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After ten years in prison, New York City is like living in a surround-sound movie theater: everything seems so brilliantly colored, each facet of life turned up to an eleven in a way that seems unsustainable. Business men streaming along the sidewalks like lines of ants, young women with brightly colored crop tops dash about from store to store, cooing over different souvenir shops. I Heart NYC.
From the height of Meredith’s apartment, the city sprawls out before Oliver, each street traceable, as if he’s looking down at a map. It’s all fascinating: the hundreds of windows, each with their own lights flickering on and off, the immense height of the Chrysler Building, the sleek vehicles honking and weaving through the congested streets of the city. Yellow taxis swerve wildly, darting through traffic in ways that are most certainly illegal,picking up every type of person in the middle of the road.
“Oliver.” Meredith brushes a hand against his back lightly, seemingly afraid to startle him. “Pip just called.”
Oliver pulls himself away from the city and backs up, realizing he’s been clutching the window pane. “Pip called? When?”
Meredith bites her lip. Even this early in the morning, her make-up is immaculately done, complete with a bold crimson lip that she apparently still falls back on. She looks as stunning in it as ever, with her long red hair curling gently around her shoulders, and her eyes done dark and sharp. They’ve slept together about three times now—four if you count just a blowjob before sleep—but last night, Oliver opted for the spare bed and Meredith didn’t seem insulted. She’s grown since Dellecher. “You were asleep.”
This makes sense. In prison, Oliver had to get used to sleeping around noises—it was never entirely silent, and to be disturbed by any stray sound would leave him sleepless, exhausted. He’s sure he now sleeps like a baby, impossible to wake even with a ringing phone. He imagines Meredith sitting up in bed, and Pip’s scratchy voice through the phone. He loves Pip more than any of them, except perhaps James—it’s only natural, given that she was the only one who continued to visit him every week. It feels as if his sanity belongs to her alone.
“What did she say?” he asks.
Meredith sucks her bottom lip again, uncharacteristically hesitant. Though Oliver only reintegrated about a week ago, he’s already noticed Meredith’s edge, sharper than ever. One has to be, he imagines, to be a screen actress rising to the top so rapidly. It isn’t all acting talent: it’s her intense presence, her ambition. She knows her worth, and Oliver guesses, without having asked, that Meredith hasn’t simply climbed the ladder; she’s clawed her way up. “She’s wondering if you’re returning for the reunion. Dellecher. Classes 1996 to 1999.”
Oliver freezes up. “Go back to Dellecher?”
Dellecher, always in love with their traditions, had Alum Week once every four years, in which a four-year block of alums were invited back to teach, observe, and visit with each other again. The youngest year would work with the freshmen, the oldest year would work with the seniors. For Oliver, it had taken place in his freshman year, and he had been stunned by the sudden flood of late-twenties stage actors swarming the campus. They were incredibly sharp, as all actors Dellecher churned out were bound to be, and had fresh information about what the acting world was like for young artists struggling to make a name for themselves. “Pull the name Dellecher as much as you can,” they would often say. “Casting directors know what that means.” They had advice about surviving Dellecher (“You probably won’t” and “friendships are strong but always remember: ambition is stronger”). He had always wondered about them; it seemed incomprehensible that he would be like them in ten years—juggling the papers, agents, flying to auditions across the country, complaining about plays that ran for too long or not long enough.
In the end, he wasn’t like them ten years later anyway. He can’t imagine what he would say to those kids. If you ever end up in prison, make sure to keep at least two acquaintances that will be your eyes and ears. You will be their eyes and ears. Don’t let anyone take you by surprise.
OLIVER: We teach bloody instructions, which, being taught, return to plague th’ inventor.
Shakespeare, he has found in the past few days, feels unnatural on his tongue, as if he is returning to his home country after years of not speaking the his native tongue, and is now floundering, barely fluent. It terrifies him that he could become like this, after everything he’s given to the Bard. He remembers announcing to his family that he would go to Dellecher or nowhere. Shakespeare has been his future, his only future.
Meredith looks at him, her brow creased. It seems to him that she can tell how clunky the line felt on his tongue. “Whenever you recite, it’s like hearing a ghost speak.”
Oliver tries to smile, but he can feel it coming across pained. “It feels the same way to me.”
Meredith catches Oliver’s hand, squeezing it once. Her nails are perfectly manicured, a bold red; her fingers are cool and thin. If only Oliver could have loved her instead, everything would be so different. James might be in prison, rather than dead. Meredith would be taking the television world by storm right beside Oliver, who might be landing decent and reliable roles on large stages—a power couple for Dellecher’s shiny catalogue of famous alums. She’d be clever at home, never dull. Gorgeous and caring and good in bed and successful.
“They can’t want me.” Oliver squeezes Meredith’s hand back and then releases it gently. “You should go though. I won’t wreck your apartment while you’re gone.”
Meredith scoffs. “If you want to come, you should come. Pip has strings to pull over there.”
Pip, now a Dellecher professor herself, loves to repeat the old adage those who can’t do, teach, but the truth is obvious: Dellecher wouldn’t take her unless she was phenomenal.
As much as he can’t imagine being back there, in the hallways he’s dreamed of for years with nothing else on which to focus his thoughts, Oliver knows there’s only one answer. If they will have him back, he will go.
