Let Me Be Yours Read online

  “They really try not to talk about it,” Angela said. “Like we’re supposed to just forget what this place was, as if it’s not fucking bonkers.”

  “Is there anything left around from back then? EST machines or something?” Ryan asked, looking thrilled.

  In truth, I had always wanted to find that evidence as well. To search all the places of the campus that we weren’t allowed to go and do my job properly. Risking all the tetanus and jail time in the world, just to see something no one was supposed to see. But I was a coward through and through.

  “I heard there’s one building that’s still got stuff in it,” Angela said. I turned to look at her, not having heard of it myself. “In the basement.”

  “‘Course it’s in the god damn basement,” Ryan laughed.

  “You’re so full of shit,” I said to Angela, shoving her gently on the shoulder. She flipped me off, then slid off the bed.

  “Am not,” she insisted. “It’s out by the old science building, the one that’s been under construction since the dawn of time.”

  “Let’s go see it,” Ryan suggested, seeming all the more enticed by the idea. I worried, looking at him, that he was more enticed by Angela than by the mischief. But then he laid one hand on my knee and shook me just a little. My ears went hot, and my lips parted in a flutter. “Right, man? That’d be so cool.”

  Angela grinned, looking proud of herself, doing a little dance across the carpet. My eyes fixed on that strong hand as I considered the dangers. The worst-case scenario was hard to pin down. There was the possibility of disappointment, of course, that it would be completely empty. There was the risk of getting caught, which gave me a sort of nervous pit in my stomach. And, of course, something that felt like a very real threat then, as the sun continued to set and bathe the sky in darkness: that it would defy all reason and be full of ghosts, thereby forcing me to rethink my entire worldview while I died a horrible death.

  He gave my knee the softest, encouraging squeeze.

  “Yeah,” I agreed, finally looking up, into his pleading eyes. I knew that, in reality, there were sounds other than the pounding of blood in my ears. I knew that there were distant, city-bound planes flying above, and that Angela was singing as she did her triumphant dance. But in that moment, the surrounding world seemed to fall away. I felt again as if I was doing something I oughtn’t, enjoying even his most chaste touch as if it meant something deep and libidinal. It wasn’t fair to him, was it; to relish in the slightest affection, to moon over a clueless man who just wanted to be my friend?

  But he bit his lip as he grinned at me, and in a fugue state I felt myself place a hand on top of his.

  “Okay,” I said, redundant and transfixed. I knew it was stupid, to be floored by something so simple. To blush like a teenager and allow my mind to race and fill with thousands of possibilities as to why he was touching me. Isn’t that what all the old magazines said? If a boy likes you, he’ll go out of his way to make contact.

  But Ryan wasn’t some fifteen-year-old kid, and neither was I. At twenty-one, we didn’t have to play by the same rules.

  “Alright!” He retracted his hand and then clapped me fraternally on the back. As he slid off the bed and made his way over to Angela for a high-five, I felt my stomach sink.

  Chapter Three

  We agreed to wait until well after sundown, knowing that campus security liked to make their rounds right after it got dark. In the meantime, we walked up the road to the liquor store, ready to proudly flash our driver’s licenses, wiping the smug look off the clerk’s face.

  But to our disappointment, as we purchased our six-dollar bottles of wine, he didn’t even ask for ID.

  In the gravel parking lot, we put the three bottles into my backpack, all the cheap glass padded by our sweatshirts, should the derelict house of horrors prove chilly.

  “You got that, bud?” Ryan asked, probably noting how I grunted at the weight of it on my back. “We can take turns.”

  “It’s alright,” I told him, shifting the placement of the straps to make it more even. “I’m stronger than I look.” I flexed my noodle arms then, and he laughed, melodiously.

  “I bet you are,” he said, once again leaving me reeling in a void of ambiguity. He walked on ahead, and as Angela set out behind him, she turned to me with her eyebrows raised in a way that could only be taken as suggestive.

