When Andrew pulled off Hollywood Boulevard and onto a side street, I thought that he might have a house in LA, as well. Only when he slid a key card into the reader over the door handle did I realize this wasn’t someone’s house.

“Where are we?” I asked, walking around the little cottage. It was a bit dissonant – the furniture and flat screen TV were new, but the fixtures in the bathroom and kitchen were pure 1940s, down to the refrigerator with the old-style handle you didn’t see anymore, where you had to pull to release the catch.

Then I saw the attractively arranged display of wine bottles and miniatures, next to the usual hotel assortment of Toblerones and whatnot.

“What hotel is th… Oh shit,” I cut myself off, seeing the little notepad next to the phone that said “Chateau Marmont.”

I found him in the bedroom, unpacking. “Andrew,” I said, “I can’t…”

He turned and put a finger to his lips. “Shh. This is on me, and I won’t hear another word.”

“This must cost…”

“A lot,” he grinned. “But what’s money for?”

I shook my head. “Okay.”

It was only when I was back in the living room did I realize there was only one bedroom.

One bed.

“How long have you been planning this?” I had to ask him.

“I made the call this morning,” he answered from the other room.

I was right, I thought with a sudden spike in my blood pressure. Tonight would be the night.

“And they had an open cottage, on a weekend night?”

“Ask me no questions, et cetera.” He came out of the room wearing only a luxurious white bathrobe, and he threw me one. “Get comfy. I’m going to order room service. What do you want?”

“Umm. I didn’t see a menu.”

Andrew laughed and put on a posh accent. “My good sir. At such an establishment as this, you order what you want, not what they offer.” Then he dropped it. “I know they make a truffle mac and cheese that’ll make you cum.”

“Make it two. I’m going to shower.”

* * *

We were both in our robes now, and there’d been nothing antique about the water pressure in the shower, fortunately.

Some part of me thought, if you’re going to fuck like bunnies tonight, don’t eat a bunch of rich food, but then we ate like wolves, a truffle burger each to go with the truffle mac and cheese. Almost as if we were stoking up on fuel for what was to come.

We went through two bottles of wine at dinner, and I knew why. The tension, the excitement, the nerves – I felt like a virgin again, and why wouldn’t I? This would be the first time I’d had sex with someone I loved, someone who loved me.

“I feel like a teenager,” I said as we sat on the couch, Andrew on my left, not touching but close, Sportscenter on the TV. We both had our feet on the coffee table, and the light from the TV flickered over Andrew’s bare legs.

He looked and me and laughed. “I know, right? When do I yawn and stretch and put my arm around your shoulder?”

I nudged his foot with mine. “We could start with a game of footsie.”

He returned the nudge, changed the angle to hook his toes into mine. “Or thumb wrestle with our big toes.”

“You have got some fucking ugly toes,” I said.

“Yeah, well, wait till you’ve squatted next to a patient on scene as long as I have, and see what it does to yours. You’ll have feet like a catcher’s.”

“No, I mean, like born ugly. Damn, for such a good looking man, Nature abandoned you at the ankles.”

“Fuck you. Look at those skinny calves of yours.” His foot stroked my shin, then traced a line along the side of my gastrocnemius muscle.

“They’re not skinny. They’re slim. And I bet I could outrun you now. You’ve got all that beef to push, what, two hundred pounds?”

He looked at me, his eyes starting to smolder. “Yeah, thereabouts.”

I moved my left leg away from his foot, and crossed my right so that foot could push his robe up, a few inches at a time, to reveal his quads.

“My, Grandma, what huge quads you have.”

Now he threw his arm around my shoulder, but he didn’t stop there. He put his hand on the back of my head and forced me towards his face, until it was only an inch apart from his.

“All the better to fuck you with, my dear,” he whispered in that gravelly voice that had made me nearly cum the first time I’d heard it.

And it was on.

I feinted towards his face, as if lunging to kiss it, startling him. But I drew back, a tease, before I made contact.

His eyes narrowed. His iron grip on the back of my head didn’t change. He opened his lips, and ever so slowly revealed his curling tongue, his mouth opening as he extended it towards me.

My pulse spiked. I could feel his breath, the heat of it, the rich truffle and wine scent of it. I closed my eyes, waiting for it, surrendering to it.

Then I felt it, just a swipe of the tip of his tongue across my lips.

“O fuck,” I whispered, my eyes flying open.

His face was intent, serious, as focused on mine as if I was a patient. His hand moved from the back of my head to my chin, and he pushed it up.

“Hold there,” he commanded. His fingers slipped to my throat, encircling it as if he would choke me.

He bit my chin, just barely, and I shivered. His stubbly cheeks brushed mine as he moved to an earlobe, and nibbled on that.

“Breathe,” he reminded me, and I needed the reminder because I’d stopped doing it, in shock.

His other hand slipped between the folds of my robe and grabbed my cock, achingly hard. I twitched under his touch, and felt those agile fingers slip down, past my balls to tease my perineum, stopping cruelly just before reaching my asshole.

I remembered I had hands, too, and pulled his robe open across his chest.

Finally, I was touching those heroic shoulders, that hot silk skin. I pushed the robe down off of them and pressed my hands like paddles against his chest, his pecs as hard as body armor.

He sighed weakly as I made circles around a nipple, and I grinned. I’d found the first of his g spots. I pinched it, just a little, and his eyes flew open.

“Ouch,” he said flatly, and the way he said it made me even harder. As if to say, oh you wanna go there, do you?

His hand came back to my balls, squeezed them, then slapped them lightly, making them bounce. I jumped from the pain, but it was just the right amount of pain, the adrenaline racing through my brain, then making a u-turn and picking up a carful of pleasure-loving neurotransmitters for the ride back.

I responded in kind, my own agile hands just grazing each of his nipples in a sideways swipe, letting the fingernails just slide across their tips like knives across butter.

“Oh shit. Fair’s fair, is that it?”

“You hurt me, I’ll hurt you.”

“Yeah. And I’m gonna hurt you so good.”

“You better.”