Oliver wakes to Meredith shaking him lightly. It’s four hours before their flight, she tells him, sweeping her braid over her shoulder. It looks almost black in the dark room. She started braiding it before bed to keep it from tangling, she explained to Oliver the first night they spent together. Now, he’s used to her sitting up after they have sex, neatly plaiting her hair as he rolls over and falls asleep.
He wonders what James would say.
Together they pack—for Meredith, two huge suitcases of expensive cosmetics and elaborate outfits, and for Oliver, almost nothing—and head to the airport as the sun rises.
“First class,” Oliver murmurs as they climb aboard. Meredith, dressed almost comically normal, is wearing a T-shirt and shorts, as well as sunglasses and a baseball cap. She joked as they got dressed that she was playing the part of a celebrity in public. Oliver whistles low as they settle in. “Meredith Dardenne.”
“Hush,” Meredith says. “Don’t speak my name.”
Oliver watches the city disappear below him with rapt attention, still thrilled by the busy rush of New York City. It spreads out before him, a web of streets and lives, and then the plane tips and it’s lost beneath the thick clouds of spring.
“What will we say to them?” he asks, at last turning from the window to Meredith. He lets his gaze drop to her lips, today a soft pink, allowing the gesture to speak for itself.
Meredith lifts one elegant shoulder, appearing unbothered. “The truth.”
Right. “And this is…”
Now, a faint shadow of annoyance crosses quickly across Meredith’s expression, though she’s quick to kill it. Oliver still knows her tells; still knows when she’s pretending. “I’m not an idiot, so don’t be an ass. The truth is we’re sleeping together but we’re not together. The truth is that you’re still in love with James.” Meredith gives him a sharp look. Her green eyes are like steel. “The truth is that nothing has changed.”
I’m sorry, Oliver thinks of saying, but what for? Not loving her? Not being over James? Sleeping with her at all? What he did in fourth year? Talking about it? “Okay.”
Meredith blows out a breath. “At least you’re honest about it this time.”
Pip picks them up in a worn-looking green convertible. “Hey,” she says. “Here comes the gang, huh?”
This gets a smile out of both Oliver and Meredith, and after some bickering over the front seat that makes Oliver feel young again, they climb in and head off. Oliver has been in Pip’s car, but only once: the day he got out, when she came to see him. They’d gotten ice-cream. Haven’t you missed this? she’d asked, and he’d said it’s too cold for ice cream. But yes, of course he’d missed it. He’d missed everything, even the thick smell of smog from Pip’s car and brain freeze on a cold day.
It’s only after a few long minutes in silence that Oliver senses something is wrong. Pip, though unassuming, isn’t often this quiet; certainly when she saw Oliver for the first time since he got out, she wasn’t this quiet. It’s been a long time since she’s seen Meredith, too, and he’d expect them to be catching up.
Instead, Pip is holding the wheel tightly, and shaking her left leg slightly. She only seems to get more tense as they approach Dellecherl; signaled first by the way the houses around them give way to woods and a winding road, and wide stone buildings begin to come into view. She keeps looking through the mirrors, a hypervigilance that can only mean one thing: she’s trying to distract herself from something. Meredith, also sensing this, hasn’t said a word since they got in.
Oliver clears his throat. “You okay?”
Filippa pulls up next to the duplex she lives in: Dellecher’s faculty housing. On the other side stays some writing professor who she isn’t very familiar with, but who often parks in Pip’s spot. Oliver wonders if that’s what the small gray car is beside hers in the driveway. She doesn’t get out of the car; she just sits there, her hands resting on the wheel.
FILIPPA: Not body’s death, but body’s banishment.
Oliver glances over at Meredith, who looks just as confused as he feels. She’s sliding out of the car, red heels clicking, and hauling their things out of the back, but she’s watching Pip, too, with a baffled, concerned expression on her face.
“Pip,” Oliver says gently, reaching to touch her shoulder, “let’s go in.”
Pip grabs Oliver’s hand and holds it fast, looking at him with urgency. “People are already in there,” she warns him.
“I know.” Oliver opens her door and tugs her out of the car. “You told me Alexander and Colin would be arriving a day before us.”
FILIPPA: Cowards die many times before their deaths.
Behind them, Meredith hisses slightly through her teeth. “Caesar is a little touchy, don’t you think?”
Oliver accepts the bag Meredith hands him and together they make their way to the front door; Pip trails behind, locking the car and looking as if she wants to say something more. What exactly? Oliver can’t figure out. He’s never seen Pip so disoriented before, so speechless. He remembers how smooth she was only moments after she’d found out about the murder and helped with James’ bloody shirt.
“You’re like Alexander, then. You think Julius Caesar fucked us.”
Meredith laughs hollowly. “I think we fucked us. I think Richard fucked us. But yes, I don’t have good feelings about Caesar either.”
“Just knock,” Pip calls from behind them.
Meredith raps sharply on Pip’s door with her knuckles, ignoring the rusty silver knocker. The whole building seems old in the way that Dellecher always felt old: the stone buildings feel dated and full of histories, and it seems the faculty housing is no exception.
There is one set of footsteps, and then the door rattles open.
“Hi, Oliver,” says James.
For a moment, Oliver can think nothing at all. He can only see James standing there, and yet not know James is standing there. His brain is unable to accept it.
