None of the Heartbreak

 

 

HE WAS feeling much better by the time Saturday morning rolled around. He’d actually gotten in a long workout on Friday for one thing, and he brought his running shoes and his sweats to work on Thursday for another, and managed twenty minutes of exercise during lunch. He thought he might start doing that a couple of days a week—it helped take off some of the day’s stress when he couldn’t make it to the gym.

Friday night, when he’d dropped Josie off in the gym’s daycare, he was actually disappointed to see that Justin wasn’t there. When he’d asked Jackie, the supervisor, the girl had winked at Josie and told them that Justin was helping to get ready for S-A-N-T-A. After Josie went off to play with the dollhouse, she’d told Hank that Justin had needed the night off to study for finals, and Hank felt stupid. He was a nice kid, but surely, Justin was entitled to a life of his own, right?

But that didn’t change the fact that his stomach was distinctly fluttery on Saturday morning. It took him a while to identify the feeling, and unfortunately, when the cause surfaced, it was in a particularly uncomfortable way.

He’d gotten Josie all ready, and she was sitting in the living room with the few toys she’d had when she’d arrived and a couple more that he’d bought her since. If he left the cartoons on with the volume low, she’d start singing to the dolls. He loved that sound—Amanda used to do the same thing when he was watching her.

He’d just finished his first cup of coffee when Alan and Keith showed up. Alan breezed by him in the entryway without even saying hello.

“Hi, Hank,” Keith said, embarrassed, and Hank grimaced and nodded.

“Hi, Keith.”

“Stop sucking face and get me a beer!” Alan snapped, and Hank grunted, looking to see if Josie had heard. She hadn’t—small blessings.

“There is no beer in this job,” Hank said evenly, and Alan made that little whining sound that Hank deplored so much. Of course, when they’d been together, Hank had found it adorable. That had changed when Hank had walked into their apartment and heard him making it with Keith buried to the hilt up his backside. Poor Keith. Alan had hidden the pictures and told him it was his apartment alone. Keith wasn’t that bright, but he’d been mortified. Well, that was okay—now it was Keith and Alan’s apartment. Hank had been coming home early to tell Alan about his big promotion at the bank they worked at—and now Hank was Alan’s boss.

They’d had to settle into an angry détente—jobs in the financial world were hard to come by these days, and neither of them wanted to look for a new position. So Hank made the teller schedule and did the counts and Alan made snide comments about Hank buying his suits from a funeral home, used. Hank’s raise was enough for him to make a down payment on the house, so moving out was timely, and it was all copacetic—or, at least for Hank, drama free.

And it worked out well when Alan wanted to take an extra day off for Thanksgiving. Hank had a teller with a new baby who needed the hours, but requisitioning for overtime was a pain in the ass, and not the kind Hank used to give Alan, either. This had been Hank’s compromise—come over, break down the bedroom, paint it, and help him decorate it. Three strong men could do it in eight hours, when it would take Hank all weekend by himself.

Of course the downside was working with Alan.

“What do you mean, no beer?” Alan asked, curling up his lip. He had a small pretty face, and a slight build—a born in the butt bottom, as he liked to say—as well as blond hair that he could grow fashionably long. (Hank had tried to grow his thick, brown hair long in college, when they’d been dating. Gel, blow-dryer, it didn’t matter—more than two inches of length, and Hank had what they’d called back in the ’70s, a “’fro.” It was not a good look for him.)

“No beer,” Hank repeated. “I’ve been a little too busy to have a beer lately, is that okay with you? Now here, let me show you what I need done.” He took the guys back to the bedroom and explained the situation—he’d stripped the bed that morning when Josie had been eating her cereal, and he had Alan and Keith on their way to his garage with the mattress when Justin came knocking at the door.

He answered it, hot and breathless, and startled enough to smile warmly when he saw Justin there, fidgeting, wearing his trademark Cal-Fit jacket.

“Come in,” Hank said, gesturing. “Geez, Justin, aren’t you cold?”

Justin had just opened his mouth to answer when Josie saw him, and unlike Alan and Keith, Justin was not to be ignored.

