Alone Together

I'm not sure what to say except, here it is, chapter 40, the one everyone seems to have been waiting for. With this chapter we begin a new arc, the second to last one. In writing this chapter, I have tried to be true to all that has come before it, especially the Part Two sections of chapters of the Axis Mundi arc, which you may want to reread, since I did when I was working on this chapter. Please send all compliments, complaints, and other assorted feedback to denis141@hotmail.com. I suspect there may be some complaints, but hang in there faithful readers, sometimes good things come to those who wait.

DEDICATION: For all those readers who voted for me in the Boy Band Story Awards. I won 13 awards, including Most Anticipated Couple, for Aaron and James. The best award though was the Reader's Choice award. So this chapter is for all you who voted for me.

A SPECIAL THANKS: To my ever faithful feedback buddy Zach, who agreed to read a draft of the chapter. His input was invaluable, and I thank him very much for it.

DISCLAIMER: I don't know NSYNC, and this story is purely a work of fiction.

This story also contains male/male loving (and occasionally some smut). Thus, if that's not your thing, or if you aren't old enough to read this, you should stop reading now. Sorry.

ALONE/TOGETHER

CHAPTER 40: OF LOVE ALONE: Part One: That One Winter Night, At Last.

"I like the winter," Finny assured me for the fourth time, as we came back from chapel that morning.

"Well, it doesn't like you." Wooden plank walks had been placed on many of the school paths for better footing, but there were icy patches everywhere on them. A crutch misplaced and he could be thrown down upon the frozen wooden planking, or into the ice-encrusted snow. [...]

"The winter loves me," he retorted, and then, disliking the whimsical sound of that, added, "I mean as much as you can say a season can love. What I mean is, I love winter, and when you really love something, then it loves you back, in whatever way it has to love." I didn't think that this was true, my seventeen years of experience had shown this to be much more false than true, but it was like every other thought and belief of Finny's: it should have been true. So I didn't argue. ---

Until now, in spite of everything, I had welcomed each new day as though it were a new life, where all past failures and problems were erased, and all future possibilities and joys open and available, to be achieved probably before night fell again. Now, in this winter of snow and crutches with Phineas, I began to know that each morning reasserted the problems of the night before, that sleep suspended all but changed nothing, that you couldn't make yourself over between dawn and dusk.

~ John Knowles, A Separate Peace (1959).

"Oh, Jake," Brett said, "we could have had such a damned good time together."

Ahead was a mounted policeman in khaki directing traffic. He raised his baton. The car slowed suddenly pressing Brett against me.

"Yes," I said. "Isn't it pretty to think so?"

~Ernest Hemingway, The Son Also Rises (1926)

"...there is that might-have-been which is the single rock we cling to above the maelstrom of unbearable reality."

~ William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom! (1936).

AARON CHASEZ BASS

A pounding sleet storm sliced the midnight sky into dark diagonal ribbons. The rat-a-tat tapping of sleet-stones on the roof of the car echoed inside it. I shivered hard and pulled my blue wool pea coat closed. I could see the mailbox down the block, standing there like a distant waiting figure - thick and stolid, slump-shouldered and alone. Sleet-stones slashed against it and ricocheted in all directions, scattering across the nearby lawn and across the narrow concrete street.

It was past midnight and I'd been sitting there since the sleet storm began nearly an hour ago. I came to mail a letter. But I wasn't quite ready yet. And so I waited. And I remembered -

James walking slowly through the chilly December night, taking small steps, as if waiting for me to catch up, but somehow knowing I didn't intend to. I'd been holding back for a reason, walking slow behind him, not wanting to catch up, not wanting to be there at all. It had rained earlier and the still wet sidewalk seemed to shimmer and glow as it reflected the orange-yellow light of the street lamp on the corner.

The mailbox sat like it always had, next to the street lamp, its metal the color of frozen mud. James walked slowly toward it. The diffuse light that pooled around the mailbox seemed in the foggy air to be tangible, like fine illuminated drapery. I continued to follow after him, staring at the envelope he held in his hand. It felt like he was stealing something from me. I watched the envelope like I wanted it back.

"Wait," I said, catching up with him in one long quick stride.

I grabbed his arm and turned him around. Not rough. Not like I was angry.

I didn't want to hurt him. I just wanted him to look at me.

"Are you sure?" I asked.

"No," he said, his word flat and lacking emotion. "I'm not sure about anything."

"Then why do it?" I said, blurting it out, not thinking clearly, if at all.

"Why not just wait? You can wait, can't you?"

"Wait for what?"

The question silenced me. There was no way to answer it honestly. At least not right then. Other people might have improvised something, offering up some feeble half-answer just to keep the conversation going. But I was never like that with him.

And James knew it.

I could see it in his eyes as he stared at me. His eyes were clear, and unafraid. He looked like he did that first time I saw him, on the playground, knocked down in the dirt, surrounded but defiant. I came to his rescue, or so I thought. Greg Black had slapped him flat across the face. But James didn't cry or try to get away. He sat there staring up at him, daring Greg to slap him again. That was when I tackled Greg, and punched him like I'd never punched anyone before. His nose bloodied my knuckles. When I hit Brent Tompkins his nose was smeared with Greg's blood. I remember thinking, Take that.

The fight didn't last long, and was over fast. My new shirt got torn, and I was more worried about my dad being madder about that than about me being in a fight. Miss Taylor from the playground was the one who pulled me off Gene Peroukis. But I shook her hand off and gave him one last punch. I was yelling something. I don't remember what. Gene had big tears in his eyes, and his lip was quivering and bloody. I wanted to hit him again. I hated him for hurting James. And I didn't even know James yet.

Waiting outside the principal's office James took my hand. That was the first time he did that. And I remember thinking - If you want to hold my hand, that's okay by me. I thought he was scared. Now I see he wasn't. He was brave. Braver than me.

"I can't wait any longer," he said, looking up at me like he was sorry for breaking the silence that I stood there in. "I need to get this over with."

"But the deadline isn't until next week," I said, pointing out the obvious fact of it, something we both already knew. But what else could I do?

"Aaron," he began, closing his eyes and shaking his head in that way he did when he felt impatient, but didn't want to show it.

"Maybe if you think about it more," I said, knowing that I was stalling now. "I don't know, like maybe you should talk to my Dad."

"Your Dad told me I should follow my heart."

His eyes look really sorry now. I was afraid he was going to cry, but he didn't. He just stared at me. And I felt more confused. And hurt - not that I knew why. Not then.

"And that's what this is?" I said, asking a real question this time, something I really didn't know. "Following your heart?"

"It's not just Stephen," he said, knowing immediately what I meant.

He looked down at the envelope when he said this, probably so he wouldn't have to see me wince, which is exactly what I did hearing Stephen's name.

"It's not," he said.

"I don't believe you," I said, stepping back from him, like I was afraid of what else he might have to say, like his words were rocks or something thrown at me, not like intending to hurt me, but still dangerous. I wanted to get farther away.

"Seattle University is a good school," he said, softly touching my elbow with just the tips of his fingers. "And I have a full-ride there."

"And Fortney will be at the University of Washington," I said, not willing to give up now that his name was out in the open, like a loose lacrosse ball rolling midfield.

"Yeah he will," he said, pulling his hand back. "So what?"

"And you want to be with him," I said, trying to make it a question, but failing.

"He's my boyfriend," he said, it being his turn to point out the obvious, but in a way that warned me that he was willing to fight if I wanted to. "And you know that."

"You don't love him," I said, ignoring the warning.

"How would you know how I feel?"

And so he had me again. Good question, I remember thinking. How would I know how you feel? I'd never asked him about Stephen, except for the time after I pretty nearly broke his leg at lacrosse practice, and that was just to see if he had to stay in the hospital. He must have known that it was something I didn't want to talk about, because he didn't ever bring it up. I could have asked, which is something I now know. Just as I know that I should have asked. I should have let James tell me all about Stephen and him, how they kissed, and maybe had sex. But that was back when I was sure that nothing could come between us, and that the Aaron and James show would never come to an end.

"Maybe I don't know," I finally said, after thinking for a long while and feeling ashamed for somehow letting him down. "But you sure don't act like you love him."

"I'm going to Seattle, aren't I?"

"Great," I said, shaking my head sadly.

"He says he loves me," he said, sounding like he was trying to convince himself as much as me, which made me sad and even more ashamed at how I'd messed things up.

"People say a lot of things James," I said, smiling weakly, thinking that I'd finally said something both helpful and true.

"That's right," he said, agreeing and so giving me that. "They do. But sometimes at least they say them."

"I just don't want you to get hurt," I said, my hands clenched into tight fists with me thinking all of sudden about the playground again, and how simple that had seemed. I just wanted to protect him.

"Do you think I want to get hurt?" he asked, surprising me with how quick and scolding his voice seemed, like a parent slapping a child's hand and shouting Don't touch that. "Is that what you think? That I want the world to slap me in the face? That I'm a brain-dead idiot ever-ready to follow a pipe-dream off the edge of a fucking cliff? And that you know better than me what I need in life? Is that what you think? That I can't survive without you?"

Another question I couldn't answer. Which was why I was beginning to wonder if there was anything I knew for sure about James and me. He was standing right in front of me, but it was like I hardly knew him. I guess I only thought I knew him, but didn't.

"I know this is your decision," I said, not looking at him when I said it. It was a feeble admission, I know, and a clear dodge of the question. I felt like I was avoiding a tackle so the contest could continue and I might still end the hero.

"Then you should be supportive, or shut up. Because you've been stupid for way-the-fuck too long."

That was when I exploded. I still don't totally know why.

"James!" I screamed. "It's just that - FUCK - I don't know."

The night air was cold on my arms and I remember standing there wishing I'd worn a coat. For some reason I'd assumed that it would be a short walk to the mailbox and back. And that all of the confused and angry feelings I had would remain safely in check, pressed into the background like before. But it had not turned out that way.

"This is just so fucking frustrating," I finally said, telling the truth because that was all I had, and the only real reason I had for continuing to talk to him.

"What is?" he said, reaching out and taking one of my fists into his hand and then with the other hand slowly unfurling each of my fingers so that my hand was open. He could do that to me. He always could - wind me up then wind me down. His touch was soft, and his voice was too. It made me sad, the honesty of it, and its caring. He made me feel loved, although I'm not sure I knew that then. Nor did he.

"Why are you so frustrated?" he said, persisting.

"Did he really say he loved you?" I said, knowing the answer, and asking it more to torment myself than anything else. I deserved it.

"Yes."

"But did he mean it? Did he really mean it?"

I wasn't sure immediately I'd asked him this out loud. I knew it was a dangerous question. That much I realized. What I didn't realize though, not back then, was that he was asking himself the same thing too.

"I think so," he said, staring at my open hand like it was the most interesting thing that he'd ever seen. "And that he doesn't want to lose me."

"That's not love," I said, surprising myself at how certain these words had seemed, like I really believed what I was saying.

And maybe I did. Or maybe I was just repeating something that my Dad had told me, something that seemed appropriate to the moment, but that I didn't fully understand. Love for me was like that then, like water must be for a fish. I had been surrounded by it for so long that I had no real reason to recognize it was there. But now I do.

"Sometimes it is," he said, tracing a finger across my palm like he was writing me a message there for later. "It has to be."

"Well I don't think so," I said, my voice suddenly drained of any true conviction.

I must have sounded petulant, like a little kid insisting on getting his own way. I had never been that kind of kid. But sadly, it seems now, that I was becoming that kind of young man.

"You're different than me," he said, looking at me.

His blue eyes were wet and reflective. I could see myself, but not clearly; and it distracted me. I watched his lips instead. His words fell softly, as if in confession. It was more than a whisper, but only slightly more. I had to strain to hear him.

"You have confidence," he said. "You're strong. You're beautiful. You're smart. You're talented. Your parents are famous, and you are too. Face it Aaron, you're set. You can have anything you want - just for the asking."

"Not everything," I said, murmuring the truth, but not really wanting to hear it.

"Maybe not," he said, letting go of my hand, like he was giving up on trying to make me understand, which is understandable. I wasn't making it very easy for him.

"I don't know what else to do," he continued. "I've gone over it a million times in my head, trying to think of a reason not to go. Or a reason to go to another school. But there is no reason. Not one I can think of."

He hung his head and looked down at the sidewalk for a long time. All I could see was the back of his head and neck. I remember being stunned by what he'd just said to me, stunned beyond understanding it. James looked back up at me before I could think of what to say. He smiled and took my hand again.

I remember trying to smile back, but I'm not sure if I succeeded.

"I won't be leaving for another eight months," he said, writing on my hand with his finger again. "And you could visit me in Seattle - if you want."

"I've never been there," I said, not sure what else to say, but grateful for the shift to small-talk, something I was good at.

"It doesn't rain as much as they say."

"No?"

"No."

James shook his head no and a tense and fateful silence returned to surround us. In the silence, I noticed again how cold the night was, and I felt sorry for James standing there in just jeans and a t-shirt. I remember how his hand trembled as he pulled it away from me and turned away. He faced the mailbox with his shoulders thrown back, like you would to brace for a fight. I watched him pull the mailbox open and look inside. His fingers looked thin and small, like a child's hand, and I imagined that they must be cold.

He stood there not moving for what seemed like a long time to me. He held the envelope crumpled in his other hand. The muscles in his neck were visible and straining. I remember that my thoughts felt frantic and confused. All I really wanted to do was grab him, or at least to grab the envelope.

None of it made much sense. Nor does it really make sense now. I had thought, just days before, that I had finally come to understand my relationship with James. And I thought it was simple. I loved James as my best friend. I was not gay. James was. That was fine with me. James has a boyfriend, Stephen Fortney. Boyfriends have sex, like people in love have sex. Best friends do not have sex. I promised my dad that I'd wait to have sex, until I was ready and sure. I promised James I would respect his relationship with Fortney, and that his being with him was all right so long as it made him happy, and that he didn't get hurt again. I promised him, and myself, that I'd still always love him.

