The next morning, it was my turn to hump down to the coffee shop and come back with the quad espressos, while Andrew rolled over in bed with the covers over his head until caffeination was available.

We’d picked a cheap motel in SoMa (well, as “cheap” as anything gets in SF) and the local coffee shop was just opening up for the day. I’d hoped for some funky joint with mismatched easy chairs, a resident cat, and a barista-selected soundtrack, but no go. This place was shiny, the bar chrome-plated, the light fixtures simple but clearly expensive, and it was already full of phone-absorbed techies in line for their ornate concoctions. The funky joint I’d hoped for had probably been here, once, until it was priced out of the neighborhood.

There was one couple – that is to say, two people who were not only together in number but in presence. They were two cute young guys whose hands roamed lightly and idly over each other’s backs, then brushed each other’s hands with a series of finger wiggles, like some kind of secret sign language. And then, breaking my heart, one of them leaned over and kissed the other on the cheek.

And you just knew they were in that golden moment – deep enough into the relationship that they were in sync, in harmony, but not long enough into it to take any of this happiness for granted. Not enough time put in for the adorable little thing you do to become that fucking irritating thing you do.

I wanted it so badly, what they had. I wanted it to be Andrew’s kiss on my cheek, I wanted… all the fucking questions answered, all the obstacles overcome, all the difficulties solved, between us. I wanted to just teleport through time to a place where that was us.

You want it to be easy, the voice in my head said. I couldn’t argue with it.

It’s kind of ironic. All day in my job, I touch people. I take their hands and I press their chests and I lift their bodies. And yet for all that, I was so hungry to be touched, to feel a man’s warm firm body up against mine, his hands on me, and not even for the sex – just so that I could confirm that I was still real, that someone could see me, that I was still there, that the hands of others wouldn’t just pass through me like I was a ghost.

When I got back to the room, Andrew took his coffee wordlessly, but there was nothing new about that. I never did get any conversation out of him until at least two shots of espresso had been absorbed into his system.

But what really relieved me about that morning was that it wasn’t awkward. We took turns in the bathroom and got dressed and packed up and checked out, and it felt the same as it did the day before, leaving Sea Ranch, and the day before that, breaking down our camp.

Just like those mornings, we worked together on all that was required, as if we were on the van, really – as if we’d just set “all that” from last night aside to get on the road, to get shit done, to do the job at hand. That was a place we were both familiar with, comfortable with, where we had a checklist to perform, a job to do, a role in the play.

I know that both of us were thinking about Andrew’s story about Derek, how nothing had changed after that night, the first time the two of them made out over the prostrate body of their worshipper. And yet something had, of course, something that had brought them closer together. They hadn’t declared their undying love for each other but, for Andrew, his real love for Derek had been born then and there.

And what was that compared to what we’d done, all the exchanges of secrets, hurts, desires, fears?

Nothing had changed between us.

Everything had changed.

“Fuck,” Andrew said, as we literally inched down 101. The car ahead of us would move, and Andrew would take his foot off the brake, and then just as suddenly that car would stop and so would we before he could ever touch the gas. We were near Gilroy, the Garlic Town, and Google Maps told me there was a major accident a few miles ahead.

I tapped at my phone. “We can get off at the next exit, take Highway 25 inland. Google says the drive is normally about 20 minutes longer than 101, so if this accident is a real cluster, it would actually be a lot faster.”

“Roger that,” Andrew said, forcing his way out of the fast lane and into the exit lane, with all the aggression required in our line of work.

The landscape was pretty bleak, and soon enough, we were passing through the town of Hollister. Bored, I Googled it on the phone, and found a Dave Eggers article in The New Yorker about the town.

I filled Andrew in. “So the town of Hollister has absolutely nothing to do with that Abercrombie and Fitch brand. They made up some dude named Hollister, gave him one of those ‘the most interesting man in the world’ stories, about him being some rich kid, no offense, who summered in Maine and went to Yale, refused to go into the family business and sailed to the Dutch East Indies. Rubber plantation, native wife, sailing the South Pacific on his schooner, what the fuck is that?”

“Any sailing ship with two or more masts. And I’m precluding the shit you’re about to give me because I know the answer to that,” he said with a wink, “and acknowledging that I’m also some rich prick who summered in Maine. Though actually it was Martha’s Vineyard.”

“Ohh, excuse me,” I laughed. “Anyway. A life of adventure, collecting native art, settled in LA and sold bric a brac from the South Pacific, I guess that’s how they tie in the whole clothing thing. And the imaginary son of course became an exceptional and legendary surfer…”

“Are there any other kinds in stories like that.”

“Not that I’ve ever heard. Soon the surf shop became a ‘globally recognized brand.’ La la la all of it lies. Oh here we go, here’s the best part. ‘The Hollister story is one of “passion, youth and love of the sea,” evoking “the harmony of romance, beauty, adventure.”’ According to the company propaganda.”