“Justin!” she squealed, and came running across the living room through the entryway. “You came! Hank said you’d come, but you weren’t there last night so I thought you might be gone. People go sometimes. But you’re not, and we’re going to see Santa, right?”

Justin squatted down and hugged her, and talked to her from that level, earning Hank’s eternal appreciation.

“Of course we’re going to go see Santa. And then, if it’s okay with your Uncle Hank, we’re meeting my sister-in-law with her kids at Chuck E. Cheese, and you can play there. Do you want to do that?”

Josie’s face lit up. “Oh yes!” She turned to Hank. “Can I go, Uncle Hank? Can I? Oh, please? Mommy never took me because she said it was ’spensive, and I’ve never been!”

Hank cringed at the thought of Chuck E. Cheese—oh hells, the lights, the noise, the giant rat, the crappy pizza… and then he looked at Justin, squatting in his entry way and smiling like he knew exactly what Hank was thinking. Hank saw that smile, the slightly crooked front two teeth, how his cheeks dimpled up, the way his blue eyes crinkled in the corners, and his stomach got even more fluttery. He had the sudden realization that Justin was taking her to the dreaded faux-pizza den of the six-foot rat, and Hank was going to be completely in the clear.

Oh geez, it was enough to make a guy fall a little in love, right there.

“Of course you can, Bunny,” he said, smiling back at Justin and feeling a little shell-shocked. “I’ll just go get some money for games and things.”

“No, Mr. Calder. That’s all right!” Justin stood and put his hand on Hank’s arm as Hank was turning around.

It wasn’t Hank’s sore arm, and he didn’t flutter or grab too hard, but suddenly the two of them stopped still and looked at Justin’s chilled red fingers on Hank’s bicep. Hank shivered, and covered the hand with his own, and turned back around, smiling hesitantly.

“You’re a college student, Justin, and you’re doing a really wonderful thing here. Please let me pay for her games.”

Justin nodded, and Hank wasn’t imagining it—a dull red settled under his eyes and across his high cheekbones.

“Thanks, Mr. Calder,” Justin said quietly. “I appreciate it.”

“Well, hel-lo gorgeous!”

Both of them jerked when Alan came in from the garage through the kitchen entrance, Keith at his heels.

“Here, Bunny,” Hank said, bending down to heft Josie into his arms. “Let’s go get some money for Justin and a bag of clothes for you, just in case, okay?” One of his first lessons about having a little girl was that little girls had accidents. If Josie was going to be gone for more than a few hours, an extra change of clothes was very, very necessary. He looked up to where Alan and Keith were zeroing in on Justin and smiled apologetically.

“Justin, this is Alan and Keith. They’re helping me out with the bed. Alan and Keith, this is Justin. Don’t talk to him, don’t touch him, and if you have to communicate, do it in Morse code with your bulging eyeballs, are we clear?”

He scowled in particular at Alan, who rolled his eyes and said, “Touch—ee!” and Hank decided this whole thing would go best if it went quickly.

“Okay, Bunny,” he muttered, “let’s work fast, because I’m telling you, Alan works faster.”

Josie, encouraged by the triple threat of Justin, Santa, and Chuck E. Cheese, wasted no time at all in helping to pick out her clothes as well as Lisa, her very bestest most special doll. They were back in the entryway no more than three minutes after they’d left.

Alan was already holding Justin’s arm companionably as he and Keith laughed about something. To his credit, Justin looked like he was trying to escape.

“Alan, hands off before I break your fingers.” The words sounded mild, but Alan let go quickly with a sniff.

“Jesus, Henry, you’re the one who always says you don’t like drama!”

“Well, you’re the one causing it. Go start breaking down the bookcases. Set them up in the garage and move the books. I need to call to see if the delivery is on time.” With that he transferred Josie from his arms to Justin’s, and then gave Justin the bag. “Okay, I’ve got an extra set of clothes, her health insurance card—it’s Kaiser—and one of those little school ID cards, and I know you have my phone number and—”

“It’s okay, Henry,” Justin said, laughing. “It’s fine. Remember—I’ve done this before!”

Hank flushed, and then he realized that Justin had called him Henry, not Hank or Mr. Calder, and he caught his breath again and looked into those dark blue eyes.

