I still feel lost as I watch Jason dodge into a small coffee shop that doesn't seem to have many people in it, miraculously, because there are long lines outside almost every coffee shop, restaurant and food stand.

People are eating, drinking coffee and trying to stay away from the gates. I think people are trying to ignore the gates because of the flights being grounded.

There are lots of people on the phone and the noise hasn't gotten any better. I don't like the noise, so I try to stay away from the windows, but it's hard because the cases are very difficult to carry and I’m not being helped.

I’m behind Jason who looks at me with disdain as he steps out of the coffee shop once again and sets his gaze on me.

He picks up one case and lifts it with ease. I should be able to catch up to him without worrying, but I’m not. The one case I still have is slowing me down considerably.

I do start to walk faster, but he still leaves me behind as he finds a table in the back corner of the room and leans the case against the wall. I finally join him, sit down in front of him, and place my case up against the one he just took.

“Thank you,” I say.

“Uh-huh,” he replies.

I bite my lips. “What do you want? Do you still only drink tea?”

He scoffs. “Cappuccino with a triple shot, please.”

“Okay,” I reply.

After I get both of us coffee, I sit down in front of him, and set his foam cup in front of him.

He won't take it out of my hands, I don't think. And I don't want us to touch.

I know I'm being immature, but when he put his hand on my shoulder, something happened. Not at first, not when I didn't know it was him. But the moment I knew it was him, I felt a shiver going down my spine. The way it used to back when we were kids. Before anything else happened. Before we grew apart.

I watch him take a sip of a coffee before I speak.

“Hey. So, can we talk now?”

“I’m having coffee with you, literally right now,” he says. “So, talk.”

“Okay,” I reply. I suddenly find myself feeling completely unprepared to talk to him. Why did I ask him to come here? I have nothing to say to him. I can’t just launch into an apology. “I guess you work here?”

He smirks. “Ah, yes, Max. Clever as usual.”

“Don’t be a dick, Jason,” I say, a little more defensively than I mean to. If he’s joking, he’s not doing a very good job.

“Sorry,” he replies. “Learned it from the best.”

My phone vibrates in my pocket. “Hold that thought,” I say. It’s not my sister’s face on screen, but rather my brother. My brother rarely calls me.

I pick up the phone almost immediately, wondering if something is going wrong. The first thought I have is maybe my sister's lying to me about something. I don't think they'd be this excited to see me, and she's pressuring me a lot, so maybe there's something wrong with Mom or with Dad.

They’ve kept things from me before, important things, like accidents.

When my brother got into his car accident a couple of years ago, I only found out days later. It wasn’t serious but they didn’t know it wasn’t serious at first, so I hated that they kept me out of the loop.

He was fine, but if they had called me I would have gone out to the hospital to see him straight away. I still did go out to see him, but it was too late. He was completely okay by then and, while he appreciated the visit, it wasn't the supportive visit I wanted to give him. I did get to play with my nieces and nephews, though, so that was fun. “Hello?'

“Hey, kid. How are you doing?”

Unlike my sister, my brother is chill. He always has been, and yes, he does have some reservations about my career, but he mostly keeps those to himself. I think he understands I'm not trying to hurt anybody. I'm just trying to have a life. My sister is more traditional, and I get it. If I were in her shoes, I would also be annoyed and worried about what I was doing to our parents. I kind of get it even though I’m the cause of it.

“Things are going okay. We're still stuck here, all flights are still grounded, and I've been trying to go downstairs to get a car, but honestly I haven’t managed to get past the escalators.”

He laughs. “I guess you're not trying very hard.”

“I'm trying. It's just hard with all my suitcases and there is a lot of people I have to navigate past to get there. I'm struggling with that, and I'm really worried about driving down all the way to Jackson because I’ve not driven for a really long time.”

“I get that. Look, Anna told me you guys got into it,” he says quietly.

I nod, even though he can’t see me. “Yeah. She's mad because... Well, she's mad for a lot of reasons.”

He's quiet for a second. “Did you really break up with her? The, uh, older lady.”

“Sarah, yeah,” I reply. “We did break up.”

“Shit, Max. When were you going to tell us?”

“When I got down there. There's a lot to update you guys on.”

He’s quiet for a second. “But you're okay. Right?”

There is no bitterness in his voice, there is no disappointment, it’s just complete concern. I feel like shit that I've made him worry, because he doesn't deserve that, none of them do.

“I'm okay. I've been better, and things are a little bit up in the air for me right now, but I'll make it work.”

“Okay. You know I'm here if you ever need me, right? Anna will be here too. She just worries about you.”

“I know that.”

“I'm checking on the weather where you are so I'm going to be watching if there's any changes. But please don't go on the road when it's icy. If you must, take a Greyhound bus.”

“I thought Mom and Dad couldn't wait to see me.”

“Yeah,” he says. “They can't wait to see you. But, they would much rather you got here in one piece.”

“Okay. I can call Mom if you'd like.”

He laughs. “If I like? You're probably going to have to, but don't do it today, you know what she gets like near Christmas Eve. You don’t want to deal with that.”

“Yeah,” I say with a smile. “I know what she gets like. Anyway, I kind of gotta go. Will you say hi for me to Brianna and the children?”

“Of course.”

“Great. I'm sorry I've got to go run, I bumped into an old friend and I'm being really rude by talking on the phone right now.”

He chuckles. “Old friend huh? Someone I know? Someone hot?”

“You do,” I reply. I hesitate before answering his second question. I don’t know what to tell him. “Honestly, Al, you’d be surprised.”

I can hear his smirk over the phone even though I can’t see him. “Well, at least you're having a nice layover.”

 “It's definitely an experience.”

He laughs, I laugh with him and then we say our goodbyes, quickly, because I don't want to annoy Jason any more than I already am. I’m almost positive he doesn’t want to be here.

Jason is staring at me when I hang up. “Is everything okay?”