• You're only as good as your promise, my dad always said.

I promised to always love James, and I always did. I loved his clumsy smile; the way his hair fell always in his eyes; his manic laugh; his quick and biting wit; his horrible impatience, with everything except with me; the way he closed his eyes when he played the cello; his slender tapering fingers and shiny nails; the way his back tapered to his hips and waist; his soft pink-pale skin that sun-burned so easily; his tight thin-lipped smile; his long smooth hairless arms; how small his teeth were; the way he lodged his tongue in the corner of his mouth when he was thinking.

Yes, I was in love with him. And not as just a friend - whatever that means, or could mean. I realized, standing there, watching him, that there was something ugly and false and misleading in the statement, I love you as a friend.

Was it possible to love someone in any other way at all?

Of course not.

Which was why I shouted for James to wait.

"Wait." I said, the words blurted out like an unexpected sneeze.

"What?"

"I have to tell you something," I said, feeling more frantic than before.

"Tell me what?"

"I have to tell you...."

"What?" he said, staring at me impatiently, something he hardly ever did.

"I think I love you," I said, surprising even myself.

James stood looking dumbfounded for what had seemed to me a nearly unending amount of time. He said nothing at first, just staring at me, his hand still on the mailbox, like it might be stuck there.

Unable to bear his silent staring any longer, I stepped up to him and put my hands on his shoulders.

"I think I love you," I repeated, like I was unsure that I had said it the first time.

"You think?" he said, pulling his hand from the mailbox with the envelope still in it. I must have smiled when I saw envelope still in his hand because I remember feeling satisfied and happy, like I'd just scored a goal. I don't think I was listening to what James was saying, not at first. But then he stepped toward me and I noticed how red his face had become. That was when he yelled at me.

"As in you don't know," he yelled. "But you'll get back to me when you do?"

I don't really remember what I said in response - not that it matters. There was nothing I could have said at that point to make things right. I had made a mistake without knowing I was making it. I had tossed my feelings into the fray before I fully - or even half - understood them. What was worse though was my dangling the possibility of love in front of him like it was some kind of prize or reward. It seems now like a cruel thing to have done, and I regret doing it.

"James, I just..."

"You just what?" he said, his hand on his hips, his eyes narrowed in an impatient frustrated stare. "Come on - spit it out, Aaron."

"What's wrong? I just said ..."

"I know what you just said," he said, each word angrier than the first. "You said I think I love you. As in you don't know, but - what, you plan on getting back to me on that part, is that the movie playing here?"

"Wait," I said, about to make things worse, but not knowing that then. "It's not supposed to be like this."

And it wasn't. But it wasn't his fault. It was mine.

"Oh, sorry," he said, spitting out the words at me in an explosive rush of sarcastic anger. "I must have misplaced my script. Because this is the part where I'm supposed to tear up the envelope and rush into your big strong arms, isn't it?"

"James - stop it," I pleaded, wanting him to stop but knowing somehow too that I had deserved this rebuke, and more.

"Oh - no, no - that's not it," he said, continuing his barrage. "You want instead we should hustle back to my bedroom and get some busy-busy going, or you think maybe we should just fuck right here?"

"Is that what you think?" I shouted, shocked by what he said. "That I want to just fuck you!"

"Well - you better if you want to be my boyfriend," he shouted back. "Or do you think maybe we'll just spend a lifetime together cuddling?"

And there it was - another question I hadn't even thought to ask, let alone answer. I remember thinking that it wasn't fair that he seemed to understand what was going on better than me. It was like he had thought about it all before, without needing to rehearse it in his mind first, while me - I was standing there looking stupid, and trying to make it up as I went along.

"No," I said, unable to look at him, knowing I was blushing terribly. "I know that if you're...if we were, you know, you and me - you know. It's just that...."

"What are you talking about?" he said, his voice growing quiet, his hands slipping off of his hips. He looked less defiant, and it made me feel better.

"You know," I said, closing my eyes. "That I've never been with anyone. Not like that. With a girl or guy or anyone."

"Yeah - I know," he said.

"I could have," I said, offering this news to him as if it meant something, as if for some perverse reason I feared that he would think me less of a man if I didn't at least act as if I could have had sex if I'd really wanted to.

"Tell me about it," he said, the sarcasm in his voice more biting than I hoped he'd really meant it to be. I didn't want to think that he was trying to embarrass or tease me.

"What do you mean," I asked, trying to make sure.

"Nothing," he said flatly.

"I just didn't want you to think I'm stupid."

"Why would I think that?" he said, looking up at me.

"I don't know."

"You told your Dad you'd wait," he said. "And you always do what your dad says. I know."

"Yeah," I said, looking at him directly in the eye what seemed like the first time in hours. "He asked me to promise. And I did."

"Yeah."

"It was important to him."

"And to you."

"And to me."

"Well, that's fine," he said. "But I didn't make that kind of promise. So you know that I've had sex before."

"I was pretty sure of it. Yeah."

"With Stephen."

"And others?"

"Yes," he said, blushing. "But only, you know, with Stephen."

"So you let him be inside you."

"I guess that's one way to put it."

"But the others you..."

"We messed around. But not like that."

"Did you think you loved them - the others?"

I asked this thinking that his answer might be yes. Maybe I was naïve. And maybe I still am. But my views were more romantic then. I believed in the story of how my dads had met and fell in love, and I thought that was how it was going to be for me, and for James, even if not together. I guess I was wrong.

"Are you kidding?" he said, about to laugh but then not doing so when he saw the serious look on my face.

"No," I said, feeling my face color.

"Yeah," he said, the word less like a word than the soft exhalation of breath. "I guess you're not."

"But to answer your question," he went on. "I didn't think I loved them. I don't even know if I liked them. I did it just for fun. To find out how it felt. That's all."

"Oh," was all I could think to say. And even that seemed like saying too much.

"It didn't matter at the time. I just wanted to get off with someone."

"Does it matter with Stephen?"

"I'd like to think so," he said, after pausing to think for a long time.

"Does he make you feel good - Stephen - when he's...."

"I don't really want to talk about it," he said, cutting me off.

I understood that he was drawing a line, and I respected it.

"All right," I said.

"It's private."

"Even from me," I said, careful not to make it a question.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"It's okay," I said, wanting it to sound convincing, but doubting that it did.

"It's not that I...," he continued.

"I understand James."

"Thank you," he said, stepping closer to me again.

I remember that as I stood there I was trying to not think of Stephen being in him. It seemed wrong to imagine. Because when I did, I hated Stephen even more. I suppose I had no right to hate him, just as I have no right to hate him now. But I do

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner," I finally said. "About how I felt."

"So am I," he said, looking up at me again. His eyes were wet with tears.

"But I wanted you to know," I said, trying now to explain why I hadn't told him sooner, feeling like I owed him something in the way of an explanation, even though I now realized that I had nothing like this to offer.

And I still don't.

You can't explain what you don't understand.

"Why did you want me to know?" he asked. "Why now?"

"So maybe you'd consider it, making up your mind."

"I've made it up Aaron," he said, looking as if he was about to step away from me again, and turn back to the mailbox. "Aren't you listening?"

"I'm listening."

"It doesn't seem like it," he said, seemingly unable to muster the anger that he'd intended to go along with these words. "I made up my mind this week, and now I'm out in the fucking cold, standing in front of the fucking mailbox, freezing my fucking ass off, about to mail my acceptance letter."

"I thought you'd be happy," I said, my voice quavering as if I was about to cry.

"That you waited until now to tell me?" he said, finding his anger. "That you stood by and let me hook-up with Stephen - you who introduced us. That you let me make up my mind, make plans and promises, and then - now that it's too late - you tell me that you think you love me. Great! Just great."

"It's not too late," I gasped, like someone had punched me. "It can't be."

"Because you say so?"

"It's never too late for love."

And there I'd said it - my coda, words intended to conclude a pas de deux. I was proud of what I'd said as soon as I had said it. And suddenly certain that my words were perfect, and that hearing them James would instantly see the beautiful logic of how things had worked out. I remember staring at him, waiting anxiously for him to respond to what I'd said, and for his frown to melt away and for him to smile.

But he stared at me unsmiling.

"Yeah," he said, his lips pursed so tightly that I wondered how the words got out. "Maybe you should give that line to JC, because I'm thinking that he might want to use it in a sappy ballad for that lame-ass boyband he's managing now. Just don't be expecting me to rush to the store and stand in line waiting to buy the single."

There was nothing really left to say. But of course I kept talking.

"I didn't really know before," I said, stuttering, trying to get the words out fast so that James couldn't interrupt me. "At least I don't think I did. I thought we were friends. James - we are friends. Best friends. But the feelings were all wound up in that, and I didn't see it. I didn't think about it any other way. I..."

"Didn't think about it," he said, cutting me off.

I remember his voice heavy with resignation. He sounded tired. I was angry at first that he'd managed to interrupt me. I felt like I had a lot left to say. But as he spoke, I grew more and more relieved. I knew I needed to listen to him. And so I did.

"You didn't think about me," he said. "About how I feel. And the only reason you're thinking about me now, making this last minute dash to tell me all this, is because it's finally dawned on you that I won't always be around for you, that you might lose me to someone who at least had the courage to tell me that he loved me."

"Even if he doesn't mean it," I said, angry again, but this time not at him. I was angry that I was losing. I had treated the whole thing as if it was a competition. Me and Fortney on a field, with James the prize, already lost, but me not wanting to concede.

I didn't understand this well enough then to be ashamed of myself. It seems that winning and losing was all then I understood. I saw the world in terms of competition. It was an easy metaphor for me. Too easy I suppose.

Because it kept me from seeing that, in trying to compete for James, I had turned our friendship into something it had never been before: a game. And I'll never forgive myself for that.

"Yeah - well fuck you then."

"James..."

"No - I mean it," he said, stomping his foot and glaring at me. "You didn't spend a single second thinking about how I might feel. And now this? This?"

"Yes I did," I said, crying suddenly, my hands held in front of me, two tight fists vibrating like grenades about to explode. "I always thought of you. Maybe not in the way that you think about things, but in the way that I do."

"Aaron - I don't understand you," he said, shaking his head sadly, like he was saying not only that he didn't understand me, but that he was giving up trying.

"But don't you see," I said, pleading with him in my mind to please not give up on me. "I didn't understand me either. I don't know. It just seemed like everything was all right the way it was going. And - sure, we hit some bumps, but I thought it was fixed even though now I know it wasn't. So I don't know. It's just...I don't know."

"Do you know how many times I've wanted you to kiss me?"

He asked this without any obvious sentiment. It was a fact he was pointing out to me, like a teacher pointing at a map and saying, "Madrid is the capital of Spain." But in this case, what James pointed out was something I did not already know - as inexplicable as that now seems. My ignorance was not willful, but it had left me no less blind.

"I'll kiss you," I said, stepping forward one step, carefully, like I was walking on fresh ice. "Again - I will."

"Wait," he said, holding out his hand, like a policeman signaling for a car to stop.

I stopped but did not step back. He was close to me now. All I had to do was lean over and my face would be right next to his. He looked afraid. But not of me. His eyes swept back and forth, like he'd lost something and was looking for it.

"You kissed me?" he said, finally speaking again.

"When you were asleep," I said, nodding. "Last week."

"At Justin's house?"

"Yes."

"You kissed me?"

"I didn't know why," I said, admitting the truth. "Not at first. I just sort of did it. I know I wanted to though. When I did it."

"You wanted to?"

"I wanted to," I said, wiping my nose on the back of my sleeve, still crying, but not ashamed of it. "I did."

"And now?"

"I want to," I said, knowing it was true, but not with my head. "Really bad."

That was when I stepped forward and opened my arms. James looked up and his eyes caught the light that fell from the streetlamp above him. They seemed suddenly like pools of freezing dark-blue water. I leaned over him and his face fell into shadow. His smile was wry and tender; it exposed the tips of his small white teeth. I reached my right hand around behind him and rested it in the small of his back. My left hand fingered through his long hair. Looking up at me, unblinking, he smiled a smile that seemed a signal that, yes, this was exactly how he wanted it would be.

I leaned forward to kiss him. I remember that I was about to close my eyes when I saw his smile vanished. He pulled away from my embrace of him and jumped back, his arms outstretched and flailing, like he was trying to catch his balance.

"I can't let you," he cried, the envelope falling from his hand, and him falling after it as he crumpled to the ground like a tent whose main pole had cracked in two.

JAMES CRAIG

I stand at the window waiting. It's past midnight again. This is not unusual.

From my reflection, I can see my eyes glow red and green from staring at the 7-eleven across the street. The sign atop the store is sixty feet long and maybe ten feet tall. It has to be big so the cars driving by will see it and stop. The store is always open.

A man maybe sixty-five walks back to his battered truck after paying for gas. His gait is slow and stooped. I watch him wondering what his story is, where he's going, and where he's been. Was he going home to someone or is he wandering the night alone, on his way to nowhere, or no one? Probably no one. He looks alone.

Inside the store a short black woman maybe thirty buy a pack of cigarettes and a stack of scratch-off lottery tickets. She moves out of the way of the next person in line at the register and stands at the condiment counter where people put mustard and ketchup and onions and relish on the 99 cent hot-dogs and microwave hamburger sold there. She works her way slowly through the stack not smiling. She uses a silver-colored coin to scratch each ticket clean, looking beneath the scratched off surface to see if she's won anything. The process takes several minutes to finish, and I watch the whole time.

She looks up when she's done, maybe thinking, or trying to decide. Not being her, I don't know which, except it does look like she's staring up at me standing here in the window of our apartment, lit up by the 7-eleven store sign.

Her shoulders slump as she picks up her pack of cigarettes, shoves it in her purse, and then turns and throws the scratched-off lottery tickets away - all except for one. I watch her get back into line. There are two people in front of her, and she seems patient to wait her turn. She'll turn that one winning ticket in for more.

"She wants another chance to win," I say out loud to no one. "That's what she wants. It's what everyone wants."