Justin winked at him. “Henry,” he said again, with inflection, “I do know how to deal without the drama, okay? Now give your Uncle Hank a kiss, Josie-bunny, and we can leave.”

Josie pursed her lips dutifully, and Hank went in for the kiss—and blew a bubble on them instead. Josie broke into a cackle of glee, and that’s the sound she was making as Justin turned around and took her out the door.

Hank turned around to Alan and Keith—who hadn’t left yet—and scowled.

“You two are, under no circumstances, ever, to touch the babysitter. You are not to talk to him, not to molest him, not to lure him over to pervert central with free beer. You are not to show him your etchings, and I swear to heaven, Alan you asshole, if you so much as fondle his shirt, I will fire you.”

Alan winked. “Now, now, Henry. You know if you do that, you’ll probably lose your job too!”

Hank looked at Keith, who was watching the two of them with the avidity of a tennis enthusiast at Wimbledon, and then grabbed Alan’s arm and frog-marched him down the hall. “Excuse us, Keith,” he called back, “I need to talk to him a minute.”

They got to Josie’s room and Hank pinned his ex-boyfriend to the wall with a glare. “Alan, you’re right. I may not be able to fire you without losing my job, but if you so much as talk dirty to that boy, I will do worse than fire you.”

Alan rolled his eyes in disbelief.

“You doubt that? I guarantee, if you touch a hair on his sweet twinkie little head, I will personally tell every person you are screwing about the other four people you are screwing, including your little experiment in bisexuality, Julie.”

Alan’s mouth had dropped open. “How in the hell—”

“Do you think you’re the only one who likes drama, Alan? I swear to God, you can’t take a piss at work without someone walking into the bathroom and spilling all the business you never wanted to know.” Well, technically, he’d been in the stall, so he’d been doing more than taking a piss, but the point was, he’d overheard plenty—most of it from Alan himself.

Alan’s eyes narrowed and his lip curled. “God, you just can’t stand the idea of anyone else having fun, can you? Just have to go make the whole rest of the world as goddamned Puritan as you are!”

Hank grunted. “The Puritans weren’t big on treating people decent, Alan. Find another comparison, but leave me, and my niece, and my niece’s babysitter out of it. Now you’re the one who wanted the day off, and I’m the one who has to deal with the paperwork. You want to make that happen? Move your scrawny uncomfortable ass.”

Alan gasped and held his hand to his mouth like that was the most offensive thing about the conversation, and Hank ignored him and started shuttling books.

 

 

THEY DID it. He was ready to strangle Alan (and have Keith canonized!) by the time they were done, but when Alan and Keith left—Alan actually too tired to bitch, and Keith very grateful for both the day off to visit his parents before Christmas and the pizza and beer Hank had bought—the room was done.

Hank was in there shutting the window, which had been left open to get rid of some of the paint smell, when there was a knock on the door. He practically ran down the hall, he was so excited to see what Josie would think about it. They’d painted one wall pink and all of the trim in the room lavender, and although they’d left the other four walls white, Hank had put up posters of Disney princesses and Bubble Guppies and Dora the Explorer all over, but that wasn’t the best part. The best part was the day bed—the kind that looked like a long couch and had a little trundle cot that slid underneath—that was all set up in the corner. Hank had ordered it in lavender and also bought a pink comforter with a white eyelet sham with matching pillowcases and pillow shams and even a little canopy.

That bed looked like an iced party cake and Hank was dying, dying for her to see it, so she could know that she had a home in Hank’s little house, and that she could stay there as long as she wanted.

He threw the front door open, as excited as he’d ever been about Christmas, only to find her asleep over Justin’s shoulder, so exhausted she was leaving a little puddle of drool on the shoulder of his thin company windbreaker.

Hank was so disappointed it felt like he shrank.

“Here,” he said softly, “I’ll take her.”

Justin shook his head. “Let me put her down, Henry. Odds are better she won’t wake up that way.”

Hank didn’t protest that he wanted her to wake up, because that had happened once, when he’d gotten her from Mrs. Watson’s daycare really late, and at 1:00 a.m. that night, when she’d finally dropped off to sleep, he’d sworn never ever again.

