Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Saturday December 10, 2016

TK Strand opens his eyes on the morning of his twenty-third birthday when nausea stabs like a spike in his gut. He rolls to his left, heaving. Everything goes dark. No, not dark – not pure dark, at least – there are flashes, like a slow strobe light with a green tinge.

Sunday December 11, 2016

TK opens his eyes and crushes his body into a ball. His bones hurt – a shocking pain, like they’re rodded with sparking wire. His back and leg muscles are in spasm. There’s a sound coming out of him unlike anything he’s ever heard himself make. He recognizes the sound as something from a National Geographic documentary he saw once – a lion, but from a distance. A low and dull roar traveling through the dusk air.

There is no way for a person to survive this, surely?

He calls for his dad.

Somewhere in the room, Owen answers, “No, TK.” But no to what, TK couldn’t say.

TK’s tears roll into his ears. For a moment there’s a sense of lying in a lukewarm bath with his head underwater.

Owen is speaking. It’s something like: “Come on, let’s get you out of that shirt.”

TK hisses. Touch hurts him. He feels like he’s been exposed to radiation. Maybe he was? Is he red all over? It seems like everything is red – layers of the world sloughed away after a disaster to reveal weird gooey redness underneath. That’s what he sees for a moment.

He blinks until colors go real. Owen is holding a gray t-shirt. Gray. TK glances down at himself. His skin is pinky-gray, greasy with the slime of cold sweat. His sheets are soaked through.

Monday December 12, 2016

TK opens his eyes to a heavy ache in his lower guts like he’s about to shit the bed. Suddenly he’s teleported into his dad’s bathroom, sweating and hollering. His dad is outside, yelling annoying words through the door – like instructions on how to use the faucet, something stupid. TK thinks he’s going to die on the toilet like Elvis. This is the first coherent thought he’s had in days.

Tuesday December 13, 2016

TK opens his eyes. Something smells salty and earthy and green and meaty and good. “Mom?” he says. Gwyn is sitting on the edge of the bed, stirring a spoon into a mug of…soup, is it? He supposes so. She’s humming a tune he recognizes from long ago. A lullaby? He has so many questions. “What’s going on?”

“You have to eat, honey.”

It smells amazing, the soup-or-something. But his stomach cramps with a sharp vice-grip. He doesn’t think he can take it.

“You’re doing so well, my sweet boy,” she tells him, “I’m so proud of you, TK.”

TK focuses on the soup mug in her hand. It’s a vintage Campbell’s, which has been in his dad’s cupboard since he can remember. The design is a creepy illustration of a boy in blue and a girl in pink, enthusiastically eating an orange soup. He’s always loved it. He tries to take it from her. She hands it over with an exhausted grin. But something happens between their hands. His fingers are damp, and maybe he’s shaking. The soup-or-something slops steaming hot over his sweaty pajama t-shirt. The mug flips – airborne. They both try to catch it. The handle knocks against TK’s bedside table, snapping off with a clean break. The bowl of the mug cracks on the floorboards. Soup spreads everywhere, as if that small mug had contained a whole vat’s worth.

“Mom. I’m so sorry.”

“Oh, baby, that’s okay – I think we’re both a little butter-fingered this afternoon.”

They both start to cry.

Wednesday December 14, 2016

TK opens his eyes when he feels a soft pressure on his forehead. His dad’s hand is stroking through his oily hair. Owen still wears his uniform from an earlier shift. He smells like smoke. Rubbery smoke. He’s been dealing with an industrial fire.

“Hey. There you are,” Owen says, “How are you feeling, son?”

TK tries to sit up but it hurts, so he lies flat and flicks his eyes between Owen and the ceiling. The ceiling has a crack in it. “Is it snowing?” he asks.

“Raining. That’s rain you can hear.” Owen reaches across the bed so he can pull back a curtain.

TK’s eyes naturally squint in horror at the daylight. When they adjust – and stop hurting – sure enough, he can see round drops of silver-blue rain on the window. He misses the world out there, rain and all. He’d give anything to be outside right now, in the downpour. He wants to hear all about Owen’s day; how is everyone at the 252? Do they miss him, or are they glad he’s not around? He’s been a bad member of the crew, lately. Do they all know he’s holed up, going cold turkey? Do they know about the heroin Owen caught him stashing under his bunk? TK panicked and immediately fled upon confrontation. It took Owen eight hours to track him down.

“No,” Owen tells him, “Nobody can know about that ever, you understand? Not even your mom knows I found it in your workplace. It’s between you and me.”

TK sniffs back his tears. Owen leans over, kisses his forehead.

Thursday December 15, 2016

TK’s eyes have been open for five hours. He’s sitting up on the foot of his old bed in his dad’s apartment, staring out of the window at the street, people-watching. Mrs. Ellis opposite is stringing up a rainbow of Christmas lights. Half an hour ago, he watched her hook a wreath of spruce leaves and red bows to her door. In his hands, which shake only slightly, he holds a steaming melamine mug of coffee. Today, both his parents are here – their voices carry from the living room. They were laughing a moment ago, but now they’re whispering about something. Which means they’re talking about him. Fair enough.

He slips his feet into fawn moccasin slippers, pulls on his blue flannel dressing gown and shuffles into the living room, drinking his coffee.

“Thank you for not sending me to rehab,” TK says.

Gwyn stands up from the couch. She looks halfway loving, halfway pissed, and much scruffier than normal. Her hair is messy, falling out of a bun. Lilac shirt tails stick out from her dark purple sweater. “TK. I’m being serious when I say this.” Her voice is fried and brittle. “I believe in you. But if this happens again – rehab is exactly where you’re headed. Withdrawal, here, is a one-time only deal.”

TK tugs the cord of his dressing gown tighter, really feeling the pinch. Glancing to his right, he can see the front door – all locks bolted. It locks with a key, too, which is kept in a box that looks like an old blue book. The decoy book isn’t in its usual slot on Owen’s shelf. The key is probably somewhere about his dad’s person. TK is, effectively, in the best prison in America.

He looks at Gwyn and Owen. They are both as emotionally exhausted as he feels physically. They can’t do this again. He thinks he can’t, either. Really believes. Those cramps – he thought he wouldn’t survive the pain. He was screaming out. The high of heroin isn’t worth that level of anguish. He tells himself – promises himself. There’s no going back on this.

“It won’t happen again,” TK says, I swear.” He puts his hand over his heart, like he’s about to sing the National Anthem with sincerity. “From now on, I’m clean. I’ll go to N.A. every day.”

Owen gets up from the couch with a tearful sigh, shaking his head and hesitating slightly before he reaches out and eases TK into his arms. “Come here, we need this,” he says to Gwyn, “Group hug.”

Gwyn joins them, but TK catches the reluctance on her face that Owen seems to miss. Reluctance, or something else. A haunted expression, but as if she’s looked into the future, not the past. As if she already knows what happens next.

Wednesday November 8, 2023

TK sits on the upholstered bench at the foot of their bed, tipping the almost-empty liter bottle of Absolut back and forth in his left hand, every so often clinking his wedding ring against the thick glass. Memories, now, of playing with the Galileo thermometer displayed on his mom’s desk at work. He wasn’t supposed to touch it, but could never resist. He loved watching the orange and blue glass spheres slide around in the cylinder.

The door to the loft rolls open at 9 p.m., when Carlos said he’d be home. Always so good with timekeeping, that man.

Carlos calls for TK. TK doesn’t answer because he can’t. He sits where he is, feeling like he’s been punched in the gut, and listens to his husband search.

“I need you to get home,” he’d said in his first text, “We need to talk.”

“Everything okay?” Carlos had replied, his throat closing up as he typed with a happy expression because he’d just told co-workers, “My husband has texted.”

“No. When will you be here?” “K, babe, I’ll hurry, it’ll be 9 I think. I love you.”

TK didn’t reply. Carlos kind of wanted to throw up, but he didn’t know why. Whatever the reason, TK was pissed. He dropped cash onto the bar and left half his Craft beer, making vague excuses to the officers he’d joined for a drink.

TK listens to Carlos hang up his raincoat near the door. The rain has stopped. At least, TK can’t hear it falling anymore – it’s been stormy much of the day. TK avoided a downpour himself when he clattered home from his shift to find their Amazon delivery soggy and dented in the communal hallway. No matter – the box only contained replacement fuzzy pad-things for that weird mop Carlos got. The coziness of being home on a rainy autumn evening put him in a domestic mood. He eyeballed the chores roster he and Carlos had developed but he typically ignores, preferring to go hard with a deep-clean sometimes, rather than spot-clean daily.

He listens to Carlos rustle around, move slowly along the floor. Closer now. His tread quickens. He arrives at the half-shut bedroom door, handsome and put-together in black chinos and a deep red flannel shirt, his hair still neatly gelled after a long working day.

“There you are. What’s going on–?” Carlos sees the vodka. A five-second terror rushes through him when he thinks it’s TK’s. He can’t recognize the bottle as his own – until he does.

“Hi, Carlos,” TK starts, his eyes watering as he revisits the script in his head. “Hope you had a good shift. Sorry to rush you home. I just wondered why I’ve found an almost-empty bottle of vodka under your side of the bed?” This is something he learned from his mom. How she stayed steely. How she let him know she wasn’t letting it go. Let him know she didn’t like it. Let him know he was loved. “I’m really worried about this, baby. I was starting to worry anyway, and now–”

“Why were you going under the bed?” Carlos asks, face neutral, heart-pounding in his ears.

TK smirks and nods. A rogue tear drips from the end of his nose. He knew his husband would answer the question by asking a question.

“Dust bunnies.” TK points with the bottle towards the corner of the room.

Carlos turns to see the alien-looking mop with its dirty green oval head leaning against the closet. “Babe, I think there’s a misunderstanding.”

“You’re hiding that you’re drinking.”

Carlos’ mouth falls open in wounded disbelief. “It’s not like that – not at all.”

“For how long?”

“I’m not, TK.”

“But you are. I know you are.”

“Baby.” Carlos whispers.

TK thinks back on it all. When they were newly having sex and going clubbing, they’d had a late-night conversation about drink and drugs and TK’s triggers. What could Carlos do to make himself easier to be around, as someone who is starting to collect good wine and enjoys the occasional margarita or dark ‘n’ stormy? The answer was actually for Carlos to talk about it; let TK know when he wanted a drink; reassure TK that he wouldn’t be surprised by anything he saw or found. Sometimes, when people suddenly and playfully dangled a substance in front of TK, he’d end up hypnotized because he hadn’t built up his defenses or taken himself in hand. It was so difficult – too difficult – to say no. TK never developed a palate for wine, so that was mostly okay to encounter. Beer was boring, took a while to kick in. Cocktails though, and hard liquor – they were sinister, more complex. Last time he drank hard liquor was to chase a fist of pills. Last time he drank hard liquor, he nearly died.

Carlos had tenderly kissed TK’s hands, told him how strong he was.

TK hadn’t really wanted to hear it. He wanted to get up and put his clothes on. But he stayed, and told Carlos about the lions, like Dr. Barnes had advised long ago. “If people don’t get it, make them see your lions.”

Carlos eagerly listened, although with some confusion at first, when TK explained, “If you’re thrown in with the lions, and somehow you win against them, you still come out wounded and weak – because you’re just a person and you fought lions, right?”

Carlos stroked a hand through TK’s hair. “That’s what you’re recovering from.”

TK nodded, closed his sleepy eyes. “Sharp teeth.”

“I think I understand,” Carlos said, sitting up in bed and taking a minute simply to think. “You’re…around lions every day.”

“Got to be ready to fight them off. It’s easier if you know they’re behind you.”

That was then.

He looks at Carlos now – his husband now. He looks past Carlos’ shoulder at all the hard and scary things that have followed him for months. Lions of his very own.

“When we first got together, you said you’d tell me when you drank. You said you’d be careful with alcohol around me. But lately you’ve been drunk a lot more. And you’re hiding booze from me–” TK inhales quickly, “–under the bed.” He doesn’t phrase it like a question this time.

Carlos rubs his hand over his chin, agitated, his coolness heating up at the confrontation. Drunk a lot more is annoyingly accurate, compared to the beginning of the year, but it’s still not that much. “No, look. It’s…I enjoy wine and whiskey and things – which you know. But I don’t like to drink hard liquor in front of you. Not if I can help it, anyway. You know that too.”

“You’ve drunk hard liquor in front of me plenty.”

“But I–”

“Just cut the crap, Carlos. How often are you drinking when I’m not around? How often are you drinking vodka? Which, last I knew, you didn’t even like.”

“It’s grown on me. I don’t mind it. TK, this is nothing–”

“Is it because vodka’s clear so it can be disguised as water?”

Carlos tries to process this – it’s a simple suggestion, but so unexpected that it baffles him. That TK would think he’d put it in a Hydro Flask and swig it in the park.

“Is it because hangovers aren’t so bad compared to, like, gold tequila or bourbon?” TK goes on. “Is it because–”

“Stop.” Carlos cuts, quiet but firm as he sinks to his knees in front of TK and rests his hands on his thighs. TK is soft in his black sweatpants and forest green sweater, and trembling. “TK. Baby. Please listen to me.”

“God…tell me you don’t you drink this when I’m sleeping in bed next to you?” TK snaps his eyes up, looking at Carlos hard for all of three seconds. He can never maintain a stare as well as Carlos can. He thought he could write the book on out-staring, or out-glaring, more specifically, before he met Carlos. But he’s got nothing on him.

“Oh, babe – it’s nowhere near that serious,” Carlos implores him, eyes wide and sincere. “I have never done that.” As if to demonstrate the truth in some abstract way, Carlos grabs the bottle from TK and slings it onto the bed, where it lands on the ultra-soft comforter with a muffled thump. He takes both of TK’s hands in his. “If I’m drinking more right now, it’s because my father was fucking murdered and nobody knows who did it. And nobody really cares. Anyone who isn’t sober already would drink more. TK, please look at me.”

TK does. It’s hard, but he does. Eyes shimmering, brimming over. “I used to hide things under the bed,” he says, whipping his hands out of Carlos’ so he can collapse his face behind them and ugly-sob with at least a little dignity.

TK’s confusion and dread and suspicion passes into Carlos the way he feels sound-vibrations in a nightclub travel up from the floor through his feet. Carlos’ body hums with it. Guilt like never before. He crowds TK, tipping him against his shoulder.

