Drama

 

 

CHRISTMAS EVE loomed in four days, and Hank was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

It had to, right?

He’d just been so damned happy.

Yes—work, Josie, clean the house, repeat daily as necessary—all of that was still there. But, like he’d imagined, having Justin to fill the quiet places in all that routine also filled the empty places in Hank. Having him spend the night—quite a lot of them, for two weeks—well, damn.

Hank could never remember waking up every morning and being so incredibly grateful.

Josie had woken up that first night that Justin slept over and tiptoed into Hank’s room. (He’d expected this—they were both chastely dressed in sleep shorts and T-shirts by then.) Hank had walked her back to her own this night, but she’d seen Justin, still sleeping, on the other side of the bed.

“Will he be here in the morning?” she’d asked, as he pulled the covers up to her chin.

“Yes,” Hank said, not doubting it for a moment.

“Good,” she yawned. “I can sleep if he’s going to be here.”

Hank had no idea how that worked, but as he’d gone back to bed and pulled Justin against him, he’d thought blearily that it was probably just magic.

 

 

SO TWO weeks later, the biggest thing he was stressing about was what to get Justin for Christmas. He’d gone back to the bath shop and bought Sky—the entire line, bath scrub, body spray, shaving cream, man-sturizer, the works! But it didn’t seem enough. Although it was personal, maybe the most personal thing he’d ever bought for a man (Alan had preferred gift certificates and DVDs) it just didn’t encompass all of the good things, all of the hope and the joy and the oxygen that Justin had brought into his life.

So when Hank sat down at his desk after his lunchtime run, the question of whether gloves were lame as a gift and a worry about taping the Charlie Brown Christmas special on television that night were the only two things on his mind.

And then his desk phone rang and his world ended.

“Henry! How ya doin’, big brother? How’s my baby girl?”

Hank had heard about a person’s “bowels turning to ice,” but even though he’d been in a car wreck when he was seventeen, he’d never had it happen to him.

Until now.

He almost hung up the phone, but like social niceties, cowardice wasn’t his strong suit either.

“Hello, Amanda,” he said, pulling out the files he’d been planning to review and a pen and pretending like this was any other office call. “You couldn’t use my cell phone?”

“Didn’t want you to hang up on me,” she said impishly. “You can’t turn the office phone off!” No one had ever said she was stupid.

“Yes, well, only cowards run away,” he said coldly and was not surprised to hear her gasp.

“That’s not fair, Henry! I was desperate!”

“You were tired!” he snapped back. “And I totally would have helped you out, but you didn’t ask for that, did you! You just…” his voice threatened to shake and break and he took a deep breath. “You abandoned your child, and you were just lucky you left her with me, because Josie’s in a good place now. I’m just waiting to see what fresh hell you’ve got waiting for your daughter now.”

“Henry! Don’t be mean to me! I want to come back!”

“Why?” Hank lashed out, hating himself but unable to stop. “So you can dress her up like a doll and parade her in front of your friends? So you can leave her alone while you go to the movies? Yeah, Amanda—she told me about that. She told me that you snuck out while she was sleeping, and she told me about different men every morning.”

“God, the kid’s a freakin’ narc!” Amanda whined, and Hank took a deep breath and tried to control himself. This… this blame thing wasn’t going to help the situation. Besides that, his voice was rising, and his co-workers were eyeballing him and, dammit, he didn’t like drama!

“What did you need, Amanda?” Hank asked, because that had to be the only reason she called, right?

“I just…” Amanda’s voice dropped. “I just wanted to see her, that’s all,” she said. “I… I was passing through town and I wanted to wish her a Merry Christmas. Is that so freakin’ bad?”

Oh hells. “No,” he said shortly, running his fingers through his hair. No. It wasn’t. Amanda was young, and it was Christmas, and it wasn’t so freakin’ bad to want to see your family at Christmas. “Are you going to try to take her from me?” he asked, surprised when he said it, shocked at how close this fear was to the surface.