The apartment has three rooms - the main room, a bedroom with a window that looks onto a wall, and a bathroom not much bigger than a phone booth. When you come through the front door, you're right in the main room, the biggest part of what's a pretty small place. It combines a kitchen with a living room and an eating area. There is a couch at one end, with an old floor lamp that looks like a slightly bent brass coat-rack standing next to it. The couch cost twenty-five dollars at a garage sale. Stephane bought it for me, along with the lamp, and most of the other furniture in the place. I bought the mattresses in the bedroom new, and used my own money. That was for Stephen and me.

It's been over a year since I left San Diego to finish high school here, transferring to the Matteo Ricci program at Seattle University. I did it with my mother's blessing. She'd been eager to have her new boyfriend move into the house, which was not about to happen while I was there. She said I was bad luck when it came to her keeping a man around. She said it always as a joke, but I know she thought it was true. That was the way she thought. Not that I cared. It was her life to ruin, just as was mine.

Stephane had been somewhat less than approving when I told him of my plan to leave San Diego - that is, once I managed to stop crying and tell him. I never asked him how much that phone call cost, but I'm sure it was a lot. I remember he listened without complaint, just as I had hoped he would, silently waiting for me to finish crying and say what I needed to say. For some reason the melodrama of my life had at that point seemed to require that I speak French, and Stephane had been patient with that as well.

"C'est comme un mauvais roman par le Balzac,"1 I said to him, making the kind of half-joke that I had always disliked my mother for making.

"Vous n'êtes aucun Eugenie Grandet," had come his dry reply.

When I was finally done, at least an hour later, Stephane had sighed loudly, and then calmly said, in that way of his, which was blunt, but not unkind, "À l'avenir, vous regretterez cette décision. Ceci, je vous promets."2

And, of course, I knew he was right.

Despite his views, Stephane had helped me: loaning me money, although I nearly had enough myself, and meeting me at the airport in Seattle. We stayed at the Sorrento hotel. I was his guest, and friend. And from there it was an easy walk to school - three and a half blocks, mostly all downhill.

We stayed together at the hotel for nine days, sharing a bed, but not intimately, despite one gently rebuffed attempt. It was on our fourth day in Seattle that I found the apartment. Stephane helped me move in over our remaining days together. On the last day, he took me grocery shopping and stocked my refrigerator with all varieties of food before leaving after dinner. I asked him to stay with me there, for a while at least. But he politely declined, saying it was time for him to go.

"C'est votre voyage," he had added, kissing me on the forehead in that way he did, leaving a wet mark that was a seal for me, proof of his affection. "Là où il mène, j'ai peur pour savoir. Mais si vous avez besoin de moi, vous devez me téléphoner. Promettez-vous?"

"Mais oui," I said. "Je promets"

"Bon puis. Puisque je dois aller."

"Merci Stephane."

"De rien."

"Il est plus que vous savez."

"C'est vrai."

"Je t'aime Stephane."

"Oui, je sais," he said, smiling and kissing my forehead once more. "Je t'aime également."3

And so I was left to life my alone, a life that I came oddly to enjoy. It was in a way monastic, built around my studies, the simple solitary meals I ate, my job at a law firm making photocopies and delivering the mail, and my twice-a-week volunteer work at the Duncan-Doulay House, a care facility for people with AIDS. I didn't bother seeking friends, or trying to be social. I mostly stayed in the apartment.

And I remember clearly how I found it.

I'd gone out alone own while Stephane napped. He loved to nap after lunch, and usually I joined him. But there was no nap this time. I wanted to explore.

I started at the edge of campus and walked straight up Madison, past the florist shop that seemed stranded on a triangular asphalt island carved out by the intersection of three oddly-angled streets, past the apartment building that I learned rented only to lower-income people with children, past a gay bar with a royal coat-of-arms painted on its door and a glowing neon rainbow flag sign in the window, past Pagliacci's pizzeria, the check-cashing place, and the janitorial supply store, and up the hill to the small triangular park in which seven large oak trees canopied three more oddly-angled intersecting streets. It was here, just a few feet past another gay bar, this one called CC-Seattle's, that I found my home. It's on the third floor and faces the street, and the 7-Eleven across from it.

Stephen stopped for cigarettes there from time to time on his way home. For some reason I watch it, maybe out of habit, whenever I'm wondering when he might get home. I'm not sure why I bother to wait up for him, and sometimes I don't. Stephen is late a lot, sometimes not coming home at all. But he always had an excuse. Always.

Tired of looking out the window, as much as waiting, and with nothing else to do but call Stephane, which I don't want to do, I undress and climb into bed. The sheet and blankets are cold and make me shiver. It will take a few minutes to get warm.

I stare at the ceiling. It is one of those sprayed-on ceilings with tiny silver flecks embedded in a white fibrous material. What light that the curtains do not keep out make the ceiling sparkle. It reminds me of the ceiling in Aaron's room. Lance had painted it a dark slate gray, the color of the sky at night. Working from a National Geographic map, Lance had then spent six days painting tiny glow-in-the-dark constellations, planets and comets and suns, glowing nebulae and asteroid fields, and of course shooting stars. Aaron and I would lay beneath the canopy of this vast solar system each night and point out constellations to each other before falling asleep.

The sheets felt never cold back then, even in the winter.

But it was cold our last night together, the night I didn't say good bye. I remember how the skin on my back had prickled as I found myself falling on the winter-hardened ground to retrieve the envelope I had dropped stepping away from Aaron's kiss. My shirt had come untucked and the winter air blew across exposed skin. I trembled and almost dropped the envelope again as I stood up, trying look only at the mailbox, and not Aaron. The mailbox was somehow still propped open, like it was frozen that way. And so before I could give it any further thought, or hear him say anything, I tossed the envelope inside and shut the mailbox slot with a thud that sounded like the ringing of a broken metal bell.

It's like I can still hear the sound of that mailbox closing echoing through my life.

And him saying, "I don't understand."

"I know," I whispered, feeling myself sway. "But I can't Aaron. I can't."

"You can't what?"

"I can't be in love with you," I said, telling him the truth of what I felt I knew but now know that I didn't. "I promised Stephen I wouldn't."

"He can't make you promise something like that," he said, sounding as outraged as he was shocked. "It's not fair."

"What's not fair?"

"That he made you make a promise like that."

I could tell that Aaron was in tears. He wasn't crying. Not that I could hear, with my back to him. But I knew that I turned around and I looked at him, I'd see his eyes wet and brimming over, which would then make me cry too. That was why I didn't turn around. I was already close enough to crying, and I was trying to keep myself under control.

"He didn't make me promise," I said, knowing he wouldn't believe me, because I didn't believe it myself.

I wanted badly to believe that I could make a promise I could keep. And Stephen had asked, even getting on his knees. He asked me to please be with him, without asking for a promise to seal it. He said he loved me, and wanted to be with me, as my boyfriend.

"We'll be lovers," he had said.

It was only after I said that I would be with him, and he was undressing me, and kissing my neck that he asked me to promise not to be with Aaron.

"Promise me," he'd said, looking up at me from where he had kneeled again, this time to pull down my pants.

"I promise," I'd said, knowing that he was either being more prescient than me, or more cunning. I know now that he was both.

"I made the promise freely," that night I said to Aaron, finding the courage to turn around and look at Aaron, because I owed him that at least. "And I intend to keep it."

"That's crazy."

"No it's not," I said, looking into Aaron's eyes as he slowly shook his head.

"But-"

"He's jealous of you Aaron," I said, wishing Aaron knew just how jealous of him Stephen really was.

I also wished he'd known how good it had felt to me back then to have Stephen care enough to be jealous of him, to want to keep me for himself. Sure it made me feel like a prize, but that was all right with me, because it made me feel good.

To be prized, that's like love, I thought.

And I believed it. I probably still do.

"Crazy jealous," I said.

"No," he said, not so much sounding like he didn't believe it, but that he didn't want to believe it. Or maybe it was just that he didn't really understand what he was saying, or what it meant in the scheme of things.

"Yes," I said, not really knowing what I was saying yes to.

"But-"

"Aaron - he has a right to be jealous. And every reason."

"I can't stand this," he said, his cheeks wet and red, his nose sniffing.

"I'm sorry," I said, taking his hand, which had felt cold and limp and lifeless as he held it. He had feared then that he had killed something in him. He hoped he had not.

"It's all my fault," I said, wanting to convince him, wanting to take all the blame, to shoulder it all, to protect Aaron from its heavy weight.

I felt Aaron still had a chance. And that his fate, unlike mine, was not tied to the Stephens of the world.

"I should have told you how I felt a long time ago," I said, desperate for him not to blame himself. "Before Fortney. So you'd have known. I'm sorry."

"No - it's not your fault. It's mine."

"It's not Aaron. It's really not."

"James- listen," he said, his hand finally coming alive, and squeezing my hand back. "I need to say this."

"All right," I said.

"I love you."

"Please Aaron - don't."

It was like he'd slapped me hard. It felt like the thud of the door on my face that had almost broken my nose. The sting was indescribable. My hand flew instinctively up, as if to protect myself from the next blow, or another beating.

"No listen," he said, squeezing my hand again. "When I told you before I wasn't gay, I thought...I don't know, I thought it would make things simpler. I mean, I was so fucking jealous too - about you being with Fortney, I couldn't stand it. I didn't want to share you with anyone. But I thought that was wrong. That I was just being selfish, and that if I was really your friend, I needed to give you your freedom. I didn't know how else to fix things between you and me. I didn't want to lose you, but I didn't think I had a right to keep you to myself either."

"You were really jealous?"

"Yes."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"It didn't make any sense."

"But if that was how you felt."

"I thought I was just trying to protect you - you know, like as a friend."

"But..."

"No - I know," he said, hanging his head and staring at the ground. "It was just that - I don't know, it's not like I think about guys and that. I mean, I notice them, sure, and I can easy think someone's hot, or not. But being with guys, like in general, I wasn't sure that's where it was at for me."

"Are you gay?"

"No. Yes. I don't know. Does it matter?"

"I'm not sure. But - yeah, maybe it does."

"I've thought about it a million ways, but it doesn't make any sense to me.

Who cares what I call it? I don't - not anymore. What matters is how I feel."

"About guys."

"No. About you."

"About me?" I said.

"Yes, about you," he said, his voice suddenly so deeply resonant that he sounded just like Lance "I think I realize now that what I feel is want for you. And I want you in anyway you'd want to have me."

"What happened?"

"You happened," Aaron had said, looking up and back at him. "You."

"I don't know what to say."

"See - when you got hurt, your lip, and your head, it made me sick inside, so sick. I could hardly sleep thinking about it."

"I was afraid you were going to kill him."

"Believe me, I wanted to."

"He didn't..."

"I know. You don't have to say it again."

"Okay."

"When you were asleep - that night at Justin's - I was watching you breathe. And you seemed so beautiful..."

"Stop it," I said, gasping and pulling my hand away from his hold on it. "Aaron - stop it. Please."

"I wanted to hold you. To keep you safe. To not let go."

"To not let go."

"I love you James."

"Oh Aaron - please. I can't stand it. Don't."

I was crying so hard by then, tortured inconsolable sobs. Aaron tried to hold me, but I kept pushing him away, shaking my head, and saying no. I tried to get myself under control, to stop sobbing long enough to speak, to tell Aaron how much it hurt, that it hurt too much - so much too much.

"I wanted to make you happy," he said, plainly determined to say what he had to say, to get it out. "And I knew I could. That I always had before. And that you had made me happy too. I don't want it to end James. I don't want it ever to end."

"No," I managed, leaning against the mailbox, fearful that I might fall. "You don't know what you're saying. You really don't."

"Yes I do."

"I have to go.

"No you don't."

"Yes I do."

"No because..."

"Aaron," I said, deliberately cutting him off, the one thing that I seemed to be able to do well. "Please don't ask me to stay. It will kill me. It really will."

Aaron had stood there, silent and staring, for what seemed like a long time. There was a pained expression on his face that I could not stand seeing. I reached for his arm, unable not to. He looked down, seeming to loom over me, then and still, in everyway. I tugged at his arm and Aaron sunk to his knees, his gaze tipped to one side, his nose wet and nearly dripping. He snuffed and took a deep breath. He held his hands out in front him, palms up, as if about to present something to me. But then he placed his hands on my chest, and I felt their warmth seep through my shirt, warming me. That was when I leaned forward and whispered into Aaron's lips, "I really know what love is now."

And then I kissed him, careful to keep my lips closed, defying every urge or emotion I'd ever felt for him. He kissed me back - resolutely, patient, sincere, gentle - everything he had ever been to me.

This was not the kiss that either of us wanted. It was a kiss good-bye. I knew it. And I think he did too. Or I hope he did.

When he finally spoke it was with a voice so quiet and broken that I had known hearing it that I'd never forget it as long as I lived.

"When will I see you again?" he said, the kiss tapering off too soon. "I know you have to go. To Seattle next year. So I won't ask you to stay, or not go. But please tell me you'll forgive me. Please."

I remember the tears in Aaron's eyes.

"Maybe a little time will help," I said. "You know - apart. And then when we start up school after break - um, we can, you know, figure out some stuff."

"But that's like almost three weeks," he said, leaning forward, and trying to kiss me again. He had not let him, helping him to his feet instead.

"It won't feel like so long," I said, knowing it was a lie.

Standing there, he tried one last time to kiss me. And I let him. Or in my mind I did, because that's how I want to remember that night, a year ago today. Without looking at a calendar I know. The memory of watching Aaron walk away throbs like a bruise in me, like a long-ago broken bone that always aches, but worse at certain times of year, like in winter weather, or when a storm approaches.

I can still hear the sound of his brown boots scuffing against sidewalk. It was as if he no longer had the strength to pick his feet up off the ground. His shoulders slumped, and his back drooped forward. He looked like a wilting plant.

I wonder now if I'll grow old alone, with only memories left, like old postcards stuck in an album and saved as souvenirs of place where I'd been but decided not to stay.

