He was in the lobby when he heard someone call his name. “Karl? Karl, is that you?”

In no mood to be seen, let alone hailed, he was going to let it go and just make his shamed way out of Cray Reliable. That had been fucking humiliating. But when someone grabbed his arm, he couldn’t help but turn and see who it was.

“I see you!” said Delia, this time wearing a very professional-looking sweater suit, its cuffs carefully concealing her tats. “Look at you all dapper. I never figured you for a tie-and-blazer man. Then again, I wouldn’t have guessed I’d see you in this temple of exploitation.”

It was hard to listen to her; in his head, he was already going over how he’d tell this story to Burns. Burns might laugh, but he’d also understand how awful it felt. How even though he’d tried to do the right thing and apologize, all Karl had managed to do was dig himself in even deeper.

People made no sense, sometimes. But Burns would put his strong arms around Karl and whisper confident words to him.

“Job interview,” he said finally.

“Oh, that’s so exciting! Wait, no, from your face, I guess that’s bad.”

He shrugged. “It’ll be all right.”

“You look so crestfallen! You didn’t bust out the politics in front of the interviewer, did you?”

“It wasn’t like that.”

She gave him a sympathetic look and squeezed his arm. “Do you want to go out later? Not today, you look like you need some recovery time. But I was thinking last night, when Burns said—”

“You talked to Burns last night?”

She laughed. “Barely. Don’t tell him, but your friend was the worst date I’ve ever been on, and I’ve been out with a juggalo.”

“You went on a date with Burns?”

It was like his head was too rattled from the interview to think clearly. What did she mean, date? It didn’t make any sense. Burns was his.

She fluttered a hand at him. “He shook my confidence, honestly. I’m pretty good at keeping a man’s attention—a straight man’s,” she said pointedly, “but his head was in the clouds. At least until I made a crack about your camping trip.”

His stomach dropped. Was Burns joking about the trip? Was he telling her all about it? “I…what?”

“I may have hinted that the trip was a bit more camp than camping, if you know what I mean. He went ballistic!”

Why was Burns going out with you? Why was he telling you about our trip? I wouldn’t tell anyone about it in a million years! It was too special to talk about. Too important. It might be a story when they were old, but right now it was too new, everything was new and delicate.

How could he have told her? What did it mean that he did?

“I have to go,” he said.

“Oh? Well, yes, go lick your wounds. Tomorrow is another day, Scarlett! Call me!”

* * *

“What did you tell her?” he asked Burns.

Mrs. Burns had not been interested in letting him in. “I think Tommy’s a bit under the weather,” she told Karl when he showed up at the door. “He might have caught a touch of something on that trip of yours.”

She hadn’t stopped him from coming in, though, only cautioned him as he headed up the stairs, that his friend may not be in the mood to talk.

Burns was seated at the window, staring out at the front yard. He hardly acknowledged Karl’s entrance. “Tell who?” he asked quietly.

“Delia. On your date. Surely you remember that, it was just last night.”

He wanted to talk about the interview. The worry and embarrassment of it were weighing on him…and that was without thinking about how he would break the news to Simon.

Yet this news about Burns had consumed him the whole way over here.

Burns scowled. “It wasn’t a date. Did she tell you it was?”

“Maybe I misinterpreted. A single man, a single woman, dinner, parents trying to set them up…”

“Oh, fuck off, Karl, it wasn’t a date. Everybody insisted, so we had dinner at LuAnne’s. Except we didn’t. I left.”

Karl fell onto Burns’ bed. The blanket smelled like Burns. He was so sad.

“Why did you leave?”

“She was… I don’t want to talk about it,” Burns said.

“She what? Did she hit on you? Come on, you have to tell me.”

“No, she was talking about our damned fishing trip.”

“I know. She mentioned that. I can’t believe you told her about that.”

“All right, hold on, Karl, I’m not sure what you think went on—”

“It’s just, it’s bad enough that I had the most humiliating job interview ever, but now I find out you were telling a stranger about what happened between us, when I thought—”

“I didn’t tell her!” Burns said in a sharp whisper. “And keep your fucking voice down, my mom might be listening.”

“Then what was her fucking joke about, about it being camp?”

Burns rolled his eyes. “Holy shit. Is that what you’re worried about? You think I told her you gave me a blowjob?”

Karl looked away. “More happened than just a blowjob. For me, anyway.”

“I would never tell her about that. I wouldn’t tell anyone. That’s just Delia. She’s come to a small town, and she’s bored out of her skull, so she wants to make a little trouble. She’s just trying to have fun. But I couldn’t handle it. She was asking if we…if…”

Karl lay back on the bed and pressed his face into Burns’ pillow. He really didn’t want to hear. But as the silence lengthened, he glanced over at Burns, surprised by the pain on his face.

