see you at the end

Dylan

Brynn stretches toward me, muttering something in her sleep, her bare limbs flopping onto me.

I slide my arms around her and exhale against her hair, which smells faintly like an elegantly perfumed coconut. I close my eyes and try to sleep, and as Brynn’s warm, soft body curls into me, I try to focus on that and not on paintings with geometric shapes and angles. Not on sexual light silhouettes and not on yacht cologne.

I tried not to think about it all weekend. I tried, and I surprised Brynn, getting in the shower with her, kissing a spot on her neck that she likes, standing behind her, her wet ass pressing against me. I tried when we were on the bed, both our bodies slippery, barely dried off, and I was inside her. I tried once more when her head tilted back and I saw an ivory neck with a gold chain. Her mauve acrylics dragged over my pecs and I was not successful.

In fact, I heard it in my head like a taunt.

You’re insatiable.

It was just the champagne. And nerves. Socially Awkward Penguin.

I’ve lied to Brynn before, but it’s been white lies. Silly. I lied to impress her on our first Internet date. I said I was a musician, but that wasn’t entirely true. I played piano in undergrad and grad school, majored in music, and I was going to write TV and film scores, but on our first date I was teaching elementary school music classes, giving little kids piano lessons on the side, and throwing pennies at six figures of college debt. I thought it was embarrassing. I thought musician would give me an edge, help me stand out from all the other guys vying for her attention on dating sites.

Turned out, my fibbing wouldn’t have mattered, because at first we didn’t have much chemistry. We said we’d be friends and we actually stayed friends, too, because we ended up having friends in common, which was typical in small-town Moneta. We had friends in common that liked to go to Smith Mountain Lake on hot weekends in July, have cookouts, ride WaveRunners, and belt out Jimmy Buffet karaoke at the Virginia Dare Marina. I’d see her at the lake and she’d see me. She’d say hi to my mom and to Dean. They’d say hi to her, they liked her, and they’d say that to me when she wasn’t around.

Then one day we were set up on a blind date and laughed when we saw it was with each other. It seemed kismet then, and so we gave it another chance. Two years after that I asked her to marry me and now here we are. Here we are in a year-long, going on two, engagement. Here we are in Washington, DC and she’s got the word Director in her title, working for the American History Museum, and we have this two-bedroom loft in Georgetown. It has upgraded appliances, vaulted ceilings, and assigned parking spaces in a parking garage. There’s a gym downstairs. There’s coffee shops and boutiques within walking distance.

Isn’t this the fucking American Dream?

My chest tightens with a pain, an ache, like the bone is being stretched. We’ve been here for a little over a month, but I’ve never really felt here until now. This seemed like some kind of interlude. Even signing the lease didn’t seal it in. Even packing up the U-Haul didn’t confirm it.

But I couldn’t tell Brynn to reject this opportunity just because it would have made things easier for me. She was wearing the gray-green gabardine of the National Park Service, knocking down wasp nests from Booker T. Washington’s birth cabin. She was hauling a power-washer in a golf cart to clean racial slurs off of his monument before Juneteenth. She was coming home sunburned, bee-stung, and with a mystifying optimism only she could have. She deserves to work for such a prestigious museum. I would’ve been a complete asshole if I hadn’t supported her.

But it isn’t the same outside the windows. It isn’t the sounds of Moneta, early morning birds and breezes. The Handy Mart isn’t just down the street, florescent lights over the gas pumps even when the place is closed, giving one false hope. A lazy, drunken weekend at the lake isn’t just fifteen minutes away, and my mom and Dean aren’t just a short drive down the road.

This is foreign, and there’s traffic, even at this heathenish hour, and distant sirens.

Maybe the bone in my chest is caving in, collapsing, pressing on my heart.

Brynn’s breath skims over it as her nose bumps against my chin. Her eyes slit open.

“You awake already?” She mumbles.

I brush a copper-penny wave from the corner of her lips. That bone is heavy, pressing inward, settling with resignation.

