While Julian calls his parents, I call mine, then my brother. I give my parents a version of the truth of why I’m staying home with Julian, but Jack cuts me off, saying he’ll see us soon. I expected nothing less of my big brother which is why I had us get dressed before I even picked up the phone.

Julian is just hanging up with his dad when there’s a knock at the door. Julian turns startled eyes on me, but immediately cracks up when he hears, “What the hell? How come I can’t get in?”

I wink at him before I stroll to the door, listening to my brother pound and huff from the other side. As soon as it’s open, he barges past me. “Take your time, why don’t ya?”

“I did.” I turn back to the living room just in time to see him set a brown bagel bag on the table and fold Julian into his arms.

“How you doing, kid?” he asks in a gruff voice.

“Okay. Better this morning. Chuck and Vaughn took good care of me last night, and I got a good night’s sleep.”

Leaning back my brother runs an appraising eye over him before turning back to me. “You alright? I left you guys alone last night when Walter called me, but I got concerned when you called and said you were staying home today, too.”

“Everything’s fine. If you hadn’t hung up on me so fast I could’ve told you we only decided to stay home today so that we could make a plan of how to deal with this Phillip.”

Grinning at me like a little kid plotting a cookie heist, my brother says, “I think I can help with that. I’m going to dial a number and hand you the phone. Tell him everything while Julian and I make some breakfast. I ran out of the house so fast I didn’t have time to have breakfast with my wife.” He pulls his phone from his pocket and scrolls his contacts before hitting connect. He says, “Talk to my brother; this is important,” before thrusting the phone at me and dragging Julian toward the kitchen.

As I’m bringing the phone up to my ear, I hear Julian asking, “Your wife gets up this early every day to have breakfast with you?” I can’t help but admire how fast he’s bounced back this morning after how wrecked he was last night.

“Hello,” I say into the phone.

“Tell me your story,” a voice mumbles back at me. Under normal circumstances, I would’ve hung up and demanded my brother give me some answers, like who the hell he just dialed that can supposedly help Julian. But he’s my brother, and I know he cares about Julian, too, so I decide to trust him and tell the voice at the other end the story. I only give as much background as the mysterious voice asks for, and as I’m talking, I realize I’m glad he didn’t ask for many more details because there are many things Julian hasn’t shared with me, yet. Of course, I haven’t shared a lot of things with him yet, either. “I’ll take care of it. You and Julian sit tight,” the voice says. Startled, I realize I know who it belongs to. Before I can ask how, or even say thank you, the phone disconnects.

Wandering into the kitchen, I take in the scene before me. Julian and Jack are standing at the stove chatting away. I can smell the bacon frying, and Jack is holding the spatula while staring intently into a frying pan with eggs. I grin at my big brother making Julian his specialty, over-easy eggs with bacon on a bagel. Glancing to the side, I see that the bagels are already sliced and in the toaster oven. My heart warms when Julian catches me standing there and his smile grows to epic proportions before he holds out an arm for me to walk over and join them.

Breakfast is a lively meal. We don’t talk about the Phillip situation, or even work. My brother shares stories with me about teenage Julian and Chuck and their many errors as they learned on the job as teens. Then, to not leave Julian out of the fun, he switches over to telling him embarrassing stories about me while I was growing up. By the time my brother gets up to leave to run and check on my site before heading to Nathaniel’s, we’re all wiping tears from our eyes.

I wait until after we’re both settled next to each other on the couch with cups of coffee before I bring up the past. Not his, but mine. “I want to share something with you.” He immediately focuses on me.

“Share something with me?”

“Yeah, I feel like all your painful memories are being laid out for all of us whether you wanted to reveal them or not, and… well, I guess I want to even it up for you a little. Maybe share some of my history that I’m not so proud of.”

“Okay, but you don’t have to if you don’t want to. You know that, right? I’m not expecting you to—”

Laying my hand over his knee and gently squeezing, I reassure him. “I do want to. I haven’t talked to anyone but one person about why I didn’t come home, but… I want to tell you if you want to hear it.”

Reaching forward to set his mug on the coffee table, he leans back to lay his hand over mine. “Of course, anything you want to share with me, I want to hear.”

“I guess, let’s go back to the beginning. When I was in middle school, I was like all the other guys. Popping a boner anytime a girl’s shirt was tight across her breasts or showed a hint of cleavage. I had my first kiss at a party in front of my friends, snuck porn magazines, and took so many showers I’m surprised my skin isn’t still wrinkled.” Julian chuckles, nodding for me to continue. “Anyway, I was in high school, sophomore year, when I realized that all the things I felt for a girl, I was feeling for this guy named Bailey, too. He was that out and proud gay guy, and his personality won over everyone so no one cared. Well, there were people who cared, but there were enough of us big guys who were willing to stick up for him that he didn’t really have many issues. And Julian, the muscles in his thighs could rival any of the guys in our crew. He was a gymnast so his thighs were… outstanding.”

“Dude,” Julian complains.

Lifting my hand to bring his hand to my lips, I kiss the back of it before setting them back on his knee. “Don’t worry. No one has anything on those tree trunks you’re walking on.”

“That’s better. Continue.”

“Okay, so you’ve met my dad and have witnessed for yourself how supportive he is.”

“Ohhhh…” Julian breathes out.

