Dreaming Out Loud

aka the sleepless in seattle fic

Fic by jerakeen & Art by cleverboots

Lucille Margaret Masters is not a very interesting person. The most interesting thing about her is that she grew up in an old, abandoned church—but then, in her experience, most people find that creepy-interesting and not fun-interesting, so she can’t even use it as a conversation starter.

The truth is, she’s just average, and average doesn’t get anyone laid. No guy has ever wanted to fuck her through a wall at the mention of her job (teaching second grade) or her family (single mom, runs a store for all kinds of New Age-y paraphernalia) or her dreams (what she really wants to do is paint). Lying is out of the question, because while she has no problem making things up, she does suck at the delivery, and all that leaves her with is—well . . . her feminine wiles.

Through trial and error, she has managed to cultivate a foolproof technique that lets her lie by omission. She basically just keeps everything to herself, acts mysterious, provides a blank canvas for the men, so to speak, and they paint a portrait of their own choice, doing all the hard work while she just smiles a lot, acts interested, and looks pretty.

She has found that when it comes to one-night stands, it isn’t required for either party to be interesting, anyway. It’s mostly a matter of right place, right time, and the right kind of equipment.

With all that planning, one would think that she’s having sex every other day. A couple years back, that would have been about right, but lately, she just hasn’t been feeling it. In fact, the last time she had sex was two months ago, and it had been completely unplanned. She hadn’t even been smiling mysteriously when the guy had come over to her and started talking. But he’d been amusing, and she had gone with the flow.

That fucking flow. This is all its fault.

It’s not like Lucille hates kids or anything; it’s just that she’s never wanted the husband and white picket fence thing, and the question of kids was one that she figured she’d sort out when she got around to it. And now here she is, getting smacked in the face with the possibility of becoming a single mom, just like her own mother had been.

(Her mom is going to laugh so hard at this, the bitch.)

She just—has no idea how to feel about this. The bathroom tiles under her ass are cold, and she has a feeling that no matter how long she sits there and stares at it, that little pink plus sign on the stick is not going to change into anything else. She’s going to have to make a decision here.

She needs to think this through. What the hell does she even want to do?

Putting the stick on the counter, she pulls herself up and looks in the mirror. She should put on some make-up, just to make herself feel better, before she hunts down Neil Lambert’s phone number and tells him there’s a chance that they’re going to be having a baby.

But first, she’s going to have to puke a little.

Kris turns off the engine, killing the Britney Spears song on the radio mid-word, and walks across the lawn towards the children playing baseball. The sound of a dozen kids yelling and screaming all at once assaults his ears, but he’s used to that sound; it’s more welcome than a Britney Spears song any day. As he gets closer to the field, he spots Dylan being tackled by a tiny blonde girl with a red face and braids flying behind her. Dylan hits the ground, and Kris winces. That one is going to leave bruises, and he’ll be hearing about it at length tonight for sure.

“Hey, Kris.”

It’s that redhead—Joanne? Jolene? She’s loitering around the fence with a couple more parents, waiting for the coach to let the kids go. He knows her, he’s absolutely sure, but he has too much stuff in his head at any given time to be able to hang onto random names. He knows Dylan’s teachers’ names and his friends’ names; those have priority. And he knows that Jolene, if that is indeed her name, has a cousin in Dylan’s class—but since Dylan basically thinks that girls have cooties right now, Kris has never had an opportunity or reason to try and get to know her.

“Hi,” he says, nodding at her. Then he stuffs both his hands in his back pockets and tries to look busy watching the children.

Jeffrey, the coach, has gathered the kids in a circle around him—a restless, fidgety circle—and is talking to them about team spirit. That’s what Kris figures from the occasional word that drifts to him, anyway. It’s hard to say for sure since eight-year-olds never shut up.

“Are you and Dylan coming to the fundraiser on Saturday?”

Kris stares at Jolene blankly. Fundraiser? He doesn’t remember anything about a fundraiser on Saturday. Joe Coleman is playing at the restaurant that night, they’re getting their meat delivery from that new place Andy Johnson has recommended, Candice said she can’t work, her in-laws are coming to visit, so he’s one server short, and Daniel mentioned something about bringing a date . . . but no fundraiser.

“I don’t . . . uh.”

“Dad.”

Dylan is standing in front of him, dirty and sweaty, hair plastered to his cheeks. It’s getting too long; they should visit Curtis and get it cut soon.

Thankful for the save, Kris claps his hands uselessly and grins. “You got your backpack?”

Dylan holds it up and rolls his eyes at him. So Kris panics around women, big deal. He’ll be the one laughing in a couple of years.

“Let’s go, then.”

Kris turns back to Jolene with a polite smile and finds her playing with her hair. Why do women do that? It’s weird, like they have a secret sign language he can’t decipher. Katy did it occasionally as well. Kris should have asked her what it meant.

“We have to run. It was nice seeing you.”

Jolene smiles back at him with thin lips; it looks awkward and forced. Well, that makes two of them, then. Kris grabs Dylan’s backpack and puts an arm around him to steer him towards the car, matching his steps to Dylan’s smaller ones automatically.

“She likes you, you know,” Dylan says.

“What’s her name?” Kris keeps his voice low, making sure she can’t hear. He looks at Dylan from the corner of his eyes.

Dylan huffs. “Josie Hannigan. Told you before. She’s Fran’s cousin.”

“Oh.” Kris doesn’t remember ever asking before. Oh, well.

“They all like you. They think you’re hot.”

Kris wishes he could be surprised at that coming out of his son’s mouth, but Dylan has been a parrot ever since the first time he said da, and this is nothing compared to what he learns from TV.

“Who thinks I’m hot? And where do you hear about that stuff?”

“Everyone. Jason’s mother. Carol’s cousin Alexa. Marty Brown’s sisters.” He shrugs like it’s the dumbest question he’s ever heard. “I heard Mrs. Grant talking to the lady with the eyebrows the other day. Everyone says. Why aren’t you dating?”

“I don’t—wait, Mrs. Grant? Your teacher, Mrs. Grant?”

Dylan shrugs again, getting in the car and struggling with the seat belt. Kris reaches in and buckles it for him. “You know what? Let’s never listen to gossip. Ever.”

“Fine by me,” Dylan says.

Kris doesn’t believe for a second that he means it. Kids love gossip. They thrive on it. “Anyway. What’s this I hear about a fundraiser?”

Dylan lies in his bed, listening to the sounds of the guitar coming from downstairs. He doesn’t mind the music—even at night. He doesn’t want to learn to play himself, which he thinks maybe makes his dad sad sometimes, but he’s used to music. He doesn’t think about it a lot; it’s just there.

There’s always music at Papa Joe’s, and Dylan gets to spend a lot of time there, sitting in the corner booth where he carved his initials on the table—his dad saw it, but he didn’t say anything, because he’s the coolest dad ever—and doing his homework and stuff. And they almost always have dinner there. Dylan likes barbecue; it’s much better than when he goes over to Matthew’s and his mother makes them eat broccoli—which tastes like feet.

Dylan doesn’t have a mother, but he and Alfie made a list once—that was before Alfie had to move to Baltimore—and they decided that since Dylan has the coolest dad ever, and has Uncle Daniel who knows how to do back flips, and Uncle Charles who showed them how to dig for worms and scare girls with them in the playground, and Samantha who has the biggest collection of scary animal documentaries and lets him watch them whenever he stays over, and two sets of grandparents who buy him whatever he wants for Christmas and birthdays . . . well, by their count, he’s pretty lucky he doesn’t have a mother to shove broccoli down his throat. Not that he thinks his mother would have—his dad always says his mom was the most fun person he’s ever met—but Dylan still figures he’s pretty lucky, when you take the list all together.

Things have been kind of sucking lately, though. First Alfie had to move, leaving Dylan with stupid Matthew and his stupid broccoli, and then he found out that his father is sad. And lonely. And a bastard. He doesn’t really know what that last one means, but it didn’t sound like a good thing when Uncle Daniel’s friend Ralph said it.

They were at Papa Joe’s when he first realized something was wrong. He was sitting with Uncle Daniel and Ralph, and he was eating barbecued ribs—with his hands, because that’s what makes it fun—and that’s when he heard Ralph say, “We need to get him laid is all I’m saying.” He was looking at the stage, where Dylan’s dad was singing, like he did every Thursday night.

“Don’t say laid,” Uncle Daniel said. Dylan could see the half-chewed onion rings in his mouth. “The kid, man. Don’t talk like that near the kid.”

Ralph smiled wide at Dylan, showing him all his teeth, and then belched loudly and laughed, his shoulders shaking with it. He did that a lot that night; Dylan thinks maybe he was drunk, because that’s what drunk people always do on TV.

“The kid’s got a right to know what a sad, lonely bastard his father is.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, stop talking,” Uncle Daniel told him, throwing a napkin at his face.

After that, they started talking about girls, and Dylan tuned them out as usual. He even forgot all about the whole thing, until he heard Uncle Charles and his dad talking one night.

They thought he was asleep, but Dylan doesn’t sleep half as much as the grown-ups seem to think he does. He was sitting at the top of the stairs and considering his options—go back to his room and read the latest issue of Justice League Unlimited, or try to see how many steps he could creep down without being noticed—when Uncle Charles said, “You’ll still be in your thirties when Dylan goes away to college, man. What’re you gonna have then? Your lonely ass and a fucking barbecue joint? That’s what you wanna do with your life?”

His dad sighed. “We’ve been over this, Charles. Hell, we’ve been going over this since before Dylan was born! You know what everybody was saying—give up the baby, or what kind of life were we gonna have. And you stood by us then—”

“Yeah, well, maybe I think you’ve sacrificed enough. Maybe I think it’s finally time to go after what you want.”

“Charles. I don’t wanna date right now. I don’t.”

“Well, fine. Don’t date, man, I don’t care.”

His dad snorted. Dylan tried to make the same sound himself, but then thought maybe he’d practice some other time, because it made him want to sneeze, and he didn’t want them to hear him.

“I don’t,” Uncle Charles said insistently. “But don’t act like you don’t want anything more than this. What about music, huh? You’re not a ‘Thursday nights at Papa Joe’s’ kind of guy. You’re better than that. You could make it big.”

“Nah,” his dad said. “You can’t do starving artist with an eight-year-old in tow. That’s not how it works.”

“So let’s order you a coffin already, dude. You sound ready to lie down in it.”

Dylan’s eyes opened wide. That was scary, thinking about his dad in a coffin, but it was also kind of cool. If Dylan had a coffin instead of a bed—and vampire pajamas—and a sleepover for his birthday this year with Night of the Living Dead—

Then Dylan heard his dad getting up and scrambled back to his room, got under the covers, and pretended to be asleep. The day after that, he emailed Alfie and they started planning. Alfie, as always, had the best plans.

So now, listening to his dad play when he thinks Dylan is asleep makes Dylan kind of sad and worried. His dad is good, that’s what everyone says. But no one ever gets discovered in Arkansas. Alfie says even Baltimore is better if you want to be famous, but he still thinks that city kind of stinks, so he doesn’t recommend it to Dylan. He says they need to move to Los Angeles. That’s where all the famous people live. And Alfie has an Aunt Madeleine there, and he can totally come and visit sometimes.

Dylan doesn’t have his own computer, but his dad lets him use the one in the living room. He even has his own account there, with his very own user picture (Batman) and password (robinsux). So he already looked Los Angeles up, and he’s pretty sure Alfie is right about this. Because Los Angeles is where Adam Lambert lives, and if his dad is ever going to make an album and give concerts and stuff, Adam Lambert is the guy to help.

Adam Lambert isn’t a very nice guy, from what Dylan can tell. His dad always tells him that it’s not nice to say to other people’s faces that you hate their macaroni picture frames or that you think their hair is the color of puke, but Adam Lambert seems to do stuff like that all the time. But Dylan’s dad also said that Adam Lambert knew what he was talking about when he wrote about Frank Collins’ album, and even though Dylan doesn’t really remember what Frank Collins’ music was like from back when he played at Papa Joe’s—it was months ago, Dylan doesn’t even remember what season it was—he’s pretty sure his dad liked him, so he figures maybe Mr. Lambert is just mean to people who actually suck. His dad doesn’t suck, the whole town says so, so Dylan doesn’t think there’s going to be a problem with the meanness.

Adam Lambert’s email address is easy to find—it’s at the bottom of everything he writes—so Dylan adds it to his address book under a fake name (Mister X) and starts to compose his message. Alfie helps out a lot, rewrites Dylan’s email so he sounds more grown up, and he even gets his father to help edit the video Dylan has of his dad singing at Papa Joe’s, though, of course, they don’t tell Mr. Wilson what it’s really for. If anyone asks, Dylan is preparing a surprise for his dad, which he is, in a way, so that’s not even lying.

After a week’s work, Dylan is pretty happy with the email and the video—his dad has his eyes closed for most of the recording, but Dylan doesn’t think he can Photoshop his eyes open, so there’s nothing he can do about that—and they finally upload it to YouTube, and Dylan hits send.

He sits in front of the computer for an hour waiting for a reply, but Alfie says he’s a dumbass, Mr. Lambert is probably way too busy to check his email every second, so after sixty-seven minutes, he turns off the computer and goes to watch some TV instead.

Before he knows it, it’s the weekend and he visits his Grandma, and she makes him apple pie with vanilla ice cream, and then it’s Monday and there’s a school trip to Pinnacle Mountain where Terry Conroy pushes him, and he falls and scrapes his knee, and then . . . he forgets all about the email.

And then it’s a week later, and his father is calling for him from downstairs with his full name, which means Dylan is in big, big trouble, and it all comes back to bite him in the ass.

“Dylan James Allen, get your ass in here.”

“What did I do?”

Kris presses the receiver against his chest to muffle the sound. “You emailed Adam Lambert?”

Dylan blanches. “Oh.”

That’s a yes, then. “You put my song up on YouTube?”

“Alfie’s dad helped,” Dylan mumbles, looking down.

Kris shuts his eyes and counts down from ten in his head. “Why?” he asks, keeping his voice level. Yelling never helps. Neither does talking, most of the time, but at least that rarely ends in tears and incurable headaches.

“I wanted you to be happy.”

“You wanted me to be happy,” Kris repeats, uncomprehending. “What makes you think I’m not happy?” He pauses, searching Dylan’s face for clues. “And what does that have to do with Adam Lambert?”

Dylan’s eyes open wide, and an excited flush covers his face. “We could move and you could make an album and be on MTV and stuff. Then you’d be happy, right?”

Kris stares at him, unable to utter a word. What in the world is his kid going on about?

Dylan shuffles his feet. “And you said Adam Lambert knows about music, so I thought he could help.”

Kris is pretty sure Daniel is to blame for this; he almost always is. He doubts he can prove it, but he would know Daniel’s influence from a mile away. The time Dylan thought he could fly and broke his leg falling out of a tree? That was all Daniel. Or the time Dylan drank three bottles of milk just to see if he could do it and ended up throwing up all over the couch? Again, Daniel. If Kris could ground Daniel, he’d be a happy man. But he can hardly punish a—supposedly—grown man, and since there are no broken bones, spilled blood, or puked-on couch cushions in this instance—and since Dylan is, as always, full of good intentions—Kris lets his anger evaporate.

Most of it, anyway.

“Come here,” he says, pulling Dylan closer and kissing him on the head. “I’m happy here; you don’t have to worry about me.”

“But—”

“And you can’t just email people our phone number!”

“It’s not people,” Dylan grumbles. “It’s Adam Lambert.”

Kris gives him a stern look. “We’re going to talk about this—as soon as I’m done with this phone call.” He gestures to the receiver still clutched in his hand. “Now go up to your room and finish your project.”

“So you’re not mad?” Dylan asks, hopeful.

“Oh, you’re in trouble, mister. Don’t think you’re not,” Kris says, turning him around and pushing him towards the stairs. Dylan goes up with his head hanging low, his feet dragging. Kris shakes his head and lets out a longsuffering sigh.

Children. Just when you think you’ve gotten a handle on them . . .

Kris clears his throat and goes back to the phone. “Hey. Sorry I kept you waiting.”

The man at the other end of the line chuckles. “Oh, no. That was very interesting.”

“Ever tried living with an eight-year-old?” Kris asks impulsively, dropping himself down on the couch.

“Can’t say that I have,” the man drawls, amused.

“Yeah, well. Interesting is a word for it. At this age, they’re all very—unique. Every day is an adventure.”

The man laughs softly and says, “So I’m guessing you weren’t the one who emailed me the recording. But that’s okay. Kid did you a favor. You’re kind of unique, too.”

Kris knows he’s not unique. He’s talented, sure, but there are a lot of talented people out there like him. He would know; Arkansas’ talent has been passing through his restaurant for years. Some of them make it, some of them don’t, but if you ask him, they all deserve to. “I’m not—I have a job. I have a kid. I live in Conway. I’m not one of those people who’re out there chasing their dreams. So, I’m really flattered, Mr. Lambert, but—”

“Adam.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Call me Adam.”

“Oh, okay. Well, like I said, I’m just not interested. I’m sorry.”

“That’s a shame,” Adam says, and he sounds sincere, too, which surprises Kris. He knows better than to expect honesty and sincerity from people in the industry. Adam Lambert may be just a critic, but he’s still a big name. If Kris knows him all the way in Conway, he must be pretty big in L.A.

“Thank you, though. I really appreciate the call,” Kris says, because even though it had been kind of alarming at first to know that Adam Lambert has heard him sing, his saying that Kris is unique—well, that’s probably going to be the highlight of Kris’ music career.

“Okay,” Adam says, sounding disappointed. “You know my email if you change your mind.”

“Yeah,” Kris says. “But I won’t—I can’t.”

Adam clicks his tongue, sounding dissatisfied. “Then I’ll let you get back to grounding your kid.”

Kris grins. “Grounding him never works. I’m going to go with no comics for a month.”

“Ouch,” Adam says.

“It was nice meeting you.”

“You too, Kris Allen from Conway, Arkansas,” Adam Lambert says and hangs up.

Kris lets his head fall back against the couch and closes his eyes.

Adam never meant to become a critic. For one thing, he’s always hated writing. To be able to write properly, you have to sit still and focus on one thing for hours at a time, and that’s just not Adam. But it’s a rule or something that every favor you ever do has to come back and haunt you forever, and once he wrote a short piece for a friend, he couldn’t get rid of the job. So in the last three years, Adam has learned that he can, in fact, write—turns out Neil didn’t get all the writing genes in the family—and realized that he maybe even enjoys it from time to time.

Every door he tried with his singing seemed to shut in his face, but with writing, people kept opening them and shoving him through. Who was Adam to say no to a steady paycheck—especially at a time in his life when he was literally starving—or to fame, even if it’s just the internet kind? At first, he’d figured it would be yet another step in his singing career, but then years passed, and he slowly began to accept the fact that this was a career in its own right. And now he can say—without choking on a shot of tequila, even—that he’s almost happy with his life.

He likes to think his style really started to show in his column once he accepted his fate. He put his foot down on what he will and won’t write about, tried to steer clear from becoming too pop, determined to find the hidden gems and push them into the limelight—be a fucking fairy godmother as Brad had said—and now he has a nice balance going. He does red carpet and Hollywood parties, he does reviews of the public sweethearts, but he also goes to the puke-smelling dives with ten-dollar entrance fees and keeps up with what the kids are doing these days. He came through those dives himself once upon a time, and he’s found talent more than once in the unknowns he goes there to see, so no matter what his editor says, he’s not giving up on them anytime soon.

Though he has to admit, he does feel kind of old to be seeing some of these shows. That’s where Allison comes in.

“Dude, this place rocks,” Allison says, spilling half her drink on the table as she tries to put the glasses in her hand down. She laughs at her clumsiness and sings along with the kid on stage, one hand in the air. “I love them!” she shouts.

Adam doesn’t really love them, but they’re okay. Not bad for a group of teenagers anyway. They could be the next Fall Out Boy if they stick with it; whether that’s a good thing or bad is up for debate.

Adam makes his martini last, because there’s no way he’s braving the bar, and listens to the song with half an ear. His mind is mostly on the interview he did that morning, with an up–and-coming named George Sallis. The guy was surprisingly level-headed for a twenty-three year-old, and his voice kind of reminded Adam of that guy from Arkansas—Kris Allen. They’d had an interesting chat, not only about music and where George wanted to go with it, but also about life and love, and it had made Adam think . . .

“What’s up with you tonight?”

Adam comes back to the bar and realizes that it’s much quieter than it was a moment ago. The band must have taken a break; Adam’s ears thank them for it. He notices that Allison is staring at him expectantly and says, “I’m sorry, what?”

“Where’s your head at, man? Not here, that’s for sure.”

“Oh, nothing,” Adam waves her concern away. “Nothing. I’m just . . .”

Allison raises an eyebrow, waiting, and Adam thinks what the hell. “I feel like—like I missed something. Like there was a turn I was supposed to take, years back maybe, and now I’m lost, and I missed some important stuff along the way.”

Allison gives him a look. “Explain.”

“I’m almost thirty. I did the wild youth thing, I did the self-discovery thing, I did the falling madly, crazily, stupidly in love thing. Those feel—right, you know? Those were supposed to go that way. But then the singing thing never happened, and the acting—well, I wasn’t crazy about that anyway, and I started working for Howard, and my life finally settled down, and now . . . Now I feel like something’s missing.”

“You’re horny.”

Adam rolls his eyes. “Look, I was talking to this guy today. George Sallis?”

“Oh, I love him,” Allison interjects, nodding excitedly.

“I asked him where he saw himself in five years, and he said he saw himself with Denise. That he’d always have music—and Denise. That guy is only twenty-three. And he has a wife he’s sure will still be with him in five years.”

Allison opens her mouth, but Adam interrupts her before she can talk.

“And I believed him, too! That’s the weirdest part! I believed that he’d be with Denise, because he had that look in his eyes when he talked about her, like it was fate. Like there was no other way. Meant to be! Written in the stars!”

“Okay, okay, I get it,” Allison says, pulling his flailing arms down and placing them back on the table. She pats the back of his hand. “So what you’re saying is: you’re horny?”

Adam groans and slumps down in his seat.

“Dude, seriously. Didn’t you feel that way about Brad? Wasn’t it meant to be, forever and ever et cetera, et cetera?”

“That’s not the same thing,” Adam grumbles. “We were kids. It was forever and ever, and that’s why he’s still one of my best friends, but it wasn’t like—he wasn’t home. I didn’t see us ever getting real jobs and buying a house together or whatever.”

“So you wanna get married?”

Adam glares at her. “No. I want . . .” He thinks about Kris Allen from Conway, Arkansas, with his well-meaning son, and his gig at a stupid little family restaurant, and how he doesn’t even have to think about rejecting an offer at a music career because he has a son and that’s his home, and that’s all that matters. Adam knows how Kris Allen would have answered his question; in five years, he’d still have music—and his son.

“Oh, look.” Allison grabs his hand. “They’re starting again.”

Adam watches her bounce in her seat in time with the beat and sighs. In five years, Allison will probably grow up a little, so Adam will have music, and a purple-haired friend who’s no longer a teenager.

After two weeks of watching and re-watching the YouTube clip, Adam decides to give Kris another call. By that time, he has the song memorized—it’s an original, he looked it up—and he knows the four minute recording by heart; the people seated at the corner booth right next to the stage, the waitress serving them barbecued chicken and beer, and Kris Allen singing with his eyes closed as if none of them existed, him and his guitar the only real things in the world.

Adam thinks about what Kris’ life must be like. He probably has a day job, and a cute little wife to go with the cute little kid. They probably play Scrabble at night when Kris doesn’t have a gig at that restaurant.

Adam has never wanted kids—his life has never been kid-friendly—and he’s certainly never wanted a wife, but the thought of Kris Allen’s small-town family leaves him yearning for something he can’t quite name. After a while, he finds himself trying to come up with ways to make the dream work for Kris. Adam can help him, can introduce him to people; they can get a demo out and see if there are any takers. Kris wouldn’t have to move on an empty hope, Adam can help him do most of it from his cute little home in Conway, and when they get a deal, they can rent a nice apartment, maybe in Adam’s neighborhood, and Adam can drop by from time to time and have dinner with them.

And maybe Adam is not a fucking fairy godmother, and Kris’ family is not his to play around with. Maybe they’re happy right where they are, away from Adam and his grubby, family-stealing paws.

That’s also possible, Adam has to admit. But he makes the call anyway, just to be sure.

The second phone call surprises Kris more than the first, if that’s possible. He recognizes the voice on the other end immediately, but feels the need to clarify anyway—because why would Adam Lambert be calling him? Again?

“I was just listening to that song again—what’s it called anyway?”

“I’m sorry, which song?” Kris asks stupidly.

Adam turns up the volume. “The song you’re singing here.”

“Next Time,” Kris manages to get out. “It’s called Next Time.”

“Hmm,” Adam says, “I like it. It’s a good song. Anyway. I just wanted to offer, again—I mean, I know you said no, but I can help with a lot of the earlier stuff. We can get your demo out; you wouldn’t have to up and move here or anything. If you can come out for the weekends, that’d be plenty. I know all the right places, all the right people, you know?”

“I’m—” Kris doesn’t even know what to say. Actually, he knows what he wants to say—he wants to ask why, wants to know where the hell this offer is coming from—but that’s not what you do when someone like Adam Lambert takes an interest in you. You act cool, and if you have to refuse, you do it with grace, and then you try not to drown yourself in the tub afterward. “I can’t.”

“Oh,” Adam says, sounding disappointed. “I know it must be hard to imagine, with the family and everything, kid’s school, your wife’s job, right? But you’re really good. You can do something with that.”

“It’s not—I don’t have a—my wife died,” Kris says. He knows from experience that there is no good way to say it. You just have to blurt it out and hope for the best.

“I’m sorry,” Adam says, sounding a little flustered like everyone does.

“It’s okay. It was a long time ago. I just—I have a kid to take care of and a restaurant to run, and not screwing either of those up is a daily miracle for me, so I really can’t jump into something like this.”

Adam sighs. “I understand.” He sounds like he’s pouting.

“Mr. Lambert, I’m really—”

“Oh, stop calling me that for God’s sake.”

“Okay, Adam—”

“Is this your restaurant? The one in the clip?”

Kris blinks, trying to keep up with the conversation. “Yeah. Papa Joe’s, I own half of it.”

“Huh. Why does that sound familiar to me?” Adam mumbles, almost to himself.

Kris answers him anyway. “Frank Collins.”

“Frank Collins?” Adam parrots back at him.

“Yeah. He used to play at Papa Joe’s.”

“Seriously? You know Frank?” Adam sounds so bubbly, Kris can’t help but grin. There’s something very disarming about the way his voice reflects his emotions. It’s not that different from an eight-year-old’s, in that respect.

“He’s one of my brother’s best friends, actually.”

“Small world!” Adam laughs. “I can actually kind of see a thing or two he must have learned from you, now. But he never dropped your name when I asked about his influences.”