James looks twenty years older. His glasses are the same, and he’s as clean-shaven and neatly dressed as he’s always been, but there’s a weight that lies on him, dragging his shoulders down, making his expression look drooped with exhaustion. There’s defeat written in him that was never there before. He looks at them as if he can hardly tell what he’s seeing.
Oliver’s tongue finds only Shakespeare.
OLIVER: Is there no exorcist / Beguiles the truer office of mine eyes? Is’t real that I see?
And James—it really must be James, for Shakespeare feels as natural in his voice as anything—answers his line.
JAMES: No, my good lord; / ‘Tis but the shadow of a wife you see, / The name and not the thing.
Meredith skips forward several lines, sounding as dumbstruck as Oliver, if not more so. For Oliver, James has been dead a week. For her, years.
MEREDITH: Do I see you living?
“Come in,” Alexander says from somewhere inside. “We’re having tea.”
Over tea, they learn that James had simply shown up on Pip’s doorstep the day before, clutching nothing but an old black suitcase. He had come back for Alum Week because “it felt like time.” No one has to acknowledge why it finally felt like time. James stares across the table at Oliver baldly as he says it.
Somehow, it isn’t that much of a shock he’s alive, not for Oliver. He hadn’t really gotten used to the idea that James was dead yet, and for years he’d been clinging to memories and imaginations of James without ever seeing him in the flesh. The fake suicide he wasn’t present for is almost a campfire story: something he understood to be scary, but never lived himself.
James is here, and that’s good enough for him.
Meredith, on the other hand, is full of cold fury. She grills him like a lawyer conducting cross examination. Why did he do it? Where did he go? Did anyone know? Did he think about how it would feel for everyone else, to think that after everything, they’d lost James, too? Alexander and Pip tune out in a way that suggests they’ve already interrogated James in a very similar way, and James responds in a way that suggests he’s already had to articulate these answers. This, if anything, seems to frustrate Meredith more.
“We loved you,” she keeps saying, “We all fucking loved you.”
“I’d say faking my death wasn’t personal,” James says, clutching his teacup and looking grey, “but of course it was personal. It was intensely personal.”
“Jesus.” Meredith drags a hand through her hair which, even in her distress, falls perfect around her shoulders when she releases it. “I’m not going to pretend we weren’t even slightly angry with you for Oliver’s imprisonment—”
James flinches but appears to have heard this several times before.
“It was my choice,” Oliver interjects, disbelieving. “How could you hold it against him?”
“Oliver would you put a hold on your nobility for one fucking second?” Alexander jumps in. “You’re too willing to be used.”
“Stop,” James says weakly. “Leave Oliver out of this.”
Filippa sighs. “Oliver is part of this, and he isn’t exempt from defending himself either.”
“You think Oliver needs to defend himself?” For the first time, an edge of fire lights in James’ voice. “Are you insane?”
“Oliver is right here,” says Oliver, “and he’s willing to defend himself: he didn’t want James to go to prison.”
Meredith grits her teeth. “Nobody did, but nobody wanted you to go to prison either.”
Pip touches Meredith’s shoulder lightly and, in the way that only Pip could, seems to draw the fury from her, leaving behind only shellshock.
FILIPPA: Come then, away; let’s ha’ no more ado.
James lets out a long breath, looking down into his tea. He has rarely looked Oliver’s way, and Oliver aches to speak to him alone, and to touch him and find that he’s real, and to hold him close until he feels like he can breathe again. He hasn’t breathed fully, he feels, in ten years.
“Is it safe to offer everyone more tea now?” Colin asks, coming over to the table with a teapot.
The table quiets. Alexander looks annoyed at them and at himself for having reached such a level of passion. Meredith is quietly passing James the sugar and cream as he pours himself another cup of tea, and when she’s done, she slips her hand behind him and presses his back, just once. Filippa is calm as ever, though Oliver can tell she’s closely monitoring everyone else, as if afraid a fight might break out again.
“So, alum week, huh?” Alexander eventually says, and everyone lets out a murmur of amusement. “Good to be back, isn’t it?”
Wren arrives the next day and peppers James with the same questions, but she seems less furious than Meredith. Meredith was always an easier fire to light; Wren seemed to hardly have any anger in her. It was something Oliver always envied, and perhaps envies still.
“So, how was it, being an English teacher?” she asks James, and Oliver can tell by the halting way he answers that she’s the first one to ask this. He feels slightly guilty that he hasn’t.
“Frustrating. Getting them through the Henry Triad is like pulling teeth. They don’t know how to feel it.”
“Sounds awfully dull,” Meredith interjects, but she sounds fond. “Only the best of us could slog through that.”
When James doesn’t rise to the bait, Wren turns and says lightly, “Not everyone has the thrilling life of a rising TV star.”
“Hmm. I never thought you’d grow up to be a boring old English teacher,” Meredith says, but her voice is warm and fond.
“And Oliver?” Wren turns to Oliver, who’s sitting on the couch and observing, relieved that they’ve sheathed their weapons for now. “How have you been? What’s it like to be back?”
“I was actually back here about a week ago,” Oliver points out.
“That’s right. When they let you out. You really told Colborne everything?”
“I really did.” Suddenly afraid this will make him a traitor, Oliver glances around at everyone, but they seem unsurprised; perhaps Filippa already told them what he was going to do. “It’s different being back with you all, though.”
With Wren back with them, everything feels steady again—there’s a pacifist in their mix—and Pip’s vigilance dies down. She introduces “Milo” around as if he’s new to everyone, and after he’s gone, everyone teases her about it.
