The Thing I Didn't Know I Didn't Know (Russel Middlebrook: The Futon Years Book 1) (13 page)

"Oh," she said. "Yeah."

"Well, I hate to drop this on you like this." Sadly, I didn't actually hate it all, but I was determined not to feel any actual joy about it. "I just figured it was something you should know."

Min didn't say anything. Outside the boat, the water sloshed. The waves seemed particularly rough tonight, probably from all the boats trying to get home.

"Are you going to break up with him?" I said. As soon as I said it, I regretted it. It sounded way too eager. Besides, it was none of my business anyway.

"I don't know."

I just kept staring.

"It's complicated," Min said.

"Complicated? He's cheating on you. Trust me, this was no peck on the cheek."

Min twisted on her bed. "I'll definitely talk to him."

"Min?" I said.

The lamp on her nightstand flickered. Were we going to lose power? Min looked over at the bulb.

"What's going on?" I asked.

"Why do you think something's going on?" She still wasn't looking at me.

"Well, for one thing, you never told me you were seeing Trai in the first place."

"Yeah, sorry," Min said. "I just knew you don't like him."

"And now you don't seem very upset by what I just told you."

"I
am
upset. I'll talk to him. Thanks. I really appreciate your telling me."

I didn't leave the doorway, just kept looking at her.

"Do you and Trai have an open relationship?" I asked. This is what Dan Savage was always going on about—what Felicks and I had talked about at dinner.

"No," Min said tightly.

"So why aren't you mad?" Where was the shrieking and the throwing of vases—or at least the Min-equivalent? A confident dismissal followed by a thorough un-friending?

"I am," Min said. "I'm really upset. I am."

I'd seen Min upset before, and this wasn't it.

Okay
, I thought,
now I have something else to add to my bullet-point list of things not to celebrate this Fourth of July:

* Not just one, but two lunatic roommates.

*   *   *

As I was getting ready for bed that night, I got a text from Kevin.

Hey there, wanna come to dinner at Colin's and my place?             

I stared at the text on my phone for about ten minutes.

My perfect ex who I wanted to get back together with but who didn't want me anymore was inviting me over to his place for dinner with his probably-just-as-perfect new boyfriend? Once again, this had disaster written all over it.

But if Min could be so completely blasé about Trai seeing Lena, I guess I could do the same with Kevin. So I sent a text back to him saying, Yeah, I'd love to come.

CHAPTER TEN

So I'd been invited to dinner at the apartment of my ex-boyfriend and his new boyfriend. I know I'm making my life sound like all I ever do is go to dinners and parties, which is just so not true. Most of my life is actually spent watching little kids pee in Green Lake, or refilling the quinoa bin at Bake—no lie. But nothing interesting ever happens at those places (except the things I've already told you). For better or for worse, dinners and parties are usually where the action is.

This particular dinner with Kevin and Colin? Beforehand, it seemed both wonderfully civilized and absolutely terrifying. What if I burst into tears in the middle of the soup course? What if they casually brought up the idea of a three-way during the entree? What if Colin challenged me to a duel during dessert?

Basically, I had absolutely no idea what to expect. I just had the unsettling feeling that, as usual,
something
was going to happen.

It took place the very next night, Saturday. From Gunnar's houseboat, I took the SLUT over to Belltown, which is the part of Seattle where Kevin and Colin live. (SLUT stands for South Lake Union Trolley which—true story—is what the city referred to it as right after the train opened. Naturally, once they realized what acronym they were accidentally spelling out, they immediately renamed it the South Lake Union Streetcar. But the first name stuck and now people still mostly just refer to it as the SLUT.)

Kevin and Colin lived in a nice new building—so nice that I was sort of scared to see the inside. True, I live in a houseboat on Lake Union, just about the hippest place a person can live in Seattle, but that's only because I happen to have a rich best friend who doesn't mind my freeloading off him, not because of anything I've done. In other words, if I tried to use it to trump their posh Belltown apartment, there was a good chance I'd end up looking ridiculous.

They buzzed me in, and I rode up to the twelfth floor. The elevator smelled like lavender, and I had this annoyed feeling that it was some kind of pretentious new "ambiance" service—like how buildings used to play canned music in their elevators, now they literally pumped different fragrances into them. Hell, maybe they changed it every day—cinnamon one day, lilacs the next.

The door to Kevin and Colin's apartment was already open a little when I reached it, but I knocked anyway.

"Hello?" I said, pushing the door open farther. "It's me." As if they didn't know that, given that they'd buzzed me in only five minutes earlier.