“I wouldn’t mind if she wanted to come with me!” Amanda said excitedly. “I’ve got this sweet setup in Lincoln now, and my boyfriend says he likes kids and wouldn’t mind her. My best friend lives in the same complex and we’ve got a pool and—”

“Please,” he said, his voice tinny and echoing in his ears. “Please rethink that,” he said when he could get his breath. “The social worker just okayed her for my house, and we’ve got a routine and a daycare worker and….” Oh God. Justin and Josie, they were… they were his home and his everything. She couldn’t just swoop in and take half his everything, could she? “I fixed up her room and we’ve got plans for Christmas.” No, oh please, Amanda, I gave you all my toys when we were kids, I fed you, I walked you home from school, and I never wanted anything, being your family was enough. Please don’t take this thing, this one thing, away from me when it’s so close to all I ever wanted.

“Oh Henry!” Amanda laughed. “God, you’re so uptight! She’s a kid! She’ll be fine wherever she is. Some television, some McDonald’s, she’s all good!”

“Right,” Hank said bitterly. “Because God knows we both turned out just fine!”

There was a wounded silence on the other end of the line, and then Amanda inhaled. Hank recognized that inhale—it was the sound Amanda made right before she dug her heels in.

“I’ll be there tonight. I’ll let you know if I’m taking her with me then.”

Amanda hung up and Hank was left at his work desk, shivering, trying to tell himself that those were not tears burning tightly in the back of his throat.

Suddenly he wanted Justin. He needed Justin. He told his supervisor that he was not feeling well and excused himself from his afternoon, then made a beeline for the gym.

When he got there, he flashed his ID and went straight back to the gym daycare, so focused on talking to Justin that he actually stopped short when he heard Justin’s voice come out of an empty workout classroom to his left.

He didn’t sound happy.

“Justin! Baby!” came a female voice that Hank dimly identified as Justin’s supervisor. “You’ve got to calm down. It sounds like things are going great—I don’t know what your problem is!”

“You don’t get it, Jackie!” Justin wailed, and as Hank backed up and leaned against the wall, the better to eavesdrop, just hearing his voice—even distraught—eased something in Hank’s chest and slowed his heartbeat. Justin charmed children, small animals, grim social workers, and Hank. Surely, Justin would find a way to convince Amanda that Josie needed to stay with him, stay with them, so this warm, almost painfully gratifying sensation of home didn’t need to evaporate like sweat after a run.

“What don’t I get? He’s a nice guy, he likes children—hell, he has one built in—and I’ve seen him look at you. I think he sort of worships you. It’s weird. What’s the problem?”

“He doesn’t like drama,” Justin said, and Hank grimaced. Well, he’d made that clear, hadn’t he? “And I want to bring him home. Home. You’ve met my mother! She’ll call in the whole family and they’ll grill him and I’ll be coming out too and there will be tears and… drama! And… I… I don’t want to scare him off, but… it’s so stupid.” Justin’s voice broke a little. “I just want to bring him home for Christmas.”

Hank found himself laughing a little—not from Justin’s misery, because he was pretty sure he could put an end to that—but from Justin’s enthusiasm. The way his voice broke on “Christmas,” the way his enthusiasm had to be measured in joules and not degrees. Oh God, how had Hank made it? How had he made it through the first week of parenthood, through his whole adult life thus far, without knowing Justin?

He opened the door then and stepped inside. “Hey, Jackie,” he said, smiling a little, “can Justin and I have a minute?”

She was a wide-hipped, buxom girl with corkscrewed brown hair, and she nodded, looking grateful. “You guys have fifteen minutes before the next class, ’kay?” With that, she shouldered her way out into the hallway, leaving Hank and Justin alone.

Hank opened his arms and gestured with his hands and Justin flew into his chest and sniffled. Hank clung to him, kissing his temple and fighting back a smile in the wake of his obvious misery.

“You heard everything?” Justin asked after a moment and Hank nodded.

“Uhm-hm.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, drama queen, you didn’t scare me off.”

“No?” Justin looked up at him hopefully, and Hank shook his head.

“No. But I do have a request.”

Justin’s wide blue eyes were shiny and his lashes were spiked with tears as he looked up and nodded. It was an appealing look—helpless and vulnerable like that—but Hank knew better. Justin was plenty strong.

