Gabe wasn’t entirely sure how he made it through dinner without touching Tristan all the time. After rubbing off together in the backseat of his car, he wanted contact. Way more contact than sitting across the booth from him at an Irish pub while they worked their way through two massive plates of food.

He’d ordered the Guinness beef stew and it was fantastic. Just enough beer flavor without overpowering the meat and vegetables. Tristan was packing away shepherd’s pie. He’d opted out of the various Guinness-flavored items on the menu because of his medications. The dining room and bar were crowded, which didn’t surprise Gabe. It was Saturday night.

He entertained Tristan with their exploits on Thursday. A few times Tristan reacted to something he said as though it was familiar. It gave Gabe hope that reinforcement and repetition would help Tristan’s memory.

His cell rang. The screen lit up with Debbie’s name. He almost didn’t answer it, but she’d only call again until he did. “Hey, what’s up?”

“I can’t find my slippers. Where are my slippers?” she asked.

Fuck me.

“You threw them out two days ago because you said they smelled.”

Tristan’s eyebrows went up, asking a silent question, and Gabe hated her for doing this now.

“I did not,” Debbie said. She slurred only a little bit, which hinted at tipsy rather than hammered. “Those slippers were brand new.”

“They were brand new five years ago. Listen, I’ll buy you slippers tomorrow. Wear socks for tonight.”

“They were new slippers.”

“I have to go.” Gabe hung up then put the phone on silent.

“Who was that?” Tristan asked.

“My mother. And I know it sounded like a weird conversation, but can we not talk about it?”

“Sure.” Tristan speared a piece of carrot. “We can, though, whenever you want. Talk about it, I mean.”

“I know. But I don’t want her crazy to interfere with tonight.”

“I don’t want my crazy to interfere with tonight.”

“Hey, you aren’t crazy.” Gabe again resisted the urge to hold his hand in public, even to comfort him. Tristan had been hesitant with it at the market, and Gabe didn’t want to make him uncomfortable. “And you’re getting better.”

“I know. So where are we going later in order to avoid your mother and her crazy?”

“My dads’ house. They’re both working until about two a.m., so we’ll have plenty of privacy. And they have a sixty-inch flat screen in the den.”

“Seriously? Damn.”

“Yeah. They love watching old movies from the thirties and forties. Bear is a huge Humphrey Bogart fan. He swears Casablanca is the most perfect movie ever made.”

“I’ve never seen it.”

Gabe shrugged. “I watched it once. It was very good, but older movies aren’t really my thing.”

“What do you like?”

“Action and adventure. Screwball comedies. Anything that distracts me from real life.”

“I hear you.” Tristan sipped his iced tea. “That’s why I like animation. It’s a whole new world that can be imagined and drawn up. It’s like magic.”

“Creating something about of nothing is a little bit like magic, I agree. So have you done anything outside of art class?” Gabe was fishing with that question, hoping to jog some part of Tristan’s slowly improving memory. “Don’t check the notebook.”

Tristan scrunched his eyebrows and stared at the table. “Yes? I feel like I have, but I don’t know.”

“Thursday after you guys dropped me off, Noel stopped at an art supply store.”

“He did? Why?” His eyes went wide. “He bought me stuff with my debit card. My parents put money into a checking account every month in case I need anything. What did we buy?”

He seemed so excited by the idea of art supplies that Gabe had mercy. “A drawing pad, proper pencils and some pastels.”

“Pastels are my favorite.” Tristan blinked hard, his eyes too shiny. He studied his fingernails. “I’ve used them. My nails aren’t clean. See?” He held out his right and, sure enough, bits of color were embedded beneath his short nails.

“I love seeing you this excited,” Gabe said.

“It’s been so long since I’ve been this happy.”

Their waiter chose that moment to ask if either needed drink refills. Gabe asked for more water. Tristan was fine. He was still so overjoyed he didn’t catch the waiter’s dirty look. While Tristan wasn’t exactly obvious, he had a way of talking when excited that got a little more noticeable. And the happy comment hadn’t helped.

Fuck the waiter.

“Do you remember what you’ve been drawing?” Gabe asked. He knew the answer from their still frequent emails, but testing Tristan was like mental physical therapy.

Tristan poked at some mashed potatoes. “No…wait.” He frowned. “Faces?”

Gabe grinned. “Yeah. Whose faces?”

“Um….” He looked all around the dining room, as if the answer was out there somewhere. “I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

“Hey, don’t apologize for what you can’t remember. Celebrate what you can.”

“Okay.” He didn’t smile but he did seem less annoyed. “So whose faces am I drawing?”