“Why do I get the feeling that J. Peterman wrote that?”

“Elaine,” I said in my best Mr. Peterman impression, “I’m sorry to hear that you don’t see the beauty in that inspirational story of true adventure.” I dropped the accent. “Actually, says here that the town is more famous for biker conventions, gangs, heroin and meth.”

“Great. I’ll drive faster.”

* * *

I don’t know why I picked it for “Crazy Idea Number Two,” but it just seemed perfect, instantly, when I saw a dilapidated old house just off the highway outside of town. It looked like the Psycho mansion, some bizarre old New England haunted house transplanted into sunny California. It had that single round window in the tower, like the Eye of Sauron, watching you, and a rickety porch sticking out like a monstrously hungry mouth.

“Turn here,” I said.

Automatically, Andrew obeyed, and only after that did he look at our destination and say, “What the fuck?”

It was not only uninhabited but uninhabitable. When we pulled up in front of it, sure enough, the one bit of bright color on its gray exterior was the neon orange CONDEMNED sticker pasted on the front door.

Andrew turned off the engine. Looked at me. He knew what I was thinking. He laughed.

“Do you have cell service here?”

I checked the bars on my phone. “No, do you?”

“No. If you break a leg in there, I’ll have to haul your ass out.”

“And vice versa.”

He looked at the house, a wild look on his face.

“Let’s fuckin’ do it.”

* * *

We felt our way across the porch with our feet. It wasn’t the first door that we’d broken down, or the first “abandoned” building we’d entered in our line of work, and it was certainly one of the easiest. The door crumbled more than it opened, its hinges flying free of the rotting wood at the first shove.

We had flashlights, which we’d packed for the camping part of the trip, but Andrew said I was a fucking pussy if I needed a flashlight in a haunted house, and that was that.

It was dark inside, of course, but it was more the smell that got me feeling creeped out. It wasn’t the scent of a sealed up building, because all the windows had long ago been smashed out by kids hurling rocks. But it had that musty air, like when you open a box of old books, or shake out an old rug. Not a place for anyone with asthma, for sure, but as long as I couldn’t smell a dead body, it was all okay with me.

“You wanna bet ‘Mother’ is sitting in a rocker upstairs?”

“You wanna find out?”

I grabbed the banister on the staircase and gave it a shake. It felt solid enough. I took a few careful steps up, then nodded at Andrew to follow me.

Halfway up, there was a creak that was more than a crack, and Andrew turned to me and we exchanged that “o fuck” look.

Then we fell through the rotten wood with a crash.

We didn’t fall through the ground floor, but mercifully landed in the “Harry Potter” cabinet beneath the stairs. It wasn’t the longest fall, but it was enough for my tailbone to shriek in protest. The collapse had taken me straight down, and then like a domino, Andrew had fallen forward on top of me.

There was a second or two of nothing, of complete silence, and for one terrifying instant I wondered if Andrew had died. I could feel broken, splintered wood digging into my back.

I stayed completely still for a moment until I could feel Andrew’s chest rising and falling, sucking in dirty air.

“Andrew,” I said.

Andrew gave a deep, low cough. “Scene safe,” he said, and I cracked up.

“Oh hell no it’s not,” I said, as the laughter made my ribs ache.

Andrew laughed too. “Fuck, that hurts.”

And yet, what I felt most was… Andrew’s body on top of mine, covering mine, chest to chest, his face against my neck, his hot breath tickling the hairs on the nape of my neck. His heat, his strong heartbeat, his scent, carrying just the slightest whiff of some floral Aveda soap left over from Sea Ranch, mixed with the tang of the “driver sweat” on his back. The contact, the touch, that I’d longed for that morning in the coffee shop, had been given to me, my wish fulfilled with the usual unkind genie’s twist.

At first, it was just shock that kept us down, analyzing our bodies for damage. But not for long.

And then. Then we just lay there, Andrew on top of me, not moving, just… resting. Fate had quite literally thrown us together, no effort on our part required, resistance futile.

And we both liked it, needed it. Just our bodies finally together, and neither of us ready to get up and leave this feeling behind. The warmth, the comfort, the solitude, the quiet.

“What’s your name, sir?” I teased him.

“I forget.”

“What day is it?”

“My back says a pretty lousy one.”

That broke the mood. “What’s wrong?”

“I think I pulled something. Or tore something.” He shifted, rolled off me. It hurt, letting him do it, losing his heat, the comfort I’d taken from the two of us, lying there injured together.

The door to the cabinet we’d fallen into was easy enough to open, since the handle pulled right out of the rotten wood. We moved slowly, carefully, Andrew crawling out first.

“That was a dumb idea,” I said.

He nodded. “That was the point, though. Crazy Thing Number Two accomplished.” He moved his arms and legs, flinching, then nodding. “Nothing broken. You?”