“Wow, Camilo really turned out nice, didn’t he?” Alexander muses, earning a jab in the side from Colin.
“Did you see those pecs in the old days? He was always going to turn out well.” Meredith grins as if she’s just spotted prey. “He’s a catch, Pip, he better move in soon.”
“He wants to,” Filippa replies. “We’ll see.”
“We’re past thirty, and only two of us have settled down,” Wren observes. “Good for you, Pip.”
Without meaning to, Oliver looks over at James again, just in time to catch James looking at him before he looks away. Perhaps it’s due to his years rooming with James, but he can imagine settling down together so clearly: the dark, neutral colors of their furniture and the worn titles on their shelves. Their cupboards stocked with tea and chocolate, indulgent.
He catches up with James as the group disperses for an early goodnight, citing various reasons: too tired from travel (Wren), a need to do something before bed (Alexander and Colin, to many displeased groans), the need for sleep before the first day of Alum Week (Filippa) and to perform an extensive end-of-day skin care routine (Meredith).
“Hey,” he says. It’s the first time they’ve directly spoken to each other since they quoted All’s Well at each other yesterday, when James opened the door.
“Hey,” says James. There are dark circles under his eyes, and when Oliver speaks to him, the ease he’d gathered over the course of the day with everyone disappears; he becomes stiff and unnatural. “Oliver, I…”
After a moment when James doesn’t finish his sentence, only stares hard at him and swallows several times, as if his throat is blocked up, Oliver says gently, “Come on, which room are you staying in? Who are you with?”
“Actually, no one. Alexander and Colin in the guest, Wren with Pip in Pip’s bedroom—”
“Ah. Me and Meredith, and that leaves you.” Oliver reaches out—god how long he’s longed to do this—and touches James. Just a light brush of his hand against James’ elbow, a prompt. “Come on.”
“I’m in the office, on an air mattress.” James leads him down the hallway into a tiny office. The whole floor is swallowed up by the air mattress and Pip’s desk is piled with papers, neatly stacked, but without the space required to do any work.
“Jeez, I feel bad now. We should’ve just taken the housing Dellecher offered.” Oliver sits on the edge of the bed. He tries to take a catalogue of James: is he thinner than before? Does he look like he’s become addicted to something, or likely to jump off a bridge? Surely it’s too fast now, but might he one day want to kiss Oliver the way he did on stage, the night everything ended?
James smiles a sad smile and joins Oliver on the bed, which sinks beneath his weight, causing their bodies to lean into each other slightly. Their shoulders press together, warmth seeping through Oliver’s clothes and sending his heart rushing. “I wouldn’t give up a minute with them.”
“You did,” Oliver feels the need to point out. “You gave up years.”
James goes still beside him. His voice is tight. “You don’t know what it’s like,” he says eventually, as Oliver is preparing to apologize for mentioning it. “I felt on the brink of being the next Caesar. These people—we all love each other so much. And I spent every day convinced they all wanted to kill me. I know you insist on believing the best of people, but I know this much: there’s a part of them that will always hate me.”
Oliver hesitates, knowing it to be true. He can understand the need to get away from it all, and to escape the people who will put up with all the terrible things they feel about you because they love you like family. The way they did at the beginning, with Richard. The next Caesar. Yeah, Oliver can understand it. “I think there’s a part of all of us that will always hate ourselves for leaving him there.”
“When Alexander said to leave him there, and started saying all that stuff about how we’d finally be free of him—I felt so relieved.” James looks up at Oliver and tentatively rests his head on Oliver’s shoulder. He lets out a long breath. “I’ll always hate myself for that.”
Oliver feels his blood hum underneath his skin. He spent his college years wanting James without realizing it and his prison years wishing he’d realized it. Now he’s here. He wraps an arm around James’ thin body and pulls him close, pressing his nose to James’ soft curls. “He didn’t say anything that wasn’t true. If you guys hadn’t held him back from breaking down my door, he’d probably have killed me. If we hadn’t dragged him off of you in the lake, he would’ve drowned you. I can’t even count the number of times I was afraid we wouldn’t even be strong enough, collectively, to stop him from wringing Meredith’s neck. He was incandescently jealous.”
“The tyrant,” James agrees simply. His hand gently links with Oliver’s, and Oliver wonders: should he squeeze James’ hand? Does this mean anything? Does James ever think about the kiss they had onstage? Solemn, noble James, a banished hero. Perhaps a tragic villain.
They’re quiet for a moment, caught in their own thoughts. Perhaps James left his world behind entirely, and has resolved not to think back on what they had or could’ve had at Dellecher. Maybe he tries his best simply to teach English every day.
“You should sleep here tonight,” James says suddenly, lifting his head from Oliver’s shoulder to look at him. Though he’s gaunt now, and probably better cast as Macbeth than ever before, he’s as handsome as ever. Perhaps Oliver remembers him so clearly from their time in Dellecher that he will, in some ways, always see James’ younger, brighter self overlaid. “I’ve missed you.”
“Oh, James.” Oliver pulls him into a true hug, then, wrapping him up in both arms and feeling the solid shape of James’ body against his own, warm and alive. His ribs are more prominent, and his elbows sharper, but he feels more like home than anywhere Oliver has ever been. James holds Oliver back, hands gripping Oliver’s shirt as if to keep him there by force. “Alright,” Oliver murmurs into him. “I’ll stay.”