“Yeah,” Kris says, leaning back on the couch and playing along. “So fickle once they make it big, aren’t they?”

The thing with Adam’s job is that some weeks he has to work day and night to get an article done, and others, it’s done in half an hour. Interviews are easier; he usually has those written in a matter of hours. Reviews, especially of popular artists, take more time. But those are few and far between, and since he doesn’t even have to make appearances at the office—in fact, Howard, his editor, prefers that he doesn’t—that leaves him with a lot of time on his hands.

Which, it could be said, is both a blessing and a curse.

Adam likes the night life. He likes hanging out with his friends, making new ones, hooking up with beautiful people. He likes having the time to take care of himself—getting a manicure, going to a spa, or spending half the day in his bathtub, just chilling. But he also genuinely enjoys working. There’s a certain satisfaction he gets from keeping busy and productive that no mud mask can ever give him. That’s why in the last couple of years, he’s found himself getting involved in a variety of different projects that’ll fill his otherwise empty weekdays—things he enjoys doing that’ll challenge him a little bit, and more importantly, things he will be proud to have his name attached to.

Allison was one of those projects, and she’s turning out beautifully, if he does say so himself. He can see her getting better, growing and gaining confidence every day. She’s going to take the music world by storm when she’s ready. Adam can’t wait to see her at the Grammys and the VMAs and tell people that’s my girl.

But Allison is out of his hands now. There’s not much he can do for her but give advice when needed, so now he has a new project to fill his time—Skin.Graft’s new Adam Lambert Collection.

It was Cassidy’s idea, though Adam doesn’t know how this didn’t occur to them sooner. Adam can do fashion; he can do fashion with his eyes closed and his hands tied behind his back. And with Skin.Graft’s most immediate target being the music industry—whatever they wear, their fans will just have to buy, Cassidy reasons—Adam’s name on their designs will be perfect—for both of them.

He’s been working on designs for the line for the last couple of weeks, and he’s beginning to realize that it’s going to take them months to be done with it. He’s a perfectionist and has a very clear vision of what he wants, and Cassidy has to find the middle ground with what Adam wants and what they can get. They’ve been meeting almost every day to get his ideas down on paper, talking fabrics and colors, with Adam reluctantly but surely learning from Cassidy to factor in the cost and the limitations of his chosen materials, and how to balance the wild signature pieces with stuff people will actually buy that they can wear in their daily lives. (Cassidy glares at him when he says people can very well wear purple sequins in their daily lives. Adam does, after all.)

It’s hard work and very frustrating to try and put into words what he wants Cassidy to draw, but it’s also one of the most exciting things Adam has worked on in a long, long time. It makes him get up in the morning (okay, afternoon mostly) with purpose and a smile on his face, and that’s what these projects of his have all been about.

“Hello, beautiful,” Cassidy greets him, sounding groggy, like he spent the night drinking and just woke up. Which, judging by the look of the studio, is exactly what happened.

“Hey. What the fuck happened to you?”

Cassidy gives him a wide and sleepy grin. “Teresa.”

Of course. He does have that fucked-out look about him. Adam throws his jacket on an overturned chair and pushes him toward the shower. “Go clean up. You smell like girl.”

Cassidy chuckles at his scrunched up face. “Don’t lie. You like girls.”

Adam does. Girls are pretty and nice. But not like this. “Not their vaginas,” he says. “You have vagina cooties. Go shower. Shoo.”

Cassidy doesn’t put up a fight. He just mumbles, “Do I ever,” and wobbles his way to the bathroom. Adam hears the water start as he takes a seat at the desk by the window and starts looking through the designs he and Cassidy had been working on the day before. He pulls up the sheet with leather jacket #3, his favorite so far; he holds it up, studying the details around its shoulders, and starts taking notes. It definitely needs more spikes.

Papa Joe’s doesn’t open until noon, but since Kris has to put together breakfast for Dylan and pack his lunch, he ends up getting up early on weekdays anyway. It takes at least three tries to get Dylan out of bed—every day, without fail—and then it’s a rush to get him dressed and fed and presentable and out the door on time. If Dylan ends up missing the bus, then Kris has to drive him, which throws his whole routine off and means Kris will be cranky all day.

Nobody wants that. Kris has it on good authority that he’s worse than a five-year-old when he’s cranky. So really, it’s for the good of all mankind that Dylan catches his bus.

“Dylan! Your eggs are getting cold!”

Dylan yells back, “Yeah, coming!”

When he comes down—making enough noise to wake the whole neighborhood—Dylan’s hair is sticking up in at least five different directions, and his t-shirt is only half tucked in. It’s also possibly the oldest piece of clothing he owns. The original bright green color is now faded to almost white, and it has more holes than Kris cares to count. Kris sighs and wets his hands under the faucet, attacking from behind and tackling the hair before Dylan can wriggle out of his grasp.

“There. Better.”

Dylan grumbles into his orange juice and glares at him over the rim of his glass.

Kris grins at him. “I’m going to burn that t-shirt by the way.”

Dylan gasps, clutching at the worn-out dinosaur print on his chest and almost spilling orange juice on it. That’s just what it needs, after all. “You wouldn’t!”

“Try me.”

Eight-year-olds are easy to fool. Taking in the shocked face—scandalized look and all—one would think that Kris makes a habit of burning Dylan’s clothes. It’s not like Kris doesn’t have a pair of red sneakers that have seen much better days and are beginning to develop some holes themselves; but that doesn’t mean he’s going to let his son get away with looking like a street urchin, and he has learned through experience that all it takes is the right tone of voice to make Dylan buy into his threats.

Kris packs a juice box and an apple with Dylan’s sandwich and has him out the door with two minutes to spare. He watches through the living room window as Dylan fiddles with the straps of his backpack all the way to the corner, where a group of kids are already waiting for the bus. Ellie and Joy greet him with enthusiastic smiles, but Dylan all but runs away from them, making Kris smirk as he turns back to take care of the breakfast dishes. Allen men are just hopeless with women. It’s in their genes.

Weekday mornings after Dylan leaves and before Kris has to go to work are the only alone time Kris has. He savors it—makes those couple of hours count. He doesn’t do laundry or clean the house—those are things he saves for when Dylan’s home—instead he does the things he’s not allowed to do with an eight-year-old kid present, which are many and varied, he has found out through the years.

He’d had it much worse for a long time. Back when he couldn’t afford his own place, they’d had to move back in with his parents, and even after they moved out, when Dylan was home full-time and Kris couldn’t justify paying for a babysitter when he could take care of him himself—taking Dylan in to work with him was never a problem, which was exactly why Kris stuck with his job at Papa Joe’s even before it occurred to him that he could be running the place one day. Sacrifices had to be made back then, but that really doesn’t make it any less tragic. There were a couple of years in between when Kris hadn’t gotten to watch an R rated movie for months, let alone porn. His life had consisted of going to work to prepare food and serve food and deal with the dishes, and then doing it all again at home for his son.

There is no way he’s going back to that. Now, he has a carefully refined system in place.

Booting up the computer, Kris logs onto his account and checks his emails. Ruby Royale Slots says download now to make your FORTUNE, which Kris deletes without opening, along with the requisite Official VIAGRA email. There’s one from Daniel with an attached picture, subject line saying you have to see this, and another one from—

Adam Lambert. Again.

Kris skips Daniel’s and clicks Adam Lambert’s right away.

This is the second email he’s gotten from the man, the first being a link to a new song of Frank’s, which had only said hope you don’t mind that I got your email from Dylan. Kris hadn’t known whether to clutch at his chest in glee or ground Dylan for twenty years. Dylan’s explanation when he’d asked, by the way, was that Adam already knew their phone number, so what difference did it make if he knew his dad’s email address or not? Besides, I thought you liked him?

The boy is a perfectly annoying mixture of him and Katy, that’s for sure.

This email doesn’t have a link or an attachment. It’s short, like the one before, and to the point.

I know this is personel and I’d understnd completely if you don’t answer but I have no one else to talk to about this stuff. So.

How did you decide to keep Dylan? You couldn’t have been any oldr then 18.

Kris stares blankly at the computer screen for ten minutes, and then at his phone for another fifteen, before he finds the name in his contacts and makes himself hit call.

The buzzing of his phone wakes Adam up and immediately makes him think Danielle. He’d said he wasn’t going with her to the dentist; he doesn’t care how scared she is or how hot her doctor is. For God’s sake, he was up until 4 AM; it’s way too early for dental work.

“I do not care if the chair eats you,” he says into the phone, his voice thick with sleep. “I’m not going with you.”

“Um,” the person on the other end of the line—who is very clearly not Danielle—says. “I’m sorry?”

“Oh, shit,” Adam says, half-opening one eye. “Who’s this?”

“Kris.” An uncertain pause. “Allen.” Another one. “From—”

“Arkansas, yeah,” Adam says, sitting up and letting his smile creep into his voice. “I know who you are.”

“Sorry I woke you up. I didn’t realize how early it was.”

“It’s okay,” Adam lies easily, “I was going to get up anyway.” He grabs a pillow and sticks it between the headboard and his back, settling into a more comfortable position.

“But not to save your friend from man-eating chairs?”

“I don’t battle furniture before noon.”

Kris snickers. “You’re a man of principle.”

Adam slides down just a little, eyelids falling half-shut. There’s something about this guy’s voice.

“So,” Kris says, probably seeing Adam isn’t about to start talking anytime soon. “I got your email.”

It all comes crashing back to Adam suddenly. The baby. The email. The vodka. “Ah, about that . . . I probably shouldn’t have presumed—”

“No, no, it’s fine,” Kris rushes to reassure him. “I’m just not very good at . . . writing stuff. So. I thought . . .” He chuckles, sounding a little uncomfortable. “You know, I’m not particularly good at talking either.”

Adam can almost see him palming the back of his neck nervously. Which is just ridiculous, because how would Adam know the man’s gestures from seeing a four-minute video of him singing? (Four minutes and thirteen seconds, his mind corrects him. Adam imagines himself punching his brain.)

“I’m really sorry for bothering you with this. But I honestly couldn’t think of anyone else. I mean, there’s my mom, but she’s . . . you know. My mom.”

“Yeah, sure, man, I don’t mind,” Kris says, sounding more relaxed. “So you wanna know how I decided . . .”

“Yeah,” Adam says, sliding even further down in the bed. “What was it that made you say I can do this?”

“It was . . . Well.” Adam hears him take a deep breath and then release it. “We were very young. I was eighteen, and she was just barely seventeen. And obviously we didn’t plan it. But I don’t think there was ever a moment we thought we wouldn’t go through with it. It was just . . . look, we were different than a lot of kids who—I mean, we were together and we knew we would get married one day, so it was just . . . a matter of bad timing, and that was . . . you know. I just told myself to deal with it.”

Adam puts a hand on his temple, trying to push the headache out with his fingers. “But geez—you were eighteen. Weren’t you scared?”

“Of course I was,” Kris responds immediately. “But the thing is—I realized that it—that I wanted it, I wanted them. I mean, I’d thought about dropping out, trying to make it with my music, but really? I was always gonna settle down with Katy, you know?” He pauses, and then continues more softly, “But, yeah, I was scared. I was scared I wouldn’t be able to hold him, that I would drop him, before he was even born. And then I was scared I wouldn’t be able to take care of him. And then—Katy died. And I was scared that I couldn’t do it on my own.” He pauses. “I’m still scared. I think it comes with being a parent. You’re supposed to be scared.”

Adam presses the phone against his forehead—it feels cool and smooth—and rubs his eyes with his free hand. He’s known about this baby for twenty hours, and it’s already giving him headaches. This does not bode well for their future relationship.

“—then maybe I could help better,” Kris is saying when he puts the phone back to his ear.

“What? I’m sorry, I didn’t get that.”

“I was saying that if I knew more about the mother . . .”

Adam waves a hand, then lets it drop on the bed. His limbs are still mostly asleep, and they don’t want to wake up. “It’s some girl I don’t even know.”

Kris is silent for a second. “You don’t know her? At all? I guess your situation is completely different—”

“Oh.” Adam sits up, feeling stupid. Of course that’s what Kris thought. “It’s not me. I mean. I’m not having a baby. My brother is.”

The chuckle Kris lets out sounds surprised and relieved. “Okay. Now it makes more sense.”

“Yeah. Sorry. I’m not usually this stupid. It’s just everyone who knows me would know that I’m gay, so I guess it just didn’t occur to me—”

“. . . that I didn’t know you?” Kris says good-naturedly.

Adam had known Kris wouldn’t be weird about the gay thing. He can just tell that with people. “Well. Yeah.”

“I did know that you’re gay. I must’ve read it somewhere. But, you know, you can’t believe everything you read on the internet.”

Adam grins. “When it’s about me? You should probably believe most of it.”

“So should I be designing a teeny tiny leather jacket or what?” Adam says instead of hello. He can almost hear his mother berating him for it.

Neil groans. Adam grins widely, taking a sip of his coffee and maneuvering around an old lady wearing a fabulously old-fashioned pink hat.

“Don’t talk to me about babies. Just don’t.”

“I bet Mom’s excited. You’re her only hope for grandkids.”

“We are not telling Mom.”

“What? Never?” He stops short in front of a store—Gucci. That’s a beautiful shirt. If only the buttons weren’t so horrendously large.

“Just—until I sort this shit out.”

“You talked to her yet? What was her name? Lucy?”

Neil heaves a sigh. “Lucille.”

Adam makes a face. What kind of a name is that? “Yeah. That. Whatever.”

“She keeps saying she can do it on her own, and I can’t—I don’t even know if I want to insist or not.”

“You do,” Adam says, feeling like an older brother suddenly. It usually works the other way around with them—even with the sleeping around, Neil is always the more mature one—but this time, Adam is ready to be grown-up and experienced and full of wisdom. He’s even wearing a suit in honor of the occasion.

“I do? What?”

“It’s still going to be your kid no matter what you do. And apparently, it’s all worth it in the end.”

Neil lets out an incredulous laugh. “And you would know this, how?”

“I know people.”

“People with kids?”

He doesn’t have to sound so dubious. “I know people with kids—who didn’t plan to have them. Single parents, even. And they—”

Neil cuts him off with an impatient sound. “Who exactly are you talking about?”

“You don’t know him. Just someone I know. That’s not the point. The point is, he says that you should try to see things from her point of view, that she’s probably scared and trying to protect herself, and that you should be respectful of that. But you shouldn’t give up, because even when they cry and poop and make your life a living hell, babies are amazing. His words, not mine. It’s biology or something—instincts, I don’t know. I probably don’t even have them.”

“Hmm,” Neil says. “Is this friend of yours called Dr. Phil by any chance?”

Adam rolls his eyes and throws his empty coffee cup into a trashcan. “You want his advice or not? This guy had a kid at eighteen, lost his wife two years later, and managed to raise a kick-ass boy all by himself.”

“The point being that he’s now single, right? And I’m guessing also hot. Or you wouldn’t be interested in his sob story of a life.”

Adam feels offended on Kris’ behalf. It’s not a sob story. “He’s not—”

“Tell me what he looks like,” Neil dares him.

Adam is this close to hanging up on him. This is what he gets for trying to help his kid brother out. Figures. But he’s not about to lie and say Kris is ugly. That would be even more offensive than the sob story thing. “Brown hair, brown eyes, kind of small, great voice. Cute, if you like that kind of thing.”

“Which you do.” Neil chuckles, suddenly in great spirits. “Your selfless search for advice on my behalf is not so selfless after all.”

That is so not how it is. “He lives in Arkansas.”

“And he’s Southern!” Neil crows. “Let me cross that off the list!”

“Ha ha.” He’s not funny. Neil’s never funny. It’s tragic that he thinks he is.

“Does he have an accent? I bet he has an accent.”

He does. Not that Adam feels like sharing now. “Fuck off. I’m hanging up.”

“Are you going to adopt his son? Because you should tell Mom—”

Adam hangs up on him.

Brothers. Can’t live with them, can’t ever get rid of them.

Kris is washing the dishes he’d been too lazy to take care of after breakfast when the phone rings. “Hello?” he answers, sticking the cordless between his chin and shoulder and drying his hands with the cheerful yellow towel with a smiling crab on it.

“Kris!” It’s Adam, and he sounds panicked. “I called your cell! You didn’t answer!”

Kris checks his pockets. “Must’ve left it in the bedroom. Is everything okay?” They’ve been talking on and off for weeks now, mostly about music, and families, since Adam’s brother is still struggling with his situation. Adam calling him in a panic can only mean one thing . . . The baby. Something must have gone wrong with the baby.

“No,” Adam moans into the phone. “Nothing’s okay. I have a date in an hour, and I don’t even know what to do with the potatoes!”

Kris collapses in a chair, deflated. Why is it that his conversations with Adam never go the way he expects them to? “What potatoes?”

“The date potatoes. I don’t know. They look like regular potatoes.”

Date potatoes. Right. Because that makes sense. “And what exactly is the problem with them?”

“Nothing, I hope.”

Kris lets his head fall forward, resting his cheek on the table. “Adam. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Oh. Sorry.” Adam takes a deep breath, hopefully calming down a little. “Okay. Here’s the thing. I don’t do dates like this.”

Kris can feel a rant coming.

“I don’t invite people over to cook. And if I did, I wouldn’t make them cook potatoes. I don’t eat potatoes. Period. Do you know what happens when I eat potatoes? I get fat.”

“We wouldn’t want that,” Kris says, amused.

“No, no, we wouldn’t. But this guy—he’s cute. He’s Cassidy’s friend, and Cassidy says he’s nice, so when he said he likes to cook, I said what the hell. Live a little, you know? Change of pace and all that stuff.”

Kris makes an interested sound.

“So I went shopping. Got shrimp, because that’s apparently his specialty, and I got potatoes, because he told me to, and then what does he do? He calls, just now, and says, oh hey, I’m going to be late, take care of the potatoes, will you?”

Kris mock-gasps.

“I know! Take care of the potatoes! What does that even mean?! What the hell am I supposed to do with them?”

Kris doesn’t mean to make fun of him, really, because Adam sounds genuinely confused, but he can’t help but snicker. He’s imagining Adam in a sparkly leather jacket—like in that stupidly smug-looking picture of him they had up at the Sound Essential website a couple months back—hair spiked up, staring at a bunch of potatoes helplessly.

“Oh, that’s nice,” Adam says. “Kick me when I’m down.”

The bitchy tone sends Kris into another fit. “I’m sorry,” he says in between gasps. “I’m just—okay, no, seriously. I’m gonna stop.” And there comes another wave.

“You’re so mean.”

Wheezing and coughing now, Kris rubs his face and tries to gather his wits. “Okay. I’m done. What do you need?”

“Tell me what to do with the potatoes,” he says sulkily.

Living with Dylan, Kris has plenty of experience ignoring sulkiness. One could say he’s an expert by now. “Um. Do you have olive oil? Rosemary? Garlic?”

A cupboard door creaks open. “I think so.”

“Okay,” Kris says, checking his watch. “I’ve got another hour before I have to leave for work. We can do this. First things first; do you know how to work the oven?”

Adam deems three of the potatoes too ugly to be eaten and throws them away, despite Kris’ assurances that they won’t look the same once cooked, and then manages to cut his finger while peeling one of the prettier ones. Fifteen minutes of whining and peeling and cutting later, Adam finally places the pan in the oven and sighs into the receiver, sounding completely spent.

“Thanks for this, Kris. Really. You were the only person I could think of among my friends who wouldn’t burn water.”

“Oh, come on, not a problem.” It really isn’t. He likes talking to Adam. He likes that Adam considers him a friend by now.

Adam sighs again. “I don’t even wanna eat anymore. Ugh.”

Kris smirks. “Wait until it starts to smell good.”

Adam groans, settling into a seat from the sound of it. Such a crybaby. “He better be worth all this.”

All this as in four potatoes. Kris rolls his eyes. “So what’s he like?”

“Dark, curly hair. Green eyes. I like his eyes.” He pauses. Kris waits for him to continue. Surely there’s more to the guy than his hair and eyes. “I don’t know,” Adam says, and then changes the subject, voice perking up. “Where’s Dylan?”

“He’s at Sam and Joshua’s, they live—”

“Across the street, yeah, I know,” Adam says. “Probably watching that whale thing, right? He was excited about that.”

“Um. I guess.” Kris thinks back to their previous conversations and emails, but no. He’d never mentioned the whales. “How do you know?”

“Oh. We email sometimes.”

That should be creepy. His eight-year-old son having email conversations with a thirty-year-old man they’ve never met. Kris holds his breath and waits to feel creeped out by it, but it just doesn’t happen. He’s mostly flabbergasted. “Is he bothering you . . . ?”

“No, no,” Adam says vehemently. “He’s—interesting. I’ve never really had a chance to talk with a kid his age before, so it’s . . . you know. It’s nice.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. I help him with multiplication, he helps me with my spelling . . .”

Kris grins. That sounds like Dylan. He’s crap at numbers just like his dad, but loves to write, which must be something he got from Katy, because frankly, Kris is hopeless with that as well—though however bad Kris is at writing, he has to be better at spelling than Adam. Even Kris gets the urge to correct him sometimes.

“He’s ruthless. Almost as bad as my editor,” Adam says, not sounding the least bit put out. “Hey, did I tell you what Howard said to me the other day?”

No, in fact, he did not. Kris checks his watch again. Seeing that he has another twenty minutes to spare, he puts his feet up on an empty chair and settles in to listen to Adam’s story.

Kris doesn’t know what he would have done the last couple of years without Samantha. It’s not so much that he can’t afford to pay for a babysitter anymore, but that he wants an adult with Dylan on the nights he has to close the restaurant. He doesn’t have a lot of emergencies—his life is as stable as it gets—but the fact that they live so close comes in handy on the rare occasion that he has to leave in a hurry, and she and Dylan loving each other to pieces is the kind of bonus that just can’t be bought.

Kris usually lets Dylan stay with Samantha until after breakfast when he spends the night there, but they have a busy schedule ahead of them today, so he picks Dylan up at 8:30. Kris is bleary-eyed and yawning, having slept only four hours. Dylan, of course, is a bundle of energy.

“Dad! Dad! Come see the whale eat the seal! It’s an orca! And it looks like a panda! And it just swallows the seal! And then there’s—”

Kris grabs the back of Dylan’s pants and pulls him back out the door. Samantha and Joshua have a very comfortable couch. If he sits, he’s going to fall asleep, and then who’s going to install the new fence?

“We need to go now,” Kris tells him. “I’ll watch it some other time.”

Dylan makes a petulant, whiny noise at the back of his throat. “But Dad—”

“No buts. We need to go shopping, and then stop by Papa Joe’s, and then find Daniel—”

Dylan perks up at the mention of Daniel. Getting Daniel, Charles, and Dylan together in one place always means trouble. Kris has been waiting for those two to grow up for a long time now, but it looks like Dylan will become an adult before they do. Kris can only hope they’ll behave today. He won’t have another day off for at least two weeks, and he’s been putting off the fence repair for months—which is why it now needs to be replaced completely.

“Busy day ahead?” Samantha asks, stepping out. She’s dressed in jeans and a red plaid shirt, her hair down and messy around her shoulders. It’s the blink of an eye, there and gone in a second, but the way the sunlight glints off her hair makes Kris see Katy’s face instead of hers for a moment. He can almost smell the sweet vanilla scent of her shampoo mixed with sweat and sleep first thing in the morning—before it’s all gone, just like that, and Kris is left staring at Samantha a little breathless, with a sizzle deep in his stomach; the bittersweet ache of a memory.

He offers her a shaky smile. Samantha is too tall. She doesn’t look like Katy at all.

“Yeah. I’m going to call the guys over, get that new fence installed, finally.”

Samantha nods. “Dylan can stay if you want.”

“No, no.” Samantha and Joshua are too kind to them already, having Dylan overnight twice a week at least. There’s no need to abuse their goodwill. “He’s going to help me. Earn his keep.”

Dylan glares at him. He will obviously do no such thing. Kris knows he’s mostly just going to complain and repeat over and over and over again that he’s bored—until someone (Daniel) starts tickling him into submission and hopefully earns them a couple minutes of silence.

“Let me at least help you guys with the food then,” Samantha says. “I’m home today with absolutely nothing to do. I’ll probably try and knit if you leave me to my own devices, and we all know how that turns out.”

In their neighbor Mrs. Mortensen’s words—and she’s the one who taught Samantha how to knit in the first place—Samantha just doesn’t have the hands for it. After last Christmas and the sweaters—and Kris is using the term sweater very loosely here—that Samantha had gifted them with, the whole neighborhood has decided that Mrs. Mortensen was trying to be polite and that Samantha just plain old sucks.

“I can make a potato salad,” she adds, looking excited at the prospect. Kris smiles at her enthusiasm. Charles would never forgive Kris if he refused that, anyway.

“I can’t possibly say no to potato salad.”

By the time Kris gathers the troops and gets everything together, it’s almost 11 AM, and they start preparing the holes for the new poles as Samantha fires up the barbecue. Daniel, Ralph, and Joey are all obviously hung-over, but that kind of thing never keeps Daniel down, and he doesn’t let the other guys slack off, either. By noon, almost all the posts are in place, waiting to be packed, and they all have their shirts off, with Dylan gleefully hosing them down.

Kris pulls his own shirt up and off, not even bothering with the buttons. He wipes his forehead with it before dropping it by the door. It’s so damn hot. He never would’ve picked today to do this kind of work if he had another day off in the foreseeable future. His shirt lands on the ground with a solid thud, reminding Kris of the cell phone he had in his breast pocket, and he fishes the phone out with a muttered curse and checks to see if it’s still working. The last thing he needs is to have to pay for a new phone.

It seems to be working—as well as it ever does, anyway. Looking down at the cheerfully lit-up screen, Kris gets a sudden urge to call Adam. Kris doesn’t call him all that much—he doesn’t want to bother the man in case he’s doing something important and Hollywood-y—so it’s usually Adam who takes the initiative when they talk. But whoever does the calling, this living with a phone attached to his ear thing is getting kind of ridiculous. It’s almost like back when he and Charles were ten, when they’d driven their parents crazy wanting to run back and forth between their houses every half hour to tell each other whatever awesome/stupid/funny/boring thing had happened while they were apart. Kris likes Adam. He enjoys talking to him. It makes Kris feel giddy and young. But the frequency of the calls is kind of childish, isn’t it?

His finger hovers over the call button, his mind already coming up with opening gambits, but he makes himself tuck the phone back into his jeans pocket instead. They still have to get the concrete ready for the corner posts, and he’s getting hungry.

Adam has been staring at the same sheet of paper all day. He’s taken breaks—gone to the bathroom, made coffee, checked his emails, read the latest online gossip—but he keeps coming back to the drawing Cassidy handed him that morning, telling him to come back when he’s made up his mind after the fifth revision—and no matter how hard he tries, he just can’t find a way to make the collar work.

Stupid shirt.

Finally, around mid-afternoon, he caves and calls Kris.

“Hello.”

Kris’ voice is hoarse, and he sounds out of breath. It makes Adam choke on his tongue a little bit.