“My pride.”

“You’ll have to drive,” he said.

I nodded. “Okay. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

* * *

Susan’s house was just as I remembered it. Well, not exactly. With nobody to get on a ladder and keep up the paint and the shingles and the roof and, well, anything else, the place was starting to show its age.

It was a semi-rural location, a half mile off the main road with enough land around the house that you couldn’t hear or see any neighbors. Someone had chosen the site eighty years earlier for its water supply, and the house was surrounded by huge leafy trees, an oasis in the parched land around it. The trees were a Vermont fall in miniature, the reds and gold and yellows of the leaves in their last splendor for the year.

It was beautiful. It was home. Especially when I saw Susan standing on the porch, leaning on a cane, smiling, waving.

My whole body unclenched. I was so terrified that I’d see her in a wheelchair, that her MS had progressed quickly. Her long silver hair was pulled up into a lavish bun, which told me that today was a good day, that she’d had the energy and dexterity to fix herself up. Either that, or she’d gritted through the pain to make it look that way. That would be Susan all over.

Over this last year, it had been like pulling teeth on the phone to get an honest status report out of her.

“I’m fine, just fine, Nick. And how’s school going?” Or how’s your new job, or who’s this Andrew fellow you keep talking about, oh yeah, she really latched onto that one. She knew how to change the subject, to put me on the defensive to keep the conversation away from her health.

I knew that something in my voice had changed over my time working with Andrew, how I talked about him, and Susan was always the sharpest tool in the shed.

And when I tried to force her to tell me how she was doing, really, she’d take the nuclear option and start needling me about “this Andrew person who is starting to sound like more than a coworker to me.” And that was the end of that conversation.

“Well,” was the first thing out of her mouth when she saw Andrew moving slowly and awkwardly, “I’m glad I’m not the most fucked up person here today. What happened to you?”

Andrew’s astonishment at her wry tone and foul mouth lasted only a second before he laughed. “A ghost attacked me, in a haunted house.”

“Hmm. Ghosts. I imagine you see a few of those in your line of work.”

He turned to me as if to say, I did not expect this. Then, delighted, he went right back to parrying with her.

“Yeah, but we try to keep them in their bodies when we can.”

She laughed. “Come here, Nicholas.” She lifted her free arm, waiting for the hug I gave her eagerly. “So good to see you.”

“You too, I’m so sorry it’s been so long.”

“You’re a grownup. Grownups have jobs, and lives, and boyfriends.”

I opened my mouth to protest that Andrew wasn’t my boyfriend if that’s what she was trying to get at, but then I shut it.

Pulling a page from her book, I changed the subject. “We broke into an old abandoned house and fell through the stairs. Andrew got a little beat up, so we’d like to stay the night if…”

“What, you weren’t going to spend the night before that? Get your ass in here. Don’t tell me you broke into the old ‘Psycho house.’ You did, didn’t you. Well, anyway. I couldn’t make cookies but Helen did. From my recipe of course.”

“And I bet you stood there and supervised her every move.”

As she went inside, she looked over her shoulder and smiled at me. “Well, I sat there and supervised. You know me.”

“Yeah, I do,” I smiled. “Nobody else does anything to your satisfaction.”

I grabbed our stuff from the car and humped it inside, only letting Andrew take a light bag.

“Who’s Helen?” he asked me as we put our stuff in the foyer for now.

“She’s a neighbor. She helps Susan out.”

“Where do we put our bags?” I called out.

“Back bedroom,” she replied. “You’ll have to share. Everything upstairs is gone to hell since you left. Don’t even think about it,” she said just as I opened my mouth, reading my mind as always. “You two can share a room, it won’t kill you.”

I took the bags down the hall, without looking back at Andrew. I didn’t want him to see my face. I’d flashed back to days when I was a teenager here, to days when I brought a friend home from school to “study,” and what we’d ended up studying wasn’t taught in our abstinence-only sex ed class.

There was one bed in the guest room, to my dismay. A full size bed. Not as big as a queen, not as tiny as a twin. Room for two people. But with very little space between them. If any.

I heard Andrew come up behind me in the doorway. I turned and saw him looking at the bed, his face expressionless.

“Sorry,” I said. “Susan can’t get upstairs anymore, so she lives downstairs and Helen stays here some nights when her MS is really bad and…”

Andrew put a hand on my shoulder. “It’s okay. Relax.”

God, his touch.

“Okay. I’ll try.”

* * *

We drank some lemonade, made small talk. She was fine, just fine, and since today was obviously one of her good days, I didn’t press. It wouldn’t have done any good, anyway.

It didn’t take me long to get outside, to find the ladder and put it up against the wall and start retacking shingles, cleaning gutters, finding everything that my eye diagnosed was wrong that I could fix right now.

Andrew remained on the ground at my insistence, sitting in a lawn chair and nursing a beer to chase down his three Advil.