“I’m still asleep,” I reply.

***

Music in Society starts at 10:00am.

I decided to drive to Potomac Community College for the first week rather than risk the Metro. I end up in my office an hour before my class starts. I don’t know what to do with the time, so I fiddle around with the books on the shelf that Brynn and I brought in on Saturday. Then I make sure I have enough syllabuses for all thirty-three students on the roster, and after re-checking everything, making sure I’m prepared, I still have too much time to stew in my anxiety.

About ten till ten, I walk into class with everything and a travel mug of coffee in my hand, which I regret because it’s just going to make me feel more anxious. And I am when I see the number of students takes up about two and a half rows. The classroom is the auditorium kind with the desks arranged on ascending levels, but thankfully this one isn’t very big. A few of the students look up from phones and laptops when I walk in, some smile, some return to their phones and laptops.

I get set up with everything, hooking my laptop into the projector system, which projects the laptop screen onto a screen behind me. When I’m done, I think it’s time to start class but there’s still two minutes. I stack papers that don’t need to be stacked and just wait…awkwardly wait.

I take a look at the students and see most of them are young, probably right out of high school, but there’s a surprising amount that are older. My age and older. There’s a woman to my left with short, white hair and impeccable makeup who looks to be in her seventies. There’s a couple of men to my right that look like they might be in their forties or fifties. It’s an interesting mix, and I’m way out of my element.

I look at my watch again and see that it’s now show time.

“Morning everyone,” I say and people look up from their electronics. My stomach flutters with nerves but I try to ignore it. “I’m Mr. Atkins and I’ll be teaching Music in Society this semester.” I pull up a PowerPoint slide I added sort of last minute. It’s a picture of me behind the piano in grad school. “Just wanted to share a little bit about me. I got my B.A. and M.F.A in Music, focusing on piano composition and performance, at Shenandoah University. I also studied at the Conservatory and briefly performed as a concert pianist.” I pause there and note some general interest and smiles. It takes some of the edge off. “I’m also new here. To this area that is. I just moved here a little over a month ago with my fiancée from a little town in Virginia you’ve probably never heard of called Moneta.”

“Oh,” says the elderly lady. “I have! I have family out that way, in Huddleston. The Vineyards?”

I tell her that the name sounds familiar, but I don’t think I know them. Another woman, with messy hair and wearing red-framed glasses, asks if that’s out near Smith Mountain Lake, and I say that it is. One of the forty or fifty-something guys starts talking to her about it’s where they filmed the movie, What About Bob? and I have to insert myself into the conversation and bring us back on track.

But so far so good. No one seems to know that I actually have no idea what I’m doing or that I’m nervous as hell. The brief interest and conversation, however, helped with that a little bit.

I start introducing the course then, and get ready to hand out the syllabus, when one of the double doors to the classroom opens. Like clockwork, all heads, including mine, swivel to the right to see who the latecomer is. He ducks his head, shoulders hunched, clearly trying to slink up the steps quickly toward the back, so as not to draw more attention to himself. He slips down a row and chooses the last desk at the end, and when he sits he slumps down, obviously embarrassed.

So as not to embarrass him further, I turn my attention back to the class, pick up the stack of syllabuses, open my mouth to speak again, when I freeze. I look back at the latecomer.

And the latecomer is looking back at me. Looking back at me with wide eyes and pink-tinged cheeks.

It’s him.

Model Influencer.

You’re insatiable.

Him.

And even in an over-sized hoodie and track pants, looking thoroughly exhausted, and even with those wide eyes and pink-tinged cheeks, he looks like he belongs in a magazine. It’s incredible.

And it’s a shock.

Such a shock that the stack of syllabuses in my hands slip out and flutter to the floor. There’s a second that passes where I don’t register what I’ve just done. Then a middle aged woman with big earrings and long confetti-looking nails gets up from the front row and starts snatching up scattered pages. I snap out of it and kneel down to help.

