Page 428 - A Little Life: A Novel

“You think I don’t know that?” JB had yelled. “You think I don’t fucking
hate myself for that?”
“I don’t think you hate yourself enough for it, no,” he’d yelled back.

“Why did you do that, JB? Why did you do that to him, of all people?” And
then, to his surprise, JB had sunk, defeated, to the curb. “Why didn’t you
ever love me the way you love him, Willem?” he asked.
He sighed. “Oh, JB,” he said, and sat down next to him on the chilled
pavement. “You never needed me as much as he did.” It wasn’t the only
reason, he knew, but it was part of it. No one else in his life needed him.
People wanted him—for sex, for their projects, for his friendship, even—

but only Jude needed him. Only to Jude was he essential.
“You know, Willem,” said JB, after a silence, “maybe he doesn’t need
you as much as you think he does.”
He had thought about this for a while. “No,” he said, finally, “I think he
does.”
Now JB sighed. “Actually,” he had said, “I think you’re right.”

After that, things had, strangely, improved. But as much as he was—
cautiously—learning to enjoy JB again, he wasn’t sure he was ready to
discuss this particular topic with him. He wasn’t sure he wanted to hear JB’s
jokes about how he had already fucked everything with two X
chromosomes and so was now moving on to the Ys, or about his
abandonment of heteronormative standards, or, worst of all, about how this
attraction he thought he was feeling for Jude was really something else: a

misplaced guilt for the suicide attempt, or a form of patronization, or
simple, misdirected boredom.
So he did nothing and said nothing. As the months passed, he dated,
casually, and he examined his feelings as he did. This is crazy, he told
himself. This is not a good idea. Both were true. It would be so much easier
if he didn’t have these feelings at all. And so what if he did? he argued with

himself. Everyone had feelings that they knew better than to act upon
because they knew that doing so would make life so much more
complicated. He had whole pages of dialogue with himself, imagining the
lines—his and JB’s, both spoken by him—typeset on white paper.
But still, the feelings persisted. They went to Cambridge for
Thanksgiving, the first time in two years that they’d done so. He and Jude
shared his room because Julia’s brother was visiting from Oxford and had

the upstairs bedroom. That night, he lay awake on the bedroom sofa,