“I’ve got the good shit,” Susan had told him. “If you want it. I don’t take it myself unless it’s a Hellfire Day.”

“No, ma’am,” Andrew said. “I will take a page from you and gut it out.”

She looked at him for a moment. Making a final decision. Then smiled her biggest smile. “Atta boy.”

It felt good to be physical, to get shit done, to release my tension in pure effort. We’d done some crazy shit, sure, but most of the time had been spent driving, sitting, cramping. Up here on the roof, I could just let go of worry, about Andrew, about Susan, about what it all meant to me.

I broke at dinner time – around six, the daylight fading and the chill air moving in.

Susan smacked me when I tried to take the casserole from the oven. “I’m not a cripple yet, dearie.”

“Okay, okay.” I knew it hurt her to do it, I knew from the way she turned to remove it so that I couldn’t see her face. But she had her pride. And more than that, we both knew that if she stopped doing these things, if she started letting other people do this and that and the other, that soon enough she would be in the dreaded wheelchair.

“So,” Andrew said after we’d stuffed ourselves on tuna casserole. “I bet you have some funny stories from when Nick was a kid.”

“Oh yes. And you’ll never hear them. Well… Maybe some day,” she finished, winking at me.

I blushed, knowing she’d caught it, the… what? The “something” between me and Andrew, the thing that was more than friends but not something else, not yet. Her “some day” implying that she’d be a part of both our lives for a long time. Because we’d be a part of each other’s.

Andrew caught it. I dared to look at him. He laughed, and I had to laugh too.

Because it was still all so fucking weird, the way the map of our relationship had changed in days, like our itinerary, between the time we drew it and put it away, and now, when we opened it up to look at it again. Who the fuck put this valley there, this hill, this detour?

After more than a couple of Susan’s chocolate chip cookies for dessert, Andrew said he was tired and I knew he wasn’t lying. He’d been in pain all day, hiding it as well as Susan, but now the lines on his face said it for him.

“Go to bed,” Susan commanded. “Nick and I will clean up.”

At one point, when I saw her wincing as she dried the dishes, I put my hands on her shoulders and forcibly sat her down on a chair. “Sit. Supervise. Period.”

“You’re so forceful. Where did that come from?”

I laughed. “I know, right? Probably from work. From all the uncooperative patients.”

“Hmm.”

When I’d cleaned up to her satisfaction, we took our coffee out on the porch. It was just as quaint and homey as you could imagine. Yeah, right down to the porch swing. Which was where we sat, me doing the work to keep us gently rocking.

“What are you thinking?” she asked me. “I see the worry lines.”

“You got me. I’m worried about who’s going to rake all those leaves. And I was thinking about Matt. How he and I would spend those fall afternoons out here, raking leaves while we listened to a ball game on a tinny radio.”

I smiled. “How we’d make the biggest piles and I’d jump in them and ruin all our work. And he’d act like he was pissed, but I knew it was a lie. And then he’d jump in them too, and we’d ruin a whole day’s work.”

She smiled. “It would take the two of you a week to do what should have taken a day.”

“Yeah. I was so happy here, you know? I was scared for the first year, waiting for the axe to fall. For it to all be proved the lie I knew it had to be. Then I had those two great years. Probably the greatest I’ll ever have in my life.”

“That’s not true. There are great years ahead of you. And now, spill it.”

“Spill what?”

“Don’t bullshit me. You and Andrew.”

“Shit. You know, Susan, I honestly don’t know what to spill. We’re friends. We’re good friends. And over this road trip we’ve… Started to wonder what else we are, what else we might be. But it’s complicated. He’s moving to LA and…”

“Oh don’t. It’s always ‘complicated.’ When I met Matt, I was a waitress taking night classes at the community college. Just for myself, history classes or art classes. And he was teaching ‘World of Engineering’ 101 to kids who’d get their associates degree and probably be done with school then. And somehow, he and I would keep running into each other in the hall, or what passed for the cafeteria, or in the parking lot. But he was all butthurt that he was a teacher and I was a student, this can’t be, it’s against school policy, la la la. But I was an adult, not some kid, and I wasn’t his student, and I threatened to quit taking classes forever if he didn’t stop wringing his hands and go out with me. That fixed that.”

I laughed, then sobered. “Some part of me… Some part of me still can’t believe it, you know? That Andrew could want me. Look at him! He could have anyone. He’s gorgeous, brilliant…”

“You know what I think?” she said, looking at me with a sharp gaze and narrowed eyes. “I think maybe you’re just as afraid of succeeding as you are of failing. Of how much your life might change if you go for it with him, and get it.

“And how much you will change. How you’ll have to let go of all that shit you’ve been carrying around all these years, all this ‘oh I’m not good enough’ shit. Because you see Andrew and you know, he’s the best. And if he wants you, you’re the best, too. And then you have to live like you’re the best.”