He gestured Justin down the hall instead, turning on the hall light as Justin walked into what was obviously her bedroom, so Justin wouldn’t have to turn on the pink tiffany lamp that Hank had installed on the new white bookshelves. He slipped into the darkened room as Justin pulled back the comforter with his free hand, and then laid the limp little body down on the clean pink sheets. Justin was very careful then, taking off her shoes and her coat, and leaving her in her second set of clothes—stretch pants and a T-shirt, which were damned close to pajamas—before pulling the blankets up and tucking them under her chin.

Hank bent down and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek before she could wake up and then followed him out of the room into the hallway.

“Well, I—” Justin started to say, and then Hank said, “Thank you so much for—” and then they both stopped and looked at each other bashfully in the middle of the hallway. Finally Hank reminded himself that he was the older of the two of them, and it was his job to break the ice.

“We have real pizza,” he said hopefully. “And beer, that is, if you’re… uhm, you know. Twenty-one yet. And if not I’ve got milk. But, would you—”

Justin brightened while he was talking, like the light that made him Justin from the inside had been flipped on.

“I’d totally love to!” he said, keeping his voice quiet, even if his gestures started to get a little loud. “And don’t worry, Henry, I turned twenty-one in November, so you’re totally safe. Not corrupting a minor or anything.”

Hank had been leading him down the hall and he turned around and looked at him sharply over that. Justin returned the look cheekily, and Hank turned back around, resolute.

“Why ‘Henry’?” he asked as they got to the kitchen, and Justin didn’t miss a beat.

“Because Mr. Calder’s too formal, and that other guy called you ‘Henry’ and it pissed me off.”

Hank was in the kitchen by now, and he turned slightly, looking at Justin wryly. “Well, people do that when you’ve got history. The only two people to call me ‘Henry’ have been Alan and my mother.” And his sister, but he wasn’t going to mention that.

“And now me,” Justin said, waggling his eyebrows.

Hank had no choice but to laugh. He reached into the refrigerator and pulled out two microbrews. “I’ve got pizza, if you like. Slightly higher quality than Chuck E. Cheese.”

“Please?” Justin begged, holding his hands up like a puppy dog. “Please please please please pleeeze! I’m dying for something to wipe the taste of Chuck E. Cheese pizza outta my gullet… I’d mug your mother for a decent piece of pizza!”

Ah, gods, laughter, quiet laughter. It really was a luxury. “Don’t mug my mother,” Hank said, the chuckles freeing something inside him. He handed Justin the plate with the last five pieces on it and added, “She never had money for pizza.”

“Now tha’s a cwyin shame,” Justin said through a full mouth. He closed his eyes for a blissful moment and chewed. After he swallowed he said, “Omigah—is that Mountain Mike’s? Us broke college students never eat at Mountain Mike’s!” He took another bite, his face lit up and happy in total ecstasy over the pizza. For a moment, Hank let himself bask in the pleasure of a completely happy human being.

“Come sit in the living room if you like,” Hank said. He moved across the little hallway and pulled the coffee table in front of the brown corduroy couch, getting two coasters and a placemat from the compartment underneath for the beers. He took the recliner and put his coaster on the end table next to it. He had one of those little organizers on the arm of the recliner, and had just pulled out the remote when Justin came in and settled down.

“No, no,” Justin said hurriedly. “Don’t turn the TV on. Let’s talk.”

Hank paused midclick and wondered what his expression must have been. He didn’t have to wonder long.

“Ohmygah! Jeeezus, Henry! I’m not going to torture you with tongs! I just get distracted by anything pretty, and I’m more in the mood to be distracted by you!”

Henry looked at him. “Because I’m not pretty?” It was more for clarification than because he was fishing for compliments, and he was unprepared for the adult, predatory look to cross Justin’s baby face.

“You’re plenty pretty, Hank. But right now, I’m more interested in your mind.”

Hank snorted. “That’s a switch.”

“We’re not all like your… whatever that was… Alan.”

“We’re?” Hank asked, flummoxed for a moment.

“Us drama queens,” Justin said with a wicked grin. “We’re not all like your friend, ex-friend… okay, what is he to you? Cause whatever it is, I don’t see it!”