Hank kissed his forehead. “Tell your mom that you’re gay first, and then ask if Josie and I can come to Christmas Eve dinner.”

Justin wrinkled his forehead. “But—”

“Yeah, I know Alan and I did it that way. But I needed the hand, because my mom wasn’t exactly the warmest person, and I never felt safe. Not even with Alan. The whole reason he agreed to come was because he didn’t think I had the balls to do it. Not with mom. Not with anyone, really,” he said, and he knew that would hurt Justin, but he didn’t know how to make it not. He held Justin a little tighter. “I’m working on that part, okay?”

Justin nodded.

“If your parents are the people you’ve told me about—the people who made you—you don’t need me for this. But I need to know I’m not walking Josie into Drama Kitchen on a holiday, okay?”

Justin choked on a hiccup. “Oh. Oh God. Ohmygah! You’re right! I’m so stupid! I didn’t even think! I was just thinking about you and I didn’t even think about Josie ohmygah ohmygah ohmygah—I’m so sorry!”

Hank closed his eyes really tight and kissed him, thinking their ten minutes were about up. “Justin, you’re a total drama queen, and I love you. You’re wonderful,” he stated. “Josie needs you in her life. So do I.” Oh God, he made it sound like they were going into battle or something. But he couldn’t help it. He needed to call the social worker and he needed to get himself all ready to talk to his baby sister and to make a case for her letting her baby stay with him.

He pulled away and backed up. “I, uhm, I’m not going to be coming to the gym tonight—”

“Are we still on for later?” Justin asked, instantly upset, and Hank hesitated. “What? I’m not good enough to come over anymore? Didn’t you just say ‘I lo…’. Omygah! You did! You did say the L word, and now you’re running away?”

Hank backed up; he knew he was leaving Justin confused as hell, but he felt powerless to do this any other way. All his railing against drama, how was he supposed to let Justin see him falling apart like a lost child if Amanda stole their little girl?

“Call me when your shift’s over,” he said, reaching behind him for the handle. “We’ll talk then, okay? You’re perfect, and don’t forget to ask your mom about Christmas Eve.” And with that he fled, leaving Justin gaping after him, aware that he hadn’t told Justin why he was there in the first place.

 

 

THE NEXT few hours were agony.

He called the social worker from in front of the daycare lady’s house. Mrs. Ramirez once again confirmed what he’d known, which was that Amanda had every right in the world to come sweep Josie out of his home.

“Can I get her to sign something that makes that not possible?” he asked, and Mrs. Ramirez sniffed.

“We do have papers where a parent agrees to relinquish custody. Odds are good she could overturn it if she changes her mind, but in the meantime—”

“It’ll take her a while to change her mind. Can she sign them today?”

There was a sigh over the phone and Hank almost imagined Mrs. Ramirez felt a little bit of pity for him. “Now Mr. Calder, you know we don’t work that fast. But if you like, we can start drawing them up, then the next time you see your sister, we can see about doing that.”

Hank thought about screaming, but he didn’t. That was drama neither of them needed. “Okay, then. Let’s draw up something legal, and yeah. If Amanda doesn’t… if we can, we can get her to sign them.”

He clicked off then and went in to get Josie. He’d promised her a chance to make decorations tonight, and he figured since there was no gym and he was off a little early, he could make good on that promise even if Amanda came and took her away, and there were no more promises ever.

Melodramatic, Henry. Don’t be melodramatic.

They made little drums out of felt and toilet paper rolls, and then they made wreaths with little bows using beads and pipe cleaners. When they were done with that, they moved on to foamies, and he helped her decorate little picture frames. He pulled out the pictures he’d had taken at Sears with her and painstakingly glued them to the back of the frames.

“Now who do we want to give these to?” he asked, forcing himself to look at them dispassionately. He’d had them taken in November, and she had sat so stiffly in his arms. He’d had an idea that if they had a picture up on the mantelpiece, she’d believe that this place, his house, was where she belonged.

“Mrs. Watson,” Josie said eagerly, and Hank thanked Heaven for good daycare services, and set that one aside.

“Good. Who else?”

