"You have spent your whole life surviving," she said. "When will you start living?"
"It is not that simple."
"It is exactly that simple. You are in a country where it is legal to be who you are. You are on a team where a man came out and the world did not end. You have met someone who makes you sit on floors and call your sister at what is, I will remind you, seven in the morning. What more do you need? A written invitation from God?"
"I need to not be afraid."
"No, Misha. You need to be afraid and do it anyway. That is what courage is. The absence of fear is not bravery. It is stupidity. You are the least stupid person I know."
I laughed. It was a small, broken sound, but it was real, and Katya heard it and I could feel her smiling four thousand miles away.
"Go to him," she said. "Stop being a monument. Be a man."
"You are very bossy for a twenty-one-year-old."
"I learned from the best. I love you, Misha."
"I love you, Katya."
I hung up. I stayed on the floor for another ten minutes. Then I stood, put on my shoes, picked up my keys, and drove to Cole Briggs's apartment at eleven o'clock at night without texting first, because if I texted I would lose my nerve, and I could not afford to lose my nerve again.
His building was in Virginia-Highland, a neighborhood full of old trees and restaurants and the kind of easy charm that suited him perfectly. I found his door. I stood in front of it for a full minute, breathing, and then I knocked.
Footsteps. A pause. The lock turning.
He opened the door in sweatpants and a T-shirt with his hair pushed back and his eyes slightly confused in the way of a person who was not expecting a visitor. His apartment behind him was warm and lit and messy, and I could see a laptop open on the couch and a half-eaten bowl of something on the coffee table, and the whole scene was so domestic and so alive that it made my sterile apartment with its single plates feel like a museum.
"Mik?"
"I cannot stop thinking about you."
The words came out without permission. No preamble. No construction. Just the raw, unedited truth delivered on a doorstep in Virginia-Highland while a man in sweatpantslooked at me with an expression that shifted from confusion to something much more dangerous.
"I have tried," I continued. "For five days I have tried. I have read Dostoevsky and studied film and followed every routine I have built to keep myself from wanting things that will ruin me. None of it works. You are in my head every minute. On the ice. Off the ice. In the dark when I am trying to sleep. I hear your laugh and I lose my place in the book. I see your name on my phone and my hands do something I cannot control. I am not built for this. I do not know how to want someone and survive it. But I cannot stop, and I am tired of trying, and I am here because my sister told me to stop being a monument and be a man."
Cole stared at me. His mouth was slightly open. His hand was still on the door frame.
"Your sister sounds amazing," he said.
"She is. Can I come in?"
He stepped aside. I walked into his apartment and the door closed behind me and we stood in his living room with approximately four feet of charged air between us.
"You didn't respond to my text," he said.
"I know."
"Five days, Mik."
"I know."
"I thought you were done. I thought the rooftop was a one-time thing and you were going to pretend it never happened and I was going to have to play hockey next to you for the rest of the season knowing what your mouth tastes like and never getting to taste it again."
"I am sorry."
"Don't be sorry. Just tell me what you want."
"I want you."