"Je me souviens," I'll say, looking at them again.

Or maybe I'll remind myself of something that Stephane said to me as we stared one night out across the dark vastness of Sydney Bay -

"Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point."4

AARON CHASEZ BASS

The sleet slowly let up. The steady staccato beat of sleet-stones hitting the roof of the car turned random, then tapered to soft tapping and stopped.

Haze hung in the air like the aftermath of a just-doused fire. The ice-sheened sidewalk captured the light from the streetlamp and held it frozen, refusing it reflection. This would all be gone by morning, this chilly winter scene, so unusual in these parts.

My hands shake and my shoulders ache from sitting for so long not moving. The envelope feels like a dry dead leaf in my hand, like the kind I once collected for a school science project, pressing them between two sheets of wax paper that my dad then sealed closed for me with a warm iron. After it had cooled, I taped the sealed-in leaf to a piece of construction paper and wrote on it with a thick black crayon. I can't remember what I wrote, except that it was something about how it was leaf fallen from an avocado tree that my dad planted in our backyard.

It was only later, when I was a few years older, that I learned the whole story about the tree, and how my dad had planted it on the spot that he had stood nearly 17 years ago to promise his heart to the man he loved.

On their anniversary my dad would gather a small bouquet of spring-bright sprigs, leaf-covered, and bursting green, each sharply cut from a lower branch and then tucked in to a small jar that he set on the table next to where JC lay still asleep. I watched from the hallway through the half-open door while my dad went to make our breakfast. My dad Josh never took long to stir from sleep and see the leaves sitting there. Perhaps he'd heard my dad put them there and waited long enough to think that no one would see the always surprised look on his face. It was almost as if he was not sure that they'd be there. But they always were, every year, and he always smiled when he saw them.

"Planting a tree is an act of faith," my dad said one year when I was old enough to help him rake the leaves.

I remember looking up at the tree thinking that it was the tallest thing that I'd ever seen, because it was taller than my dad.

"This grew from an avocado stone," my dad said, pointing at the tree.

"A stone?" I said, wondering how anything could grow from a stone.

"It's like a seed," he'd said. "But harder."

I'm not sure why I remember this now, about the tree, and about the mystery of the stone it grew from. My dad Josh had said he'd made prawn salad - maybe for the first time; but he couldn't remember. He said he'd sliced ripe avocado to go with it and threw away the stone. My dad Lance retrieved the stone from the trash bin under the kitchen sink, rinsed the clinging green bits of flesh from it, and then stabbed three toothpicks into it. It sat on the window sill in a jar full of water for two months before sprouting.

Telling the story, neither of my dads ever agreed who had seen the stone sprout first. Each one always tried to give the other credit for the sighting. But they agreed that my dad Lance had been the one to plant the tree in the back yard when it got too big for the pot in which it had grown out on our upstairs deck.

"It took the better part of a day," my dad Josh said. "But he dug the hole himself."

"As I recall," my dad Lance said smiling. "Josh, you helped out quite a bit in the planting yourself."

They both blushed and laughed at this part of the story, and it made me happy for some reason to them like this. Just as it made me happy to watch my dad Josh wake up and see the ecstatically-green spring-bright left at his bedside for him. To me it meant it was almost Spring again.

Shuddering, this time from chill, I look at my watch knowing it's time. When I exhale, my breath billows visibly in front of my face before disappearing. It must now be as cold inside the car as outside. The engine and heater had been off for twenty minutes or more. My legs feel stiff from the cold. I try pumping them up and down, sort of like I am running in place. It helps a little, but not much. My right knee brushes against the car-keys dangling from the ignition like a shiny metal ornament, and the tinkle until I quiet them with my hand. I can see that the mailbox waiting for me. It's like some animal wanting to be fed.

I start the car and the keys tinkle again. The defroster takes a few minutes to heat up. While I'm waiting for the windows to clear, I hold the envelope up and look at it. It's my admission acceptance letter and the deposit check to hold my place. I've decided to go to Harvard, to study what I don't know - maybe history, maybe astronomy, or maybe math. When I announced my decision at the dinner table a week ago, the news made my dad Lance predictably happy. He practically crawled over the table to hug me hug me and pat me on the back.

But it wasn't his reaction that I'd been worried about. Like I said, his happiness was something more than predictable. No, it was JC's expression that I'd paid attention to, watching him out of the corner of my eye. The words weren't long out of my mouth before I saw him grumble silently to himself, cross his arms tightly on his chest, and then frown. He knew, of course. He always knew.

With my dad Lance, I had always been able to smooth things by him. He was always eager to believe me, and happy to accept the most positive spin on things. Not that I ever lied to him, not directly. But my dad JC, he had truth radar so finely tuned that I learned early on that it was hopeless even trying to mislead him. With him, it was better to say nothing at all than lie. He never faulted me for silence, for not telling himself that had happened that I didn't want him to know. But lying to him was unpardonable.

Releasing the parking brake, I steer the car away from the curb, the tires slipping before finally finding traction with a noticeable lurch forward. I thumb the toggle on the door and the window slides open without a noise. Air colder than I expected rushes inside and makes me gasp. The car rolls forward without me giving it any more gas. When the car is next to the mailbox, I slowly press the brake pedal, not wanting to skid.

My fingers are cold and I blow on them before reaching my left hand out the window and pulling the mail box slot open. Sleet stones slide from on top of the mailbox and rattle down the sleeve of my coat.

"This is fucking ridiculous," I say, tossing the envelope inside the mailbox and then letting the door slam close with a deep metallic clunk.

"There's it's done," I say, rolling up the window again.

The drive home is slow. I search the road for black ice remembering that it was forecast for freeway overpasses. The defroster running at full blast doesn't fully clear the windshield so I lean forward to see better. My back is painful and tense as I hunch over the steering wheel. When I reach the electronic gate at the bottom of our drive I push the button for remote control and then sit and watch the gate swing open. Pushing the button was something that James had always done. It was a kind of game for us.

"Open sesame," he'd say, snapping his fingers and pointing at the gate right after he'd pushed the button.

"That's some powerful magic you got going on there," was my usual reply.

"You know it," he'd say, smiling that smile of his.

This is not the first time I have found myself here, late at night, sitting in my car alone, watching this gate swing open. And it is not the first time that, sitting here, I think of James pushing the button that caused the gate to open. If I was prone to sentimental metaphor, or inclined to find sacred symbolism in things mundane, I might see the gate as meaningful. But I don't. It's just a gate to me, and when it's open I'll drive through it. It's a simple as that.

STEPHEN FORTNEY

The skeletal arms of the bare cheery trees that grew in the Quad at the University of Washington cast criss-crossed shadows on the gravel pathway. His boots were loosely tied and made a loud scratching scuffing sound as he shuffled toward the stairs leading to red square. It was late, but the libraries were still open. Exams started next week. He had not yet started to study. He'd borrow Ashley's Psych 101 notes, which she'd promised to loan him tomorrow. He hadn't much minded fucking her again, but he was worried that she was starting to be a little too into him. And her over-the-top moaning drove him nuts. It was like she was trying to win some sort of porn-star award. But Brad thought she was cool, and that it was cool that they'd hooked - which was all that mattered, since Brad was house president and said he'd make sure he was rush chairman next year.

The halogen lights that flooded red square cast everything in sharp relief. He liked how the sculpture at the corner of the square nearest him - something by some dude that James seemed to get his boxers in a knot about - made a shadow that extended in a long diagonal line from its base most of the way across the square. He walked there, in the shadow like it was some kind of path.

Halfway across the square, on the way to the parking lot where he'd left his car, he glanced at the Suzzallo library on his left, a building that looked more like a cathedral than a library. It seemed to him overblown, like it was trying too hard for attention. He never studied at the library, just as he rarely studied at the apartment. He preferred the study lounge at the Phi-Delt house, where he could have a beer, and James wasn't always hovering around.

He was about to look away when he saw a guy smile at him. The guy was sitting on the steps that led to the library's ornate brass doors, like the guy didn't have anything better to do but just sit there checking him out. The guy held a skateboard between his legs with his chin resting on one end of it. He smiled back at him and slowed his pace. The guy looked about his age, maybe one year older, but not more. And hot-looking too. Definitely checking him out, and definitely worth tossing a Waddup to.

We wandered over not too eager-like. Slow and casual. But the guy got up before he got there and headed for the door to the library, glancing once over his shoulder and giving him a nod like, Hey, follow me. So of course he did, pulling open the heavy brss door and giving the chick at the check-out desk a friendly nod. He was trying to look like he knew his way around.

The guy was maybe fifty feet in front of him, and heading down some curving stairs - to where he didn't know. At the bottom of the stairs there was a short hallway that led to the men's room. The stone floor was noisy and his shoes clattered and echoed as he walked across it. The guy was already at a urinal by the time he got inside the bathroom. Two stall doors were closed and he could see feet in the gap beneath them. It was quiet and cold, the walls were made of icy-gray marble. He wanted to clear his throat, but didn't because he feared it would be too loud, and echo.

He stood at the urinal next to the guy and looked down at his cock. It was hard. He took his own cock out half-hard and stroked it. The guy smiled at him and reached over and took it, stroking it for him. His hand felt hot on it. His cock stiffened. The guy laughed and bent down and licked the tip. He shuddered and whispered, Yeah, tilting his head back and letting his mouth fall open, panting.

An eye was staring at him threw a hole in a stall door that he had not seen before. He turned so that whoever it was could have a better view of the guy sucking his cock. It felt good. He wondered if it tasted like Ashley. He forgot to wash it off.

The guy's hands were on his ass now, squeezing his cheeks, one finger jabbing at his hole. It wasn't going in, but it still felt good. The guy on his knees was sucking him like crazy, hurrying him to cum, but he wasn't ready yet. He wanted to last a little longer, and putt on a good show really giving it to the guy. It was wicked because he didn't dare give it to James this rough, and this guy seemed to really dig it that way.

He could hear the guy behind the stall door jerking off now, and see his knees in the gap at the bottom of the door. The guy winked at him through the hole in the door, like he was encouraging him, like he was saying, Yeah, give it to him, with the guy on the floor in front of him struggling to keep up with the force and speed of his thrusts without gagging or throwing up.

The other stall door banged opened. Not the one with the eye hole. It was an older guy, maybe thirty, standing there with his cock in his hand and his t-shirt pulled up and playing with a nipple-ring as he stroked. The older guy was totally built, and had a hairy chest. Probably a grad student, he though. But totally fucking hot.

He liked older guys and signaling him guy to come over and play. The older guy shook his head no and continued to stroke, putting his free hand on the stall-door as he steadied himself and grunted, shooting a big splat of spunk four feet in front of him.

He laughed at the sight of it as he felt himself getting closer. He looked down and the guy on his knees was looking up at him. He gripped the back of his head and face-fucked him. The guy pulled off him for a second and smiled, like he was saying, I'm keeping up, aren't I frat-boy?

That was cool, he thought, laughing as he watched the guy practically inhale his cock again.

And then, Yeah, he muttered and grunted himself, letting it go, letting him have it, and smiling at the slurping sound, and the fast thwup-thwup-thwup of the guy beating off.

"Fuck dude," he shouted, jumping back, still sort of laughing, and still spunking, a blob of it landing on the guy's face. "You're getting it on my boots. That ain't cool. My boyfriend bought me these."

The guy ignored him, caught up in his own pleasure. He sort of smirked at him and then shook his softening cock into the urinal, wiping it off with his hand. The bell that he assumed was the signal that the library was about to close rang, and he hurried to button his jeans. After he washed his hands, he looked over the top of the stall with the hole in the door. It was some really old dude. And kind of ugly too.

Nice show for the geezer, he thought.

Then he left, smiling.

STEPHANE RIDEAU

He rarely spoke on the telephone for more than a few minutes at a time. A call for a taxi. Or perhaps to speak with Benôit when he was planning a day-visit to Lyon. This was then why he had been surprised, again perhaps, by how heavy the telephone receiver felt holding it for half an hour as he stood barefoot in his small kitchen, leaning against the wall, listening to James once more try to speak through his tears.

It was something about Stephen not yet being home, and that he was thinking, as he had put it, of busting up with him. This had seemed to him a strange turn of phrase, but he'd known what it meant. Busted as in broken, and broken as split into two. The call had ended abruptly. James had blurted out that he had to go, and then hung up.

This was not the first time that a telephone call had terminated abruptly. He knew that James could not talk freely when Stephen was home. Or, at least, he did not feel that he could, which was of course the same thing. James explained that it was because the apartment was so small, and with the telephone in the main room there was no way to talk without disturbing Stephen studying - or some such thing.

More likely it was that James did not want to give Stephen reason to worry that all was not well between them. This was how James was, instinctively protecting the men who nominally protected him. It would leave him lonely someday, just as it seemed to leave him lonely now. Perhaps secretly he wanted to be alone.

All of this he had said to James, more than once. But James had never been one prone to listen to advice. And he was even less so now. Too good James was at pointing out that he was hardly one to talk himself, sharply saying, "You're the one who spent half your life, and all your youth, in love with an older married man. And who are you with now? No one, that's who."

"Yes these were my choices," he had conceded. "This much is true. But it is your choices we are talking about, and if you wish to merely change the subject, then I will no longer bother to bring it up."

That had silenced James, but had also ended the discussion.

The morning now felt especially cold to him. He saw that the sky threatened snow. It would be a good day to stay inside.

But I must first get warm, he thought. And have a bit of bread with jam, and some coffee. These are necessary things: warmth and nourishment.

"Rien ne peut survivre pour longtemps sans la chaleur et l'alimentation," he said as he wandered to the bathroom. "C'est un fait. Particulièrement au milieu de l'hiver.5

In the bathroom he washed his face with a small cotton rag, and brushed his teeth using the peppermint tooth powder he preferred over the more popular brands of paste. It was Saturday, which was the day that he usually worked on his script. He was eager for it to be done so he could send the final draft to Lance to read. But unfortunately, he did not feel much up for the concentration that the final scenes required to write. It was the part where the character based on Andre dies, and leaves him alone. It was not a happy scene for him to write, or much of a time he wished to remember.