James and Oliver join breakfast together the next morning, ladling out oatmeal from an immense pot Pip has prepared. Oliver, feeling sheepish, settles beside Meredith, unsure what to say.
“Don’t,” Meredith says before he even opens his mouth. She looks beautiful and well-rested, and her hair is done up delicately, with chains of silver. “I know. I told you not to treat me like an idiot.”
“We didn’t… if you were wondering.” Oliver clears his throat. “But I think you and I—”
“You didn’t?” Meredith seems impressed and somewhat surprised. “Give it time. Oliver, if I wanted to be sleeping with someone who loved me, I wouldn’t have slept with you. It’s okay.”
Oliver reaches over and squeezes her hand. He knows it isn’t as easy or simple as she’s making it seem, but if Meredith wants to skirt the topic and pretend it’s all water under the bridge, he’s willing to go along with it. “Thanks,” he says. “When do you have to get there?”
“Officially? 9 am. But I’d better be there fifteen minutes early, or Gwendolyn will kill me.”
This familiar refrain, Gwendolyn will kill me, brings a smile to Oliver’s face and seems to inject a little life into all of them.
“Oh Gwendolyn. How’s she doing?” Wren asks. “Still terrorizing everyone and picking favorites?”
They laugh together about Gwendolyn’s extravagant, dramatic habits as breakfast ticks on, and speculate whether she’ll be willing to see Oliver. James is out of the question, since his legal death is a whole can of worms they don’t want to open.
“Don’t let her catch you wandering the grounds,” Alexander tells James. “She’s too old for a shock like that.”
Pip considers James, who’s poking his oatmeal with little interest. “You think she’d recognize him? He looks awful.”
“You’ve always looked awful,” Alexander says.
“I thought you said you might kiss me,” James says, and though it’s a joke, he says it with so little energy, it felt more like a lament.
“What?” says Collin. “When?”
“Because the scene was intense!” Alex says defensively.
“You look fine,” Oliver tells James. “You just need a little more food and sunlight. We can take a walk around while everyone’s busy.”
“We’re giving them great advice,” Meredith declares. “How to cover up murder 101. We can tell them what it actually feels like to be backhanded across the face.”
No one says what they’re really thinking: they know what it feels like to kill one of their dearest friends. They have lived Julius Caesar.
Alexander groans, dropping his head against Colin’s chest dramatically. “This is so fucked, guys. Why are we talking to these kids? We’re going to fuck them up.”
“We tell them the most important thing is to love each other,” Wren says, and the table settles again. “At least we got that part right.”
When everyone has left, James and Oliver pick up the cleaning: they clear the table, wash the dishes, and put the leftover oatmeal in the fridge.
“I can’t believe she lives like this,” Oliver mutters as he closes the fridge. “That oatmeal was terrible and definitely not worth saving.”
James shrugs. “I’ll take it.” James glances at Oliver, and then away. His new quietness is startling. “You’re the one who needs to eat. How did you gain weight in prison?”
Oliver looks down at himself. “I guess Camilo would finally be proud of me. I bulked up.” He wonders if this is attractive to James, or if James prefers him weedy and thin, the way he used to be. James did love him then, he’s almost sure of it. The kiss, he has always assumed, meant something other than simply goodbye.
James breathes out, not a laugh, but maybe something close. “You should ask him.”
They browse Filippa’s bookshelves, which are lined with Shakespeare plays: up to a dozen copies of each, with different line notes and editor’s notes and forewords, each offering new perspectives on old scenes. Sometimes, Filippa’s notes are scribbled in the margins, though she has the same rough, choppy handwriting that Oliver has never learned to parse. James reads him a few passages from Twelfth Night, with commentary on the incredible levels of homosexuality in the text.
“You would be a perfect Antonio to my Sebastian,” James says, without glancing up from the page, though Oliver knows James could recite Twelfth Night in his sleep. He speaks cleanly, in a way that suggests he’s picked each word carefully, and doesn’t intend to say much more.
Oliver startles. He isn’t expecting James to be so direct.
“Dedicated, and the best friend one could have.” James slides the book back onto Filippa’s shelf and straightens.
Oliver watches James, and the careful way he touches things, as if he’s afraid his hand will pass right through them if he isn’t paying attention. “I’d be honored to be your Antonio.” James gives him a half-smile, but doesn’t say anything, so Oliver prompts, “Do you want to walk around at all?”
“Walk around?” James bites his lip. “Do you?”
Yes, Oliver would like to walk around. It’s not only that he’s eager to see Dellecher again, to revisit in the flesh all the places he’s seen over and over again in his dreams and memories, it’s also just that he’s still eager to walk in the world, and feel the air and see the trees rise above the buildings.
Oliver reaches over for the house keys by the door, and together they leave, locking up behind them.
“How does it feel, seeing everyone again?” Oliver asks. He really wants to ask why James did it: why he left, when he came back for Alum Week, but it seems like too heavy of an opening to the conversation.
Around them, faculty housing begins to give way to the campus buildings: stone theaters, open amphitheaters, classrooms in old-looking buildings. There are the same maple trees from when Oliver was here, now blooming with young leaves.
“It’s good,” James says. He seems unsure what else to say. Oliver misses the easy way he used to be able to talk to James, Shakespeare or no: their conversations always seemed to flow as easily as running lines, but now the years stretch between them.