That was it. We were out of our robes in a flash, and Andrew was pushing, shoving me towards the bedroom, a hand on my shoulder like a cop maneuvering a prisoner.

Andrew turned me around before he threw me down on the bed, and before I could even bounce on it, he was on top of me, his hands pinning mine back, his crotch in my face, the tip of that absurdly huge cock over my mouth.

“You could make some money on that thing, you know,” I said, teasing him. “Get a mold cast and sell it as an amazing lifelike ten inch dildo.”

“Ballsy Silicone Supercock Mark II,” he agreed. “But there’s just one problem with that.”

“What’s that?”

His eyes met mine, no smile in them.

“Then someone else would have my cock in them. And nobody gets this cock but you.”

My eyes started to tear up. It was crazy, right? This big old dick in my face and the sweetest thing anyone ever said to me was that it was all mine.

“Then give it to me,” I commanded.

One corner of his mouth turned up devilishly.

“No returns,” he warned.

“No problem.”

I parted my lips, my teeth, opened my mouth, myself for him.

His hips twitched, and the head slid across my tongue, already trickling precum, the clean slick taste of a healthy man on a healthy diet. Then more of his dick followed, and I could feel it thickening from head to shaft, tapering out to a fat base.

It wasn’t my first time at the cock sucking rodeo, but yeah, eventually I gagged. The head reached the back of my mouth and touched my throat, and I could let some of it in, but then, fuck, there was so much of it, it was so fat in my mouth that my body panicked and I choked.

Andrew was out in a flash. “Easy there,” he said as if I was a nervous thoroughbred.

He grabbed me under the pits and pushed me up the bed, then pulled me till I was sitting up, my back against the headboard. He stood in front of me, feet straddling my hips. He squatted just a little, till the base of his dick was even with my mouth.

I turned and tilted my head, trying to create the perfect angle. Andrew was still soft, and I knew he was willing it, because that thing wasn’t getting down there if it was rock hard.

And I did relax, and took a big breath, and opened my throat. He pushed slowly, but I was ready now, and I teased his cock with my tongue, and he lost it and thrust.

I took him to the root, the whole of him inside me. I half-gagged a few times, and he moved to pull out, but my hands were free now, and I grabbed his ass cheeks to stop him. I took a breath, then pushed him forward, into me again.

That started to get Andrew hard, I knew, my insistent push. He got more aggressive now, knowing that I would stop him if it was too much. His hips moved faster, the thrusts of his cock knocking the back of my head into the headboard.

“Sorry,” he said, putting a pillow behind my head.

I yanked it away and threw it on the floor, my eyes looking up at him, a plea, a demand.

“Fuck yeah,” he growled, fully hard now. He put a hand behind my head to keep it in place, even though I would have welcomed the feel, the sound of my skull against the wood. But Andrew would be kind in his cruelty, he would hurt me but never hurt me.

I pulled my head free at last. “I need you inside me,” I gasped.

“You sure?”

“Am I sure? Are you fucking kidding? Ever since I saw that fucking monster in your apartment that morning I’ve been sure.”

He laughed, dropping beside me on the bed, the two of us propped against the headboard now. “They all say they want it, till they have it.” He started stroking it, letting me see its awesome majesty in its rock hard state.

I reached across and took over the job of jerking it, and he did the same for me. We looked at each other and smiled. We were both thinking of him and Derek, doing the same thing, only this was different. He’d been sure he knew what Derek was thinking, and he’d been wrong. With me, he was sure he knew what I was thinking, and he was right.

“You took it pretty good down your throat,” he admitted.

“You always were good at intubation,” I winked.

He burst out laughing. “If it took me as long to intubate a patient as it took me to get down your throat, he’d be dead.”

I stroked his cock slowly, taking two seconds from base to head. “Oh, that thing could raise the dead.”

He sighed, eyes closed. “I can’t use a condom.”

“I’m not surprised.”

“No, it’s not that they don’t make ‘em big enough, it’s just that…they make me soft. But I’ve been tested, before Carrie and after, you know because you never know, and…”

I stopped him. “Me, too. After Raz, trust me, I got tested for everything.”

He blinked. “And there hasn’t been anyone since then?”

“No. Once bitten et cetera.”

He was astonished. “So I’m… only the second guy you’ve ever been with?”

“Yes. Not counting my teenage fumblings with a friend.”

“Teenage fumblings, huh?”

“Yeah, you’re not the only one who helped a buddy out back in the day,” I said, moving my hand from his dick to his abs, stroking the chiseled channels with the back of my hand, letting the fine hairs there just barely tickle his skin.

“Ohhh fuckity fuck fuck,” he whispered, shivering.

“Did you pack lube?” I asked him.

“No…did you?”

“No. Why would I need, it, right, on a road trip with my best buddy?”

“Hmm. That right there sounds like a scenario where lube should be the first thing you’d pack.”

I hopped up and went to the bathroom. “This thousand dollar a bottle hand lotion should do the trick,” I said, squeezing out a sample onto my fingers and admiring its slick consistency. “Hope you can afford the extra charge on the bill.”

“The fifty cent chocolate bar gets billed for a grand. The thousand dollar lotion is free. Go figure.”

I stood in the bathroom doorway, watching Andrew stroke himself slowly, watching Andrew watch me, with a lust in his eyes that no man had ever shown for me – for me, not just a body, a face. I kept my eyes locked on his as I coated my fingers with lotion, still locked as I reached back and stuffed it into my asshole.

I saw his nostrils flare like a bull’s, his chest heaving as his heart rate accelerated. I didn’t tease him, or myself, any longer.

I straddled him, my ass over his hips, my hole just out of reach of his dick. He looked up at me in amazement.

“Fuck, you’re beautiful,” Andrew whispered. “Your fucking beautiful face…”

“Wait till you see how it looks when I’ve got your cock in my ass,” I said, reaching back and squirting lotion onto his dick, batting his hand away from it, taking ownership.

He tried to thrust his hips up, to get in there, but I denied him, moving forward, hovering over him.

I leaned down and whispered next to his ear. “Don’t. You’ll know, when it’s time.”