I looked out into the night, at the glittering necklace of lights on the distant freeway. I had no answer to that, because the only real, good, true answer was the one I wasn’t ready to give.

* * *

I trembled, going down the hall to the guest bedroom. It felt like I was sixteen again, back in high school.

I remembered how my heart hammered the first day me and my friend Aaron fooled around, how scared I was – not of being gay, not of sex, but of being wrong, of misreading the cues, of thinking I was seeing something that wasn’t there. Years later I could see them, the cues and openings Aaron had scattered that afternoon, like candy on the road to the gingerbread house. And only when he lost patience and put my hand on his crotch did I believe it was really true.

Andrew was lying on the bed, still dressed. He turned when I came in, groggy.

“Sorry, I didn’t want to wake you up.”

“S’ok,” he said. “I’m really just drowsing.”

“I can take the couch if this is…”

He looked at me, his eyes coming into focus. “Shut up. Sit down.”

I sat on the edge of the bed, facing away from him as I took off my shoes. I lay down flat on my back, staring at the ceiling, stiff as a board for fear I’d smash the invisible barrier I’d erected along my half of the bed.

Andrew rolled over on his side, away from me. “My back aches. I need heat on it.”

I was on the cusp of getting up, getting a hot pack from the luggage, when I decided.

Fuck it.

If I’m wrong, I’m wrong, and this will be the end of it.

I rolled over on my side, too, and made myself into big spoon to Andrew’s little spoon. It was a little awkward, since he was several inches taller and more than a few pounds heavier, but I managed. My chest was up against his back and my arm was around him.

Go on, I thought. End it now. Get it over with.

Instead, he took my hand in his, and clasped it to his heart.

“Tell me a story,” he said. “Tell me one of the stories Susan wouldn’t tell me.”

I was safe. I’d crossed the bridge and it hadn’t collapsed under my weight. I could tell him anything now, trust him now, know that my feelings for him were accepted, returned.

And it started to tumble out of me.

“I remember when I got here. When Susan and Matt took me here from the group home. I still had that…numbness that your survival instinct draws over you like a blanket, the refusal to believe yet again that ‘this time would be different.’

“I told you about the Super Jesus Farm, right? Where they used me as slave labor? They made… we, the kids, made all kinds of jams and preserves to sell by the roadside. I had to stand out by the road in the sweltering heat and wave at passing cars to lure them in. The shade was reserved for the products, and if I came in at night burned red as a beet, wincing in pain, well, the farmer and his wife always had a Bible verse ready about trials and testing.

“Oh, and Lord forbid the accounts failed to tally by a few cents, because there was always another Bible verse to justify punishing me because The Wicked Borrows and Does Not Repay. As if even after they shook me down and rammed their hands in my pockets, I’d still managed to hide that missing nickel somewhere.

“And of course all the products had some fucking Bible verse on the label, to gull the gullible into thinking, oh what a sweet Christian family who lives on that farm and makes this jam, it must be Little House on the Motherfucking Prairie in there!”

Andrew laughed faintly.

“Okay, I just lied to you. I wasn’t numb when I was there. I was angry. As far as I could see, the whole system was there to exploit me, as free labor, or an extra digit on a check from the system. But numb is what you do when you have to hide your anger to survive.

“Of course Matt and Susan were nice when they picked me, because everyone is. I was thirteen years old, and on the cusp of either permanent residence in a group home, or getting selected by yet another exploitative foster home. Because I wasn’t that cute tow-headed little blond boy anymore. I was a sullen teenager with slumped shoulders and a defiant attitude.

“By then I’d learned that the more of an asshole I was to potential foster parents, the more likely it was that they couldn’t be bothered to haul me off into Biblical bondage and servitude.

“But Matt and Susan took me anyway, even after I knew damn well the bitch social worker had warned them that I had ‘behavioral issues.’ Because, you know, it was my fault that Farmer Jesus lost his foster kids, I was the one who ruined the happy fucking family by bursting into tears one day at the stand, begging a man with kind eyes and a car with federal government plates to help me.

“Matt and Susan were so good to me. They were so kind, their voices and their eyes and their physical presence with each other was so comfortable and real… And when you’re a kid… shit, maybe when you’re just human, but especially when you’re just hitting puberty and all those emotions and shit… Some part of me wanted to believe, you know, that fatal flaw that got me into so much trouble with Raz. That this was it, that I’d come home.

“But enough of the rest of me knew better, at least about foster parents, not to believe that part. Look where ‘faith’ had got me so far.

“And they knew it. Matt was an engineer, a hydrologist for the state, and Susan was a stay at home mom. She wanted to home school me, and all I could think was, crap, here we go again with the whole Jesus Rode Dinosaurs creationist textbook bullshit. But it was just the opposite. She taught me history, literature, science, art, music… No wonder I thought the world was ugly, because nobody had ever shown me how much beauty there was in it, out there, waiting for me.”