“Everything’s fine,” I reply.

He raises his eyebrows and brings his foam cup to his lips. He takes a long, deliberate sip, obviously waiting for me to break. He doesn’t expect me to, I don’t think, but I can’t help it.

We used to talk so much when we were kids. We spent ages talking under the stars on the roof of my house, trying our best not to wake people up. That’s where he came out to me, but I don’t want to think about that right now.

“Okay,” he says.

I rub the bridge of my nose. “I don’t want to bore you.”

“I wouldn’t be bored,” he quietly replies.

“Why are you being so nice to me?”

“I'm not. I'm just here. You look like you need someone,” he says. He takes another sip of his drink, then sets his gaze right on me. “If you need someone, then I'm going to be that someone. It's really shitty when you need someone and there's nobody there.”

I sigh. “I don’t know, Jason. I think everything's fine. I don't know though because my sister is being really weird about me coming home, and I keep asking her if something's wrong. She says nothing is wrong but I don't know if I believe her.”

“Do you think it's something to do with your parents?”

“I don't know. You know my parents though. They won't tell me anything.”

“Yeah. They won't tell you anything,” he says smiling.

He does know my parents. He spent a lot of time over at my place when we were kids. I think he still says hello to them when he goes home if he bumps into them.

I sigh once again, my gaze darting from his face. “I haven't seen them for a long time. Not for Christmas, I mean. It's not like I don't go home. But they seem to think this is really important, and I'm worried about it.”

“Is it the first Christmas you’ve gone back home for a while?”

“Yeah,” I reply. “First Christmas in eight years.”

“Damn. Do you mind if I ask you why?”

“No. You can ask me why.”

He raises his eyebrows. He's not going to ask me anything, even though I could do with the prompting. It's hard to talk about this, because it doesn't matter how many times I internalize my thought process, I still feel guilty about it. And I know I shouldn't. I know I'm pursuing my own life and I know it's okay to do that.

But when I'm speaking to someone about it, especially someone from my past, especially someone like Jason, I feel like I can't break out of this guilt loop.

I shouldn't have left, because I could have bought a better future back at home. I could have had some schooling back at home. I could have been a dentist or a doctor like my parents wanted me to be. But I didn’t want to go to school for something like that, it's just not what I wanted to do. Ever.

I slumped forward as I start to answer. “I guess I just feel a bit like a disappointment. It's okay when I'm around them for a couple of days, and it's just me having lunch with my mom and dad and then my sister and then my brother. It’s okay when we have like one big dinner together at the end, when my nephews and nieces are there.”

He raises his eyebrows. “Doesn't seem too bad.”

“It doesn't seem too bad until the holidays. You know how everyone has this drunk uncle who gets really belligerent during the holidays and how every family ends up arguing about politics?”

He smirks at that. “I know that, yes.”

I take a deep breath. “Well. For me, my family doesn't start arguing about politics or who will be the better president or whether people are taking our jobs. They start arguing about the merits of my accomplishments.”

He frowns at that. “What?” he says shaking his head. “Your family never seemed very judgmental to me.”

“They weren't. Not until I moved, and then they became really judgmental.”

“I find that hard to believe. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that you're lying. But the Diaz family I knew, they were super nice. Like I always wanted to have your parents.”

I suppress the shiver down my spine as I think about Jason’s home situation. Of course, he wanted my parents. I have no idea why I even think I have the right to complain in the first place. “I get that. They’re still nice and really supportive, they're just... I think they're disappointed in me. Because they think I should have made it further in my career at this point. And it hurts to hear that from everyone in one go, y’know? Like, I can be drip-fed it just fine.”

“You can be drip-fed disappointment?” He says, a smile tugging at his lips. I can tell he’s about to smile from the way that his eyes glimmer. Even under the harsh yellow light of the tiny airport coffee shop, his eyes light up his face. Even if he wasn’t gorgeous, even though he’s a man—I’m not gay—I would totally write poems about those eyes.

If I could write at all.

“You can be drip-fed disappointment when you're me,” I reply, waving my hand in front of my face. “I mean, it's not really too bad. Not one of them has ever come out and said, ‘hey, have you considered moving back?’”

“That counts for something.” he replies as he shrugs. “My parents keep trying to get me to move back.”

My eyes widen at the very thought. I can't think of a worse idea than Jason moving back in with his terrible parents. I guess it’s his mom and his stepdad now—stepdad number two, stepdad number one was the real problem, but still.

Jason might have forgiven his mom, but I never forgave her for what stepdad number one did to him.

He used to stay at my place for long stretches of time, because his parents were having such terrible fights. If he didn't, then he might not have made it on time to school. He started snoozing during class, his grades started to suffer, because he was so tired from all the fighting at home.

The fighting started in middle school. When we were in elementary school things were fine between them, but then something happened with his stepdad. I think he might have relapsed. I'm not sure. All I know is that one time I saw Jason with a bruise on his forearm and I asked him about it and he said not to worry.

Of course I worried. He was my best friend.

I told my mom about it and we told my dad. He then told me that he had told some mandated abuse reporter at school. I didn't know what that was, but what happened next, I will never forget.

Jason got to my house in the middle of the night, his clothes wet and dirty, and bruises all over his face. He looked terrible, he was so beat up.

I wanted to call the police, because there's nothing else to do. But he begged me not to, so I didn’t. My parents took more convincing but they weren’t going to put him through something he didn’t want to go through.

He stayed until his mom kicked out his stepdad, and then we never saw that guy again. She married someone else later, after Jason had turned sixteen, when we were both in high school.

I don't know anything about him, except that he's a genuinely lovely person. At least that's what my parents tell me, because it's not like Jason told me that. Jason and I didn't speak for a long time, and it's weird to me we're speaking now. It's weird to me that Jason is trying to hear me out about my problems, like we’re still friends. I would definitely not want to hear about my problems. But there’s this sense of ease and familiarity between us that can’t be denied and I think he feels it to.