He knew what I meant.

I leaned back, finding his massive hardon, and I slid it up and down my crack, letting my ass cheeks jerk his dick, pressing it down flat onto his abs.

“Jesus…shit…fuck…” Andrew winced with the pleasure, the torture.

Finally I was ready. I let him pop up to full staff, and moved around until the head was just touching my hole.

“I am so fucking in love with you,” I said. And then I pushed back on him and took him inside me.

Yeah. I did that on purpose. I was scared to say it, so scared. And I knew that Andrew could say, later, if he wanted, that the look of astonishment on his face was because of how good it felt when my tight hole grabbed his cock. I was giving him a free pass, a “man pass,” to forget what I said and just feel good.

I kept sinking backwards onto it, taking more and more, opening up to him, relaxing my muscle. It still hurt like a motherfucker, but somehow I’d released a wave of endorphins when I used the L word, that let me take the pain.

I couldn’t take it all, though, not yet. My sphincter protested angrily about halfway down, as he thickened the closer I got to the root.

My eyes had been closed ever since I said it. I didn’t want to see his face if I’d troubled him, upset him, by saying what burst out of me.

“Nick.”

I opened my eyes. Andrew had his hands on my hips now, steadying me, helping me.

His eyes were new to me. Not angry Andrew, demanding Andrew, laughing Andrew. Someone else.

“I am so fucking in love with you, too.”

Then he pushed his hips up, hard, and I gasped. It fucking hurt, but I loved it. I wanted him to rip me open, I wanted him to make room inside me for all of himself, to tuck himself inside me where I’d never lose him.

My ass ground against his hip bones. I’d done it, taken all of it, it hurt deep inside me, its tip pressing its way into my guts. God I loved how much it hurt.

Then he knew it was time. He rolled me over without pulling out, pushed my legs back, hovered over my body on the bed like a ghost in a story, but no ghost, real, so real.

Then Andrew fucked me.

Long, smooth strokes at first, pulling almost… almost all the way out, that head just tickling my hole, my body instinctively trying to push it out, but he wouldn’t let it. Then, sometimes, a slow reentry, sometimes half way, sometimes all the way. Then, sometimes, a fast agonizing thrust, his whole body slamming against mine as I cried out.

As he worked harder, sweat dripped off the tip of his nose onto my face, and I stuck my tongue out and licked it up. That made him fucking crazy. He shook his head, sweat flying, and he wiped it off my face with his hand and stuck it in my mouth, and I licked his fingers clean with all the enthusiasm of a kid with a mixing bowl of cookie dough.

“Oh fuck I’m gonna come,” he hissed. “I don’t wanna pull out, man.”

I reached up and grabbed him by the chin, shocking him into stillness. My eyes bore into his.

“If you come in me, you own me. It’s like planting your flag. A part of you, inside me, forever. You sure you want to do that?”

In response, his eyes rolled up in his head and he fucking pounded me as hard as he could, shouting as he blew his load.

“Yes! Yes, fuck yes!” And I knew it wasn’t just fuck yeah feels good, but the answer to my question, yes I want to do that, yes I want to stay inside you, forever.

He collapsed on top of me when he couldn’t thrust one more time, when every drop of him was infused into me.

When he got his breath back, he began to move his body against mine. My own stiff cock was aching for release, already half juicing with the fluids he’d forced out of my prostate. His slick belly rubbed against my head and I groaned.

He rolled off, and lay next to me, his head turned towards me, his eyes on mine. He put his hand on my dick and slowly, tortuously stroked it. Like Derek, I thought, only I know Derek and his dick never got this, the languid sensuous treatment I was getting.

Andrew’s unblinking gaze met mine, and our eyes never left each other’s as he ran his hand up and down my shaft and I only closed mine when the tension was too much, and I blew all over myself, shooting so hard a gout landed on my chin.

Still stroking me, Andrew moved in, licked the cum off my chin, kissed me with it, both of us tasting me.

Finally I was drained, limp. I took his hand off me gently, shuddering one last time.

We didn’t say another word. I think we were both in shock, to be honest. Reeling from what we’d done, what we’d become, amazed that it had been…this. This fucking amazing thing that nobody had ever prepared me for, that nobody could ever describe to someone who hadn’t felt it. That we’d said it, and meant it, and sealed it. That the very best thing that could ever happen really had happened.

To say another word out loud might wake the other from this dream, it had to be a dream, didn’t it, life couldn’t be this wonderful, could it?

Maybe. Maybe not. But if it was a dream, let’s sleep, let’s sleep forever and keep dreaming it.

* * *

And the next morning we definitely slept in. It was Monday, and we had the day to fuck around. I woke up to find Andrew already awake, his arms around me, as if to make sure that I knew first thing that this was real, that there would be no “look at the time, gotta go,” no “I’ll call you.” That he was here and was still here and would still be here.

“Mmmm,” I half sighed. “Coffee.”

He chuckled, his abs twitching against my back. “Yes, master.” He untangled himself from me to pick up the bedside phone and order up room service.

“Breakfast, too?”

“Yeah…”

He ordered two pots of coffee, two quad espressos and enough food for four people – well, four people who hadn’t fucked three times the night before, sleeping and waking to the insistent nudges of a giant boner, demanding attention again and again, attention ever so willingly given. We made short work of oatmeal, eggs, pancakes, bacon, toast, sausage, and corn muffins.

When I came out of the shower, Andrew looked pensive, almost irritated.

“What?”

He shook it off. “Just talked to my mom. Told her I was in town.”

“Did you tell her why?”

“Yeah. She wants me to come to dinner tonight.”

“Okay, I can see a movie or…”

“No, no, no. You’re going with me.”

I arched an eyebrow. “Meeting the parents already, huh? Must be getting serious.”

He half smiled but didn’t laugh. “I need backup, dude. Me and my dad, at a dinner table… I need a literal wingman. It’s fucking combat.”

I nodded. I’d seen enough of that in my uglier foster homes. Dinner tables were the headfucker’s favorite place to work, everyone trapped in their presence for at least as long as it took to stuff down your food and “be excused” to anywhere else.