I mutter something to her and to the class, I don’t know what, about being sorry or excuse me. I try not to make eye contact with anyone as I hand out the syllabus.

“My office hours are listed on the top,” I say. “I’m down the hall to the right, 122B…and um…”

I lose my train of thought for a second. I try again. “If you still need to get the textbook,” I say. “there’s still a few copies in the bookstore, and uh…”

I lose my train of thought again.

Most of the students are looking at the syllabus. Some are looking at me. My right side, where Leander Garrison sits, feels hot. Hot like there’s a space heater or coals on that side, heating my skin, making one armpit sweat, making one hand clammy. I walk to the left side of the room. Someone raises their hand and their face is a blur. I’m relieved to answer their question, although I’m only partly paying attention to what it is.

There’s a few more questions after that, none of them really getting my full attention or comprehension, but the answers I give seem to be adequate because no one asks anything further.

There’s a lull.

I forget what else I was going to say or do.

I’ve forgotten how to think at all apparently.

So, I dismiss class early.

We’re not going to delve into the text until Wednesday anyway, and now that I’ve been so thrown off, so jostled that I can’t focus anymore, I’d like to save myself anymore embarrassment.

And now people are gathering up their things and leaving, the What About Bob? guy chatting up the ladies as they exit the classroom.

And now Leander Garrison is coming over to me.

I busy myself with unhooking the laptop from the podium and stacking up the extra syllabuses. I try to think of what I should say to him.

I’m sorry I just walked off like that…

I wasn’t trying to be rude…

It was late and I needed to get going…

Or…

You were right. I am insatiable.

“Hi,” he says simply.

“Hi,” I say simply.

He hesitates for a second. His eyes are a little puffy, as if he hasn’t had much sleep. Not that it makes much of a difference. He’s wearing rings again, gold, a thick one around the thumb of his left hand. My eyes are drawn there because there’s a pattern on it, a symbol I’ve seen before. The symbol for male linked to another symbol for male.

My pulse jumps in my neck.

He’s looking at me warily now. I pull my gaze away from the ring. I sit on the edge of the desk as casually as I can and before I can stop myself, I say, “That was your painting.”

A slow smile spreads across his face.

I feel myself smiling too. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

He shrugs. “Because you wouldn’t have told me what you really thought.”

I consider that, and it’s true.

“How did you find out it was mine?” He asks quietly. My eyes are drawn to that gold ring again because he’s twisting it, idly, around his thumb.

“Facebook,” I reply. “I wanted to…find out who created that light thing, and I saw you. And your painting.”

He regards me for a moment. It must be crossing his mind right now—what I saw in the light thing and his question. A question I hope that he doesn’t follow up on right now.

“You’re very talented, by the way,” I say before he can. “I probably would have told you that, if you’d mentioned it was yours.”

He huffs out a laugh. “Thanks, but no one’s bought it yet. So, I don’t know if I’d call myself talented.”

My gaze flicks to his hands again. He’s still twisting that ring around his thumb, slowly tugging on it, pulling it to the tip of his thumb then pushing it back down to the base. My blood vessels dilate, pulsing and pumping crimson away from my hands and feet and toward the organ that least needs it right now.

I get up from the desk abruptly, something close to panic thumping in my chest. I grab my laptop, travel mug, and all the papers. “Um. We should go ahead and clear out for the next class.”

He nods and walks alongside me out of the classroom and into the hall, where we both sort of linger until I gesture for him to walk with me to my office.

“I didn’t see a price on your painting,” I say.

He looks at me sidelong, smirking. “It’s negotiable. I guess. If someone is interested. Are you?”

I’m able to distract from my flushing face by unlocking my office door. “Um. I don’t really—I wouldn’t have the space for something that big. I mean, I like it and all, but—”

“I was joking,” he says, leaning against the door frame as I put my things down on the desk.

I see he’s messing with that ring again, and he glances around my closet-sized office.