  I brought up the rear as we made our way down the road on its narrow, dangerous shoulder, our backs to the oncoming traffic. Each car that passed made me tense up, preparing to get hit. Eventually, I caught up with Ryan, having pathetically quickened my pace for that very goal.

  “You okay?” he asked me, watching as I nervously inched away from the edge of the road.

  “Just don’t wanna get hit,” I said with a shrug. By then he’d become accustomed to only some of my little anxieties and neuroses. It seemed I revealed a new one to him every day, and I was waiting for which one would be the tipping point. Which little insecurity would finally get him to roll his eyes or scoff?

  “Switch with me,” he said, grabbing my arm, pulling me gently past him, so that he was the one closest to the road instead. “That feel better?”

  He was so kind, I realized. Any friend I’d had before might have feigned a shove toward the road, might have chided me for being too skittish and paranoid.

  “...thank you,” I said finally, looking down to my shoes, kicking at the gravel and mud. He let his hand fall down my arm, briefly brushing my fingers, hesitating a moment as if to grab my hand.

  “Not a problem,” he assured me, and then he went on walking. “You sure you’re gonna be okay sneakin’ into this place?”

  “I’m more afraid of cars than of ghosts, because cars actually exist,” I said.

  “You really don’t believe in ghosts?” he asked me, genuine and curious. I walked alongside on the uneven ground and nodded. “Never seen one?”

  “No,” I told him. “Do you believe in them?”

  He shrugged.

  “Ain’t ready to rule it out, is all.”

  Ryan, I’d learned, was a man of faith. Not to any evangelical, preachy extent, but enough to actually believe in something, and remain open-minded about the ways of the universe. I blamed it on his upbringing. Blamed, as if it had to be a bad thing. He had proven it wasn’t. I didn’t believe in anything, myself. I admired that he hadn’t lost that capacity, while I couldn’t even fathom a god.

  Once we reached the old building, the campus was utterly dark. It was an old section, last used before the advent of motion-sensing lights. Before we made our attempt to break in, we opened the first bottle of wine. Angela took the first gulp, then Ryan, and then me, and I tried not to get too hung up on the idea that his lips had touched it. Tried, but failed, and found myself trying to taste him there. His soft, never-chapped lips.

  Even with just an ounce or two of booze in me, I managed to become so capable of swooning. But I held fast to trying to appear as if I wasn’t infatuated.

  Angela, ever-mysterious in her resourcefulness, pulled some bobby pins from her pocket and inspected the rusty padlock on the old door.

  “Luc, you keep watch,” she commanded in a furtive whisper, and she knelt before the door, whipping her yarn braids over her shoulders, sticking her tongue out as if that might help her focus. “Ryan, gimme some light.”

  “Yes ma’am,” he said with a chuckle, elbowing me gently in the arm as he pulled out his phone to shine the light. I grinned stupidly, overwhelmed by his charm, as one always gets during a newish crush. Everything they say and everything they do is always funnier, braver, more brilliant. You look at them with the fabled rose-colored glasses, and you swear that they will still be just as divine when you take them off.

  I wasn’t worried so much about him. Ryan, I felt, could still be perfect even as time passed. I was more worried that, even if he should like me now, it wouldn’t last. That there would eventually be something about me that would piss him off,
and it would be the last straw. That always seemed to be the way it happened with me. I would meet some guy, and he would find my scrawny shape amusing. He would see my anxiety as something he could fix, and when he failed to do so, I would become too frustrating and no longer a worthwhile project.

  I lit a cigarette. I was down to two a day.

  I scanned the horizon for anyone who might see us. It was dead out there, everyone still pregaming in their dorms before their Friday really began.

  I heard a satisfied grunt from Angela, and then the sound of the padlock falling to the ground.

  “Phew…” She grabbed for the open bottle of wine and drank some more, refreshing herself after her hard work.

  “Incredible,” Ryan said.

  “Sometimes I think you’re in the wrong major, Angela,” I said.

  “Well, they don’t offer degrees in being a thief,” she told us.

  “They do,” Ryan said. “It’s called being a business major.”