Henry took a swig of his beer and swiveled the recliner so he could see Justin instead of the television. “He was my boyfriend. My first serious one, actually.” Sigh. “More serious for me than him I guess.”

“What makes you say that?” Justin took a dainty bite of his new slice of pizza, as if to make up for stuffing his face from the last one, and washed it down with a sip of beer.

“Finding him in bed with someone else,” Hank said. He was, he realized, walking a difficult balance between trying not to be a dick and trying not to spill his guts on the floor. Nobody liked guts with their pizza—talk about unappetizing!

“Nice. Did you really find him in bed? Because you hear that all the time, but you gotta think, like, sometimes, you just catch one guy walking out of the apartment, and then there’s confession time, or, you know, you see a kiss or—”

“Alan was in our bed, screaming ‘Fuck me harder with that thing!’ and Keith was behind him, doing what Alan said.” Hank had to admit, he did get a perverse pleasure out of watching Justin try very, very hard not to spit pizza out all over his plate. When Justin had mastered himself, and after he’d knocked back another swallow of beer, he cocked his head thoughtfully.

“That was a lot of drama,” he said, and Hank found himself looking into a pair of surprisingly intense blue eyes.

“Yeah, well, I’ve seen worse,” he admitted.

“Mm…” This time Justin was eating thoughtfully, and Hank supposed he was enjoying the hell out of just watching this guy eat. It was like every mouthful was a different mood. He swallowed, and Hank was sure another question was coming. He was wrong.

“My mom’s the dramatic one in my family,” Justin said, smiling. “She can turn any moment into a joke or a reason to laugh. My dad likes to play practical jokes—stupid ones, like pulling down your pants if you’re wearing them too low or playing hide and go seek when you’ve been reading and you’re not sure if anyone’s in the house. They do this haunted house every year for Halloween—it’s huge, and scary, and the louder the music the better. It always scares the hell out of the neighborhood kids, so my sister Brenna and I are the last two left at home, and we always have to go meet the little ones Josie’s age and take them by the hand and show them how it’s not as scary as they think.” Justin laughed softly. “There’s this one little girl on our block—red hair, blue eyes, freckles, cute as hell and a bossy little shit, too. This last year she left her older brother at the sidewalk with their mom and stalked up to our porch all resolute and everything—she’s like five, right? And she’s got her little pumpkin in front of her, and she’s a little witch with a black hat, and she’s frickin’ adorable, right?” Justin’s shoulders went back, and he clutched his pizza plate in front of him like a little girl clutching a handbag. He widened his eyes and pursed his mouth to a little girl’s kewpie doll pucker, right down to making his rather lush lower lip tremble, and Hank started to laugh.

Justin kept going. “Anyway, she gets almost up to us, and the lights start going and the ghost drops from the tree and the big cackle comes out of the sound effects machine, and she doesn’t scream, she just turns right around and stalks back to mom and her brother, saying, ‘I’m not old enough! I’m not old enough! I’m not old enough! You go!’” And now he mimicked her shoulders and her posture and Hank had this image of this pudgy five year old, being absolutely in control at the same time she was frightened to death.

By this time he was laughing so hard he could barely breathe, and as he wiped his eyes and calmed down his breathing, he saw that Justin was grinning wickedly, chuckling through another bite of pizza.

“That’s awesome,” Hank breathed, still coming down. “I can totally see her. How’d her older brother take it?”

Justin grinned some more. “Oh, Kaden’s all about the science of the thing. I swear, he’s like, eight, right, and he’s like, ‘Evelyn, I told you that at our age we’re too imaginative to confront a manifestation of our fears!’”

“Oh get out! No way an eight year old said that!”

“No, I swear! This kid is something else. Their mom just stands back and listens to them talk and crosses her eyes. She’s a trip—she’s perfectly willing to let them amuse the hell out of her. I love it!”

Hank sobered a little, still feeling the release of laughing so hard. “Yeah, kids are a trip. I always wanted them, you know? Alan wasn’t so excited, but I always knew I was going to have some someday.” And he remembered Josie, sleeping soundly down the hall. “I wasn’t exactly planning on it being quite so soon,” he said, his voice quiet and thoughtful. “I don’t regret it, but, well, it caught me off guard.”

