“Good evening, this is Deborah Fara.”

“Hi, mom.” I cradled my phone near my ear as I lay down.

There was a crackle and a pause on the other end of the phone. “Adam? Is that you?”

“Yep, it’s me. How are you, mom?”

“Adam. It’s been weeks since I’ve heard from you. Months, maybe?”

“Yeah, well, not much has changed,” I lied.

“Well, clearly your phone number has changed. What is this 360 area code?”

“It’s for Washington. I got a new phone a few weeks ago.”

“Hm,” she said, curt. “Washington. What are you doing in DC?”

“Not DC. Washington State. I’m in between Portland and Seattle.”

“Oh,” she said, sounding completely uninterested.

“So how is Stephanie doing, mom?” The real reason I’d called was to find out how my sister was with her new twins. Well, I guess they weren’t new anymore, seeing as they were over a year old. “I need her phone number—I didn’t have it memorized and it got lost with this new phone I bought.”

“Well, if you called more often, you’d know how Stephanie was doing. The twins were in the hospital with the flu last week. Luckily they’re out now and recovering well.”

“Jesus,” I said, “I’m so glad they’re okay.” I was lying down on my newly purchased bed, with my feet up against the wall.

“Yes, they’re doing fine. I was talking with my financial advisor about setting up college funds for them the other day, actually.” Her voice was cold and clipped. It seemed like every time I called her, she’d gotten more bitter.

“College funds already? They’re still babies...”

“Well, of course, Adam. It’s the same way we did it for you, shortly after you were born. Not that you’ve done anything with that money….”

“And I’m not going to touch it.”

“And what are you doing now for work, Adam? It isn’t too late to go back to college. People do it in their thirties all the time.”

“I’m getting by. I definitely don’t need dad’s money. I’ve told you, I’m never touching it.”

I heard the clink of ice in a glass, and I could almost picture the clear tumbler of vodka soda that she was undoubtedly holding. “Well, I’d say your kids would inherit it, Adam, but I know that’s just wishful thinking.

“Why is that?”

“You know why. You’ll never have kids.”

My blood began to boil. I was typically a calm person, almost too calm, but speaking to my mother was a rare occurrence that could make me insane—could almost make me forget the adult version of who I was, hurtling me back through time to the years when I had to live with her as a teenager. I kept thinking it would get better as I grew older, and it hadn’t, the wounds fresh every time we spoke.

“And what makes you so sure that I’ll never have kids?”

“Well, other than the fact that you’ve told me before you don’t want any, I also don’t think you’ll ever settle down, Adam.”

Settle down. The implications in her words were staggering.

Because to her, settle down meant quit being gay. And that was something that no matter how many times I told her—that I’m gay, I always have been—she wouldn’t accept. And neither had my father, when he’d been alive.

“Can I please just get Stephanie’s phone number?” I said, ice cold.

“Let me find it. But do consider college, Adam. You know you’re the only one in the family who hasn’t gone. Your inheritance is waiting for you, all you have to do is ask.”

I could hear her rustling through papers and I tried to keep my anger measured and contained.

I was resolute that I would never take inheritance money from a family that had never accepted who I am, and now well into my thirties, still didn’t. Because no matter how modern my parents might have seemed in other ways—my dad had been an award winning electronics pioneer and made his own way to riches—they had never gotten over the fact that their only son was gay.

She finally gave me Stephanie’s number. After a few more perfunctory exchanges and audible, deliberate sighs, we hung up.

And I felt hollowed out.

I turned over onto my stomach in bed, burying my face in one of the new pillows. I thought I had been prepared to talk to her—I’d even psyched myself up, reminding myself that I lived far away now and she had no control over me—but here I was, practically numb after speaking with her for only a few minutes.

I got up and crossed over to the kitchen, searching the fridge aimlessly. I opened up the freezer and pulled out the ice cream cake, taking another slice from the rapidly dwindling delicious cake.

And slowly but surely, as I ate it sitting at the kitchen table, my anger started to fade.

Because this week, I had started to feel like I could call Fox Hollow home. I was building a life for myself unlike anything I’d ever had.

Granted, it was the first place I had even tried to make feel like home in years, but I still had been able to develop a sort of routine after the first week of being in town.

And I was enjoying my job working at the cleaning company more than I could have imagined. We had recurring weekly and monthly jobs at nearby schools and facilities, and then also picked up one-time jobs to deep clean houses or various other buildings. It wasn’t the kind of job where I got to talk much with my coworkers—even during lunch breaks, most people on the crew seemed to prefer reading newspapers over socializing. But it was oddly calming. Sure, cleaning up a kid’s puke off the floor at an elementary school wasn’t fun, but those extreme cases weren’t the norm, and it felt infinitely more right to be a glorified janitor than it would to take the money my father had left for me.