“Please,” I gesture to one of the chairs Brynn and I bought at Target. “You can come in. Have a seat.”

He hesitates for a second, then shakes his head. “Actually I need to get going.” He adjusts his backpack. He smiles. “Good to see you, though. And I’ll see you again Wednesday.”

“Right. Wednesday.”

I give him a nod and a wave as he walks off. I sit down at my desk and pull the roster in front of me.

There he is.

Garrison, Leander.

I didn’t even notice when I’d skimmed the list earlier. What are the odds?

A handful of minutes pass. My laptop is open in front of me, there are ten new emails in my inbox, a couple look important. My phone I’d put on silent has a new text across the screen from Brynn, and there’s a new class to prepare for tomorrow.

And yet, all I can do is just sit here.

Sit here as if I am recovering. Sit here and stare at where Leander Garrison was standing and think about that ring on this thumb. Impulsively, I bring up the browser on my laptop. I search for the symbol on Leander’s ring and confirm what I already knew.

It means he’s gay.

I quickly close the browser, push the laptop away, turn it to the side, as if brushing it off, pushing what just happened away from me, and I reach for my phone to read the text from Brynn.

How’s the first day??

I start typing back a response, telling her it’s been good so far, the students seem okay. Then I add that she won’t believe this, but the guy from the gallery, the one talking to me, she just won’t believe it, but he’s one of my students.

Isn’t that crazy?

And I know she’ll agree. She’ll text back that it is crazy and wow, what a small world, what a coincidence, what a random thing to happen, and she’ll be right.

But I clear all the text that I typed.

I type another message. One more concise and general.

So far so good!

***

Leander

Dylan Atkins.

So that’s his name.

Or rather, Mr. Atkins. Mr. Dylan Atkins, M.F.A.

I see it at the top of the syllabus, and it fits him. The Dylan is just a little bit edgy, like maybe he had hippie parents or wannabe hippie parents, who wanted to give their son a name that wasn’t common, but not completely ridiculous. But the Atkins isn’t so edgy. The Atkins is clean, and neat, and three square meals a day.

I can see it in him. I can see it in how he doesn’t shave his face smooth. He leaves some scruff behind, accentuating his jaw and a faint cleft in his chin. So there’s the edginess.

I can see it in the clothes he wears—a button-up tucked into khakis or slacks. I peeped a white tee under the button-up today. It was plaid and long-sleeved. That part is the three square meals a day.

He’s cookie-cutter, blends in, and looks like any basic white dude living out in the suburbs.

So, I don’t know what it is about him then.

I think about it as I park myself and my laptop in the campus dining area to kill some time. The smells of Subway and Au Bon Pain fill the air, and I debate on getting a coffee.

And of course—of fucking course—he just so happens to be teaching the class.

And I happened to be late to said class on the very first day.

That isn’t a complaint necessarily. Just unexpected. Also unexpected is that he’s a pianist. The image of him behind a piano was on the screen when I tried to duck into the classroom. His eyes were closed in the picture, as if he’d been super into whatever he was playing. I picture it being something classical and composed by some dude in a powdered wig. Something slow and lazy; something you’d listen to on a rainy day while reading a classic novel.

My phone dings. I look at it. It’s a text from Alex.

Philly this weekend?

I sigh. I start to text Alex back but he sends another one:

La bohème Sat. @ 8 Opera Philadelphia

He quickly follows that one up with a link. I tap on it.

I’ve got a good excuse to say no. I’m going to have a fuck-ton of studying and reading to do. It takes me longer than most people to do those things, so I can’t really run off to operas in Philadelphia on a whim now.

I slump down in the chair I’m sitting in. But it’s an escape at least. It’s a place to be where I don’t have to deal with my parents or Lionel’s weird notes.

I text Alex back.

Sure.

When my phone chimes again, I expect it to be Alex again, but it isn’t. It’s my mom:

Please come home today. Your father’s in trouble.