Evan glanced over at the door when Maura answered the knock. Reg was having cereal this morning, which kept him in one spot, at least. He had looked so happy to see Evan, that it made Evan’s heart swell with pride. “More prince story?” he asked.

Then the knock, and the glance…and the shock. He froze in place when he saw Simon standing there.

“Can I help you?” said Maura.

“I need to speak to Evan, please,” said Simon.

“He’s…he’s a friend, Maura. He can come in.”

Maura looked hesitant. No. She looked panicked that someone from Evan’s life should intrude on hers. Most times, she would have put her foot down, slammed the door, and given Evan a lecture about this, but she couldn’t stay.

“I don’t know what this is,” she told Evan, “but I have to go. I can’t be here for it. Please…just, damn it, Evan, remember your commitment.”

She glared at Simon, grabbed her attache, and pushed past him out the door.

Simon stepped in, looking confused and dumbfounded.

Then he saw Reg, and his eyes widened.

“I…hello,” Simon said.

“Hi,” said Reg.

“Hi,” said Evan.

“Hi,” said Reg again.

I can explain, thought Evan, but another thought was there first. “Did you follow me here?”

Simon looked so guilty, it reminded Evan of a dog that chewed up your favorite shoe. He was all but putting himself in the corner. “I guess I did,” said Simon. “I’m so sorry. It was worrying about you that did it, thinking you might be endangering yourself somehow, doing something—”

“Something stupid?”

“Well…” Simon said, his voice trailing off. “Possibly? But now I find that you left work to do…babysitting I mean, isn’t your current job entry-level enough, did you have to regress to a teenage girl job?”

Evan nodded. “Caught me red-handed. This is Reg.”

“I’m Reg!”

“Pleased to meet you,” Simon said. “I’m Simon. I work with your babysitter.”

“She’s sick!” said Reg.

“His real babysitter, he means,” clarified Evan. “She has a stomach flu thing, and I had to… You followed me?”

“I know! It’s the most evil thing I’ve ever done, I feel just awful, I’m like a stalker, it’s terrible.”

“I mean, it’s not terrible, but it is a little weird.”

“You wouldn’t tell me where you were going!”

“Did you really need to know?” asked Evan. Why did he feel so defensive? Why was he so afraid of this conversation? Reg was here, Simon was here, the explanation should have been simple.

Except that this was the biggest secret in his life.

Simon had come further into the room at this point, taking it in, looking up at the moldings on the ceiling, the furniture…Evan had really found a nice place for Maura to live. It made him proud to have done it for her, and he wondered what Simon thought of it.

What would Simon think of all of it?

God, telling him, giving him the full story, it would involve Simon in his life in a very real, concrete way, that couldn’t be taken back. This wasn’t like some random flirting. It was even more serious than their first encounter. This was real.

Telling Simon the truth would mean bringing him deeply into his life. It would be the responsible thing to do.

It wasn’t gossip or something, just something you hear and toss aside. It would mean that Simon would have power over him. Just like the rest of the world seemed to have.

Can I trust him? Can he keep this secret with me?

Simon looked so hurt and confused, though. He’d obviously agonized over following Evan, and now that he had, he didn’t know what to do with what he’d seen here.

It was the fact that he looked so hurt, that made Evan realize he could truly trust him. Simon had already become deeply emotionally invested in Evan.

“I guess I don’t need to know—” began Simon.

“Wait,” said Evan. He took a deep, deep breath. “Do you want to hear a secret about me? A secret that you have to swear never to tell? One that will get me in a hell of a lot more trouble than just skipping work?”

Simon looked both fearful and skeptical. “Oh god, if you’re going to tell me you’re married and have a kid, I am going to be so freaked out, after…after…” He looked down at Reg and went silent.

“What? Married? To Maura? Why would you even think that?” Then Evan looked around, and again tried to see things from Simon’s point of view. “Oh. Oh, yeah, I guess I could see that. But no! Maura’s like my oldest friend in the world, no, no, not at all, never gonna marry her, I like guys. Men. Because of the gayness, you see.”

“Oh, whew. Wait, then…what’s the big secret?”

“Well. So, a few years ago, Maura decided she wanted to have a baby. She thought about doing it, you know, artificially, but it was kind of expensive; I offered to pay, but she didn’t want to feel beholden to me. But she hated most of the guys she was meeting, and she knew that if they contributed…um…their genetic material, things would just get weird and awkward and complicated.”

“Unlike, say, right this second, where things aren’t at all weird and awkward and complicated?” said Simon.

“Yeah. Well, I don’t think either of us foresaw how it would go. So, I donated—”

“You don’t really have to go into details on that part.”

“Good point. Anyway…Simon, meet my son, Reg. My extremely secret son.”

“I’m a boy!” explained Reg.

“Indeed you are,” said Simon. He looked back up at Evan. “I guess I still don’t understand the secret part.”

“Can you imagine what Archie would do? He already hates my guts. But if there’s another heir to the Cray fortune…he’d just explode. He’d make Maura and Reg’s life really, really hard. Maura understands that…hell, she’s the reason for the secret. She doesn’t want anyone to know, because eventually it’ll get to him. He can’t know about this, Simon.”

“I won’t tell.”

“You can’t. Things would absolutely fall apart. I can’t even believe I’m telling you this.”

“This is the secret you’ve been keeping all this time? This is why you’re so weird, when we talk about…certain subjects?”

“I don’t know how to do it, honestly,” Evan said. “I don’t know how to make it work. I have a son that the world can’t know about, and…”

And a guy I like, that I can’t have a relationship with, for the same reason I can’t tell the world I have a son.

Because I’m not in control of my own fate.

“It sounds awful,” said Simon.

“I think it’ll get better eventually, though. I mean, maybe if I can prove I’m responsible, hold down the job, defend the family trust…” He sighed. “Basically, maybe once I’m not totally at my family’s mercy, Maura will relent, and I can claim Reg as my own, and not have to carry around this secret.”

“You live in such a different world,” Simon said. “I have never dealt with anything like this before. Literally nothing.”

“I just didn’t want you to be mad at me.”

“I’m not!”

“You were. You were mad and disappointed.”

“Okay,” Simon said. “I guess I was. A little bit. But you were zooming around with your big secrets, you could have been going off on a party-yacht or something all this time, how I was supposed to know?”

“You’ll keep the secret?”

“Of course I will.”

Simon bit his lip, and Evan had the strangest feeling that Simon had more to say. That he wanted to confess something, himself. Evan was ready for it. Please tell me you see some way for this all to work, some way that I haven’t managed to see yet.

But what Simon actually said was, “You can trust me. I really have to get back to work, though. I can cover for you, but nobody’s there to cover for me. It was nice to meet you, Reg.”

The look he gave Evan as he opened the front door was strange, almost sad, but Evan had never felt more connected with him than at that moment.