“Cee Cee—she’s the girl with the black hair at Mrs. Watson’s.”

“Very nice. Who else?”

“Justin—Justin will want one, right?”

Hank nodded. “Yeah. Exactly. Justin would really want one.” If Amanda took Josie, Justin would probably cry his eyes out over that picture—but he’d still want it. God, Justin was so much braver than Hank was.

“Good,” Josie said, putting an extra sticker on Justin’s frame. “We should have new pictures taken, with you and me and Justin, and then we could give one to Mommy.”

Hank wondered if his lungs could freeze, right along with his bowels. “You think your mom would like one of those?”

“Yes. Then she could see our family. She’d be happy, to see our family.”

Hank nodded, and the ice spread to his whole body. He was numb, he thought gratefully. He was numb, and he’d just do this. He had her help make dinner—omelets tonight, and she got to pour in the egg mixture and sprinkle the cheese and the spinach and the tomatoes, and then she spooned sour cream on top of both the omelets on the plate. He set her at the table on her booster seat, and sat kitty corner to her, like he had for the last three months. When Justin ate with them, he sat on her other side. For a moment, a bare moment, Hank wished he’d invited Justin over, had begged him to come over, in fact, so he could have that one memory of the two of them at his dinner table, but he blocked that thought out before it could level him.

Decorations, dinner, bath, television, book, song, bed. It was their routine, and it was soothing, and Hank couldn’t live every goddamned second in a state of freaking out. When bedtime rolled around, he put her to bed with a hug and a kiss. He looked around her room, wondering if he should have packed her clothes, and then it hit him.

Nine o’clock, and Amanda wasn’t here. Maybe she wasn’t coming?

“Is Justin coming over?” Josie asked sleepily, and he bent down and kissed her one more time.

“Maybe,” he said, and for the first time that evening, the little ice skin that had congealed over his heart chipped large, and he had to take a deep breath to keep everything from spilling out onto the shoulders of a very small, and at this moment, very content little girl. “He had something to do when he got off work, but he said he was going to try.”

“Good,” Josie whispered. “Tell him ’night for me.”

“Night, Bunny. Love you.”

“Love you too,” she whispered, and even though she said it a lot, almost every night, he promised himself he’d never forget that she did.

He went out into the living room afterward, and stood, at a loss. All set for drama and none had arrived. He pulled out his phone to call Justin when he heard a creak on the porch and then, sniffing, smelled cigarette smoke.

Very quietly he opened his front door and went outside.

Amanda was sitting on the bench out on his front porch, and judging by the butts in the empty coffee cup at her side, she’d been there for quite some time.

“Jesus, Amanda! It’s freezing out here!” It was, in fact, dank and foggy and damp. He wasn’t wearing a coat and he shoved his hands in his khaki pockets in basic reaction.

“I’d noticed,” she said softly, inhaling. She lifted her shoe and stubbed the butt out on the sole, then dropped it in the coffee cup, breathing out smoke while she did so. Hank looked at her, trying to radiate disapproval, but it was hard. She had blond hair and brown eyes, just like Josie, but her hair was straight and Josie’s was starting to curl, like Hank’s did.

“Why didn’t you come in?” he asked, and she shrugged.

“You two, you had your thing. I saw you, right? Sitting on the couch, watching television, reading, bath time. All that shit you used to do for me, except you were… hell, ten, right?”

“Yeah.”

She was wearing jeans and an old denim jacket with a pink hooded sweatshirt underneath it. When she looked up at him, he could almost imagine that she was a child again and he was taking care of her this time, and not her daughter.

“I knew, right?” she said, looking at him, her eyes filling. She wiped them with the back of her hand and just kept talking, her voice roughened by grief and cigarettes. “I knew when I brought her here that you’d take care of her—”

“I could have taken care of you too,” he said, and she half-laughed.

“Yeah, well, Henry, I don’t seem to do really well with that.”

He sighed and leaned against the house, shoving his hands deeper inside his pockets. “I’d noticed.”

“You didn’t tell her I was coming, did you?” It was a question, and Hank had to answer, when he’d been putting off the answer even for himself.

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because I really hoped you wouldn’t show up.”