He looked at nowhere, his mind reliving old battles, preparing for the next.

I put my hand on his shoulder. “Hey. Zen.”

He laughed as I reminded him of how often he’d had to say that to me when I was still fresh and anxious on the van. Be here now, in this moment, deal with what’s right in front of you right now.

“Right.” He got up, shed his robe. “Let’s go walk on the beach. Put our feet in the ocean.” He grabbed me, pulled the sash of my robe and let it fall open. “After we fuck again.”

“No way. I’m so full of food. I can’t even.”

He put his hand on the back of my neck and of course I lost it. “I’ll be gentle.”

I put a hand on his chest, and squeezed his nipple. “I doubt that.”

Eventually, we did get dressed and headed to Venice Beach. We paid the exorbitant parking fee charged by the local lots, and headed for the water.

“Fuck, this is depressing,” I said as we walked along the storefronts. Homeless people, street rats, tourist trap junk shops, and tattoo parlors of dubious hygiene and skill level comprised the attractions. “Hollywood promised me that Venice Beach meant starlets on roller skates and sexy muscle dudes.”

“Yeah, I know. Hollywood sucks that way.”

We made a turn towards the ocean. It was late morning on a Monday, so there were few other people on the beach. We took off our shoes, stuffed our socks inside them, and tied them in a knot to sling around our necks.

The water rushing across our feet as we walked was cold, but bracing, and the sky was clear, the sun keeping at least that part of the Hollywood promise, the part with the forever sunny days.

Eventually we found a spot to sit, just out of the reach of the lapping waves. We threw down the towel Andrew had liberated from the hotel to keep the sand out of our asses.

He sighed. “It’s so disorderly, you know? Like we came into this through the side door. I’m not complaining, it’s just… weird.”

“Yeah.” I knew what he meant. All this, the way we were now, however that was. “Most couples meet as potential couples. They go through that front door, they look for someone to date, they know they’re going on a date, there are milestones along the way.”

“First base, second base.”

I laughed. “Yeah, we started on home plate. And they’ve got rules, they’ve got a template to follow. Who calls who after how long, who pays for what, who reveals their dark secret when, et cetera. But we became friends first, but not just friends but best friends.”

Andrew nodded, and took my hand. “Fucking blood brothers.”

I squeezed back. “Yeah. And then we fell in love and started fucking.”

He shook his head, grinning. “Right. So where’s the guide book for that, right? It’s like okay, we’re dating or whatever now? I guess? But we’re already way, way past all the ‘getting to know you’ shit. But at the same time we’re on step one again.”

“Yeah. And I don’t in any way think you’d ever be ‘another Raz.’”

“And you’re not ‘another Derek.’”

“Right. But…” I hesitated.

“I know, man. I know what you’re thinking.”

“Yeah. I’m afraid that we’re missing something. That we’re so hell bent on doing this thing, that we’re not seeing that forehead-slapping reason that of course this was going to end in tears, how could I not have seen it. The fucking thing you can’t see now, refuse to see now.”

We both knew the story. How the other person was good, and trustworthy, but... Two good people can end up in a shitty toxic relationship, if there are things they’ve blinded themselves to going in.

“And I’ll be honest,” Andrew said. “I don’t think we could even try this thing in a long distance relationship. You know what, fuck UCLA. I can apply to a medical school back home, I can…”

I smacked him half seriously on the back of the head. “The fuck you can. And lose another year, waiting for another round of applications and interviews?”

“Would you want to move to LA? I mean just uproot yourself and…”

“You’d be here. Susan is just down the road. I could get an EMT job here, even if it’s just fucking transport or something.”

“And you could live with me to save money…”

I cut him off. “No way. No fucking way do we start a relationship by moving in together.”

“Oh, right. Yeah. Probably a better idea to do the phases, right, first you leave a toothbrush at my place, then your underwear, and so on.”

“Right. So we don’t move in together, then realize we would kill each other after it’s too late to change our minds.”

“Like that call we went on. We could have a Toilet Seat Incident in days not years.”

I laughed. “Exactly.”

He was talking about a call we’d gone on, a domestic violence incident. After coming home from a party thrown by their loved ones, to celebrate their forty years of wedded bliss, a sixty-five year old woman had hit her husband in the head with a golf club, cracking his skull.

When the cops arrived and asked her why, she shrugged and said, “Same as it’s been every night for forty fucking years, he left the toilet seat up again.” And she’d endured it for thirty nine years, three hundred and sixty four days, chewing on it every one of those days, until that night, when she decided that forty years of it was enough.

Andrew shook his head. “What are we even talking about this for? I haven’t even had my interview yet, and not only are we planning the wedding, we’re planning our first argument.”

“Well, I don’t golf, so we don’t have to worry about that one.”

He laughed. “Yeah, but I bet you could choke me out with your stethoscope.”

“Don’t test me on that.”

* * *

Andrew was jittery as fuck as we got ready for dinner. He seemed to debate forever whether or not to wear a tie, putting it on, taking it off, back and forth.

We’d stopped that afternoon at some high fashion men’s boutique on Rodeo Drive. “We need something to wear to dinner. Shorts and t’s won’t cut it, I’m afraid.”

“Armor for battle, eh? What about your interview suit?”

“That’s ‘nice but not too nice.’ You can’t go into a med school interview looking like a rich prick.”

“But you have to prick it up for your family?”

“If I want to preclude Dad’s first line of attack, yeah.”

It hurt, you know? To see the look on Andrew’s face when he said it. To see a man who had a father, all his life, but a father with whom he had to prepare for battle, even just for one meal. Who had to buy a high end suit just to avoid one cutting remark.

In the boutique, I started to sweat. I knew that if Andrew was wearing a suit, I’d need to wear one, too, and god knows I didn’t pack my Men’s Wearhouse special for this trip. The problem was… none of the clothing had price tags.

Which meant it was one of those “if you have to ask, you can’t afford it” kind of places. Where if you really must ask the salesman the price, then he quotes it so casually that you have no choice but to be just as cool about it, and nod your head as if to say, of course such a fine item costs that much, even though you want to shit your pants at the number of zeros.