Andrew said nothing, but he squeezed my hand tighter.

“Ever had an abused dog? Remember how long it took for him not to flinch when you raised your hand, how long it took him to believe that the food in the bowl was really his? How long it took him before he’d put his head in your lap and let you scratch him behind the ears? That was me.

“Every night, we all sat down to dinner, no prayers, and Matt and Susan would have a lively conversation about politics, or sports, or entertainment, and for a long time, I’d just sit there and I’d listen. And bless their hearts, they never turned to me and made me talk, never asked me what I thought or didn’t I agree. They just let me be silent, till I was damn good and ready to talk.

“And I could eat as much as I wanted, that was the miracle. Okay, Susan limited my sugar intake but, protein? I ate like a fucking plow horse. I grew three inches the first year.

“I got on a soccer team. I made friends. I learned about the Twelve Caesars when the other kids were still on the first presidents. They took me to Disneyland. Disneyland! A year before that, I might as well have said my foster parents were gonna take me to the moon, and it would have been more likely.

“I don’t know how long it was before I was happy. It wasn’t a movie moment, you know? No sudden pivot point, no single moment where I realized that I was okay, and it would be okay.”

I slid my other arm through the gap between the pillow and Andrew’s neck, and he cradled his head on it, and he took that hand, too. I held him tight, so tight.

“Then when I was sixteen it all ended. Matt died, quickly, of cancer. Susan was diagnosed with MS. She hid it from the social workers as long as she could, but… Eventually, they found out. And they took me away, because she was no longer ‘competent’ to care for me.

“I told them, ‘I care for her!’ I shouted at the social worker. ‘Who’s gonna care for her if I’m not here!’ But you know, the system, the rules, all they ever say is, ‘I’ll lose my job if I bend a rule, so fuck you kid.’”

“The day they took me away, was the worst day of my life. Is that bad? That it was worse than the day my parents died?”

“No,” Andrew said softly. “The day my grandfather died, I wished with all my heart that it had been my father. I still do.”

“I guess the moral of the story is, I’m scared, Andrew. I’m scared to believe in… us, this, in what might be this, or whatever. I’m scared that if I get anything good, and I sink into it, that it’ll be taken away. Just because it was good, and I don’t get that. It’s not allowed.”

Andrew broke out of my embrace and turned over to face me, his eyes kind, moist. Yeah, he’d been crying as I told the story.

“It is allowed. We are allowed. It’s fucking messy and weird and strange and hard but… it’s gonna be. You and me. I decided. I figured out what you need,” he said with a wicked grin.

“What’s that?”

“A caveman. You need a guy to be the caveman. Because you won’t believe, can’t believe that someone really truly wants you unless he knocks you over the head with his club and drags you back to his cave. Then you believe.”

I laughed, hard. “Shit. It’s true.”

He stroked my face with the back of his hand, and I lit up like a string of lights around a Christmas tree, electricity running around and round my whole body.

“You know what I’m scared of?” Andrew asked.

“I would have said nothing.”

“Ha. I’m scared of the weight of it. The emotional weight of someone else’s love. The responsibility to be that person, the person that you see.”

“You are that person. I’m not wrong this time.”

He smiled. “Thank you. But do you know what I mean? That on the days I want to be someone else, someone…easier to be, I can’t. Because I have to be that guy. The one you love.”

“Let me tell you something,” I said. “My turn to be the caveman and knock you on the head with a couple of facts. You are that guy I see. You are always that guy. Andrew, I’ve already seen you pissed, and mean, and hurt, and sad, and tired. I saw all that in the fucking van, for chrissakes. You were so mean to me when I started work.”

He laughed. “I was a total fucking dick to you.”

“You were. And I was prepared. I knew it. And I knew I was ready for it, I was good enough, you’d see, I’d prove it, and when I did, you’d see it because you were good, you would stop being mean when you knew you didn’t have to be. So you see, it’s too late for you to pretend anything anyway.”

He laughed, and rolled onto his back, taking me with him, so I could bury my face in his chest, feel the heat of him, the firmness, the real factual truth of Andrew here, now, with me.

And then we slept.

“What are you doing!” I nearly shouted at Susan the next morning.

Some time around dawn, I’d woken up and detached myself from Andrew. The arm that I’d tucked between his head and the pillow to complete his encirclement was numb and stiff. We’d fallen asleep in that position and, amazingly, had stayed like that all night.

Just as I’d never take the van out without every cabinet fully stocked, I’d never go on the road, especially with Andrew, without a bag of freshly ground espresso coffee. So that even if we ended up somewhere there was nothing better than a shitty motel coffee maker, we could get wired up before getting dressed.

I took the bag of coffee out to the kitchen, to find Susan already up and whirling about, limping on her cane from one counter to another, cooking breakfast on the stove, and making sandwiches for the road on the counter, where a pot of coffee had just finished brewing.