She sighed and pulled up her knee so she could rest her chin on it. “My boyfriend would take her in you know. We could have a really cute little family.”

“Yeah?”

“But he wants, like, a kid of his own. I don’t know if I could do both kids.” She shuddered, and he did too. But he couldn’t make her stop smoking or take care of herself or make her take birth control. He could only do a small set of things to make his world work. His job, Josie, taking care of the house. And Justin.

“I want custody,” he said, ignoring her little hurt gasp. “Legal custody.” His voice broke a little. “All I thought of all day was you coming here and taking her away, and I can’t do that, Amanda. I’ve been a stand-up guy. I’ve done right by you. All I want is just a promise that you won’t take her away from me.”

“You can’t make me do that!” she snapped, standing up, and he shook his head, not looking at her so he could talk.

“I know I can’t. But next time you come by, I’ll have papers for you to sign anyway. Think about it, Amanda. It won’t be hanging over your head like a broken promise. You give me custody, and next time, you can come in the house, and you won’t have to feel bad. She won’t expect anything of you, she’ll just be happy to see you.”

“Yeah?” Amanda asked, her voice uncertain, and Hank looked up quickly into brown eyes so very like his own. “She’ll be happy to see me?”

“Ecstatic,” Hank said, his voice raspy. “She’d be thrilled to see you now.”

Amanda shook her head. “I couldn’t,” she said. Now her voice broke too, and he could see what this visit had cost her, and how high the price had been of not knocking on his door. “You think I don’t remember, Henry. You think I’m not grateful. But I remember. I remember how you made a home when Mom couldn’t. I saw you doing the same things with my little girl and I thought, ‘Yeah. That’s why I brought her here.’ And suddenly it seemed like the best thing I’d ever done.”

“She has her own room.” Hank wiped his eyes across his sweatshirt. “It’s pink, with purple trim—”

“Like cake icing,” she said, smiling a little. It had been the room she’d always wanted. It was how he knew how to decorate it.

“Yeah.”

She nodded and threw herself into his arms unexpectedly, smelling like coffee and cigarettes, and not like little girl at all. He hugged her back.

“Take care of her, okay?”

“I promise.”

“I’ll come back after Christmas, maybe, and sign those papers.”

He half-sobbed into her shoulder, the relief making him weak, and Amanda pulled away from him, wiping her eyes some more. A pair of headlights paused at the end of Hank’s driveway, and Hank looked up to see Justin’s old Dodge Neon parking behind Hank’s practical Hybrid, instead of next to it.

“Who’s that?” Amanda asked with a small frown.

“My boyfriend. He adores Josie.”

Amanda half laughed and then backed away. “Well, I’m gonna leave before this goes all drama queen on me.” She looked into Hank’s eyes again and nodded. “Bye, big brother. See you ’round.”

She trotted off the porch and hopped into her battered gray Corolla, barely waiting for Justin to get across the driveway before she backed out. Hank found that his knees weren’t working right, and he slid into the porch bench like warm Jell-O.

“Who was that?” Justin asked, his nose wrinkled at the smell of cigarettes. “And jeez, Henry, why’d you let her turn this place into an ashtray?”

Hank took a few minutes before answering—long enough for Justin to stop and get a good look at him, and then to come closer and wipe off Hank’s cheeks with his thumbs.

“Your face is freezing, Henry,” Justin said softly. “Want to come inside?”

Hank shook his head. “Did I ever tell you about the day Josie came to stay with me?” he asked.

“No.”

It wasn’t that long ago, it really wasn’t, but Hank felt like a whole other person now.

“See, Amanda had her, and every so often she’d call up on Josie’s birthday or before holidays, and Mom and I would meet her somewhere and celebrate. We never knew when her number would change or when her cell phone would be working, so after a while, we just stopped calling, and started to depend on those random phone calls. And then we went for like, three months, with no Amanda, no Josie—Mom and I were getting worried, but we had no way to track them down, and then, the day after Josie’s birthday in October, they just showed up on my porch.”

Justin was still standing in front of him, so Hank took advantage of that and wrapped his arms around Justin’s thighs so he could rest his face against Justin’s middle. Justin stroked his hair, and Hank relaxed into him—and kept on talking.