“Uh.” Adam coughs. “I was going to ask you about collars, but it can wait if you’re busy,” he says tentatively.

Kris groans and mutters, “Dammit,” to himself. Into the phone, he says, “Hold on a sec, will you?” and yells, “Daniel! Come and see if you can pull this back out!”

Someone—presumably Daniel—answers in the affirmative, and Kris walks away from whatever it was he was trying to pull back out. “Sorry,” he says, “You were saying something about—collars?”

“Yeah, but that’s not important. What’re you doing?” Adam is curious. His imagination is running wild, his mind coming up with all kinds of implausible scenarios—most of them fit for porn.

“Installing a fence,” Kris says. Adam hears him swallow loudly. “And drinking beer.”

“Huh.” Okay, that wasn’t in any of his scenarios.

. . . but it totally could be. It wouldn’t take a lot. Adam can almost see Kris; hair slicked down with sweat, arms bare, face determined. “Sounds fun,” he says, trying to pull himself out of the scene, which is officially past disturbing and reaching levels of major creepiness.

“Not really,” Kris comments.

“You know what’s not fun?” Adam asks, breathing properly now that he’s safely away from the distressingly vivid fantasy. “Not fun is spending a whole day trying to design a shirt collar. That’s not fun.” Adam glares down at the drawing. “I’m so bored with my life right now.”

“You’re welcome to come and help me with the fence anytime,” Kris offers. Adam can hear the grin in his voice. He’s probably lounging in a chair, legs spread apart, shoulders loose. As Kris’ lazy drawl never fails to do, it makes Adam want to be there with him—sitting under the sun, drinking cold beer . . .

Okay, maybe not under the sun. He doesn’t want to turn into Mr. Freckles again. But he could hang out under a tree or something—with Dylan! And they can watch Kris do his fence thing.

“Actually, I’m pretty sure you’d like it here. Lots of young, shirtless guys walking around right now.”

Oh, evil.

“Are you shirtless, Kristopher? I want a picture.”

Kris chuckles, and Adam melts. He has no idea why everything about Kris Allen makes him feel warm inside. He keeps assuring himself that this is just harmless flirting, but something tells him that he shouldn’t be writing it off so easily. There’s nothing harmless about this level of attachment.

Not that that’s enough reason to put a stop to it. It’s nowhere near.

“Is that Adam?” He hears Dylan’s voice—he sounds excited, which he always is where Adam is concerned. And people think Adam wouldn’t be good with kids! (And by people, he means Neil.) “Hi, Adam!” Dylan yells, and Adam’s pretty sure from the sounds of struggle that he’s pulling at Kris’ arm to get to the phone. Kris curses under his breath, and Dylan runs away, his laughter chiming behind him.

“Brat,” Kris says.

Adam is preparing to defend Dylan—clearly, the kid misses him—but someone beats him to it. “Wonder why he’s so bratty?” a guy says. “Could it be genetic, I wonder?”

“You’re supposed to be helping Daniel,” Kris answers him, sounding very pointedly not amused.

“I’m busy.”

“Yeah, busy inhaling the leftover potato salad—oh, hey,” the change in Kris’ tone tells Adam that he’s no longer talking to the potato salad guy, but to him. His voice gets softer, livelier—okay, Adam’s going to stop analyzing that now. “We had potato salad. Made me think of you.”

Adam is swinging between being joyful (yay inside joke) and indignant (I remind you of potatoes?)—but again, the other guy is faster. “Aww. That’s so nice. Your friendship is starchy and yummy.”

“Charles,” Kris says. “Go be unhelpful somewhere else.”

“Hey,” Charles protests. “I helped plenty.”

“Yeah. You did one post, and see . . . Yeah, that’s it. The upside down one is yours.”

Charles grumbles, walking away. “Nobody appreciates my art.”

Kris sighs. “Wanna trade? I would love to design collars today.”

“But Kris. You don’t appreciate art.”

“I appreciate it plenty. Especially when it’s not in my backyard.”

Kris sounds done in. He doesn’t get bitchy like Adam does when exhaustion wins out; instead, he either gets drunk-silly or completely unresponsive. Right now, it sounds like he’s well on his way to the latter. “You sound tired,” Adam says, over-simplifying.

“Yeah.” Kris drawls the word, yawning into it. “I am. I want my bed.”

That’s a problem they share. Adam kind of wants Kris’ bed, too. Which is so very much not good.

Unaware of Adam’s musings, Kris says, “Tell me about that collar of yours.” He yawns again. “And what happened to the rest of the shirt, anyway?”

Adam pushes away his worries and tells Kris all about the shirt collar that refuses to work.

Dylan is lying on the carpet in the living room, just about dead from boredom when the phone rings.

“Hello?”

“Oh. Hey, Dylan!”

Dylan sits up. “Hey, Adam!”

“How’s it going, kiddo?” Adam asks, cheerful as always. It sounds like he’s walking somewhere; there are traffic sounds in the background.

“I’m so bored,” he says. “I’m dying.”

Adam chuckles. It’s not funny, really. Dylan needs friends who live in the same city as him or he’s just going to explode from wishing one day. It’s not fair that Alfie’s in Baltimore and Adam is in L.A.

“Your dad not home?”

“No,” Dylan sighs. “He’s at church.”

He’d asked Dylan to go with him like he always does, but the church is kind of spooky, even when his dad is with him. And besides, Father Fowles is scary. He always glares at Dylan.

“Did someone die?” Adam asks, sounding worried.

Dylan frowns. Why would someone die? “No,” he answers.

“What’s he doing in church?”

Dylan wonders if there are no churches in L.A. He should ask Alfie. He would know.

“He does the music thing,” Dylan explains. “Music directing something?” It’s got to do with music and singing and the choir—and sometimes with budgets, but Dylan doesn’t know what those are.

“Oh,” Adam says, surprised. Then he starts laughing. “Oh, boy.”

Dylan doesn’t even try to understand what’s funny. Adults are weird sometimes. That’s just something you accept and move on. Instead, he tells Adam about how Uncle Daniel was supposed to be playing Mario Kart with him, but then his girlfriend called, and now he’s having a fight or something with her in the backyard, leaving Dylan all alone with his boredom.

It turns out Adam hasn’t ever played Mario Kart before, so Dylan tells him all about how to use the wheel, and the golden mushrooms, and how lame Baby Mario is, until Uncle Daniel comes back and Dylan has to go.

After he says goodbye to Adam, he tells Uncle Daniel that they should invite Adam over to play someday. Uncle Daniel just gives him a weird look.

Adam has always had a good relationship with his mother. She always took an interest in his life, without ever pushing him to share when he didn’t want to—which went a long way with him in his teenage years. He may not have anything to hide from anyone now, least of all her, but back then, every little feeling was a huge deal, a secret to be kept. Unlike most his friends’ parents, she always managed to maintain a good balance, made him feel safe and cared about.

Ever since the divorce, though, he’s been worried about her getting too invested in her relationship with him and Neil—and even their relationships with other people—and using them as an excuse to not get a proper life of her own. He doesn’t want to mess with his mother’s life unless it’s absolutely necessary—that wouldn’t be fun for him or her—so Adam has been letting her get away with it. He’s even talked it over with Neil; it was a unanimous decision to give her some more time to acclimate.

In the meantime, Adam takes her out to lunch once a week, and she joins him and Danielle on their monthly spa dates. Today, they’re having lunch at this great place Brad recommended, a posh-looking outdoor café, and for once, Leila has managed to get Neil to join them. He’s sitting uncomfortably next to Adam, fidgety and jumpy, clearly waiting for Leila to rip him a new one for knocking up Cecile.

(Is that even her name? Adam has a terrible memory for names when he doesn’t have faces to match them with.)

“Honey, I’m not trying to be pushy or make your life harder, but this is serious. You need to take this seriously.”

“I am taking it seriously,” Neil mumbles into his grilled chicken.

Leila directs her don’t-mess-with-me glare at him in full force. Adam can almost see Neil shrinking under it. “You’ve known for months. What exactly have you done about it?”

Neil opens his mouth to defend himself. She cuts him off.

“Aside from pissing and moaning about your fate?”

Neil sighs, rolls his eyes.

Leila snaps her fingers. “You need to wake up. You’re not a kid anymore. Do I need to tell you about the birds and the bees again?”

Adam snorts. “I think the first time was traumatic enough for everyone involved.”

Neil turns to glare at him, finding him an easy target, but Adam couldn’t care less. For once, he’s not the one in the hot seat. He’s going to enjoy the hell out of the experience.

“Neil.” Leila sighs. “It’s your choice whether to accept your responsibilities or not, no one can make you, but I would’ve thought we raised you better than that.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” says Neil, grabbing Leila’s hand in a sure grip. “Mom. I’m not gonna run from it or anything. There’s no need for the guilt trip. Please.”

“Well?” Leila raises an eyebrow. “She’s—what? Six months along now? What have you done for her? Ever been to the doctor’s with her? Bought a crib yet? What exactly have you been doing to help?”

“I asked, okay?”

“Oh, you asked. That’s all right then.”

“Yes! I keep asking, and she says she doesn’t need anything. And she told me the baby was healthy! She’s been going to the doctor with her mother or something. It’s not like I’m going to invite myself along.”

Leila’s face softens. “Neil—that’s not . . . Honey, did you even think about what she might need? Is she working?”

“Yeah, she’s a teacher,” Neil mumbles.

“Well, a teacher’s salary won’t get her far. Will she keep working after the baby’s born? Does she have any money put aside?”

Neil winces. He looks battered. Adam doesn’t remember when he last saw Neil this distraught, if ever. He honestly does want to help, but there’s only so much secondhand advice he can offer. He wishes Kris were there. Kris knows this stuff. Nothing beats experience.

“Geez, Mom, I didn’t ask her that. Besides, I can help until she can get back to work. I’m not completely useless.”

Leila leans closer to him over the table. “Yeah, and does she know that? Did you tell her?”

Neil stares at her, dumbfounded. He looks like a fly caught in a spider web, helpless and in shock.

“You have got to talk to her,” she stresses. “She needs to know that she really can count on you, that she can trust you. And she’s only going to believe that if you give her hard facts—define the boundaries.” She waves a breadstick at him. “Let me tell you something, you think you’re being there for her right now, but she’s probably feeling all alone. And trust me, you do not want to feel alone when you’re pregnant.”

“It’s—I don’t . . . It’s just so awkward.”

“You better get used to it. This is your life now. She might’ve been just some girl you slept with, but not anymore. Now you’re family.”

It’s so strange that the word family immediately makes Adam think of Kris and Dylan these days. They’re the tiniest family he’s ever seen—literally, they’re so short—but somehow, in all the ways that count, they’re also the most complete one as well. Adam isn’t even really sure what that means. It’s just—he’s sort of always figured he’d end up old and grey one day—and still undoubtedly fabulous—hopefully with someone who cared about him, but there were never any kids in that picture. Now . . . okay, there are still no kids in the picture, he hasn’t lost his mind completely yet, but now he does understand why people would want that.

“I think you’re lucky,” he blurts out and doesn’t even feel like taking it back when he realizes what he just said.

Neil chokes on his water. “What?”

“Yeah. I mean, kids are kind of cool. And this girl is not completely horrible, from what you’re saying.” He shrugs. There’s no need to be all negative about this.

“Lucille,” Neil says, absently.

“Ah, yeah. Lucille.”

“You’re getting stranger every day,” Neil tells him. “Have you told Mom about your adoptive son yet?”

“Adoptive—!” Adam splutters. That’s ridiculous. But Leila looks interested, and there’s no stopping the stupid smile that’s spreading across Adam’s face—his cheeks fight him over it quite vehemently—so he goes with it. “His name is Dylan, and he’s not my adoptive anything.” He lets the smile turn into a full-fledged grin; in for a penny, in for a pound. “But he’s awesome.”

By the time Adam realizes what Neil has done, it’s almost an hour later, and he’s told his mom all about Kris and Dylan, about how Katy died and Kris had to cope on his own, how hard he works even now, how much he loves his son—and there might be a monologue in there where he goes on and on about Kris’ talent and the way he’s wasting it in a barbecue joint. He also tells her about Kris’ action movie addiction, the way he knows how to fix everything and how he tried to talk Adam through fixing the dripping bathroom faucet, which ended with them both deciding that Adam should always call a professional. He’s just getting into the time Dylan called him to ask about how to interview a waitress for a school project—he has a crush on Kris’ head waitress, Marianne—when Neil scrapes his chair back loudly and gets up.

“Well. This has been great, but I have to go.” He grins at Adam, who’s still trying to come back from Arkansas, and winks at his mom. “Let’s not do this again soon.”

Leila stares after Neil as he makes his hasty getaway. “He’s good at deflecting attention, isn’t he?”

“He always was.”

Leila nods, sipping her Coke. “So. This is interesting. You and this guy.”

Adam shakes his head vehemently. He can’t blame her for drawing the obvious conclusion, but . . . “There is no me and Kris.”

“But you think he’s attractive, and talented, and you respect him. And he is your type. And you talk to him more than you talk to anyone else, apparently. So all that adds up to . . .”

“He lives in Arkansas.”

Leila nods. “I’ll give you that one.”

Adam plays around with his salad, chasing a rogue cherry tomato with his fork.

“Maybe,” Leila says, “this means you should start dating guys like him now. Dependable, responsible . . . you know.”

Adam’s back straightens suddenly. It feels like someone has landed a solid punch to his chest. “No,” he says firmly, shaking his head. “I’m not looking for Kris-clones. I don’t want that.”

“That’s not what I meant. I just think that maybe you’re ready for a more stable relationship now—”

“I don’t—I don’t like Kris because he’s stable.” Adam squints into the green leaves in his salad and tries to explain this without sounding like a lovesick idiot—which he’s not. Really. “I like him because he’s fun. He’s responsible and all that, but he’s like a kid, too. He has the most juvenile sense of humor. Worse than Neil, I swear. I mean, he’s taught his son how to burp the alphabet; that’s the level we’re talking about here. And . . . I like him because he’s passionate about music and has great taste. He’s not impressed with me, but he genuinely likes me. And—we just get along great. He’s just—such a good person. It’s not like I can just find someone like him and—I mean, it’s him, it’s Kris, it’s all of him, not—”

He looks up to meet his mother’s eyes, to make sure that she understands what he’s saying, and of course—she’s wearing the same expression she did the first time he told her about Brad.

“I did sound like a lovesick idiot, didn’t I?”

She nods and offers him one of her breadsticks. He munches on it with a pout.

“GRANDMA!”

Kris grits his teeth. He has the headache to end all headaches, and Dylan’s voice, high and shrill, piercing through his skull, is not helping.

“You okay, son?” his father says, taking Dylan’s backpack from him.

Kris offers him a wan smile and hugs him with one arm. “Yeah. Headache.”

His mother clucks her tongue. “Well, come on in, lie down a little.”

Kris shakes his head. He needs to go home. That’s the best part about grandparent weekends; his house is going to be quiet. Of course, he won’t be home to enjoy it all weekend, since he has to work tonight—but still. Quiet. People don’t appreciate quiet nearly enough.

“I have to go back,” he says. “Got stuff to do.”

“Nonsense,” his mother says. “You should rest. Come on. I made pie.”

“No, Mom, I can’t. I have to go—”

“What’s so important that it can’t wait?”

My bed, Kris thinks. My pajamas. Cool sheets. Quiet room.

“He needs to call Adam!” Dylan pipes up, running out onto the porch with his Lego Airbus clutched in one hand, making plane noises.

“Who’s Adam?”

Kris winces. He opens his mouth to explain, but Dylan dives between the two of them, maneuvers around the potted plant next to his grandmother, and stops making the engine noise long enough to say, “Adam’s Dad’s new best friend!”

“Dylan,” Kris groans.

“What’s wrong with your old best friend?” his mother asks him. Kris closes his eyes and shrugs helplessly.

Dylan checks his altimeter (which looks remarkably like his watch) and lands his plane on the porch with a flourish. “Adam’s famous! That’s why he lives in L.A.! And when we move there, he’s going to take me to see the sea lions!”

“Move?! Kris? What—”

Kris shakes his head—which makes the headache even worse. “We’re not moving anywhere. And I’m not going home to call Adam. I just—have stuff to do.” Kris hugs his bewildered mother. “Dylan, behave. Mom, I’ll see you later.”

Ignoring his mother’s spluttering, Kris all but runs back to the car.

He is so not calling Adam today.

That resolution, of course, doesn’t apply to Adam calling him.

“I’m bored,” Adam says. “Play with me.”

“Hopscotch?” Kris offers, snuggling deeper into bed, half-asleep.

“I don’t think I can hop that far. Let’s play Truth or Dare.”

Kris snorts.

Adam whines. “Pleeeeeease.”

“I’m sleeping.”

“You can sleep-play. I’ll go first. Tell me about the most adventurous sex you’ve ever had.”

Like that’s going to happen. “I’m not telling you about my dead wife.”

Adam is quiet for a moment. Then he says, “Okay. Playing the dead wife card.” He makes an impressed sound. “I’m going to let you get away with that. Just this once.”

“Thank you.”

“Let me tell you about mine then.” He clears his throat. “So we were at this beach—”

“Argh.” Kris buries his face in his pillow. “Adam! I’ll hang up on you. I swear.”

Adam sighs. “You’re the most boring friend I’ve ever had.”

“Knowing your friends—I’m kind of proud of that.”

Kris has his reading glasses on and still has to squint at the screen to make out the tiny font on the Sound Essential website. Since he’s been reading Adam’s column for years now, and they haven’t changed their layout in all that time, he has to conclude that he needs a trip to the optometrist.

“Dad.”

He can see Dylan standing next to the desk from the corner of his eye, politely waiting for him to respond, but he’s in the middle of the article, and it’s really interesting. So he just says, “Hmm?” and doesn’t turn around.

The article is about three guys from Chicago. Adam says their debut album is revolutionary and exceptionally intelligent; the way they combine folktronica with hip hop is ingenious, apparently. Kris has no idea what folktronica is, and to be honest, he’s kind of scared to find out, but these days, he finds that he likes reading between the lines of Adam’s articles even more than the music talk.

Adam’s reviews have always had a personal side. He could be writing about an excellent album, but if the artist bored Adam to tears during the interview, you would clearly hear the snores. Kris could, anyway. He can see how much Adam likes these guys from the way he writes about the depth of their friendship, their pasts, and their families—going so far as to mention the mother of one of the guys, who they say is a badass ex-groupie and was a major influence on their chosen career path. Now that Kris knows him personally, he can almost hear Adam’s voice as he reads. He can’t help but grin when—

“Dad!”

Dylan has started squirming. That means that they’re distressingly close to the point where he’ll huff and then get angry and then start crying because nobody loves him. Reluctant, but knowing better than to wait for the inevitable hissy fit, Kris turns away from the screen and says, “What?”

Dylan’s face is already slightly red. Please, please, don’t start crying, Kris begs silently.

“Here,” Dylan says, holding out a piece of paper.

Kris takes it from him and straightens the crumpled corners. It’s an IOU. In Kris’ handwriting. He looks up, hoping that Dylan’s not asking what Kris thinks he’s asking, but judging by the determined set of his jaw, he is asking exactly that.

“Now?” Kris asks, and if his voice comes out slightly whiny, he’s blaming it on being caught off guard.

“Yes,” Dylan says resolutely.

Kris stares down at the paper in his hand. It’s cut in a strange shape; he can’t tell what it’s supposed to be. Dylan always cuts their IOUs in appropriate shapes, so maybe this is a rock? A very misshapen, strange rock.

Thinking his schedule over, Kris tries to come up with a solution. But there’s just no way.

“The car’s at the shop,” he tells Dylan—not that he thinks it’s going to help. “And Daniel’s gone to Jonesboro.” Dylan shows no sympathy whatsoever. “I have to be at work tomorrow. Marianne’s not gonna be there.” Even mentioning Marianne doesn’t earn him a smile.

“That’s what you said last time,” Dylan says, stubborn. He has his arms crossed over his chest, and he’s glaring. Kris has no idea where the attitude’s coming from. It’s definitely not something he learned from Kris.

“I did promise, and I will take you camping, this is just not a good time—”

“It’s never a good time!” Dylan’s voice breaks, and he sniffles, barely holding back the tears. “Alfie’s dad always had the time to take us.”

Okay, that’s definitely not how it was. But Marshall did take the kids camping every summer, and there’s no way Kris can make Dylan understand that he could afford to spend that kind of time with them because he had a wife to help him and a nine-to-five gig with paid vacation. “Dylan. I know. I’m sorry they had to move, you know I am, and I promise—”

Dylan ducks his head, face crumpling at an alarming rate. Kris sees a couple of tears slide down his cheeks and tries to reach for a hug, but Dylan pulls back and runs away before he can.

Kris hears him storming up the stairs and sighs. There goes his Saturday morning.

Adam is not a patient man. And that’s something about him that Kris already knows, so really, there’s no reason for him to drive himself crazy waiting now. Besides, there’s only so much baby-related internet surfing he can do. No matter how long he stares at the pictures, he doubts he’ll ever be able to see the difference between the two strollers other than their price tags.

“Hello.”

“Kris. Hey. I sent you an email.”

Kris pauses, sounding confused. “Oh. Um. Okay?”

“And you didn’t reply,” Adam provides. Kris is slow sometimes.

“Huh. Well. I’m outside, so.”

Kris’ cell phone is one of those ancient ones that can’t do anything but call people. It has no camera, no email, no Twitter, nothing. Adam doesn’t know how he survives. “When will you be home?”

“Uh. In the morning.”

Now that doesn’t sound like the Kris Allen he knows. “Wild night out?” Adam ventures, intrigued.

“You could say that,” Kris says, not offering an explanation.

Adam loves a good mystery. Now, what could Kris be doing out all night? What do people do at night in Conway, anyway? But—wait a second . . . “Didn’t I call you at home?” He looks at the screen of his phone, and yeah, that’s what it says. Kris & Dylan Home.

“Yeah,” Kris drawls, almost sheepish. “I have the cordless with me. I’m in the backyard.”

He’s having a wild night out . . . in the backyard. That’s actually more like Kris than the bar-hopping Adam was imagining.

“And why?”

“We’re camping.”

Adam shouldn’t find that half as charming as he does. “And why?” he repeats, because that’s what he should be saying here. That’s what any rational person would say. They wouldn’t be enamored with the idea; they’d be worried about Kris’ sanity.

“Because . . .” Kris sighs. “I’m a shitty dad?”

Adam gasps. “That’s slander, Kris Allen.”

Kris snorts, amused. He always is at Adam’s theatrics. “I am. Trust me. I’ve been promising Dylan that we’d go camping, and . . . Well. Let’s just say it’s been two months, and it took him crying for me to finally do something about it.”

Suddenly, Adam wants to hug Dylan. And then Kris. And then maybe both of them together. It’s a strange feeling. Not because he doesn’t hug people—he does, a lot—but because he’s never hugged either of them before, and that feels like a crime at this point. “It’s not like you had time . . .”

“Yeah, but that’s no excuse. I’ll never have time. I have to make time. He’s growing up so fast . . .” He trails off, and then after a lengthy pause, “I can’t believe I just said that,” he says, sounding both incredulous and choked up.

“You’re old,” Adam teases him.

“You’re older,” Kris shoots back.

And I don’t even have a son to show for it, Adam thinks, which is a completely stupid thought when he doesn’t want a son.

“I was looking at his hands today,” Kris says, veering off topic as he does when he’s sleepy.

“His hands?”

“Yeah. You ever seen a baby’s hands? Fat fingers, strong but clumsy? He doesn’t have baby hands anymore. He has adult hands.” He breathes in and out, loud and deep. “Actually, he has his mother’s hands.”

Adam holds his breath. Kris doesn’t sound sad, just introspective, but he rarely mentions Katy, and no matter how curious he gets, it’s not a topic Adam can broach easily. He can’t say anything right now, either. He can’t ask what Katy was like, if she liked camping, if she was pretty. He stays quiet instead and listens to Kris’ breathing, and the crickets in the background, chirping rhythmically.

“So, how was camping in the backyard? Fun?” Adam says finally, mainly to see if Kris has fallen asleep.

He hasn’t, though it sounds like it’s a close thing. “It’s no Wooly Hollow, but it did the trick,” Kris says. “We had a small fire and roasted marshmallows—and there were mosquitoes.”

“Mosquitoes, yeah, that’s important,” Adam agrees absently.

“We watched the stars a bit, and then, of course, Dylan passed out.”

“You got a tent?” Adam asks, trying to imagine the scene. He knows their backyard from the pictures Kris sends him from time to time. They’re usually of Dylan being silly—Dylan in a Batman costume, Dylan covered in mud, Dylan making his ninja face at the camera. There’s not enough of Kris if you ask Adam, but no one’s asking for his opinion, and he can’t exactly tell Kris that he really wants to see his face—since he’s working on the not being creepy thing and all.

He is creepy, though. Incredibly creepy. He wants to see pictures of Kris doing his everyday chores, cooking, cleaning, being the boss at work; he wants pictures of him just walking places, even. It’s completely irrational, but . . . He knows Kris’ life now, inside and out, and he can almost envision it—he just needs a little more detail. Does Kris ever wear an apron? Where does he sit at work? At the counter? In Dylan’s corner booth? In the back office? What does he wear around the house? Jeans or sweats?

“Yeah, tent, sleeping bags, the whole shebang,” Kris says, pulling him—thankfully—away from his thoughts. “Why my son is sleeping on the grass right now, though—that’s a mystery.”

“He’s going to catch a cold,” Adam says, and then pinches his own thigh—hard. When did he turn into his mother?

Kris, unaware of Adam’s masochistic display at home, just makes a noncommittal sound. “It’s warm. He’ll be fine.”

Adam closes his eyes, shutting out the bright lights of his living room. Kris’ drowsy voice is pulling him under slowly but surely. He’s picturing himself out in the open, where those crickets are chirping, and the air is probably warm and a little bit sticky—just enough to know that it’s summer.

A sigh escapes Adam’s lips unchecked.

“What did you wanna tell me?” Kris mumbles. It feels like he’s right there with Adam—but also a million miles away.

“Mmm,” Adam hums. “Nothing important.”

His questions can wait until morning.

Quiet and still, they listen to the crickets for a long time.

“Ow,” Adam says when he answers the phone. Kris kind of misses talking to people who answer the phone with a nice, calm hello. Only . . . not really.

“You okay, man?”

“Peachy,” Adam says in a familiar bitchy tone. “Danielle’s just trying to put my eye out.” The last part is said very pointedly away from the phone.

“Stop fucking squirming, you big baby,” Kris hears Danielle say in reply.

“Dare I ask what you guys are doing?”

“Getting ready for a party,” Adam says, and then gasps dramatically. “Ow. You bitch.”

Kris ignores him. “What party?”

“It’s this Vanity Fair thing. I wasn’t going to go, but a friend said Madonna’s going to be there, so . . .”

