Single Player (23 page)

Matthew was startled by the hot wave of anger and shame in his stomach.

Silas continued. “It's okay to be afraid of failure. My therapist says that the root of—”

“I don't give a damn what your therapist says,” Matthew interrupted, turning around. “I'm not afraid of failure, okay? I don't see why you even care about this. Can't you just shut up and play the stupid game?”

Silas tipped his head to the side. He looked like a confused bird, and it would have been adorable if Matthew weren't so incredibly frustrated right now. “I thought I was your boyfriend now. I'm supposed to want what's best for you, and I do. I don't want to see you wasting your life playing video games and working at a bar.”

Oh, bad word choice. Matthew saw red, fists clenching, fingernails digging into his palms. “You think I'm wasting my life?” he asked, his tone dangerously quiet.

Silas's eyebrows drew together as he frowned, puzzled. “Gaming is fun and all, Matthew, but come on. It's not the same as engineering. If you aren't going to choose a serious career, you could at least be serious
about
it and apply for the promotion with some actual responsibility.”

The hurt and anger came so fast and so close together that Matthew had a hard time telling them apart. “And you think I'd be better off like you, then? A neurotic insomniac with so many issues he can't take a day off from work until his supervisors literally force him out of the building? You want me to ruin my life, too?”

Silas drew back as if slapped, his mouth falling open, and Matthew regretted his words immediately. Pride, though, kept him from apologizing. He held his ground, even as the shame burned inside him, and pushed his advantage.

“I'm glad your therapist is fixing your fear of failure, but it's not the same for me, okay? It's not.” He knew he was shouting now, but couldn't seem to stop himself. “I like having a good time. I like bartending and playing games and programming, and I want a boyfriend who's fun, not someone who's a total fucking mess who needs to control everybody else's life because he can't control his own.”

Silas's face fell. He took a step backward, and Matthew could see that his hands were shaking. Immediately he felt like an ass, but he couldn't speak past the lump in his throat.

“I should go,” Silas said quietly. He quickly started to gather his things, which had been left in various places around the apartment. Matthew felt rooted to the spot, unable to help or even speak, watching Silas race to leave. A few minutes later, Silas stood near the door holding his clothes in his hands, his expression a blank mask Matthew had never seen on him before. This was Silas closed down, when he had been previously so open, and seeing that made Matthew ache. They stared at each other for what felt like hours, but must have only been seconds, neither of them willing or able to speak. Finally, Silas turned and left the apartment.

Matthew watched him go. He must be going to call a cab. Hell, he was an odd guy. Maybe he'd walk. Nothing Silas did made any sense, anyway. He'd only told him the truth. How dare Silas say that Matthew was wasting his life? What gave him the right to pass judgment? As the minutes passed, he tried to convince himself that he'd made the right decision here. Even if his words had been unkind, Silas had needed to hear them, right? Right.

So why did Matthew feel so shitty?

It wasn't true, of course, none of that was true. They'd both erred here. He wanted to run after Silas, but just like before, he felt too proud to admit he'd been wrong. Silas had been wrong first.

He looked at the clock. It wasn't even lunchtime yet and already this day had been shot to hell. Swearing under his breath, he logged out of
Diablo.
He didn't have the heart to play any games at all right now.

When the cab dropped
Silas off in front of his house, he could hardly believe that it hadn't even been twenty-four hours since Matthew had picked him up to go build the cat wheelchair with Caleb. So much had changed since then. No, not changed. Fallen apart. He felt the dull throb of anxiety in his stomach, like he was late with a project that he couldn't complete. He walked into his house in a daze, still carrying some of his clothes from yesterday. That's right; he was wearing Matthew's shirt. He looked down at it, and even the sight evoked a pang of sadness.

With a bit of distance, he could acknowledge that he probably should have backed off with Matthew. Knowing he had a tendency to latch on to ideas, he should have anticipated that Matthew might not want to discuss this issue with the same intensity he did, and the smart thing would have been to let the matter go. Even if he
did
think Matthew was selling himself short, it probably wasn't nice to call it out so directly. Still, he couldn't believe Matthew had been so nasty. His words had stung in a way that Silas thought he couldn't be hurt. He wasn't just hurt, either, but also angry, because he'd opened up to Matthew about his challenges and Matthew had thrown them back in his face, used his problems against him. What kind of person did that? He thought he knew Matthew, but maybe he didn't know the man at all. Heck, they had met less than a month ago, and their relationship itself had barely even formed. Dismissing their connection felt wrong, though. He'd grown close to Matthew. Close enough that Matthew knew what he could say to hurt Silas, and he had. He really had.