“Baby,” Carlos says, “It’s been under the bed for a while. I sank some right after Dad died…I drank some of it with Paul and Asha that time…And if you really want to know, I got plastered by myself when that good lead fell through, remember? I’m sorry. I’m sorry I scared you, but you don’t have to worry.” He tries to remember his rationale. Why did he place the vodka under the bed, instead of back in the bottom drawer of the freezer where it had been ignored by TK for a long time anyway? Inconveniently, he was very drunk and crying a waterfall himself at the time, so the answer evades him.

TK pulls away from Carlos, his tear-streaked face shining pink. “I don’t like any of this. Any of what you’re saying. You got plastered by yourself?”

“You were working nights. I was being stupid.”

TK sniffs and traces his forefinger down Carlos’ chest, hooking it into a gap between the marbled buttons of his shirt. He loves this shirt. He bought him this shirt. It’s a thick brushed cotton, slightly fuzzy to the touch. “You wouldn’t come with me to grief counseling. But I need you to come with me to N.A.”

“I don’t think I–”

“Please.”

“TK.” Carlos picks TK’s hand away from his shirt and kisses it, though TK quickly withdraws. Carlos gazes at him, hurt. “I don’t need to go to N.A. or A.A. or anything like that – and I don’t need grief counseling, I told you. It’s not for everybody. It’s not for me. You said you understood. You didn’t want to go after you lost your mom.”

“Yeah, but now I’ve found a bottle of vodka under the bed.”

“Which I accidentally kicked under there, or something, I don’t know – like a month ago – when I was just getting sad-drunk on my own.”

“Do you hear yourself?”

“I’m not an alcoholic.”

“I’m not saying you are.”

Carlos blinks, bewildered. “You’re not?”

“I’m scared you’re developing a dependency, and I know where it can lead. That’s what I’m saying.”

Carlos stops, does a snappy calculation in his head, and confidently holds TK by his arms. “Other than half a beer with people from work this evening, the last time I drank was at Mom’s on Sunday. That red wine. I couldn’t even finish it.” He genuinely had no craving for alcohol that day. The flan Mexicano, on the other hand…

A slow tear slopes down TK’s cheek. Carlos wipes it away, crushes it between his thumb and forefinger. Six months into their marriage – this is the first time he’s made his husband cry tears of pain instead of laughter.

He feels himself start to go. A lump in this throat. His chin wobbles. He has to stand up.

“Fuck it. Okay. I’ll do it.” He snatches the bottle from the bedcovers, where it’s left a perfect and deep imprint of its shape, and unscrews the cap, walking away.

“Where are you going?” TK asks, jumping up to follow.

Carlos leads him into the bathroom. He makes a big show of pouring the small remainder of vodka into the sink.

“If me coming to the Y will make things better, then I’ll come to the Y,” Carlos says, running the faucet at full capacity and then dramatically turning the water off.

“You will?”

“When I stand up and say I’m Carlos and I’m not an alcoholic, everyone’s going to be pretty confused. But I’ll do it for you, if it’s what you need.”

TK bites his lip. There’s a lot to unpack in how Carlos is wording absolutely everything, but TK’s brain is too tangled itself to do any disentangling, and Carlos has a tearful-yet-satisfied look on his face that’s both annoying and adorable. He’s just agreed to do the thing he initially refused, though, which feels like a significant achievement. “Thank you,” TK whispers.

Carlos kisses his cheek, tastes his tears. “I’m going to make us some tea, baby. We both need to relax.”

“Fine.”

Carlos starts heading out of the bathroom with the empty bottle for the recycling tub, turning behind him once to ask, “Did you want me to sleep on the couch tonight?”

“No? Why would I want that?” TK nearly laughs.

“Because last time I was in trouble, you made me sleep on the couch.”

TK gasps, grabbing at the back of Carlos’ shirt, pulling it scruffily from the belted waistband of his jeans. “You got out of bed in a mood because neither of us could agree on who the big spoon should be for the thousandth time.”

Carlos turns swiftly, wrapping TK in a sideways hug. He nuzzles at him, dragging him alongside to the kitchen. “Well, the big spoon to end all big spoons is going to be me tonight.”

“I’m not arguing with that.”

It’s okay, then. Not perfect, like some of their nights are as close to perfection as either of them think is possible on Earth. But okay. They drink their favored lavender-chamomile blend and talk about a variety of things on the couch, including TK’s earliest experiences of group meetings, while Carlos snacks on a family-sized bag of peanuts and TK struggles through an overly-gummy Swedish Fish getting stuck on the roof of his mouth. Neither of them has an appetite for anything more, both afflicted by experiencing strong emotions in their stomachs instead of their heads, sometimes, and Carlos worst of all. He tells TK that he once vomited into a box of wigs because auditioning for the school play (in effort to explore his arty side – which had seemed like such a good idea to begin with) was way too much pressure. Joining the wrestling team, swim team and the track team had been easier, weirdly, even though sports performance was higher-stakes in everyone’s eyes compared to some bizarre adaptation of The Seagull.

“Dad didn’t want me to be a theater kid anyway,” he says.

Saturday June 17, 2023

“See you there,” the reply came, five hours and forty-two minutes after Carlos used his father’s burner phone to make initial contact by texting, “Joe’s Ale House, 15:00, Saturday. C.”

But now it is 3 p.m. on Saturday, and Carlos feels about as nervous as he did the afternoon he attended his father’s funeral. That was over a month ago, yet the emotions around it linger like a series of burns. He keeps waiting for the morning he wakes up and doesn’t think it’s Dad’s funeral today, as if he’s stuck in a time loop.

Softly instructed by TK, Carlos takes a seat over in the darkest corner of the bar, close to a fire exit. Usually, Carlos would have an ale in such a place, but he’s nauseated, so TK orders two Cokes.

Carlos sits at the round wood table, which is the same dark wood as the walls, floor and ceiling. The place is styled to look like somewhere in the Bavarian alps, but it makes Carlos feel like he’s in a coffin that also contains a billiard table and two slovenly drunks at the bar arguing over the superiority of pistachios versus salted peanuts.

TK joins Carlos with a preempted bottled beer for their guest and a Coke each, ice clinking loudly in the glasses.

“I asked for a slice of lemon,” he says quietly, handing Carlos’ Coke over. “The barman said this isn’t a gay bar, you know. So, I think we need to be careful.”

Contrary to what he just said, TK sits next to Carlos instead of opposite him, and holds his hand under the table.

“He’s late,” Carlos says, checking his watch for the eighth time since they entered, then glares at the door like the door itself has any control over who enters or exits.

“You think everyone’s late when they haven’t arrived after two minutes.”

“Well, technically I’m not wrong about that, am I?” Carlos grumbles.

“All right, Poindexter.”

“We are not about to have our first fight as husbands here and now, TK.”

“Babe, we had a fight on our wedding night.”

“No we didn’t.”

“Yes we did.”

“We disagreed over who should be the big spoon, yet again.”

“You got quite upset about it, baby.”

“I was tired.”

“I know. Which is why I should have been the big spoon,” TK says firmly.

Carlos pulls a face and takes a deep breath like he’s about to launch into a tirade about his rightful big spoonness, but the door swings open on its creaking hinge.

Gutiérrez strides on through with practiced pimp swagger, removing his sunglasses. He says an emotionless “Hey, Jack,” to the barman, who ignores him in favor of joining the debate about nuts.

Gutiérrez slips silently into the chair opposite TK and Carlos, sitting centrally so he can keep eyes on them both. He’s definitely agitated that he’s not facing the main door, Carlos thinks. Also interesting is how loudly he entered compared to how fluidly he sat down. He can move through the world enormously or invisibly as needed. Carlos contemplates this too – finds himself wondering if he possesses that skill, or if his father ever did. He thinks not.

“Thank you for coming,” Carlos begins unsteadily, “This is my husband, TK. TK, this is–”

“Pablo,” Gutiérrez says instantly, not leaving anything to chance. For all Carlos and TK know, Pablo is the guy’s actual first name anyway.

Gutiérrez smiles like he’s charmed by them. With a warm, husky voice he says, “Literally needed your hand held, huh?”

TK and Carlos look down. Shielded by the table, Carlos has his hand on TK’s thigh. TK squeezes Carlos’ fingers. With his free hand, Carlos slides the pale ale across the table. Gabriel always enjoyed a pale ale. Carlos figures he and Gutiérrez would have drunk them together sometimes.

Gutiérrez nods his appreciation, taking a sip without removing his eyes from Carlos. He looks like he did when Carlos met him the first time – scruffy black hair, unshaven face, a short-sleeved black shirt over a white tank, chunky gold chain around his neck. Carlos wonders if he himself is virtually unrecognizable, and that’s why Gutiérrez is studying him so carefully. Today, Carlos wears a freshly ironed sand-colored shirt and his smartest dark jeans. He’s clean-shaven, hair tamed and styled. Everyone keeps telling him he has a post-wedding glow, although a month has passed. He no longer wears his own gold cross, which is small and simple on a fine gold chain. It had belonged, originally, to his paternal abuela. Gabriel gave it to him right after the arson attack that destroyed his townhouse.

TK squeezes Carlos’ hand a little tighter, enough to make Carlos jolt under the table and then play it off with a smile. TK gestures with widening eyes for Carlos to start talking already. Carlos squints back to tell him ‘I’m doing it!’ Gutiérrez observes them with interest.

“Pablo. Uh.” Carlos starts, then has to stop to clear his throat. He takes a sip of Coke. “I really am grateful that you’ve come here today, so I can apologize in person. I am very sorry for wrongly accusing you of my father’s murder. Assuming I definitely was wrong. I kind of don’t trust anybody–”

TK treads on his foot under the table.

“Okay,” Carlos whispers, returning his attention to Gutiérrez, who is even more interested by their little interplay. “And for pointing a gun at your head. It was very…I just want you to know that I didn’t take any pleasure in it.”

“Well, that’s something,” Gutiérrez says, “Wouldn’t recommend you develop a taste for cold blooded murder.”

“I am so sorry,” Carlos says again. When he sips his Coke this time, he feels like a little boy, and he misses his father so profoundly he could easily start crying. For whatever divine reason, he keeps it all inside.

“Listen to me,” Gutiérrez says, seeing into Carlos’ core anyway. Gutiérrez has got to know Carlos pretty well over the past twenty years through Gabriel’s stories, with Carlos totally oblivious. “Me and your dad, we were tight for a long time. Even though he was a huge pain in my ass, I miss the guy. It’s cool you reached out, because I wanted the opportunity to tell you that.”

“Thank you.”

TK, then, takes his hand away from Carlos’ and rests both on the table, in a move that shows the naturally suspicious man that he has nothing to hide. “Pablo, do you have any idea at all about who could have done this to Gabriel? Like, an individual with beef? Or a hitman,” he whispers the last word.

“Beef?” Gutiérrez repeats, cocking an eyebrow. “Only the entire criminal element of Austin, and Dallas, and a vast portion of Houston. And don’t even get me started on a particular bowling alley up in Oklahoma.

“Bowling alley?” TK whispers with intrigue.

By his side, Carlos laughs. “I actually know about that. Racketeering that crossed state lines. Dad said it was like Breaking Bad meets The Muppet Show.”

Gutiérrez smirks fondly, picks at the label on his beer bottle. “The FBI brought it down, but some idiot rookie accepted a bribe and gave names of officers and rangers directly involved with the case. A hit was put on your dad, but let’s just say he was the top gunslinger in the situation.”

“I didn’t know that part,” Carlos says, a shiver climbing his spine like a spindly insect.

Gutiérrez shakes his head. “Not the kind of thing you’d want for a bedtime story. But it all went quiet after that anyway. So, yeah, it could be someone from All Starz Bowl back with a vengeance, or it could be anyone else, like we already told you. If it’s a hitman, you’re not only looking for one guy. Which means you shouldn’t be looking at all. Because before you know it, you are going to be up shit creek without a fucking paddle, and nobody’s going to come get you – to be brutally honest – because you’re not worth it. If anything happens to you because of this, they’ll mop it up and tie it off with a big blue bow. They’ll say an officer was killed during a car chase, and draw minimal attention, because attention for you will bring it onto everyone else involved. You’ve got to realize what’s at stake here, kid. It’s bigger than any of us.” Gutiérrez’s voice collapses as he finishes, “Bigger than Gabriel, and he was the best of the best.” He sniffs. “Fuck.”

Carlos and TK glance at each other. Gutiérrez shrugs, sips his beer, blinks against his tears.

“All we ask is that you keep an ear to the ground,” Carlos says gently, “Will you do that? Will you help me help my father – the only way I can help him now?”

TK watches Carlos give Gutiérrez the cow-eyes across the table. Gutiérrez, hardened undercover D.E.A. Special Agent on the frontline though he may be, clearly melts.

“I already am,” Gutiérrez tells him, “Mijo, I can’t promise anything.” He takes a deep breath and another long swig of beer, finally looking away and zeroing in on the billiard table. “How about I kick both your asses at eight-ball?”

A friendly challenge like this makes TK grin – eager to show Gutiérrez his skills. TK tells him he can break, which he does, and immediately pots the solid blue. Carlos doesn’t feel sick anymore, so much as strange and tired and sad. He leaves TK and Gutiérrez to their game for a moment, returning to the bar for a double whiskey to be added to his Coke.

Chapter Text

Thursday November 9, 2023

TK wakes at 7 a.m after a falling dream. There’s no shock to it. In the dream, he lands at the bottom of a sheer mountain. Alone in the cold, he squints up at a gray, rainy sky. Hard drops of ice-rain smack painfully against his face and bare chest. He can't move, can't breathe. Nobody knows he’s there.

His eyes open to his real life slowly. Carlos is next to him, lit violet in the dawn light, warm in the sheets. Outside, torrential autumn rain. The sadness and the weirdness of the dream will linger all day, the way TK’s dreams such as these always do. But a more sensational reality is this: To roll closer to his husband and pour over him, pinning him frontside to the mattress.

Carlos wakes only seconds after TK. He keeps his tired, grainy eyes shut and imagines the day ahead. Gym soon. Noodles for lunch. What to wear later. How it’s going to feel to accompany TK to an N.A. meeting for the first time this evening, all because he was dumb enough to leave a bottle of vodka under the bed and trigger TK’s latent anxieties to hit the roof.

But for now, TK has laid his entire body on top of him, pressing him down with a bear hug that’s taking his breath.

Mouth smushed into his pillow, voice distorted, Carlos asks, “Babe, is this revenge?"

TK smiles into Carlos’ hair, kisses his ear. Around 1 a.m., TK stirred and tried to become the big spoon. Carlos responded with a grumpy-sounding, “Urgh, sweetheart!” and accidentally clunked TK’s Adam’s apple with his elbow when he turned. TK spent a whole minute making a noise like he was drowning in a whirlpool. Carlos kissed his neck with devastation.