And yesterday we had cleaned a gorgeous house in Tarringville, the wealthy neighborhood that Grey’s ice cream shop was in. It was a veritable estate, and we’d been hired to deep clean it after the 98-year-old owner had passed away in a nearby nursing home. As we left the house and drove through the surrounding town, I kept my eyes open for Freezy Sweet, and finally saw it on an otherwise nondescript corner, its sign glowing in the foggy afternoon light.

Grey hadn’t contacted me since that night at my house. I saw him outside every day, taking Chewy out or in the backyard by himself, but I never received a phone call, or message from him.

I’d almost been convinced he wanted nothing to do with me. But that night, after hanging up with my mother, eating ice cream cake, and cracking open a book, I heard a rapping knock at my door.

It was Grey, looking much the same as he had the last time I’d seen him, soaked with rain in his black hoodie. He was slumped, barely meeting my eyes.

“Grey. Come on in. Don’t you own a raincoat?” I said, opening the door wide for him.

“Oh. Uh, no,” he said as he stepped inside, and I heard a distinct waver in his voice. His hands were pressed into the front pocket of his hoodie, and when he finally looked up at me I saw that his eyes were reddened, maybe like he’d been crying.

“Jesus,” I said, taking a step closer to him. “Are you alright?”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said, with a shake of his head. “Listen. Did you really mean what you said about walking Chewy?”

“Of course I did. I’ll walk her anytime you need.”

He took in a breath. “Okay. I might have to take you up on it, then.”

“Sure. I’m ready whenever,” I said.

He nodded. Now not only did I think he'd been crying before, in fact I worried he may begin to tear up again at any moment, the lines of his face straining and tightening one moment only to collapse again a second later, seemingly too weak to even bother with worry.

It was painful. I felt deeply for him, too deeply for a person I'd only recently met. He was in his twenties with the weight of the world upon him, too young to have reached resignation but old enough to be so weary.

“Grey,” I said, “Why the sudden change of heart?”

“I just… don’t know if I can even be around in the evenings for Chewy anymore. I have to up my hours even more at the shop because I just… I can’t afford this new medication my mom needs and basically I’m just fucked and if I’m at the store from 9 a.m. until 9 p.m. I’m not gonna be able to take care of my dog and I just—”

“Hey,” I said, pushing in close and putting a hand to his shoulder. He finally met my eyes again. “I would love to walk her. Consider it a done deal. But are you okay?”

He pulled in a shuddering breath. “I mean, no? Not really? But I’m not going to put that on you, Adam. I’ll be okay, I just need help with the dog.”

“Your mom is sick?”

He paused for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah. She had this thyroid operation a couple years ago, and they haven’t been able to get the meds right ever since, and they keep switching them on her and it’s awful, and finally they have this new one for us to try but it’s expensive as hell and my shitty insurance doesn’t cover much and I need to work more hours.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said, wishing there was something I could do more than just promising to walk his dog. “Is there anything else I can do to help?”

He leaned back slightly, pressing his hands to his temples. “Only thing that would help is me getting the fuck out of this town. Which it’s starting to look like will never happen.”

“What’s so wrong with Fox Hollow?” I asked.

He practically glared at me. “Everything? I still don’t even know why you came here. I’ve been trying to get out my whole fucking life.” His voice was harsh as I’d ever heard it.

“It’s beautiful here,” I said, “And simple. And everyone is nice. I don’t know, I really love Fox Hollow so far.”

He stared to the side, shaking his head slightly. “Two weeks ago I would have said there was nothing good here at all.”

“Two weeks ago?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said, staring at me now, his eyes a shock of blue under the dark hair and hood. He shrugged. “Well, you’re here now, and that’s kind of the only cool thing that’s happened in as long as I can remember.” He said it nonchalantly, like he was describing a fact in a textbook.

And it took me totally by surprise. “You… you don’t hate me?” I asked.

“Why would I hate you?” he said.

“I don’t know, I just thought you’d given up on talking to me after last time I saw you, since I didn’t hear from you. Thought maybe I was too pushy. The weird older next door neighbor who wants to walk your dog and is overly friendly.”

He puffed out a quick laugh, his lips twitching almost into a smile before slipping back into dejected gloom. He looked so vulnerable, so young; I knew he was 26 but there was something innocent about him, something he tried to hide with his attitude and dark clothes. It only made me want him more. “You’re definitely not too pushy. I didn’t call because I didn’t want to burden you,” he said.

“Walking Chewy is hardly a burden. And neither is talking to you, Grey.”

He chewed his bottom lip, then let it go. Finally his face fell into a more resolute expression, less pained and more resigned. “Okay. I can give you an extra key to my place—I’ll bring it over tonight. I apologize in advance for the state my house is in. You can walk her any time in the afternoon. I feed her around 5 or 6, she isn’t picky, food’s on the shelf.”