“Did you always plan to come back for Alum Week?”
“I don’t know. No. Nothing I did was planned, really. I wanted to kill myself. I just sort of ended up not doing it. I applied for some jobs and ended up teaching—just for one year, I told myself, and then I ended up sticking with it. And then it was Alum Week, and I just… decided to come.”
“Did you like teaching, at least?” It’s terrible to Oliver, this blank detachment with which James speaks, as if he’s giving the summary of a novel he didn’t particularly care for, rather than talking about his own life. He seems to have simply let go of the reins.
James looks at Oliver blankly. The buildings have parted to make way for the lake, and together they falter for a second, then continue on, towards the edge. “It’s fine, I guess. I’m not in love with it. Everything feels—dimmer than before. Like it’s always nighttime. Or like everything’s a dream.”
Oliver doesn’t know what to say to this. He’s always hoped that James would be able to forge something with the time Oliver gave back to him, and he’s always imagined the different ways James could be living: a Shakespeare actor, the way he’d always planned to be; a writer or a literature professor, even a bookstore owner, anything. “How old are your kids?”
“Fifteen, sixteen.” James kicks at the soft dirt at the edge of the lake. He doesn’t seem to have anything to add to that, either. He’s so… empty. Oliver can’t find the right words for it. It’s like he did kill himself, and only came halfway back.
“Well that sounds rough,” Oliver offers sympathetically.
“Not as rough as ten years in prison,” James says dully.
“No,” Oliver concedes, “not as bad as that.”
“Did you ever get hurt?” James asks, and Oliver hears a flicker of feeling in James’s voice: a touch of concern, the weight of regret.
Oliver hesitates. Yes, often, but he doesn’t want James to worry. “Nothing that left a scar,” he decides to say.
James isn’t an idiot. He makes a small sound of distress, but doesn’t push Oliver on it. They reach the shoreline and begin to walk along it, the dirt squishing beneath their feet. The mud isn’t thin enough for their shoes to sink in, but each step feels sticky. It’s kind of nice, Oliver thinks—all these textures, all these landscapes.
“So, no one knew?” he asks. He doesn’t have to specify what he’s talking about.
“No, no one knew.” James shakes his head. “Do you really think that any of them would’ve kept it to themselves?”
“Filippa, maybe.”
“I don’t know. It’s one thing to hide something that’s already been done; it’s something else to continue to hide something indefinitely.” James seems to consider his words for a moment, and then concedes, “If I told anyone, though, it would’ve been her.”
“Not Wren?” Oliver isn’t sure he wants to know the answer, but he can’t help asking.
James looks surprised. “No, definitely not Wren. She’s the last one I would’ve told—I could never put a secret like that on her.”
“I thought you and Wren…. What happened with you and Wren?” It seems so silly to be asking this, after everything, and yet somehow it’s so important to him, he can’t let it go. What happened between James and Wren after Oliver got locked away? He can’t even find it in himself to be jealous; if James could find someone to love and console him, at least for a few years before his disappearance, Oliver would be happy for him. He hopes that James suffered the years as little as possible.
James pulls to a stop, and Oliver realizes with a jolt of horror that they’ve come across the dock where they’d found Richard that terrible morning. James’ expression is completely still, an empty, terrified look in his eyes. Oliver realizes, perhaps for the first time, that whatever memories he has of this place—Richard’s beaten body floating face-up in the water, blood streaking his face, and Alexander saying Nothing, and Richard begging them weakly, choking on his own blood—whatever awful things he thinks of when he looks at this dock now, they pale in comparison to James’.
He can picture it all: James, ten years younger, stumbling after Richard in the dark, unable to see where he’s gone. Come back! You’re drunk, you’re going to hurt yourself! Richard, appearing behind him, threatening him, his huge, hulking body and stunning anger. What would Oliver have done differently if Richard had come at him like that. I dare you, that’s what James had said Richard had repeated over and over. He can picture James at the edge of this dock with a boathook, at the edge of the water, and he understands.
James hasn’t moved. He’s staring out at the water as if Richard might rise from it, bloodied and angry, like Banquo’s ghost.
“James,” Oliver murmurs, coming up behind him. Gently, slowly, he places a hand at the small of James’ back, a reminder that he isn’t alone. The touch seems to draw James out of his thoughts, though he doesn’t move. His eyes grow more focused. “It’s over. It’s in the past. Let’s go.”
James breathes out slowly. “Oliver,” he says, almost a question.
“It’s me,” says Oliver. “Come on. Let’s go.”
James looks up at him and his vision seems to clear. Relief blooms in his eyes, and he steps away from the edge of the water, looking shaken. “I thought he was going to kill me,” he says.
“I know. He might have.”
“I thought—what was I thinking? God I just thought, who was going to stop him?” James sounds so agitated, Oliver wants to wrap him up in a hug and hold him until he starts breathing evenly again, but he’s not sure if he should. He’s not sure about anything with James anymore, except that he loves him, and he may always love him.
“I know,” Oliver says.
“I think about it all the time,” James says. “I think about all the things I could’ve done that night, and I just… I can’t think of anything I could’ve done and known I would come out alive.”
The fact that James lingers on this, even after moving away and leaving everything behind, cracks something in Oliver’s chest. Oliver has revisited it all the time too, often imagining himself as James, or going back to the kiss James had given him after they realized Colborne had come for him, but he had ten years in prison and not much to think about, nowhere to run. This is different, and worse.