He remembered that, back then, finding time to be alone with him was difficult. As one would expect in such a case as this, Andre's wife mostly took care of him in his dying days. Andre's grown children were also around, circling like vultures, the youngest one only one year older than he himself. Because Andre was seldom free from the clutter of his family, and no longer able to create any distance from them himself, it was only near the very end that Andre's wife relented. She allowed him to be at the hospital with Andre, and they had their time with alone.

He would sit and hold Andre's hand. And when Andre was alert enough to pay attention, they would talk a little bit, or he would read to him - mostly poetry - Vallery, Rilke, and Verlaine. And so, in this way and other, the final days had not been much different than the last five years of their affair. Their tenderness was spoken, and the most intimate touch they shared was a kiss goodbye.

Leaving James to himself in Seattle had felt much like leaving Andre at the end, knowing that he would die holding his wife's hand. It had the left in him the same vast and stinging sense of emptiness, and the regret as pungent as the smell of spoiled cheese. He had been tempted to agree when James had asked him to stay. He knew just how easy it would be to fall into the role of James' protector, to take him on as a project, and to use his greater experience as a lever both for and against him.

He had himself been Andre's project from the start. He saw this now. Just as he saw that, with him Andre had found a way to be a young man again, to push back against the gravity of accumulated choices, and thus to start over. Or so it must have felt holding a young man who, not yet eighteen, adored him with the out-sized ardor of one convinced he was in love for the first time - when, in fact, he was not.

But that was of no importance then or really ever. Andre had remained a director until the very end. For it was at Andre's request that he had obtained the necessary drugs for him, the handful of bright confection-colored pills that Andre swallowed to end his life. He had fed them to Andre one by one without shedding a single tear.

"Time for your close-up," Andre had laughed, oddly finding the strength to speak, and using to make a joke that was tragically unfunny.

He had said nothing in reply because there was nothing to say. This was how it was to end. Andre had commanded it, and he had dutifully played his part, believing that this is what people do in their life - play their parts, and speak their lines like the good little actors they all are.

But life need not be like this, he thought, rinsing off his toothbrush, and putting it away. Not unless it is allowed to be so.

"Il pleure dans mon coeur,"6 he whispered, staring at his reflection in the mirror as he recited the first line of Andre's favorite poem. He then went on reciting, knowing the poem by heart. Comme il pleut sur la ville; Quelle est cette langueur Qui pénètre mon coeur? bruit doux de la pluie Par terre et sur les toits! Pour un coeur qui s'ennuie le chant de la pluie! Il pleure sans raison Dans ce coeur qui s'écoeure. Quoi! nulle trahison? . . . Ce deuil est sans raison. C'est bien la pire peine De ne savoir pourquoi Sans amour et sans haine Mon coeur a tant de peine!7

His wet eyes stared back at him, and he felt like an old man. He knew the poem had been his warning, and that he had failed to understand or heed it. He would write to James and tell him this - why no heart must suffer so. LANCE BASS

In the winter he heard the bare poplar branches scraping at the side of the house. The sleet had kept him awake at first, and now it was wind pushing the branches at the house that stirred his thoughts. Josh had come to bed with him about an hour ago, but he had remained only a few minutes before getting back up again, mumbling that he was not tired after all, and he was going downstairs.

He knew that Josh was worried about Aaron, and that he'd stay up to wait for him to come home. It had been a year ago today that Aaron had had his falling out with James, over what he still did not know. Aaron refused to talk about it, with him at least. He suspected that maybe Josh knew. But he had not asked, sensing that it was off-limits somehow, a confidence between Josh and Aaron, perhaps unspoken, but still there.

He was in some ways glad that James had moved on. His relationship with Aaron had been a source of stress for him, and a distraction he thought. Once he had moved to Seattle, Aaron had redoubled his efforts at school and started spending time with a larger circle of friends. He had dated a series of different girls, mostly from school, but also two he had met at a photo-shoot. He had liked Lauren, and thought Aaron was getting serious about her, even though JC had insisted it was just a fling - and a sexual one at that. When he'd asked Aaron what was going on, he had shrugged and said it was no big deal.

"She's just a girl dad," Aaron had said, giving him the frowning stare that Lance had lately come to know as the mind-your-own-business look.

And that was the last he'd heard of Lauren, or of anyone else for that matter. Josh said he wasn't seeing anyone at all, and that he should stop asking.

"Asking about it all the time will only make it worse," Josh had said.

But it made him mad that Josh was running interference, and acting as Aaron's protective screen. They had fought about it more than once, about how Aaron was so much more distant now, less willing to come to him for advice, and to share what was on his mind. He had gone from being the most open of children to being as shut up and self-contained as a lonely old man.

And he wanted to know why.

Or maybe he didn't. Even though he and Aaron had closer before, that did not mean they would not be just as close again. Maybe not like when Aaron was a boy and he'd cry when dad got out of his sight for even a second. He had for a while, druing the first few years of Aaron's life, feared that Josh might be jealous of their close bond, that Josh would feel that this bond somehow took something from his love for him.

But Josh had never once been even remotely jealous of the attention he'd focused on Aaron. Indeed, Josh had told him, too many times to remember, that watching he and Aaron together, how he played with him, read to him, helped him with his homework, or with some science project, that all of these things had made Josh love him even more.

"Being a father changed you," Josh wrote once in a Father's Day card. "In a million ways, all good and clear and bright and better. I'm proud of you. And I'll always love you. I promise."

It was Josh's unstinting support, and his complete lack of concern over who got credit for what when it came to Aaron, that caused such guilt in him now. He was jealous of Josh, and his sudden closeness to their son.

He felt it especially lately. He would walk into a room and find the two of them sitting there, suddenly silent, having just stopped talking, as if not wanting him to hear what was being said. It was always awkward, with tenseness to the silence that lingered even when the silence was broken, usually by Aaron saying that he needed to go do his homework, or to call someone, or to be somewhere. He would then would glance nervously at Josh, as if to say, Don't tell him what we were talking about, and leave the two of them to stand there alone together, awkward and uncomfortable.

Once Aaron was gone from the room, Josh would kiss him softly on the lips, and whisper, Don't worry. The reassurance Josh offered was genuine and welcome. He would have worried but for Josh's words, which he acknowledged with a kiss in return.

They had devoted the last sixteen years of their lives to raising Aaron, to helping him become the kind, well-mannered, trustworthy young man he was, and so now it was time to focus their attention more on each other again. He had turned down several large roles - one recently in a movie he would really have liked to do, the Mysteries of Pittsburgh, to be directed by Todd Haynes, someone he'd wanted to work with. His manager had come unglued when he turned down the part, and he'd been forced to endure - for what had seemed like the thousandth time - the speech about how he was throwing away his career, and that he needed to follow-up the Star Wars film with something as big and notable.

He'd listened to the speech, but did not care. Turning down the part had been the right thing to do. He wanted to take a few long trips with Josh overseas, and maybe help him to re-do all the gardens around the house - something he'd been talking about doing for a long while, but not found the time for. There was also the band that Josh managed now. It was scheduled to go tour early this summer, and they'd laughed about getting a tour-bus of their own

"We can fuck like rabbits," Josh had said. "And not worry about getting caught."

He had laughed hearing Josh say this. And it had brought back memories of all the time they'd spent sneaking around on tour.

He'd hardly been older than Aaron back then - eighteen years old. He followed Josh around hoping for even the faintest of touches, not ever getting enough of him, and wanting to touch him even more because he couldn't do it without the risk of getting caught. It was only when Joey had figured out that they were a couple that they managed to be alone together on the road. It had been he and Joey on one bus. And Justin, Chris, and Josh on the other. But Joey would challenge Chris or Justin to marathon video-game challenges, and send Josh to other bus.

At first they'd been too nervous to do anything but furtively hold hands and kiss, hiding from the drivers in the back. But once it was obvious that Joey planned to sleep on the other bus, crashing on Josh's bunk, he and Josh started to make love more often, this being one more of the many gifts that Joey had managed to give him unnoticed.

But there was no need to sneak around or hide anymore. Each of the pieces of their lives had fallen beautifully into place. The future was clear and bright and full, like a sunny summer day. And while both JC and he were older now, neither of them was old. The summer would be the start of a second youth, and a time of renewal and discovery. He couldn't think of a single thing they couldn't do together if they wanted. And he knew it was going to be great.

COLIN FARRELL

Walking home down the narrow cobble-stoned street that led to his house, leaning forward into a biting winter wind, the collar of his coat held tight and closed around his throat, he was grateful for that last whiskey he'd drank. It was keeping him as warm as the blankets on his big bed would soon do, holding to him long into morning when finally forced awake by the need to piss, he'd drag himself out of bed into the cold morning air and run to the toilet, swearing loudly the entire way. He sometimes thought he might never get out of bed in the morning but for the wicked need to piss.

He stomped his boots on the front stoop and pushed the door open. He'd left the light on in the front room. He and anyone else could see it easily through the uncurtained wood-paned window next to the door. Just inside the house, he stepped out of his boots, which were unlaced and loose and thus easily escaped. He kicked off his pants on the way to his bedroom and hung them on the back of a chair in the hallway. He threw his shrugged off flannel shirt on the end of his bed before climbing quickly under the covers wearing just t-shirt and socks.

Lying on his back, his hands behind his head, looking up, he wondered whether to smoke. After quitting two years ago, the habit had crept up on him again. He'd managed to keep it mostly in the pub at first. But last week he'd bought a pack to keep in the house, admitting that it was the beginning of the end if he bought a second pack, which he was closing to doing, there being only two or three left in the pack he had.

He rolled onto his side to reach for his cigarettes, deciding that he'd smoke one and then go to sleep. He saw his cell-phone and grabbed it instead. He hadn't checked his messages all day.

The first message was from his agent. He's sent him a great script. Someone else had passed on it, and the part was his if he wanted it. He should take it. It wasn't a huge part, but it was key. A shoo-in for an Oscar nomination. And he'd be great in it.

"What a fecking bunch of shite," he muttered, not listening to the rest of the message and deleting it. "Always blowin' smoke up me arse."

The second message left him slack-jawed and listening hard. It was from Aaron. He had called sometime this morning. If his head had been clearer he probably could've figured the time difference, but be didn't bother trying. The call was from Aaron's car, and at first he thought he might have been in an accident.

But Aaron said he was fine.

• Not to worry.

• I called to say hey, and to see how you be doing 'bout.

• Decided to go to Harvard and all I think.

• Sending me letter to hold the spot while I be deciding.

-Things ain't much worked out like I'd been hoped, and feelin' a bit down.

• But nothing to worry about da.

There was silence after that, and something mumbled about it was time for him to go. He missed him an awful lot, he said, and he hoped he wouldn't be mad if maybe he decided to do something different than what they'd talked about before.

• I know you be excited too about me headin' off ta Harvard and all that too.

• And I'm pretty sure I'll go.

• Anyway, I'm going to go. I miss you Da, and I hope I see you soon.

He saved the message, intending to listen to it again in the morning. After putting down the phone, a cigarette was lit and in his mouth without thinking. The cigarette smoke circled his head as he exhaled. The smoke stung his eyes. He blinked as he looked across the room at the far window. His view out the window was blocked by a rosemary hedge. He could see only a few thin crevices of sky through its prickly tangled branches.

He had been meaning to trim the hedge for years; it was nearly beyond managing now. His aul man had trimmed the hedge around the house he grew up in every year in December. His mother used the branches to cover the mantel, adding bits of holly here and there, and gold fabric ribbon. What she didn't use to decorate she burned in the hearth on Christmas morning. He remembered waking to the sharp spicy-green scent of the burning rosemary mixing with the sweet tobacco smoke from his aul man's pipe. His own unruly hedge made him angry, and he vowed that he would chop it down tomorrow.

He sat in silence smoking, one cigarette and then another. He smoked the last one slowly. Not so much to make it last, but wanting extra time to think.

He knew better than to read too much into what Aaron had said - not that he was normally one to read between the lines of what someone said in any case.

He thought for a moment he might give Lance a call, but then decided not to. He didn't want to stir a pot that might not need stirring. Plus it had sounded like Aaron was telling him something in trust, something he might not have told anybody else about. He had warned him against ever doing this, telling him.

"A thing said to me is thing said to your aul man," he'd said. "And don't be goin' and testin' me on that boy, or you'll be in some serious shite, if you be knowing what I mean sayin' that."

Aaron had never really put him to this test, except once. Last year on his birthday; and it had been an awful mess. He'd been visiting on his way to London to wish the kid a happy seventeen. JC had told him about the thing with James, as much as he knew, that is. He'd got the feeling Lance was not tuned it, and Aaron wasn't talking, so he ignored the situation, and played it light like always.

That evening, they'd had a bit of a party, with cake and lots of well-wishes, after which Aaron went out carousing with some pals of his. It was just past midnight when his cell-phone rang, and it didn't take long for him to figure out that Aaron was bolloxed, which is to say drunk off his fucking ass. He'd managed to get his car to the bottom of the drive, but in a fit of teenage brilliance decided driving it further was not the best of ideas. He got the car put away for him and then held his head for an hour and a half while he barfed his guts out, crying the whole time not to tell his dad.

• Promise me you'll tell them then.

• I can't.

• I don't s'pose ya think ya can, which be another thing entirely.

• Please da. Please.

He never promised one way or the other, but he'd kept quiet just the same. Aaron might have confessed himself. He had always been that kind of kid. But whether he'd told on himself was something he'd never found out. Nor did he care to.

"I hope you ain't be putting me to it again," he muttered coldly, snubbing out his cigarette in the chipped china saucer he'd been using as a temporary ashtray.