“You’re going to wear yourself out,” I chided her. “You look like a pole dancer, twirling around the kitchen on your cane.”

She laughed, and then so did I, at the absurd image. “Where are your dollar bills, then, baby? You didn’t come in here without tip money, did you? What kind of establishment do you think this is?”

“You’re going to be a wreck later today.”

She nodded, agreeing placidly. “Later today, hell. About five minutes after you two leave. But goddamn it feels good to be my old self for a few hours. I took two Percocet from my special reserve, and I probably could pole dance right about now.”

“Just so you could do all this? Which you knew would piss me off?”

“Yes, and yes. Here.” She handed me a spatula. “Flip the pancakes. Is Andrew awake?”

“No. His spirit must be summoned from the other side with a cup of coffee right under his nose.”

“Well, it’s ready. And so’s breakfast, by the time he gets up.”

I took the coffee back to Andrew and did the necessary. He grumbled but instinctively reached for the coffee and took a sip. His eyes opened.

He looked at me and then, I could see, his memory flooded with a cascade of “oh right” realizations. Oh right, we’re at Susan’s house. Oh right, we slept together last night. Oh right, I’m in love with my best friend.

I laughed, reading his mind. “I know. Same here.”

He half grinned, half grimaced, as much as could be expected this early.

“Get on up, breakfast is ready.”

Andrew shambled into the kitchen in sweats and a raggedy t shirt, and Susan knew better than to give him any cheery greeting.

We ate in silence, and it was perfect. The sun was rising, the first light angling across the kitchen and reflecting off the yellow linoleum, a warm diffuse light like something from a painting.

The food was delicious and we both ate like cart horses. There was nothing that needed to be said, no questions to ask, other than a polite inquiry as to how Andrew’s back felt this morning, much better, thanks for asking.

Susan didn’t give me any meaningful looks or questioning looks about what happened last night. I think she somehow knew exactly how it had played out, just by looking at us.

We packed after that, and said our goodbyes. “Don’t be a stranger,” Susan said as she hugged me hard. I hugged her back hard, both of us knowing it would hurt later but fuck it.

“I won’t.” I wanted to say, because I’m moving to LA and I’ll be so close to you now. But I didn’t say it. It wasn’t true yet, it wasn’t settled, hell, it hadn’t even been discussed.

When she said goodbye to Andrew, I saw his face change, as she whispered something in his ear. Startled, then accepting, then amused.

I could have asked him later what she’d said, but I didn’t want to. It was for him, and him alone, or she wouldn’t have whispered it.

And I could pretty much guess what she’d said, from Andrew’s face. All the things I could never say about myself: Nick is good, Nick is fragile, Nick has an unlimited capacity for love, Nick has a bottomless well of hurt and pain. Any or all of these.

“We forgot something,” Andrew said from behind the wheel.

“Shit. What?” I asked, trying to think what we’d left at Susan’s house.

“We’re almost to LA, and we forgot to do the Third Crazy Thing.”

“Ah. Right. That’s probably okay, since Crazy Thing Number Two nearly killed us.”

Andrew shook his head. “No. Gotta do it.”

We’d taken 101 instead of the 5 – another hour’s drive but fuck it, we weren’t driving inland if we didn’t have to.

“There’s a place I have in mind,” he said idly, firing off my danger signals.

“Uh oh. I don’t like the sound of that.”

And I didn’t like the sight of it either, when he took an exit off 101 onto the 1, and then off that into some shitty little town whose name I didn’t catch from the exit signs I hadn’t been watching.

A few more turns and he pulled into the lot of a biker bar, where Harleys were lined up outside like something out of a movie. I should have been thinking Sons of Anarchy but I kept thinking Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure instead.

We walked in and it was just what you imagined. Dark, smelly, with nobody paying any attention to the state ban on indoor smoking. It wasn’t crowded this early, but you can imagine the kind of men hanging out in a dark bar at 11 am on a weekday.

The bartender waited for us to realize our mistake and leave, but Andrew pushed a 20 across the bar into the tip zone, the drainage mat where the drinks were poured. Then he pulled out another 20 and hey presto, two beers comin’ right up.

“Does it strike you as funny,” I had to ask, “how much this reminds me of Dark Bar?”

“Or most other sleazy gay bars I’ve known and loved,” Andrew agreed. “This is where the interior designers come for inspiration.”

“Do you think they walk around, taking photos, measurements?”

“Light meters, to match the exact shade of dimness?”

“Petri dishes, for floor scrapings?”

“Ph strips for the toilets?”

We laughed. We got a couple of scowls, one from a skinny dude playing pool. He was rat face ugly, too nasty to be appealing even in that dirty trade way. He was wearing a jean vest and a sleeveless t shirt, showing off the tats on his wiry arms. His hair was long and greasy, and his feeble adolescent attempt at a mustache should have been put to sleep.