A salesman greeted us, and I had to admire his technique, as a former retail worker myself. He was dressed in what he sold, and he was slim and elegant, dark hair slicked back but not “slick,” with the looks of a fashion model out of a magazine.

And yet, for all the difference between him and me, he had the same eyes I had when working the door. He’d sized us up as we walked in the door, two dudes wearing about $50 worth of clothes, $150 if you added in our Nikes.

But Andrew changed as we walked in, changed into…that guy. The scion of privilege, the one Born To The Purple. Nothing he said, nothing he did, just the way he carried himself. His “hey” to the salesman was as casual as could be, but you could just feel it, the money. Like, well, armor. It was just… obvious he belonged in places like this. Something you have to be born into, I think.

And so we instantly passed the test; we weren’t two yokels come to town to gawk at the fair. Well, I was.

As I wandered, admiring the clothes, I saw Andrew whisper something in the salesman’s ear, and he got a discreet nod in return. The minute I stopped in front of one suit for more than thirty seconds, feeling the soft wool fabric of a jacket, another guy, just as handsome and understated, materialized at an appropriate distance from me.

“The third one back, I think that would be your size.”

“Oh,” I said, like a kid caught shoplifting candy. “I’m just looking.”

He smiled, a flash of kindness in it, and an invisible wink, a message for me – I came here from nowhere and erased all tracks of who I used to be, on the outside, but on the inside, I’m like you. Don’t sweat.

I know that sounds crazy, but, I knew just from his smile that I could relax with him. Like I said, we know our own kind.

Later, I realized that of course a shop like this would hire all types of people, their approaches as tailored to the kind of money (new, old, arrogant, insecure) that came in the door as the clothes were to their bodies.

“If you’re already in the showroom, you might as well enjoy the test drive. I’m James, and I’ll go get the keys.”

I laughed. “Yeah. Okay. Let’s play dress up.”

We went and had a coffee while they did the little alterations necessary to perfect the fits. There wasn’t a cash register, or anything as vulgar as that. All the calculations were done offstage, in the back somewhere, and Andrew must have palmed off his Amex Black Card or whatever when I wasn’t looking.

“Now we need to go to TJ Maxx so I can get something,” I winked.

“You just did.”

I blinked. “Andrew. I can’t afford a pair of socks in there, and thanks, sugar daddy, but I really don’t want you to…”

He cut me off. “Dude. It’s not a sugar daddy thing. I need you looking good, too.”

“As part of the game.”

“Yeah.”

I looked at him. “Did it ever occur to you how that will look? Me the EMT in a suit I can’t afford?”

Andrew reddened, seeing his error, how the pawn he’d moved to protect one piece had made another one vulnerable.

Then he sighed. “Yeah, he’ll make something of that. But, thanks for reminding me. I’ll be ready for that.”

Jesus, I thought.

* * *

I couldn’t watch him play the tie game anymore. I took the third one he’d tried on out of his hand.

“You don’t want to wear a tie, do you?”

“No. Whenever I put one on, I feel like I’m being hanged by the neck until dead. Especially right now.”

“Then don’t. Be comfortable.” I shook my head. “Is your dad really that bad?”

Andrew sighed. “Well, he’s my dad. I don’t mean you can’t understand it, but…”

I waved it away, no foul, go on. We stood there, in front of the mirror, Andrew’s reflection looking at mine. He was dressed in his new finery, and I was still in my shorts and t, postponing the discomfort of a suit and dress shoes as long as I could.

“The dads you had, your birth dad, and Matt, they were good to you. The foster ones who tried to control you, or use you, they didn’t have anything over you. I mean, they had physical power, but… they didn’t have the fucking hold on you that a father has. You can’t even imagine what someone can do to your head when they have twenty years to do it. All the things he ever said to me, all the land mines he buried.”

“What do you mean, land mines?”

“Just… shit he said when I was a kid, idle things that I never thought about until they exploded in my head years later, when I was just… walking around and boom, I figured them out.

“I remember him driving me back to school once, after Christmas break. I was maybe twelve years old. He was hardly saying anything unless he was on speakerphone with some colleague. Then all of a sudden, out of nowhere he says, ‘I never wanted any of this. The white picket fence, all that.’ And I was just a kid, I loved my dad, worshipped him, and I nodded sympathetically.

“Only years later did I realize what he meant. ‘I didn’t want a kid, a family, I don’t want to be spending a whole day driving you back to the school I put you in so you’re not underfoot.’”

“Maybe that’s not what he…”

Andrew cut me off. “No, I know. If it had just been that, just once. But he’d do other shit. I remember once, I said I wanted to play the piano. And he said, ‘Well, I’ll get you one of those toy pianos like the kid in Peanuts, and if you don’t flake off on that like you do on everything else, we’ll see.’ Or I’d say, you know, some kid thing like, I wanna be an astronaut when I grow up. And he’d say, ‘Well, you’ll have to be in excellent physical shape, and you’ll have to know a lot of math and science, be an upstanding straight arrow type citizen…’”

Andrew finally grinned. “That was when I was maybe ten. By that time I was already growing my hair long, turning into a dirty little skate rat, and had already smoked my first joint. It’s only later that you realize he wasn’t preparing you for something hard, he was discouraging you from tyring. Telling you, you can’t do that.”

I was speechless. All I could do was take his hand.

He squeezed mine in return. “The funniest one… well, the most telling one. I was a big reader, I mean, not assigned reading but what I wanted to read. Did you ever read Watership Down?”

“Yeah, oh yeah.”

“So the guy who wrote that wrote this other book, Shardik. About a bear, this civilization that worshipped it, all that. It was a huge book, at least for a little kid. And I got lost in it, you know? All I wanted to do was come home from school and read that book. Instead of, you know, doing homework.

“Then the school called and told my parents that I wasn’t keeping up with said homework. I mean, they didn’t fuck around in Admin, one week of deviation from the Golden Path is like the end of the line in that world, you’re off the Harvard track and headed for Skid Row if you miss one assignment.