I don’t want to ruin it by asking him what he’s doing.

“Do you want to move back in?”

“Nah. They want me to move back in though,” he says then licks his lips.

“Are things okay with your mom and you now?”

He nods. “Yeah. She was really sorry about what happened. My current stepdad is really nice, but I'm not moving back home.”

“I don't think I could live in Jackson now,” I reply, shrugging. “When you get used to the big city, you don't really want to go back, do you?”

“Jackson isn’t a small town.”

“It feels like it,” I say. “Compared to here.”

“Yeah. I don't know. I've thought about it, Max. This is so hard.”

I nod. “Yeah. So what are you?”

He sets his gaze on me. “What do you mean?”

“You know. Model, theater actor, aspiring porn star, comedian?”

“Dancer,” he replies, his gaze falling to the floor and blushing. “At least that’s what I'm trying to be. I was with a company for a little while, but it paid like shit and you know my parents don't have any extra money to support my big city adventure.”

“I feel that,” I reply, flashing him a smile. Then I get more serious. “I thought that dancers in companies got a place to live.”

“Sometimes we do. Mine did.”

“It’s not good enough?”

“It's not enough when you’re living with your ex-boyfriend.”

“Oof, yeah, that sounds tricky.” I reply as I imagine him with his dancer ex-boyfriend. He has to be gorgeous to have gone out with Jason, and despite myself, I feel a pang of jealousy.

I try my best to ignore it.

His ex-boyfriend is none of my fucking business.

I didn't know that Jason danced—professionally, I mean—but now that he’s said it, it makes perfect sense. He has the body of a dancer: slim, slender with graceful and practiced movements.

He was taking dance classes when we were kids, but he didn't tell me about it until he came out. Until he was revealing all his secrets to me.

One of them was contemporary dance, and that was one of the reasons why he got in trouble with his stepdad. He said dancing was for pussies.

Personally, I have never met anyone braver than Jason Mayes.

“It wasn’t tricky. It was impossible,” he replies in a small voice.

“Was it hard? Like emotionally?”

“The ‘living with the ex’ part was fine. I could live with an ex easily. Just the part where your ex-boyfriend is better than you at everything is the hard part. Especially when he won’t stop rubbing it in your face.”

“He sounds like a shitty person.”

Jason smiles at me, his eyes glimmering again. I could look at his eyes for hours. “Totally shitty person. Great dancer though.”

“So when did you leave the company?”

“I finished the last season. I could have auditioned for a Christmas role but I don’t think I would have been okay with being around Brandon anymore.”

“He even has a douche name,” I say, flashing him a smile. He shakes his head, but he’s smiling back at me. A sincere smile, not the kind that he has given me before, with the snark hidden behind it.

He’s really smiling back at me, the way he used to when we were kids. The way he used to before things got… well, before things got complicated.

“You know, I thought a lot about you over the past few years,” he says, after a long pregnant pause between us.

 “You did?”

 “Yes,” he replies, looking away from me. “I thought about what you might be doing. I thought about looking you up, because I kind of realized you would be here, in the same city as me. You always wanted to be an actor, and there are only a few places in the country where you could go do that. I know you're serious, and you've always been serious about this.”

“I'm serious,” I quietly whisper.

“Yes. But I never did look you up.”

“Why?”

“I guess I didn’t really know what I would say to you,” he says, just as quietly as me. Despite how loud everything is around us, our voices are much quieter than before. It seems to work, though, as I can hear him perfectly fine and I think he hears me.

This is intense.

“I don’t know what you can say to me either,” I reply after swallowing. “I've thought about what I would say to you a lot, though, for what it's worth.”

He sets his gaze on my face. “It might be worth more than you think,” as he smiles. I think to try and make the situation seem less awkward than it is. “Have you practiced it?”

I shake my head and smile as I look down. I have practiced it, like I practice speeches for awards I'm never going to win in front of my mirror.

I still do that, even though I should have grown up and gotten over it years ago, but I haven't. Except now, I also go through apologies in my head.

Even in my head, things don't turn out the way they should, with butterflies and rainbows, but rather they end with Jason throwing a plate of food at me and telling me to stay away from him.

Except the Jason in my imagination seems a lot less collected than the Jason in front of me. The Jason in front of me doesn’t even seem upset.

“Do you want to hear it?”

He nods. He doesn't say anything, doesn't even move his lips, but his gaze is straight on my eyes, and he stopped darting his gaze away from me at any point. His eyes are burning, they're burning into me, and their intensity scares me. But he doesn't seem upset, just curious. I don't know how he's going to react to what I'm going to say, but I feel like I have to say it. He's just giving me a chance to apologize to him and I'm not going to let myself down by not doing that. “I'm sorry I was so shitty to you.”

He raises his eyebrows. Still not saying anything, he just licks his lips, and keeps looking at me. Right at me. “Okay.”

“I'm sorry about what I did to you.”

“Okay.”

“I should have known better, but I freaked out. You didn't do anything wrong. You were incredible. I wasn't ready to meet you there, because you are so much more mature than I was and I was such a little boy.”

“Okay.”

I wonder if he's going to say anything else. His expression changes, his gaze still burning into me, and I'm starting to get a little bit worried.

Maybe this was a bad idea, maybe he’s going to tip his coffee on me and scald me with it. “I've done a lot of self-exploration since then, and I realize I made mistakes because I was really confused about myself.”

That seems to get his attention. His head straightens, just a little bit, and he brushes his hair away from his forehead. He lets go of his cup and there's a smile playing on his lips, but he doesn't say anything. Not yet, and it's okay, because I don't think I deserve for him to say anything yet.

I sigh. “I should have never treated you the way I did, and the fact I never reached out to you to apologize, well, it's only because I was so ashamed.”

He audibly swallows. I can tell that he’s doing his best to keep his composure and it makes me feel like a terrible person. “Thank you. That means a lot.”