“She asked if we’d slept together?” Karl asked.

“Not in so many words. And I think she was joking. But I couldn’t handle it. I left.”

Somehow Burns’ pain was making it through the aching fog that surrounded Karl.

“Why couldn’t you handle it?”

“Do you need to interrogate me right now?”

“You’re not really talking,” said Karl.

“I’m scared. I don’t know what else to say. She somehow knew, or guessed, and I got scared. She used the word lovers.”

Lovers. That was a strange word to roll on the tongue. It was a smooth, round word, not ugly and jointed like friends with benefits, not ridiculous like fuck buddies.

What does a lover do? A lover loves.

He looked over at Burns. For the moment, his own shame over the interview melted away, seeing the worry-creased face of his friend.

“Come here,” he said to Burns.

“You don’t understand.”

He patted the mattress. “Dude. Come here.”

Slowly his friend got up, moving like he had aged another twenty years during the conversation. The bed squeaked softly as he sank down next to Karl.

“Tell me what you’re scared of,” said Karl.

Are you frightened of someone finding out what happened on the trip? Or are you frightened about what you’re feeling right now?

Was it wrong to hope it was the second? That his big brave friend, the confident one, the golden boy, was reduced to trembling by the thought that they had stumbled on something real together?

He put his arm around Burns, and at first Burns tensed, then sank against Karl’s shoulder.

“I don’t know,” Burns said, finally. “Nothing in my life works like this. It feels like I’m split in two. Half of me the world sees, and they love me, and it’s great, and if they ever saw the second half, the half I keep hidden, they’d hate me.”

No one could ever hate you, Karl thought. He kept silent, his only noise the quiet sound of his fingers stroking Burns’ chest.

“I’ve always known about that second half,” Burns continued. “I knew that it would be dark, and empty. Like space, without any stars.”

There is no void within you.

“What happened between us upset the balance,” said Burns. “It broke through the halves. That’s not supposed to happen. Light never breaks into the dark half. I don’t like I how I feel right now. So torn.”

Karl swallowed. This was it. This was the moment Burns would tell him that what happened between them could never happen again. He prepared himself. Time to tuck away that memory, put it where all the nostalgia goes, to be brought out at random moments, sighed over, then put away again.

“Torn,” he prompted. Just get it over with.

“I spent all last night thinking about my conversation with Delia. My fear. All this morning too, sitting in that chair, staring outside. But it kept getting interrupted. Over and over again, I would worry, but then a thought would pop into my head. A memory of you. Not just the sex. Conversations we had a year ago. That time we went rafting. You stealing my onion rings. I don’t understand why the fear goes away when I think about you. I don’t understand why you’re not part of that dark half of my life.”

“That’s probably a good sign,” said Karl.

“Do you think so?”

“What, that I don’t inspire terror? Dude. I have been waiting over 24 hours to see you again, and it has been agony. What does that tell you?”

Burns turned and looked him in the eye. “What are we going to do?”

“The first step is, you’re going to say how you feel about me. The second step evolves naturally from that.”

“How I feel?”

“About me, yes.”

Burns thought about it. “When I fell in that water, it was such a shock. Like everything in my body woke up and went into alarm mode. When we kissed, it was so similar. Everything in my body woke up…but it was exciting instead of terrifying. It wasn’t alarm mode, it was like every cell was saying yes all at once.”

“That’s way more poetic than I would’ve expected from you,” Karl said.

“I had a lot of time to think about it.”

“I should stay away from you more often. You’ll be writing me sonnets next.”

Burns shook his head. “What about you? I mean, it’s okay if you just wanted to be friends that occasionally do stuff, I don’t mind if—”

“No.”

“No?”

“I’ve been terrified of what might happen to our friendship if we crossed that line,” said Karl. “I think the only way I can feel safe, is if I know I mean more to you than just a fuck.”

“You definitely do.”

“Because you mean more to me, too.”

“So…what are we?” Burns asked.

Karl kissed him softly. “I believe Delia called us lovers.”

“Ugh, no. That sounds like one of my mom’s soap operas.”

“Boyfriends?”

“That sounds like we’re 13.”

Karl laughed. “How about I just call you mine?”

Burns kissed him back, harder this time, and pressed against him until Karl rolled onto his back. Burns was atop him now, which was thrilling in a way Karl couldn’t describe.

He loves me. Oh my god. Someone actually loves me.

He touched Burns’ face, stroked the stubble that had grown soft overnight. He reached down, felt the bulge that Burns was growing. When he gave it a squeeze, Burns pressed against him, slowly, sensuously.

Burns froze as they realized the bed was squeaking in time with his movements.

“Oh shit!” he said.

They heard footsteps on the stairs.

“Is everything okay in there?” asked Burns’ mom on the other side of the door.