“Yeah, revenge hug,” TK sighs, sinking further against him. It’s sore when he swallows. “And I just feel weird. And cold.”

Carlos rises, strong about it so he can push TK onto his back. He rests on top of him instead, front-to-front, eye-to-eye. TK doesn't protest. Wants it like this.

"Don’t think I’m saying this just because I don’t really want to go," Carlos says, stroking TK's messy hair, “But we can back out of this. I made a mistake. I’m an idiot. But I don’t have a dependency and–”

“Carlos.” TK huffs against him. “We are going. You promised. It’s something we should have done before we were married, anyway. I know – I know there were plenty of opportunities, and I was the one kicking the can down the road. It’s different now. It’s both of us.”

“Babe–”

“What I mean is, you’ll hear me talking, too. You’ll hear my shit.”

"It won't make any difference to me. I'm not going to file for divorce because I hear you talking about your recovery in a meeting.” Carlos pauses to kiss his head. He’s so kissable this morning. Edible. But so sad, too. “I'll say it a thousand times if I need to. You're my hot mess. You're the best hot mess that's ever happened to me. I want all of your pieces, because that way you’re whole, and–”

“Yeah, yeah. Okay –” TK leans up to kiss him, smiling into it. But his tongue and his bite make the kiss serious quickly, like it was always going to be. TK slides his teeth along Carlos' bottom lip, gently powerful.

TK Strand is eighteen months sober after a setback that he didn't cause, but has had to live with every day. When Sadie spiked his stew with 70mg of OxyContin, there were certainly intended consequences – but an enforced relapse wasn't one of them. It was a cruel bonus he figures Sadie wouldn’t have been aware of. Nobody, TK thinks, really knows anything about anybody. Which is why he wants Carlos to speak up, too. But he appears to be deflecting.

Carlos pops away from the kiss to tell him, “Say whatever you need to in the meeting.”

“I will,” TK whispers.

“I don't want you to hold back just because I'm there. I want you to be your true self."

"And that goes for you too, baby.”

“Mmm hmm.” Carlos hums, keeps running his fingers through TK’s hair, all the way down to the back of his neck to make him tingle.

“You're pretty good at this. Little pep talks, I mean. And massaging my head. God."

"I'm just so proud of my husband, you know?"

TK releases his hands from beneath Carlos so he can pull his face down for another kiss, squishing his cheeks as he goes. They make out lazily for five seconds until Carlos instigates a heavy length of tongue again. A massive, wet, disgusting, aching kiss that sparks TK's nerves and enhances Carlos' morning wood with an insatiable pressure. TK rubs the flat of his palm against it by way of inspection. Carlos can’t think straight and starts humping TK’s hand.

"Baby–" TK cracks up, "Would you like to actually fuck me?"

"TK. Babe. I'm so hard for you."

"Remember when people started scaring us, saying married sex is, like, a non-event?"

"Yeah. It's such bullshit,” Carlos says quickly, “Don't know what they're talking about. Spread your legs."

"Ours is more like – an Olympic relay. We keep bringing gold home for the USA. We’re legends. We should get advertising deals."

Carlos looks down at himself, every bit as turned on as he was when they first started sleeping together. "TK. Whenever I don't think I could love you more, you prove me wrong."

If there is such a thing as a fall latte, TK thinks, and fall festivals and fall games and fall fashion and fall harvests and fall carnivals, then there is such a thing as a fall fuck. A fuck that feels equivalent to golden light and the nights drawing in, seeking warmth, being well-fed, being home, staying in bed, listening to rain.

TK does what he’s told. His pajama pants come off. He spreads his legs, spreads himself wide, pink-cheeked and glaze-eyed, teasing his hole. Carlos fumbles for the lube, losing his cool, leaking at the sight of him. Leaking because he knows how it’s about to feel – the hot resistance around his erection, TK grabbing his ass and bucking to the force of his thrusts. TK will coat his middle finger with lube and push it inside Carlos when Carlos instructs him to. He already knows how he wants to come. He wants to see TK with his mouth open wide. Then he wants to look down so he can see TK spill. He’ll feel TK squirm and jerk and cry out and bite his arm. He’ll come at the bite. He’ll come at the sight of TK, wrecked and drizzled in his own orgasm. Nothing makes him lose it like that – TK messy beneath him, barely able to say, “I love you; I love you,” but he always tries anyway, tripping over the words in desperation.

When Carlos slides inside him all the way, TK closes his eyes, opens his mouth, worships every thrust that knocks him into the headboard, every moan from Carlos’ red, wet mouth, every word of praise.

Carlos tells him he wants a finger. TK slicks up, slips past his rim, travels deep. Carlos kisses him and moans, “Husband,” into his mouth.

It gets TK – right in the chest, a sharp pain, a chopping ax. He never feels safer than when he’s making love with Carlos, but the idea that they’ve made love like this with that bottle of vodka secretly under the bed makes him want to cry again, so he does. Carlos kisses his tears and says sorry, like he knows he must.

The green plastic chairs – which TK thinks are the exact color of green glass beer bottles, but has never mentioned it to anyone but Carlos – are set out in a perfect circle. Carlos finds the circle highly satisfying. He is immediately at ease in the room. Brick walls painted warm-white, floor a parquet-style laminate. Simple and clean. Next to a trestle table set out with Pyrex mugs, a coffee urn and a Lipton tea variety pack, there is a large, wall-mounted display of primary-colored splodgy art, courtesy of the toddler creche on the ground floor. Cooper is sipping a coffee, staring at the paintings like he's at MOMA. He turns around with a kind smile when he hears their footsteps behind him. "You're the first to arrive. That's never happened before."

TK laughs. It’s funny because it’s true. "I thought I'd see what it's like to be early for something. It's quiet."

In fact, Carlos got jittery, which made TK jittery, so they headed out the door fifteen minutes before they needed to.

“Hey, you!” A young woman with a delighted, crooked smile skips into the room with her arms out, doing a little shimmy as she approaches TK.

“Hey – look at us early birds!” TK laughs, giving her a shimmy of celebration back.

Carlos watches TK’s face light up as they fist-bump. He figures this must be Pippa – the twenty-three-year-old who lived in eighteen foster homes growing up and has a thousand times more love to give than she’s ever received. TK speaks to her exuberantly – it’s been a few weeks since he attended a meeting. She holds onto his arm as if to earth herself while they have a quick catch-up. TK hasn’t felt ready to become a sponsor yet. He’d contemplated it last year, but Gwyn’s death and the spiking incident knocked the concept and his confidence into oblivion. Watching TK with Pippa, though – Carlos thinks his husband is in his element. It’s actually beautiful to see.

A loss of faith in oneself as a side effect of grief is certainly something Carlos experienced too. Maybe TK’s confidence is returning from oblivion, smoldering but alive. It’s nice to know that it can.

Carlos leaves TK and Pippa be, focuses on pouring himself a coffee from the urn. He smiles softly at the Pyrex mug in his hand. Six months ago, the Y upgraded to these mugs from single-use Styrofoam. TK came home excited about it. Carlos had just returned from a grinding shift full of blood and guts, and couldn’t really hold a conversation about a mug, so he slumped on the couch and listened to TK chatter on about it.

“Take me with you to a meeting sometime,” Carlos said quietly – too tired and traumatized to level his voice normally.

“Just so you can use one of the new mugs?” TK teased.

Carlos smiled. “Yeah. That’s the only reason.”

Now he’s here, actually doing it – due to a misunderstanding, really, but it feels nice. He looks at TK, so beautiful in his gray wool sweater, a bright pink t-shirt poking out from under the round collar, his 252 Firehouse medallion proudly displayed on his chest, a reminder of where he came from that is a source of pride rather than pain. TK chose his outfit quickly and easily. Carlos tried on eight different button up shirts, eventually rejecting them all. With TK’s prompt, he settled on his failsafe burgundy cashmere-wool mix sweater – something that fits him perfectly, suits his warm skin tone, but looks like he hasn’t tried. He doesn’t know why he cares so much about how he’s seen this evening, but it matters to him grossly. He wonders if he should have opted for smarter black jeans instead of indigo. TK is in black jeans that make his butt look unreal.

Carlos sips his coffee, staring at his husband’s ass. Unlike his husband’s ass, the coffee is tasteless and grainy, but like his husband’s ass, it’s warm and soothing too. When TK moves, Carlos’ daydream splinters and fades. He looks at Cooper instead, who is still staring at the paintings, awestruck, as though in a gallery full of masters. Cooper seems to sense Carlos watching, which distracts him enough to look back at him with his usual fratboy-with-a-heart-and-wearing-a-leather-jacket friendliness that Carlos admittedly envies. Sometimes Carlos worries he’s too stoic and guarded, which might come off cold. Why would the ray of sunlight that is his husband be attracted to that?

“This is my favorite kind of art,” Cooper says, “Unpretentious. Gets right to the point.”

Carlos laughs, charmed by this man he’s had a challenging history with, which Cooper himself is oblivious to. He’s an innocent, yet a catalyst.

Alongside Cooper, Carlos ruminates the abstract sponge and finger paintings before him. “Which one is your favorite?” Carlos asks, pushing up the sleeves of his sweater and flexing his toned forearms a little. He’s self-aware enough to realize this a stupid and needless power move, and yet he can’t stop himself.

“Oh, man – how can I choose? I love them all.” Cooper puts on a mock-snooty face. “This is the most established art movement in the world, did you know?”

“The YMCA of Austin Toddler Creche? Yes, that’s well known.”

Cooper throws his head back and booms out a laugh that has TK and Pippa turning around.

“No – the art of little kids,” Cooper clarifies. “It’s enduring, and tells us so much. From an anthropological standpoint, it’s fascinating.”

Carlos tries to de-slack his jaw so he doesn’t look as bewildered as he is. “Right.”

“Sorry. Art history major.”

“Really?” Carlos smiles with surprise. “I didn’t know that.”

“Well, I dropped out of college first off because of my addiction. When I got sober, I didn’t want to go back to my pre-law shit.” Cooper laughs, there’s a locker room mischief to it. “My buddy told me art history was what all the chicks took. He was right.”

“Cool.”

“But I was blown away, genuinely. Every lecture.” He gazes at the toddler art again. “One of the best things I ever did, man.”

“TK told me you have a baby daughter,” Carlos says, not prepared to talk about anthropology and art degrees with Cooper right now, but fairly intrigued to do so, someday.

“Yes,” Cooper beams, “Joni. Thank you for the card you guys sent, it’s beautiful – it’s still up on our bookcase.”

Carlos smiles politely, not knowing what card Cooper refers to. He doesn’t remember signing one.

“She’s ten weeks old, so her one talent is, like, grabbing at her teddy bear,” Copper goes on, “Which she does very well. But I’m getting her an art set for her first birthday, and then every birthday for the rest of her life.”

“That’s really nice.” Carlos takes a sip from his grainy coffee, unexpectedly emotional about the idea of art sets as a rolling gift.

Cooper sighs, a touch sad suddenly. “Maybe she’ll reject it, and that’s okay. I’d just prefer to assume she’ll be into art, for now.”

Carlos nods, words escaping him. Who we are, and who we are not, starts at birth. Only one version is taken seriously. All too easily, the wrong version is what everybody sees. His parents bought him an art set when he was seven, and never again.

Carlos looks over at TK, makes eyes with him. He retracts a portion of his thought. The wrong version isn’t what everybody sees.

“How are you doing, baby?” TK says loudly from afar, striding over when Pippa starts giggling with someone else.

Carlos holds his arm out, reaching for a few seconds until TK naturally slots himself against his side, pressing his hand against the small of Carlos’ back. Carlos drops his arm around TK’s shoulders.

Cooper looks at them fondly, like he thinks they’re cute. “I’m really glad you’re both here,” he says, “Carlos, this is powerful of you, man. Shall we sit?”

People are starting to arrive quickly now. TK and Carlos follow Cooper to the chairs and sit together, with TK in the middle of their trio.

Carlos leans close to TK, whispering, “Did we get Cooper a card when his baby was born?”

TK is surprised, or a little confused by the question. He thinks for a moment, remembering back ten weeks. It was still summer then, and so many things have happened within their busy days. “Oh, yeah. I sent it from both of us.”

“I didn’t even see it – I didn’t know what he was talking about. Did you sign it for me?” Carlos hopes he isn’t sounding stage-whisper levels of annoyed; he isn’t annoyed, as such, it’s more like embarrassment. “I’d have been happy to sign it.”

“I wasn’t really thinking.” TK shrugs.

“I am fine with him,” Carlos says, keeping his voice low as he glances at Cooper, “I like him.”

TK shrugs again. “I quickly bought a card after work one day. I didn’t think sending it from us both would be a big deal?”

“It’s not. I just – I just want you to know, I’d have signed it.” Carlos tries to give TK a reassuring smile, but TK seems worried. Eighteen months ago, Carlos went through a jealousy journey when he found out Cooper was TK’s N.A. sponsor, but by the end of it, he was happy that TK could turn to Cooper about anything. It troubles him to think TK might still hold back on talking about Cooper sometimes, even to the point of not asking Carlos to sign a congratulations card. This is something he has damaged, so he must fix.

The meeting is chaired by a lady called Carolina – twenty-one years sober after eighteen years smoking, snorting, drinking, chewing and shooting up anything her often-stolen money could buy. “I kept dying,” she says, “And I kept coming back to life. I kept having to be forgiven. People did forgive me until they didn’t. My mom died when I was still heavy into my addiction. Her last view of me as a person was someone she regretted bringing into the world. It was still another six years until I got clean. And it was because of this – working it.”

TK sits back in his chair, watching Carlos listen to the stories shared around him during the round-robin. The microscopic tensing of his jaw, the way he bites the side of his bottom lip, the way he barely blinks. There’s about twenty people in the room, and all of them fall within the shadows and the light of addiction and recovery, heartbroken and healing.

Cynthia is six weeks without pills but four days without alcohol. She was always a big drinking party girl. Pills came into it after her two-year old died. She sits with her arms folded, facing the display board of toddler art, staring at the purple circles and green diagonal lines that represent people.

Jonathan is two weeks out of rehab – Turtle Creek, this time, up in Dallas. Withdrawal was the worst agony yet, but he got a lot out of the experience, this time, and he’s happy to be back in Austin living with his twin sister. Nothing traumatic began his addiction, which he feels is important to note. Clubs were fun, drugs were fun, his drug-taking clubbing friends were fun. Then, none of it was fun because he slurred everything he said and developed sores on his face. Nobody wanted to hang out with him. He lost his job. He got lonely.