Justin nodded, and set down the empty plate of pizza, then drained his beer. “What happened?”

“Would you like another beer?” Hank asked, making to stand up. “Here, I’ll get your plate for you and get us another round.”

“I’d mostly like for you to not dodge the question,” Justin said, and unlike when he was telling the story, his entire body was absolutely still, waiting, like Hank was a feral cat and Justin was going to gentle him into submission.

“Well, I’ll get us another beer anyway.” Hank stood up and took Justin’s plate as well as the placemat and everything else into the kitchen. “They’re the last two in the fridge. No, no, don’t get up. Get comfy, turn on the television—I’ll just be a moment.”

Justin sighed behind him. As he cleared the living room, he heard Justin on his cell phone, telling someone not to wait up for him. When Hank returned, after rinsing off the plate and wiping off the placemat and putting them in the rack to dry, Justin was sliding the phone back in his pocket.

“My mom,” Justin said, neither apologetic nor sheepish. “She worries if I don’t let her know I’m okay. She figured I’d be late. I told her we’d probably end up talking after I brought Josie back.”

Hank handed him the opened beer, surprised. “You knew we’d—”

“Well, I’ve been crushing on you for months, thinking you were straight. No way I was going to let you go without at least a little conversation!” Justin was smiling again, inviting Hank to share the joke, but Hank couldn’t. Months? Months, and Hank had just pushed him away, dismissed him, because he liked to move his hands a lot. It didn’t speak well of Hank, that was for—

“You’re feeling all guilty, aren’t you?” Justin asked, that wicked grin still in place.

“No!” Hank lied.

“Of course you are—look at you. Your house is totally neat; you do everything by the book. I mean, you had a placemat for pizza on the coffee table for Pete’s sake! Yup. Little bit of raging-queen-o-phobia, and you’re all freakin’ out on yourself for not being a better person. I can read the signs.”

Damn. And now Justin had made Hank smile again. Hank took a drink of his newly cold beer. He needed to change the subject.

“Do your parents know?” he asked randomly, and Justin blinked. Good. For once he was surprised.

“That I’m gay?”

“Yeah.”

Justin shook his head. “Nope!”

Hank snickered hard enough to spit out his beer. “The hell they don’t!”

Justin laughed. “Well, we haven’t officially had the talk, how’s that?”

Well, Hank hadn’t had “the talk” until college either. “Why not?”

“I don’t know. I guess there’s no reason to yet. Nobody serious yet, no reason to rock their world.”

Hank nodded. “Yeah.”

“Did you have the talk?” Justin asked, and Hank looked despairingly at his beer. The beer was full, the pizza was cleaned up, and he hadn’t heard a peep out of Josie in the last hour. It wasn’t even like the memory was that bad.

“It was anticlimactic,” he said with another swig of his beer. “No drama, nothing to talk about.”

“Well, tell me anyway.” Justin toed off his trendy little lace-less sneakers and curled his feet up under his bottom, then leaned on the arm of the couch, propping his chin up on his hand. He looked sweet and defenseless sitting there, and Hank found that he trusted that complete lack of defense. For all his drama, there was nothing about Justin that Hank couldn’t see right in front of him.

“Okay,” Hank said, leaning forward moodily and resting his forearms on his knees, holding his beer between his palms. “Here’s the thing. Alan and I were going to move in together—find an apartment and everything—so we could stop having to listen to his roommate have sex when she thought we were gone. So I came home to tell my mom that I was gay, I was moving out, and all those sleepovers hadn’t been just to watch movies, and as we get there, my sister Amanda hauls ass out of the house screaming, ‘Because you’re a bitch and I hate you!’”

Justin squeezed his eyes shut and then opened them again wide. “And you said there wasn’t going to be any drama.”

“Yeah, well not on our part. For once, Alan kept his mouth shut, and we go into the kitchen. Mom’s cracking open a new bottle of whiskey and pouring herself a giant glass, and she looks up at me and says, ‘Yeah, what?’”

“Oh dear.”

“Yeah. Anyway, Mom’s sort of formidable—big woman, wide shoulders, don’t-fuck-with-me jaw—and she scared the holy hell out of Alan, and he reached for my hand and I squeezed it to let him know it was all right. And Mom, she just raises her eyebrows, plonks down on the kitchen chair, and starts downing the whiskey like it was iced tea.”