Kevin stepped into the end of the long hallway. "Russel! Come on in." He still had the same impish smile that I remembered so well—so damn mysterious that it would've stumped even Leonardo da Vinci.

"Wow, this is a great place," I said, before I'd even had a chance to register what I was seeing. But then the images of the apartment in front of me finally reached my brain. It was nice, but not so nice that I wanted to slit my wrists. It was sleek and clean, and the furniture was trendy—mostly glass and leather, neither Ikea nor Pier One, but probably from one of the condo specialty shops in Pioneer Square. Still, it was small, almost as small as the front room of Gunnar's houseboat, but it didn't have a good reason to be so compact, so it
felt
more confined. It had a view, but not of anything interesting, like the Space Needle or Elliott Bay. It mostly just looked out on the other nearby apartment buildings.

And geez, that entry hallway sure was long.

Finally, I came to the end where Kevin was waiting. I wasn't sure whether to hug him or not. We'd hugged before, at Uwajimaya, right? But he didn't make a move toward me, didn't open his arms or anything, and I didn't exactly want to throw myself at him, so instead I sort of walked right by him, officially stepping out into the main room.

"It really is a great apartment," I said, totally repeating myself.

"Can I get you something to drink?" Kevin said. "A beer? Wine?"

"Sure," I said.

"Which?"

I was about to ask for a whiskey sour when I realized that hadn't been one of the options. So instead I said, "Maybe just a glass of ice water?"

I turned and looked back into the kitchen, which was sort of recessed from the main room.

And that's when I saw Colin. He was cooking dinner. Something sizzled on the stove, and I smelled...curry? Or was it cumin? And what exactly is the damn difference? Colin was slicing avocados.

He was looking right at me, but not smiling. I didn't smile either, just sort of stared at him.

"Russel?" Kevin said, wrestling with the ice machine, getting me my water. "This is Colin. Colin, Russel."

"Hi," Colin said, still not smiling.

But I didn't answer. It was like I
couldn't
answer. I was struck dumb.

You know how some people look better
in
clothes—how the material just sort of hangs off them hinting at the great things underneath, but also covering all their flaws? And you know how some people look better
out of
clothes—how they have some breathtaking attribute, like great arms or a huge dick that they'd be stupid to cover up with material?

Then there are people like Colin where that's a stupid choice, because you just know that he looks as incredible in clothes, with the material falling perfectly off him, as he does out of them, with his great arms and huge dick.

Kevin is hot, and while I was hoping that Colin looked like something that lived under a bridge, I was fully expecting him to be hot too. But I expected him to be ordinary-hot, like Kevin or Felicks. I didn't expect him to be godlike-hot, like Montgomery Clift in his early movies or Matt Bomer now. I'd like to be able to say he was
too
hot—that he was too perfect, that he was plastic, or fake, or generic, or something like that. But I can't say that, because he was just too stunningly handsome.

"I live in a houseboat on Lake Union!" I said.

No one said anything, which made sense, since it was an incredibly stupid thing to say. Colin kept staring at me, not smiling, and Kevin stared at me too, still standing at the refrigerator. For a second, the trickle of water from the ice machine made me think I was peeing my pants.

"But this place is even better," I said, salvaging the moment somewhat (and also heading off any talk of how I was able to afford living in a houseboat on Lake Union). "I mean, I love this location—so close to downtown, but not right in the thick of things."

"Yeah," Kevin said, handing me my water. "We love it. It's close to Colin's school and my work."

"Oh, right," I said. "Amazon."

"Yeah," he said, like he had something to apologize for, which I guess he did since half the city worked there. And because they're, you know, Amazon.

"Do you like it?" I said. "I don't think I asked you that."

"It pays well, but the hours are crazy."

"What do you do?" Colin asked, mashing the avocados. He was making fresh guacamole.

"Oh," I said, stalling for time, trying to think of some way to make my jobs sound more impressive than they are. "Well, I have two jobs. I work as a lifeguard out at Green Lake. And in this bakery over in U Village."

"Ah." Colin didn't even nod, just squeezed limes into the avocados.

"Where do you go to school?" I asked him.

"Seattle University. Law school."

This told me something important about Colin. I said before that everyone my age in Seattle either has Unstoppable Career Drive or Passionate Aimlessness—well, everyone except me. If Colin was in law school and Kevin was killing himself at Amazon, that meant they both had Unstoppable Career Drive. So it made sense that they were together.

"That must keep you pretty busy," I said.