Kendall is eleven months sober – almost an entire year. Everyone is so happy. Carlos seems charmed by her, TK thinks. She’s nineteen and wants to be a cop, but wonders if she can, after everything. She’s been an opioid addict since she was fifteen. Fell off a horse. Her badly sprained back healed just fine after a matter of weeks, so she became adept at faking a limp and wincing as if she was in pain. A limp eventually manifest as her real walk. Her smile now looks like a grimace, as though she’s permanently altered her physical state for the sake of a repeat prescription.

Pippa is super excited that Kendall is eleven months sober, because she herself is eleven weeks sober. “Eleven-eleven,” she says, “Everybody, make a wish!” Pippa laughs and claps her hands. Something about her is a lot younger than twenty-three. It’s very possible she’s high on sugar – her new favorite thing when she’s feeling the urge is to buy a Blue Coconut Slush from Sonic Drive-In. Pippa started drinking when she was ten. Pot was totally her gateway drug. Meth frazzled her at sixteen. Her foster brother’s buddy cooked. She’s on meds for psychosis but she still sees strange lights. She doesn’t know how she has tinnitus but it’s like there’s a constant fizzing, blinking neon sign in her head. But! Her roommate adopted another cat, so now they have three, and she loves them. She wants to work with animals.

It’s Cooper’s turn next. He looks so sunny, healthy. Sober for thirteen years. Despite that, he didn’t trust himself to start a family until his girlfriend, Danielle, got pregnant – and then he just had to believe he could care for a kid. Welcoming baby Joni has changed his perspective on everything. He can be the man his father never was.

Then it’s TK.

“Hi. I’m TK.”

“Hi, TK,” everyone says, including Carlos, which tickles them both.

“I’m an addict.” He glances at Carlos, feels himself get hot in the face. He knows it’s fine, but he doesn’t often use that phrase so bluntly around Carlos, especially lately, as time has gone on and it’s less of a struggle to resist substances. This is more taxing than he thought. “It’s been roughly eighteen months since I started back on day one, because I was spiked. It’s been too long since I’ve come to a meeting. Uh. I started using in my teens. It was peer pressure. It was a way to escape. It was a way to have fun, but also punish my parents, who I actually love very much. And it did punish them – it really did. There was something in me that just wanted it. I told myself it was all under control. But it was like trying to run from lions. Sometimes I could. I didn’t think of myself as addicted. Like, it didn’t define me. I was a son, a boyfriend, a friend, I went to school, and then I held down my job. Except, one day I realized I wasn’t any of those things anymore. Not really. I died and came back to life and–” he looks at Carlos again. Carlos, his husband with huge, shining brown eyes, earth in rain, staring back at him with aching love. “I have a birthday coming up. I find my birthdays kind of hard anyway, but last year was my first without my mom.” He balls his hands into fists. “She died suddenly. She was hit by a bike, crossing the street. She went out like a light. I didn’t get to say goodbye. I didn’t get to say thank you. She died knowing I’m okay, which is comforting. But. Last year was a really tough birthday without her voice on the phone at all. I kept looking at my phone like I was expecting her name to... In the end, I had to hide my phone from myself in my sock drawer. But this year it’s going to be different. I really want it to be different. I’m going to be thirty and it matters. When my mom died, there was a big part of me that wanted to die too. Death never used to scare me that much. But now–” he can’t look at Carlos anymore. “I’m so scared of dying again. And it’s because of all of you that I haven’t.” He gets a lump in his throat, has to take a breath, laughs at himself. “From the moment I arrived in Austin. You – and this place we’re in – you’ve been here for me. I want to say my biggest thank you, because I can.”

Carlos starts applauding. He is the only one.

“Thanks, baby,” TK says softly while everybody else verbalizes their congratulations. He squeezes Carlos’ shoulder.

Carlos stops himself mid-clap, pats his hands on his jeans, rubs his thumb along his lip, reaches to fiddle with a gold cross he no longer wears, wants to dissolve into the floor.

“Thank you for sharing,” Carolina says. She looks a little tearful herself, though has to stay impartial and grounded.

Cooper beams at TK encouragingly, reaching over to slap him on the back.

“Thank you all.” TK squeezes Carlos’ shoulder harder, gives it a little shake. “I’m also really happy to be joined by my husband.”

The majority of the room sighs with a collective aww that gives Carlos butterflies. It’s his turn now.

Every time something that resembles public speaking happens to him, he has to remind himself that he is not fourteen, tongue-tied memorizing audition lines for Konstantin. He can do this. He’s a skilled police officer. Yesterday, he tasered a man who used a golf club to beat up an RV while his wife and child were hiding inside. Why can he perform that function in his daily work life without issue, but saying his name in front of a circle of politely smiling strangers is so hard?

“Hello,” he declares, “I am Carlos.”

He tries to remember the brief speech he went through with TK this morning – a few key facts. But they were both naked at the time, and now that’s all he can focus on. The terrible truth is – this would be a lot fucking easier if he’d had a cold glass of oak aged Chardonnay beforehand.

“Truthfully, I haven’t dealt with addiction myself. But I have been drinking a little more than normal, for me, because of some bereavement of my own, and it’s fine. I’m not going to do that anymore. I just wanted to come here and sit beside my husband and support him, and support you.” His hands shake. This will be better, he thinks, if he actually addresses TK as an individual, rather than the whole group. Zoom in. Close the space. Pretend they are out for coffee at the place on 5th. Or even better, pretend he’s saying his vows, which conversely was one of the easiest things he’s ever done.

“TK, I just want to say to you–” Carlos restarts, staring at him with glistening cow-eyes. TK gives him a subtle headshake, trying to silently communicate that Carlos should not crosstalk in the meeting, but here it comes, right from the heart. “There’s nobody like you. You’re my north star. My best friend. You made your own life so much better, and mine too. You’re living proof of what is possible, and it’s because you do everything with so much love. I’ve never seen strength like it.”

TK squeezes his lips together and turns away. He’s cried in meetings before, but he was hoping to avoid it this evening, even though he’d assumed Carlos would talk about himself. But judging by the way everyone in the room is swooning, the man has used deflection to become instantly beloved.

Okay, Reyes, TK thinks, you’ve outfoxed me this time.

“Thanks, baby.” He grunts, clearing his throat and gritting his teeth, both angry and in love with his stupid husband. “Same to you.”

Carlos swings his head and hunches so he can see past TK. “And, Cooper.” He begins. Cooper looks at him hopefully. “Cooper – the way you’ve been such a rock for TK has been a blessing for both of us. I want you to know how appreciated you are in our lives. Congratulations to you and your girlfriend. I hope Joni makes art you never want to remove from your fridge door.”

Cooper swallows. “Thanks man,” he whispers.

TK watches everyone around them exchange either an impressed or weirded-out glance at Carlos’ unexpectedly passionate speech.

Carolina pauses, holding herself still and waiting to see if Carlos has any more to say. When he sags in his chair with a minor amount of emotional exhaustion, she issues a reminder that everyone is here to share their own experiences if they want to, rather than focus on someone else’s.

A lightning strike of anxiety rushes through Carlos so strongly his jaw hurts and his stomach flips. He panicked on the spot – forgot the no-crosstalk rule – and now he can never show his face in the YMCA of Austin ever again. He turns to TK, hoping for some eye contact that suggests it’s okay, this a natural blip. TK is steadfastly looking away and wiping his eyes.

The rest of the meeting is heavier. There’s a lot of interesting thoughts about being in recovery in a world that constantly wants you to party and be social and have sex and drink, and kind of shits on you if you don’t. Three people are at the meeting because they are court-mandated. All of them are angry and defiant. Carolina handles them with the grace of someone trained in de-escalation. Eventually, one of them, a man in his sixties, breaks down sobbing.

When the meeting ends, almost everybody wants to talk to Carlos. He stands by the trestle table next to the display board of toddler art, as if it’s become a place of security for him, and addresses Carolina when she politely smiles his way. “Thank you for being so welcoming. I’m amazed by you – your strength and your perseverance.”

“Thank you, sweetie, that’s kind,” she says, midway through loading used mugs onto a poppy-patterned tea tray. “Remember we’re always here, okay? Remember that. Always here to listen to your story when you’re ready to share.”

TK is about to thank Carolina himself when he notices Carlos’ hands are shaking with nerves as people approach him, but instead of shying away, his mouth is motoring onwards, seemingly without control.

“Cynthia – I can’t tell you how sorry I am for your loss. The fact that you’re here, doing this, is an inspiration to me. Jonathan, I really admire your courage in going back to rehab even though it was the last thing you wanted. You went with what you needed, and that’s an inspiration to me, too. I’m really happy it turned into a good experience. Kendall, I’m a cop myself. I know the Austin Police Department needs people with compassion and who understand things about the world. I’d be happy to talk to you about my experience, if you like. Pippa.” He head-flips to her. She gazes at him with wide gray eyes full of storms and love. “My eleven-eleven wish was for you. You can totally work with animals. I know some ranchers through my family, so I can probably give you advice too.”

Jonathan and Cooper shake his hand. Cynthia gives him a hug. Carlos hugs her back tightly, lets it linger. She cries a little, mottling his burgundy sweater with teardrops until Cooper and Carolina gently prize her away. Carlos has held many grieving parents. His second week as a rookie, a grieving father cried into his chest. He’s never gotten used to it. In this context it feels even harder. There’s a dull, sad ache in his core that might well last the rest of his life, like being conscious within the rubble of a landslide.

Then there’s another sensation. The warmth of TK’s hand rubbing his arm, lightly tugging his sweater sleeve. His soft voice saying, “It’s time for us to go.”

At these words, Carlos takes a full breath for the first time in hours.

They’re hungry after the meeting. TK suggests he and Carlos drive to the diner he often goes to with Cooper and some of the others – Blue Moon by the river, a gimmicky but fun mid-century Americana-style diner, which almost seems too goofy as setting for the conversation TK knows they’re about to have. They go anyway.

Carlos is taken by the place, with its fizzy incandescence of sherbet-hued neon signs, dark blue walls, framed pop art posters and classic chessboard flooring. He’s immediately drawn towards the retro bubbler jukebox in the corner. Kidlike, he plays around with its colorful buttons. TK takes a window booth with pale blue upholstery and orders them the omelets he swears by. Carlos finds a catalog of The Great American Songbook, which he considers for the atmosphere, but opts for 2010s indie for the sake of his own nostalgia.

The waitress, a blonde thirtysomething dolled up in a pink candy girl pinafore, brings over two unsweetened iced teas with slices of lemon, addressing TK like she knows him well. Carlos watches them smile and talk as the music he’s selected kicks in. Sometimes he thinks TK is magic – people are so drawn to him. He doesn’t know what that’s like. The only person who has truly been drawn to Carlos, flaws and all, is actually TK himself, which seems funny when Carlos considers it. Maybe he did marry the most popular kid in school. Nobody would have seen that coming, least of all him.

Carlos returns to their booth, blushing because he has a crush on his husband, and stirs his paper straw around in his iced tea, clinking the perfectly edged ice cubes against his glass.

As he takes a sip he locks eyes with TK, who looks a little sad, or distant, or something. He’s not entirely okay, though he’d seemed to glitter like the rain on the window when the waitress spoke to him. He was happy enough in the car, singing along to Stairway to Heaven on the radio.

“Is something on your mind?” Carlos asks, “Or is it just the meeting? Parts of it were pretty tough. And I’m sorry, I forgot the crosstalk rule I just–”

“Yeah. No.” TK pinches the bridge of his nose. “I wondered for a second if you were trying to sabotage it.”

“What?” Carlos reaches to grab his arm across the table. “No, not at all!”

“Okay, I know. I know,” TK tells him, “But you’re really meant to talk about yourself, if you do talk. It’s a moment where we can be truthful, and we don’t have to worry about what other people think, but at the same time we’re not alone.”

“I get it,” Carlos says, starting to sweat with shame in his good sweater.

“Look, baby, I’m happy with how the meeting went overall. Believe me, I’ve been to ones that were a lot harder. And everyone fell in love with you. Even the guys who hated being there.” A big part of TK wants to sit back, fold his arms and confront Carlos again. He wants to fan the flames of his burning frustration – demand to know why Carlos didn’t go into any detail about his own story. But if he’s going to get Carlos to return for a second attempt, he figures there needs to be a battle strategy.

Carlos laughs into his iced tea, thinking TK might be going a bit far with his praise. But TK’s smile is small and he has a wistful look in his eyes, like he’s drifting to a faraway place in his mind.

“I love you,” Carlos says.

“I love you too.”

“You’re not okay.”

TK shakes his head. “I’m just a bit antsy.” TK shifts his shoulders, runs his thumb around the edge of his glass. “Carlos. There’s still so much I haven’t told you about me – like, the old me. Back in New York.”

“I know, sweetheart. But you can. I’d like you to.”

“I have so many regrets and I’m scared that you’ll–” TK sits up, smiling broadly at the waitress, who sets their plates down in front of them. “Thank you, Mandy.”

“You’re welcome, sugar. Holler if you need me,” she says, winking at Carlos. “Congratulations on your wedding. I wish y’all many more years of happiness than I had.”

“Thank you,” Carlos replies, following her curiously with his eyes as she swishes away. He leans over slightly, closing their space and whispering, “That I’ll what? You’re a light in the dark, TK, and that’s all I see. You’ve made a connection with Mandy, all because you stop for omelets here from time to time.”

“That’s just omelets. It’s small talk. She’s chatty.” TK shrugs. “I’m not telling her about the time I emotionally tortured a guidance counselor because the guy I got caught giving a handjob to was kicked out of school. I’m not telling her about the time I lost my virginity at–” face falling, he stops abruptly, and saws his omelet in half with the side of his fork. It splits with some protest, wobbling as it divides. A spongified segment of sunshine with fluffy edges. “And yeah, if you want. I’ll tell you the story. I tell you any of my stories, Carlos. But only in exchange for yours.”

Carlos cuts into his own dinner, wishing he hadn’t so whimsically attempted to impress Cooper, TK, Carolina, the whole N.A. group, himself – he doesn’t even know anymore.

He takes his first bite. The omelet is excellent.

Chapter Text

Thursday November 9, 2023

Carlos nods with slow and impressive concentration, TK thinks, considering the woeful tale he’s been subjected to from the moment he told TK to go ahead and open up. TK isn’t sure where his monologue-of-shame came from, but he’s sustained it to the point of their omelets getting cold.