“Wow,” Kris says, suitably impressed. “That’s awesome. You think you’ll get to meet her?”

He hears Adam get up, despite Danielle’s protests, and start rifling through something—probably his closet. “I don’t know. I don’t know. Maybe.” A drawer slams shut. “God. It feels like I might throw up on her if she talks to me.”

“Take a barf bag?” Kris suggests. Adam’s responding glare comes through loud and clear. “Got a date?”

“Date. Yeah—”

“A hot one!” Danielle yells. “Smokin’!”

“—who’s going to be left to sit on her fucking ass at home if she doesn’t get dressed in the next two minutes!”

“I’m going! I’m going! Geez! Chill the fuck out.”

Adam sighs. “So yeah, I’m taking Danielle. She has a cute dress she’s been dying to wear, and since no one ever invites her anywhere—”

“I can still hear you, you fucker!”

“Pathetic, really,” Adam says, ignoring her.

“Uh-huh.” It’s always amusing to witness the Adam/Danielle banter. She reminds Kris a bit of Charles for some reason. Only with much prettier legs. “You got a plan of attack?”

“Why would I need a plan of attack?” Adam says loftily.

Kris doesn’t buy it for a second. Adam’s going to get a chance at meeting Madonna and not going to treat the opportunity like a war scenario? Not likely.

“If you don’t wanna tell me—”

“Okay,” Adam gives up immediately. “So I know this guy, right? He knows her, used to play for her, so I talked to him, and he said he would put in a good word. And he’s going to text me and tell me where exactly I can conveniently bump into them. He’s going to go like, oh, look who’s here, Adam Lambert, I was just telling you about him.”

“And that’s where you throw up on her?”

“I sincerely hope not,” Adam says, completely serious. “Puke would not go well with my suit.”

Kris is about to ask about the suit—not that he’s interested, but it’s become a habit ever since he realized how inexplicably happy it makes Adam to tell him all about his clothes, down to the tiniest detail—when Danielle interrupts.

“Zip me up.”

Kris hears a zipper going up and blushes, feeling extremely uncomfortable to witness that, if only by sound. Adam would make so much fun of him if he knew that.

“The seams are going to give,” Danielle says, worried.

“It’ll be okay,” Adam tells her, placating and wise. “Just don’t breathe.”

“So, what are you doing tonight?” Adam asks, turning his attention back to Kris.

“The usual. Dinner with the guys. Greyson’s playing tonight. Great band. In fact, I think they might be coming your way soon.”

“Hmm,” Adam says absently. “No real celebrities for you, huh?”

“I wouldn’t say that. Richie May’s going to be there, and he’s the inventor of the world famous Richie May Chili Cheese Dip.” Adam chuckles. “You know, I can put in a good word for you if want to meet him,” Kris offers.

“Thank you,” Adam says graciously. “I bet Dylan loves that,” he adds as an afterthought.

“Yeah. And speaking of, I gotta get back to him. You guys have fun.”

“Yeah, you too.”

Kris is just about to hang up when he hears Adam say, “Hey, wait, why did you call me?”

“Oh! I was going to ask you about that band you made me listen to the other day. You kept calling them the tomatoes, and now I can’t remember their real name.”

Adam chuckles. “The Aubergines.”

“Yes, that’s it!” Kris grins. “Thank you.”

“Talk to you soon?”

“You know it.”

It’s always at the back of Kris’ mind, a niggling worry that his friendship with Adam is getting out of hand. The thing is, he doesn’t really care if it is. Daniel keeps giving him odd looks, and Charles makes fun of him at every opportunity—but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything, since Daniel is a dumbass, and Charles always makes fun of everything anyway. They’re just annoying, but not all that hard to ignore; Kris has years of practice at it.

What he cares about is Dylan, and Dylan’s all for it, so why should Kris try to change something that works, just because those two idiots have trouble comprehending it?

Granted, it’s uncomfortable to try and explain to other people why he’s spending so much time talking with and about some guy he’s never met; they can’t possibly understand the ease of their friendship, and how rare a thing to find that is for Kris—especially when Kris’ much-used excuses for not dating (not having the time and not wanting to deal with introducing people to Dylan) don’t seem to apply in this case.

There are good reasons for that. For one thing, he and Adam are not dating. Despite Charles’ boyfriend jokes—which are nowhere near as funny as he thinks they are—there’s no chance that they’ll ever be dating. Which is a weight off Kris’ shoulders, honestly. He’s glad that there are no hidden layers to their conversations. It’s all very simple and honest. There’s no pressure on either of them to be anything but themselves.

The honesty comes easily, since it seems that Adam doesn’t know how to be anything but sincere—to the point of rudeness sometimes—and Kris somehow knows that it’s enough for him to be Kris Allen from Conway, Arkansas. That Adam—despite having the most colorful set of friends Kris has seen outside of a sit-com—likes him enough to set aside the time to call him almost daily. Who’s Kris to object to that?

Probably the most important reason, though—the major difference between Adam and all the women who have been pushed Kris’ way by well-meaning friends and family in the last couple of years—is that Adam recognizes Kris and Dylan’s relationship as something to be respected. He doesn’t try to insinuate himself into their little family, doesn’t try to be an uncle or a dad. He’s happy to just be Adam; their friend.

It’s not something other people can appreciate from the outside. There’s such a fine line between loving Kris and Dylan and wanting to take over their lives. That’s why Kris smiles and says maybe when they suggest that he take Mrs. Bayer’s daughter out on a date—Kris, dear, isn’t she just lovely? She is lovely, but she’s also in the market for a husband, and Kris is not interested in casting a lovely new face in Katy’s place. He doesn’t tell them they’re being rude or blind, though. His mama’s raised him better, after all. He just smiles and says maybe.

Kris can deal with all that. He can juggle work, house, kid, family, church, gossip, annoying friends, nosy neighbors, and add Adam without dropping any of them. It’s all cool. But then his birthday arrives, with cake from his mom and a huge hug from his dad as always, and Dylan unintentionally brings it home that no matter how Kris rationalizes it, there’s something very not-normal about his relationship with Adam.

“You got me a phone?”

It’s a pretty clunky phone, too. It’s cordless, a bright yellow color, and unexpectedly heavy.

Dylan jumps up and down, arms flailing happily. “It’s a shower phone!”

“A shower phone,” Kris repeats.

“Yeah,” Dylan says. “Now you can talk on the phone even when you’re in the shower!”

Dylan jumps up to give him a hug, and Kris catches him, thanking him for the very thoughtful gift, and gives Daniel—who’s laughing his ass off in the corner—a death glare over his son’s head.

Kris will bet his guitar that this is all his doing.

Kris listens to Dylan beg and plead and yap and whine about it for two weeks before he says yes.

What he’s agreeing to is for Dylan to go on a trip to L.A. with Daniel. Daniel’s going for a friend’s wedding, and he’s offered to take Dylan with him—because he’s probably already planned out the pranks they’re going to pull at the reception. Not that Kris cares; as long as no one gets hurt, he looks the other way and lets Dylan get away with most of that stuff. So normally, he’d be jumping at this opportunity. It’s two birds with one stone: it would provide a much-needed reprieve for Kris, and give Dylan a chance to get out of Conway and see new things.

As much as Kris likes Papa Joe’s and accepts the responsibilities that come with being the one in charge, he doesn’t want his son to have a boring or limited childhood because of it. He wants Dylan to travel, have fun, be a kid. Kris’ own childhood had been full of mischief and excitement, and missing one parent or not, he wants all that for his son, too.

Thankfully, he’s blessed with a wonderful family and an amazing (however juvenile) set of friends. They let Dylan tag along to all sorts of Kris-approved activities and trips. So this is really nothing new; it’s par for the course.

What makes Kris pause this time is . . . well. There are other variables to consider.

Okay, more like just one. But it’s an important one.

Adam lives in L.A.

Kris hates that he’s over-analyzing this, but he can’t help it. For days, it’s all he can think about. He can’t avoid telling Adam that Dylan will be in town; that would be rude. But if he does mention it, Adam will probably think Kris is expecting him to meet Dylan or something (which Kris is not). But can Adam even say no, if he’s busy or doesn’t want to play babysitter? Kris doesn’t know which would be worse, really— Adam saying yes out of obligation, or saying no and breaking Dylan’s heart.

It’s such a tiny thing—entirely too stupid—but has the potential to get so, so messy. It’s at the tip of Kris’ tongue every time he talks to Adam—he almost blurts it out a couple of times—but the fear of disturbing the balance of their friendship holds him back.

Until Adam does it for him.

“So. Dylan said something about coming to L.A.?”

The conversation doesn’t go at all like Kris had thought it would. Adam is so genuinely excited about meeting Dylan and spending time with him that Kris doesn’t even get a chance to use the speech he had rehearsed about how Adam really doesn’t have to do this, that Kris won’t be offended or anything. Adam just goes on and on about all the planning he has to do and berates Kris for not giving him enough time to prepare. Kris tries to cut in a couple of times, to say that he doesn’t need to make dinner reservations for God’s sake; he can take Dylan to a McDonald’s, or just get him a bagel or something. But it’s futile. There’s no stopping Adam.

Afterward, Kris can’t stop grinning for hours. Rationally, he realizes that his friendships and relationships are supposed to be about him, not his son. But they’re a package deal, after all, always have been. If Adam had been less than perfectly happy about meeting Dylan—well. It wouldn’t have been just Dylan getting his heart broken, to be honest.

Kris walks around high on relief all day and then sleeps for ten hours straight.

It’s a blessing in disguise that the weekend of the L.A. trip coincides with a flu outbreak at the restaurant. Half of Kris’ regular staff is out sick, which means he has to make do with part-timers who don’t really know what they’re doing. They’re slow, they get the orders wrong, they break plate after plate, and no one remembers to call the sound guy for the show that night, so Kris ends up doing it himself. He’s so busy, he doesn’t even have the time to worry about Dylan and Daniel.

The wedding reception is on Saturday, and aside from a simple “we’re here, so you can stop worrying now” from Daniel around noon, Kris doesn’t hear from them at all. Dylan calls that night before bed, telling him all about the cake (it’s the most important part) and the bride’s dress (which is foofy) and talking very carefully around what happened to the punch (Kris doesn’t ask.) The next day, Kris drags himself out of bed, takes a shower, and drives to work thinking it’ll be more of the same—which it is, until his phone starts vibrating in his pocket and just doesn’t stop.

Adam texts him all day.

Can i keep him? Ill take good care f him i promise.

He wnts a pet octopus. Can i get hm 1?

Yr brothr is abit of n idiot.

But i like hm nyway.

This is fun. Wish u were here.

Snding u pix. Chck ur email.

The texts and pictures keep coming all day. Kris can’t always reply, but he still finds himself running back and forth between the restaurant and the office to check his email every fifteen minutes.

Dylan seems to be having the time of his life, getting his picture taken with every kind of fish ever (and some of them twice), and there are pictures of him robbing a gift shop (Kris texts Daniel immediately to tell him to stop Dylan from making Adam buy stupid stuff for him, but the only reply he gets is “2 L8! LOL!”) Then there are the Dylan and Daniel goofing off pictures, for which there’s a comment from Adam that says “Which one is older again?”, and finally a picture of Dylan with Adam, Dylan gaping at a shark with huge eyes, and Adam watching him instead of the shark with a fond smile on his face.

Kris spends fifteen minutes staring at it, and then leaves it open on the screen so he can stare at it some more whenever he passes by the computer.

In the next three hours, he breaks two plates and one glass, and completely forgets about table #2, getting them their food an hour late with many apologies from their prettiest waitress. Kris makes Marianne dump a glass of ice water over his head when she threatens to send him home and keeps on working.

His mind is just too busy with . . . everything. Or he finally caught that virus. It’s one or the other.

That night, while he’s waiting up for Dylan and Daniel to get home, Kris Googles Adam. He’s done it before, back when they had first started talking on the phone, but what he thought of Adam then and what he thinks about him now are worlds apart, and Kris is curious how his perception of what Adam looks like might have changed in the meantime.

That picture of Dylan and Adam has thrown him off, more than he’d like to admit. Maybe it’s Adam in casual clothes—he’s wearing black jeans and a simple black shirt, though his hair is teased up in a way Kris is sure Dylan will want to replicate, and he has about a million necklaces hanging around his neck—or the lack of make-up, or how natural it looks, not posed or forced at all, but whatever it is, it’s messing with Kris’ head. He can’t quite put the two Adams together in his mind—the Adam who writes for Sound Essential, wears outrageous clothes, is quoted bimonthly by one blog or another, saying sensationally honest things about this artist or that; and the Adam who calls Kris every day, helps his son with his homework via email, takes him to Sea World and looks at him like he’s more interesting than a hammerhead shark.

Google image search takes only moments to spit out a colorful page for Kris to browse. It says that there are about 960,000 results, and that the search took only 0.12 seconds. Kris takes that very important information in and moves his eyes downwards, heart beating inexplicably fast in his chest.

The pictures are just as he remembers from the last time: the official picture Adam uses in his column, in which he’s wearing a black suit and black eye shadow, has his hair slicked back and one eyebrow raised challengingly; a picture of him on a red carpet somewhere, holding hands with a blue haired man; one of him giving an interview, hand in the air; one of him in drag, high heels, sequins, and a purple wig. It goes on and on; Adam dancing, Adam kissing guys, Adam interviewing people, Adam at parties, Adam at a premier. It’s hard to look away from the screen, because it’s fascinating that Kris knows exactly what’s under all that make-up and glitter now; but it’s also making him extremely uncomfortable to keep looking, speculating about what might have been going on in each picture.

Kris minimizes the browser and opens the picture Adam sent him once again. He stares at it, feeling confused and kind of scared, until the doorbell rings and Daniel carries in a sleeping Dylan. After that, things get back to normal, more or less.

The week before Dylan’s birthday, Kris has absolutely no free time. It’s tradition that they have a party in the backyard, and of course, half the town is invited without even needing an invitation. So, call it a pot-luck or a simple-enough barbecue, it takes a lot of planning and eats away at the free time Kris doesn’t really have in the first place.

It’s his mother’s fault for offering to do it herself if Kris is too busy, year after year. There’s no way Kris can let her take this on, on top of her own work, but since she offered, he can’t just not throw a party, either. If there’s going to be a birthday party, it’s definitely the parent’s job to take care of the details.

That Wednesday, when he’s so tired that he can’t sleep, he calls Adam to make up for the two missed calls from him in the past two days.

“There should be a pill,” Kris says, “of whatever it is mothers have that makes this look easy.”

“I think you need breasts for that,” Adam says.

“I would look ridiculous with breasts,” Kris comments. He goes on, “Most of the time, being a single parent is okay. I mean, it would have been a nightmare back when he was a baby, but the school years are much easier. One person can handle that. But at times like this . . . I feel the need to clone myself.”

“With breasts?”

“Why are you talking about breasts?” Danielle’s voice joins in from a distance.

“Did she move in or something?” Kris asks, surprised, before he can stop himself. She’s been at Adam’s place a lot lately, and Adam did say he was already in bed. Not that that makes it Kris’ business, but still, he can’t be blamed for being curious.

Adam sighs. “She has a tiny shower stall in her new apartment, and apparently, she can’t shave her legs there.”

“So she comes to your place to shave her legs?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

There is something very inappropriate about their relationship. But, yes, very much not Kris’ business.

“Don’t you wish . . .” Adam pauses, hesitant to go on.

“What?” Kris prods.

“Don’t you wish that you’d gotten married again?”

“No.” That’s an easy question to answer, but expanding on the answer will prove to be a challenge. “I couldn’t do that just so Dylan would have another parent—”

“No, of course not, I just meant—you don’t even date . . .”

“It’s easier to date when it’s just you.” Go ahead, state the obvious, Kris chastises himself. Adam doesn’t ask him a lot of personal questions; Kris wants to be able to answer properly the one question he does ask. But he’s tired, and this is really hard to explain. “The first couple of years, I couldn’t even imagine dating. It felt like I’d be betraying Katy. After I got over all that, and when I finally had everything on track, when I could afford the house on my own and had a system and a safety net with friends and family, I did date. But I didn’t want anything serious, and every girl I went on a date with expected me to propose on the third date or something. It got old real fast.”

“So now you don’t even bother?”

Kris has heard this question many times in the past, from his parents and friends and concerned colleagues, and it has always been extremely annoying. He doesn’t know why he doesn’t dismiss the whole conversation and hang up the phone with a fake excuse now. Adam sounds genuinely worried, but so had everyone else. He doesn’t let himself dwell on that thought, though, and answers the question as honestly as he can instead.

“If there ever was someone worth bothering for, I would. Otherwise, for random people who I think could be maybe possibly interesting after two drinks? I don’t think I will.”

Adam is quiet for a while, so Kris just rests his eyes, not wanting to hang up on this note. When Adam talks again, it’s not to say anything Kris would have expected from him.

“Tell me about Katy?”

Kris sucks in a deep breath and turns to lie on his back. “What about her?”

“Anything. What she was like. Just . . . anything.”

“Okay,” Kris says and closes his eyes. “We met way too young, on the playground. I knew she was special by the time she was on the cheer squad with Daniel, in middle school, but it took her longer than that to notice me. She—she had the brightest smile, never held it back. Her laugh was kind of stupid, and she was self-conscious about it, but I loved it anyway. It was just very honest, you know, and it made her approachable for me, because, man, I gotta tell you, she was one of the prettiest girls in school, and it took me weeks to get up the courage to ask her out. I felt stupid about that after, because she—I mean, she was just silly, more than anything else. She would hang out with me and the guys. She liked greasy food, and she liked drinking beer from a bottle, and she was the one that taught me how to burp the alphabet. She didn’t care all that much about how she looked, she would wear my clothes, even the baggiest sweaters, but she looked beautiful in anything she wore anyway, so she didn’t really have to dress up at all. When she did, though, she—she took my breath away. We have a picture of her in Dylan’s room, dressed up for prom, and she looks like something out of an old Hollywood movie.”

“I’m sorry, Kris,” Adam says, voice almost a whisper, and even though Kris doesn’t really know what exactly he’s apologizing for, he knows there’s no need for it.

“It’s okay. I can talk about her now without feeling like I’m going to cry.” He chuckles and then has to sniffle a little, so he corrects himself. “Without feeling like I’m going to bawl my eyes out, anyway.”

“A little crying is okay,” Adam says.

“Yeah,” Kris agrees. Adam is safe to cry with. “I don’t need a degree in psychology to know that I’ve moved on, though. I mean, I can date if I wanted to. I’m not letting it hold me back or anything.”

“Good luck finding someone who can live up to that, though.”

“Hmm,” Kris says, considering Adam’s point. “I don’t think anyone would have to live up to her. You love different people for different things. Right?”

“You’re a wise man, Kris Allen,” Adam says after a pause. He sounds—impressed, and oddly enough, self-satisfied.

Kris snorts. “If you say so.”

Danielle is sitting on Adam’s bed, combing her hair and staring at him when he finally hangs up the phone.

“What?” Adam asks, looking away from her questioning gaze.

“This is going to end in tears,” she says.

Adam gets up to get a glass of wine. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Dylan spends the day before his birthday moping because his best friend won’t be able to make it. How that turns into a discussion of whether or not they should move to Los Angeles is a mystery only an eight-year-old’s mind can make sense of.

“Don’t you want to be close to your best friend?” Dylan asks. “If I had a chance, I’d want to be close to my best friend.”

“Then why do you want to move to Los Angeles and not Baltimore?”

Dylan rolls his eyes at his father’s ignorance. “Because Baltimore sucks.”

“Baltimore doesn’t suck.”

“How do you know? Have you ever been there?”

Kris shakes his head.

“Well, Alfie has, and he says it sucks. That’s why we need to move to Los Angeles.”

Kris doesn’t know how he got sucked into this completely meaningless conversation. “Adam is not my best friend.”

Dylan gives him an incredulous look. “Of course he is. You talk to him on the phone! Every day! For hours!”

Okay, that part is hard to explain. “But what about your Uncle Charles?”

Dylan looks confused. “He can move with us too, I guess.”

“No, I mean he’s my best friend.”

“Oh,” Dylan says, thrown off now that his theory has been disproved. “Can you have two best friends?”

Kris makes a face. How should he know? He’s never been good with labels.

“What is Adam if he’s not your best friend?”

Now that’s the million dollar question, isn’t it?

When Dylan wakes up on his birthday, his dad and Samantha have already baked his cake. It sits huge and tempting on the kitchen table, the bright blue icing calling to him. Unfortunately, his dad doesn’t let him touch it.

“You’re going to eat breakfast like a normal person. You’ll be having way too many sweets later today anyway.”

So Dylan eats eggs and bacon like a normal person and then has to dress up like one too, which apparently means he can’t wear his favorite dinosaur t-shirt. It’s not fair, really, how many things he’s not allowed to do on his birthday.

People start to arrive soon, thankfully, so Dylan doesn’t die of boredom—which would be a shame, because then he wouldn’t get to have any cake. First it’s Uncle Daniel and quite a lot of his friends, who his dad says—mumbles under his breath—are only there for the free food. Then it’s Uncle Charles, and Marianne, who looks very pretty in her pink dress, and Christa from Papa Joe’s. Then Dylan’s friends turn up, neighbors and classmates, almost all of them arriving together—they must have met along the way. He doesn’t see when his grandparents get there, but Grandma Kim catches him while he’s playing hide and seek and gives him a huge kiss. He barely makes it out of her arms alive and then doesn’t have enough time to find a good hiding spot, which just figures, really.

Alfie’s not there, and that sucks, but it can’t be helped. There’s a lot of food to make up for it—although not Alfie’s favorites, too, this year—and all his favorite people are there. He can see a huge pile of presents—some of them don’t even look like clothes—that he can’t wait to get his hands on, and then they cut the cake, and Dylan has never had anything as awesome.

It’s a brilliant day.

His dad looks happy. He’s been tired a lot lately, and Dylan hates that, because the more tired he gets, the less patient he is, and he’s not a lot of fun that way. He’s still better than most dads, not as serious, or boring, and, like, he doesn’t wear suits a lot, but Dylan prefers it when he smiles. Which he’s doing right now, talking to Uncle Charles and cutting more cake for second helpings.

Dylan runs over to get another piece.

His dad has gone upstairs to fetch his guitar when the doorbell rings. And that’s when his birthday gets even more brillianter.

Dylan hadn’t really thought Adam would come when he emailed him the invitation. Alfie had said he probably had better things to do, but they’d agreed that it would be rude not to invite him, so Dylan had scanned his invitation and sent it to Adam. It wasn’t a big deal, so he didn’t even tell his dad.

He would have, if he’d realized Adam would come.

“Dylan, who is it?” his dad asks, coming down the stairs with his guitar in hand, and Dylan pulls back from the hug to look at him a little sheepishly. He hopes this won’t end like that first email incident. He doesn’t want to be grounded on his birthday.

“Um. It’s Adam,” he offers tentatively, but his dad seems to have figured it out on his own. He looks shocked, standing a couple of feet away and staring at Adam like he’s seeing a ghost. Dylan looks up at him too, and whoa, he’d forgotten how tall Adam is. He’s like . . . a mountain or something. He makes Dylan feel tiny.

“Hi,” Adam says, smiling and waving at Dylan’s dad. He looks nervous. Dylan thinks maybe he’s afraid of a scolding, too. This is Dylan’s fault, though, not Adam’s, and he’s not about to let his dad get mad at someone else for something he did.

“I invited him,” he says. There. It’s out in the open now. Let the punishment come.

His dad looks at him and smiles. Dylan lets out the breath he’d been holding. So he’s not getting grounded. That’s a relief.

His dad shuffles closer, leans his guitar against the wall, and then they’re finally hugging. Dylan was beginning to think they didn’t really like each other all that much or something. With his dad constantly saying they’re not best friends, it’s hard to understand what exactly they are. But there, they’re hugging and smiling, so they must be really, really good friends at least.

They hug for a long time, which, to be honest, gets boring after, like, seconds. Dylan doesn’t know if he’s allowed to leave, or if he has to watch his dad stand on his tiptoes until he comes down, or what, so he just stays where he is, fidgeting a little. When they finally pull back, they both laugh. They sound happy. Dylan congratulates himself on yet another successfully executed plan. Alfie’s going to be ecstatic.

When they seem like they’re done smiling at each other, Dylan grabs Adam by the hand and introduces him to everyone.

It takes a while.

Adam says he doesn’t want anything to eat, but Dylan tells him he has to try the cake, so he says okay.

“Well, if you say it tastes like awesome . . .”

He eats not one, but two slices, and accidentally smears a little of the icing on his t-shirt.

“Oh, well,” he says, looking down, “it goes with my nail polish, at least.”

Adam’s nail polish is fierce. It’s, like, black, but then looks blue sometimes, like that one bug he and his dad found in the forest once. It looked like a cockroach, but it was bigger, and had, like, thicker legs. Adam makes a face and winces when he tells him that, so Dylan decides not to tell him about the hairy underbelly. But anyway, that’s the color of his nail polish, and it’s kind of awesome. Dylan is pretty sure his friends would make fun of him if he tried it, but Adam says it wouldn’t be his style anyway. (Dylan doesn’t tell him that he doesn’t know what his style is. That would be kind of embarrassing to admit to Adam.)

People steal Adam away from him after a while, first Uncle Daniel, and then his grandma and Samantha. Dylan can’t very well tell them to back off, so he lets them talk a little and goes to join Matthew and Johnny in the pear tree. They tie some of the white balloons to the branches and turn it into a pirate ship, and then Matthew almost falls down trying to steer their ship away from the iceberg, which is hilarious, because they have to pull him back up by his pants, and there can’t be an iceberg in their way with the sun out anyway. With all that commotion, Dylan kind of forgets about Adam until he hears someone singing with his dad.

People always make his dad sing whenever there’s a get-together at their place. It’s because he’s good, but also because he lets people ask for songs and plays their favorites for them. Dylan is not good at remembering lyrics or melodies, so he usually gets bored when the singing starts. He likes it when they all sing along, though. Then he can pretend to join in, but sing nonsense instead. That’s kind of fun.

Dylan grabs a chocolate chip cookie from the table and sits down next to Uncle Daniel, who makes room for him by elbowing Uncle Charles. His dad is singing something about an angel, and Adam, sitting next to him, joins in sometimes. When he’s not singing, Adam is watching his dad’s hands on the guitar. He probably doesn’t play himself, Dylan thinks, or he wouldn’t be so interested in how it’s done.

There are whistles with the applause when the song is finished, and his grandma asks for another one. Adam winks at her and starts singing before his dad even has a chance to start to play.

Dylan has no idea how many songs they sing—feels like a million to him—but they keep singing well into the night, and most people have left by the time they stop. When his dad gets up to put his guitar away, Adam tells him to bring the big shopping bag he brought with him, and then hands it to Dylan.

“Happy birthday, kiddo.”

Dylan tears it apart in seconds.