The best action, really, would be to shut off this part of himself. If he closed down and blocked off the emotions, like he had when his parents died, they would eventually go away. He'd feel sad at odd moments, but he could deal with the sadness incrementally instead of all at once. In the meantime, though, he needed some kind of distraction. After walking into the bedroom, he stripped off Matthew's shirt and threw it into the corner. It didn't help; he smelled of Matthew's soap and shampoo, and every inhaled breath reminded him of the other man, the way he felt on top of Silas, holding him down and making his body come alive with every touch and kiss. He stripped off the rest of his clothes and got into the shower, his second of the day—he needed to wash the traces of the other man off his skin. He stood under the water for a long time, turning the faucet gradually hotter until it stung his skin, closing his eyes to let the heat drown out all other sensations. He stood there until the water began to get cold, when there was no more hot water left to quiet the intensity of his mind, and then he shut off the water and stepped out again, feeling empty and blank and hollowed out as if with an ice cream scoop.

Methodically, perfunctorily, he dressed in a pair of old jeans and a T-shirt, the outfit Dee had more than once called his “uniform.” Dee. He should probably call Dee. He picked up his cell phone and stared at its blank screen, not yet ready to actually wake it from sleep mode and call his friend. Calling Dee meant conversations and confessions. It meant telling her exactly what Matthew meant to him, since he couldn't keep real secrets from this woman, and then it meant listening to whatever sort of advice she was going to force on him. Good advice, surely, but that didn't mean he was ready to hear it. He left his phone on the end table, and instead sat down on the sofa and stared at the television.

Having a television usually felt to Silas like an unnecessary expenditure. He rarely watched TV. He had a full cable package because it came bundled with his home Internet, and occasionally he flipped through and looked for shows and movies, but generally it remained turned off. Now that he wanted the distraction, he wasn't sure where to start. What was on, exactly? What did people watch? He hated reality TV, but there had to be other options. His coworkers frequently discussed shows, but he generally tuned them out when they started discussing things he didn't care about. As he flipped through the guide, he tried to judge if any of these shows seemed familiar. The problem with watching television in the middle of a Saturday was that apparently the only things on were bad made-for-TV movies and infomercials. He considered Netflix, but eventually he just turned off the TV and tossed the remote onto the table, feeling defeated before he'd even begun.

Eventually, he brought his laptop over. The Internet was always a good place to kill time, as he knew from those nights when he got lost on Wikipedia following new tabs down increasingly bizarre research paths. Maybe he could do the same right now.

Spending the rest of the day surfing the Internet wasn't his idea of quality work, though, and he couldn't shake the guilty feeling that he should be doing something more meaningful. But what else could he do? He couldn't go to his job. He couldn't take up freelancing. His hands were tied. The expression brought back memories of last night, memories now tainted with longing and guilt and anger. Matthew's idea about loafing had seemed fun when Silas had someone to loaf
with,
but without Matthew, loafing just felt lonely.

He switched over from the Internet and loaded his CAD program. His recent files were all designs for Zuul. Funny how adaptive equipment for a cat could make him emotional, but a glance at the files gave him a choked-up feeling in his throat. He'd put a design together for some litter box improvements, as well as a ramp for Zuul to get up and down off Matthew's furniture, files that were now just sitting there, not useful to anyone. This was a way to feel useful, though. He could finish these designs and maybe get the equipment made somehow, and then he could give it to one of Matthew's coworkers to pass along. The cat didn't need to suffer just because he and Matthew were . . .

Were what, exactly? Had they broken up? Were they ever really together in the first place? They'd called each other “boyfriend,” but maybe that was just a word Matthew used because “sex partner” sounded indelicate. Their fight had cast everything into uncertainty. Silas opened the file of the litter box system and started to make some modifications.

The ringing phone startled him out of his focus. He glanced over at the end table where he'd set the device earlier, surprised someone was calling in the middle of the day. When he looked up at the laptop clock, though, the time said that it was after five. He'd been working on this all afternoon. Moreover, he hadn't eaten since breakfast, and with the feeling of being reoriented to the world came a sudden stabbing hunger. He ignored the hunger, because the name on the phone was Matthew's.

He stared at the device as it rang, a range of emotions running through him in rapid succession. Hope that maybe Matthew wanted to make amends, followed quickly by sadness about what had happened, but then anger as he remembered what exactly Matthew had said. The hurt followed closely thereafter. Even if Matthew wanted to apologize, he wasn't ready to hear it. He muted the phone and put it facedown on the couch beside him, his throat thick with all those emotions, and waited for the telltale beep that would indicate he had a voice mail. The beep never came.

Silas picked up the phone again and stared at it. He deleted the missed-call notification and studied the blank screen, making a decision. One deep breath, then another. Finally, he unlocked the phone and dialed a familiar number.

A voice answered right away. “Silas?”