“What do you think?” TK asks, “Do you still–”

“Yes, TK. I still want to be your husband,” Carlos tells him in his usual low and steady tone. “You were just a kid when all that happened – it’s not like I’m judging you.”

“I wanted to help him. But I was too scared. So, I said all these–”

“Look at me.” Carlos reaches across the cream laminate tabletop to brush his knuckles against TK’s neck. “Hey. You were just a kid, TK. There were a lot of adults in the room who should have done better. It shouldn’t be on your shoulders.”

TK smiles, hanging his head so he can kiss Carlos’ reaching hand. “You’re undoing thirteen years of guilt right here, you know.”

“If only it were that easy.”

TK sits back against the soft upholstery of the booth, feeling like he’s strapped into a rocket. To verbalize a deep regret has hit back at him with a kind of G-force. It hurts to breathe.

Tuesday December 21, 2010

TK Strand enters the office of Principal Arenburg for the second time in two weeks. Today, Principal Arenburg is joined by Vice Principal Woodsman, Guidance Counselor Miss Zan, and both of TK’s parents. A week ago, it was only the V.P., and that was bad enough – permanently enraged jobsworth that he is. Of course Woodsman was destined to find blunt wraps, pills and ribbed condoms in TK’s locker during a ‘randomized search’ that TK thinks you’d have to be stupid to believe. He was targeted. Woodsman has it in for him.

“Take a seat, Tyler Kennedy,” Principal Arenburg says, gesturing to the hard, shit-brown plastic chair next to his mom. The adults sit on springy sponge-backed chairs with gray boucle covering. TK tries not to think about the construct of hierarchy. Tries not to think of himself as a young nomadic lion leaning to drink from a watering hole full of crocodiles, like he saw on National Geographic last night.

TK sits down as he’s told. This meeting could actually be about two things. Maybe it’s about both of them.

“TK. You returned from suspension only yesterday after a very serious offense,” Principal Arenburg begins, “And now we have had to bring your parents in because you were seen, this morning, engaged in a sex act in the gym.”

Okay, TK thinks, they know about the second thing.

TK glowers at Principal Arenburg. She’s a smart older lady, firm but fair with decades of experience. He likes her. It hurts to stare her down like this, but he holds it. He holds on all he can.

Gwyn, dressed in her smartest black pantsuit and a white silk blouse, clearly dragged away from a working day of important meetings just to be here, turns in her chair to face him. “TK. Sex at school?”

He doesn’t look at her. “It was only third base.”

“With another boy!” Woodsman booms.

“Well, he is gay,” Gwyn snaps, “Which everyone knows, and we were assured wouldn’t be a problem when our son transferred over here.”

“Of course, Ms. Morgan. My apologies for the phrasing. The issue is that both Tyler Kennedy and the boy in question have only just turned seventeen. They’re still so young. Regardless, they should not be engaging in such relations on school grounds.”

TK swallows. Tries not to think about the details. The way Fox Richardson’s slightly cold hand felt as it slipped into his boxers. The way Fox’s track-runner abs tensed when TK started tugging on him, both of them so hard against each other’s pressing palms. It would be bad to get a boner right now. He thinks instead about the equipment room door opening – the thud as the door met the wall. The winter light through the vertical windows of the gym suddenly poured pearly white against stacked tennis rackets and the net bag of basketballs. They didn’t see who caught them, only heard a scandalized gasp and cloppy footsteps running away.

“You haven’t called the other guy’s parents, right?” TK asks, fiddling with the frayed edge of a hole in his jeans, through which his goosebumped knee pokes out. “It’s just, I don’t think they know he’s into dudes.” He doesn’t think Fox knew it himself until recently, and he doesn’t know anything about Mr. and Mrs. Richardson and whether they’d be cool.

Principal Arenburg, V.P. Woodsman and Miss Zan each share a panicked glance with each other. TK notices the guilty wince on Miss Zan’s face in particular. He looks at his parents. Gwyn shakes her head, fed up. Owen pinches the bridge of his nose.

“This is abysmal,” Gwyn says, her voice quiet but harsh, “Disclosing this to us is one thing. We told you the reason why TK had to leave his last school. We’ve been upfront. TK is openly gay. But this other kid? Have you just outed him to his parents? What about his safety – have you taken that into account at all?”

“Ms. Morgan, we are dealing with this in line with school policy,” Principal Arenburg says, maintaining an impressively unflappable demeanor while Gwyn looks ready to grab everyone in the room by the throat.

TK glances at Owen. He hasn’t said anything yet, and TK doesn’t know if that’s good or bad. He seems exhausted. He’s come straight from a shift where he was working overtime. He still smells like smoke.

“We don’t want to lose Tyler Kennedy from the school,” Principal Arenburg looks at TK kindly, like she understands something inside him. He wonders if she’d given a handjob in a gym equipment room back in the ’60s. “You’re bright. You’re well-liked. You make people laugh. Don’t ruin it for yourself. Don’t use up all your second chances.”

TK is touched by this, but he doesn’t react.

“We’re suspending Tyler Kennedy until after the holiday break,” Principal Arenburg says to Owen and Gwyn, “Then it’s after-school detentions the first week back in January.” She faces TK again. “And starting in January, you are to begin weekly meetings with Miss Zan for the rest of the school year.”

“What, like a kind of therapy?” TK asks.

“Like a kind of guidance,” Miss Zan replies.

Owen and Gwyn sit forward, lightening up, happy with this idea.

“We appreciate that,” Owen says.

TK glares at him.

One steamy, private, consensual handjob and everyone loses their damn mind.

“I don’t need–” TK starts, but Owen and Gwyn shoot him a look that shuts him up instantly. He doesn’t have the energy to argue a case against an actual lawyer, an agitated fire captain, and three incensed members of the school faculty, including one overwhelmed guidance counselor who looks five minutes older than he is.

By 8 p.m., TK is alone in his bedroom with only the desk lamp shining. He’s angled on the end of his bed so he can slump with folded arms on the windowsill. Here, he looks out at the street, back turned on his half-hearted effort at homework. American History. Colonies schmolonies. Blah blah snooze.

He droops, nesting his chin in the crook of his left elbow while he watches the snow clatter and puff against the glass. It’s coming down thick. Busy days and nights await Owen. He’ll be cutting open cars to extract people freezing to death inside, coordinating ice rescues, and inevitably putting out fires started by electric heaters. TK wishes he could be with his dad on those missions – in the teeth of it, doing something practical and useful. He’s no good in school except for that weird string of As in biology – which is mainly down to Mr. Patel being great at his job. It’s a drain on society that he has not dropped out.

Yet, he can’t bear to suggest dropping out to his parents, who are having an amicable conversation at the kitchen table right now. They can agree on their love for him, and their disappointment in him.

The muffled sound of their voices stops. He hears footsteps tread the floorboards, heading towards his door.

A single knock. Owen opens up without being invited.

“Hey, kid. I’ve got to go now. I need to be at the firehouse bright and early. You’re sitting in the dark?”

“You don’t want to stay on the pull-out?” TK sniffs. They’ve made the spare bed up for him a few times before. “It’s a mess out there, Dad.”

“I don’t want to be caught here tomorrow. It’ll take me too long to get across town.”

TK glances at his wet window, at the snow splattering on impact. “It’s the longest night,” he says, and it does seem unusually dark beyond the white drift.

Owen wanders over to squeeze TK’s shoulder through his bright blue American Apparel hoodie. “You feel cold. You need to eat – there’s a plate for you in the oven. It’s still warm.”

“I’m just not hungry.”

“TK.” “I’ll barf.”

“You won’t.”

“I feel nauseous.”

“Because you haven’t eaten. Come on.” Owen tugs lightly at the white drawstring of TK’s hood, then harder at the hood itself. “I’m not going to stop doing this until you follow me to the kitchen.”

TK tries to brush Owen’s hand away, but Owen only strengthens. “Fine,” TK grunts. He’s in enough trouble as it is.

TK flops off his bed, feet in pink socks hitting the floorboards with a messy thump. Owen makes TK lead the way to the kitchen, shadowing him as if he might bolt.

Gwyn looks up from her laptop. Keen to keep up with the gay scene that her son is about to enter as an adult, AfterElton.com is open on her browser.

“Ah, good,” she says, retrieving his plate of stew from the oven. “Sit at the table to eat this, TK. No TV lap tray.”

TK sits down as he’s told. As she moves around the kitchen, he observes her with a blank expression that he isn’t putting on. He’s felt more and more empty and gray as the evening has progressed.

“Okay, I’m going to head out,” Owen repeats in his non-negotiable tone. He leans down to kiss TK’s hair. “See you soon and stay out of trouble.”

“Yeah,” TK mutters, “Soon.” It won’t be soon.

Owen is in the middle of lacing the boots he took off at the door when the knocker rattles. “I’ll get it,” he calls.

TK dips a slice of bread into his stew, padding it against a lump of tomato.

“Hey – what do you think you’re– stop!” Owen shouts.

TK drops his bread, turning quickly in his chair. A red-faced man forces his way past Owen, rushing into the apartment. Owen has hands on him, pushing him back.

“Hey, who are you?” Gwyn gets out of her chair so abruptly it crashes to the floor behind her.

“I’m Matthew Richardson.”

TK looks down, watches his bread sink into the orangey-red sauce that had started to smell delicious to him.

“And your son is having sex with mine.” Matthew surges forward into the kitchen. Owen pulls him back, thumping him against the wall.

Gwyn puts herself in front of TK, arms out, creating a shield with her body without thought. “Get away from him – get out of our home.”

“Did you hear me?” Matthew Richardson yells, “Your son is gay. They have been–”

“We know he is!” Owen shouts into his face. “TK is out to us – he has been for years.”

Matthew stares beyond Owen at TK, bewildered and easing down. “Years?”

“Yes.”

“Well. My son has not been out for years. My son came out to me today.” Tears shimmer in Matthew Richardson’s eyes. “And it’s all because of him that he thinks it about himself.”

“Me?” TK gets up, but Gwyn slaps at his arm to get him to stay behind her. “Fox would be gay whatever, wherever.”

“I don’t think so.”

“It’s not like TK touches someone and turns them gay,” Gwyn says.

“I wish,” TK follows.

“You–” Matthew Richardson shoves Owen to the side.

Gwyn steps back against TK. There’s another chair and his stew on the floor, arms flying and legs tangling and then a crack.

Matthew Richardson is on his back, whining. Owen is above him in an awkward straddle, cradling his fist in pain.

TK and Gwyn cling to each other, staring at Owen.

“Does he need an ambulance?” Gwyn asks, “Do we need the police?”

Matthew rolls onto his side, wheezing. They all watch him silently as he rises to his knees and struggles to stand. Owen caught him smack in the eye.

“I don’t know what you thought would happen,” Owen says, “Going for my son like that.”

“Fucking gays. You’re everywhere,” Matthew spits.

“It’s not a bad thing,” Gwyn tells him, pleading, “I promise, it’s not. Fox needs you.”

“Don’t tell me what my son needs.” Matthew rises to his feet, tentatively assisted by Owen. He wobbles, bleeding from his eyebrow, panting to catch his gristly breath. “My son is never going back to that school.” He looks at TK. “You’re never seeing him again.”

“No–” TK whispers. He’s not numb anymore. This is the worst of the consequences. He starts to cry quietly. Gwyn hugs him to herself.

“Get off me.” Matthew pushes Owen again, gently this time, his fight gone out like a flame. “I’m fucking leaving. I’m going to fucking sue you.”

He slumps away, seeing himself out and slamming the door so hard books tremble on the living room shelves. Owen pursues, sliding all the locks before checking the communal hallway through the peephole.

“Does he have a case?” Owen asks, jogging back to TK and Gwyn.

TK has taken the initiative to clean up the stew and the shattered plate. Practical. Useful. Even if he can barely see the mess through his tears. Even if he cuts his hand on a shard. How he’d welcome the blood.

“Well…” Gwyn sighs. “Look, just don’t worry. He’d be obliterated by my firm.”

Quietly, as a family, they pick up the knocked-down chairs and wipe stew splatter off the Edwardian kitchen tiles. The apartment on Canal Street is full of original features, to Gwyn’s pride. TK can see the pain in her eyes because some human storm swept through and made a mess.

“I’m sorry, Mom.” He reaches out to squeeze her arm.

She says nothing, squeezes his hand back, cleans an orange-red smear from a tile.

TK rises shakily to sling a paper towel into the trash. He notices Owen by the door, unlacing his boots.

“I’d like to stay,” Owen says with a smile when TK catches his eye. “If you’ll have me.”

“Yes – please,” Gwyn calls at him, “I think we’d both feel better right now, if you did. How’s your hand, do you need ice?”

TK takes a moment to love the way his mother is speaking to his father. She’s addressing him so kindly yet so casually. Owen blushes.

TK hops into the living room to help Owen with the pull-out couch. Gwyn fetches the spare pillows and sheets from the linen cupboard; TK brings his father a plush fleece blanket from his bedroom like an offering.

“Time for bed,” Owen says.

“I mean, it’s like eight o’clock, so no,” TK grunts.

Owen peers at the carriage clock on the mantel. “Huh. Feels like midnight.”

Gwyn appears by Owen’s side, nudges him to take a bag of frozen petit pois wrapped in a dish towel. “Knuckles.” She drapes the makeshift ice pack over the back of his hand for him. If it still hurts, he’s not showing it now. “I can’t believe this.”

“He can’t actually remove Fox from the school, right, like overnight?” TK asks Gwyn, as if she holds all the answers.

Gwyn and Owen glance at each other like he’s asked a strange question.

“Yes, he can, honey,” she tells him. “We removed you from your last school immediately.”

“But that’s different. I was–” he doesn’t want to say the words. Gay bashed.

“I know, honey, shh.” Gwyn strokes his arm.

“Fox didn’t do anything wrong. And neither did I.”

“Actually, you did.” Gwyn’s tone switches abruptly to sharp and corporate. “The school does have a clear policy about sexual activity on the grounds. But the consequences for Fox are far more extreme than they should be.”

“Can’t we help him, somehow?”

Owen rubs TK’s back, his face devastatingly sympathetic. “Son, last week I asked if you had a boyfriend. You told me you didn’t. Is Fox your boyfriend?”

TK sighs tiredly at the misunderstanding. This whole thing has blown up in what feels like every kind of bonkers way. “No. We’ve just hung out, hooked up a few times.” Their first hookup had been so incidental it barely registered – a simple ‘we’re both into dick and we’re horny, let’s do something about it’ arrangement between them. “And now it’s gone from nothing, and nobody’s business, to being this massive problem the whole world knows about. I’m angry. I’m so fucking angry!”