I nodded.

“Are you sure you’re okay doing this?” he asked again.

“Very sure.”

He let out a long sigh. “Thank you. It really… really means a lot to me.”

He left and then came back two minutes later with a key, a leash, and a couple of written notes about Chewy, plus his phone number.

“I’ll start tomorrow. I can’t wait,” I said, standing near the front doorway.

He laughed, finally seeming a little more relaxed. “Hope you still feel that way when you see how crazy she is. Please call or text me with anything you need to tomorrow.”

“I’ll take good care of her, Grey. Good luck at work.”

He nodded and held my gaze for a moment, then turned to the door. “Thank you, Adam. I’m going to make it up to you.”

* * *

Walking Chewy gave a rhythm and routine to my days that firmly solidified Fox Hollow feeling like home.

She was crazy, and barked at everything from leaves to ants to thin air, and in the perennial mist and rain I had to clean mud off her paws almost every time we got back to Grey’s house. At first she’d been reluctant to have a leash put on her, but as the days passed she became used to me, and soon would greet me, happy and wagging, at the front door every afternoon.

When I went inside to feed her I tried hard not to pry around Grey’s house—but I couldn’t help noticing a few things anyway: the simple furniture, the stacks of books everywhere, the relative lack of decoration on the walls. There were plenty of neon dog toys, dog beds of various sizes, and general things for Chewy, but not much that seemed like it was Grey’s.

There was one exception: a bookshelf in his main room that was filled with tons of DVDs, mostly of older movies. It seemed like Grey must be a movie buff, because while he had certain titles I knew and recognized, he had even more that I’d never heard of. He had a small TV nearby and I could picture him, lounging on his bed, watching movies at night until he fell asleep.

But the best thing about walking Chewy had nothing to do with the dog herself.

Every night, Grey would bring me something new. It was his form of “paying” me for taking care of the dog. He paid in gifts instead of cash, slowly bringing me a never-ending parade of items that showed how much he appreciated my help.

The first night I hadn’t been expecting it at all. He’d showed up at my door past 10 o’clock, holding a strange thing in his hands. It was a little glass bowl with soil in it, with tiny succulents, moss, and slate stones inside.

“It’s a terrarium,” he said, holding it out to me, I took it, my hands brushing his cold fingers for a moment in the exchange.

“Grey, this is incredible. Where did you find this?”

“I, uh, I just threw it together. Extra glass jar we weren’t using at work, stones and moss from the lot behind work.”

“You made this?” I asked, incredulous. The work was stunning, seeing it at close range, every stone and plant arranged perfectly and with care.

He just shrugged. “I needed something to do. Today was slow as hell. Guess nobody wanted any ice cream. And I wanted to give you something as a thank you.”

Grey was downplaying an unbelievable gift that he’d clearly spent time on. But I’d accepted it graciously, setting it on my windowsill in the living room, right where I could see it every morning.

I’d thought that would be his only grand gesture, but the gifts kept coming.

The next night, he showed up with a wooden crate full of fresh mangoes that a regular at the ice cream shop had brought in to share with the pastry chef. A couple days later, he brought a chess set, made from fine, handcrafted wood, that he got for a dollar at a yard sale on his lunch break from work. Another day it was a birdfeeder, which I’d put on my back deck and already had seen a hummingbird come by.

He acted casual and self-effacing about every gift, never taking credit, even though every last one of them was unique, somehow newly precious. I hardly knew what to do, and wanted to repay him now, after getting so many of his gifts.

I had been walking Chewy for two weeks, and Grey had brought me something almost every day.

Every gift just served to widen the expanding affection I had for him. I started to look forward to his daily arrival. When I woke up I’d see his gifts around me in my room; when I went to bed I’d dream of blue eyes and dark hair. In dreams he was often just at my doorstep, an imitation of real life, but in others I dreamed of warming the coldest parts of him, or what the skin at the small of his back would feel like underneath his sweatshirt.

And sometimes in between, half-awake in the middle of the night, my brain would be just tired enough to give into the obvious truth: that I wanted Grey. Badly. A deep, inescapable want, one more possessive than I normally had for people, that had probably started weeks ago but had grown into something surprising and urgent. Half-awake, I’d think of what he’d feel like from the inside. How soft his hair would be gripped in my fist, and what he might sound like if I made him come.

I’d touch myself quickly, methodically, part guilty and part drunk with lust.

The thoughts pressed at the corners of my mind at night, but in the day I didn’t let them see the light. Because ostensibly I was helping Grey, I was being a good neighbor, a good Samaritan, a worthy addition to the kind people I’d met in Fox Hollow. Grey was bashful and humble around me, always rushing home after giving me his gifts, claiming exhaustion. I had no idea if he thought of me at all, other than as his older neighbor who walked his dog.