I don't think that means he forgives me, I don't think he can forgive me. Because regardless of how good my apology is, I was the one to make his years of high school hell, regardless of whether I wanted to or not.

I didn't want to, but I became his biggest opponent when I used to be his best friend.

I was a dick to him, not just a little bit but a lot. And I'm never going to forgive myself for that, even if he does forgive me.

“Could I ask you something, Max?”

I shrug. “Sure, you can ask me anything. I'm an open book.”

He’s blushing a bit. I wonder why. His gaze darts away from me before he speaks. “Okay. So when you say that you've done a lot of self-exploration after it happened, do you mean like sexual exploration?”

I don't want to get into this with him. My cheeks are burning already. He's right, of course. After I moved out to the city I realized my hatred for him being out wasn't so much about him being gay but rather how I felt about him.

When he came out to everyone else, it was as if he had ripped the secret away from both of us. I know that is such a stupid way to think about it. I know it's such an adolescent thing now.

But at the time, it seemed to me like our world had ended, like he had betrayed me, like when he came out to me it was going to be something we were going to share—just the two of us. But it wasn't like that.

It wasn't just something for the two of us at all, it was something Jason had to share with everyone, and I knew I had no right to tell him with whom he could share his sexual orientation.

I had no right to tell him he had to remain closeted. I know. But at the time, I didn't realize why it was hurting me.

I never told him.

I thought he didn’t need to know.

I can’t tell him that now either.

I can’t tell him I used to be in love with him, because that wouldn't be fair to him.

I'm not in love with him anymore, and the last thing you want to hear from your childhood bully is that he was in love with you. I should have known better. I should have treated him better. That's the end of that, that's as far as that goes. I nod, finally. “Yeah. Sexual exploration.”

“So this person you just broke up with, was it a man?”

“The person I broke up with? No. It was a woman.”

“But you've been with men?” he says as he narrows his eyes.

I sigh. My experience with men is limited. I can't tell him I've been with many men because I haven’t.

I have only ever been with one, after getting very, very fucked up at a party.

It wasn't unpleasant. I was having a good time, but honestly it was just sex. Sex is sex, and I really don't want to tell him I was thinking about him. The only reason I hooked up with this guy was because he reminded me of the way Jason looked back when we were teenagers. “One guy.”

He cocks his head as he considers this. “Well, was he good? Did you stick with him for a while?”

“No. I don't even know his name.” I said as I shake my head. “It was at a party one time and I just wanted to see if I liked it.”

“I've been there.” he replies nodding. “Did you?”

“It was okay.”

“I guess he didn’t rock your world, huh?”

I shrug. “Honestly, there was someone else on my mind.”

“Oh, I get that.” he says as he smiles. “Do you think if it had been someone that you were sure that you liked, it might have been a different experience?”

I swallow. I don't want to tell him that I know it would have been a different experience if it had been with him, if I had let him kiss me on the roof that one time.

But I didn't, and I've grown to regret that every single day of my life. It took me a while to get to where I've realized that what I feel is regret, not anger. Not at him, anyway.

The anger at myself never stops. But when it comes to him, well, it’s regret. It's regret for turning him away, regret for everything I did afterwards.

I didn't like that he confused me. I didn't like the way I felt around him, like I was no longer in control. Like I wasn't the person running my own life.

Jason hasn’t stopped curiously staring at me, and I realize I'm getting a little bit choked up.

I don't want him to see me cry, not over something like this, because it's not like I can change it. It is what it is. I've made my bed and now I have to lie in it. That's just the way things work. I clear my throat as I look away, setting my gaze on my oversized and inconvenient suitcases.

If it weren’t for them, I would have already run to the bathroom.

“Yo, Max, you okay?”

I lick my teeth and I stare at him, trying my best to keep myself from blinking. If I don't blink, that means no tears will come out from my eyes. I give him a stiff nod instead of using any words to answer him.

He might just think I'm tired if I pretend to yawn, but it's too late for that now. I look away from him once again as I stand up and walk over to my cases. “I’m going to the bathroom. I'll be right back.”

“Are you taking your stuff with you?”

“I don't see a lot of choice.”

“I can watch it.”

I don’t even thank him, I just nod, though I’m facing away from him so he can’t see me.

I get up and start to walk away from him, not looking back once because I don't want to see him at all. I don't want to see the way he's looking at me. I don't want to see if he's judging me. I don't want to see if he looks like he’s lost in thought.

I don't want to know anything about Jason Mayes right now.

I finally get to the bathroom at the very end of the floor, the one furthest away from the coffee shop. There are others which were closer, I’m sure, but I don’t want to be near him.

I know it’s irrational, but I don’t feel like I can be near him.

The bathroom is full, and there's a long line to get inside. It’s fucking annoying. The last thing I want is to have strangers see me choked up.

I take my phone out of my pocket, unlock it and then hover over my mother's contact card. My brother's right, my mom gets incredibly wound up the day before Christmas Eve, but I'm going to have to call her. If I don't, I don't know what Anna's going to tell her. I want her to know I want to be there, but I'm stuck here. I want her to know I don't have a choice.

“Hey, Mom,” I say when she finally answers.

It takes her a while, but she seems pleased to hear from me. “Hey baby. How's your airport adventure going?”

“It's going okay, Mom.” I reply smiling at nothing. At least my mom can almost always make me smile, regardless of how guilty I feel about Jason. “Not as boring as I would have thought. Ran into an old friend so we’ve been catching up while we wait for our next flight.”

“Oh, yeah? Who did you run into? Someone I know?”

“Jason Mayes, Mom. Do you remember him?”

“Yeah, of course I remember him.” she replies. “You never did tell me what happened between you guys.”

I sigh. “We got into a fight,” I reply. That’s close enough to the truth.

“Oh, it was a girl, wasn’t it?”

“It wasn't a girl, Mom. Jason’s gay, remember?”