  Our laughter echoed into the empty building as Angela pushed open the heavy door. It immediately looked like a nightmare, even just from what we could see. The door opened into a long, tiled hallway, the ceiling fit with falling fluorescent lights. We all shined our lights down the hall, looking at the decay, the black mold and the scurrying rats.

  “Nasty,” Angela said. “Come on.”

  I hesitated at the threshold. I wondered if that was how kids felt, back before this place got cleaned up. I would have been one of the chickens, I thought. I would never prove myself. And I didn’t even believe in ghosts.

  “S’alright, bud,” Ryan said, reaching for my hand to pull me into the dark. Angela was already trudging on ahead. “No ghosts, remember?”

  I felt like a child, needing to be encouraged so gently. Or at least, that is how I imagined it was like to feel like a child that someone gave a shit about. Maybe every failed relationship was my fault, actually. I always needed someone else to be the grownup.

  But there I was, six-foot-one, with a backpack full of alcohol, and the warm palm of another man pressed to mine. I ignored how few miles there were then, between me and my childhood home. I curled my fingers around his hand and stepped into the abyss.

  Our footsteps echoed as we walked, as if the building seemed to grow impossible larger around us. We kept our lights ever-swinging, not wanting to miss an inch of scenery, not wanting to pass the basement door that would either thrill or disappoint us.

  Eventually, we came to the obvious threshold: large, army-green double doors with a push bar. Angela grinned, and then lifted her phone.

  “And we’re rolling. Coming to you live from the Northeast State, our ace reporter Lucas Lopes is on the scene,” she said, taking on the stale enthusiasm of an anchorwoman.

  “Come on…” I put my hand up in front of her phone. “You’re practically begging for this to turn into a horror movie,” I said.

  “Don’t be shy, Lucas,” she said, pouting, but lowering the camera nonetheless.

  “You ask a lot of me.”

  “Y’all are just wasting time because you’re scared to go down there,” Ryan said, gently admonishing us. “Let’s open this thing.”

  He pushed his hands into the bar, and it gave with a loud creak. He managed to get one of the double doors open, and he held it for me and Angela as we entered the basement. As I passed him, I gave him an appreciative smile. His green eyes seemed to glow in the dark. As he let the door shut behind him, he placed a guiding hand on my shoulder from behind me.

  Hours ago, I might have decided it was one of those teenage excuses for touch. But now I just felt like he thought I was a coward. And as much as I knew I ought to prove him wrong, the heavy feeling of his hand on my back was just too welcome for me to shrug him away.

  We walked down the wooden stairs in a single-file line, each holding onto the hem of the shirt of the person in front of us. I was in the middle, and I could feel Ryan there, his knuckles against the small of my back, nothing but the fabric of my t-shirt between his skin and the elastic band of my underwear. It was nothing new, as he’d seen me in nothing but that, more than once. I’d seen him, too, fresh from the shower, his tight, black, short-legged boxer briefs clinging to his strong body as if made for him and him alone. And me, gangly in my boxers.

  But now, fully-clothed, it was somehow more nerve-wracking to be near him. I blamed it on the horrors that laid below.

  Once we reached the bottom of the stairs, we saw what we were not supposed to see. Finally, I could project that voyeuristic feeling onto something that didn’t make me giddy, but just made me uncomfortable.

  There was a table with folded white hospital gowns, a collection of leather straps and straightjackets in a massive laundry bin, and a few leather gurneys strewn about.

  “Huh…” Ryan mused, walking in further. “‘Nothin’ beside remains,’ I guess.”

  “This is it?” Angela asked, venomous and tipsy. She approached me to unzip my backpack and take out the second bottle of wine. “I was hoping to see some really fucked up shit.”

  We sat at the bottom of the stairs for an hour or so, passing the wine to one another, positing where there might be more little enclaves of evidence of this place’s past. Maybe they burned everything. Maybe we were just patients having a group hallucination, and this wasn’t a school at all. That was my favorite theory.