Gwyn tries to hold him. “TK. Calm down.”

“No!” He backs away from them both. “Fucking make me.”

“That’s what I’m trying to do.”

Owen snatches at TK’s elbow to get him to come back. “Stay here, son.”

“Get off–” TK shoves Owen’s reaching arm away.

“Oh, you want to fight me now?”

“Stop it!” Gwyn shouts, her voice scything the air between them. They both step back, upright and guilty. She puts her hands on her hips, glaring, thinking. “TK. This is serious. This time next year, you’re a senior. Then school will be over before you know it. Principal Arenburg’s right. Don’t ruin it for yourself, sweetheart. You’re so nearly there.”

“Your mom’s right, too,” Owen says, “You have to get your head down, do your work, stop drinking, stop smoking weed, stop taking pills, stop having sex–”

“Damn it, Owen,” Gwyn clips, “You’re making him sound like Keith Richards.”

TK doesn’t let himself smile. The situation is too dire. Sex and drugs are the best thing about school, and – outside of biology and photography club – his reason for going.

“Okay,” TK says, “But I’m not going to pretend to be happy about it. Actually, I promise, hand on heart, I’ll be miserable.”

“Ah, there he is.” Owen smiles mockingly and deigns to squeeze TK’s shoulder. “Daddy’s ray of sunshine.”

After the holidays, when he has what will be his only meeting with Miss Zan, TK keeps his promise.

Tuesday January 4, 2011

A few days into the New Year and 2011 is already garbage. TK sits shivering in an unstable chair outside the office of Miss Zan, wondering where it all went wrong. Manhattan life after 9/11 comes to mind. The blizzard of dust, his dad’s rough cough for weeks after, his terrifying tears for his fallen crew. The way he vanished into rebuilding his firehouse from scratch. The way he kept forgetting about Little League. The way Gwyn looked happy, so fucking happy, the day she signed the divorce papers. The way she put on pearl earrings and her best perfume before going to a bar with her girlfriends in celebration. The way she was on/off with Enzo after that. The whiplash of it. The way Owen married Lorraine, who looked at TK like he was a nasty little alien. The way they divorced so quickly, like it had meant nothing. Well, it did mean something. Eighteen months of sheer anxiety for TK, that’s what it meant.

TK slumps forward in his chair, mimicking the crash position. He stares at his feet.

Like an idiot, he’s chosen to wear the new multicolor Nikes Owen bought him for Hanukkah-Christmas, and now they’re dirty because he epically misjudged a puddle while he stormed his way to school. $80 and they offer nothing against the cold. Within his bright yellow socks, TK’s toes are pinched and prickling. He sits upright again, pulling his fleece-lined Parka around him. A shuddering chill in his core creates the illusion of nausea.

In his coat pocket, he feels the sleek oblong of his phone buzz. He checks it surreptitiously. It’s a coded message from Mike, saying he’s scored weed. It cheers him up, some, for about five seconds before he opens the texts between him and Fox. Every day between December 21 and December 28, TK asked him are you ok – what’s going on? – can we talk?

No answer. He checked Facebook – Fox unfriended him. His account is private. Understandable. His dad would have made him do that, obviously.

On New Year’s Eve, TK texted again, “Hey man, hope all’s good with you. Let me know. What’s your new school?” He got a response immediately – message undelivered.

The door to Miss Zan’s room, which is sticky on its hinges, draws back with a creak. TK lets his phone slip back into his pocket and plays it cool. If he’s caught using his phone, it will be confiscated.

“Hello, Tyler Kennedy,” Miss Zan says in a soothing tone, like she’s about to hypnotize him. “Come in, take a seat.”

TK gets up, pathetically squelches with freezing feet in dirty shoes into her small office. They might as well have shoved her into the janitor’s closet, it’s so cramped in here. He has to squeeze into the chair across from her desk, the back of it banging against a drab green filing cabinet.

“How have you been over the holidays?” Miss Zan asks.

“Lousy. You?”

“Okay.”

“Okay?” TK laughs at her. “You haven’t been rotting with guilt?”

She furrows her brow, as if confused over what he could be referring to.

He helps her out. “About Fox?”

“Ah.” She nods with a little smile, like she’s been told a bad punchline. “I see.”

Her cool reaction is so infuriating, TK instantly rolls from being neutral about her to holding her in contempt. “Where is Fox? Do you even know? Do you even care?” TK shouts across the desk, filling the small room with his rage like toxic gas. “He’s been ripped away from the school he knew, and all his friends, because of you. Did you know he was in a band here? Did you know anything about him before you called his dad?”

Miss Zan isn’t so relaxed now, as though the full, jarring ache of the situation is only just traveling her spine. She folds her arms, giving herself a hug. “TK. Fox had also been pulled up on a few indiscretions, before the incident you were involved in.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“So, you know it’s policy to involve parents, particularly after a series of issues.”

“Do you ever figure the parents might be the reason for the issues?” TK asks, framing the word issues in dramatic air-quotes. “Like, maybe Fox has a shit dad? A homophobic dad? A dad who burst into my home and tried to attack me? If he’d brought a gun, me and my parents would be dead.”

Miss Zan sits in a silent stupor. TK sits tall in his chair, mighty, a cat with a mouse. Miss Zan – twenty-six at most, with a soft heart that she’s clearly trying to toughen, who wants to be a shoulder for kids to lean on, and truly help them, has already been complicit in a big old unforgivable fuck up. For this, TK has no sympathy.

“We – we need to talk about you–” Miss Zan says, tripping on her words.

“I’ve got nothing to say to you–” TK hisses. And then he realizes that he does. Lyrics to a song that Fox and his band were working on, which he remembers because Fox had been excited about it, and it was the longest conversation they ever had. “You can’t be my guide,” TK says, looking into her worried eyes as he quotes, “You’re too dull. You’ve got no light.”

“Tyler.”

“Don’t you get it? What about this situation is failing to go through your thick head? You think you’re going to make a difference but you never will.”

“Tyler.”

“My name is TK!” he yells.

“Okay. TK.”

“Actually, don’t.” He covers his ears. “I don’t even want to hear you say it. You’re pathetic. You are bad at your job.”

TK watches as the words strike all her nerves. Her dark eyes shine with tears. Her cheeks look hot. The greenish stripe of a vein appears to the left of her forehead. This moment will remain, in TK’s mind, as one of his most callous. An unforgivable fuck up. He could have simply sworn at her and swaggered off. He could have delivered an F-you viciously, but it wouldn’t have hurt – not really – not like this. He watches a tear fall before she can dab it away with one of the tissues she usually passes to students. TK wonders if this is what it’s like to be powerful – it just makes you feel like bitter shit.

Miss Zan writes a quick note and then asks him to leave, reminding him he still needs to come back next week, even if neither of them really wants it. In the end, it’s Miss Zan who cancels. He doesn’t see her around in the hallways, either.

TK plows through his school day, gets his head down, learns a thing or two about DNA and the Great Depression. At 3:10 p.m., TK walks with Mike back to his place, scraping his fingers along a frosty chain link fence that cordons a park, just for the pain of it. They sit cross legged on Mike’s bed, the window open next to them while they inhale from a bong and breathe out against the northerly wind that rushes wild into the room, ruffling soccer ball-patterned curtains and lifting untacked edges of band posters. TK tries not to shiver because it’s not tough to shiver. He perches so his feet are tucked warm under his legs, and watches the lilac sky swirl above them, releasing a fresh fall of creamy snow. TK sticks his hand out of the window for the flakes, as if to catch summer rain after a heatwave.

Mike chuckles into his bong hit. “You’re crazy, dude.”

“I like how it feels,” TK tells him, giggling and wanting to cry.

Thursday November 9, 2023

Carlos unclenches his jaw, takes a final sip from his iced tea, stabs the straw into a slice of lemon. “And it was Mike who…he was the one who really opened the floodgates, right?” he asks, re-clenching his jaw. He knows Mike ghosted TK after they got high and TK kissed him on Brooklyn Bridge one summer, but the extent of their friendship and addiction spiral – TK has been hazier with these details.

TK looks at Carlos carefully, peeling himself away from the blue vinyl that’s sticking to his back. “That’s right. But if it hadn’t been him, I’d have latched onto someone else.” He picks up his fork, pierces the prongs into a cut triangle of omelet, trying to summon his appetite to return. “But fair’s fair, Carlos. Tell me something I don’t know about you.”

Carlos sighs, thinks about it. His secrets are less the concrete events themselves now, and more his feelings around them. “Do you remember my mom was upset the day before the funeral because Ana was talking about a couple called Nicolás and Lori?”

TK takes a second to think back. There was so much going on in those raw first days after Gabriel was shot. A cloudy memory sharpens. They were all in the kitchen – Owen was there, and Carlos’ sisters. Carlos’ oldest sister seemed to light a fuse by dredging up some old drama while they re-heated casserole that nobody ended up eating. But Carlos didn’t outwardly react to whatever Ana was saying, and then Andrea abruptly changed the subject. TK put Andrea’s anger and impatience down to grief, but maybe it was something else.

“Tío.” TK taps his finger to his lips, trying to recall. “Ana was calling them tío and tía.”

“Right,” Carlos says, shifting heavily in his seat. “They’re not actually related to us, but we were raised like they were. Nicolás and my dad were best friends since elementary school, and Lori is the younger sister of one of my mom’s best friends. Lori came to my baptism, met Nicolás. They fell in love at first sight. Mom always said I’d brought them together. They got married six weeks later.”

“They didn’t come to your dad’s funeral,” TK says tentatively, “And you definitely didn’t invite them to our wedding.”

“Actually…TK, that’s not–”

“So, what the hell happened?”

Mandy wafts by, asking if Carlos wants a refill of iced tea. He says yes, suddenly parched as if he hasn’t had anything to drink for hours. She takes his clean plate away. TK is still picking at his food, but then looks at Carlos with heartbreaking worry and sets his fork down. He folds his hands together, leans his elbows on the table, smushes his mouth against his thumbs.

Mandy returns with the tea a moment later. “You done, hon?” she asks.

“Yeah. Sorry. I’m full,” TK says.

She takes his plate too, frowning with concern of her own, but says no more.

Carlos gulps a swig of iced tea to push down the lump in his throat. TK is staring at him like he already knows the story. “I came out to Nicolás and Lori after Iris and I separated. They had a big fight with my parents because of it.”

“Oh no.”

“You were afraid I’d say that.”

“Yes.”

“My dad and his best friend who was like a brother to him. I destroyed them–”

“Baby, that’s not–” TK tries to cut in, but Carlos keeps going.

“–and then, about a year ago, I made it even worse.”

TK goes quiet, picking up on the charge of pain in the atmosphere. In the south-east sky, sheet lightning turns the rolling black clouds dusty yellow. The hairs on his arms rise. A primal reaction at the sight of it. TK pulls his slightly ruched sweater sleeves down to his wrists, takes Carlos’ hand, and listens.

Chapter Text

Saturday February 23, 2013

“Separated from Iris? What does that mean?” Lori asks, as though she’s never heard the word separated before in the context of a marriage.

Carlos stands on the porch, shivering with nerves or the cold. He can’t tell anymore. At his feet, wrapped in two garbage sacks for protection from the rain, is an unboxed flatscreen TV. He and Iris pointedly did not have a wedding list – didn’t ask for anything at all – but Nicolás and Lori wanted the young couple to have something special. They never got around to opening it. In the seven weeks between the wedding and Carlos running back to his parents’ house, they’d been living in Iris’ childhood home. There was already a widescreen TV downstairs, and Iris had a small set in her bedroom with a DVD player.

“I hope it’s not too late for you to return this for a refund,” Carlos says, “If it is, I’ll give you the money. Maybe we can come up with a payment plan.”

Nicolás stares down at the TV – boxed and wrapped in garbage sacks – with the same sort of horror as if Carlos were asking him to help dispose of a dead body. “But you only got married to that pretty girl on…when was it…?”

“January 3,” Carlos says.

“It’s…it’s…” Nicolás gets stuck wheeling through the timeframe.

“February 23,” Lori completes. “Mijo, it hasn’t even been two months. What are you doing? Oh, Lord. Did you cheat? Did Iris cheat?”

“No. It’s nothing like that.”

“Are you struggling to conceive?”

“Lorena, will you listen to yourself?” Nicolás snaps, “You just pointed out it’s been less than two months. Give the boy a chance.”

“Exactly,” Lori snaps back. She looks at Carlos fearfully, her eyes welling with tears as if she’s reacting to her own offspring delivering the news. “You have to give it a chance.”

“I just can’t.”

“Marriage takes work.” She loops her arm with Nicolás’. He gives her a gentle look. “But it’s so worth the effort to sustain your connection, your commitment. You made a promise before God himself to see your marriage through to death. You have a future ahead of you. You have a chance to be blessed with a family of your own. It’s not too late.”

“I’m gay.”

“I was barely twenty-two when Nicolás and I married. It was daunting, I’m not going to say it wasn’t, but it was also the best–” she cuts herself off. “I’m sorry. Did you just say–?”

“Yes. He did,” Nicolás tells her, pulling the front door ajar behind them. “Carlos, are you out of your mind?”

Carlos doesn’t know how to answer this. Being gay and being out of his mind are not mutually exclusive, and right now it’s a yes to both things.

“I’m sorry,” Carlos says, “But it’s true.”

“We have children inside – keep your voice down,” Nicolás scolds. “Carlos, this is nonsense.”

“It’s not.”

“Do your parents know?”

“Yes. I told them last year.”

Nicolás and Lori look at each other.

“They knew before you married Iris?” Lori asks.

Carlos closes his eyes. Why did he have to go into the details? “Yes. And Iris knew.”

“So, what the hell was your game?” Nicolás steps up to him, poking his chest as if to provoke an altercation. “Extortion?”

“No!” Carlos looks at the flatscreen TV he’s returning. “We never asked for any gifts.”

Nicolás shakes his head. “Unbelievable.”

“Look – hopefully you can get your money back.”

“It’s not about that.” Nicolás glares down at the sack-wrapped TV like he wants to spit on it. “Keep the TV. Sell it. You need the money more than we do.”

Carlos thinks he’d rather throw the TV in a dumpster. But he will take it back home with him. He will sell it on Craigslist and he will sensibly put the money into his savings for another rainy day.

The front door opens behind Nicolás and Lori. Sweet little Nicolás Jr., coming up four, wearing a Mickey Mouse t-shirt and pull-up jeans, stares at Carlos with wondrous brown eyes. In the shadowy hallway, newly-nine-year-old Verónica twirls around in a princessy full skirt and then does an energetic power-walk to the door to join them.