“You really didn’t have to do that,” he hears his dad say, and Adam replies, “Shut up. I wanted to.” But Dylan can’t really be a part of that conversation, because Adam got him the most amazing and cool and incredible jacket ever, and Dylan can’t even believe that it’s real and his.

“This is mine?” he asks, shocked, staring down at the jacket.

Adam laughs. “Well, yeah. I designed it for you.”

Dylan is torn for a moment between hugging Adam, putting the jacket on, and breathing, but hugging wins out in the end, so he jumps up (and up and up and up) to grab onto Adam’s shoulders. Adam gives him a tight hug, just like the one he gave his dad, and then puts him down on his feet so he can put the jacket on.

It fits perfectly. It’s the most badass jacket Dylan has ever seen. It’s leather.

“I can’t believe you,” his dad says to Adam. Dylan looks up to see that he’s grinning. That’s good. That means Dylan can keep the jacket. Not that he’d have let it go without a fight.

“Oh, come on,” Adam says. “It looks so cool on him.”

His dad shakes his head, but the grin is still there, so it’s okay.

Dylan asks if he can wear it to school; his dad’s answer is, predictably, no. He asks if he can wear it at home, to which Adam replies that he probably should for a while, to break the leather in—that means to make it softer and fit better, he explains to Dylan. Adam also makes him promise to never ever wear the jacket over anything plaid, which makes his dad snicker. Dylan doesn’t get it, but solemnly promises anyway.

With everyone gone, the swing is free, so Dylan lies down on it to listen to his dad have a chat with Adam and Uncle Daniel. His jacket feels a little stiff, but it smells amazing, and it’s so not a kid’s jacket. It’s awesome. He spots a bright star right up their chimney, so he closes his eyes to make a wish—for the same thing he wished for with the candles, but there’s no harm in doubling his chances—and then falls asleep to his dad’s quiet laughter.

Kris walks Adam to the door, leaving Daniel in the backyard with cleanup duty.

“I can’t believe you came all this way for just a couple of hours.”

Adam checks his watch. “More than six hours. Totally worth it.” He looks up and grins, his face lighting up with it. Kris doesn’t even know what to do with himself when Adam grins like that. It’s like the simple expression is amplified on his face; too intense, too honest, too joyful. “I was going to New York anyway. Just thought I’d make a stop here.”

Outside, the cab driver honks.

“My ride’s here,” Adam says, then looks a little uncomfortable. “This has been—Kris. I’ve had so much fun.”

Kris palms the back of his neck. What does he say to that? How can he thank Adam for everything he’s become not only to Kris, but to Dylan as well? And today—getting along with all of Kris’ friends and neighbors and relatives as if he was made to be right here with them, as if he’s known them all for decades and not hours. And—and singing with Kris. With that incredible voice. Kris hasn’t had this much fun and excitement and feeling in so long. He doesn’t quite know how to respond to it now.

Another honk pulls him out of his thoughts.

“Time to go,” Adam says, and leans in to give Kris a big, enveloping hug. Kris moves into it instinctively; Adam’s scent, already familiar, surrounds him. He shuts his eyes and clutches at the material of Adam’s jacket, unwilling to let go. He’d needed this—needed to see Adam face to face. It may have come out of nowhere in the beginning, but he isn’t crazy; Adam is important, and today has proved once and for all that it’s all real—the conversations, the friendship, the closeness. It’s real. For both of them, he can clearly see now, because Adam is clutching at him just as tightly.

Adam makes a satisfied sound, just a hum, and it takes Kris right back to that afternoon, when Adam had grabbed him and pulled him into the bathroom. Kris had been surprised, not sure what to expect, and then confused when Adam had pulled out a small make-up bag.

“You look like death warmed over,” Adam said, touching the soft skin under Kris’ eyes with a fingertip. He unzipped the bag and pulled out a small tube. “Concealer,” he said, holding it up.

Kris had taken a step back. “I’m not putting on make-up.”

“Oh, yes, you are,” Adam said, stepping closer and cornering him against the sink. “Just a bit. I promise no one will be able to tell. You just won’t look like a zombie anymore.”

They‘d been so close; Kris could only gulp in response. Adam positioned Kris’ face with a touch on his chin and narrowed his eyes as his fingertips started dancing under Kris’ eyes, feather-light, like butterflies landing on his skin. When he was done, he hadn’t taken a step back like Kris expected he would, but leaned in instead, inspecting his work, and then his eyes had drawn down to Kris’ lips, and Kris had thought, ‘He’s going to kiss me.’

Adam hadn’t. But now that Kris thinks back to it, that doesn’t really matter, does it? If he had, Kris would have kissed back. That’s what matters.

What matters is the way Adam is looking down at him right now, just as reluctant to let go. What matters is that quite unexpectedly, it’s Kris who pulls Adam down with a hand at the back of his neck, that he’s the one who lifts himself up on his toes, and that he is the one who initiates the kiss.

It’s not a polite kiss. Not like any of the goodnight kisses Kris has shared with his occasional dates. They pass by gentle and searching and exploring and go straight to desperate. Kris’ fingers bury themselves in Adam’s hair—they must pull a little too as he struggles to stay up—and Adam’s hands cling to his hips, pulling him first closer to Adam, and then turning to push him against the wall, where he crowds Kris in and lets a moan escape from his lips and into Kris’ mouth.

They ignore the next honk, because Adam is busy sucking on Kris’ bottom lip, and Kris’ hands are now on Adam’s cheeks, fingers tracing the lines of his face and jaw. Kris doesn’t know what he’s doing, but he doesn’t want to stop. He should be worried about Daniel walking in, he should be worried about a lot of things, but he’s not. His only worry at the moment is the burning in his lungs and how that means that soon he’s going to have to stop kissing Adam—which, honestly, he’s not sure if he can do.

Adam pulls back when the cab driver starts getting antsy and honks twice in a row. He stares down at Kris, his lips swollen and red, breathing hard, and looks confused and conflicted when that sight draws a moan from Kris.

“Kris,” he says, panting, but then shakes his head and can’t continue.

Kris just focuses on breathing.

“I—Kris.”

He leans in and takes Kris’ lips in a fast and hard kiss, over in seconds, and then pulls Kris’ hands down from his neck, giving them a squeeze before dropping them.

“I have to go,” he says.

“Yeah.” Kris steps away and nods.

Adam pauses with his hand on the doorknob, makes as if to turn, but then pulls the door open and leaves hurriedly.

Kris stands there, staring at the closed door until he hears Daniel’s footsteps, at which he locks himself in the bathroom. He’s not up to facing anyone just yet.

Adam calls Danielle from a deserted bathroom at the airport, staring at his own face in the mirror, taking in the way his huge, unstoppable grin makes him look like an idiot, and trying to comprehend just how much he doesn’t care right now.

“He’s perfect,” he gushes. “He’s—he’s incredible. I can’t even—”

“Breathe,” Danielle says.

Adam tries, but it’s easier said than done. “I’m just so—I want to go back and keep kissing him forever.”

“You kissed him?”

“He kissed me.”

“You fucking liar,” Danielle says. “I’m just going for Dylan,” she mimics his voice—very unsuccessfully. “It’s just a birthday party, it’s not a big deal.”

“Hey!” Adam protests. “I was keeping my hands to myself. He was the one that grabbed me—”

“Don’t even! You must have done something.”

“Yeah, I mind-whammied him gay.”

“You could have. It’s not like you haven’t done it before.”

Adam takes a deep breath. “Look, it was just—It was—I don’t know, Danielle. I don’t know what happened. Everything was just so—perfect. He’s so hot, and so amazing, and his family’s awesome, and, like, we were singing together, and I looked at him, and it was so—”

“This is not good.”

Adam leans against the counter. “I know. I know it’s not good.”

“But you’re doing it anyway.”

“I’m not doing anything.” He’s not. He’s just—standing there. His heart is doing weird things, but then, he can’t exactly control that, can he?

“Yeah, if you say so.”

She doesn’t believe him, and yeah, okay, he doesn’t believe himself, either. And she’s probably going to figure this thing out before he does anyway, so there’s no use trying to hide things from her.

“He is just so perfect. For me. I don’t know what that means. I don’t know if he’ll just panic and never talk to me again or what, but I can’t just ignore it.”

“Okay,” she says, agreeing grudgingly. “It’ll probably be okay. Somehow.”

“Yeah.” They stay silent for a moment, but then there’s an announcement and his boarding pass tells him it’s his flight. “I have to go. They’re announcing my flight.”

“Okay,” she says again. “You go, strut your stuff down that runway, and we’ll figure this out once you’re home.”

“Love you.”

“You, too, crazypants.”

Kris is nervous about talking to Adam—and he’s a little absentminded the next couple of days, mixing up the shifts at work, forgetting to pick up dinner on his way home, small things like that—but he’s not freaking out. When Adam finally calls, thirty-seven hours later, and asks him if he is, he can honestly say no.

“I’m not freaking out. I swear.”

“Oh, come on,” Adam says, sounding less tense, “not even a little bit? Didn’t you at least have an ‘oh God, I’m attracted to a guy’ moment? You’re supposed to be straight!”

“I had an ‘oh God, he lives half a world away’ moment,” Kris offers. “If that helps.”

It’s obvious from Adam’s voice that it does help—which makes Kris’ stomach flutter like he’s swallowed a swarm of bees. “Wow. Okay. That’s—” He chuckles, low and a little choked up. “You are so amazing, you know that?”

“Oh, shut up,” Kris grumbles, embarrassed.

“So what—what does this mean?” Adam asks, ignoring Kris.

How’s Kris supposed to know that? “Can we—just—not talk labels and meanings? Because I don’t know what it means, I really don’t, and I’m not sure if—”

“Hey, that’s fine,” Adam says. “We don’t have to.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Let’s just—be you and me.”

“Okay.”

“So,” Adam says. “I hear Dylan lost a tooth. Does he still believe in the Tooth Fairy, or is he too old for that now?”

Daniel has been a huge fan of Adam ever since the L.A. trip—they apparently exchanged numbers—but even after Dylan’s birthday, Charles stays skeptical. Kris knows Charles too well, so he knows that sometimes it takes him a while to warm up to some people, especially if they’re the confident type. He’ll eventually have to give in, because Adam’s confidence is not born of conceit, and there is no sane reason to resent the guy for being comfortable in his own skin.

Kris should totally wait until Charles comes around to tell him what happened between him and Adam, to avoid unnecessary dramatics if nothing else, but he’s never kept anything this big from him, and one Saturday night, after two beers too many, it just escapes his lips.

“Dude,” Daniel says, drawing the word out ridiculously. “That is. Wow.”

“Yeah,” Kris nods, picking at the label of his beer bottle and resolutely not blushing.

“Way to go,” Daniel says and salutes him with his own bottle.

Kris and Charles both turn to look at him like he’s lost his mind.

“What?” he asks. “The guy is clearly out of Kris’ league.”

“Yeah,” Charles says. “The guy.”

Daniel shrugs. “Not everyone’s a hundred percent straight.”

“Says the cheerleader,” Charles mocks him.

“Yes,” Daniel says, undaunted. “And Adam Lambert is clearly hot enough to tip the Kinsey scale for anyone.”

Kris bites his lip not to laugh out loud. “Maybe not for Charles.”

Charles makes a face and stands up to get another beer from the fridge. “You have been flirting with him for months, so I guess I should say congratulations.”

“I haven’t—” Kris splutters, looking to Daniel for support, but Daniel just nods.

“Yes, you have.”

“I have?”

“Yeah, I was getting worried, actually. But I figured it had to be a good thing that you’re interested in someone after all this time.”

“Someone,” Charles adds, “who lives in another city, leads a completely different life, and oh yeah, has a dick.”

“I’m okay with his dick,” Kris mumbles into his bottle.

Daniel spits out his beer and almost falls off his chair from laughing. Charles doesn’t look half as amused.

“You think,” he says.

“I’m pretty sure.”

“How can you even know?”

Kris sighs. He’s thought about this, thought about Adam waiting for him to freak out all the way in L.A., but it stays fairly uncomplicated no matter how much thinking he does. “I want to sleep with him. I think that’s pretty much all I need to know.”

“Argh, my ears,” Daniel says, covering them with his hands. “No details. Please.”

“Kris, what are you doing?” Charles asks, uncharacteristically serious.

Kris looks away. “I’m not sure yet.”

They’re not putting a label on it, that’s what Kris had said, and weeks pass with no mention of what the hell they’re going to do about this thing between them, but even with Danielle and Cassidy giving him worried looks, Adam is surprisingly okay. For the first time in his life, he finds that he has the patience to wait for something he wants. It’s not like he doesn’t have Kris now. They still talk every day. The rest of it, he can wait for.

Their conversations are more or less the same; they still talk about nothing and everything, but now there’s an undercurrent that wasn’t there before. It’s nothing anyone else could sense, but Adam knows it’s there, and he knows Kris feels it too. There’s a sense of belonging, of entitlement, that just makes Adam giddy every time they speak.

They rarely mention the kiss. But they don’t avoid the topic either.

“Charles says I flirt with you.”

Adam grins at Kris’ offended tone. “You do.”

“Crap,” Kris says, sighing. “I don’t mean to.”

“It’s okay,” Adam placates. “I always flirt back.”

They get into details about their love lives now, something they had previously carefully avoided. Adam figures it’s different now; they’re sizing each other up as potential boyfriends. Which is all kinds of scary, because he wants Kris to want him, but he can’t bring himself to hold things back from or lie to him. It just doesn’t work, even when he tries. And having to be perfectly honest about the skeletons in your closet when you want someone to like you is truly terrifying.

“I’ve always dated younger guys. I say that’s my type, but I think it’s maybe more than that. I like taking care of people, helping them, so I’m just instinctively drawn to guys who would need that from me.”

It goes unsaid that even though Kris is younger, he doesn’t need anyone to take care of him.

“But in the end it never works, because they can’t reciprocate, or maybe I don’t let them, I don’t know. I get tired, after a while, from it all being one-sided, and I don’t think they even understand what I need.”

Kris talks more about Katy, tells Adam stories from their teenage years. It makes Adam uncomfortable at first, but then he realizes that this is how it’s supposed to be; if there’s ever going to be something between them, then Katy will have to be a part of it, too, because she’s a part of Kris, and definitely a part of Dylan, and that’s nothing to be scared of.

Kris even tells him about Katy’s death, about the accident, the hospital, the funeral, everything that came after it—the anger, the sadness, the acceptance. Adam cries a little bit, but manages to keep it from Kris; it wouldn’t be right to make that particular conversation about himself.

“Have you ever been so sad that you felt like you couldn’t breathe? For days? I couldn’t tell the time. I’d wake up and I didn’t know if it had been just hours or days or weeks since she died. My mother took care of Dylan. I think I was in shock. I couldn’t even take care of myself.”

After that, Adam feels comfortable enough to prod for information he couldn’t before. It’s only partially because he wants to know more about the things Kris doesn’t talk about; mostly he just wants to embarrass Kris. It’s a shame that he can’t see the inevitable blush covering his cheeks.

“When was the last time you got laid?”

“You realize it could’ve been Dylan that answered the phone?”

“He won’t be back from practice until five. Don’t change the subject.”

Kris huffs. “Have you been talking to my brother?”

“Why? Are you having sex with your brother?”

Kris splutters. “What? No! Jesus! Where did you get that?!”

“You were the one who brought up your brother.”

“This is—Okay. Let’s start over. Hello, Adam, isn’t it a lovely day?”

Some days, though, it’s hard to keep from pleading that Kris move to L.A. Some days, Adam really, really needs to touch him. He thinks maybe Kris can read it in his voice, or possibly has telepathy, because he calls in sick to work the day Adam gets the flu from hell, and stays on the phone with him for four hours straight, watching soaps with him, and then singing for him—even though he grumbles at first that it’s the stupidest thing he’s ever done.

They talk about their childhoods . . .

“I used to be fat.”

“That’s your big trauma?”

“Oh, shut up.”

Adam’s wild youth . . .

“So I had this pink dress with slits up to my thighs, and—”

“I think I’ve seen that picture.”

“Yeah? I make a pretty drag queen, right?”

“Hmm,” Kris says. “It was surprisingly hot.”

And how it all changes with age.

“Back when I was a fat, ginger kid, I wanted someone to look at me and see the superstar inside me, you know? This is not me, I kept thinking. This is just a shell. And now—now that I’m everything I wanted to be back then . . . I meet new people and find myself wishing that one of them would look at me and see the fat, ginger kid I am inside. And not care about it, you know?”

Kris doesn’t say that he sees that and doesn’t care, but Adam knows it anyway.

Kris has the advantage, Adam thinks, because he can just Google Adam and find a billion—unflattering though most of them are—pictures of him. Adam can’t just come out and say he wants Kris to send him pictures, preferably naked. He can’t let the creepiness come out after he’s held it back for so long. So he improvises.

“I went shopping today, and there was this awesome shirt.”

“Hmm,” Kris says, pretending to be interested, as he always does when Adam starts talking fashion at him.

“So I bought it for you.”

That wakes Kris up. “You—what?”

“I bought you a shirt.”

“Nothing sparkly, right?” he pleads.

“No need to panic. It’s black.”

“How do you even know my size?”

“It’s called size tiny,” Adam informs him. “I’m going to Fed-Ex it to you, and you’re going to email me a picture as soon as you try it on.”

Kris grumbles something about Adam being worse than his mother.

“Promise me!”

“Okay, okay, I will.”

Though it might be a bit of a disadvantage, at times, for Kris to have Adam’s pictures splashed all over the web. Adam can’t imagine how curious he would be if he were constantly seeing pictures of Kris out with other people. He figures it should be obvious that he’s not dating anyone, hasn’t since Dylan’s birthday, but they haven’t exactly talked about it or anything.

I like your dead animal, Kris’ email reads, and attached is a picture of him and Brad, taken at an awards show. He’s wearing a black furry coat—synthetic thankyouverymuch, not a dead anything—but what’s more important is, he’s holding Brad’s hand and smiling at the cameras.

Which is not really a big deal. But Kris probably thinks it is.

You don’t care about my clothes, so don’t even try. That’s just Brad. You know I would tell you if there was someone. Right?

Kris’ answer just reads Right.

They don’t mention it in any of their conversations. Adam hopes that that’s a good sign.

There are times when they get on each other’s nerves, but they never really fight. Not until one day when Kris is dead tired from working late for three days straight, and Adam is too pissed to consider anyone’s feelings before blurting things out. Turns out that’s not a good combination for them; go figure.

“I don’t normally care about shit like that, but I liked this guy from the start. I knew he would go places, you know? And he has. I mean, his album took off like crazy, and this offer—that’s not something that happens to every new artist. And he said no. I couldn’t even believe it. I called him to check. He says he can’t tour this year, because Denise’s mother is sick or something like that. I get that he wants to be supportive of his wife, but this is a once in a lifetime thing. There are a million artists out there, dying for that opening spot, and he just—he says no and throws it all away.”

Kris’ voice is cold when he says, “It’s not the end of the world.”

“Could be the end of his career,” Adam grumbles.

“A career is not everything.”

“Not if you’re, like, working in an office. But this is music. This is for life.”

“So is marriage,” Kris says. He pauses, but then continues before Adam can figure out what to say. “He might be a musician, but that doesn’t mean that he’s not going to love someone more than music. That happens, you know. You love them, and you care about them, and you can’t bear to be separated from them for anything, especially when they’re sad and need you the most. And believe it or not, Adam, but not having a music career doesn’t make you any less of a musician.”

“I know that,” Adam says. “I’m just—”

Kris snorts. “No. I really don’t think you do.”

And he hangs up.

Adam lasts twenty-six hours before calling Kris again.

“Hey,” he says, and then waits a bit to see if Kris will hang up on him again. He doesn’t.

Adam clears his throat. “You answered.”

Kris sighs. “You called.”

Adam has an apology speech prepared that he mostly botches, but Kris seems to know he’s just insensitive and not, like, completely heartless, so it works anyway.

“I overreacted,” Kris admits.

What follows, though, comes completely out of left field and almost makes Adam pinch himself to see if he fell asleep with the phone in his hand.

“Next weekend,” Kris says. “Dylan will be at my parents’, and I’m not working, and if you’re free, I’d like you to come over.”

“To—I mean—”

“Yeah,” Kris says, cutting him off hurriedly.

“Wow,” Adam says, struck speechless.

“You don’t have to say yes,” Kris explains, sounding uncomfortable. “I just—If you want. I want to try.”

“Experiment.”

“Yeah. Just an experiment.”

“What happens if—?”

“I don’t know. I don’t—know what happens either way. Probably nothing. Just—a fun weekend. Or a very awkward one, possibly.”

“Okay,” Adam says. As if there ever was a chance that he would say no. “I’ll just—book a flight and email you, then.”

“Okay,” Kris says.

Kris’ hands are shaking as he puts down the phone, and he has to brace himself against the wall to keep standing. He almost picks the receiver back up to call and cancel, but no—no, he shouldn’t. He made up his mind, and it’s no big deal. It’s just Adam. It’ll be okay.

Two steps to the right bring him to the couch, and he drops down on it gratefully. Rubbing his hands on the rough material of his jeans helps with the shaking, but there’s a deep sizzling all along his bones that makes him feel cold and hot all at once that he can’t do anything about. He slides down a little and rests his head on the soft couch cushions, settling down to wait for it to go away.

This is the most inexcusably selfish and irresponsible thing he’s done in a long, long time. He’s blaming it on the pants—the dark green, impossibly tight pants Adam had been wearing in that video at the Skin.Graft website, and… God. Kris should not have watched that. How could watching a video of Adam walking down a catwalk in a fashion show be a good idea when he’d had to carefully steer clear of Google to keep his sanity these last couple of weeks? In what world did that make sense?

But Kris had clicked the link, and he had watched Adam strut and slink and pose and—and smile, like he’d just won a Grammy or something, so happy and on top of the world and sexy.

He took Kris’ breath away. Literally. It blew his mind that he had kissed that guy. He had kissed that guy and then let him go.

But no matter; it’s been easy enough to fix, hasn’t it? Despite his worries, all it took was a phone call.

Now he just has to wait.

And breathe.

Adam’s flight is at noon, giving him plenty of time to pack in the morning. But since sitting still only makes him fidget and panic and want to call Kris, he puts on his most comfortable pajama pants, pours himself a glass of wine, and starts going through his drawers.

He’s going to pack his black jeans. The skinny ones. But maybe that’s too much for Conway? Will they even go out? Or is it just going to be sex— Okay. Not thinking about that. Moving on. He’ll need t-shirts. Nothing too sparkly. Understated. Maybe the grey one with the rip along the—where is it?—yes. That one. And he’ll take the white shirt. The one that doesn’t wrinkle easily. He doesn’t want to have to iron stuff there. That would hardly be sexy.

Taking a generous sip from his wine, Adam walks into the bathroom to grab his toiletry kit. Next up is make-up, which is easy enough, since he’s only going to be taking the bare essentials. No need for glitter or his new fuchsia eye shadow. Just a black eyeliner will do.

Now—underwear. Black or white? Or green, Adam thinks, delving deeper into his drawer. Or maybe even purple. His fingers close around something soft and furry—okay, probably nothing furry, but that’s not underwear anyway. Handcuffs. He had forgotten about those. Should he—? Nah. Definitely not. He sits down on the floor, handcuffs dangling from one hand, and his eyes are unconsciously drawn to his other drawer, the one where the handcuffs are supposed to be in the first place.

Maybe just a vibrator?

He’s contemplating what would happen if he called Kris to ask about his views on sex toys when his doorbell rings, pulling him out of his thoughts.

He expects it to be Danielle, coming to stop him from doing something devastatingly stupid (as opposed to his normal behavior, which, according to her, is just charmingly stupid) but the door opens to reveal Neil instead, eyes bloodshot and listing dangerously to the left.

“Are you—busy?” Neil asks, eying the handcuffs still clutched in Adam’s right hand.

“Uh. No.”

“Oh, good,” Neil says, hiccupping loudly and sliding down to sit on the floor with the force of it. “I might be needing some help.”

Adam opts to make Neil some coffee instead of giving him more booze, but it doesn’t seem like it’s going to make a difference either way; with his cheek smushed against Adam’s kitchen table, Neil already appears half asleep.

“I’m going to be a dad.”

Adam looks up from the black furry handcuffs he’s been playing with and says, “Huh?”

Neil raises his head with difficulty. “I’m going to be a father.”

“Oh.” Adam nods. “Yes. Soon, right?”

“Right,” Neil says. “Soon.”

His head thunks back down on the table. Adam winces. That’s probably going to leave a bruise.

“Do you still . . .” Neil says, sounding as thoughtful as only a truly drunk man can manage, but then trails off without finishing.

“Do I still what?”

Neil sighs. “Still think I’m lucky? ‘Cause I don’t feel lucky. I feel—scared, and panicked, and—and—inadi—inadiq—”

“Inadequate?”

“Yeah. That.”

“I think you’re supposed to.”

Neil blinks at him. “That’s—stupid.”

“No, seriously. It’s a huge responsibility, and you don’t wanna screw it up. That’s what’ll make you a good parent. You care.”

Neil’s face crumples, a frown pulling down the corners of his mouth. “I don’t wanna care,” he whines.

Adam rolls his eyes at him. “Man up. Come on. You can do it.”

Moaning, Neil covers the back of his head with his hands, pulling at his own hair. His own greasy hair. Where the hell has he been? He looks like he hasn’t had a shower in weeks.

“God,” he groans finally, sitting up and palming his face. “I don’t even know . . .”

He looks drained. Adam wishes he could make him see—make him understand what an opportunity this is, that it won’t just be a nuisance. But short of taking him to Conway with him—which is so not happening—he doesn’t know how.

“Tell me again about your guy,” Neil says, head down once again, resting on his arms.

“My guy?”

“Your guy in Arkansas—and his awesome son.”

“Oh,” Adam says, looking away. His guy. “Okay.”

Kris rolls out of bed with his eyes still mostly closed, grabs the bedside clock to check the time, and then half walks, half stumbles down the stairs. The doorbell doesn’t ring again, and rubbing his eyes, Kris wonders for a moment if he only dreamed it happening the first time. It’s barely 8:00 AM.

After a slight detour towards the kitchen—because that’s normally where he goes first thing in the morning—that serves no purpose other than stubbing his toe against the doorjamb, Kris finally makes it to the door and flings it open.

Adam is standing on the other side, looking somewhat anxious. “Hi,” he offers with a small, tentative smile, and stuffs his hands in his pockets.

Kris checks the time again. “You’re early.”

Adam shrugs. “Couldn’t sleep. Caught an earlier flight.”

“Oh.” This is a surprise. A good one—except, no, not really. Because Kris is still in his pajamas, and his hair is probably a mess. He runs a nervous hand through it and beckons Adam in, starting when he realizes that he’s still holding the clock in his hand. “Come on,” he says, ignoring the heat rising in his cheeks. “I’ll put the coffee on.”

Kris doesn’t look back, but sees out of the corner of his eyes that Adam takes a chair at the table. He putters with the coffeemaker and the cups, and then takes out the flour. He’ll make pancakes. It’ll keep him busy, and Adam probably hasn’t had breakfast yet.