  Ryan and I were beside one another as we all talked, and I found he kept sliding his hand farther along the wooden step, farther behind my back. In my intoxication, I allowed myself to lean back into his arm.

  Angela heaved a sigh. She always reached that point in the evening when she could no longer smile, could no longer keep up with herself. She left with a vague goodbye.

  “She alright?” Ryan asked me, his lips hovering over the mouth of the third bottle.

  “She just gets sad,” I told him. “She says she...builds up these nights in her head, and even if she has fun, it feels empty.” Like a birthday, the older you got.

  “Yeah…” He sounded like he had a deep understanding of the plight. In the dark, lit by nothing but our phones, I could see his eyes cast down at the concrete floor. “Nothin’s ever as good as we want it to be.” He took a sip. “Ugh-- this, for example.”

  I laughed as he passed me the unwanted bottle, and despite his warning, I took a generous gulp. Anything to get rid of the last bit of nerves I still had. It was all so quickly evaporating. I felt his eyes on me as I swallowed, and I made slow work of tilting the bottle back down, of removing my lips from the glass mouth. I watched his eyes travel my face, watched his playful smile fade into something a bit more somber. Something I could mold into whatever I wanted it to be. I pretended that he was looking at me with desire. I pretended we were somewhere very far away, and that he could love me.

  His thumb ran up and down my lower back where he was propped up by his hand. Everything was so quiet.

  But then, the loudest of sounds. The door to the building swung open, and light suddenly leaked in from underneath the basement door.

  “Shit,” I said, gathering up the wine and my backpack. There came some vague, angry, booming voice from the other side of the door.

  “We gotta hide,” Ryan said, grabbing my wrist, taking me swiftly to some dark corner of the basement.

  My back against the wall, he pressed a finger to my lips. I nodded slowly, acutely aware of how my lips were brushing against his skin.

  It was as unavoidable as imagining yourself getting hit by a car when you’re walking along a busy road. A man presses his fingers to your mouth, and you can’t help but imagine them going in deep.

  The security officer was descending the stairs. We stood stock-still and close, squished into the corner together. I realized then that I was curling my fingers into the fabric of his shirt, and that our bodies were flush.

  I wanted him, then. And I imagined that he wanted me, too. I felt ready to risk getting caught, just to share one kiss in a musty basement, surround
ed by the relics of worse days.

  The guard made a cursory sweep of the basement with his flashlight, missing us just barely. In our triumph, we grinned at one another, fighting victorious laughter, wrinkling our noses at the thrill of having gotten away with it. Once we heard the basement door close again, we allowed ourselves to exhale.

  We waited to hear the front door open and close one last time, and then ascended the stairs to make our quick escape. We ran, stealthy as we could, hand-in-hand, to the door, and stood close to peer through the porthole windows and make sure the coast was clear.

  We bolted back to the tower in a fit of childish giggling. That night, dizzy and exhausted from the long evening, too sheepish to mention what had happened, we fell asleep in separate beds.

  Chapter Four

  The school paper was finally up and running again by late September. I was tasked with reporting on political events on campus, so when I wasn’t studying or hanging out with Ryan and Angela, I was attending rallies and protests. Of course, the only story in the paper that anyone cared about was a security guard’s account of a strange encounter he had in the old science building.

  “We’re famous,” Ryan said. I took a moment to appreciate that ‘we.’ “Guess we ain’t going back there any time soon.”

  “I’m okay with that,” I admitted.

  We were enjoying the last bastions of nice autumn weather, sitting on the quad with our textbooks between us. Ryan looked like the sort of man who was meant to exist in the fall. How his collarbone peaked out from his wool sweaters, the slight glimpse of his knee-high socks beneath the cuff of his jeans. I tried to imagine him in winter, spring, summer. In every season he made me sweat, no matter the weather.

  Things had changed since that night. It was as if some dam had been broken between us, and things had become so much more tender, domestic. When I made coffee in the morning, I would wake him up with the smell and the news that I’d already put in just the right amount of milk. At night, we would stay up too late, just talking until we were too tired to open our mouths.