"Yeah," he said. Then he thought for a second. "Well, not that busy. We go sailing a lot."

"Sailing?"

"Yeah. I have a sailboat. We keep it in a marina on Lake Union. We're out there all the time. Hey, if you live on a houseboat, you've probably seen us."

Remember when I said I wondered who was out sailing on Lake Union on a Thursday night? Well, now I knew. Anyway, I'd been wrong about Colin. He wasn't like everyone else in Seattle in their twenties, with
either
Unstoppable Career Drive
or
Passionate Aimlessness. He was the one guy in the city who had both.

In other words, he was the exact opposite of me.

*   *   *

Dinner was chicken tacos in soft corn tortillas with Mexican rice—and fresh guacamole. As much as I would like to be able to report it was terrible, it wasn't.

"How did you guys meet anyway?" I asked them as we ate.

"In school," Kevin said. He'd gone to UC Irvine.

"We were both on the rugby team," Colin said, exchanging a wry little grin with Kevin that I was certain had to do with them regularly soaping each other up in the gym showers.

What the hell
was
rugby anyway? I knew it wasn't that game with the balls and pins. Cricket? And it wasn't polo, the one with the mallets. Suddenly I realized there was this whole game I'd been hearing about all my life, and I had no idea what it was or how to play it. So I had no idea what to say about it.

So I said, "This is really good. Is this curry or cumin in the chicken?"

"Both," Colin said.

"What's the difference anyway?"

"Well, cumin is a spice. Curry is a mix of different spices—including cumin."

"Ah," I said. "Well, it's good."

And then the conversation came to screeching halt. Something smelled like lavender, and then I realized it was me, from the elevator.

"So, Russel," Colin said. "Kevin tells me you're a pretty good baseball player."

I looked at Kevin, who looked a little surprised that Colin had brought that up.

"No," I said. "I mean, I played in high school for about half a semester. But I wasn't ever very good. Not like Kevin."

"Yeah, you were," Kevin said, not really selling it.

"Do you like Amazon?" I asked Kevin.

"Well, it pays well," he said. "But the hours are crazy."

There was a pause when I think we all three realized at the same time that this is exactly what I'd asked Kevin before, and that he'd given me exactly the same answer. On the other hand, it meant that I wasn't necessarily the only one nervous here.

This dinner was rapidly crashing and burning. I think we all realized that at the same time too.

"So tell us, Russel," Colin said. "What do you do for fun?"

"Huh?" I said. "Oh, I don't know. Mostly just hang out."

Colin nodded like I'd actually said something interesting.

"Hey," Kevin said, "remember when Joel Long super-glued all the computer mice to the desks? I thought Valdez was going to have a heart attack."

Stories from high school?
I thought. Had we really sunk that low?

But I laughed. "Oh, yeah."

"I wonder whatever happened to Valdez."

"He had a heart attack. He's dead."

"Really? Oh, God, now I feel like an asshole."

"No, sorry, I'm just bullshitting you."

Kevin laughed. "It's all good."

Colin smiled, but that's about it.

"Seriously, Russel," he said. "What's your big thing?"

My "big thing"? I wasn't sure I had one. And what was this business of Colin calling me by my name over and over? Most people didn't do that, not in everyday conversation. Was this some sort of "alpha male" thing—some way he was trying to gain dominance over me? Or maybe I was just reading into it again. I was definitely predisposed to not liking Colin.

"Well," I said. "Last week, I went on this search for Bigfoot. We didn't see him, but I guess they did find a partial footprint." I explained a little bit about the expedition. I even mentioned the Bigfoot blimp with thermal-imagining, and the Kickstarter campaign.

"Bigfoot, huh?" Colin said, smirking, totally judging these people he'd never met. "How long have you been into that?"

"Well, it's not really me," I said. "It's my housemate Gunnar. He gets involved with a lot of crazy stuff."

"Good ol' Gunnar," Kevin said, smiling. He knew Gunnar from high school. "How is he?"

"Oh, Gunnar is Gunnar. He's actually rich now." I told them about
Singing Dog
, but I left out the part about that being the reason I was able to live in a houseboat on Lake Union. "That's how he's able to pay for these projects of his, like looking for Bigfoot."

"This Gunnar sounds like a real character," Colin said, and I didn't miss the subtext:
Is there anything interesting about
you?              

"What about Min?" Kevin asked.

"Oh, she's working on her PhD, of course."

"Of course!" Kevin said.

"Physics. I guess she and her friends have figured out a way to encrypt information using quantum physics, not mathematic logarithms."