It’s not like waking up earlier and waiting nervously until Adam arrived would have been easier. Maybe this is better after all. At least, this way, he doesn’t get a chance to worry. Though if he’d known, he would have worn something more flattering than his ten-year-old sweatpants and Michael Jackson t-shirt to bed. He has newer sweatpants—and t-shirts with fewer holes in them.

He checks on the coffee—but of course it’s not done yet—and looks around in a panic for something to offer Adam. He can’t make small talk; he’s completely tongue-tied. He’s afraid that if he opens his mouth, he’ll say something stupid and embarrassing. He’s never been in this situation before. Casual sex is not something you do in a town where you know everyone’s grandparents.

The bowl of apples on the counter catches his eyes suddenly, and Kris grabs it like a lifeline. He holds the bowl out to Adam with what he hopes is a friendly and not deranged smile.

“Here, try one of these. They’re the apples Dylan went to pick last week.”

Adam doesn’t smile back. He looks—pensive. Taking a hold of the other side of the bowl, he pulls Kris closer with it; then he removes it from Kris’ grasp and places it on the table.

“Hi,” he says, and pulls Kris even closer, resting his hands lightly on Kris’ hips, his face level with Kris’ stomach.

Kris wishes he had thought to pull his sweats a little higher. “Hey.”

From this close, Adam doesn’t look as flawless as he did on that catwalk. But then again, the guy on the catwalk hadn’t looked like he’d know how Kris’ son almost fell out of a tree last week for a bunch of apples, either. They are two faces of the same man, Kris knows that, but even so, he finds himself irrationally happy that the one that’s sitting in his kitchen is not the porcelain-perfect catwalk guy.

Kris’ hand is on Adam’s cheek—though he has no idea how it got there—and he feels it with his fingertips when Adam’s lips stretch to shape a satisfied smile. Adam looks downright wicked, blue eyes gleaming with mischief, as he drags Kris’ hand down to his mouth to nip at his thumb—and then in a flurry of movement, he manages to get Kris to straddle his thighs, and catches his lips in a surprisingly well-coordinated kiss.

It’s even better than their first kiss. It’s more lighthearted for one thing, not as desperate. And Kris is ready for it this time. Instead of feeling like his insides are being put through a wringer, he feels like he’s riding a rollercoaster. A really big one, with lots of turns.

One of Adam’s rings catches on a hole in his t-shirt, and Adam makes an annoyed sound when he can’t get it free. It makes Kris laugh into the kiss and pull back from it, grinning down at Adam.

“Pancakes,” Kris tells him, getting off his lap, thinking how wonderful it is that they can have a not-so-awkward breakfast now.

Adam doesn’t seem to agree. “I don’t think so.”

He grabs Kris’ hand and drags him—not entirely unwillingly—toward the stairs.

“But. Breakfast?”

“Later.”

Kris is breathless, boneless, and flushed red all over in an embarrassingly short time. He thinks he should be offended at the smug look Adam is giving him from where he’s resting against Kris’ stomach, but he honestly can’t bring himself to care right now.

He hasn’t felt this alive in ages.

“I know how long it’s been since you last had sex, so I’m not going to take this as a compliment. There’s always the next time, though.” Adam pretends to check his watch. “In about an hour?” he offers.

“You—what—?” Kris takes a deep, calming breath. “How do you know how long it’s been?”

“I know all.”

Kris glares at him.

“Okay. Your brother told me.”

“You talked to Daniel about—”

“Please don’t make me talk about either of our brothers when I have your dick in my hand,” Adam protests.

That sounds fair enough, but— “You don’t have my dick in your hand,” Kris feels he has to point out.

Adam smirks. “Let me fix that right now.”

Kris chokes on a chuckle and then bites down so hard, he makes his lower lip bleed.

They don’t get around to having breakfast until after noon. Looking down at the abused sheets once they get off the bed, Kris remembers his panic that morning when he’d realized that he didn’t have enough time to change the sheets, that they were going to smell all sweaty and awful. That worry’s in the past now, because the sheets are way beyond saving, and the bedroom smells like a brothel anyway. Not that Kris would know how one of those would smell; he’s just making guesses here.

He makes blueberry pancakes for Adam. It’s a regular weekend breakfast for him and Dylan, but Adam makes the experience—well, Kris is going to go with interesting here. He sets the table in a couple of minutes and then spends the rest of the time making excuses to touch Kris in progressively more intimate places, making it very hard for him to focus on cooking. Kris figures Adam has a bit of a hyperactivity problem, because it’s impossible to make him stay still for more than a minute. That thought leads, inevitably, to thoughts of sex and how they have two days of it ahead of them, and . . . that line of thinking is not very helpful with the cooking either.

It’s a miracle that the pancakes aren’t burnt completely.

Kris pours them each a cup of coffee and takes a seat at the table to enjoy his pancakes (though he doubts he’ll even be tasting them), but he finds Adam’s foot hooked through the leg of his chair before he can even start eating and can only shake his head when Adam pulls him closer with it.

“Much better,” Adam says, scooting a little to the side so their thighs are touching.

Kris rolls his eyes at him, but surreptitiously moves a little closer himself.

“Mmmmhmmm,” Adam hums, taking a bite. “This is so good.” He moans. “Like, sinfully good.”

Kris forces himself to look away from Adam’s face and takes a bite himself. It’s really not that good. “Mediocre, at best,” he tells Adam. “You’ve probably forgotten what real food’s supposed to taste like. You need to eat something other than salad once in a while.”

“Stop being cute,” Adam says, his face way too close for comfort. “Or wait, no, don’t.” He leans in and kisses Kris, long and soft, sharing the taste of blueberries in his mouth. “Mmm,” he breathes. “I like you cute. It gives me an excuse to kiss you.”

Kris doesn’t say that he doesn’t need an excuse—that this weekend is one big excuse-free zone. Because that could open up a discussion of what exactly this weekend is and what it isn’t, and he really isn’t ready for that, so he stuffs another piece of pancake into his mouth instead and doesn’t say anything.

Adam eats two helpings of the blueberry pancakes, and then—then there’s some more kissing, and then Kris is on the table somehow, and his t-shirt is missing, and they end up breaking two plates.

It’s totally worth it though.

The thing about sex with Adam is that one minute it’s scorching hot, and the next, completely silly. It’s unbelievably addictive, and a part of Kris wants to live in this constant state of crazy honeymoon sex—possibly because he’s never had a honeymoon before.

In between sessions of wild, amazing, completely out-of-this-world sex, Kris finds himself thinking that it shouldn’t be this easy. Not for someone who hasn’t had sex in—he counts back in his head—thirteen months, for someone who hasn’t had sex with a guy ever. There should be more panic, more uncertainty, definitely more pain, and not nearly as much enjoyment. But none of that stuff applies when Adam Lambert is involved, apparently, just like Adam had claimed once that the rule no white after Labor Day didn’t apply to him, because he just looked too awesome in white.

The man clearly comes with his own set of rules. It’s not Kris’ place to question that.

They do absolutely nothing all day except have their usual about-nothing-and-everything conversations (in bed) and have sex (in all sorts of places). Kris draws the line at ordering pizza for dinner just so they can stay in bed longer, though, and gets up to take a shower and to cook. He’s going to make pasta, easiest food to prepare there is—

“No,” Adam corrects him, “microwave popcorn is the easiest to prepare.”

“That’s not food. God.”

—if only Adam would leave him to it for a couple of minutes. In the end, Kris has to send him to the living room to pick a DVD for them to watch just so he can get a break, knowing full well that Adam will hate each and every one of Kris’ DVDs.

Adam comes back in seven minutes with a DVD in hand and a disturbed look on his face, and Kris notes with alarm that he has actually missed him.

“I can’t believe my choices are Steven Seagal and The Emperor’s New Groove.”

Kris smirks to cover for his inexplicably fast heartbeat. “You should have brought your Velvet Goldmine DVD, then.”

Adam groans. “How can you own a movie called Today You Die? Seriously, Kris. I just can’t—you paid for this? You could’ve donated that money to a good cause, like the never ever ever let Steven Seagal make another movie for the love of God organization.”

“Of which you’re the founder, I’m guessing,” Kris mumbles, kissing Adam’s lips. He does it just because they’re there, Adam once again having wrapped himself around Kris, but the domesticity of the moment strikes him out of nowhere and makes him blink down at his own hands, red with tomato paste and dripping down on the counter.

He can do this. He’d thought he couldn’t for so long, thought it wouldn’t work with someone other than Katy, but it comes surprisingly easily now.

Kris leans back against Adam’s chest and pushes that thought away. This is not the time for decisions. He needs to give it time and think it through.

“What did you pick?”

Adam nuzzles into the back of his neck and holds the DVD up.

“Bruce Willis. Awesome.”

“Lots of explosions for you,” Adam tells him, lips brushing Kris’ skin.

“You know what I like,” Kris agrees.

At first, they settle apart on the couch, with one cushion between them, but Adam lies down just a couple minutes in and rests his head in Kris’ lap. Kris has seen this movie about a million times, and Adam isn’t interested in the slightest, so it’s inevitable that they get distracted only halfway through. Kris lets himself be pulled down, Adam crowding him in between his body and the back of the couch, and they make out, unhurried. They don’t have anywhere else to be.

Adam is infinitely more beautiful without make-up, his freckles uncovered, but Kris has to admit that he likes the almost rubbed-off eyeliner, too. It makes Adam’s eyes look deeper, the blue color of them richer. He tries not to think about what Adam must be seeing when he looks at Kris; it’s been a long time since he last worried about that stuff, and Adam seems to like him just fine anyway.

Kris has the rather sizable proof of that poking him in the stomach.

Adam’s hands, now free of all his rings and bracelets, roam under Kris’ t-shirt, mapping his back, and then one of them squeezes in between them and takes a hold of his nipple, rolling it between his thumb and forefinger, his lips biting along Kris’ jaw line at the same time.

Kris lets himself moan with abandon. He’s used to holding all sound back because of Dylan, and he’s just naturally shy with new people—or so he remembers—but Adam has managed to cure him of all that with just one blowjob that afternoon. He’d gone slow, excruciatingly so, and refused to let Kris come until he stopped biting his lips. Kris vaguely remembers calling him an evil son of a bitch at the time, but now that he’s looking back on it, that forty-five minutes he spent relearning his limits might just have been the best sex he’s had in his life so far. It’s definitely the hardest he’s ever come. He has a feeling that he might’ve passed out from it.

This is different, of course. They’re hard, but it’s not all that urgent, and running a hand through Adam’s soft hair, Kris thinks he can do this all night. Moving to this slow, teasing rhythm, letting the inferno of earlier simmer down to a slow burn in the pit of his stomach. If there were a fireplace in the room, this would be the perfect fade to black scene, Kris thinks. Instead, on the screen, they have Bruce Willis blowing something up.

Adam pins Kris’ hips with his and lets out a long hiss at the contact. Then, “Tell me what you want,” he says, daring Kris, just like earlier.

That had been lesson number two; talking about sex without blushing or looking away.

“Anything,” Kris says. He’s not picky at all. Adam has proven that he can make Kris enjoy practically anything anyway.

Another roll of hips. “No. Tell me.”

“I don’t know,” Kris whines. “This is good.”

Adam pulls one of Kris’ legs over his own and presses in harder. “You wanna come like this?”

Kris moans.

“Then you’re going to have to tell me.”

Kris’ eyes snap open. He glares at Adam. “Are you going to stop being evil anytime soon?”

“Nope,” Adam says, leaning down and nipping at Kris’ lips. “You love me evil.”

Kris narrows his eyes at him. He can be evil, too.

Flipping them over is easy enough; Kris’ leg around Adam’s hips helps him keep them from falling off the couch. Once he’s settled on Adam’s thighs, Kris unzips Adam’s jeans and doesn’t even bother trying to pull them down—evil people who wear evilly tight jeans don’t deserve to be comfortable during sex anyway.

“I want you to fuck me. How’s that?” he says, taking off his own t-shirt. It’s getting too hot. (And for the record, the flush is from the heat.)

Adam pulls him down into a deep kiss, making Kris brace himself with hands on Adam’s chest. “It’s amazing,” Adam says, then gives him another, softer kiss. “Awesome.” One more lick. “Perfect.”

Adam fishes out the condom and lube he’s been carrying in his pocket—how do they even fit there?!—and lies back to let Kris have his way with him.

It turns out it really is amazing/awesome/perfect. Who would have thought?

Having a sex marathon is tiring business, and yet, judging by the sounds drifting up the stairs, Kris is awake and playing guitar at—Adam checks the bedside clock—4:27 in the morning. He gets up, pulls his underwear free from the tangle of clothes on the floor, and puts it on. Then he makes his way down the stairs, trying to be quiet so as not to disrupt Kris’ playing, but stops halfway through when Kris’ voice joins the melody.

Hello world, hope you’re listening

Adam stands there and considers sitting down on the step, so he can listen without interrupting, but then realizes with dead certainty that that isn’t how this is supposed to go. He’s supposed to be down there, with Kris, preferably touching him in some way, because he’s a part of this now. He wants to be a part of this, and if someone wants him out, they’re going to have to kick him out—out of this moment and out of Kris’ life in general. Adam has felt this way before, on stage, or whenever he’s had a microphone in his hands, and he’d thought he felt this way with a couple of guys, mistook something that was mostly adrenaline for love—fierce, crushing, inescapable love—but there’s no confusing it this time; this is the real thing.

Kris stops playing and turns around, hearing his footsteps, and says something about waking him up. Adam doesn’t respond. He sits down next to Kris on the couch, but then decides that’s not close enough and fits himself behind Kris, turning them to the side a little to use the armrest for support.

“What’re you doing?”

Kris sounds amused. It isn’t really amusing; Adam is having an epiphany here. He wraps his arms around Kris’ waist and rests his chin on his shoulder, breathing him in. He still smells a bit like Adam.

“Go on,” he says, nudging Kris. “I love that song.”

Kris continues where he’d left off.

By the time he’s done, Adam has a startlingly clear picture of where this weekend could take them, going forward. Kris is better than that restaurant; that was something Adam already knew, but now it feels like a personal affront to him that Kris wouldn’t try for more. He has to. He’s meant for bigger things. Adam will be with him, every step of the way, pushing him and teaching him and taking care of him. And it’ll work—Adam can see clear as day that it will work—because, with Kris teaching him and loving him and taking care of him in return, it won’t be one-sided; it will be a partnership.

“I love you,” he whispers into Kris’ ear, because the feeling just won’t be contained anymore, but as expected, it throws Kris off, and the end of the song comes out a garbled mess.

“I—”

“Don’t,” Adam says, kissing just under his ear. “Just—play me another song?”

After a long, expectant pause, Kris starts playing again. They sing the song together.

Sunday starts with a drawn-out breakfast, during which Adam tries to feed Kris and have sex with him at the same time. It’s really not very practical, but it does prove to be surprisingly fun. After that—and a thorough shower—when they’re finally too spent to even think about sex anymore, Adam makes Kris play some of his own songs.

Kris hasn’t worked on his music with anyone else in a long time. These days, it’s mostly him and his guitar and a couple of stolen hours after Dylan has gone to sleep, but he and Adam have always understood each other effortlessly on almost every subject that matters, and music is no different.

After almost three hours spent working on one song, Kris realizes that his fingertips are sore, not quite as used to the strings anymore, and his cheeks are hurting from smiling too much.

When he looks over, Adam is lying on the floor with his head propped up on an elbow, grinning at him.

Kris puts the guitar out of harm’s way and kisses Adam’s grin away.

They forego lunch in favor of a nap, which neither of them actually takes. Instead they lie in bed, tangled together, each one pretending to believe the other’s asleep. After about two hours of meditating to the rhythm of Adam’s breathing and carefully not thinking about what it’s going to be like to go back to phone conversations after this, Kris’ eyes catch the red digits of the clock on the bedside table, and he says, “You’re going to be late if you don’t leave now.”

Adam doesn’t make any move to get up. Neither does Kris.

“When are you supposed to pick Dylan up?”

“Not until nine,” Kris says.

“Okay,” Adam says, rolling them over. “I can catch a later flight.”

Adam goes slow and makes it last, easing Kris down whenever he gets impatient. He makes Kris tremble with need, pulling back every time they get close and starting over, entering Kris again and again, repeating the same cycle, until Kris is begging loudly, beyond embarrassment.

When he finally comes, Kris doesn’t even want to know whether it’s all sweat that’s running down his temples, or if there are tears mixed in as well. With limbs turned liquid, he tries to hold onto Adam, and they rest until their hitching breaths quiet down and it’s almost time for Adam to go.

They shower separately, and Kris watches Adam put on his make-up, his freckles disappearing under a layer of foundation. Adam packs without a word, and they go downstairs, careful not to touch each other.

At the door, Kris doesn’t know what to say. He is grateful, but he can’t thank Adam for this. He’s too confused to promise anything to him or offer hope for a repeat. He can’t say he loves Adam, because even though they both knew they loved each other long before the idea of this weekend ever entered Kris’ mind, saying it out loud now will mean something else entirely.

What they’ve shared is so far beyond Kris’ ability to articulate, he thinks anything he can say will sound insultingly simple anyway.

Adam turns back, right at the door, and the look in his eyes is one Kris hasn’t seen before. It’s hard and determined and unforgiving to the point of being scary. Letting go of his bag, he grabs Kris’ face in his hands and kisses him, deep and frantic, an echo of their first kiss, and Kris clutches at Adam’s jacket and kisses back.

“We’re going to talk about this,” Adam tells him when he pulls back. “When you’re ready.”

Then he leaves, before Kris can bring himself to open his eyes.

Kris calls Daniel and asks him to pick Dylan up, because he doesn’t think he’ll be able to drive with knees that refuse to stop trembling. Then he sits on the couch and stares at the coffee table with unseeing eyes, waiting for them to arrive.

There’s always a well of strength reserved inside him, to be used only for Dylan, and that’s how he manages to get up and answer the door for his son. Dylan is practically asleep on his feet, wearing his leather jacket on top of his Batman pajamas. Kris hugs him close and kisses his hair, letting the smell of him sooth his nerves a little, and then sends him upstairs to his room to sleep.

Daniel doesn’t talk until they hear Dylan’s door slam shut. Then he says, “What the hell happened to you?” and pulls him into the kitchen without waiting for an answer.

Kris sits in one of the chairs and waits for the words to come. They don’t.

After a couple of minutes of Kris looking anywhere but at Daniel, Daniel takes a guess. “Adam was here, wasn’t he?”

Kris’ head whips up. “How did you—?”

Daniel rolls his eyes. “Oh, come on,” he says. “Dylan’s away, and you suddenly have something mysterious to do that none of us can help with?” He makes a face. “Not that any of us would have wanted to help with that.”

“But. Uh.”

Daniel leans back in his chair with a smug tilt to his head. “Also, Adam wasn’t answering his cell, so I called his apartment. Some chick called Danielle said he was in Arkansas.”

Kris kicks him in the shin.

Daniel grins. “And I thought, what else could Adam be doing in Arkansas? He must be doing my brother.”

Kris glares at him. “I will kill you.”

“Whatever. Do your worst. At least you’re acting like a human being now.” He picks up an apple from the bowl and rubs it against his shirt before biting into it loudly. “Are you going to tell me what the fuck is wrong now? Am I gonna have to kick some ass, or what?”

Kris runs a hand over his face. He’s not trembling anymore, but his joints still feel weak. “No ass kicking necessary.”

“So it was good? Not that I want details. I don’t want any details. At all. Ever.”

“No one’s offering you details,” Kris reassures him. “And—it was good.”

“And?”

“It was—a little too good.”

Daniel stares blankly at him. “Wasn’t that the whole point of this exercise?”

“It’s—No. I didn’t think—”

“You really are an idiot, aren’t you?” Daniel interrupts him, and actually waits for an answer.

“I . . . What?”

“You’ve been in love with this guy for how long now? And you didn’t think it would be good?”

Kris opens his mouth to tell him that there’s love and then there’s love, but Daniel’s on a roll.

“Jesus, man. The last time you two were in the same room, half the neighborhood had to take a cold shower afterward. Are you really that dense?”

Kris stares at him, speechless, probably proving that he, indeed, is that dense.

Daniel lets out an incredulous chuckle. “I honestly thought you were being secretive or something. I didn’t realize you were actually dumb.”

Kris covers his face with his hands and groans. “What the fuck do I do now?”

“Now—you figure it out,” Daniel says.

Kris drops his hands. “Figure it out? Yeah. That’s easy. We live in different states, but what the hell, we’ll just figure it out.”

Daniel munches on his apple, unconcerned. “Last I checked, neither of your asses were bolted down to any one particular state. You’ll find a way.”

Kris stares at Daniel and wishes he could be half that confident.

“Is this an orgy?” Neil asks, standing at the door of Adam’s bedroom. “Because I gotta tell you guys, I don’t feel comfortable having an orgy with my brother.”

Adam rolls his eyes, fluffing the pillow behind him. “Sit your ass down.”

Brad scoots away from Danielle a little bit and pulls Neil down to sit next to him at the foot of the bed.

“So,” Adam says, clapping his hands. “We’re gathered here today—”

“Not for an orgy?” Allison prompts.

“—not for an orgy, God, you’re a bunch of perverts.”

Neil raises his hand. “Then why are we in your bedroom?”

“Because,” Danielle jumps in, “he’s afraid of his living room.”

Brad snickers. “Seriously? Again?”

“I’m not afraid.” He wouldn’t call it fear. “I just . . . don’t like it much.”

“What is it this time?” Brad prods with a raised eyebrow. “Is it haunted? Is your couch possessed?”

“I hate it when that happens,” Neil comments.

“It’s not—look, that’s not the point. This is a serious meeting—”

“On your bed,” says Allison.

“Yes,” Adam confirms impatiently. “Enough about the bed.”

Allison slides out from under his arm to sit up, raising her hands as if to say don’t bite my head off, man, but Adam yanks her back in before she can get away. “You’re here for moral support. Stay where you are.”

She gives him a salute, the brat. “Yes, sir. Ready for snuggle duty, sir.”

“Anyway,” Adam says pointedly. “This is a serious matter. I need help.”

“Okay,” Brad says and puts his serious face on. “Shoot.”

Adam takes a deep breath. “I . . . fell in love.”

“Oooh.” Allison squirms under Adam’s arm, excited. “Is this one of those times when we get to make some guy jealous and—”

“No,” Adam says.

Allison deflates. “Damn.”

“This is about the Arkansas guy with the kid,” Neil states, looking for confirmation.

Adam nods wordlessly. He’s been both eager and apprehensive to share this with everyone. Kris is not the kind of guy any of them would have expected for Adam to fall in love with, and Adam can’t really expect them to understand when they haven’t even met him yet, but he can’t afford to wait for that to happen right now. He needs help today. To be honest, he probably needed help months ago.

“Arkansas?” Allison asks, suspicious. “You told me about him. Musician. Something Allen?”

“Yes,” Adam nods again. “Kris Allen.”

“Wait—he’s actually in Arkansas?” Brad asks, confused. “How did you manage to fall in love with some guy in Arkansas?”

“There’s this brilliant thing called the telephone—” Adam starts to say, but Danielle cuts him off.

“Okay, you know what? You suck at this. I’ll tell them the story.” She waves her hand at him dismissively. “You just shut up and look pretty.”

Adam dutifully shuts up.

Danielle clears her throat. “Once upon a time,” she begins, taking in her audience. Everyone is listening—except for Cassidy, who’s drooling on Adam’s sheets. Adam kicks his head, but Cassidy just snuffles and keeps on sleeping. Danielle continues. “. . . there was a boy named Dylan who loved his father very much.”

“I’m sorry, Adam, but I have to ask this.” Brad seems disbelieving, but mainly of the fact that Kris even exists. “Has anyone actually seen this guy?”

Adam groans. They’re not going to be helpful at all; what was he thinking? Cassidy’s still asleep, Neil looks bored, and Brad thinks he’s crazy. He should’ve just called Allison and cuddled with her for a couple of hours. That would have at least calmed him down.

“I have,” Danielle says, ignoring Adam’s pain. “Kind of. I’ve talked to him on the phone. Real cute accent. And I’ve seen pictures.”

“Pictures!” Allison pokes him in the ribs. “Adam, I wanna see!”

Adam takes out his cell, grumbling. It’s not like he minds showing Kris off, but that wasn’t the point of this whole thing.

“Oh, he’s cute,” Allison says, taking the phone from him. She scrolls through the pictures, Brad and Neil crowding closer to see, and comes to a halt at one. “And hot.”

“And you were calling me a pervert,” Neil says with a smirk.

Adam doesn’t have to see the screen to know which picture they’re looking at. He should have deleted that one; hell, he never should have taken it in the first place, but Kris had looked so beautiful sleeping next to him, he hadn’t been able to resist.

You can’t even see that much skin, seriously. They’re being ridiculous, fawning over it like this.

“If you’re quite finished,” Adam says, taking back his phone and sticking it in his pocket.

“So,” Brad says. “He’s cute. And you’re in love. That’s great.”

“Yes,” Adam says with a nod. “And now I have to—do something about that.”

“You’ve already fucked him, so I’m guessing you’re thinking about something more . . . permanent now?”

Adam winces inwardly at the crass wording. Kris’ eyebrows would knit together if he ever heard Brad talk like that about him. He would smile and act polite, but he wouldn’t like it. But this isn’t the time to give the guys Kris Allen 101; that bit of fun will have to be pushed off until after today’s business has been dealt with.

“Permanent, yes.” He nods.

“Permanent, as in . . . crossing state lines permanent?” Allison asks slowly.

Adam nods decisively.

“You are not moving to Arkansas,” Brad says with a snort. “You’d die of boredom, and, like, lack of glitter.”

Adam scoffs. He can do just fine without glitter, thank you very much. But that’s not the point anyway. “I want to ask him to move here.” He looks around at their faces; Neil and Danielle aren’t surprised, but Brad looks . . . unconvinced. Adam plows on, regardless. “I’ve asked him before—before all this, before we even . . . you know. And he said he couldn’t, what with Dylan and everything. And I get that, I do, he has people to help him there, but—I can help, too. Now that I’m invested in this, I can help with Dylan, I can help with getting him gigs and then a record deal, I can help him financially, I can—”

“Woah, woah, woah.” Brad waves his arms around. “Time-out.”

“What?”

“You’re talking about . . . like . . . real, serious, getting-married-and-raising-a-kid sort of moving here.”

“Well, not getting married, but yeah.” Adam nods. “That’s the idea.”

Brad’s face turns white as a sheet. “I think I need to sit down.”

Neil pats his thigh. “You’re already sitting down.”

“Oh.” Brad rests his head on Neil’s shoulder and stares at Adam, first in complete and utter shock, then searching, and then, finally, concerned. “Are you sure about this? You’re jumping into this thing with your usual stupid enthusiasm, but how do you even get out of it if it doesn’t work out?”