“What’d she say?”

“Well, first I said, ‘Mom, this is Alan, my boyfriend, we’re moving in together,’ or, you know, something to that effect, and then Mom polishes off her giant glass of alcohol and says, ‘Fucking lovely. You’re gay, your sister’s pregnant, and I’m moving to fucking Reno. Feel free to send me a postcard, Henry, I’ll be really happy to hear from you.’”

Justin was scrubbing his face with his hands by then. “Oh, Henry, I’m so sorry.”

Hank shrugged. “What for? It didn’t matter. She was still my mother. She’d just had enough of Amanda, that was all. Mandy’s boyfriend was a real loser, and Mom dared to ask—just ask, mind you—if maybe raising a baby alone was more than a high school senior could manage, but Mandy was freaking stubborn. Mom apparently had been planning the move for months. She’d sprung it on Mandy that morning, and Mandy came back with ‘I’m pregnant’ and then….” He shrugged.

“Then you walked in, and your little bomb wasn’t hardly a fart in the wind.”

Hank laughed a little and shrugged. “Drama,” he said pragmatically. “Like I said, it’s overrated.”

“Mmm…” Justin said, but it wasn’t a dissenting sound. “I hear you—but you know little girls like some drama, right?”

Hank thought of Josie, fast asleep in her new room. “Yeah,” he sighed. “I know.”

“So, you and, uhm, Santa—you’ve got the hookup? Christmas is in three weeks, you know.”

Hank had to laugh. “You mean the house not being decorated? Yeah. Well, I’m taking Monday off. The social worker is coming at nine, I’m dropping Josie off at daycare after that, and then it’s all about Christmas shopping. I figured when that was done, I’d get Josie early and we could decorate.”

“Are you getting a tree?” Justin asked, his expression avid, and Hank could tell he was excited about this just because it was Christmas.

“Tomorrow,” Hank said, smiling. “I was going to go to a lot with Josie.” He hesitated, and then asked shyly, “Did you want to come?”

Justin’s smile was so damned bashful Hank almost wiggled in his seat. “Very much, but I work tomorrow.” Justin perked up. “I’m off Monday, though! I’ve got a final at nine, but I can meet you back here in time to go Christmas shopping. Can we do that? Then I can come back and help you decorate.”

Hank laughed, because Justin had just invited himself over and insinuated himself into Hank’s plans and his day and his life, and Hank had no impetus to say no.

In fact…

“Hey,” he said shyly, “do you, uhm, want to see what I was thinking about getting for her?”

Justin sat up perkily and nodded with so much force his hair flopped back and forth off his forehead. “Yeah! Yeah—absolutely.”

Hank got off the seductively comfortable recliner and yawned outrageously. “I’m sorry—I didn’t realize that was coming. I hope—I mean, I know you called your mom and everything, and you’re welcome to stay later, I just….” He flushed. “I don’t want you to stay here if you’re bored or anything.”

Justin’s smile was sweet and wicked. “Well, Hank, it’s not like you’re my first sleepover.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. My best friend Shelia in high school used to have me over all the time.”

Hank made the time honored fishhook gesture, to indicate that Justin had caught him fair and square; then he walked around to the other side of the coffee table so he could get into the locked drawer next to the place mats. He felt Justin’s presence there acutely, and just as he’d jimmied the drawer open (the lock had long ago ceased to be functional) he felt a tentative hand on his backside.

There were not enough letters in the language to describe the sound that came out of his mouth.

“You like?” Justin asked, and Hank pulled in a breath that felt like water.

“I’d be lying if I said no,” he confessed, thinking he should move. Justin’s hand got a little more personal, curling around Hank’s cheek and squeezing, and Hank let his breath out on a little grunt. “But.” He swallowed. “See, Josie really loves you, and if you decide this is a bad idea and disappear….” Justin’s hand slid away, the fingertips lingering for a moment.

“I get it,” Justin said, his good humor intact. “Drama.”

Hank grabbed the stacks of marked up toy catalog in the drawer and crab-walked away, moving to the less personal space of the recliner.