The leftover ashes from his last cigarette glowed like tiny embers before finally going dark. There was a sad tight feeling in his chest that bothered him. He slipped his hand beneath his t-shirt and rubbed up and down the length, feeling for where his sternum started, and then where it stopped. He leaned back down against the pillows, and with his other hand pulled the blankets up to his nose.

He'd call Aaron in the morning, and see what was up. In the meantime, he hoped that a night's rest had helped him, and that a new day had cast things in a different light.

JC CHASEZ

He liked the feel of his hands plunged deep in the cold dark dirt, stirring it with his fingers running through it, mixing in bone meal and composted leaves and grass. His fingernails scraped the bottom of the metal tub he squatted in front of, hunched over. He shivered at the sudden cold feel of the metal, and the sharp scraping sound, like a shovel hitting stone.

The dirt was ready to transfer to the clay pot lined up in eight long rows behind him. The pots were old, stained by time and near constant use. Twice a year he planted them, in the spring with sweet peas, pansies, cosmos, and poppies, and in the winter with forced flower bulbs - hyacinth, narcissus, crocus, and tulips.

He had taught himself ten years ago how to force flower bulbs to bloom out of season, rising Lazarus-like from the grave of fifteen weeks buried in dirt-filled trays he stacked in the two refrigerators Lance had bought for him and had installed in the utility room downstairs.

Lance helped him to gather and clean the pots each year, setting them out for him to dry in the first full sun of spring. He was left alone in planting though, the small room in which he labored having become a sanctum of sorts for him, a place where he could listen to music, and come to contemplate alone the near-magical transformation of a shriveled brown bulb buried in cold dirt into green-glorious life again.

The two refrigerators stood side by side, each one black. On the door of each was the list he'd made of the bulbs resting inside. He kept careful track.

Looking at the one on the left, he surveyed the list. First the tulips - Barcelona, which were when bloomed a deep violet color that reminded him of the vestments worn by Catholic priests at Christmas; Cassini, which were blood red; Negrita, which were a dark, nearly-black purple; Red Paradise, which were vermillion, a vivid Chinese red; and White Dream, which were a bright ivory white. Next there were the narcissus - Barrett Browning, which were white streaked with orange, and Tête À Tête, which were a glowing sunny yellow. Finally, there were hyacinths, in silvery white and brilliant bright pink, Jeanne d'Arc crocuses, which were pure white with deep purple, and blue irises called Harmony.

He was reaching for the refrigerator door, prepared to open it, when he heard Aaron's car pull up the drive. The car's engine idled for longer than usual, and he hoped that it didn't wake Lance up. He was not sure why that he hadn't immediately turned the engine off, like he normally did. But then this was not a normal day either.

Sighing, he wiped his hand on the damp rag he used for this purpose. It was gray and smeared with dirt. He wondered what time it was. There was no clock in the planting room, and he was not wearing his watch. It felt late though. He had been downstairs for at least an hour, and it had been past eleven o'clock when he'd got out of bed. Turning to climb the stairs, he prepared for the worst, but hoped for the best.

Aaron was not crying this time. But he hadn't expected him to be either. Not like last year when he had burst through the front door and nearly knocked him over on his way up the stairs, four at a time, to his room. He'd found Aaron face down on his bed, a pillow clutched beneath him, his kicked-off boots in the middle of the room. The faint grayish light from outside Aaron's window illuminated his neck and the back of his head. He rested his hand in the middle of Aaron's back between his shoulder blades. He could feel Aaron's ragged breathing, his slow muffled sobs, and his body shaking.

He had sat with him all that night, not moving from Aaron's side until he knew for sure he was asleep. By then the sun was nearly up. He remembered watching bleary-eyed as the sky began to color. He quietly pulled the curtains closed and then picked up Aaron's shoes and put them in his closet.

The months that followed had been a misery to the both of them. He knew how Aaron felt, and why he did not want to talk about what had happened. And so he waited for Aaron to confide in him on his own, and gave him the space he needed to grieve.

But the need to give Aaron space was something that Lance had apparently failed to understand, not that he blamed him. He and Lance were driven by the same concern; it was just that it took them to two different places. Lance had learned his own lesson well, and did not believe in letting problems linger, or for long go unexamined. That was why, ignoring his warning, Lance had called Luanne and peppered Aaron with questions.

Why had James transferred schools and moved to Seattle?

Did something happen?

Had James said good-bye?

Were they still best friends?

Why not visit him on Spring Break?

When was the last time you talked to him?

Was James still dating Stephen Fortney?

Was that what this was about?

Do you want me to talk to him?

How are you feeling?

Is this going to affect your grades?

Aaron had deftly brushed off every question that Lance had asked, acting the part of the untroubled son, without a care in the world, or any concern, the future still bright, and anything still possible. He had been both impressed and horrified by his performance, how convincing it was, and how wrong. Aaron had obviously decided, for reasons he still did not fully understand, that Lance did not want to know the truth of how he felt, his devastation, the sense of loss, and the deeply-felt embarassment. Aaron kept it all away from Lance, being obedient to the end to Lance's desire for a well-ordered world.

Aaron knew there was a plan; and he plainly intended to follow it as the easiest way to move ahead of impasse, and his pain. First there was graduation from high school with honors. Then there was two summer months in Europe. Next were the fall fashion shows in Milan and New York for Marc Jacobs, and the cover shoot for L'oumo Vogue. The condo in Cambridge where he'd live in the fall was already bought and furnished and paid for. All he had to do was move his personal stuff in. And finally there was the start of his freshman year at Harvard - the best undergraduate school in the country.

But none of that had happened yet. For now, there was only Aaron standing there in front of him, grim-faced and still. Wind blew stray leaves in from outside, scattering them across the dull wood floor. He offered him a small smile, and held out his hand to him. Aaron shrugged and closed the door with his foot. The door made a deep thud that echoed up the stairs when it closed. He cringed hearing it.

• You'll wake Lance.

• Sorry.

• Do you want something to eat?

• No.

• Are you tired?

• Not sleepy tired.

• Body tired.

• Pretty much tired of it all, actually.

• You need your sleep in any case.

• I know.

• And food. Did you eat?

• I shared a pizza with Brett after practice.

• You want me to fix you something.

• Nah, it'll make my stomach hurt this late. You potting the bulbs yet?

• Just about. This weekend probably.

• Yeah?

• Yeah.

• Sitting might be good. For a little while. Then I'll go to bed.

• You have basketball practice tomorrow morning.

• Yeah. Early.

• Maybe you should...

• No - I want to stay up a bit. I won't be able to sleep otherwise.

• Let's go into the family room then. I don't want to wake Lance.

• Okay.

• You sure you're not hungry."

• Can I have a beer?

• Just one.

• And I won't tell dad.

• I didn't say anything.

• But I know what you were thinking.

• He worries. That's all.

• Colin doesn't mind me having a pint with him.

• Your dad isn't Colin, and this isn't Dublin.

• Point taken.

• Here.

• Thanks.

• You want the couch?

• Yeah, but sit with me.

• Happy to.

• I mailed it.

• I saw it wasn't on your desk.

• Were you looking for it?

• No. I put clothes on your bed.

• You don't have to wash them for me. I can do it.

• I don't mind.

• Thanks Dad.

• No problem.

• I thought of calling him tonight. On my cell.

• Maybe you should have.

• I didn't know what to say.

• No one ever does. That's just part of it.

• I guess.

• I just don't want things getting more bent. It's bad enough as it is.

• What's to lose then?

• Everything. Nothing. I don't know.

• You know Aaron, time doesn't always fix things. And silence never does. So if you're counting on this to fix itself somehow, you shouldn't.

• Now you sound like dad.

• Is that supposed to be an insult?

• No. I'm sorry.

• You should give your dad more credit.

• I said I was sorry. Besides, James will call when he's ready.

• Maybe he's thinking the same thing about you.

• Well so maybe I'm the one not ready then. Or maybe it just doesn't matter. I mean, it seems pretty fucking over with to me.

• If that's what you think, then it is.

• Mostly what I think is that I don't want to think about it anymore. It's time to move on, just like dad says.

• But move on where?

• With my life. Going to school. Doing stuff. Not thinking so much. And I don't know, like not getting wrung out so much about something that's in the past.

• The past.

• Yeah. The past.

• I talked to Stephane today.

• No you didn't.

• Yes I did.

• About what?

• He called for Lance.

• What did he say?

• He wasn't home so I don't know.

• Who wasn't?

• Lance.

• No I meant to you. You talked to him, right?

• Only for a minute. He wasn't calling for me.

• I get that. But what did he say?

• He said he wanted to talk to Lance about producing some script for a movie or something like that. And I told him I'd let Lance know.

• That's all he said.

-He asked about you too, how you were doing.

• And what'd you say?

• I said so-so. Then he sort of coughed and said something in French.

• He's kind of weird.

• Not weirder than any other actors I know.

• Did you ask about James? He talks to him all the time you know.

• No. But Stephane asked if the two of you were still not talking.

• And?

• I told him it was still radio-silence as far as I knew. And I guess I was right.

• Yeah.

• He also wanted to know what I thought about the whole situation.

• What did you say?

• I said I didn't really know what to think. And that it made me sad.

• Is that the truth?

• Half of it.

• What's the other half.

• The part I still don't understand.

• Which is?

• The part I still don't understand.

• Gee, that's helpful.

• It wasn't intended to be.

• Whatever.

• Look, you brought it up. If you don't like my answers, don't ask the questions.

• I just hope he's doing all right, that's all. I don't mean to put it on you.

• Anyway, I think I'll go to go to bed before your dad comes looking for me.

• Are you mad?

• At you?

• Yeah. At me.

• A little disappointed maybe.

• Disappointed? What's that about?

• You never used to give up so easy. Or give in.

• You think I gave up on James?

• I think you've been giving up on a lot of things. Including James.

• I didn't give up on him. He gave up on me.

• Is that really what you think?

• No. But he was the one that left. Not me.

• Maybe he had no choice.

• Everyone has a choice.

• But sometimes they don't feel like they do.

• That's just weak.

• What about you going to Harvard then?

• What about it?

• Was that your choice?

• Yes.

• And you really want to go there. For you? For your life?

• I mailed the letter didn't I?

• Or so you say.

• Well, I did.

• Put the bottle in the recycling bin when you're through.

• Don't go to bed yet.

• I'm tired. I need some sleep.

• I didn't mean to make it sound like I was making fun of dad before. I wasn't.

• I'll take you're word it. How about that?

• All right. Thanks.

Aaron remained on the couch, saying nothing as he stood up. The half-empty beer bottle Aaron held caught the lamplight and it glass glowed green. The sleet had started up again. He could hear it tapping outside against the wood deck. He wished it would snow instead, even though it rarely did - once every ten years or so at best. Growing up in D.C. he had loved snowy mornings. He would wake with first sun and dress quietly. But he was and expert at being quiet and unnoticed; he snuck outside every winter without once being caught. He loved the way snow blanketed everything, smoothing off the world's rough edges, and bringing with it a sense of peace and calm.

Shrugging off the memory of walking in the snow, newspaper stuffed in the soles of his galoshes to help his feet stay warm, he turned and looked at Aaron, who was now slumped forward on the sofa, hunched over his knees, and staring at the floor. He did not want to leave him alone. He wanted to sit and hold his hand and try to explain that there was no such thing as fate, that the future was something you built by choices you made, and promises you kept. He wanted to tell him that the world was an often unkind place, full of people happy to hurt him, and to take from him what was positive and good. He wanted to tell him to trust bravery and persistence more than luck, and to stand up for what he believed, because sometimes belief was all that got you through.

But none of this was what Aaron wanted to hear right now. Aaron wanted him to say that everything would be okay someday, that just like Lance had found his way back home to him, James would find his way back to Aaron, and that the two of them would get a second chance. That was what Aaron wanted to hear, if only he could say it.

TONI COLETTE

The funny thing was, you didn't notice it at first, the wheelchair. Or the way he was slumped forward in it, as if inanimate, an object not a person, tended to but not cared for, at least not by anyone he knew.

The blanket had slipped from his shoulders and now lay draped around him, hanging off his arms halfway on the ground. His head lolled to one side in sleep. He liked napping in the enclosed courtyard among the climbing roses and rhododendrons and two flowering cherry trees. It smelled of life, not death, and with that he could sleep. Not like in his small room, with a couch he could rest on but not sleep, and a hospital bed he could neither rest nor sleep on.

She had come to see Ryan again, to wheel him back to his room, and sit with him while they both waited for sleep that sometimes did not come quickly, or at all. Waiting now in the bright-tiled lobby for a nurse to take her out to him she wondered whether to ask him again if there was anyone that he wanted her to call. This did not look to her like a place where people died. Not from the lobby. There were fresh flowers, different each day. And marble-mosaic walls wedged with china cups and charm bracelets and dancing figurines, lodged there like memories of happier times, interspersed with endless sprigs of verse in poetic dialogue with the names of donors carved scatter-shot through, each name creating a rhythm that made her forget for a moment why she was there, and who it was that waited for her to see.

The hard part was that he never smiled. And he rarely said much. He just listened and nodded his head up and down, his face like a mask with the black wool scarf he kept wrapped around his throat, his ashen hair shorn short, his gaunt shadowed cheeks, and his dark weary deep-set eyes. She had to hide the fact that his macabre appearance frightened her at times, and she did not hide it well.

For a week she had been coming twice a day to visit him. She was staying at the Sorrento hotel, a small European-style hotel two miles straight up Madison at the edge of downtown Seattle. Her suite had a view of the city. She could see the skyline and a bit of Puget Sound. Sometimes she ventured out to explore. But mostly she alternated between reading quietly in her room, or taking a meal at the bar in the Hunt Club, talking to Eddie the bartender there.

The hotel's limousine drove her each day to the skilled-nursing facility that was now Ryan's home, if you could call it that. And she could not. It was too much for her to think of someone she cared about being cared for by strangers - even kind compassionate ones. Thus it was not the place that kept her from accepting Ryan's presence there; it was that she could not let herself accept his need to be there.