“It’ll work out,” Adam tells him. That’s the easy part. Adam is sure about that part. It’s the getting there that’s worrying him.

Brad shakes his head. “Look, honey, I’m not saying you don’t love him, but . . . you’ve never done anything like this before. Having a serious relationship is one thing, but a kid . . .”

Adam offers him a reassuring smile. “Dylan’s amazing. You’ll get it when you meet them. I know you don’t understand right now, but—I promise you, I’m sure. I’ve thought it over. I’ve been thinking about nothing else for months now. I need to do this.”

Brad has this stare that Adam is pretty sure can cut right through his bullshit and see into his heart. There have been times in the past when Adam cursed the fact that he was so easy for Brad to read, squirmed under the merciless gaze, and run away, more than once, just so he wouldn’t have to admit what Brad already knew. But it’s different this time. This time, Adam doesn’t mind. He lets Brad look his fill; he’s ready to lay it all out in the open to make him believe.

“All right,” Brad says after a while, straightening up. He pulls out a pair of wire-rimmed glasses from his pocket and puts them on. “Gimme that laptop,” he tells Danielle, who obediently hands over Adam’s laptop from where it’s sitting on the bedside table. Everyone watches Brad as he boots it up and clears his throat. “So we’re gonna—” He cuts himself off to raise an eyebrow at Adam. “Really?”

Adam bites his lip to keep from grinning.

“What?” Allison asks.

Neil is leaning over Brad to see the screen. Brad elbows him out of the way and turns the laptop around.

Allison giggles.

“It’s a good picture!” Adam tells them.

It is a good picture. In fact, it’s one of Adam’s favorites; it never fails to make him smile. It’s from Kris’ parents’ anniversary a couple months back, so Kris has a suit on. (Only his mother can make him put on formalwear.) It’s his black suit, which isn’t, thankfully, three sizes too large like the rest of his wardrobe. He has his tie pulled halfway down, the top two buttons of his shirt undone, and he’s holding his guitar, probably getting ready to play his mom’s favorite song. (Kim is a big REO Speedwagon fan.) He’s squinting up at the person behind the camera, smiling at them, unaware of Dylan approaching sneakily from behind, covered from head to toe in mud and holding a fat toad threateningly in both hands.

Adam looks up from the screen to see Brad giving him a genuine and completely incredulous smile. “Really?” he asks.

Adam nods. He can hear the dozens of unvoiced questions behind that one word and he still just nods. Because really.

“All right then. Let’s do this.”

Two hours later, they have lists. Plural. Brad makes three main ones, and then there are off-shoots, plans, spreadsheets with pros and cons of every decision Adam will have to make going down this road.

Adam is grateful for Brad’s OCD. He’s feeling much calmer now.

Neil, on the other hand, seems bored. He’s been playing with his socks for the last ten minutes, making Allison shake with laughter against Adam with an impromptu sock puppet show. And Cassidy is still asleep. Adam nudges him with an elbow, but no, he’s not waking up.

There’s too much stuff to do; Adam doesn’t know where to begin. To do this right, he’s going to need Kris’ help. They need to think all this through together. But before they can do that, Adam will have to convince Kris that this is doable, and to be able to do that, he needs to have answers to all the inevitable questions first.

Questions like, where do they live? Do Kris and Dylan get another house, or an apartment, or do they just move in with Adam?

“Where the hell are you going to put the kid?” Danielle asks. “You don’t have a spare room.”

“I can convert the dressing room.”

Danielle gasps. “You wouldn’t!”

Adam nods. “If I have to. Yeah.”

“You didn’t do it for me, you bitch!” She glares at him, arms crossed under her breasts.

Adam gives her a look. “I wasn’t in love with you.”

Then there’s the question of Dylan-sitting.

“I have friends. I have a fuck-load of friends!”

“Yeah,” Allison says, “but none of them ever had to babysit in their lives.”

“Danielle has!”

Danielle shrugs. “I’ll help when I can.”

Giving her a winning smile, Adam turns to Brad.

“Oh, no,” Brad says, “don’t look at me.”

“But he’s cool, I swear.”

Brad glares. “No.”

Adam doesn’t have a car, since he prefers to walk everywhere and take a cab if he can’t, but Kris has one, so that will be okay. They’re going to need to find a school for Dylan, but that can’t be too hard. Adam sees school kids around his place all the time. While it’s not exactly the suburbs, there are still families living in his neighborhood.

They can take care of the million and one things this move will require them to, Adam is confident about that now. What he really needs to work on is the presentation.

“You’re going to have to do that thing Mom said,” Neil says. “Like, draw the boundaries, you know? So he knows exactly how committed you are, just how far he can trust you. He needs to know all that.” He gestures to the laptop. “In excruciating detail.”

“Worked for you, I take it?”

Neil grudgingly nods. “Yeah. It was painful, but it worked.”

“Okay,” Adam says, already planning his speech.

Allison has to leave for a recording session, and Neil says he can drive her to the studio, since he needs to drop by Lucille’s anyway. Danielle goes to the kitchen to cook, and Brad makes his escape before she can force-feed him green and slimy things.

“It was just the one time! Seriously!”

At the door, he turns around and gives Adam a long, considering look.

“You remember how it was when we first moved in together?”

Adam smiles fondly. He does remember.

“Remember how it was after three months?”

Adam’s smile slides off his face. He remembers that as well.

Brad smirks. “Now multiply that by three thousand. That’s how hard this is going to be.”

Adam frowns, doesn’t say a word.

“It’s going to be a lot of work. Don’t let yourself get carried away with the fairytale aspect of it. Love is not enough for everything.” He tilts his head, offers a wan smile. “We’re living proof of that.”

He puts on his sunglasses, hiding half his face behind the fire red frames, and turns to leave.

Adam grabs his elbow before he can.

“I can do it,” he tells Brad. “I want to.”

Brad grins, wide and honest—and for once, only slightly mischievous. Rising up on his tiptoes, he pecks Adam on the lips. “Good for you, baby.” He lifts his glasses to give Adam a wink. “Now go get him.”

Then he leaves.

Adam goes back to the bedroom to throw Cassidy out of his bed.

Kris feels like he is waiting for the axe to fall.

It’s his fault, too. He’s the one that screwed everything up. He’s the one who’d asked Adam over and stupidly thought that everything would work out somehow. He’d thought they could just go back to the way things were, even after that.

It was inexcusably naïve of him.

He’s been thinking—and thinking, and thinking, and thinking about how they can make this work, but there is just no way. All his reasons for saying no to Adam’s offer the first time they ever spoke are still valid and strong. He can’t afford the move—financially, strategically, emotionally . . . He can’t leave the restaurant, or his family and friends. Children need stability, and Kris had to work hard to find this balance in their lives. He can’t throw all that away and try to start from scratch now—especially not just so he can date someone. That’s the kind of selfishness a single parent can never afford.

There are people who depend on him. Joe, his staff, Father Fowles . . . He can’t disappoint them. And no matter how much Dylan thinks he wants to move, there’s a good chance he’d hate it if they did. Even if Kris had the money to pay for babysitters and a new house, there is no amount of money that can buy a new set of grandparents, or Samantha, or all those friends of Dylan’s that he scoffs at but spends hours playing with anyway.

A part of Kris wants to cry at the unfairness of getting this chance at all when there’s no way he can actually take it—because he can also see it working. The picture is hazy, granted, but if Adam really wanted it, if he could make the sacrifices, if they put their minds to it . . . It could be amazing.

Before, when everyone kept telling him to try for more with his music and his love life, it was all so easy for Kris to dismiss. But now that it has a name, now that he’s gotten a taste of it—he wants it so bad.

But he will always have to be a father before he can be someone’s boyfriend, or husband, or partner; and the dad in him is saying NO. Just no. He can’t risk Dylan’s happiness.

If it had been just him, Kris would have gambled everything.

But it’s not. And that’s that.

(Kris doesn’t even consider asking Adam to move to Conway. Adam would be miserable here. And besides, he would say no for sure. There’s no need to put either of them in that position.)

Adam waits for ten days before mentioning it, but in all their conversations in between, Kris can feel the tension—how Adam wants to ask, wants to talk about it, how he’s almost vibrating with it. Kris wants him to ask, too. He wants this to be over, so he doesn’t have to think about it anymore.

Then Adam does, and it’s harder than Kris had ever imagined.

Adam sounds excited and scared—but so happy.

“Look, just—listen, okay? Just listen to what I have to say before you say anything.”

He takes a deep breath. Kris’ knees feel weak and his heart is beating erratically, so he sits down on the stairs, holding onto the banister with one hand. Laundry can wait until he’s done with the heart attack.

“I have a dressing room that we can convert into a bedroom for Dylan. I work from home most of the time, so I can stay with him whenever you’re at work. If I can’t, there’s always Danielle, and my mom, and, you know, Neil? I have a couple of places in mind where you can get regular gigs until we can get you signed—and that’s . . . I’m pretty sure you’ll get signed right away. Even if you don’t—worst case scenario—we’ll go indie. Cassidy produces his own stuff; he would love to work with you, too. I know you worry about money, but don’t. I have some saved up; you would never have to touch Dylan’s college fund, I promise.”

Adam sounds out of breath with excitement, and for a moment there, Kris finds that he is too. He’s taking Adam words as possibilities, some of them even facts, because why shouldn’t they have that when they both want it? But then Adam stops to breathe, and suddenly Kris is shaken loose from the dream world Adam’s voice is painting so clearly. He freezes, finds himself back on his feet, back in the real world, and all of a sudden he’s furious.

He’s mad at himself more than at Adam, because he’s letting himself get carried away, when no, none of that is going to happen, because whether Adam has money or not, whether he has friends and a family to help or not, Kris’ mind was made up. No big gambles. Not with this.

“You’ve got it all figured out,” he says finally.

Adam pauses, then hesitantly says, “I thought about it a lot, yes. I wanted to be able to offer you a choice—”

Kris chuckles thickly and places a hand on his forehead. His face is burning. “That’s not a choice,” he says. “That’s—you already decided for me. Me and Dylan. You’ve got our lives planned out for us. And from what I can tell, it all comes back to you. You take care of my job, you give us a place to live, you have the money—” He stops, his breaths coming out stuttering. “You want me to drop my job, leave my home, uproot my child—”

“Kris—”

“—leave my family, my friends—”

“Kris, wait—”

“—and bet everything on you? Am I getting this right?”

“Wait, wait, wait—”

Adam sounds hurt, but Kris can’t bring himself to care. “What?” he asks. “Wait for more of your choices?”

“No. Wait. I didn’t—you said—you told me you and Katy talked about it. You said you meant to move when Dylan was old enough. I’m just—”

“Dylan is not old enough,” Kris interrupts him. “He’s nine. He’s just a kid. And those plans—they were a long time ago. I wasn’t a single parent when I made those plans.”

“So what?” Adam says. He sounds like he’s getting angry, which is good. It’s awesome, because Kris wants to fight. He wants to scream and yell and break things. “You don’t have Katy, and that sucks, I’m sorry, but you have me.”

A breath leaves Kris’ lips in a wry half-chuckle. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. You think you want to be a parent, because—what, because of a weekend of good sex?”

There’s only silence at the other end of the line. Kris can’t even hear Adam breathing anymore.

“Tell me, Adam, if you want this so much, how come you’re not the one moving?” His voice meets his ears, and it doesn’t sound like him at all. But the words are tumbling out of his mouth, and there’s no stopping them now. “You don’t have a kid to worry about, and you can write from anywhere. When was the last time you even went into work? How is it that we’re not talking about your choices?”

He doesn’t think that Adam is going to answer at first, but Adam does say, after a minute, voice tight and strangely thin, “I thought it made sense. I thought we could—”

“It doesn’t make sense.” No matter how much they want it to make sense, it’s still too much of a risk for Kris, and Adam wants him to just take it? “We’d be giving up everything so that—” He bites his lip to stop, shuts his eyes tight, and takes a deep, calming breath. “No,” he says, firm and resolved. “No. The answer is no.”

Adam doesn’t say anything.

Kris deflates and leans his head against the wall. This feels like the end of something much bigger than just this conversation. “You wouldn’t like being a parent anyway,” he says, and knows before he finishes the sentence that this is way below the belt. “Stop kidding yourself.”

There’s a long pause, and then Adam takes in a long, wet-sounding breath and lets it out slowly. “Okay,” he says finally, and hangs up the phone.

Kris has practice at acting like nothing is wrong—it’s one of the many skills he’s had to develop since he’s become a parent—so he’s pretty sure Dylan doesn’t even suspect that his dad feels like smashing every breakable thing in the house for the next five days.

At first he’s angry at Adam for opening his stupid mouth and ruining everything, and then at himself for not handling any of it right, and then at everything, because it’s all just so unfair. He wants Adam to know that he didn’t mean most of what he said. He hasn’t changed his mind or anything, he still doesn’t think Adam is ready to be a parent, but he knows Adam’s heart was in the right place with that offer—it always is. That’s why he loves Adam. That, and a million other reasons.

But he can’t bring himself to call. He’s almost afraid that he’ll lose control of the conversation again, and it’ll turn into an even bigger disaster. So he waits. He figures maybe if they wait long enough, they can just laugh this whole thing off the next time they speak, and then, maybe, they can go back to how things used to be.

Kris misses Adam’s friendship like its absence is creating a black hole in his life, a vacuum sucking all the joy and color out of it. He doesn’t even want to consider that he might not be able to get it back.

He waits, patiently, for Adam to call. Because Adam will. He always does.

When Adam does finally call, it’s Friday afternoon, and Kris is elbow-deep in dishwater. Dylan walks into the kitchen with the phone in his hand, his face scrunched up unhappily, and says, “Adam wants to talk to you.”

Drying his hands, Kris takes note of two things: that the phone rang almost fifteen minutes ago, and that Dylan looks deeply unhappy with what Adam has told him since then. Dylan’s stomping out of the kitchen only reinforces his conclusion, and Kris puts the phone to his ear with a feeling of dread.

“Hey.”

“Hi,” Adam says. He doesn’t sound happy or unhappy, friendly or pissed. He’s just sort of . . . polite. “It’s been a while.”

Five whole days, Kris thinks. It’s the longest they’ve gone without calling each other since they became friends.

“Yeah.” He doesn’t say I missed you. He doesn’t apologize. The words just won’t leave his mouth.

“I’ve been busy,” Adam says. “I packed my apartment. Who knew I had so much crap?”

Kris’ heart speeds up, his breathing going with it. “What? Why?”

“I’m going to Japan!” Adam exclaims, sounding joyful and very fake. “It was a last minute thing, so . . .”

“What?”

“Yeah,” Adam says with a laugh. ‘What’s so funny?!’ Kris wants to yell at him, but manages to hold it back. “Howard has been trying to get someone to do this series, and he’s desperate, so I said—you know, why not?” His voice grows serious, tentative. “I could use a change of scenery. I think maybe I need something like that right now.”

“How long?” Kris asks, spitting the words out through gritted teeth.

“One-to-six months. Not sure yet. It’ll depend on the popularity of the first couple of pieces.”

“Oh.”

“I wanted to tell Dylan personally, because I didn’t want him to think—I mean. I probably won’t be able to call much with the time difference and everything. But we can email, so it’ll be okay.”

The phone makes a crunching sound in Kris’ hand; he loosens his fingers. There’s one word stuck in his throat. Stay. But it’s not even funny how much he doesn’t have the right to say that. Stay—for what? Kris is not in L.A. He’s made it clear that he won’t be in L.A. anytime soon. So, really, why does he even need Adam to be there?

A phone is a phone whether it’s in Japan or Los Angeles.

“Oh. I . . .” Is he supposed to say he’s happy for Adam? He’s not. Kris hasn’t been happy for either of them since that weekend happened and everything turned upside down. “I guess—I . . . When?”

Adam breathes out, long and drawn out. “I’m leaving on Tuesday.”

“Right.” Kris nods. “So I guess I’ll . . . talk to you later?”

“Yeah.”

It’s been raining for days, but after the long, hot summer, Kris finds that he’s missed the cold wind and the smell of wet leaves. He pulls on a thick sweater and steps out to the backyard to enjoy the quiet and the clean air. It’s only mid-afternoon, but there aren’t any kids outside. Dylan doesn’t get sick a lot, but Kris still knows what seasonal changes are like for parents. Keeping the kids indoors is a necessary precaution.

He considers raking the leaves under the pear tree, but then doesn’t feel up to it and sits down on the swing instead. He’s already put away the cushions in the garage, so the metal of the seat digs into his thighs, soaking the back of his jeans. He doesn’t mind. In fact, he leans back so his sweater gets a bit wet as well. He’ll go back inside in a moment anyway.

He feels tired—completely spent. He needs to get himself together, snap out of this, but he just can’t find the will to do it. He keeps telling himself that as much as he tried to deny it, he knew this was going to happen: the fight, the silence . . . he knew it. None of it should have come as a surprise to him. And shouldn’t it make him feel better that he was right about the whole thing? Adam is not ready for any of this. He’s ridiculously warm and open-hearted and caring, and creative and brilliant and always amusing, and yes, he had fit . . . and there might have been some part of Kris—some part that he’d ruthlessly suppressed—that could easily imagine making a life with Adam, easily envision what it would be like. But Adam is impulsive, and independent, and had made an offer whose magnitude he couldn’t possibly have understood. He isn’t even ready to stand his ground and face his problems; he’d insisted that he wanted commitment, big, huge, scary commitment, but now he’s flying off to Japan, just as if he isn’t leaving a whole mess behind him. Kris doesn’t begrudge him that; Adam is free and has no one to answer to—but it means Kris made the right call, and that everything worked out the way it was supposed to. He can’t believe the tiny part of him that still wishes he’d said yes. It wouldn’t have been anything but a mistake.

So why does he feel like someone’s stolen away his ability to breathe?

Kris and Dylan have been living in this house for four years now. Kris put together this swing three years ago, painted the house last summer, replaced the old fence a couple months back. They made this place theirs; every piece of it is full of memories. Kris isn’t sentimental about stuff like that, but now it’s bugging the shit out of him that his goddamn backyard makes him think of Adam instead of all the times he’s played there with his son.

Sitting there and staring at the dark green grass covered by yellowed leaves, he can almost smell the birthday candles on Dylan’s cake; he can hear Adam’s voice, feel the weight of his stare. He remembers their first hug, tight and warm, Adam’s eyes shining with excitement as he talked to Dylan, his smile, wide and genuine, when Kris complimented his singing.

Kris had asked him how he wasn’t a rock star already with that voice, because he’d been pretty sure that it wasn’t just him being completely infatuated with Adam; everyone had seemed shocked when Adam opened his mouth and started singing. Kris would have felt self-conscious about his own voice in comparison if he hadn’t been so swept up by the harmony of the two of them singing together—Adam picking up his cues without effort, face-splitting grins on both their faces by the end of the song.

Adam had waved that away. “No one’s gonna take a chance on some guy they can’t cram back into a closet.”

Kris had felt like getting up and running all the way to L.A. to beat up everyone who had ever rejected Adam. It must have shown in his face too, because Adam had put a hand on his arm and given him the most brilliant smile . . .

“Um. Dad.”

Kris’ head whips up to find Dylan standing in the doorway in his coat. “Yeah?” he says, shaking away the scene in his mind.

“Can I go to Matthew’s?”

Kris tries a smile. “Sure.”

Dylan hesitates, shuffling his feet. “Are you okay?” He tugs the sleeve of his sweater down nervously.

“Yeah. I’m fine,” Kris says. “Take a scarf. It’s cold.”

“Okay.”

He hears the door slam shut. Dylan and Daniel; those two will never learn how to pull a door closed like a civilized human being. Kris sighs and tells himself to get up and get started on dinner. Life doesn’t stop just to let you mourn. He knows that from previous experience.

“Hellooo?” Daniel calls from the door. Kris doesn’t bother getting his hands out of the sink. With the smell drifting out of the kitchen, it’ll be the first place Daniel looks, anyway.

And right on cue, he hears soft footsteps approaching. Socked feet don’t make much sound on wooden floors, but Daniel is too big for stealth. He stops a couple steps behind Kris, waiting; Kris doesn’t turn around to acknowledge him.

He pours out the mostly brown dishwater to get a look at the bottom of the pan, then starts scrubbing the corners, the now-mangled pad of steel wool he’s using biting into his fingers.

Daniel puts a hand on his wrist. “Dude. I think it’s dead.”

Kris drops the pad and lets his muscles relax; they protest his treatment of them quite loudly.

“What’s wrong?” Daniel asks.

Kris shakes his head. “I burned the spinach.”

“Yeah. I see that.” He takes a step to stand next to Kris, hand still on Kris’ arm, and leans forward a little to see his face.

Kris looks away.

“Dylan was worried,” Daniel says.

Kris scoffs, rolling his eyes.

“He said your eyes were red.”

Now that’s just embarrassing.

“And they are. So are you going to tell me what’s wrong?”

Kris clenches his jaw and says, “No.”

After a long pause, “Okay,” Daniel says. Then his hand climbs onto Kris’ shoulder, and he pulls Kris closer to his side.

Kris doesn’t snuggle in or rest his head on Daniel’s shoulder, but he doesn’t push him away either. He just stands there and lets Daniel hold him up for a while.

Stuart is a nice guy. His wardrobe could definitely use updating, but ever since he met Kris, Adam has been finding the whole backwater chic look kind of adorable, so he just smiles fondly at Stuart’s outdated fashion choices and tells him it’s okay to be plaid.

“Thank you. I think,” Stuart says.

Adam pats his arm.

It’s Saturday night. He knows, because that’s why he had decided to drink in the first place. He’s leaving for Japan in three days, and screw his friends and their parties; Adam doesn’t want to dance. He wants to sit at a bar and drink until he can drink no more.

Unless he falls off his stool. That’s looking more and more likely with every shot. Stuart caught him once, but that doesn’t mean his reflexes will be that sharp every time.

Adam doesn’t want to break his face. He wants the Japanese people to think he’s beautiful.

“Couches,” he tells Stuart.

“What about them?”

“They should have bar couches instead of bar stools. It’s really hard to stay on stools when you’re drunk.”

Stuart smirks. “I think maybe that’s the point. They don’t want you passing out here.”

Oh, that makes sense. Adam salutes Stuart with his glass. “You’re really smart.”

Stuart laughs.

He has a nice laugh. It’s honest and unpretentious—just like Kris’. But the similarities stop there. Stuart is tall, and built, and blond, and he has a bit of a beard. Good-looking, if you like that kind of thing.

“Are you married, Stuart?”

Stuart looks like the kind of guy who would be married. But then again, so does Kris.

“This is a gay bar,” Stuart tells him. “I’m gay.”

He doesn’t really look all that gay.

“The plaid throws me off every time,” Adam admits. “I have a friend who’s plaid.”

“You mean gay.”

“I mean both. He is both plaid and gay.” He pours himself another shot. The bartender left him the bottle. He’s nice. Everyone’s so nice in this bar. “And he’s cute, too.”

“The bartender, or your friend?”

Adam shakes his head. He’s losing track of the conversation again. “Kris,” he says. “My friend.”

Stuart doesn’t respond. Adam doesn’t really need him to. “The thing with Kris is that maybe he’s not gay. Maybe it was an expe—an ex—a phase. Or maybe—maybe he doesn’t want L.A.”

He isn’t explaining this very well, he can tell, even though he’s making sure to speak really, really clearly. He’s leaving things out. “I thought he wanted L.A.,” he clarifies for Stuart. “I thought he wanted us to be a family. With Dylan.”

“And Dylan is . . .?”

“Dylan likes whales,” Adam tells him. “And sharks. And octop—octopuses.” He sniffles a little and wipes his nose on his sleeve. “I’m going to miss him so much.”

Stuart leans closer, like he can’t hear Adam. “Do you want me to call someone for you?”

“Yes!” Adam says. He wants Stuart to call Kris, so they can ask him. Because maybe—maybe Kris doesn’t need L.A. or Adam. Adam had had lists—a lot of lists—and plans—but Kris hadn’t been interested in that at all. Kris had been mad and yelled about everything he’d be giving up, and it kind of hurts, kind of a lot, because Adam had thought they’d be concentrating more on everything they’d both be getting.

But Kris doesn’t want what Adam has to offer. Maybe Kris just needs Daniel to set him up with a nice girl. He should tell Kris that. Adam could be happy if Kris was happy. Maybe. Maybe if he was in Japan. Far, far away.

Stuart pries Adam’s fingers open and takes his phone. Adam lets him. Stuart is really strong, so even if he was going to steal it and run away, Adam wouldn’t be able to do anything about it anyway. And then there’s the stool. It would take him a long time to get down off the stool.

But Stuart doesn’t run. He just looks through Adam’s contacts. “Chris Alderman?” he asks.

“No. It’s Kris with a K,” Adam informs him. Who the hell is Chris Alderman anyway?

“Oh, okay, here,” Stuart says and puts the phone to his ear. Adam feels sleepy suddenly and decides to rest his head on the bar-top. It’s cool and nice. A little sticky though.

They wait, but Kris doesn’t pick up. Or Stuart could be pretending to call for all Adam knows, but that would be really shitty of him, and he doesn’t look like a shitty guy. After a while, Stuart gives up and says, “No answer.”

“No, no,” Adam tells him. “He did answer. He said no. That was the answer.”

“Yeah, all right,” Stuart agrees easily. He’s not like Kris at all then. Kris doesn’t agree with Adam. Or he doesn’t believe Adam. In either case, he’s not with Adam, and that’s very sad. “Recents,” Stuart mumbles. “Neil? Danielle?”

“I know them.” Adam nods. It’s a small world.

“Good.”

Stuart puts the phone to his ear again.

Lucille gives birth on Monday at noon. Adam is walking to Cassidy’s—recovered from his hangover, glad to take a break from last-minute packing in order to say goodbye to his friends, and window-shopping on the way—when Neil calls.

“I thought these things were supposed to happen at night!” Adam says, torn between going in to try on the charcoal shirt and running straight to the hospital.

“That’s because you’re an idiot,” Neil tells him anxiously.

Adam hangs up on him. It would serve Neil right if he tried on the shirt first.

He expects the room to be filled with people when he gets to the hospital; he had figured that it would be crowded with Lucille’s friends and family. He’d sort of planned to just linger in the doorway.

But there’s no one else there. Lucille is sleeping, and Neil is standing over a cradle-thing. He looks up from the pink lacy monstrosity when Adam enters.

“Where is everyone?” Adam asks.

Neil nods towards Lucille. “She didn’t want me to call anyone before she had a chance to get herself together.”

But I still called you, goes unspoken. There was a time when Neil and Adam hadn’t been able to get along at all. Adam doesn’t know what’s changed since then. Have they actually grown up? That sounds so unlike them.

Neil smiles at him—a wide, bright, happy smile. He doesn’t look like a bratty baby brother. He looks like a new dad.

Don’t be stupid, Adam reminds himself. He can be both. After all, if anyone can do it . . .