“You’re doing a drawing of Noel and Shane for them to hang in their new house.”

Instead of being surprised by the new house comment, Tristan nodded. He’d retained that one. “That makes sense. It sounds like something I would do.” A sly smile drew his lips back at one corner. “I’d like to draw you one day.”

“You kind of already did in the weekend art class you take. You hung it on the wall in your room.”

“Oh. Oh well, I want to draw you again. You have a great face.”

A bit of heat rose in Gabe’s cheeks. “Thank you. Yours is pretty great too.”

“I know.”

The flirty response made Gabe laugh. “I love seeing you so confident. Something tells me you lost a lot of that for a while.”

“I’m positive I did. I know I was angry for a long time. And depressed. Even if this is the best my memory ever gets, it’s leaps and bounds better than it was. And I am so grateful to know you, Gabe.”

“Me too. I mean, I’m grateful to know you, Tristan.”

Tristan grinned then attacked his meal. By the time he’d finished his stew, Gabe was stuffed but he couldn’t say no when Tristan asked to split a piece of chocolate cheesecake. It was ooey, gooey deliciousness with a wonderful strawberry sauce on top. Tristan ended up with a smear of it across his chin, and Gabe suppressed the very real urge to lean across the table and lick it off him.

The waiter dropped off the bill, and Tristan excused himself to use the bathroom. Gabe slid his debit card into the black sleeve, handed it back for processing and then took a moment to survey the dining room. So many pairs of men and women, most likely couples. A few families. Two men in suits by the far wall. A single woman with two tweens and an infant. Very much like the people he waited on every shift.

A different waiter brought his debit card and receipts back. He was young and was blushing. “I didn’t want to impose in front of your boyfriend,” he said. “But I love your work and was hoping to get an autograph.”

“Your boyfriend.” I’d be so lucky.

Gabe shifted into Tony for a moment and gave the waiter a sultry smile. “Sure thing.” Inside the sleeve he found a blank slip of receipt paper. He signed Tony Ryder with a flourish, then added a tip and signed his receipt with a very scrawled, pretty much illegible version of his real name.

Thankfully, the waiter moved on before Tristan came back. Gabe slid out of the booth.

“Where to next?” Tristan asked.

“What do you feel like doing?”

“I’m pretty sure when you picked me up you mentioned a movie.”

A blast of cold November air hit Gabe in the face when he pushed the restaurant door open. Next to him, Tristan shivered and wrapped his arms around his waist.

“I did mention a movie,” Gabe said. “I’d planned to take you back to my dads’ house, but would you rather see one in the theater? It’s probably been a while.”

Tristan glanced around them, then leaned closer to his ear. “Which option gets your dick in my ass faster?”

The sexy purr went straight to Gabe’s cock. “Dads’ house.”

“Then let’s go to their place.”

Gabe wasn’t about to object. Tristan knew what he wanted, and Gabe was certainly on board with the plan. He was a little nervous about it too. Tristan hadn’t had penetrative sex in more than three years. Getting off before dinner would help both of them take things slow. The last thing in the world that Gabe wanted was to hurt Tristan.

* * *

On the ride through Harrisburg, Tristan clung hard to his memories of being with Gabe in the backseat as he wrote them down. Every touch of skin, every kiss and lick. The whole thing had him hard again by the time Gabe pulled into the driveway of a two-story, stone-front home in a residential neighborhood.

He hadn’t paid attention to their route. “Where are we?”

“Paxtang,” Gabe replied.

“Oh, okay. Cool.” One of the better areas around Harrisburg.

“They have the money to move to a high-end neighborhood if they want, but this is the first house they bought together.”

“No sense in moving if they’re happy.” Tristan had grown up in a ritzy, upscale neighborhood. Everyone in school had known he was one of the rich kids, and he’d hated it.

He loved the house the moment he stepped inside. Wood floors, thick throw rugs, simple furnishings. A warmth to the place that hit him right in the gut. It felt like a home. His childhood home had been ultramodern, stainless steel, every new gadget under the sun. His parents had loved him to the best of his scholastic abilities, but they valued their reputations more.

“Tristan?” Gabe squeezed his shoulder. “You okay?”

“Yeah. It’s a great place. Very homey. Did you grow up here?”

“For the most part, yes. My mother and Bear divorced when I was five, but they had shared custody until I was eight. That’s when she gave up her parental rights so Richard could legally adopt me, and I lived here full time until I was nineteen.”

Tristan was pretty sure Gabe had never told him that about his parents. He was insanely curious why his mother gave Gabe up, but he had a feeling it was a painful story. Tonight had been a good night, and he didn’t want Gabe upset over the past. “What was it like growing up with two dads?”

