shoulder and his eyes land on the jar of peanut butter, spoon stuck inside, sitting on my desk.
The bag he's holding smells amazing.
"All right, fine, you can come in," I say, smiling.
"Twenty minutes and I'm gone," he says, bending to kiss me. "I just wanted to see you and thought maybe I could barter for entry."
His eyes crawl down my body, and instantly, I heat up, thinking about exactly which kind of entry I'd like to give him.
We eat on the couch, because I only have one chair and no table that isn't my desk, currently strewn with notes, books, and my laptop. He explains why Led Zeppelin were geniuses and I go into the finer points of asylum law.
Before I know it, we're finished, he's throwing away empty containers and putting the leftovers in my fridge, and I'm sitting on my couch in pajama pants and an old t-shirt while a famous rock star is in my apartment.
I grab him and pull him back down to me.
"You going already?" I ask.
"It's been twenty-five minutes," he points out, even as he grabs my ass. "I did promise twenty and I don't want to overstay my welcome."
His lips taste like lemongrass, but mine probably do too. He's already hard as a rock and just his presence in my apartment has me aching and wet, so before I know it we're pulling each other's clothes off, he's grabbed a condom from my drawer, and I'm riding him hard and fast on my couch.
I come shouting.
When we finish, I stay half on his lap, leaning against him, and as pleasant and peaceful as the moment is, the test tomorrow starts creeping back into my brain.
"You can stay if you want, but I need to get back to work," I say, tracing a tattoo on his chest.
Gavin just laughs.
"I honestly just meant to bring you dinner," he says. "I had every intention of leaving afterward and just having a wank at home."
I laugh.
"I didn't mind that particular distraction," I say. "I just have some more studying to do."
He kisses me, then untangles himself and stands, picking his pants up off the floor.
"You study," he says. "I'll see you Friday. I've got a surprise."
"What's the surprise?" I ask, still naked on the couch.
He buttons his pants, then picks up his shirt. Even though I'm spent I can't help but enjoy the view, the long, hard muscles in his body, the easy, confident way he moves.
"It's a surprise," he says, pulling the shirt on. "Pick you up at five. Pack an overnight bag."
"An overnight-"
He kisses me.
"Surprise," he says, grinning. "Friday."
He lets himself out.
35
Gavin
I spend the day Friday alone and working on the album. I've got the phone off, Liam's somewhere else and has been well-behaved for the past few days to boot.
More and more over the past few weeks, I've been fiddling around here and there, recording bits and pieces, melody and lyrics and bridges, but now I sit down in the spare room I'm using as shitty studio and work on putting things together.
It's not easy. I still spend hours working on chords and melodies, and there's the underlying sense that what I'm playing isn't always what's in my head and I don't quite know how to get it there, but all that's normal.
But I'm no longer stunted. I don't just pick up a guitar and have my mind go blank, or worse, avoid instruments altogether as I did for months. By the time I leave to go pick up Marisol, I've got the demos of two songs written and recorded on the ancient tape recorder I still prefer to anything digital, another few tapes filled with snippets of nonsense, half-sung lyrics.
I'm relieved, more than anything, because what I've feared most all along isn't true.
It wasn't junkie Gavin writing the songs. It was just Gavin.
When I get to Marisol's place she's out on the front steps, wearing a dress, sandals, sunglasses, and waiting with an overnight bag. It still irks me that I can't pick her up properly by knocking on her apartment door, but in nearly a month I've never once found a parking spot within a half mile of her building. If I'm coming over the spend the night I've started simply taking an Uber.
But I do double park, open her door for her, and give her arse a nice squeeze hello.
"How was your test?" I ask, putting the car into gear and listening to the engine growl.
"I think it went well," she says, exhaling and leaning her head against the headrest. "There were no surprises, and that's always good. I might have flubbed the essay a little, but I don't think it was too bad."
She turns toward me.
"How was your day?" she asks.
I tell her about finally working again, that I feel good about this album for the first time in a long time. I explain song structure and she tells me about how Disney more or less controls law in the United States. Then we're on the freeway, heading west, sun shades flipped down.
"So we're not going to your house," she says.
Lately she's been ribbing me that I'm a celebrity with a beautiful house and yet we spend all our time in her tiny flat. It's not exactly true - I've only been there a handful of times, and always because that's just what made sense - but it makes me uneasy, because I know I've not got long before my reticence to bring her home gets suspicious.
I need to get Liam out, but he's been all right the past few days and I'd hate to fuck him up again.
"You'll like this much better than my house," I say. "Besides which, you're in for a massive disappointment when I do finally let you in because it's not the Xanadu you're picturing."
"Is this your way of telling me you live in a basement apartment with four other guys or something?" she asks.