It doesn't seem like she remembers it. She was there when the entire thing went down between us.

She should remember him. Maybe that's why Anna has been acting so weird, maybe there's something wrong with my mom. I can’t really think of anything worse, so I swallow and I try to make my tone seem nonchalant.

“You do remember Jason, right, Mom? He was my best friend until we went to high school.”

She doesn’t say anything.

“Dark blond hair, big brown eyes? Taller than me.”

“Oh yeah. He lived with us for a few weeks, right?”

I nod. “Yup. Exactly. That's him.” I reply smiling. Maybe I'm just overreacting. Maybe Mom is totally okay. She's probably just frazzled from everything she has to do to have the house ready for Christmas.

There’s a lot of us.

“Oh, yeah,” she replies. “How’s he doing nowadays?”

“Okay, I think,” I reply. Her asking me this makes me realize I haven’t asked him that myself and that makes me feel a bit shitty. Of course, I’ve only been worried about how I feel about us meeting up after all these years, because that’s very typical.

“Oh, good. Tell him I say hello, will you?”

“Yeah, sure. Anyway, I just wanted to let you know I'm still waiting for the flight, but the moment I know anything else you'll know.”

“Okay. Your dad and I are looking forward to seeing you. Your brother told me you and your sister got into a fight.”

“I think she's just worried I won’t make it out there on time for Christmas.”

“Your sister is high-strung. Her career doesn't allow her to chill out.”

“Chill out?”

“What, you don’t want me to use slang because I'm old?”

“No, I don’t want you to use slang because you're my mom.”

“And you say I’m strict.”

I smile. I’m feeling a little more evened out now that I’ve spoken to my mother. “I’ll keep you updated, okay?”

“Okay,” she replies. “I’m glad you have some company to keep you entertained.”

“See you soon,” I reply. I hang up the phone and walk into the bathroom.

By the time I walk into the bathroom, I feel a little better. It's a good thing I've gotten the chance to be able to talk to Jason. I would have never reached out by myself, even though I practiced what I was going to say to him.

It's weird because I didn't think I would ever get to say it, but now that I have, it feels like there's a huge weight off my shoulders. I would have liked it if he had forgiven me but it is what it is.

I know I'm not entitled to Jason’s forgiveness. I know I'm not entitled to anything. I go to the bathroom, then wash my face.

I look at myself in the mirror. I look like absolute shit. I'm really surprised people aren't going out of their way to avoid me.

There are huge bags under my eyes, and the sweat on my face has made my black hair stick to my skin. After washing my face, I'm a little bit more awake. I don't look good, but at least I know what's happening. I yawn and stretch.

I need to sleep. I was looking forward to sleeping on the plane, but I don't know when I’m going to be able to be on a plane to catch some sleep, and I don't really want to sleep with my cases around me without being able to supervise them.

Everything I own is in those cases and I don't want to lose it. If I lose it, I won't have anything. I mean that quite literally.

I appreciate Jason looking after my stuff while I go to the bathroom. He doesn't have to do that. He doesn't have to do anything for me, and I'm surprised that he's chosen to do this. It takes me a long time to get out of the bathroom and to walk back to the coffee shop. I'm walking slowly, part of me dreading what's going to happen when I see Jason once again.

What needed to happen with Jason has already happened. I've already told him that I'm sorry, and now I can’t see how the rest of our interaction is going to go.

I don't know what's going to happen next, and I don't feel like I have enough information to make an educated guess on what will happen. I think, though I'm not sure, Jason is going to never want to speak to me again. And I'm going to deserve it. And that's okay. Or rather, it’s going to have to be okay, because I'm not going to beg him to be my friend, not when I clearly don’t deserve his friendship.

I’m surprised he’s even given me enough time for coffee.

If he’s left my cases there and has gone away somewhere, that won’t surprise me either. The idea of it makes me quicken my step, but only slightly. If this is my punishment, then I’m not going to fight it. It feels like a small price to pay for everything that I did to him.

But when I get there, he’s still sitting there. My cases aren’t up against the wall, like they were before, which is mostly confusing but also a little terrifying.

He’s playing on his phone, still sitting down where we were having coffee together.

I look at him and frown as I take my place in the seat in front of him. “Hey,” he says. “I told Noni behind the counter to hold your stuff.”

I don’t stop frowning. “Why?”

He shrugs. “Because. You don’t want to be carrying all that stuff around all the time, especially when you don’t know when your next flight is going to be.”

“Yeah, but—I don’t know. Thank you,” I fumble when I see him staring at me with what seems like exasperation.

“Max, I know her. She owes me a favor.”

I raise my eyebrows. “You cashed your favor in for me?”

“It wasn't that big of a favor,” he says with a smile.

Any favor Jason does for me feels like a big favor, but I’m not going to tell him that. “Do you want another coffee while we wait?”

“Sure,” he says, shrugging. “I’m technically off now for the rest of the day. I wanted to change, but—”

“How long have you been in that uniform?”

“At least ten hours,” he replies. “I thought I could go home and get changed before my flight, but I don’t wanna risk it.”

“What about your stuff?”

“I only have my carry-on,” he says, pointing at the satchel he’s put at his feet. “My laptop and that’s it. I keep clothes at my mom’s place.”

“Why?”

“Because my apartment is a tiny shithole,” he says. “Plus, the poorer she thinks I am, the more likely she is to buy me clothes.”

“Devious,” I reply with a smile.

“Hey, if that’s what I have to do to make it so that my clothes don’t have holes in them, then that’s what I’m going to do.”

“Yeah, I feel that. So where are you living right now?”

“I’m staying in an apartment nearby. I'm living in those buildings over there, which you could totally see if it wasn't so dark,” he points out a window and I turn around to see nothing but dark clouds.

I turn back to look at him. “So you would just walk there to gather your stuff?”

“Yeah, but I'm not leaving,” he says, scratching the back of his head. “I can’t leave.”