“I appreciate it,” he mumbled, unable to look Justin in the eyes. Then Justin giggled, and he had no choice. “What?”

Again, that wicked look from that gamine face. “You act like I’m not going to try again, Henry. Look, I may be relatively inexperienced, but I’m not giving up after one grope!”

“But I’m a dick!”

Justin said “pfft” and waved his hand. “And I’m a drama queen. I mean, I’ve been behaving, but you and I both know I’m gonna snap sometime soon and you’re going to have to decide if I’m worth all that trouble!” He smiled, wiggled his shoulders, and crossed his legs before placing his clasped hands on his knee. “We’re just going to hope that by then, I’ll have made myself indispensable enough that you’ll decide I really am.”

Hank couldn’t help it. In fact, he was coming to realize that he could never help it around Justin. He laughed.

“Okay, drama queen,” he said, smiling with everything in his body. “Are you gay enough to shop for a four-year old girl?” He offered Justin the catalog from the coffee table.

“Omigah! Are you really getting her that? Of course I can shop for that!” Justin was fawning over the picture that Hank had marked, and Hank didn’t have the heart to tell him that his drama queen was already rearing its pretty little head.

“Well, I want to see it in the store first,” Hank said, chewing on his lip a little with uncertainty. “You know, sometimes the pictures look so awesome, but you see it in real life and it’s just tacky. But I figure if we go check it out on Monday, if they don’t have some of the stuff I want in the store, we can get it online.”

Justin nodded his head, looking suitably impressed. “But that’s not the only thing, right? I mean, I know, all little girls want one of these!” And with that, he pointed out a little plastic vanity table that Hank hadn’t seen at all.

They stayed up half the night. They picked out toys to check out at the store for Josie, raided the cupboard for Ho-Hos (which Hank kept in the back, for those really, really bad days), talked about workout regimens and Justin’s plans when he finished college. They giggled over old crushes and bad mistakes—Justin’s first boyfriend who was now married, with the second child pending, or Hank’s first blowjob, given in a movie theater and discovered by a very unimpressed usher. (“So you still can’t go to that Regal in Natomas?” Justin asked, and Hank had to admit that no, he was still blacklisted.)

Hank didn’t remember when he stopped talking, but he woke up around three in the morning because the hand under his chin gave out and he fell sideways. He looked to see Justin stretched out on the couch, his head resting uncomfortably on the arm, which was a surefire way to fuck up your neck. Hank went to the closet and got a spare pillow and an afghan, and came back to make the poor guy more comfortable. He covered Justin up to his chin with the afghan, trying hard not to look at his plump lips and the fading freckles on his cheeks, and then shoved his arm under the surprisingly solid shoulders and slid the pillow under his head. He pulled back for a moment and was arrested by the open eyes, blinking sleepily at him.

“Aren’t you going to kiss me goodnight, Prince Charming?” Justin slurred, and Hank was just tired enough, just happy enough from the best evening he’d had in he couldn’t remember when, to place what he thought was going to be a chaste peck on Justin’s oh-so-kissable mouth.

Justin opened for him, though, and Hank slid into his waiting, wet mouth with ease and heat, and a surprising, gut-wrenching hunger. He slid his hands up to frame Justin’s face, and Justin took his position on the bottom and took over, clasping Hank’s forearms with urgency. Hank finally pulled back, panting, and rested his forehead against Justin’s; he was trying not to start groping the guy under his shirt.

“Oh, thank God,” Justin breathed. “I’d built that up so big in my head, I was starting to doubt it could live up to that picture.”

Hank pushed his next breath out on a laugh. “That was a total and complete surprise,” he said. “You could knock me over with a feather.” Justin kneading his swollen groin was unexpected enough to make him stand up and yelp.

“But first you’d have to pound nails with your penis.” Justin smirked, but his eyes were closing in spite of his smile. “Night, Henry. I told you I’d try again.”

Hank very carefully maneuvered his hips out of Justin’s reach and bent down and kissed his forehead. “Night, Justin,” he said softly. “I’m sort of hoping you’ll keep on trying.”

Justin giggled a little, even as Hank turned off the lamp and left him sleeping in the darkened room.