something a whale would drink.”
I’d taken this as a good sign: him wanting something, expressing wanting something. He’d spent the last month in his room wanting nothing but quiet and to sleep, or maybe his ex-girlfriend back, though we mostly didn’t talk about that part.
“The ocean isn’t any color,” I’d said. “It’s just water.”
“Then like the bottom of the ocean if somebody dumped a whole bunch of blue food coloring in it.”
I bought the bleach and a bottle of dye that looked like ink. I also got a bag of Swedish Fish, because that was our favorite candy, and it worked with the whole ocean theme. We were both really into the ocean back then.
I put the bleach on his hair while he sat on the chair. I had to lean in to do it, and that made my heart pound, and then I felt guilty for its pounding, because it was messed up to feel that way about him and be that close without him knowing. But I’ll tell him soon, I promised myself. I will tell him, and it won’t be a secret anymore.
The bleach burned our eyes and our noses as it turned his hair from black to coppery gold, and then from coppery gold to almost white. We drank whisky and ate the candy and watched part six of the eight-part ocean documentary series we’d been working our way through on his laptop. This episode was about whales and how sometimes a whale will go years in between seeing any other whales. It just floats along down there in the dark, all alone. “Well, that doesn’t sound so bad,” Xavier said. But I knew he didn’t mean it.
After the bleach, I put on the dye. Xavier had already thrown away the plastic gloves, and so I got the blue all over my hands, and then it wouldn’t come off. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” he said when he saw what had happened. But he was laughing, which meant it was worth it.
We poured more whisky into our mugs and clinked them.
The buzzer on my phone went off, it was time to rinse. “I’ll get in the shower,” Xavier said. I got up and started to leave the bathroom, and he said, “No, just turn around.” But it felt very wrong to be in there while he was taking his clothes off, considering, even if I wasn’t looking.
“I’ll go wait in your room,” I said. “So the steam won’t mess up my hair.” The water was already on, and loud.
And he shouted, “Since when do you care about steam on your hair?”
“People change!” I shouted back.
I sat on his bed and stared down at my blue hands and decided enough was enough was enough was enough. I wouldn’t just tell him soon, I would tell him tonight. But how would I say it? I’d tried to imagine a million times, but had never quite come up with the words. Xavier, I know this might sound like it’s coming out of nowhere, but . . . or Xavier, you know how I always say I don’t want to date anyone, well, the thing is . . . Maybe it would be better not to plan. Maybe it would be better to just be brave: take a deep breath, open my mouth, and let my heart climb right out of it.
A few minutes later he came into his room in a towel, and I pretended to need to use the bathroom. When I got back he was standing there, dressed.
“What do you think?” he said. His hair hung in thick wet clumps. The blue was way lighter than it was supposed to be, like jeans that had been washed a thousand times. “I haven’t even looked yet,” he said. “I waited for you.”
He bit his lip and opened his eyes wide, a caricature of a nervous person waiting for a reaction. My face grew hot – he was beautiful. How strange to remember that I actually used to find him very ordinary looking. It seemed impossible to me now.
“Oh God, your expression. Is it bad? It’s bad.” He went over to the mirror. Xavier was not someone who looked in the mirror a lot. It was possible he hadn’t even seen himself in a month.
“No, it’s good,” I said.
He ran his hands through his hair, frowned, smiled, made a duck face, made a fish face. “Are you sure?” he said.
“Stop fishing,” I said. “That’s a command and also an ocean joke.”
He grinned. “I guess it’s time to be a functional human being and go out somewhere?” he said. “Like you’ve been saying all along? For my, like, birthday or something?”
It was the first time he had wanted to go out in a month.
He poured some more whisky into one of the mugs I’d made for him at the print-and-copy shop where I worked. This one had a picture of him holding a mug with a picture of him holding a mug with a picture of him holding a mug on it.
I thought maybe he was pouring too much whisky, considering. “Don’t worry,” he said, watching me watching him. “I promise this is okay.” He motioned to the whisky. “I’m really not going crazy like that anymore.”
It was almost 8:30. Through the window, the sun was setting and the sky was pink and red. “Well, we should at least have some snacks if we’re going to drink like this,” I said.
I went to his kitchen and grabbed some string cheese and pita chips. I told him to open the chips and cheeses and eat them, and we made a game of me directing him around. “Pull off a string. Put it in your mouth. Chew, chew, chew,” I said. “Now swallow.”
“Isn’t it weird, because string cheese is not really string and not really cheese and yet somehow is both?” he said.
“Save it for open-mic night, pal,” I said. “And keep eating.”
He opened up the pita chips. “Pita chips, neither pita nor chip!” he said.
I rolled my eyes. “Shoe yourself,” I said. “Become shod.” And I pointed to his Converse on the floor.
“Are you going to make all my decisions for me tonight?” he said.
“We’ll see,” I said.
“About time someone reasonable took over.”
We had another gulp of whisky each, then poured the rest into an empty Cherry Coke bottle, and it was time to go.
We walked to the train station. “Left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot,” I said. We passed the bottle back and forth. The air outside was warm and soft. It was dark now.
The platform was mostly empty. Xavier and I leaned up against the wall. Our arms were touching. Now kiss me, I thought, but didn’t say it.
The train pulled up, we got on. We drank and drank while the trees rushed by outside. An old man was glaring at us over the top of his newspaper, and staring at my blue hands, which I’d forgotten about. Because I was a little bit drunk, I held my hands up like claws and bared my teeth at him. The man just shook his head.
“Thanks for being the world’s best friend,” Xavier said. “I love you.”
I turned toward the window. I felt my face getting hot. “I didn’t say speak,” I said.
He clamped his hand over his mouth.
“That’s more like it.”
But what I was thinking about was the last time he’d told me he loved me, eleven days before. And how different that I-love-you had sounded.
I’d gone over it in my head so many times. It was the sort of thing you make your best friend talk about for hours and hours forever, except I couldn’t because he was the only best friend I had. The only friend at all, really. We’d been at his house, sitting next to each other on his bed, watching part two of the ocean series. This one was about all the very crazy things down there, way at the bottom – creatures that were nothing but jagged, gaping mouths, worms that could turn themselves inside out, fish that mated by dissolving their bodies into each other.
We were drinking that night, too, but only a little, and Xavier seemed drunker than it made sense for him to be. Our legs were touching on the bed and for