“I don't blame you. It's cold out there. Plus, it’ll be hard to see.”

He shrugs. “I'm not worried about that. Snow is snow, and the weather is whatever. But, if they started embarking people and I'm not here then I'm going to get in a world of trouble.”

I set my gaze on him. “Wait, you’re on call? Even though you’re traveling?”

He shrugs. “Something like that. Technically, no, but technically, I’m the only one who can help, so yes.”

“That sounds really terrible when you're waiting for your flight.”

He shrugs. “I don't know. You get used to it.”

“Do you? How long have you been working for the airline?”

He closes his eyes as he tries to remember. “I think about two to three months. I don't know. Not very long, but long enough to get used to it.”

“When you stopped working as a dancer?”

He frowns at me and then shakes his head. His expression says he thinks I’m the stupidest man he’s ever met in his life. I don’t want to ask him what it means, so I wait. He finally answers me after a long and tense pause. “I'm still working as a dancer, just not as a dancer who is part of a company.”

“Wait, what does that mean? What are you doing?”

“You know. Going for auditions, off-season theatre stuff, music videos.”

I raise my eyebrows. “That’s a competitive market.”

He smiles. “Yeah, I know. Tell me about it.”

“Do you like it?” I ask.

I don't mind talking about him. I like talking about him. It's better than talking about me. It's better than talking about what I did to him. I don't know if I'll ever be able to make it up to him, and I don't think that I will. Maybe that's okay, maybe we can be distant acquaintances. I think I would be okay with that. I would be okay with anything as long as Jason doesn't hate me. I avoid telling him that because I know it makes me seem pathetic.

But honestly, I've thought about him so many times through the years. It's still surreal to me that I've run into him at this airport. I never imagined him having any sort of customer service job, certainly not one like this.

It wasn’t because I didn't think he could do it. Of course he could. Jason is one of the most capable people I know and he could do anything he sets out to do. I genuinely believe that.

I guess because I thought he would be on a big play as a backup dancer or something at this point. I mean, that’s what my mind went to the moment he told me he was a dancer.

I think I did a lot to block out who Jason used to be and the more we talk, the more I realize just how much I missed him. Just how much I’m missing out on.

I suppose neither one of us has ended up where we intended to, which is a bit of a shame. Still, I feel like if destiny does exist, it’s being a real dick right now.

It's like it's saying I can't get away from who I used to be, and I can't get away from where I'm from.

It doesn't matter that I don't want to go home. It doesn't matter that I'm an aspiring actor. All that matters is that I’m not going to be able to escape Jason and what I did to him.

 “Is this just what you're doing while you find another company to take you?”

“I guess. I'm auditioning, but you know how it is. You're an actor, so you know the struggle. I’m not getting any younger and dancers have a shorter shelf life than most other stage professions,” he replies. There’s no bitterness in his voice, but he also doesn’t sound particularly happy about it. It’s just factual. He seems completely resigned to the fact that he’s getting closer and closer to his expiration date. Personally, it makes me uncomfortable to see him like this, but I’m not going to say anything. That’s not my place. “Are you on anything right now?”

I look away from him. I don’t want to admit how unemployed and under-accomplished I am. Not to him. “No. Work has been kind of difficult lately.”

“I feel that,” he says, shrugging. “If it makes you feel any better, it's been really difficult for all of us lately. Or you know, for forever.”

I chuckle weakly as I set my gaze on him. He’s so handsome. I’m obsessed with his eyes. I could look at them forever. “You know, you should get into acting.”

His eyes widen and then he laughs as his brow creases. “What? Why?”

“Because, Jason. People are always looking for good-looking white heartthrobs.”

“Maybe so,” he says with a smile. “But I can’t act for shit.”

I smile back at him. “A lot of big actors can’t. They’re still doing things.”

He cocks his head and his smile is gone. “If I didn't know any better, I would think you sound bitter.”

“I'm not bitter.” He sets his gaze right on my eyes. I shake my head as I flash him the sincerest smile I can muster. “Okay, a little bitter. It’s just there's so much competition. Like, I intellectually knew that going in, but it's been really hard to realize just how real the competition is.”

“Yeah. Tell me about it. Especially when it feels like everyone's better than you.”

I shake my head. “For what it's worth, Jason, I really don't think every dancer in the city is better than you. You have been working your ass off for years, and I'm pretty sure that shows up in your craft.”

“You would think so,” he replies shaking his head. “But there are people who started younger, who are skinnier than me, who can lift more than me—”

“All of those things might be true, but it doesn’t mean you don’t deserve all the merit in the world for being a good dancer.”

“Nah,” he says. “But they have all slept with more directors than me.”

I shake my head, unable to contain my bitter chuckle. “That’s what it all comes down to, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” he replies and rolls his eyes. “Everyone talks about all this shit making progress and stuff, but it’s just about who you sleep with. I know this is so stupid but I can only bring myself to sleep with people I care about.”

I stare at him. He’s looking away from me, as if he’s embarrassed at what he’s just said. “I don’t think it’s stupid. I think it’s…”

“What?”

“I don’t know.” I do know. I was going to say it was sweet, but that feels too personal. I keep having to remind myself we don’t really know each other that well, that we’re no longer friends. Even if we used to be a long time ago, it’s simply not the case anymore. I can’t just tell him I think his sexual inclinations are sweet, that’s not my place anymore. If it ever was.

“Max.”

“What?”

“Just tell me,” he says. “You’re not a good liar.”

“I wasn't trying to lie. I was just trying to mind my own business.”

“Well, I'm telling you not to. What was on your mind?”

I shrug. “I guess I was just thinking that it was sweet.”

“You think me only sleeping with people I like is sweet?”

“Yeah. That's what I think.”

He shakes his head as he smiles. “Who do you sleep with?”