“So my dad’s reaction was to take the book away from me. And, you know, in retrospect I sort of get that. But he didn’t have to just take it away, you know?”

The hurt was creeping around the edges now, and Andrew squeezed my hand tighter. “He could have demanded to see that I’d done my homework, and then I could have had the book back for the night, right?”

Then the cold anger was back. “But no. That would have required that he spend his time and his attention on me. That he spend ten whole minutes a day looking at my homework. Which, now that I think of it, he never did, not once. He never said to me, ‘you wanna be an astronaut, kiddo, that’s great, let’s go to the space museum,’ because that would have cost him his precious time. It was just so much easier to tell me I couldn’t do it, that I shouldn’t do anything that would inconvenience him. In fact, it was right after that incident with Shardik that they sent me away to boarding school.”

“And your mom?”

“She was fucking busy. I mean, he left her to do all of it. Yeah we had servants, but she had to manage the finances, the social calendar, deal with the school, everything. And she had to do all that society shit, you know, be on the board of this and that, the kind of woman where, when everyone else has their big corporate job title next to their name on the board list, her job title was ‘community leader.’ Having money doesn’t mean having time. So, she had no time or energy for anything other than a crisis.”

I thought back, as well as I could, to my own parents, my birth parents. So much had happened since then, so many families, so many memories I wanted to bury and never unearth again, and in burying those I’d buried what little I could remember of my parents, too.

Would my dad have done that to me, given time? Would we have fought, hated, remained stuck in battle forever because we were family?

Matt had been like the dad in Calvin and Hobbes, the dad everybody wants, kind and smart and totally tuned into his weird smart kid, the dad almost nobody really has. If he had lived, if he’d been there to take care of Susan, where would I be now? Attending some weird little college somewhere, probably, a junior or a senior, maybe, with a boyfriend, probably already with an ex boyfriend, or two. With eight years of enduring parental love behind me when I went out to face the world.

I turned Andrew away from the mirror to face me.

“Then fuck him.” I put my hand on his face. “I believe in you. I’ve seen you hold a grieving mother, a grieving son. I’ve seen you take a dumb kid fresh out of school and make him into the best damn EMT in the Pacific Northwest.”

I put my hands flat on his chest. “I have seen you literally raise the fucking dead, Andrew Hazard. So fuck that guy if he can’t see you, if he won’t see you. I see you.”

The tears rolled down Andrew’s cheeks, and he swiped with his hand to keep them from reaching his shirt.

“Now I’m going to hug you and fuck up the fine lines of your nice suit.”

He laughed, and he let me hold him, and I let him sob into my shoulder.

* * *

I drove the Jeep, not trusting Andrew to keep his attention on the road. We passed obscene, tasteless mansion after obscene, tasteless mansion as we drove into Bel Air. His old Jeep was a suspicious vehicle in this neighborhood at night – during the daytime, maybe we could be gardeners, but after dark, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we’d been pulled over.

At least the Hazard family domicile wasn’t as bad as some of the Eurotrash spectacles around it. It was a “Spanish Mission Lite” house, with the traditional red tile roof and plenty of arches. After a short uphill drive that artistically revealed the house as you ascended, there was a roundabout for parking in front.

There, a fountain out of Renaissance Rome spouted water two stories up, flagrantly defying the California drought rules. I was pretty sure that Doctor Hazard received a stiff fine from the state on a monthly basis, and paid it rather than shutting off the sign of conspicuous consumption that no doubt impressed his equally rich and wasteful colleagues.

Okay, enough poor kid bitterness, right? I really had to put that back in the box for the night.

It was Andrew’s mother who opened the door for us, rather than a servant. She looked like one of those Upper East Side society types, very thin and chic, with big starched hair. But unlike them, she didn’t have some pineapple blond dye job that clashed absurdly with the wrinkles on the face beneath it. Her hair was probably dyed that brilliant silver, but hey, it looked natural. In fact, she looked pretty damn good.

“Andrew,” she said, as she opened her arms to him, and I knew that at least he had a mother, if not a father.

“Mom,” Andrew murmured, hugging her tight. Then he let go and turned to me. “This is my friend, Nick Carpenter.”

“Hello, Nick,” she said, and I gently shook her bird-like hand. “It’s lovely to meet you.”

“You too, ma’am.”

“Oh god, don’t,” she laughed. “I’m Karen. It just kills me when young people call me ma’am.”

She escorted us into the.. I don’t know. Parlor? Salon? Whatever rich people call the room that’s not a living room but that would be if it had, you know, a couch and a TV in it.

“Drinks?” she asked, as a servant hovered in a doorway on the other side of the room.

“God yes,” Andrew blurted. She turned and looked at him with an expression that said, Don’t Start.

“I’ll have a Jack and Coke, Amanda, please,” he said to the servant. I saw him flash two fingers at his side, and she nodded, discreetly acknowledging his request to make it a double.

“Just a fizzy water for me,” I said. “Calistoga or Perrier. Or whatever you have is fine.”

We sat down in the expensive and uncomfortable chairs, some imitation French royalty stuff that made me wonder why rich people would want sitting down to be so painful.

She asked us with all the professionalism of a seasoned hostess about Seattle, about our trip, about Susan, never asking an awkward or intrusive question. She put me at my ease, though I could see Andrew was on edge, waiting for The Arrival.

And an Arrival it was, when Doctor Hazard entered the house. You could hear the slamming of the front door, the short commands barked to the butler, the huge flurry seen anywhere that people work for a man with a great sense of self importance.

Doctor Hazard was a big man. He matched his son’s height of six foot four, but he had a stockier build. “Meaty” was more appropriate than “fat,” like an old ex-football player. He had longish, thinning silver hair brushed up into a sprayed hairdo that looked like some Einstein-meets-symphony-conductor thing, the “great man” look. He was the sort of powerful man, physically and financially, who’d shove you out of the way at the airport gate when they announced first class boarding, and never look back to see who’d fallen and broken a hip.