“Don’t,” he says, because he can’t find anything else to say. He’s somewhat relieved to hear emotion in James’ voice at all, after so much apathy, but he wishes anything else could’ve brought it out.
OLIVER: These deeds must not be thought / after these ways. So it will make us mad.
James smiles wanly. “It’s something else to hear Shakespeare coming from you,” he says. “It’s wonderful to know you still have it.”
“I still have some of it,” Oliver amends. “Not as much. If you put me on the stage again, I’d have a long way to go.”
“Me too.” James seems neither saddened nor pleased about this. “I’ve let Shakespeare go, for the most part.”
Oliver finds this perhaps the most tragic of all of James’ transformations. Shakespeare was everything to them; what are they now, without him?
The edge of the lake is beginning to become more populated, with students released from classes for lunch flocking to the water for their breaks. Oliver remembers the Dellecher days, when any time not taken by food or class was filled in with exercises and rehearsals. Any other time was spent practicing lines.
For a moment, the two of them walk together quietly, moving among the students and catching snippets of their conversations.
“God, it’s just like, you know, why even do Romeo and Juliet at that point, if you know your cast isn’t right for it? Just because you don’t want to do Julius Caesar again?” one of the students is complaining as they pass by.
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose / By my other word would smell as sweet,” another is saying.
“Romeo and Juliet,” James says, and seems to recall the conversation they’d been having before they came across the dock. Without speaking about it, they both turn away from the edge of the lake and wander through campus as James speaks. “Wren and I were nothing, after. I mean, she saw me kiss you. The whole school saw me kiss you. It wasn’t a secret anymore, what I felt.”
What I felt. Perhaps, like Oliver, James has come to terms with what they were to each other in the years since they last saw each other; maybe now they are both beyond pretending they can’t see it. Oliver looks over at James and, in a fit of bravery, snags his hand in his own.
James lets him take it.
Together, they move through Dellecher, talking about the life they once lived. The people they met here, the performances they put on there, the worst audition they ever had and the first time they realized Dellecher wasn’t messing around: for James, the first time he saw the fourth years’ electric performance of Othello; and for Oliver, the time one of his closer friends didn’t make the cut for second year.
They get lunch out—both of them are afraid of being recognized by the lunch staff—and watch as the students make their way back to their classes, stacks of books in their hands, different editions of Shakespeare. About half of them seem to have paired off into romantic entanglements, although which of them are real and which of them are lovers in whatever play they’re doing, it’s hard to say. Oliver remembers how inseparable life seemed from performance in their years in Dellecher, when their days and nights were steeped so deeply in Shakespeare. How even James and Meredith ended up together for a moment, when Gwendolyn put them through the wringer together.
“It was so easy back then,” James says.
It wasn’t, really. Everything seemed so immense and everything was turned up tenfold: joy, lust, jealousy, devotion. But Oliver knows what James means; back then, they’d jump head first into anything: sex, love, friendship. Now, everything seems so difficult. Was friendship always so hard to hold onto? Was conversation always so hard to keep flowing? Was it always so hard just to muster emotion? Oliver doesn’t think so.
“Do you think it can be that easy now?” he asks. He can imagine it becoming easy again, with James. Life might be hard, but relearning James seems like something he was made to do.
“Maybe,” says James. He meets Oliver’s eyes across the table. “We’ll see.”
When everyone is back for dinner, Meredith and Colin insist on cooking because they “refuse to let Pip do all the work.” Oliver would help, but he doesn’t trust himself in a kitchen when he hasn’t cooked anything in ten years. He chats with Alexander while Wren and James catch up; Wren seems to be the only one who harbors no trace of hard feelings against James. If there’s a tiny part of everyone that hates James just a little, Wren doesn’t have that piece.
“So, he came back for you, I guess,” Alexander says, nodding across the room in James’ direction. “I’d find it romantic if I wasn’t also pissed about it.”
Oliver swallows. Is that why James came back? For him? Or did he come back only for Alum Week? It sounds as if even James doesn’t know. Although Oliver doesn’t doubt his getting out of prison made coming back easier for James, he wouldn’t go so far as to bet James came for him. “I don’t know,” he hedges.
“Oliver,” Alexander says, not unkindly, “Don’t be daft.”
They both watch James talking to Wren for a few moments. He’s got his hands clasped in his lap, and his shoulders are slumped tiredly. He doesn’t look as if he’s finally found what he’s been waiting for, but maybe that’s not a realistic expectation. Seeing each other won’t fix everything forever, even if it’s what Oliver’s been waiting for for ten years, and possibly what James has been waiting for, too.
“What happens after this week?” Alexander asks. His voice is light, but it’s clear that he wants to know. Oliver is reminded—how could he forget?—that as much as Alexander teases and affects disinterest, he cares about both of them deeply. They’re family, much more than Oliver’s family ever was.
“I’m not sure—I want to—” Oliver starts. But there’s no real way to finish it. Who knows? Are they even ready to talk about it? “I don’t know.”
“Ask him,” Alexander urges him. He knocks Oliver’s knee lightly with his own. “Frankly, I think it’s a travesty the two of you never got it together in school. Don’t make me wait any longer.” Though he’s teasing, the light in his eyes is warm.