“Greetings, Earthling!” She calls up at him. Her purple princessy skirt is paired with a t-shirt that has a pink alien on it.

“Hey, Chica,” Carlos replies, warmed by her innocence and charmed by how she’s basically the coolest person in the Rivera Ruíz household.

“What’s that?” Verónica points at the wrapped TV on the ground. “Is that for us?”

Lori, as if she’s just seen the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse moseying along their perfect street, abruptly and angrily ushers the youngest two of her four children to get inside, get away from Carlos.

Nicolás Sr., to perhaps his credit, does seem a little shocked that she’s doing this. He waits until they can no longer be heard in the hallway, and then pulls the door almost-shut again.

“Listen. We wish you all the best, Carlos. But it’s extremely inappropriate that you’d come to our house and say these things. I want you to think about that.”

“Yes, sir.”

“People might not be able to choose their – you know–”

Carlos decides it’s best that he doesn’t offer the word sexuality to fill the blank. Instead, he says, “Yeah. People really can’t. I mean, I tried.”

“But it is a sin and you know it. You can choose how to conduct yourself, regarding the subject, and you can try to get help for–”

“Oh, well, I really don’t intend to rub anybody’s nose in it,” Carlos tells him assuredly, given that he can’t imagine bringing a boyfriend over for Sunday lunch.

“That’s as maybe. But to be on the safe side, it’s probably best that you don’t come around here too often, with us still having such young children.”

“Right. Okay. Understood.” He isn’t sure what the cut off is. Nicolás and Lori’s oldest girls are sixteen and twelve.

“Good. I’ll be in touch with your father. I want to make sure everyone is on the same page.” Nicolás points down at the TV. “I mean it. Sell it. Treat yourself to something. And take care.”

“Yes, sir.”

Carlos watches his honorary Tío Nicolás turn his back on him, still shaking his head as he wanders back into his house, like he can’t believe it.

Carlos bundles the TV up into his arms and carries it carefully down the porch steps. He slots it into the back of his rickety old Jeep, looking back at his father’s best friend’s house one more time before he drives away, thinking nothing could ever make him return.

Saturday October 29, 2022

On Saturday afternoon, Carlos takes a late lunch break.

He pulls up in his patrol unit a few doors down from Nicolás and Lori’s place, lest the neighbors talk about a cop knocking at their door. This leafy street of rolled lawns and large white houses with brown flagstone porches is a suburban jewel, gold and ruby and citron at this time of year. He finds himself feeling as on-edge as he did as an eighteen-year-old who had just split from his sham marriage. That was the last time he visited, groveling an apology for wasting their time, while returning their very generous gift.

It was raining that day, and it’s raining now, with the same kind of misty drizzle. He rings the doorbell and steps back, taking in the windchimes and stained-glass suncatchers that spin from the exposed porch rafters in the strong breeze.

Carlos is expecting Lori to open up – but it’s Nicolás, now with a gray beard and bifocal eyeglasses, but the same naturally severe expression that has always been disarming.

“Carlos?” Nicolás squints at him, as though he must be seeing wrong.

“Good afternoon, Tío Nicolás,” Carlos greets him, somehow both personal and formal, still in Officer Reyes-mode. “How are you today, sir?”

“What are you doing here?” Nicolás asks outright, the etiquette of hello and I’m fine is unimportant.

“I’ve come to talk to you and Lorena – and Verónica and Nicolás Jr., if they’re here,” Carlos tells him with a smile that trembles. He’d thought doing this as Officer Reyes would be easier. He was mistaken.

“Is someone in trouble?” Nicolás asks instantly, ignoring Carlos’ cheerful expression and leaping to a worst-case scenario.

“No, sir. Not at all,” Carlos assures him. “I’m here because–”

“Only Nicolás Jr. still lives with us. Verónica is away for college. Got into Tisch up in New York. Thinks she’s going to be an actress.” He shrugs. “It’s her loans.”

Carlos rolls his lips, remembering Verónica aged eight, on stage, playing the angel in a Christmas recital like she was born to smite all of Bethlehem and Austin with it. He was eighteen at the time, engaged to Iris a month, and so much less confident than Verónica. He almost wants to laugh about it.

Nicolás Sr. looks at Carlos with a curiosity that rises into outright suspicion. “So, what are you doing here out of the blue?”

Carlos corrects his posture, stands tall and proud. It’s only taken him these five months since his engagement to work up the nerve to knock on this door and say these words: “To tell you I’m getting married.”

Nicolás bursts into a hacking laugh, laying a hand over his heart as though for emphasis. “Oh yeah? Who’s the lucky girl this time?”

Carlos steels himself. He was expecting Nicolás to slam the door in his face – but he’s mostly sizing him up, and contrite. “I’m marrying a man,” Carlos says.

Nicolás shakes his head. He’s still grinning. There’s a dark flame in his eyes. “Is that right?”

“Yes, sir. So, I wanted to speak to you. Extend the olive branch. I know it would mean a lot to my father if you came to the wedding. Or, if not the wedding – maybe we could have dinner, just a casual thing.”

“No.”

“Oh. What if–”

“You show up on my doorstep out of nowhere after, what, more than ten years – expecting me and my family to come to a freakshow?”

“Nicolás!” A sharp, familiar voice pierces the darkness of the hallway. A shiver expands outwards from Carlos’ spine. “Why are you hollering at the door?”

She appears, looking exactly the same as she did the last time he saw her. Beautiful and cold as the rain. Lori steps out from behind her husband, coming all the way onto the porch, wide-eyed with what Carlos could generously call amazement, but is probably disgust.

“Carlos?”

“Hi, Lori.”

Yes, pure disgust. He sees it clearly now. Her eyes narrow.

“He’s marrying a man this time,” Nicolás says, “And we’re invited.”

“Oh, is he now?” Lori has a way of talking about people like they aren’t in front of her, but without taking her eyes off them. Carlos remembers the technique well. Some things are never lost to time. “Did Gabriel send you?” Lori asks, wrapping her long gray cardigan tightly around herself as the chill of the afternoon strikes her. She sniffs, haughty, “Or Andrea?” She says his mother’s name like she’s describing a bad smell.

“No – Mom and Dad don’t know I’m here. Look. I’m sorry. I misjudged the situation. Clearly.” Carlos’ instinct is to look down at his feet, show his shame, break eye-contact. But he doesn’t – because he’s a grown man. He’s engaged to be married. He gets to go home to receive love if he finds none here. It wasn’t like he expected love, exactly, but he had expected some progression after the last nine years. “I just…out of courtesy…I wanted to tell you to your faces, and invite you. I had to try.”

“Try?” Lori scowls at him, offended, “You and trying don’t exactly go together.”

He slouches as if reacting to a physical blow. She might as well have punched him in the stomach. “What does that mean?”

“If you think we’re going to waste our time with another one of your ridiculous marriages, you’re even more stupid than you look in that uniform, and I invite you to remove yourself from our property.”

Lori turns on her heel, long and shining black hair rising into a mane around her head as she moves against the wind and enters her house without looking back. Nicolás follows her with his eyes, awestruck, intimidated, in love with her for reasons unknown to Carlos, but the sight of it is pure. Neither of them is capable of accepting that he can experience love just as much as they can, that love for him is just as serious.

Nicolás backs into the house with less finesse, closing the door slowly as he goes. “You’re not willing to change, so we really don’t want to know. Don’t come back here. Don’t go near my children.”

Sunday October 30, 2022

The rain clears overnight, and the last Sunday of October becomes one of perfect fall weather. At the Republic Square Fall Festival, TK and Carlos walk through hazy gold light with a mellow westerly breeze gentle against their backs. Tree leaves flare amber and red. Everybody is wearing a cozy sweater like a city-wide memo went around. The smell of cinnamon and roasted chestnuts carries on the air. Harvested produce across the food stalls seems almost impossibly bright and colorful: Scarlet apples; gourds of greens, creams, oranges, mustard tones; potatoes that look like lumps of gold; pastries that gleam with drizzled sugar; quiches with lantern-yellow centers. Carlos smells pots of fresh mint, basil and chives while TK buys tiger bread and a ramekin of olives marinated in lemon and herbs.

Carlos is already holding his phone after taking a selfie with TK in front of a maple tree – a call makes him jump, buzzing in his hand while he’s contemplating a purchase of chives. The lock screen photo of him and TK at their engagement celebration appears briefly and goes dark. Up slides the word Papá. Gabriel is calling. Shit fuck.

"Oh, it’s your dad!" TK says keenly, looking over Carlos’ shoulder.

“Uh huh.” Carlos tries to sound normal, tries to smile but knows his eyes aren’t in it. He answers with an equally awkward, “Hey, Dad…What’s up?”

“What’s up?” Gabriel blares down the line, “Is that your mamá and I are about twenty feet away from you by the candy stall, and I’ve just had a very unexpected phone call from Nicolás and Lori. You visited them yesterday without telling us?”

Carlos turns around sharply enough to startle TK, who is at a craft stall now, admiring a canvas shopper even though they already own six hundred canvas shoppers. But this one has a block print of a grizzly bear on it, so.

“Everything okay?” TK asks quietly, resting a hand on Carlos’ back and listening to the broken one-side of the conversation, which is a lot of "yes" and "okay" and "uh huh" "understood" "see you in a second."

“Yeah. Fine.” Carlos grins. “My parents are here.”

TK beams, looks around for them, then spots Andrea because she’s in a bright purple sweater. The two couples start walking towards each other, meeting in the middle of the path next to the deli stall and its aromas of sundried tomato and melted mozzarella. Nobody looks particularly happy, but Andrea hugs TK. Gabriel shakes his hand.

TK instinctively reaches to put his arm around Carlos' waist while Carlos instinctively recoils from the touch, but stops himself. He’s marrying the man by his side. His father will happily watch. He doesn't have to pretend they're roommates. Yet, he can't deny to himself that he would feel more relaxed, in this particular situation, if he and the man he loves with all his heart were standing arms-length apart instead of embracing. Pushing through the inherent dread, he willfully hugs up to TK, who puts his hand on Carlos' chest as though to ground himself in the comfort of his fiancé’s heartbeat.

“Fancy seeing you here,” TK says, weirdly feeling pressure out of nowhere to break ice. “We should have let you know we were coming. We could have walked around together.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Gabriel says gruffly, glaring at Carlos, “But glad we ran into y’all because I need to speak with my son. It’s a work matter.”

“Oh. Of course,” TK says hesitantly – and if he had to play “guess the expression of a guy trying not to show his feelings”, he’d say his fiancé is scared.

“How about we browse while the boys talk shop, eh?” Andrea says, taking TK’s arm. He has no choice but to walk with her to a table that sells jewelry of silver and semi-precious gems.

Gabriel beckons Carlos. They step away themselves, leaving the vibrant network of market stalls and crossing onto the grass, which is green and springy underfoot now the rains have returned after the scorch of summer. The city feels perfect today. If Carlos hadn’t blundered ahead and seen Nicolás and Lori yesterday, he knows that he, his parents and his fiancé would have rushed to greet each other, delighted. They’d be chattily heading off somewhere for coffee. Instead, right now, Carlos is standing on tiptoe on a knife edge, and is trying to smile through it.

“I’m guessing you haven’t told TK about what you got up to yesterday?” Gabriel says, guessing correctly of course, with his usual bloodhound tenacity.

Carlos folds his arms. What he got up to makes it sound like he was going around town committing misdemeanors. Although from Nicolás and Lori’s point of view, indeed he was.

“I didn’t realize I needed your permission before talking to them,” Carlos says, “I accidentally burned a bridge. I feel like it’s time to rebuild it.”

“You’ve got no business doing anything on my behalf.” Gabriel glares at Carlos like he wants to punish him with chores and a two-week grounding.

“Well. It was for my sake as well. I loved them once. It’s Tío Nicolás and Tía Lori, Dad.”

“They are no family of yours,” Gabriel snaps, shaking his head. But it's more than just his typical dismissiveness. He means it. “And they are no friends of mine. Especially not now. Lori was on the phone yelling about being invited to a same-sex wedding. She said you had the audacity to invite their kids, like she thinks you’re trying to recruit Nicolás Jr. into a gang.”

Carlos gives Gabriel his most sarcastic smile. "Oh, sure. We're supposed to recruit three new gays a year and we're behind on our quota."

“I know how ridiculous it is,” Gabriel growls. Carlos watches his father’s whole body language change as he stands up straight, focused and lethal. He squeezes Carlos’ elbow so hard, Carlos has to hustle out of his grip. “Carlitos. There are things you don’t know.”

“Then tell me.”

Gabriel lasers him with his eyes. “Things just between me and them that you should never get involved in, mijo. You have got to let it go.”

“You’re the one who confronted them to, like, defend my honor,” Carlos says, “I just tried to pick up where you’d left off.”

Gabriel seems flushed now. He faces away from Carlos, furtive. "Well, I needed to try to fix what I could, but it all broke even worse."

Carlos aches at the choice of words. Fix. Broken. Worse. So many years thinking he was broken, and that he'd broken his family. It's only recently, since TK came rushing with a sparkle into Carlos' heart like a shooting star, that he's dared to believe he was never broken to begin with. But Carlos is the reason for a years-long falling out between two best friends, and now he’s the reason why they might never resolve things. This is something that hurts all the way down. It hurts like glass underfoot.

“Sorry,” Carlos whispers. He gives Gabriel the cow-eyes. Gabriel pinches at his forehead like he's in pain too, and mutters something barely audible.

“Just don’t go near them again,” Gabriel says.

“Fine. I won’t. But–”

The conversation ends because Gabriel starts walking away towards Andrea and TK – Andrea trying to distract a suspicious TK by holding enamel earrings up to her face and asking for his opinion.

“We’ll leave you boys in peace to enjoy the festival,” Gabriel says, putting his arm around Andrea. “But it’s good to have seen you.”

“You too, Dad.” Carlos nods at him, then kisses Andrea’s cheek, whispering perdóname in her ear.

TK watches her rub Carlos’ shoulder and give him an extra squeeze before she and Gabriel head back the way they came.

“Ongoing issue,” Carlos says, because it’s not a lie-lie. “Nothing you need to worry about.” Also true.

He buys TK the grizzly bear canvas shopper.

Thursday November 9, 2023

“Holy shit.” TK has his head in his hands. Second-hand fury, palpable. Carlos appreciates it. “That’s why that family didn’t come to the wedding or the funeral?”