So I let my feelings live inside me, a low, persistent rumble, thriving only from the brief moments I’d see him at night.

* * *

On a particularly gloomy Sunday, where the sky was so dark at 2 p.m. that it almost looked like night, I had the day off work and Grey had gone in to the ice cream shop. I had walked Chewy, fed her, and secretly spent an hour in Grey’s living room, reading one of the books he had at the top of a stack by his bed. It was just an old Victorian novel, but I got sucked in, and before I knew it, an hour had passed as I read while listening to the rain tapping against the windows.

It was a sweeping romance novel, the kind I hadn’t picked up since I’d been forced to in high school, but now I found it startling and beautiful, its every sentence aching with emotion. Is this what Grey read in his free time? I would have expected him to sooner read something like Ernest Hemingway or Cormac McCarthy. Grey had such a dry, brooding disposition on the surface, but it seemed his shelves were full of lush, romantic books and movies.

I went home knowing that he’d probably show up sooner rather than later that night with some gift in hand. Freezy Sweet closed early on Sundays, and he should have been back by 6.

But time kept passing, and Grey didn’t show up. It was 7 o’clock, then 8, then 9, and I hadn’t seen him at all.

It was nearly 10 p.m. when I heard the familiar knock at the door.

I swung it open and found him drenched from the rain, as I’d come to expect, eyes tired and lashes strung with raindrops. Tonight, he held a big bouquet of damp flowers in one hand and what looked like a half-empty liquor bottle in the other.

“This is all I’ve got,” he said, voice muffled from the rain, as he held out the flowers and bottle. It had certainly misted and drizzled a lot since I’d moved to Washington State, but this was a full-blown heavy rain, unusual even for here.

“Jesus, you’re shivering. Come inside,” I said. He obliged, walking a few steps into the living room, and when he pushed back his soaked black hood, I had to force myself not to stare. Because it almost felt like vertigo, seeing him like that, fresh from the rain with his cheeks reddened and a giant, vibrant floral bouquet at his chest, a riot of pink, yellow, lavender and green. It was beauty, in both its starkest and its most immediate forms, here in my living room and slowly dripping onto my rug.

I went to get a bath towel and returned to the living room, draping it over Grey’s shoulders.

“Sorry it’s just stupid flowers tonight,” he said. “Someone left this bouquet at the shop yesterday and never came back to pick it up. The rum’s leftover from a new cake our pastry chef was trying, but she said this one doesn’t have the right spices to it. I gotta admit I’ve already had some of it tonight.”

He looked to me with a slow smile, and I realized that he was a little tipsy. I’m not sure if I felt bad for thinking that it was kind of adorable. “Grey, these are unbelievably beautiful. You don’t have to keep acting like your gifts aren’t special.”

I took the flowers, crossing to the kitchen and searching for a vessel to put them in. I had no vase, but had acquired an old glass pitcher, and it would have to do the job. I placed the stems inside and brought the bouquet to the table, the floral scent already filling the room. “Did you have to stay late at work tonight?” I called to him back in the living room.

“No,” he called back, and I headed back and found him standing right where I’d left him, huddled under the big towel with the liquor in his hand. “I stopped at my mom’s after work and ended up cooking dinner for her. She wasn’t feeling too hot today.”

“Ah, I’m sorry,” I said, not wanting to push the subject too far. Grey seemed to have complicated feelings about his mother, and I knew how that felt better than anyone.

“So you wanna share?” he said quickly, holding up the bottle as the brown liquid sloshed inside. I watched a rivulet of water slide down Grey’s hand, onto the bottle, and then drip onto the floor. “Still a good amount in here. I’ve only had two drinks tonight. Or maybe three, I don’t know.”

“Oh,” I said, surprised at his offer. Usually he made a hasty exit after dropping off his gifts. “Of course.”

“I mean, only if you want to,” he said. “If you had other plans for the night, then whatever. I just thought drinking at home alone would be a little too depressing even for me.”

If only he knew how utterly thrilled I was that he wanted to have a drink with me. “I’d absolutely fucking love to,” I said. “Go ahead, have a seat. I’ll get us some glasses.”

“Ah—I’m pretty sure I’m gonna soak your nice new bed if I sit down on it,” he said, looking to me from under his lashes. “I don’t wanna ruin it.”

“Right. Shit. Let me get you some warm clothes.” I crossed to the hall closet and fished out some sweatpants and a dark thermal shirt.

“Thanks,” he said when I pressed them to his hand, and he handed me the liquor. I left him to change in the living room. I suddenly was keenly aware that having a house the size of a studio apartment left little privacy, so I went to the kitchen and poured out rum for us. A low buzz coursed through my body and realized that I was inordinately excited.

Finally I was going to be able to spend time with Grey, time that wasn’t just an exchange or a quick conversation in the yard.

And I kind of could not fucking wait.