I look away from him. I don't want to admit this, but now that we are talking about this, I don't see a way to get out of it. I don't want to lie as I feel like I've already lied enough for my entire lifetime. He should get to have all the information he needs about me, all the information he asked me. I don't think that's bad. In fact, I feel encouraged. “I'll sleep with whoever I need to sleep with.”

“What does that mean? Are you a prostitute?” His voice drops when he asks me. He's whispering, and he’s leaning over me, and I can see the little specks of gray in his eyes.

They are even more gorgeous than I remember, but I'm having to look away from him. I can't deal with him being right in front of me like this, looking like this and just… existing like this in my vicinity. Not when he's trying to pry me open and when he's trying to take all these things out of me.

It feels like I'm sharing a part of myself I've never shared with anyone before. I don’t want to share it with him, we’re not close enough for that. We’re not close enough for anything anymore.

He leans back in his chair and crosses his arms over his chest. “I guess you might call yourself an entrepreneur then, huh?”

“No,” I reply, shaking my head. I’m trying to laugh but I can’t make myself do it. “I’m not a prostitute.”

“You’re not?” he asks, cocking his head.

I don’t say anything. I don’t want to say anything.

“I mean, no offense, Max, but you're acting like you are.”

I shrug. “I guess,” I reply and lick my lips. I don't like thinking about my arrangement with Sarah as if it were sex work, because I don't think that it was.

It was more than just about sex, but we barely liked each other. So maybe it was sex work, just extended sex work. Like sex work that lasted six years. “The last person I was with, the one who I just broke up with, she was much older than me.”

He raises eyebrows. “So, like, a sugar momma?”

I shrug. “I don't like thinking about it like that.”

“She paid your rent?”

I roll my eyes. “Yes. She paid for my food and my bills too. It made it possible for me to go out and pursue my acting career.”

He smiles. “Honestly, no judgment. If I could do what you did, I would totally do it.”

“No,” I say, shaking my head. I want him to understand this was a one-time thing, it wasn’t like I sought out… what did he call them? Sugar Mommas. It wasn’t like that. “It’s not an arrangement I had with other people. Only with her.”

He nods as he leans back, his arms falling to his sides. “Wait, so she's your only sugar momma?”

I nod and this time, I can’t hold back laughter. “Yeah, Jason. She's my only sugar mama.”

If this was anyone else, I would be offended by the very term, but it's him and I don’t think he’s trying to offend me. I think he's genuinely interested in what I have to say, which is a weird feeling when it comes to my best friend. My ex best friend. The person I shit on in high school. I have no idea how to think about Jason and it’s making my head split. I need to get away from him and back into me, back into my own shit. At least then I’m not going to be thinking about him.

“It didn’t start like that.”

He raises his eyebrows.

“Like, I didn't specifically want her to be my sugar momma, as you put it, or anything like that.”

“Well, how did it start?”

I close my eyes as I think back to all the parties I had been to over the last few years. There have been a lot, because when you're an actor, networking is part of your job and networking almost always takes place at a party. Whether that’s on someone’s rooftop or at a popping nightclub downtown, well, that’s anyone’s guess.

“My friend Veronica had invited me to a party. It was on her block, which was about two blocks away from mine. I didn’t think I wanted to go, but she told me that some big producer was going to be there. I didn't believe her, but she was nice enough and we had been sleeping together on and off for a while. I thought, worse comes to worst, I would get lucky.”

“Oh, the story’s already juicy,” he says with a smile.

I shake my head and crack a smile. “Not that juicy. I wasn't having a good time, and I didn't want to be sleeping with her. I mean, don't get me wrong, she was a perfectly nice person. She still is, but we were only hooking up with each other because we were bored and lonely.”

He's looking at me with a thoughtful look in his eyes. “Yeah. I am sorry to say I've been there too.”

I smirk. “I thought you could only sleep with people who you care about.”

“Yes. At the time, I was confusing caring for someone with feeling lonely. I'm afraid that happens a lot to me.”

“I don't blame you. Arriving here, with no friends, with no one to turn to in case something happens... It's all really scary. Veronica was there for me. She was someone I met at an improv class and we hit it off straight away. We wouldn't realize for a while that we were better off as friends, but at the time we were still kind of together on and off.”

“So you met your sugar momma through her?”

I shrug. “Yeah, something like that. When I got to the party, there was no big producer there. But there was this woman, and she looked like... I don’t know. Expensive.”

 “Do you mean that she was sophisticated?”

I shake my head. “No. I mean expensive, like she was wearing ripped jeans and a tunic that went all the way down to her knees. But it was all expensive clothes and even the way she moved looked like she had taken classes in I don’t know, moving. Am I making any sense? I don’t think I’m making sense.”

“You’re making sense,” he says as he nods. “I've met people like that.”

I smile. “I went over and introduced myself to her. I thought she might be the producer and that she might be in to the movie business. She told me her name was Sarah, we drank a couple of glasses of wine together, and she asked me out.”

“Ah, right. And you went out with her?”

“Yeah, I did. I had nothing better to do. And she was nice enough, and I thought she was working in the movie industry at the time, even if she wasn’t a producer.”

He smirks. “She wasn't?”

I twist my lips and then relax my face into a smile, because I can see Jason is finding this amusing. Riveting, maybe, but amusing, definitely. “Yeah, tangentially she was. She was in marketing.”

“One of the big ones huh?”

I chuckle. It’s well-known in the industry that unless you’ve made it as one of the creatives, the executives make a lot more money than you.

“Yeah, she made good money,” I reply. “We were together for a little while, having fun with each other.”

“But it got complicated?” He offers.

“Not really,” I reply. “I couldn't pick up the checks on most of our dates, though. She knew that and she had no problem with it. And then one day I told her that I felt like things were really unequal between us and that I wanted to split up.”

“But she didn't take it very well.”