His eyes were blue, but a cold blue, and the meatiness of his face compacted the flesh around them, concealing some of the color but none of the power.

“Andrew,” he rumbled like some patriarch of olden days.

Andrew stood up stiffly and shook his hand. “Dad.”

We all sat down just as the maid returned with drinks, the doctor’s usual already on the tray.

“So tomorrow’s the big day,” he said to Andrew.

“Yes. So it is.”

Andrew’s neutral statement hung in the air, sucking the life out of the conversation.

I jumped in, always the peacemaker. “We’ve been practicing the sample interview questions,” I said to Karen. “So that Nick’s got his answers polished and ready.”

“Don’t be too polished,” the doctor said. “You don’t want to sound like you’re reading a script.”

Andrew’s face reddened and the muscles in his jaw began to pulse. I knew what he was thinking – if he’d said he hadn’t practiced at all, his father would have leapt on that.

The doctor sat there and watched his son, with an almost… I gotta say it… toad-like satisfaction at having pushed his buttons.

I had his number now. I’d defended his abstract father to Andrew, when I’d thought he was lucky to have one.

The doctor looked at me, and I at him. A cat may look at a king, I thought. Also, fuck you.

“So you’re the EMT,” he said.

“I am,” I said proudly.

He seemed a bit put off his game by that. Fucking doctors can be like that, though. They expect everyone in the profession to be awed and deferential, especially those of us at the bottom of the food chain.

But me? Shit. I’d seen all 31 flavors of patriarchs in my foster homes, and the doctor and his attitude was nothing new to me.

“It’s a fine calling,” he said, surprising me. “Being a first responder.”

“Yes sir, I believe so.”

“Where did you go to school?”

“I went through a training program at North Seattle College.” I started to relax. The old crocodile wasn’t so bad, it seemed.

“North Seattle College,” he said, as if repeating the name of an exotic bird he’d never heard of.

“Yes sir.”

“And that’s where you got your…” He hesitated as if trying to remember something. “Associates degree?”

“No, sir, no degree. A certification.”

“A certification,” he repeated. “Hmm.”

Suddenly I felt like I was on trial, as if the doctor was the prosecutor, repeating my statements for the jury, hammering home the damning evidence against me.

The man was good, I thought. Nice as pie until BOOM he pulls the lever, and the floor drops out from beneath you, and only then do you realize the noose is around your neck.

“Yes, Dad,” Andrew burst out. “A certification. Just like you’re board certified in geriatric medicine.”

His father opened his mouth, then saw the trap. To say they were nothing alike was to be openly insulting, and not just passive-aggressively insulting.

“Yes, just like that,” he said, smiling at me like I was a simple child.

I smiled back, just as nice as pie, with not a hint of resentment. That threw him. I could see Andrew grinning out of the corner of my eye.

Then, to everyone’s relief, we were called to dinner. At least it meant we were moving closer to the time we could leave.

“So, Andrew,” his father said as the main course was removed. “You’re finally ready to go to medical school.”

“I am,” Andrew nodded.

“I was wondering when you’d finally live up to your potential. I’m sure your grandfather intended the best for you when he left you everything, but I wasn’t sure if he hadn’t robbed you of your motivation by doing so.”

“Just the opposite,” I chimed in, startling everyone. “Being a medic has given Andrew a view of medicine from the ground up. The sort of view you never get from inside the hospital.”

He regarded me with his toad eyes. I regarded him back. I could see Karen about to say something peace-making, and cut her off.

“In fact, I believe it’ll make Andrew a better doctor than he ever could have been without that experience.”

Take that, I thought, giving him my biggest, most earnest, Eagle Scout-looking motherfucker smile.

“No doubt,” the doctor pretended to agree. “And UCLA is a fine school, certainly among the better ones.”

“Not as fine as Boston U, of course,” Andrew said with his own smile.

“Well, I didn’t say that. But of course I’m prejudiced towards my alma mater.”

“Of course,” Andrew agreed mildly.

* * *

That was the end of the battle. The doctor was outnumbered and he knew it. We went through the rest of the motions, Andrew’s father wished him the best of luck tomorrow, blah blah.

As soon as I’d turned the car onto the street and off the property, Andrew let out a huge sigh.

“That’s over.” He turned to me. “You. You are now required to come with me every fucking time I go home.”

“Yeah, you need a wingman just to see your family.”

“You were great. I mean, Jesus, Nick, I’ve never seen anyone handle him like that.”

I shrugged. “Look. After the master classes I took in head fucking, when I was in foster care? That guy was bush league.”

Andrew laughed, a free and easy laugh that made my heart soar. I’d given him something he’d never had in this war, a powerful ally. I’d made his father look smaller, less powerful and terrifying. And in the process, freed him of some of the hold that shadow had over him.

“I was almost going to cancel the interview tomorrow,” Andrew said.

“What?”

“Just thinking about him. My war with him. How I could prove to him that I’d never be him if I never went to med school after all.”

“Oh, that’s brilliant,” I said acidly, shocking him. “The nuclear option, huh? Destroy your own life just to spite your father.”

I softened my tone. At a stoplight, I took his hand.

“Andrew. Listen to me. You don’t have to become your dad just because you become a doctor. You’ll never be your dad, I can guarantee that.”

Andrew smiled. “You’ll be around to make sure of that?”

“You’re fuckin’ A I will be.”

* * *

The next day, Andrew woke up calm, refreshed, ready. We hadn’t made love the night before, both of us emotionally exhausted by the dinner table war the previous night.

But I could see the change in him, as he tied his tie, snapped the cuffs of his jacket, ran a hand over his buzzcut hair as if to smooth it down. His father’s shadow didn’t hang over him anymore. He was his own man, making his own decisions.

“Do you want me to go with you?” I asked him. “I could buzz around the campus or…”

“No. I’m good. No offense, but I’m better off having that alone time before the interview to focus.”

I nodded. “Yeah, that makes sense.”

He kissed me goodbye and headed out the door. “Break a leg,” I said.

Andrew smiled. “That’s what you say to actors. Probably not a good idea for a medical student.”