“Hi, Dee.” Silas leaned back on the couch and rested his head against the wall. “I know this is weird, but do you have plans for dinner tonight? I could use some company.”

---

Dee listened intently as
Silas spilled the entire story, which started slowly during the car ride and came out in more detail by the time they got to the restaurant, a casual diner named Bobby's that they'd discovered in college and returned to frequently in the intervening years. It was the kind of place with the perfect level of casual independence, where two people would talk and no one cared to listen, where the food was pretty good and the waitstaff just the right side of inattentive. He wanted his food delivered hot, his drinks refilled, and no other casual chitchat from the server, so Bobby's was a perfect choice for tonight. He paused in his story when the waiter showed up to take their orders and then picked it up again immediately thereafter. He knew he was rambling, but Dee wasn't interjecting, even though he could tell she wanted to. She nodded at regular intervals, encouraging him with a nod or a sympathetic expression, and he opened up far more than he normally would have. None of the sex details, although she probably wouldn't have minded hearing them, but the emotional aspect of everything, including getting put on work leave and his increasing affection for Matthew. When he got to that day's fight, though, she stopped him in the middle.

“Wait a minute,” she said, holding up a hand. “I'm sorry, but I've gotta jump in here. Did you really tell this guy that he was wasting his life?”

Silas blinked, unsure why she was clarifying. “Yes, I did. He's a very talented man, Dee. Far too talented to be making games for a living.”

Dee shook her head in that “you're an idiot” way, complete with a sigh. “All right. Go on.”

Silas continued his story, right up to what Matthew had said in return, about him being a neurotic workaholic. “I can't believe he said that to me. He knew I—” Silas stopped and looked around the diner, but there was no one nearby. “He knows I've started going to therapy, and he made fun of me for it.”

“Yeah, babe, that's not cool of him, I admit it.” Dee looked at him with pity in her eyes. “You weren't that nice either, though. The guy probably likes his job. Not everybody has to save the world, you know.”

Silas sighed. These were all aspects of the internal monologue he'd been trying to quiet throughout the day. “I know. He's so frustrating, though.” He tried to pinpoint what about Matthew was frustrating him. “It's almost like . . .” He trailed off, trying to think of the right words. “Like I'm doing all this work, and I'm killing myself over this job because that's how I've always been taught, and here's this other person who is basically as smart as me, and he's not nearly as stressed out or applying his talents half as much as I am. How can he be so happy and content all the time, when I'm so miserable?” Silas looked down at his paper place mat, blocks of advertising for local businesses printed in green ink, staring without reading any of it.

Dee's hand slid into Silas's field of view as she reached out across the table, curling her fingers around his in an unexpected gesture of physical affection. When he looked up, she was studying him with a look of sweet sympathy, her gaze soft and gentle. “Is that what this is about? That maybe you think you're wasting
your
life being so worked up all the time?”

Silas considered that, and it felt uncomfortable, but it also made sense.

When he didn't answer, Dee pressed on. “And maybe you justify it by saying it's what makes your life worthwhile, so you want Matthew to feel the same way? To make your own life choices feel like the right ones, instead of this being about Matthew and his career?”

Silas shrugged. “Maybe. I'm not sure.” He ran a hand through his hair and remembered viscerally how Matthew always did the same, rubbing the top of his head where the black hair grew in thick short curls. He remembered the way those curls felt on his palm when he cupped the back of Matthew's head to bring him in for a kiss. A tangible sense of loss gripped him.

“You haven't talked to him since your fight?” Dee asked.

“No.” Silas shook his head. “He called me, though. Right before I called you. I didn't pick up and he didn't leave a message.”

Dee raised one eyebrow and released his hand. “You didn't pick up? What if he was calling to apologize?”

Silas averted his eyes, looking to the side of the table where the old-fashioned mini jukebox was still fastened to the wall even though it wasn't functional, had never been functional as long as they'd been coming here. “I was angry. I wasn't ready to talk to him.” He still felt a twinge of that anger, but with it was some amount of shame. “I don't think I've been very fair to him.”

“So call him and apologize,” Dee said, spreading her palms as if she were saying the most natural thing in the world. “Couples fight. It happens. I didn't talk to Francis for a day and a half last week over something stupid, but then we made up and everything is fine now.”

Silas nodded without really meaning it. “All right, maybe.”

“Promise me.” Dee fixed him with a glare from which he couldn't look away. “If he calls again, you'll answer.”

Silas didn't dare lie to her, not when she gave him that look. “Okay, fine. I promise.” He searched for a way to change the subject, not wanting to deal with Dee's soul-searching looks anymore, and then remembered something he'd actually wanted to discuss with her. “Topic change,” he announced. “Do you still have access to a 3-D printer?”