“So they get here, and I’m happy, but I’m nagging too. Where’ve they been, is Amanda smoking again, why didn’t she call—you know, all that big brother bullshit that just makes Amanda skittish as all hell, but I get them inside, and give Josie the birthday present I bought in the hope that I’d see her. Josie says she’s hungry, so I start cooking up some hot dogs, right? And while I’m getting the pot out and filling it with water, Amanda says, ‘Going out for a smoke, Henry’!”

Hank laughed a little into Justin’s windbreaker. Justin was shivering by now, but Hank couldn’t stop telling the story long enough to get up and get them inside.

“And?” Justin prompted into the silence, and Hank shivered this time.

“And that was it,” he said. “That was it. I spent my time playing with Josie and the doll, and then the hot dogs are done, and I get Josie a plate. I go outside to tell Amanda that I’ve got lunch, such as it is, and all of Josie’s clothes are on the porch, and Amanda is gone. She’d parked on the curb that time. I didn’t even hear her start the car.”

“And that was the last you heard from her—”

Hank nodded. “Until she called me this afternoon and showed up on my porch.”

Justin jerked back from him suddenly, and Hank couldn’t blame him. “Oh. My. God. Henry! You knew? There I was blubbering about my own petty bullshit problems and you knew!”

Henry sat there and looked up at him, feeling like a little kid. “Don’t be mad,” he begged, closing his eyes. “I just… I couldn’t. It was your drama, and it was sweet, and you were worried about your family and I didn’t want to take that away. But you see? You see why I didn’t want the drama at first, right? Because if something so… so quiet could totally turn my life upside down, I was just fucking terrified of real drama. Just scared to death that it would rip me apart and just leave me in little bleeding pieces, right?”

Justin’s expression softened and he came closer. He tried to put his hands on Hank’s shoulders but Hank was too agitated; he shot up from the bench, forcing Justin to take a step back while he got this out, laid it into the world so maybe the moonlight could kill it.

“So when I heard your meltdown this afternoon, it was like… it was like wonderful,” Hank said. “Because there you were, and everything in you was there for me to see, and it was okay. It didn’t hurt. I could help you fix it and it made me happy. So I started thinking about those turkeys in the snow, remember?”

Justin nodded, mutely, and Hank wondered if maybe he wasn’t going to be the one who was too crazy to keep. “So, they freaked out with the snowflakes and hurt each other, but… but that wasn’t the deadliest thing. The deadliest thing was the quiet stuff, the fox that didn’t make any noise. With you, I’ll always know where you stand. God, baby, you make a lot of noise, and I sort of love that about you, is that okay? Is that—”

Justin then did something Hank didn’t expect—he grabbed Hank’s arms and pulled Hank’s mouth down for a kiss. Hank opened his mouth and tasted salt, and realized that here he was, the anti-drama queen, and he was the one crying and freezing on his porch, and maybe he should know better.

But Justin was wrapping his strong arms around his shoulders and pulling him in for a hug, and Hank thought that maybe he should wait until he stopped shaking to change anything.

“I love you too, Henry,” Justin said, and Hank rested his wet cheek in Justin’s straight, soft hair, and wondered if he could pull himself together enough to get them inside.

Eventually.

Eventually they got inside and Hank showed Justin the pictures and told him about the plan to have one taken of the three of them.

Eventually Justin told Hank about telling his mother and father the big “secret.”

“So what’d they say?” Hank asked, fixing them some coffee laced with chocolate to warm them up since they were both still cold.

Justin looked aggrieved. “Would you believe it? My mother said, ‘Wait—haven’t you told us this already?’ and Dad said, ‘No, dear, we just imagined he did.’”

Hank found himself laughing as he handed Justin his mug. “Classic,” he said, loving that story. “So, are Josie and I still invited to dinner?”

“Yup,” Justin said, nodding. “In fact, Mom was in seventh heaven. She was like ‘Ohmygah! Instant grandchild!’ You may become her favorite son.”