And so it was that she tried to make each visit a little party. She called the library information line to learn of obscure holidays or celebration. On December second they'd celebrated National Pie Day with blueberry pie and ice cream. On the sixth they'd drank red wine to celebrate the Feast of Saint Dionysia. And on the seventh she'd brought figs, dates, and sweet wine so they could celebrate the end of Ramadan. But that day Ryan had not felt good enough to eat anything except a single bite of date.

Toni pulled the blanket back up around his shoulders and tucked it into place. He seemed asleep but she knew he wasn't. His mind was busy with its endless inventory of a life, not that long, but seemingly filled with so few moments of happiness that he had to search hard to find them. She sat quietly beside him, knowing that he would acknowledge her when he was ready.

He knew that she was there. He could smell her perfume. Joy. A fact that he had turned more than once into a more-than-sarcastic joke.

"Hey there sweetheart," Toni whispered, leaning forward to kiss his cheek when his eyes finally opened. "I sure am happy to see you."

"Did you bring my cigarettes?"

"Yes I brought your cigarettes," Toni said, rummaging in her bag and pulling out a pack. "And treats."

"What are we celebrating today?" Ryan asked, after Toni lit his cigarette him, and he had exhaled a thick plume of cigarette smoke.

"The immaculate conception," Toni said.

"Oh lord," Ryan said, rolling his eyes as he took another drag on his cigarette.

He was only allowed to smoke when she was there. He inhaled each one greedily, trying to get his fill. It seemed to give him pleasure, so she didn't mind. She considered joining him in one or two, but she had finally managed to quit, and didn't want to start again, even for the sake of keeping him company.

"Well exactly," Toni laughed. "Lord and saviour, son of God, fruit of her womb, and all that assorted rigmarole. Of course, we'll be having to say a bit of a prayer before."

"Before what?" Ryan asked, a hint of a smile on his face, amused against his will once more by Toni's goodhearted irreverence.

"Before we tuck into the sacramental wine of course!"

Toni pulled a bottle of sweet red wine from her bag and two glasses she'd taken from the bathroom in her hotel. She placed them with a noisy clunk on the picnic table just behind her and then held the bottle up for Ryan to inspect.

"No vintage, I see."

"Sweetie - it's got a friggin' screw-top. We're talking religious wine here."

"Are you serious."

"Serious?" she said, putting on hand on her hip and looking at him as if insulted. "Serious? Serious as the second coming."

"The second coming," Ryan said, squinting his eyebrows and scratching his chin, pretending to be gravely serious. "I see."

"Of course, there was no second coming for poor Mary," Toni laughed.

"Or first."

"Poor dear," Toni clucked. "Knocked up and not even a roll in the hay...."

"Literally."

"That nativity scene thing always did give me the creeps, actually."

"I think it's the animals looking on."

"Oh - exactly," Toni said, screwing the cap off the bottle of wine. "And the three wise men, what was that all about?"

"Stalkers you'd call them now."

"Yes officer," Toni said, pretending to talk into the phone. "My husband - well, he's not exactly my husband, since I'm actually married to god. What? No I'm not crazy. We're fleeing on a burro and these three whackos carrying cheap perfume and god knows what else have been after us. What? That always happens when the Star of Bethlehem appears? What in the hell's that?

Is it like the full moon? All right, yes... we'll report it once we get to Bethlehem. I just hope the hotels aren't all full."

Ryan laughed hard listening to Toni, each laugh moistening his eyes. The laughter gave way to a brittle scraping cough that took him over for two or three minutes. She held his hand while he coughed convulsing. When the fit finally subsided, Toni smiled and handed him a glass of wine. The cigarette he held was almost finished, so he took one last draw off it and threw it on the ground. Toni stomped it out with the toe of her shoe.

"This wine tastes like crap," Ryan said, coughing softly into his hand and then taking a second small sip. "Like cherry cough syrup or something."

"The lady at the religious supply store says it's been blessed."

"I think it's us that will need the blessing if we drink much of this."

"Ah-hah, and that's where I'm prepared," Toni said, pulling a second bottle of wine from her bag. "Mama brought some good stuff too."

"I probably shouldn't indulge," Ryan said, setting his glass down on the table and looking at it. "I feel sort of tired."

"It's your favorite," Toni said, holding the wine label up for him to see.

"Stags Leap," Ryan said.

"Remember visiting there?"

"That was a nice time."

"When you were feeling better."

"Yeah."

"I took Brendan there. When we first got back from Sydney."

"I know - he told me. He said he had a great time."

"I'd just moved into his place," Ryan said, watching Toni pull the cork out of the new bottle of wine and then pour it for him.

"I've got some bread and foie gras in here somewhere too," Toni said, reaching deep into her bag and rummaging through it.

"You're a fucking Mary Poppins."

"A fucking what?" Toni said, looking up at Ryan, having managed to pull a long baguette from her bag. "Mary what?"

"Poppins. Next you'll be pulling a floor lamp out of there."

"It is a bit dark in this garden," she said, renewing her search in her bag. "You'd think they'd have more light."

"No one but me comes out here at night."

"Still."

"It's okay. I like it dark like this."

"Here - foie gras. Eat."

"I'm not hungry."

"You'll eat at least a bite if you know what's good for you. Otherwise the Virgin Mary Poppins is going to curse you with the company of a bratty child."

"Well, we certainly don't want to be offending Mary," Ryan said, taking a small bit and then sipping his wine and smiling. "This is good."

"It's a 97."

"No."

"Yes."

"Don't even tell me how much it cost."

"You're worth it baby," Toni said, putting her hand on the back of Ryan's neck and gently rubbing the cool dry skin there. "And then some."

"Why do you do this?" Ryan asked, looking at her. "You don't need to be here. I came to here to be alone."

"Yes I do," Toni said, looking down into her glass, as if to collect her thoughts, and then looking back at him. "And I want to as well."

"Too bad I never met a man like you," Ryan said, in a harsh whisper that sounded disgusted but not bitter. "Or held on to him."

"You're better off without him," Toni said, putting her hand on Ryan's knee and then trying not to reveal her surprise at how bony it felt.

Ryan remained silent, his eyes narrowing, near closing. He sat this way, still, for a few long seconds, and then took a sip of wine. A dribble of wine leaked from the corner of his mouth. He caught it with his tongue before it traveled far. Handing Toni his glass, he adjusted himself in his wheel chair. Toni busied herself with unwrapping more of the foie gras, and then spreading a slice of it thickly across a piece of break.

"Here," she said, holding the bread out to him. "Have another bite."

"I'm not hungry," Ryan said, pushing Toni's hand away, the earthly pungent liver smell making him cringe and feel nauseated.

"Come on babe," Toni insisted. "Do it for me."

"Maybe in a second," Ryan said, looking at Toni straight on now, not indirectly as he usually did, furtively out of the corner of one eye, like he wanted to see her, but not have her see him.

"All right," Toni said, taking a bite of the bread herself, and then mumbling. "We have scads and scads of time."

"Right," Ryan said, once more looking away. "Forever."

"Don't be like that," Toni said, pulling her hand back from his knee, and digging a napkin from out of her bag. "No one has forever. But that doesn't mean..."

"Toni - you don't do inspirational well."

"I do a great Meryl Streep though," Toni said, smiling then laughing. "How about Meryl Streep being inspirational? Something say from Out of Africa? Or...no, no....how about Music of the Heart. That ought to lift your spirits."

"Or make me choke to death on my own vomit."

"Now there's a pretty picture."

"Yeah, well I'm just not in the mood to be cheered up."

"A seemingly constant condition I might add."

"All this is what it is. And then I die. I can handle it."

"Well maybe I can't," Toni said, standing up and turning away.

"You didn't have to come," Ryan said. "I didn't ask you to."

"You didn't need to," Toni said, carefully blotting her eyes with the paper napkin she still held, and then turning back around and sitting down. "I'm your friend."

"I know you are," Ryan said, looking up at her, his eyes seeming cloudy, not from tears, but from the distance from which he seemed to see her, as if straining to hold her in the field of focus. "But it's not like I have much of anything to offer in return. And I'm not saying this just to get pity or make you feel bad. You know I'm awful company. I smell bad half the time. I have a hard time concentrating. And me saying 'see you tomorrow' most of the time feels like I'm telling you a lie."

"It's not a lie unless you intend it to be - and you don't."

"That's true."

"Have some more wine then or I'll sing Music of My Heart."

"Jesus - fill her up," Ryan said, holding out his glass.

"Was that a joke about the Virgin Mary?" Toni asked, sloshing wine into his glass and laughing. "Because you really should be more respectful, this being her day and all."

"You never stop, do you?" Ryan said, joining in her laughter.

"Moi?" she said, clinking her glass against his, and winking at him. "Of course I don't stop. And neither should you. You got lots of life left to live."

"Isn't it pretty to think so," Ryan said, smiling at her.

"And if it isn't Mr. Jake Barnes."

"At your service," he said, still smiling. "So to speak."

"Yes. So to speak."

It was not too long before Ryan grew silent again, and seemed to drift off.

As she always did when this occurred, Toni took over the job of keeping a kind of conversation going. Ryan listened as best he could, and he nodded and smiled from time to time. Toni told him stories she made as lurid as she could about the making of her last film, a thriller directed by Peter Jackson, and co-starring Dominic Monaghan - another, as she put it, in a long line of my gay leading men.

"But that way, at least, I keep my hands off them," she laughed.

"Unless he's French," Ryan said, winking at her.

"Oh, Stephane," she said, surprised at the recollection. "What a ridiculously great fuck he was. You would simply not believe it."

"I should have gone after him instead of Brendan."

"Should have, could have, would have," she said, looking at first disgusted and then bemused. "I hate those words."

"You have no idea," Ryan said, whispering.

The night air grew slowly hazy, wrapping them in a fog thicker than their silence. Ryan was asleep. She watched him slumped in his wheelchair, tears forming in her eyes. She knew he was not doing well, even though he was taking his medicine again - as he should have been doing all along, instead of doing endless amounts of cocaine. He had gained some weight, and looked physically better. But there was the look of defeat in his eyes. She knew that he was preparing to give up; and that when she left he would.

As she gathered up the food she'd brought, and drank the last of her wine, she was sad to go. She did not like leaving him here. But she had no place to take him either. No one else knew he was here, and she had promised to keep it secret. Those few who knew him, knew he was HIV-positive, but not that he had AIDS. Or that he had come close to dying once already. They had saved him here. And she was grateful for that.

She heard someone walk up to her from behind. It was one of his nurse's - Sam. He smile at her and asked if they were ready to go upstairs. She said they were.

"You can leave that stuff there," Sam said, pointing to the paper plate and empty cups that were still on the table. "Jeri can get it later."

"Thank you Sam," she said, touching his arm.

"You're welcome," he said, taking hold of Ryan's wheelchair and slowly turning it around.

She followed Sam pushing Ryan inside and waited with them at the elevator. It took less than a minute to arrive. Ryan's room was on the third floor. It was small, as you would expect. But it didn't look like a hospital room. There was a couch and an end table. He could not have a plant in his room because the dirt might contain spores, and his lungs were still weak from the pneumonia that had almost killed him. Fresh flowers were okay. And she made sure he had a fresh bouquet every week. It was a standing order at the florist shop on Madison halfway between her hotel and here.

Sam helped Ryan into bed while Toni held the blanket up. Ryan barely seemed to notice. He seemed more tired than usual, and didn't look up at her when she smoothed the blanket over him, and tucked him in, and kissed his cheek.

"I think he'll sleep tonight," Sam whispered.

"And maybe dream a little," she said, about to cry. "Sweet, sweet dreams."

She turned away from the bed, like she didn't want to risk Ryan seeing her cry, even though he was now asleep. Usually she sat on the couch and read the book she'd brought with her, or a magazine. But tonight she was going to go. She couldn't stand to stay any longer. Not tonight. She needed to get away awhile, and hated herself a little for feeling that way. But it was how she felt, and she knew she couldn't change that.

"You know Sam," Toni said, dabbing her eyes with a tissue she had pulled from the table beside Ryan's bed. "Life can be a real fucking drag sometimes."

"Yes it can, Ms. Collette. Yes it can."

JAMES CRAIG

I can hardly sleep with him home now, with Stephen's naked body sidled close up next to me, one leg tossed across the both of mine, his arms around me, one resting across my chest, and the other one slid beneath my lower back. His head nestles in the crook of my neck, I can feel his heavy breath and wet lips. He drools in his sleep, dampening the pillow, or my cheek or shoulder. It seemed sweet at first. Now it just seems wet.

His breath is raspy and loud in my ear. It makes me think of Aaron, even though I know it shouldn't. Aaron didn't sound like this. Aaron had a soft whispering snore; it was like he was trying to tell you a secret.

He also had this way of rubbing his thumb slow and gentle and pendulum-steady, back and forth on whatever he happened to touch and hold onto in sleep - his pillow, my pillow, himself, the blankets or sheets, or some part of me. He would sometimes rest his hand on my arm, not long after drifting off, and hold it. But sometimes his hand would slide to my shoulder or chest or stomach as he maneuvered fitfully for room in the not-big bed. His hand landed everywhere, at times, him never awaking, not even a little.

And when it did, his thumb would move gently back and forth. I loved that.

I would lie there, feeling the steady-motion of Aaron's thumb, rubbing, moving slowly across what could not have more than two or three inches of bare skin. It might as well have been my entire body though. I was his then. And in some ways I still am.

Stephen's hand slips down my chest now and slips beneath the waistband of my briefs. This is usually his signal that he's horny. But I'm pretty sure he's not. He's not much for waking up and doing it in the middle of the night.

He's half asleep, but notices I'm half-hard. He grunts and says, Mmmmm, giving it a half-hearted squeeze. He continues holding it but his hand doesn't move again, not like when he wants to have sex. Instead, it's like all he wants to know is that it's still there, still there for him to grab when he wants to. His breathing becomes quick raspy-thick again, and I know he's back asleep, which is more than fine with me. I'm not in the mood to have him on me, or in me. Or near me. I want to be left alone - which is ironic, because, except for the fact that Stephen's lying next to me, that's exactly how I feel.