“She took it like a champ, actually.” I reply as I shake my head. “But at the same time, she didn't want it to end. That was when she asked me to move in with her. I told her I would think about it. She said we could still have our freedom, that the only requirement that she had was that I clean up around the house and that I was there when she needed me.”

He cocks his head as he sets his gaze on me, his eyes widening. This is the first time I’ve said something that appears to have surprised him. “That seems kind of sweet. Why did you break up?”

“Well, honestly, she was—she always cared about me more than I cared about her. She seemed to start to want something other than what our arrangement implied. She invited me to family events. Not just Christmas, but real ones, like her brother’s wedding. She wasn’t happy, though. She knew I wasn’t in love with her.”

He looks down at his empty foam cup. I wish I had replenished it before I sat down. I could do with a drink myself.

A long, tense pause takes place before either one of us says anything. When Jason speaks, his words are slow, his voice low and his tone deliberate.

“Can I ask you something personal?”

“Aren’t you already?” I reply. It sounds a little more hostile than I intend, so I wave my hand in front of my face. “I’m sorry. Of course, Jason. You can ask me anything.”

He seems surprised at that too. “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why can I ask you anything?”

“Because,” I reply and shrug. I don’t want to say anything. “I don’t know, you just can, okay?”

“Okay,” he says. “You talk about her with… I don’t know, respect. Affection, even. I don’t really know how to ask you this.”

“Why wasn’t I in love with her?”

“Yeah,” he replies. “I guess that’s my question.”

The real answer, of course, is that I wasn't in love with her because I've never been in love with anyone other than Jason. I’ve never managed to feel the way I felt about Jason with anyone else.

I wanted to. I really did. With Veronica, with Sarah, with that dude at the party.

But I'm not going to tell him that, because that seems like a lot to put on him.

He won’t know about that, shouldn't know. He's probably never going to, and I've come to terms with that. It's okay. It's okay Jason doesn't know how I felt about him, and it's okay Jason will never know.

Verging into this territory is dangerous for me. Because I don't want to reveal too much about this. I don't want to talk too much about my feelings regarding him, but if I start talking about my feelings for Sarah, or rather my lack of feelings for Sarah, I'm sure I'm going to slip up. “There was someone else.”

“Someone else you cared about more?”

“Something like that.”

“I guess that monogamy was a thing she expected from your relationship?”

“I don't know. I guess it could have been, but honestly, I don’t think so. She could do whatever she wanted, and I could do whatever I wanted, but I honestly wasn't interested in anyone else. I think she dated other men, though.”

He cocks his head and brushes his sandy blond hair away from his face. “From where I’m standing, Max, that sounds like love.”

I shake my head. “No. The reason I wasn’t with anyone wasn’t because I didn’t want to cheat on her, just because there was this other person who took over everything.”

“Right, this famous other person. Was it someone who you worked with?”

I swallow, trying to ignore how dry my mouth is suddenly. “No. It wasn't someone I worked with.”

“But you couldn't get them out of your mind?”

“Exactly. I could never fall in love with her because I could never give myself to her. It would have been unfair for me to pretend that I was in love with her. It would have been unfair for both of us if I did that.”

“Not just unfair, dishonest.”

“Right,” I replied. “I didn’t want to lie to her.”

“Did this other person, did they know how you felt about them?”

“No. They didn't.”

“You didn’t tell them?” He puts the emphasis on them, as if the pronoun isn’t a dead giveaway that I’m talking about him. Or at least about a man. He probably knows I’m talking about another guy, but I don’t think he realizes that I mean him.

I rub the bridge of my nose as I think about his line of inquiry. Just the idea that he doesn't know that he's talking about himself makes me feel sick.

“There was never any future for me and this person.”

“How do you know that?” he says. “If you never told them how you felt, how do you know that they didn't want the same thing that you wanted?”

“I screwed things up. My modus operandi has always been to fuck things over,” I say as I shake my head and chuckle bitterly. The coldness in my voice appears to surprise him, but he doesn’t move. He doesn’t ask me any questions. He simply waits for me to continue.

“This person, they were out of my life. For a long time, I blamed myself over what happened between the two of us.”

I think he’s about to reach out to me and touch my arm in a reassuring manner but he hesitates and his hand drops to the table in front of him. “I mean,” he quietly says, “I have a hard time believing that it was entirely your fault that you couldn't be with this person”

“It was,” I say instantly. “I handled things between us very poorly, and because of that, I lost any chance I might have had with them.”

“Do you regret it?” he asks as he cocks his head again.

“Oh, yeah. I regret it a lot. Every day of my life.”

“Would you tell them? If you could tell them, I mean. That you regret it.”

“What would I tell them? That I spent years pining for them? That every night's a nightmare because they don't wake up next to me, and that I don't think I can make it in the world without them?”

Jason shook his head as he laughed. “No, I meant like maybe ask them out for a date. Don't start with a love declaration before you know they're on board.”

“I know that you're trying to be helpful, but this person is not somebody who I think I can have a relationship with.”

“Why?”

“Because. I did something to them, and I don't think they'll ever forgive me.”

He leans forward.

I look right into his eyes. He looks right back at me, and his eyes look like they're glimmering, and for a second, I know for a fact he knows I'm talking about him.

I want to hear him say I'm wrong, I want him to say he's willing to give me a chance, that he wants this for both of us. But instead, as he opens his mouth, his phone, which is face down on the table, starts to vibrate and dance around, and his eyes widen and his mouth shuts.

Any magic is gone in that second.

He grabs his phone, flips it over and rubs his temple. “Shit,” he says. “Looks like they’re clearing people to go.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah,” he says. “They’re gonna need me in about an hour, if the weather keeps letting up. Looks like the warning was just a warning. Things are fine.”

“That’s good,” I say meekly.

“Yeah,” he replies and then he smiles brightly at me. “You might even get to go home today.”

“That would be ideal,” I say.

“Completely,” he replies. Then he tilts his head forward, sniffs his shoulder and sighs. “Shit, man. I stink.”