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NICK
When Richard answers the phone, I can hear a vacuum whirring in the background and someone singing an old Madonna song.
“What’s going on over there?” I ask. “It sounds like your cleaning person’s a little off-key.”
He offers a high-pitched giggle. “That’s no cleaning person, silly. That’s Alec.”
“Okay,” I reply. “Then it sounds like one of your boyfriends is a little off-key.”
“Isn’t that the truth?” he asks. “The poor thing’s as tone-deaf as a tree stump.”
“That’s kind of harsh,” I say. “Especially to the tree.”
Richard snickers again. “So what’s up? How are things going with the hot tattoo love god?”
“That’s actually why I called,” I tell him. “Adam said that he’s ever been to Fire Island. And that left me a little confused about how Tate and Alec could’ve ever shared a summer house with him.”
The vacuum and singing slowly fade before I hear a door closing on the other end of the line.
“You still there?” I say.
Richard sighs. “Fuck, Nick.”
I laugh. “Sorry?”
“It’s about what I told you,” he starts. “The story about Adam knowing Tate and Alec.”
I hold my breath. Whenever I suspect that someone lied to me, I have a visceral reaction that sends a chill down my back. I’ve never known the cause, but Dede told me it’s somehow related to something bad that happened when I was younger. “Childhood trauma has that kind of power,” she’d explained. “You may not realize what’s at the root of the reaction, but your brain has it all stored away somewhere deep inside. When something triggers it, the synapses fire and the primordial defense mechanism kicks in.”
I’m trying to get her voice out of my head when Richard asks if I can forgive him.
“For what?” I ask.
“I wasn’t honest with you,” he says. “About Adam and my two guys.”
“Uh, okay. And why would you tell me a fib?”
“Because I’m ashamed,” he says. “And because it’s a secret that nobody else knows.”
I stay quiet, hoping that the silence will prod him to keep going better than anything that I can say.
“About two months ago,” Richard continues a moment later, “we were going through a really stressful patch because of Alec’s cancer. And before you say anything, what I’m telling you is an explanation, not an excuse.”
“Just keep talking,” I say, feeling my stomach twist as my overactive imagination starts to fill in the blanks.
“I went out one night,” he says. “Got smashed, hooked up with this guy and we went to a really sweet townhouse on Barrow and Hudson.”
“Oh, shit,” I mumble. “I somehow thought that’s where you were going with the story.”
“Wait!” Richard shouts. “Hold on, Nick! It wasn’t Adam. It was his nephew, Liam. He was staying there at the time, but he moved out a couple of weeks later. When I ran into you the other day and it was obvious you were over the moon about Adam, I just couldn’t…” His voice drops and he’s nearly whispering. “I couldn’t blurt out everything. I felt so awful about fucking a random guy because I was upset about what was going on here home.”
When he stops, I ask if he’s told Tate and Alec yet. I’ve never known the intimate details of their relationship, but Richard’s urgent confession suggests that his tryst with Adam’s nephew was a hush-hush escapade.
“I haven’t told them,” he says quietly. “But the guilt is killing me. Even though most people would consider our situation really untraditional, we still pledged to be exclusive to our little tribe.”
“I guess some pledges are easily broken,” I say.
Richard sighs. “I suppose so. And even though I never wanted to be that guy, here I am.”