Oliver squeezes his knee. “Thanks, Alexander.”
“What are you going to do about Mer?” Alexander asks.
“She asked me not to do anything,” Oliver explains. “She says it would feel worse, like I was coddling her, if I tried to fix it.”
“I guess she knew what she was getting into.”
“I guess she did.” Oliver looks up as Colin brings out glasses for water. “Tell me more about Colin.”
Alexander spends the rest of the time talking about Colin, which is a relief, because Oliver hasn’t a clue what else he would say about his situation with James.
After dinner, they once again linger together, drinking wine, and Oliver and James listen as the rest of them recount their trials and tribulations with the Fourth Year students. They’re arrogant, Alex complains, they don’t know what they’re doing. Except for one, Meredith clarifies, and then Alexander and Meredith descend into praising a young woman who is playing Lady Macbeth while Wren protests nobly that all the students are talented and lovely to work with, though sometimes not always prepared to run their scenes.
Filippa and Colin turn in first, with Alexander following close behind. Wren laughs when Meredith makes a particularly nasty sexual joke about one of the producers of the TV show she’s starring in, but excuses herself soon after, appearing to have had enough. In the end, Meredith brushes her hand over Oliver’s shoulder’s, half-drunk, as she heads to bed.
Oliver reaches up and squeezes her hand, watching her go down the hallway, only releasing her hand when he has to.
“Goodnight,” she says, and is gone.
JAMES: Be ruled by me. Forget to think of her.
Oliver’s breath catches in his throat. He can remember that scene as if it was yesterday—a night his mind would return to again and again as he struggled to sleep in his cell. James as Romeo, Wren as Juliet. He remembers, too, the look James had sent him as he retreated up the stairs with Wren. To hear the line echoed back at him now is a twisted deja vu.
He thinks of what Alexander said to him before dinner, and meets James’ gaze, lifting his chin. An acknowledgement, and a little bit of a challenge. He is beside James on the couch, though they’re not close, and he can easily imagine one of them leaning over, kissing each other, touching each other, the way they never did, not even in their own dorm room.
OLIVER: O, teach me how I should forget to think!
Heat flickers through James’ gaze, cutting clean through the tired apathy of before. He seems to take a moment to gather himself, and then extends his hand out towards Oliver. A clear and open invitation.
JAMES: By giving liberty unto thine eyes. Examine other beauties.
Wrong, Oliver thinks. He takes James’ hand and says, “I have only ever examined you.”
James, for a moment, seems to freeze, as if he hadn’t thought this far ahead. Then, quickly, as if he’s afraid Oliver will disappear, he clutches Oliver’s hand with both of his own and pulls him to his feet. “Come to bed with me,” he urges.
Oliver once again thinks of Wren, of James’ look as they disappeared to have sex, but already James is pulling him down the hall and into Pip’s office, and closing the door behind him, and—
And Oliver is up against the door, with James’ hands in his hair, and James’s lips on his own.
“Oh,” Oliver says.
James has never kissed him like this before—only ever the one gentle kiss on stage or, occasionally, the brotherly kiss on the cheek between two characters. This is something else entirely, so much so that it doesn’t seem right they should share the same word. James grips him so tightly, it’s almost painful, and the kiss is so reckless, Oliver is afraid James will accidentally slice his lip on Oliver’s teeth. He kisses back gently, easing his hands over James’ back in a soothing motion. As James takes the hint, seeming to come to himself again, Oliver takes James’ shoulders and eases him back slightly.
“James,” he murmurs, searching James’ face.
James looks back at him with a sharpness in his eyes Oliver hasn’t seen since ten years ago. He looks as if he’s just woken up to reality, as if everything until now has been a dream, and Oliver is the only thing that’s real. It’s a look Oliver is familiar with; he’s sure he’s worn it himself when looking at James.
JAMES: If thou dost love, pronounce it faithfully.
Oliver cups James’ jaw and runs a thumb over James’ lips. Perhaps neither of them are all there just yet; perhaps they will never be entirely whole again. He doesn’t really care. This is as much as he would’ve ever asked for, even ten years ago: to have James in his arms. “Of course I love you,” he murmurs, drawing James in. He has a couple inches on James, and when James ducks his head, Oliver is easily able to rest his chin on top of it. He rocks them gently side to side.
They curl up together in bed, arms draped around each other, but they don’t fall asleep. They look at each other, content not to speak for a while.
“Where were you living?” James asks eventually, voice rough with disuse. He sounds more alive than he did by the side of the lake earlier that day. “After you got out, but before you came here.”
“Meredith’s flat,” Oliver says. “She’s in New York.”
The corners of James’ mouth grow almost imperceptibly tight. “Will you go back there after this week?”
Oliver hesitates. He doesn’t know what he’ll do. He can’t stay with Meredith forever; they don’t love each other in the way partners do, and besides, she’ll be wanting to bring other men home, of that Oliver has no doubt. He doesn’t have the money to stay on his own, and he can’t stay with Pip or Alexander. Wren is the only one left. And James, of course.
OLIVER: I cannot love her, nor will I strive to do’t.
James releases a heavy breath. “You could come stay with me,” he offers quietly. “Is that—would you do that?”
“Would you like that?”
For the first time, James laughs. Oliver has never heard a more beautiful sound. “Yes, I’d like that.”
JAMES: Your virtue is my privilege. For that / it is not night when I do see your face.