Neil is leaning over the cradle again. “Come here,” he says to Adam, his face obscured by frills.”Meet my girl.”

Adam steps closer and looks.

The baby’s dressed in simple white cotton and covered with a soft-looking homemade blanket that has a smiling animal of some sort on it. Possibly a very fat giraffe, or maybe a yellow elephant . . . with an unusually long neck. Neil pulls it down to reveal the baby; small and pink—and looking around blinking.

“Oh,” Adam says, surprised. “She’s awake.”

“Yeah.” Neil’s smile turns into a grin. “She’s been keeping me company.”

Adam almost tells Neil to stop when he reaches down to pick the baby up. But that would be stupid. Neil’s a father now. He’s supposed to learn how to pick up babies and hold them and change them—and do all kinds of stuff Adam can’t even imagine right now. He already looks like an old pro anyway, holding the baby with both hands and easily maneuvering to place her comfortably at the crook of his arm.

The baby yawns at Adam.

“This is Elizabeth,” Neil informs Adam. Then to the baby he says, “And this is your Uncle Adam.”

“Oh, no,” Adam protests. “No one’s calling me uncle.”

Neil smirks. “We shall see.”

Elizabeth makes a fussy noise, not really crying but sort of mewing, and Neil rocks her until she quiets down, mumbling to her about not waking up the Wicked Witch of the West.

“I think she’s gonna go with mommy,” Adam comments.

“Like I said,” Neil says. “We shall see.”

Elizabeth is a pretty calm baby. Adam stands there watching Neil walk around the room with her for a long time, and she doesn’t cry once.

“She’s pretty well-behaved,” Neil says. “Not that I trust this to last. She does have a set of pipes.”

“Genetics.”

Neil laughs softly. “I guess.” He stops pacing in front of Adam. “You wanna hold her?”

Adam’s immediate reaction is to take a step back, which Neil finds hilarious. “She won’t bite.”

Adam is not that sure.

“Oh, come on,” Neil insists, holding her up. “If you think I’m not gonna make you babysit—”

He stops, probably seeing the look on Adam’s face—but actually, Adam’s pretty much done with self-pity, at least for this afternoon. Neil had freaked out and bitched and freaked the hell out for months at the prospect of this baby, but now that she’s actually here, he’s doing . . . great. Really great. Adam wants to match that kind of self-possession with some of his own.

“Okay,” he says, “hold on a sec.” He takes off his leather jacket—that can’t possibly feel good to a baby—drops it in a chair and makes a cradle with his arms. Neil carefully places her in them.

She’s very light.

Her eyes are closed, and her face is puffy, but she has pink, round cheeks that make her look impossibly cute, and the way she keeps smacking her lips makes Adam smile despite his fears.

Adam has never held a baby this small before. She’s soft and so fragile. If he dropped her now, or held a bit too tight . . .

“Are you scared?” he asks Neil.

“Shitless.”

I think it comes with being a parent. You’re supposed to be scared.

Adam nods without looking up. “But you’ll be okay,” he says. It’s not a question. Adam knows it will be okay. He can see it in the way Neil’s shoulders are squared, and the way he holds himself, tall and strong.

He doesn’t want to be thinking about Kris and Dylan now—it’s pointless and painful—but he can’t help but picture Kris in this same position, in Neil’s place, looking at Dylan’s tiny baby face for the first time. Kris and Katy had chosen Dylan over music and . . . everything else they’d wanted for themselves; but they’d still had plans. Plans for Kris to make it big, and plans Adam doesn’t even know about, probably, for the three of them and the life they could have.

I wasn’t a single parent when I made those plans.

Adam knows, not just theoretically but from secondhand glimpses into Kris’ life, that there’s a lot of hard work and sacrifice that goes into being a parent. It’s what had had Neil so freaked out, aside from the huge responsibility of having some tiny person’s life in his charge. He thinks of Kris saying, exhausted, I have to make time. He thinks of Kris turning down his offer, not just once but twice, before they even knew each other. I have a kid to take care of and a restaurant to run, and not screwing either of those up is a daily miracle for me, so I really can’t jump into something like this.

You wouldn’t like being a parent anyway, Kris says in his ear, and Adam feels like the biggest ass in the world. Although it isn’t exactly his fault; he’s used to relationships that are about two people, not three. Still, he should have known better, considering all his lists.

He’d been asking Kris to take a chance on him, but he’d also thought that he was giving Kris a chance, and then he’d seen Kris reject it—reject him—and he hadn’t really been listening.

Lucille’s voice startles him out of his thoughts. “Give me back my baby, Lambert.” She sounds tired and groggy.

Neil rolls his eyes, but there’s still a half-smile dancing on his lips.

“And introductions, please,” she continues, sitting up. “This must be the good-looking brother.”

Adam likes her already.

Kris’ Thursday night set at the restaurant isn’t exactly a show; there’s a stage and everything, but it doesn’t feel like he’s performing. Papa Joe’s is like a second home to him. Right now, his son is sitting at the corner booth with Sam and Josh, eating his dinner—making a mess of his face, hands, and clothes—and the faces around them are all familiar. He has regulars who show up every week just to catch his set. It’s not all that different from singing in his own backyard.

Which is why he makes the stupid mistake of just going with the flow and singing the first song that pops into his head. If he had planned a set list in advance, he never would have found himself singing this song.

If I could turn back time

I’ll go wherever you will go

By the time he gets to the end, his voice is growing hoarse, and he kind of wants to hug his guitar close to his chest and cry. He bites the inside of his cheek to keep from embarrassing himself, and looks blindly out at the audience, keeping his face averted from the corner booth. This is definitely going to be his last song tonight. He had meant to do two more, but he’s really not in the mood anymore. He mumbles a thank you into the microphone and starts tinkering with the equipment before the applause even has a chance to die down.

It hits him at the oddest moments: Adam is in Japan. He is literally half a world away. If Kris were going to go wherever he will go, he should have done it when Adam was still in L.A. There’s no use being conflicted about it now.

Tucking his guitar pick in his jeans pocket, he places his guitar in its case.

Except that he is. Except that ‘conflicted’ doesn’t even begin to cover it. He’s been packing and unpacking his suitcase every night this week.

It’s under his bed, where Dylan won’t see, but it’s not like Kris will be able to hide it if he decides to actually do something about it. He has two open tickets to L.A. with their names on them, and if he ever manages to make up his mind, he’s going to have to explain it to Dylan somehow—without telling him about Adam; making this about the two of them instead, as it should be.

Which is going to be hard, considering the fact that it is about Adam. It’s about the three of them. About whether it’s crazy and irresponsible to hope that there could be a ‘three of them,’ whether it really is impossible, or just . . . overwhelming and terrifying to trust Adam with that much.

Except, if he tells that to Dylan, he’ll be fielding questions about why Adam isn’t even there, and Kris has no idea how to answer those.

He probably isn’t going to do it anyway, so none of that really matters. That’s why he didn’t get tickets for a specific date. He doesn’t want to decide, not really. This is just so he can pretend that he’s not a coward. He’s probably going to hang onto those tickets until he feels better about panicking, lashing out, not even trying to find common ground with Adam—until the whole thing fades a little; until he’s feeling a little less bruised—and then he’s going to forget about them. He’ll find them one day years down the road, maybe, and this whole thing will just be a memory.

He’s a mess. His thoughts and feelings are tangled in his chest, and they’re not letting him breathe. There’s no way anyone else can understand what’s going through his mind right now, let alone a nine-year-old kid.

Stepping off the stage, he goes straight to the bar and asks Christa for a beer.

“Hey, Kris,” says the girl in the seat next to him.

“Hi,” Kris replies automatically. She looks familiar, but he can’t quite place her face. That happens to him a lot at the restaurant.

“It’s Josie,” the redhead tells him, looking amused. “You can never remember my name.”

“Uh.” Now Kris remembers her. Sort of. Maybe. “Sorry about that.”

“It’s okay.” She has a sweet smile. “You don’t really know me that well.”

Kris just nods. Tonight he’s a bit too brittle—can’t find the will to care about being polite to almost-strangers. Civil is going to have to do.

“I came to listen to you sing tonight. You were great.”

She’s drinking a cocktail and playing with the umbrella in it, Kris notices. It makes him want to laugh, for some strange reason.

“Thank you.”

“I . . . actually.” She looks around nervously, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. “I wanted to ask you out,” she says, shocking Kris. She’s sitting up, back straight, biting her lip. It’s obvious that she doesn’t do this every day.

“Oh.” That’s all Kris has, really. At this point, it’s either that or uncontrollable laughter.

“I just figured,” she says, facing straight ahead but sneaking a sideways glance at him, “that if you couldn’t even remember my name, then you were obviously never going to ask me out, so . . .” She shrugs.

Kris takes a swig from his beer and stares at her. She’s pretty. He would say she’s too young for him, but then Charles would probably smack his head. She can’t be any younger than twenty-five. What would be the harm in taking her out to dinner just once? He could talk to her about something other than Dylan, or the restaurant, or Daniel’s new girlfriend, and they could spend a fun evening together. It doesn’t have to be anything deep or meaningful. Maybe he could even kiss her goodnight when he drives her home, and that could be fun, too.

The only problem with that plan is the way his hands are wrapped around the beer bottle, white-knuckled, at just the thought of it. Josie notices it as well. She looks down, letting a curtain of her hair hide her face, and then back up at Kris with a small smile lifting the corners of her mouth.

“You were singing about someone,” she says. “I could tell.”

Kris nods grudgingly.

She sighs. “Can’t blame a girl for trying.” She downs the rest of her drink in one go. She seems less nervous now, almost relieved. “Buy me a beer at least,” she says, holding up her empty glass to signal Christa.

Kris does.

“All right then,” she says once she’s swallowed a good quarter of her beer. “Tell me about her. Why are you heartbroken? Is she an idiot? Blind, perhaps?” She gasps. “Is she married?”

Kris chuckles. She’s not all that shy after all. He might have liked taking her out, in another life.

“It’s a him,” he tells her, surprising himself. He hadn’t even considered telling people, but now he feels as if the whole thing will never have existed if he doesn’t. That’s something he can’t allow to happen.

Josie’s jaw drops and she stares at him, unblinking, for a long time. When she finally shakes it off, she says, “Wow.”

“Surprise?” Kris offers, inexplicably nervous about her reaction. He doesn’t remember it being this weird with Daniel and Charles. Surely, this should be easier.

Josie blinks at him.

Kris takes a big gulp of his beer and looks at anywhere but her.

“Is it weird that this makes me feel better?” Josie asks him, and when he turns to face her, she seems contemplative.

Kris lets out a relieved chuckle. She’s not freaking out.

“I don’t even know,” he says.

It’s almost 6:00 PM on Saturday, and Kris is going to be late if he doesn’t leave in half an hour. Dylan has been hiding in his room, sulking, because Kris told him that he has to come along with him to Papa Joe’s tonight and can’t go over to Samantha’s to watch Planet Earth. Dylan has been there four nights this week already; Sam and Josh deserve a little privacy once in a while.

Kris is about to give in, though. He heated up the pasta to get Dylan fed before he leaves; now he’s just debating how to handle the situation. Letting Dylan win with sulking is never a good idea, no matter how low on patience Kris is. Somehow, he has to make it look like it was his own idea all along.

He stands there with the warm plate in his hand and waits for it to come to him, to have a parental eureka moment; but he’s definitely not at his best these days, and soon his brain starts to hurt from thinking. It’s just not going to work this time. He can’t win every fight. “Dylan! Come down here!”

He places the plate on the table and thinks maybe he should try turning it into a deal. They still have some leftover eggplant casserole his mother sent the other day—that Dylan refused to touch. If he can make Dylan think he’ll only get to go if he eats a bit of that . . .

And that’s when the doorbell rings. Kris walks to the door to open it, mind still busy fine-tuning the casserole plan, thinking vaguely that it’s probably Daniel. He hears Dylan coming down the stairs behind him like a herd of rhinos, and then—and then the door is open, and Adam is standing there, and Kris can’t think anything anymore.

Adam is wearing casual clothes, by his standards—faded jeans, white shirt, no glitter or sequins to be seen, though he still looks surreal standing there on Kris’ porch, against the backdrop of Samantha’s failed herb garden. He’s wearing a bunch of necklaces that peek through his undone buttons, and his eyes are lined perfectly in black. He stands still, staring straight at Kris, as if he’s just a photograph instead of the real thing.

“You’re not in Japan,” Kris says, too shocked to be anything but inane.

“Yes.” Adam nods. “I’m in Arkansas.”

“Dad. Who is it?” Dylan calls from inside, jolting Kris out of his daze. He opens his mouth to answer, but he’s interrupted by a squeal of joy. Dylan rushes past him and face-plants into Adam’s stomach, babbling incessantly, his words muffled against Adam’s shirt. But it’s not like Kris can make sense of anything right now anyway. He sees the way Adam crouches down to hug Dylan, the way they smile at each other, wider than should be humanly possible; he notices the way Adam buries his nose in Dylan’s hair, like Kris always does whenever they spend any time apart, and—none of it makes any sense to him.

“Can I . . . come in?” Adam asks, and even though Kris wants to ask why, “Sure,” he finds himself saying instead.

Dylan leads Adam into the kitchen by the hand. Kris shuts the door and follows them.

Dylan is talking nonstop. He’s eating and talking and making a mess of the table while he’s at it, but that’s a good thing right now, because Kris can’t open his mouth. His jaw is clamped shut. He can’t look away from Adam, either, which makes things all the more awkward.

Adam, who is predictably not hungry, is sitting in the chair across from Kris and talking to Dylan about . . . something. He looks uneasy, maybe even a little bit nervous, sneaking glances at Kris, but never looking him in the eye for longer than a second. His smile is slightly manic as he talks to Dylan; he sounds disproportionately excited about . . . dolphins? But Dylan doesn’t notice anything out of the ordinary—probably because he’s always disproportionately excited about dolphins himself.

Dylan finishes his pasta and carries his plate to the sink, and there’s an inevitable lull in the conversation. Adam looks at Kris imploringly, we have to talk written all over his face, and yes, okay, they probably do. That doesn’t mean Kris wants to.

“You can go over to Samantha’s,” Kris hears himself tell Dylan.

Dylan jumps up, arms flailing, and runs a victory lap around the table. But then he stops short at the kitchen door and turns to Adam, eyes worried. “Are you staying?”

Adam licks his lips and looks to Kris—as if Kris knows what the hell is going through his mind. Kris doesn’t nod or shake his head, but his face seems to give Adam the clue he’s looking for, because he says to Dylan, “Yeah. I’ll be around.”

With a final yay, Dylan runs out of the house and slams the door behind him.

Kris and Adam stare at each other in silence.

It’s not that Kris doesn’t want to break the extremely uncomfortable silence in the kitchen; it’s just that he literally can’t. He’s confused about what Adam is doing there, and he’s scared to say the wrong thing if he opens his mouth, so he fists his hands in his lap and waits for Adam to do something.

Finally, after about a million years, Adam clears his throat.

“I canceled the Japan thing.”

He waits for Kris to respond. Kris would, if he felt capable of saying anything other than uh?, but he doesn’t, so he keeps quiet.

“I wanted to—I thought . . .” He looks down, and then pulls a bunch of crumpled pages out of his bag. “I found a couple of places nearby . . .” The pages in his hand are print-outs from a real estate website. Kris notices that Adam has circled some parts with a green pen. “I can write from anywhere. I’d have to fly back and forth every couple of weeks, but that’s not a big deal.” He pushes a wayward strand of hair off his face.

Kris’ lips are parted, ready to shape words Kris isn’t sure he can handle saying out loud right now. He licks his parched lips and closes his mouth, gritting his teeth so he won’t make a sound without realizing. Adam isn’t done, anyway. He says, slowly, with emphasis, “I didn’t mean to be so pushy—before. It was stupid of me. I just got carried away.” He chuckles softly, though Kris has no idea at what; and he leans forward, elbows resting on the table. “If L.A. isn’t right for you and Dylan right now, then it isn’t right. I was making that about me, and I’m sorry. The thing is, I don’t really care all that much about where we are. That’s all just—secondary. I want to be with you, so . . . if you’re here, then I’m here.”

Kris wants to say yes. All his instincts are screaming for him to, and he’s pretty sure that his tongue would cooperate with him long enough to get that one tiny word out—but there wasn’t a yes or no question in there.

Kris decides to wait until there is one. He doesn’t want to get this wrong.

“Maybe,” Adam says, staring absently over Kris’ shoulder and into the living room, “we can move when Dylan’s older. Los Angeles isn’t going anywhere.”

He’s almost smiling at the empty space, but whatever he sees in Kris’ eyes when he glances at him turns his tone from contemplative to slightly panicked.

“You were right. I never wanted to be a parent.”

Oh, Kris thinks.

He blinks, tries to look away, but then just nods at Adam a little jerkily when that doesn’t work. This total disclosure thing kind of sucks. Throwing words out just to hurt Adam’s feelings is one thing, but having them turned back on him so calmly . . . is a whole different matter. Adam keeps going, though, eyes wide and intense.

“So, yeah, Dylan just came out of nowhere for me. But Kris—now I can’t imagine not being a part of his life. As a parent, or as . . . as something. I want to talk to him about school, and watch documentaries with him, and I want—I want to meet Alfie.” His voice turns softer, more hesitant. “And I want to be with you. You know how I . . .”

He exhales loudly and flexes his fingers like his hands are cramped. Then he says a little weakly, “Kris. Say something.”

Kris opens his mouth, and wow . . . it feels like his lungs have disappeared. “I have . . .” he starts, but can’t finish the sentence. “I got these tickets . . .” It almost hurts to rip the words out. Kris squeezes his eyes shut, and then decides to just show Adam instead of telling him. He jumps up from his seat and heads upstairs—only to notice halfway there that Adam isn’t following him. When he goes back to the kitchen, he finds Adam sitting right where Kris left him, looking lost and a little scared.

“Come with me,” he says, trying on a nervous smile.

Adam’s mouth falls open in surprise, but no sound comes out. He stares down at the half-packed suitcase Kris has dragged out from under the bed, and then blinks at the pair of tickets in his hand.

“What . . .”

Kris thinks it’s all pretty self-explanatory, actually. He sits down on the unmade bed and tucks his hands under his thighs to keep them still.

Adam tries again. “I was supposed to be in Japan.”

Kris nods—a little shakily. “I wanted to . . .” He has to swallow loudly before he can continue. No matter how difficult it is to talk right now, he desperately wants Adam to understand that most of what Kris said to him before was bullshit. Kris knows it sounded like he didn’t care enough to try, that he didn’t trust Adam, and—that hadn’t been it at all. “I thought I could maybe see if I could do it on my own. So when you came back—I would be sure, and I wouldn’t put any pressure on you.”

Adam lets go of the tickets; Kris watches them sail down to the carpet. Then Adam takes a step closer, and then another, and another . . . until he’s towering over Kris and they’re close enough to touch.

“I don’t want you to do it on your own.”

Kris wants to smile, but it doesn’t quite work. Adam’s hand reaches down to cup his cheek, traveling back into his hair to grip it tightly, and Kris sighs, indescribably grateful that Adam isn’t being careful and gentle right now, because honestly, Kris doesn’t think he could handle that. He lets Adam tilt his head back, and the hungry gleam in Adam’s eyes makes his breath catch in his throat. Adam leans down, slowly, giving Kris enough time to turn away if he wants to, but Kris could never do that. He rises up instead, hands sliding over Adam’s shoulders, and presses their lips together.

It’s clumsy and awkward, with Adam bending down and Kris pulling himself up, but their lips fit together as if they’re magnetized, and Adam’s mouth tastes of things Kris had thought he had given up.

Kris has gone years without kissing in the past, so he has no idea how he could have missed this so much in just a matter of weeks—so much that now it’s making him feel high and dizzy. Intoxicated.

“Kris,” Adam whispers in between kisses that are quickly turning frantic. He presses a knee on the bed, and his arms snake around Kris to pull him up higher, closer. Kris tries to stand up, get some leverage, but Adam makes a protesting sound in his throat, and he’s pretty much immovable anyway, so Kris gives up on the idea. Instead, he grips Adam’s shirt collar with one hand and holds onto the back of his neck with the other, half-hovering over the bed.

Letting Adam take some of his weight comes surprisingly easily.

They kiss, hurried and unable to get enough, their lips doing a completely uncoordinated dance. Kris notices tiny, random things, like how his shirt smells of his mom’s eggplant casserole and the way Adam’s necklaces make jingling sounds with his every move; and surely, he shouldn’t be focusing on details at a moment like this, he should be flying, swept off his feet, but the details make it real, and Kris wouldn’t have it any other way. Seeing Adam’s eyeliner smudged at one corner, he grins into the kiss, so wide that his cheeks hurt from it.

Adam presses kisses to Kris’ bottom lip, and the side of his mouth, and his jaw; and he hums, his childish delight clashing with the possessive hold he has on Kris—but also making Kris giddy, because it’s such an Adam thing to do.

“Adam,” Kris tries to say, but the word gets smeared between their lips. Feeling his feet slip from under him, “Adam,” he pulls back to warn. “Adam. We’re gonna fall.”

Adam grins at him—a joyous, crazy, beautiful grin—as if he’s never heard a better idea, and with a smirk, he lets them fall.

  

Epilogue

9 Months Later, Los Angeles

Kris unlocks the door and steps inside the wonderfully cool apartment. He’s so exhausted, his legs are refusing to carry him anymore, and the sticky hot weather, though nice for weekend beach trips, has not been helping with the exhaustion. He expects the place to be quiet, pictures himself sneaking into bed with Adam—an Adam who’s warm under cool sheets and soft and shirtless—but there’s a light on in the bedroom, and he can hear Dylan giggling.

He sighs. Adam is having trouble grasping the concept of school night.

He kicks off his shoes, leans his guitar against the wall, and makes a detour to the kitchen to grab a glass of water. Dylan and Adam seem busy when he makes it to the bedroom, and they don’t notice him right away, so he stands in the doorway for a moment, taking in the scene. They’re both in their pajamas, and Dylan is wearing a black top hat that’s way too large for him. He giggles every time it slips down to cover his eyes and pushes it back up to help Adam . . . fold t-shirts?

“What are you guys doing?”

Adam grins up at him, surprised and delighted, but he’s alone in that reaction; the look on Dylan’s face clearly says busted.

“Look!” Adam says, holding out a green t-shirt to him.

Kris looks and promptly wishes he hadn’t. “More dinosaur shirts?” He can’t keep the whine out of his voice. It had taken them forever to convince Dylan to get rid of his old dinosaur t-shirt. It’d had a huge rip all along the right side that Dylan was insistent could be fixed—with a stapler or something; they’d had to do an intervention. Thankfully, Adam is still Dylan’s hero, and he’d somehow managed to convince Dylan to give his dinosaur a proper burial before it completely fell apart.

“New dinosaur shirts!” Adam says, gesturing to a whole tower of them on the bed.

“Cass’dy made them for me!” Dylan says, sitting up excitedly, but then pulling his hat down to hide under it when Kris glares.

“You’re supposed to be asleep.”

Dylan flails. “I have my eyes closed!”

Kris turns his glare to Adam, but Adam just gives him a huge grin. “Don’t be mean. It’s early.”

“No, it’s not.” Kris takes Dylan’s hat off to reveal a pouting face, and pulls him up to send him to bed. “Come on, off you go.”

Dylan grumbles.

“Hey!” Adam protests as Dylan leaves. “Give me a hug first!”

Dylan sulks over to him, but Kris notices that he grudgingly smiles when Adam whispers something in his ear. He makes a beeline for Kris on his way out and gives him a hug, too. He didn’t use to do that—the good night hugging is all Adam—but Kris is not complaining.

“Good night,” he says, dropping a kiss in Dylan’s hair.

“G’night,” Dylan mumbles and shuffles off to his room.

“Why so grumpy?” Adam asks, kicking the t-shirts off the bed. They land on the floor in a messy pile. Kris wonders why he bothered folding them in the first place.

“Tired,” Kris mumbles. He takes off his belt mechanically and drops his jeans, focusing on not tripping as he steps out of them. His t-shirt doesn’t smell too bad. He decides that he can sleep in that and his boxers.

He flops down on his stomach next to Adam, who’s lying stretched out with his hands reaching up towards the headboard. Adam rolls onto his side to look at him. “Awww,” he drawls. “Let me make it better.”

Kris giggles softly into the pillow. “You’re ridiculous.”

Adam pulls him closer until Kris’ face is tucked between his neck and the pillow, and runs his hands down Kris’ back.

Kris sighs. This actually does make it better. “What did you guys have for dinner?”

Spoken with minimal lip movement and against the pillow, the question has almost no vowels, but Adam understands him anyway.

“Orange sandwiches.”

Kris opens an eye he hadn’t realized he had closed. “What is that? Sounds disgusting.”

“Cheetos and cheddar,” Adam answers him. “Not that bad, actually. Better on whole wheat.”

“Very healthy.”

“I made him eat a cucumber with it?”

Kris snorts.

“Did you have dinner?” Adam asks, slipping his hand between them and pressing it to Kris’ stomach. Kris’ stomach answers the question for him. Adam makes a clucking sound with his tongue, and then, “Come on,” he prods Kris. “Let’s get you something to eat.”

Kris protests by moaning into Adam’s neck. “Tired.”

“Lazy,” Adam whispers in his ear, but pulls him closer.

Adam is warm, just as Kris knew he’d be, and he’s soft. “You’re so comfortable. I wanna sleep on you.”

“It’s all those Cheetos,” Adam comments. “Horrible for my waistline.”

Kris tightens his arm around said waistline. It feels pretty perfect to him. He snuggles closer and lets his hand travel down, sliding under Adam’s pajamas to his hipbone, and then further down. He runs his fingers along the top of Adam’s thigh.

Adam growls in his ear. “You really shouldn’t do that if you don’t want me getting ideas.”

Kris smiles. “Would those ideas require me to move?”

“Not necessarily.”

“That’s alright then.”

With another low growl, Adam leans in to kiss Kris, unhurried and wet and messy, the kind of kiss Kris knows leads to long and slow sex, but just as Adam’s hands start pulling at clothing, Kris’ stomach rumbles. Loudly.

Adam pulls back with an amused chuckle. “I’ll go get you something to eat.” He presses one last firm kiss against Kris’ lips and gets up. “Don’t fall asleep.”

Kris listens to him puttering in the kitchen, opening and closing the fridge door, and hopes he’ll be getting something—anything—other than an orange sandwich. A couple minutes later comes the soft snick of Dylan’s door opening, and then there’s a not-that-stealthy conversation. Adam tries to smother a laugh and fails; Dylan tries to be quiet as he opens the creaky left-side cabinet, but of course it doesn’t work.

Kris makes a note to talk to Adam about midnight snacks and how they should never ever involve anything from the left-side cabinet.

Then he makes another note to oil the hinges on that cabinet.

Then, between that thought and the next, he falls asleep.

The End

July 23rd, 2010