“I doubt it. But good. I look forward to Christmas with her.” They settled into the living room, and Justin brought up the Big Bad and Hank blessed him for it.

“So, your sister. She didn’t even come in?”

Hank breathed out. “No,” he said. “But she may come back after Christmas to sign some custody papers for me.”

Justin sighed. “Henry, you know I’m still a little pissed, right?”

Hank studied his coffee. “I’m sorry.”

“You should be! Going through all that alone. Hurts my fucking feelings, you know that, right?”

“I’m sorry,” Hank said again. He looked up and clasped Justin’s hand, and for a moment they were silent. “We had history,” Hank said after a pause. “There was stuff that… that I needed to say to my baby sister, that’s all. Next time, I swear. If it involves Josie or involves us, you’ll be in the know.”

“That’s not good enough,” Justin snapped, and Hank jerked back, startled. “Not just if it involves Josie or involves me—what if it hurts you, do you understand that? You’re a mess, Henry Calder. Not the kind that drives off and leaves a kid, no, but look at you—you knew this all day and you didn’t talk to me?” Justin set his coffee down on the table without a coaster, which was good because he was starting to gesture and Hank was worried he’d scald himself. At no time did he release Hank’s hand, though, and that was a better thing.

“What if she’d taken her?” Hank asked. He set his coffee down too, because his hands were getting slick with sweat just thinking about it.

“Yeah, Henry!” Justin let go of his hand long enough to turn around and face him on the couch. “What if your sister had come and taken her away! What about that? You didn’t even tell me to come over after! What would you have done if I’d called? Were you just going to tough it out like a frickin’ man?”

Hank couldn’t look at him. “I am sort of a frickin man,” he said, and Justin slugged him hard in the arm. “Ouch!” Hank whined, rubbing the tender spot, and Justin shook his hand out and yelped.

“God, that sucks! Bitch-slapping is totally underrated!”

“Well, don’t do it!” Hank snapped, taking Justin’s hand in his and rubbing the wrist to make sure there was no permanent damage.

“Well, you were being stupid! I totally care about you—I want to be the guy who throws the pity party and the guy who rides clean up. No ‘toughing it out on my own’ bullshit—next time your world is going to fall apart, tell me!”

Hank stopped massaging Justin’s wrist and looked up to meet his eyes instead. “Okay,” he said quietly. “I promise.”

“I take that seriously, Henry.”

“I do too.”

Justin nodded. “I’m going to live. Can you come over here and kiss me now? I want to skip the preliminaries and get you in bed now. I sort of kind of need to touch you.”

Hank all but tackled him as he sat. They barely made it to the bedroom, and when Hank climaxed into Justin’s eager mouth, he had to bite his palm because he was afraid he’d wake Josie with the sound he wanted to make.

When they were done, and Justin was where Justin needed to be, with his head on Hank’s shoulder and his hand gliding across Hank’s chest, Hank played with his hair and drifted in and out of sleep.

He must have dreamt a little, too, because the next morning, waking up with Justin’s arm around his waist and Josie’s usual request (demand!) for breakfast, he felt like he had glimpsed the future.

Nothing specific, really—just the basics.

He’d seen Christmas Eve, meeting Justin’s parents, and being hugged within an inch of his life. Justin’s mother had adopted Josie on sight, and suddenly Josie had a happy, smiling woman to look to, to maybe grow into, with some love and care to help.

He’d seen Christmas morning, after he and Justin had spent all night wrapping gifts and stacking them under the Christmas tree. Josie had been happy and excited and delighted and joyful, and she’d squealed and shrieked and all of the little girl things that Hank had always wanted for Amanda, but he’d never been able to give.

He’d seen beyond that, to a New Year’s Eve in Justin’s arms, and a Valentine’s dinner when he asked Justin to move in.

He’d seen beyond that, even to Josie’s first day of school and volunteering in her class and hearing her tell him about her day, and even beyond that to being in the audience with Josie when they watched Justin get his degree.

He’d seen an entire lifetime in those magic glimpses in and out of sleep, and it was filled with laughter and sadness and joy and disappointment—and, by necessity, drama.

He slept that night secure in the knowledge that he was proud to be part of the human play.