I laughed. “Go fuck yourself.”

He knew what I meant. “You too,” he replied.

* * *

So I had the day to myself. I didn’t know what to do with it.

Liar.

I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it.

The offices of the UCLA Daniel Freeman paramedic school weren’t on the campus. I didn’t have a plan, never mind an appointment, but I just wanted to go see if they had any information, I told myself, even knowing as I did that all I needed to know could be found online.

I guess I wanted to see if it was real. If it wasn’t some unicorn, some ridiculous dream. If I could talk to anyone there, even a receptionist.

I took an Uber to the administrative offices. It was just an office, like any other. I went into the building, found the sign on the door, and stood outside it for a minute, then realized I was an idiot.

What would I say to anyone in there? Hi, I’m an EMT with a high school diploma, who’s got the nerve to ask you if I can get into one of the hardest programs in the world?

I turned around and ran right into a woman absorbed in her cell phone.

“Oh, shit, I’m sorry,” I said.

She recovered and smiled. “No problem, shit happens.” She wore a form fitting dress and blouse, like a TV attorney. But unlike some legal glamour puss, her brunette hair was flat, tied back, the legacy of someone who’d worked EMS long enough to not give a shit about wasting time on hairdos.

“Were you coming in to see anyone?”

“Umm, no, I just… I don’t know.”

She looked at me, appraisingly. “Are you thinking about applying for the program?”

“Sort of,” I said, kicking myself. Why wasn’t I doing everything I told Andrew to do, be confident, stand tall, smile. Do as I say, not as I do, I guess.

“Yes,” I corrected myself. “Yes, I am.”

“Well, come on in. I’m Kendra, I’m in Admissions.”

“Nick.”

I followed her to her office. She’d been modest about working “in Admissions.” The sign outside her door told me she was the admissions director. I swallowed hard.

She sat next to me, in one of the two chairs in front of her desk, informally putting me at my ease.

“So why Daniel Freeman?”

“It’s the best. And, to be honest, my… boyfriend is applying to UCLA Medical School. We live in Seattle, but we’re moving down here. If he gets in.”

How amazing that sounded, “my boyfriend,” but it was true, wasn’t it? He was my boyfriend, we were moving here if he got in.

“I know this program is amazingly hard to get into, and even harder to get through.”

“It is both. What’s your experience?”

“Well, for the last six months, I’ve been an EMT in the Seattle Fire Department. They were rolling with two medics, but the city started this cost saving experiment in Seattle, putting an EMT in place of a paramedic…”

I broke off, seeing her face change, the surprise on it. For a second I thought she’d kick me out, for being The Bad Man, the one stealing good medic jobs from more qualified personnel.

“You’re him. You’re the guy.”

“Yeah, I’m the one who they’re using to get rid of medics…”

She cut me off with a raised hand and a smile. “That’s not what I meant. We’ve all been watching that pilot program up there. Everyone in the prehospital care field. We all have concerns about the efficacy of the program, and of course about reductions in medic jobs. The grapevine told us that the Fire Department was working hard to kick out any EMTs who couldn’t hack the job at the highest performance level.

“And, I gotta say, we’ve taken some satisfaction in hearing that the program hasn’t worked that well. That only there’s only been one EMT who has met and exceeded the standards, endured the hazing, and proved himself worthy.”

She smiled. “So…I guess that’s you.”

I laughed. “Yeah, that’s me.”

“Your partner is Andrew Hazard.”

I almost lost it, until I realized that by “partner,” she meant on the van.

“Yeah, he is.”

“Well, I can tell you. He’s a shoo-in for the med school. Everybody there is so excited that he’s interviewing today.”

“Really?”

“I mean, come on, what a story, right? The son of a famous doctor graduates pre med from Boston U with a 4.0 average, he’s guaranteed a spot in medical school, and then he takes a detour between college and med school to be a paramedic for a couple of years? He gets his hands just as dirty as they can get in medicine? Then he becomes one of the very best medics in the country?”

I laughed, more relieved than I’d been in years. The stress just started flowing out of my body. It was a done deal, we were moving here, Andrew was in.

“And you,” she said. “You know he went through…”

“Seven EMTs in six months,” I said. “Before me.”

“So, yeah, Nick, we didn’t know you by name around here. But we know you by reputation.”

She got up and sat behind her desk now, pulling something up on her computer.

“Let’s get your application started, shall we?”

* * *

“It went so well,” Andrew said over our room service dinner. “So smooth. I just felt like I aced it.”

“You did,” I winked.

He looked at me, puzzled.

“I went to the Daniel Freeman offices today. The admissions director told me how thrilled they were at the med school that you were coming in. You’re quite the legend, you know.”

Andrew blinked. “You mean…”

“Dude. You are so in.”

“But how can you know that?”

I leaned back in my chair, savoring the last moments of my secret. “Well… it turns out that I have a reputation, too. The lone survivor of the Andrew Hazard EMT Hunger Games of Seattle, Washington.”

He laughed, astonished and delighted. “No shit.”

“No shit. So, I applied. And I don’t know, we’ll see…”

Andrew reached over the table and took my hand. “Dude. They want you.”

I shook my head, the nagging self doubts reemerging. “No, no, she was being nice because I told her about you, and the med school wants you, so they…”

“Shut the fuck up,” he said in that voice he used to use on me, my first weeks on the van. “They don’t do that. They don’t fuck around like that. They want you.”

“I’m sure I’m like one of a thousand applicants, even if they consider me they’ll…”

“No,” Andrew said firmly. “Trust me. Take it from someone who’s grown up in medicine. I know how this shit works. They know who you are, and they want you. You’re in.”

I leaned back, reeling. “Jesus. Andrew. This means…”

He nodded. “Yeah. It’s real. This is happening. We’re here.”

And I knew what he meant by here. Here, in our new home, here, in our new adventure, our new challenge. Here, together. No more talk of who’d have turn down what to avoid a long distance relationship.

Suddenly I believed it, I knew it. I’d get in, I’d graduate, I’d succeed. God knows how much time we’d find to be together, but we’d find it. I knew it.