“Faggots,” he croaked, just clearly enough for us to hear it over the metal music playing in the background.

“Yeah,” Andrew said, “just like Dark Bar. They think we’re a couple here, though.”

I wasn’t laughing, though. I realized who Skinny reminded me of. A bully in one of the group homes, not the one who cut me, but a different one. There were plenty of them, believe me.

And I guess it just hit me. Like a flashback or something, I just… lost it.

I thought about the years with Matt and Susan, I thought about the system that took me from her because I was “better off” in a fucking group home where I’d be constantly on the lookout, constantly in danger from the next homophobe, the next psychopath, than I would be in a house full of love. I thought about all the ugly fuckers I’d fought in those years.

I thought about how I’d taken up boxing as an outlet for my rage, but it turned out my rage was an endlessly renewable resource, that the outlet that drained off some of it only made room for more of it.

“Fuck him,” I said. And I put my hand on the back of Andrew’s neck, and drew him toward me. And I kissed him on the lips.

Hard. Passionate. Like we would fuck right then, right there. Because that was the only thing I could think of that would redirect all this raging energy out of my fists.

Andrew’s astonishment lasted all of a second, before he realized. I was baiting this fucker, defying him, and he loved it. It was me and him, just like him and Derek all those years ago, making out in bars just to fuck with people.

He kissed me back, as fiercely, his hand grabbing the back of my head, owning me, taking me.

And it was a game, a show for them, for all the assholes ever, but it was also the other dam breaking, the energy between us, the waiting, the hesitation, fucking over now.

My anger softened, Andrew’s lips on mine, at last, at last, starting to kill something dark in me like honey on a wound, like a morphine drip for shattered bones.

But it didn’t dissipate, not when Skinny Ugly stormed over to us, his dope-ravaged nostrils flaring.

“Get the fuck out of here, you fucking queers, before I beat the shit outta you!”

I stood up. I was taller than him, bigger, but he was like the little dog that doesn’t know it’s not a little dog. I looked around, seeing who would back him up, making eye contact with every other man in there.

They saw it in me then. In my eyes. Not some faggot making a scene to flaunt his gay pride, but one of them. A system kid who’d been here a thousand fucking times before, who knew how to read a room, before he started some shit, or finished it. Who checked every face to see who would pick sides, jump in, and who would just stand there and cheer, exhilarated at the release of energy, someone else’s violence an outlet for all their own frustrations.

It took seconds to see that Skinny Uugly was all alone in this.

“Go ahead, then,” I said, “take a swing.” I said it more for the security cameras than anything else, so that in the unlikely event of legal proceedings I could prove he started it.

I knew right away that I’d whip his ass. His swing was a roundhouse punch, a movie punch, too wide and predictable. I weaved, he missed.

Real fights are fast. Ninety percent of the time, someone gets hit and goes, fuck! That hurts! This isn’t like the movies at all, where they get clocked in the jaw and just wipe their mouths and come back for more! I think I have a concussion! I think I broke something!

This was fast, too. As I easily weaved out of his way, my fist came up and under, a gut punch that caught him as his motion carried his exposed center right to me.

There was no need to make a scene in here, no need to incite those who’d committed to neutrality for now. If I’d tried to beat the shit out of him, yeah, they would have stepped in, for fear of looking like cowards.

But the gut punch did it. He fell to the ground, and vomited, and groaned, and it was done.

“Let’s go,” I said to Andrew.

* * *

“You drive,” he said. “If you’re okay to…”

“I’m fine,” I said. And I was. In fact, I felt great. Like I’d exorcised something, there in the dark, and left it there in the dark when I walked back into the daylight. Like I’d put the black souls of all the bullies in my life into one wretchedly skinny body and punched them all at once.

“Good, because I’m not.” He was shivering a little. “Jesus Christ, Nick.”

“It’s fine.”

“You could have…disassembled that guy. Jesus.”

I was in a wild mood now, flooded with the reward chemicals that enabled primitive man to survive, that congratulated him every time he killed a mammoth, an enemy, a rival.

“How was it?” I asked him.

“It was so fast, I don’t…”

“No, asshole. The kiss.” I was emboldened, I was the conqueror, and I was ready to take my prize.

He laughed. “It was amazing. I never would have thought that you’d be so…”

“Forceful?”

“Yeah. You’re a real power bottom, huh?”

“That’s right. Fuck me hard or I’ll have your dick for breakfast.”

Andrew roared. “I stand on notice.”

We looked at each other and laughed. The Clash came on the radio, some university station playing “Brand New Cadillac,” fast and hard. I cranked the volume, and Andrew knew the words, and together we shouted along with the song, “Balls to you daddy, I ain’t never comin’ back!”

We’d crossed another bridge. We were almost home. Tonight, I knew now, we’d be there.