Gabe hung his coat on a wall hook, then took Tristan’s and did the same. “I don’t have much else to compare it to. They loved me, and that’s the most important thing. I got bullied sometimes at school for it, which was part of the reason I stayed in the closet and denied who I was for so long.”

That surprised Tristan. Gabe seemed like the kind of guy who’d always been confident and self-assured. “How old were you when you came out?”

“I figured out I was gay when I was fifteen, but I was nineteen when I came out. I’d been secretly in a relationship with an older man for about a year prior to that. When he dumped me I was heartbroken, and I told Bear everything. I don’t know why I hid it for so long.” He shook his head. “No, I do know. Debbie—my mother, she took it badly when she found out. But it wasn’t me. It was old anger at Bear and how their relationship imploded because he was in the closet when they got married.”

“Wow.” Tristan kind of wanted to write all of that information down, but how would that look in front of Gabe?

Gabe shrugged. “My family is complicated.”

“Most are.”

“Do you want something to drink?”

“No.” Tristan deposited his notebook on the floor then invaded Gabe’s personal space, hands sliding around to grip his very firm ass. “I want to see your room.”

“That can definitely be arranged. One thing first.”

“Yeah?”

Gabe’s lips whispered over his, a kiss as gentle as their earlier kisses had been fiery. Soft brushes and light licks of his tongue. Just enough pressure to drive Tristan crazy with the need for harder, faster, right the hell now. Desire burned in his gut, and he pressed his erection against Gabe’s hip. Gabe responded with a soft growl. A hand slipped into Tristan’s hair, teasing and tickling, while another slid beneath his jeans to squeeze his ass cheek.

Tristan gasped, desperate for that hand to keep going, to touch him where he hadn’t been touched in far too long. He reversed the kiss, plunging his tongue into Gabe’s mouth, tasting him. Savoring every touch, every scent, every sound. They kissed for a long time standing inside the front door, until Tristan was drunk with it. Lost to sensation and no longer focused.

The world grayed out for the space of a heartbeat, and the instant confusion made him pull away. Away from a man he knew, who’d just been kissing him like a rock star. They were both hard. He blinked at the gorgeous man.

“Tristan? You with me?”

That voice soothed his confusion over why he was in a foyer making out with someone who wasn’t Noel. “I know you.”

“Yes. You’ve known me for months. We’re on a date and this is my dads’ house.”

Recognition hit him. He found the name. “Gabe.”

A stunning smile made Tristan’s heart pound. “Yes.”

Tristan tried to find other memories of tonight. They ghosted through his mind, intangible, but existing. He simply couldn’t bring them into focus. “My memory is getting better.” And he knew why. He did know. “Drug therapy, right?”

“Right.”

Everything about them together felt right. He glanced down at the erection outlined by Gabe’s tight jeans. “And we’re about to have sex?”

“As long as you still want to.”

“Hell yes, I do.” Maybe his mind wasn’t giving him the clues about Gabe he needed, but his heart was completely on board with this man. He trusted Gabe.

Gabe took his hand and led him up a narrow staircase to the second floor. Down an ivory-painted hallway to the only shut door. A radiation warning sign had been hung on the outside, and Tristan laughed.

“I was going through a privacy phase,” Gabe said. “Be warned. You’re about to step back in time about six years.”

“I am warned.”

Gabe pushed open the door and flipped a light switch. The room had been painted a deep forest green, and the walls were covered with movie posters. The Dark Knight, Iron Man, Tropic Thunder, Quantum of Solace, Transformers, and Death Proof. A bed, a desk, a bookshelf filled with Hardy Boys and Choose Your Own Adventure books. A few baseball trophies. All very teenage boy.

“Where’d you get all the posters?” Tristan asked.

“A buddy of mine worked at a local theater. He’d get them for me.”

“That’s awesome. I loved The Dark Knight. Do you still put up posters where you live now?”

“No. I haven’t gotten any new ones for a while.” Gabe tilted his head. “Hey, you knew I don’t live here.”

“Yeah, well, this doesn’t seem like you now.”

“True. I still love comic book movies, but I outgrew hanging posters on the wall.”

“So no posters of your favorite porn stars?”

Gabe laughed. “No.”

“Good. Then I don’t have to worry so much about living up to anyone else.”

“You wouldn’t have to worry about that anyway.” Gabe cupped his cheeks with his palms. “You’re perfect.”

No, I’m not, but thanks for saying it.

“Hey, Gabe?”

“Yes?”

“Take your clothes off.”