“You just realized why our company has always been so LGBT friendly, didn’t you? Yeah, so anyway, I thought Bailey was it for me. When we started dating, it was like everything fell into place for me. And there had been girls I really liked before I dated him, but we clicked in every way. I was pretty devastated senior year when he told me he thought it would be better if we didn’t go to the same college.”

“What?”

“Yeah, I realized later he was right. We were too young. But at the time it felt like a boulder had been placed on my chest, crushing all my vital organs it hurt so bad. Anyway, I was too immature at the time to hear what he was saying. I just felt rejected. It wasn’t until years later when I needed someone and he was there, that I understood that he thought we both needed to spread our wings, but he didn’t want to see me be with someone else, and he didn’t want me to have to watch him date someone else.”

“Awe, he sounds like a great guy.”

“He is. I hope you’ll stay around and meet him someday.” Julian leans over and kisses my cheek, nudging my chin with his before leaning back so I can continue. “I get to college and I notice men I’m attracted to, but no one holds a candle to Bailey, so I party too hard and have sex with too many girls to prove my worth. You know how well that works out?” Julian nods, remaining silent. “I met this girl named Priscilla. She was a knockout, but kind of stuck-up.”

Julian interrupts, “Jack said she was a diva bitch.”

Stopping to a laugh for a minute, I finally push on. “Yeah, she didn’t get along with Patsy all that well, so Jack wasn’t a fan. And if he knew how much debt she ended up getting me into he definitely wouldn’t have been a fan. You see, Priscilla had a problem. Even in college before I followed her home to be with her, she had a problem. A wise man would’ve cut his losses and ran when given the opportunity, but the sting of what I considered Bailey’s rejection had never gone away. I needed to prove that I could keep someone who said they loved me.”

“What kind of problem did she have Jack?”

“She gambled, on anything and everything. She was a junky from the high of winning. But she was also raised like a princess, and she didn’t want to disappoint her parents. So for as little as she won, she lost thousands more, and when she did win, I never saw a dime. I already had excellent credit from working for Dad through high school, and I was able to get a good job for whenever I was available at a company near my college. Then when I graduated, the credit card applications rolled in. It was cool to get them, but I never filled them out because I had one line of credit and it was enough. I busted my ass trying to keep Priscilla’s debts paid, even taking on day labor jobs on the weekends if I had to, but… I was on site one day a year after we’d left college, and I got a call from a credit card company about a late payment for a card I’d never applied for.”

“Oh God.”

“Yeah, Priscilla and I lived together. She’d mastered my signature and filled out every form she could get her hands on. I wasn’t any better than her parents, so I’d never made her work either, so she’d always been home to get the bills. Anyway, I’d called her and there was no answer. I was too furious to work, so I took the rest of the day off and sped home to confront her. She was asleep when I got home from being out late the night before. Julian, she was so unrepentant. She didn’t care how angry I was or that she’d ruined my credit; she didn’t care about any of it. I kicked her out and told her to go home and immediately called the bank. It… it was ugly, so I stayed there and worked my ass off. I didn’t want my family to know what I’d allowed out of stupidity. Hell, I didn’t even love her by then. I had just been digging my heels in to make a point. After we’d broken up, and I still wouldn’t go home, my parents asked Bailey to call me and see if he could figure out what was going on with me. He called and I told him everything. We really talked it through, why we’d broken up, and he told me how good a man he thought I was and how hard it would be for him to find someone to settle down with because he compared everyone to me.”

“Aww.”

“It went a long way toward healing that old, gaping wound, but in the days after we talked a lot and I realized what he’d known back in high school.”

“You weren’t meant to be forever?”

“No, but I’m damn glad to have him as a friend, one of the best I’ve ever had to this day.”

“I can’t wait to meet him. I’m glad he was there while you went through that.”

“Have you lost all respect for me now?” I ask, turning all the way on the couch to face him.

“Of course not, Vaughn. I agree with Bailey, you’re one of the best guys I know. It would be hard for anyone to compare to you.”

“But I let her take me for thousands of dollars, Julian. I had to pay off mountains of debt to rebuild my credit. I couldn’t come home because if my parents had saw how frugally I was living they would’ve known something was up. Being in the same industry, my dad would’ve known what I should be able to afford, and I was living in squalor. When I saw your parents’ basement apartment, I wished I’d have been able to find something like that, especially if it came with a family for the time. I just hope… I don’t want you to leave me now that you know what an idiot I was.”

Julian scoots in close to me. “Never. That’s the past, people make mistakes, it doesn’t matter in the slightest to me.”

Running a finger down his face, I cup his chin in my hand when I get to the bottom. Leaning in to kiss him gently, I whisper, “Same,” against his lips. I feel the faint brush of his breath as he exhales when he realizes what I’m saying. “Got it?”

“Got it.”

Reluctantly, I pull back when my cell phone rings displaying Nathaniel’s number. “Hey.”

“You’re good, boss.”

“Wait, really? How?”

“Yep. Let’s just say I know the right people. See you soon.” Then just like before, the line goes dead.

“What? What is it?” Julian asks.

“Apparently, Jack’s friend had connections, and Phillip will no longer be a problem for you.”

“How? But who?”

“Baby, I don’t know, but I’m not questioning it. Let’s consider it a gift and move on with our lives. Okay?”

With his green eyes sparkling, Julian leans in, and we seal it with a kiss, or ten.