RYAN GOSLING

When he could not sleep, which was often, he came here. Tonight he had walked, with Jacob's help. It took nearly five minutes. He arrived out of breath. But he had made it, and felt good for the effort of it. Now he sat with his back to the window, on the small coffee-colored couch with the soft sagging cushions and small tear in the cloth covering the left armrest. His new cashmere blanket lay across his legs, folded neatly in half. It was dark red, the color of dried blood. Toni had bought it for him as an early Christmas present. She was leaving in three days; to where he didn't know. But he'd miss her. That much he knew. She seemed his only friend now, even though not having a friend seemed like it would be easier.

That was why he'd ended up her in Seattle. It was a place he loved, having made two movies here. But it was also a place where he knew no one. He had come here to be alone, not that it had been so difficult in Los Angeles. As he'd become sicker, people had kept there distance more and more, until the receding circle of acquaintances was nothing but a memory, and not a pleasant one at that.

He was not sure how Toni had found him here. She had said that someone called her agent and left a message about him. She did not know who it was who called, except that it had been a male voice - or the receptionist who took the message had said.

"I'm just glad who ever it was called," he remembered her saying during one of her first visits.

He tried to keep his spirits up for her when she visited, even if only a little. He hated to disappoint her, or to make her feel sad. She wanted him to get better, to stay on the regimen of pills that promised the possibility of leaving this place. To go where though, he did not know. She talked of them getting a place together, once he was out of here. But he knew Toni was not the stay-at-home type; and that if they were to settle anywhere it would be a hotel more likely than a house.

She didn't understand that this place felt like home now. Surrounded by strangers and the intimations of death, his small room, Room 4A, seemed enough for him now. Its four walls were enough to contain whatever wishes he had left, the primary one being the wish to be done with his battle and die.

It was easy to pretend that it hadn't had to be like this, that it might have been so different if only....if only what? Some man had truly loved him? That he'd followed JC to Germany instead of waiting for him to come back? That he'd have been more careful who he'd offered his heart and body to?

But none of these questions were new. He had asked them all before. And had no more answers now than he'd had before. There were no answers, and that made him sad.

Sitting there he felt a different kind of sadness though. He felt the sadness of the house. And this room. It was the accumulated sadness of all who had come before himm and died here of AIDS. It was easier to inhabit someone else's sadness. That was actors do, inhabit other people's emotions, and tell other people's stories.

The story of this room entranced him. The chaplain - Father Tom - had told it to him. The care facility was called the Duncan-Doulay House, named after two lovers, one who died of AIDS in 1989. Digging deep into his grief, Blair Duncan, supported the effort to build a place to care for people with AIDS, at the end of life.

It was in the room where he now sat that he had found the secret heart of this house. And so it was to this room each night he came to sit and think, and to pay personal homage to Blair Duncan and Jeremy Doulay. The room was lined with wood stripped up from the floors of their bedroom. Before the wood was laid down, and nailed into place, Blair had read each of the dozens of love letters that Jeremy had written him in life, and glued each to the bare floor and bare walls. It had taken two whole days, with him in this room alone, the last room to be completed before the Duncan-Doulay House opened.

He imagined Blair hunched over the letters, carefully gluing each one down.

The letters were probably stained with tears, the ink running and blurring, some of the words now nearly indecipherable. Jeremy probably used a fountain pen to write them, and his signature was probably a proud and faithful flourish. He imagined its swooping curves, like an elaborate bow tied tied to a Christmas present.

For some reason it seemed more romantic to him to imagine him using a fountain pen, how it would make a scratching noise on paper, like he was carving each word into something harder than paper, something stronger too, and more lasting.

When Blair was done, and all the letters glued down, he must have stood there for a long time, turning slowly around, arms outstretched like a weathervane. And even in the grip of grief so tight it must have felt like he was being strangled, what each letter had said spoke to him in chorus, as if to say, There is no worth in love unspoken.

My Dearest Blair,

Today while you were out at work, and I was at university researching some odd fact that you'd crinkle your nose at me mentioning, I caught a whiff of something lovely. It spelled like persimmons. And maybe a bit like cloves too.

But what was really nice was that it made me think of that time we spent in New Zealand six years ago. Remember that ridiculously red flower we found hiking that day? I wanted to pick it but you said, "No, leave it there. We'll remember it better that way." And we did.

You're my beautiful ridiculously red flower. I love you.

Yours,

Jeremy

BLAIR!

I WAS WATCHING THE NEWS AND THIS CRAZY SHRINK SAID THAT PEOPLE NEED TO GIVE UP ROMANTIC NOTIONS ABOUT LOVE. HE SAID, LOVE IS MUNDANE.

IS THERE ANYTHING MUNDANE ABOUT LOVE?

I DON'T THINK SO. NOT OURS AT LEAST.

SO WAKE ME WHEN YOU GET HOME WITH A BIG WET KISS ON MY FOREHEAD AND I'LL SHOW YOU WHAT LOVE IS REALLY ABOUT. I WILL!!!

ME.

Dear Blair,

I'm waiting for my taxi to take me to the airport. You know how I hate to wait. Nearly as much as I hate wasting time. Or eating store-bought tomatoes.

I want you to make sure to eat dinner while I'm gone. And not take-out either. Make yourself something and imagine me there eating with you. In fact, call me, and we can talk between bites and mouthfuls.

The conference is only 4 days long, but I'm sure it will feel longer, you not being there with me and all.

Well there's the bell. My taxi is here.

XOXOXO

Jeremy

Blair my love,

I know that the news has not been good - but no matter. We've

been through some tough spots before and always been fine.

Remember that time in Lima where we hired a taxi to take us to San

Isidro to see the Huaca Huallamarca and neither of us had brought

any cash? That was an adventure! And we survived.

We have always found our strength in strange places my dear.

My being not well is just another place we'll be. And we will find

our strength together here. I promise.

You are my sweetness and love, and you are still as delicious to

Me as the first strawberries of spring. I love you.

Jeremy.

My love,

There must be no good-byes. Please promise me that. No good-byes. None. And no farewells either! We have never spoken like that to each other, and I don't want me being ill to change any of that.

I have had a good full life of love with you, and I will have that always with me, right up to the end.

Yours regardless,

J.

Dear Blair,

While you were away running errands and trying to catch up

on all the things I know you've let be sidelined of late, I was looking

through the books you'd brought me. (Thank you again for that by

the way!) In any case, here's a squibb of a poem that I love and that I

know you well-know. It Seems right that I give it to you now, and so

I do. And I trust that you'll know how best to use.

You have always been here for me without fail. And I love you

for that above all.

Your man me ~

Jeremy

B-

You look peaceful sleeping on the couch. The first time in

a while. I hope your dreams were sweet. Good night, my love.

Good night.

• Jeremy.

Each night he listened, hearing Jeremy's words, and wondering of Blair's replies. Perhaps his kisses had been his replies. He did not know. What he did know though, or was at least certain of, was that between them there had in the end been no good-byes, only just that last goodnight. It was only when Jeremy was truly gone, which is to say dead, that Blair finally said farewell. This room was his farewell.

On the wall opposite of where he sat, there was a slot cut into the wall. Father Tom had told him that Blair had asked that the slot be put there so that people could send letters to those who had died and were no longer there for them to listen. Father Tom said that hundreds of people had slipped their own letters into the wooden wall, like Blair had done with all of the letters that Jerry had written to him.

Just above the slot was the quotation from a poem. It read:

Who has twisted us like this, so that-

no matter what we do-we have the bearing

of a man going away? As on the last hill

that shows him all his valley for the last time,

he turns, stands still and lingers, so we live,

forever saying farewell.

~ Ranier Maria Rilke.

"It's not just for sending goodbye letters to the dead," Father Tom had two days ago told him. "It's for anything you may have left unsaid.

"There's too much to say," was his reply. "And too little time."

The box of stationary had shown up in his room yesterday with a note on top that read, "In case you change your mind."

He was not sure if he had. But he had brought the stationary box with him tonight, and it sat next to him on the couch. Opening it, he found a fountain pen inside, and icy-pale silver paper with matching envelopes. The paper felt stiff and thick, like construction paper, but smoother, like silk. He was not sure what he'd write if he did, or to whom. He considered writing Toni a thank-you note. But then that was not what the paper was really for. It was for things left unsaid. And he'd said thank you many times to her. Nodding as he thought through this, he yawned and set the paper to his side on the couch. He would not write tonight. Instead he would sit a while longer and then make his way back to his room to sleep. He knew there was not time tonight to say even half of what he needed to say to him, in writing or otherwise. And if tomorrow, when or if he awoke, the need to say it was still with him, he would begin to write it down, maybe sitting outside in the garden to do it. But for tonight, he would listen a little longer to the words of Jeremy Doulay, and let himself believe in the possibility of love.

AARON CHASEZ BASS

The ceiling in my room is covered with a koru blanket that James gave me when we got back from Australia. It was a welcome home gift; but also a souvenir of the time we had spent away. He bought it in New Zealand on one of two vacations we'd managed from both school and the movie set. I'm not sure when he'd found time to buy it without me knowing. As I remember it, we were always together. Or maybe that's just how I like to remember - to make myself feel better, and to not believe that I might not always had paid close enough attention.

James had paid attention though. He remembered me seeing it in the gift shop at the Akaroa museum. I had pointed it out to him, and said I really liked it. I must have been thinking that he would like it too. And maybe thinking of buying it for him, which I know could not be true because, if I had been, I would have bought it right then. That was the way I was him. But James played it sly, and didn't say anything except probably something like, "It's an interesting color."

The fabric is made of hand-woven wool and it's covered all over in a koru design. The koru is an ancient Maori symbol that represents the unfurling of a fern branch. I read online that the koru represents growth and rejuvenation. James helped me hang it on my ceiling. It was my idea to put it there. I wanted him to know how much I liked it, and putting it on the ceiling seemed like a good way to show that to him. He handed me the tacks I used to keep it from falling down.

My ceiling looked like the canopy of a tent when we were done.

The first weekend night after getting back, James and I slept under the koru for the first time. For some reason, neither one of us thought to set up the army cot, which is where James had started to sleep before going to Australia. I don't even know where that cot is anymore. Stuck in storage probably.

That night I remember that James fell asleep first. I remember because this hardly ever happened. He used to tease me, but not in a mean way, about how fast I fell asleep. That night though I remember that I waited for him to fall asleep, and then I listened for a long time to him breathe. It made me really happy, just lying there, hearing him breathe, and me looking up at the canopy of the koru blanket he bought for me.

It hurts to look at it now, and to remember us sleeping underneath. I want to take it down, but keep talking myself out of it. I tell myself it's just a blanket. But it's stays more than that to me. It stands for something. It stands for James and every kindness he ever showed me. And it stands for my inept unseeing heart.

I wish I could look at it and remember James fondly again, remember him without feeling pain. Again and again, I tell myself that I need to move on, like my dad Lance is always saying, this piece of advice having become his one-size-fits-all solution to every possible problem. My dad Josh does not say such things; he is blunt and honest, but not mean. Sometimes I wish I could be more like him. But it's like in getting half of each of them, I got not enough to become the whole of who I really need to be.

Not wanting to bother anymore with questions without answers, or the symbols hanging over my head, I stand on the bed start to pull the koru blanket down. The tacks pop from where they'd stuck in the ceiling and clatter to the hard wood floor, sounding like the sleet from the storm tonight.

The blanket falls as it comes undone and drapes over me. I can't see now except through its thin gauzy weave. It's mostly dark in the room, so it doesn't really matter.

I'm not feeling sure of my footing on the bed. I step down and feel the sharp and immediate stab of a tack plunging into my heel. Falling to the floor the rest of the blanket pulls from the ceiling, covering me. I'm hunched over and crying now. I feel young and small and weak, like a wounded little kid crying for his daddy.

I want to run to my dad and ask him to pull the tack from my heel, but I pull it out myself, and feel the blood from my wound on my fingers.

I don't remember ever feeling like an orphan. I don't remember ever feeling that I was unloved. I have always had parents. I share their names. Aaron. Chasez. Bass. One name given, and two names shared. They are a part of me, and I a part of them.

But there is another part of me missing now, the part that might have completed me had I seen it in time. Now I fear there is not enough time in the world to have it back.

I crawl back into bed, and press my hands against my stomach. My thumbs rub back and forth, feeling the hard ridges made by my ribs. I try to hold still, to stop crying; but all I do is tremble. Tears fill my eyes, ignoring my wish for no more tears.

Since I can't stop crying, all I can do is pull my blanket up to my chin, and stare straight up at my newly bare ceiling. But it's not newly bare. I see the ceiling filled with constellations of tiny glow-in-the-dark planets and stars, a universe of light, created in miniature, but no less real for being small. My dad painted it there for me a long time ago, like he knew I might need it again someday.

How did he know?

1 This is like a bad Balzac novel. 2 In the future, you will regret this decision. This, I promise you. 3 This is your voyage. Where it carries you [or, ends up], I am afraid to know. But if you need me, you must telephone to me. Do you promise?

Yes. I promise.

Good then. Because I must go.

Thank you Stephane.

It is nothing.

It is more than you know.

It is true.

I love you Stephane.

Yes, I know. I love you too [or, equally]. 4 The heart has its reasons which reason does not know. 5 Nothing can survive for long without warmth and nourishment. This is a fact. Especially in the middle of winter. 6 Like city's rain my heart. 7 Like city's rain, my heart

Rains teardrops too. What now,

This languorous ache, this smart

That pierces, wounds my heart?

Gentle, the sound of rain

Pattering roof and ground!

Ah, for the heart in pain,

Sweet is the sound of rain!

Tears rain-but who knows why?-

And fill my heartsick heart.

No faithless lover's lie? . . .

It mourns, and who knows why?

And nothing pains me so--

With neither love nor hate--

A simply not to know

Why my heart suffers so.