“They hate me,” Carlos affirms confidently, “They absolutely hate me.”

“Because you’re gay.”

“It’s that simple and that complicated. And also…well, there’s something else, which–”

“I remember now!” TK interrupts, then immediately rage-sips from his iced tea. “One time we were having dinner with your parents. Gabriel mentioned a friend he hadn’t seen in years. He said they’d fallen out because of something he’d done. But then you came back from the bathroom, and he shut himself up. Why didn’t either of you just tell me the truth?”

Carlos winces. “Well, back then I still hadn’t told you about Iris and me. I was building up to it, at that point. When they rejected me on the doorstep, though, it kind of knocked my confidence when it came to…uh–”

“Facing the past?” TK finishes.

“Yeah. Exactly,” Carlos says, embarrassed and gloomy and not looking TK in the eye. “And I guess my dad was being truthful, in some way. I mean, he blamed himself. Anyway, I think my mom and Lori had issues of their own over the years, so it’s like I finally gave Lori a reason to sever the ties. Then…well…” There’s more he wants to say about it, but he can’t. He clears his throat. Takes another sip of iced tea. Condensation wets his glass, rain clicks against the window, his palms are sweaty. TK’s eyes are glazed, like he’s so sad for Carlos he could cry. It’s as though a film of water coats everything, just enough to create a sensation of drowning that Carlos has learned to pretend he does not feel. “When I was young, I always thought I was a bad person who did bad things. But then, I kind of grew out of it and felt happier about being gay. I met you. I felt better. And I felt angry – because of all the time I wasted being miserable, when it would have been okay for me to be happy when I was a kid. I was angry with my family. But I thought I was good.”

“You are good.”

“Lately, it’s been coming back. Those feelings – that I’m a bad person. TK, back in September I–”

But TK reaches for Carlos across the table and plants his hands on his forearms, pinning him, begging him. “Take it from someone who was a bad person and did do bad things – on purpose. I understand. But you’re wrong.”

“I nearly killed Gutiérrez,” Carlos says too loudly.

“I nearly killed myself,” TK counters like they’re in competition. “I used to think of being bad as, like, badass. It was cool. Apart from, I wasn’t. I spent a lot of time crying in my room, especially if I was confronted about anything.”

Carlos shakes his head. “Your overdose was different. That was heartbreak.”

“I’m not just talking about my overdose,” TK says, “But, actually, I think we should.”

Chapter Text

Tuesday April 26, 2022

TK hasn't been to his dad's place for a while. When he wanders into the driveway, he flashes back to his teenhood on the Hudson Street sidewalk, schlepping towards Owen's brown brick post-war apartment building, tucked between two steely office blocks. The elevator broke every other week, and he sometimes experiences a phantom ache in his thighs, remembering the climb to the top floor on those narrow stairs. He can smell cat litter and Madras curry and wood polish when he thinks back. He both misses those days and doesn’t.

TK rings the doorbell. Buttercup barks twice. Heavy paws thump behind the door before Owen opens up and grins. His dad being pleased to see him is too much. TK looks down, bites his lip.

"TK?" Owen reaches for his son’s shoulder, squeezes. He'd give him a hug, TK thinks, but Buttercup is snuffling between them and turning in circles in an attempt to smell everything at once.

"Sorry. Hey. I'm fine," TK says, blinking away the silver glint of tears in his eyes. "If I'm disturbing you, we can catch up another–"

"No, don't go," Owen says gently, "Now’s perfect. Mateo isn’t home. Come in. Buttercup, let TK through."

Owen leads TK into the kitchen and physically sits him at the breakfast bar. "I'm going to make you a spring smoothie, and then you're going to tell me what's up. Is it about your mom? Or did you and Carlos have a fight?"

"I wish," TK says.

"What does that mean?"

"A fight is simple. This is way more complicated." TK shakes his head. A fight would also mean make-up-sex later, so there are certain pros. "And what is a spring smoothie?"

"Spinach, apples, almond milk, basil, chicory, arugula, fenugreek, and bananas of course."

"Of course."

"Don't knock it until you try it." Owen smiles. "Talk to me."

TK watches his father practically dance around the kitchen gathering ingredients – and it rocks him, because no matter what’s going on in his life, Owen is always there to make smoothies and talk. He thinks of himself coming out at fourteen. Gay bashed behind the bleachers at fifteen. An addict at seventeen. At twenty-six, relapsing after a failed marriage proposal. Overdosing on his apartment floor. But within all of it – for his whole life – love knelt by his side in the form of his recently deceased mom and his dad whose lung cells were gnarled into cancer by 9/11 grit.

TK drags at the sleeves of his hoodie so his hands are covered. He rubs his face, hides himself. "Last night, I was in a bad way."

“After that call?”

“Yeah.”

“I thought you were. Stop rubbing your face. Why didn’t you talk to me?”

“I don’t know.” TK doesn’t stop rubbing at his face. “Carlos called Cooper, so Cooper came over and we talked it out. But when Carlos got home, I told him about, um–” deep breaths. Deep, steady. “I admitted I almost relapsed the day after mom died.”

Owen stills, hugging two green, shiny apples in his hands like they’re precious. “I didn’t realize you’d kept that from him. Did he react badly?”

“No. But I kind of freaked out. Kind of cried all over him.”

Owen smiles knowingly, sets the apples down and picks up a paring knife. “I’m familiar with your style.”

“Yeah. Well. At the risk of crying all over you and Buttercup right now, I keep thinking about you.”

"Me?" Owen asks, flattered but confused.

"And mom. And everything I put you through."

Owen looks at him seriously, opening a drawer to retrieve a second paring knife that matches one he already holds. He places it onto a thick wooden chopping board next to the two green apples and pushes it across the breakfast bar towards TK. "Wash your hands. Help me make this."

TK gets up, doing what he's told without question, smiling to himself because he's a paramedic and doesn't need a reminder to wash his hands before food prep, but they've gone back in time to his childhood, when Owen would tell him important things about life while engaging him in something practical.

When TK was twelve, Owen visited Gwyn and TK’s new apartment on Canal Street to help strip orange floral wallpaper from TK's room. While working away at the tired old flowers, which an elderly lady had once loved, Owen gave TK the sex talk. It was hetero in focus, but Owen was subtly nudging TK to tell him to stop if he wanted, if it didn't apply to him, or if he needed to discuss it in a different way.

TK shunted his wallpaper scraper up and down to remove a patch with particularly firm adhesive, shearing a little plaster away.

"Anyway, if there's anything you need to know, or just want to know – if you're ever curious or upset or you have feelings for someone, I'll always want to talk to you about all of it. You don't need to be worried or shy."

"Okay," TK said, "Can I have some lemonade now?"

When TK cores the first apple, his hands begin to shake. He needs to put the knife down. "Dad."

"TK."

"I'm sorry. I'm just so sorry."

Owen looks at his tearful son understandingly. He takes the apple from him, finishes slicing it, and waits for TK to carry on.

“I was thinking about when you and mom helped me through withdrawal in your old apartment. I was so sure I wasn’t going to relapse. But I did.”

“I know.”

“And then when I got clean again the next year, I said the same thing.”

“I know.”

“And when I overdosed – when Alex left me. I told you I wasn’t trying to kill myself.”

Owen holds a miniature Kilner jar of powdered fenugreek in his hand. Squeezes it.

“But I was,” TK tells him, shaking hard at the admission as if going into shock.

Owen gently places the jar down, walks around the breakfast bar, and pulls his son into his arms.

Friday April 3, 2020

It feels incredible to be drunk, at first, like he's full of an amber light. He could keep the whole city warm on this chilly spring day. The problem, though, is the same as always: He tells himself that a few drinks will be enough; he won’t need to get high by the preferred methods. But once those few drinks are in his bloodstream, the idea of pills seems fantastic. This has always been true whether or not he's happy and partying or miserable and alone. Today, he is more alone than he's ever been. Straight bourbon isn't cutting it.

Keiran 'Spike' Spencer sells him the Oxy. TK hasn't contacted him since he started dating Alex. Spike isn't pleased to see him.

"People like you give me hives," Spike seethes, handing over the green tube with the tight white cap. The pills rattle inside when it hits TK's palm. A shiver fizzes cold up his spine.

“A tube,” TK says, “Fancy. How’d you gank these?”

Spike scowls, offended. “Actually, it was a fair exchange.”

“Whatever.” TK glares at him. Tall, skinny Spike with his blond buzzcut and piercing blue eyes – overgrown emo scene kid dressed in black and wearing his grandma’s pearls, his faded black denim jacket covered in pins, including a pink triangle and a cartoonish jizzing dick. Dan introduced them. They shared a soft pretzel and blew each other in the bathrooms of Good Judy, one screaming-fun adventure to Brooklyn. From there, they bonded in the way only a drug dealer and a client can.

Spike isn’t done, even as he pockets TK’s cash. “Urh. Soon as you get a boyfriend, you ditch your true friends – and then what happens? You come crawling back expecting attention and sympathy the second your ass is dumped."

"He was my soulmate," TK whispers.

"Only you could have a soulmate that thinks you're a loser, Strand."

TK wobbles back to his apartment. What would usually be a ten-minute walk between Soho and Chinatown takes double that. When he's finally home, for some reason that he'll never understand, he starts to clean up. He sponges off a couple of dishes in the sink and stacks them on the drying rack. He throws refrigerated leftovers into the trash and ties up the sack. He wipes down the bathroom basin, blots a few small dots of toothpaste splatter from the mirror. Then he sits on the cold wooden floor of his living room, knocks back a handful of pills like a sambuca shot, and chases them with bourbon.

He lies down and he dies.

TK isn't sure how long he's dead for. It's five minutes and it's forever. It's dark and it's cold. But it's never completely silent. There's traffic horns. Loud bangs. Someone is yelling his name. His heartbeat booms in his ears, thumping and arrhythmic – and around it, a gushing sound like storm waves.

"TK!"

He opens his eyes. The hard plastic muzzle of a disposable resuscitator holds firm over his face. Air pumps into his lungs. He gulps it. His stomach balloons. He reflexively turns onto his side and vomits.

"Dad–" Owen is here. Owen knew. "Dad, I'm so sorry, Dad." TK shatters, sobbing into his father's chest, says sorry for the hundredth-thousandth time in his stupid fucking life. Owen hugs him close, frustrated and protective when a paramedic comes near. He’s a wolf with a cub.

"Please don't make me go to hospital. Please, please." TK, wolflike, paws and claws at his father's work shirt. He knows the doctors will come loaded with questions. He won't be able to avoid psychiatric evaluation.

Owen rocks TK and addresses the team that swarms around them. "He stays with me."

"But, Cap–"

"Evans, I mean it. He stays with me. I'll take care of this." Owen is insistent, using and abusing his captain privilege to call the shots. Anybody else would be hospitalized. Damn it, Owen would drive them there himself if anybody else made a fuss and resisted.

"Don't tell Mom," TK cries.

This gets a laugh out of Owen. "You think I can keep this from her?" He kisses TK's hair and slaps his shoulder. "I'm only so powerful, son."

By nightfall, TK has showered, eaten a salty meal, and sipped so much green tea his bladder feels like an antioxidant water balloon. He’s starting to feel more like himself after the ugliest afternoon hangover of his life.

"I'm going to take him out for some fresh air," Owen says to Gwyn. “I'll tell him then."

TK can hear them from where he lies on Owen's couch with a gray and white crochet blanket over his legs. They're in the kitchen, whispering by the fridge that is decorated with photos of TK between the ages of newborn and now, held in place with black magnetic letters.

TK levers himself up from the couch, sees Gwyn wiping her eyes with a tissue and nodding. He doesn't feel like going for a walk, but he's in no position to argue. Owen helps thread his arms into his gray hoodie. They wander together to the banks of the river, where they look across at Brooklyn Bridge and Manhattan Bridge either side of them, lit up and stretching bright and pretty over the water.

Owen's soft side shears away once they sit down. He's as flinty as TK thinks he deserves.

"Where'd you get the pills?"

"Come on, Dad," TK says as if to sneer at Owen's naivety. "There's an opioid epidemic. You can throw a stick and hit ten guys selling Oxys." This is true without being true. It's probably best not to give Owen an actual name. There's something in TK that still considers Spike to be a friend.

Overhead, a helicopter's blades puncture the air. Beyond, below, the black water sloshes into the bank. Traffic passes slow over the bridges. There are sirens, always. The lights dotted between pillars of darkness suddenly seem overwhelming, ablaze. Owen wants to know if this was TK's first relapse since 2017. Was he trying to kill himself? TK answers Yes and No, but really it's No and Yes. Or maybe not yes. Maybe the question of whether to live or die was too complicated, in the moment that his heart broke.

"He's in love with somebody else," TK says, watching Owen process it. Owen, congratulations!, had been correct about Alex all along. Owen had literally used the phrase “He's just not that into you,” when talking to TK about Alex.

"That's why he's been acting weird." TK kind of wants to laugh at what he’s about to admit. "A spin cycle instructor named Mitchell." The name feels rubbery and sticky in his mouth, like he's chewing wet clay.

Owen brushes his hand over TK’s hair, pats his back. Everything hurts except this moment of affection. His gut flips, knowing that affection in the romantic sense is what he'll never have again. Alex doesn't want TK, but TK doesn't want anyone else except Alex.

He has to stop thinking about it.

"Are you going to have to report this now?" he asks, suddenly icy with fear – but it’s a fresh and identifiable feeling.

Owen is shocked by the question, as if it's the dumbest thing TK has ever said. "We used the battering ram. The whole crew was there."

TK sees it all unfolding. A suspension. The rumor mill. He'll be viewed as a liability.

"I'll report it as an accidental overdose. That'll satisfy them."

TK is lead-heavy with guilt, like he’d buckle if he tried to stand and would end up flat on his back again, gasping for breath. He's backed his dad into a corner with this shit. But if he misses a long stretch of work, all he'll want to do is get high. He knows it. Owen knows it.

"But it won't satisfy me," Owen huffs, "It is tough love from now on."

TK picks at his face, pulls at his hair, wants to rip into his skin like he used to when his dad laid down the law.

Therapy twice a week – with a therapist that Owen picks – is the first order of business. TK also has to pack his stuff because they're getting out of town, which is weird.

"Dad, please, I am not in the mood for a vacation." TK imagines himself surly in Montauk. Surly looking at lighthouses. Surly taking photos of basking seals.

Something in Owen’s eyes speaks of hope and fear and something different. "I'm not talking about a vacation."

"Then what?"

"You remember hearing about Station 126 in Austin?"

"Yeah. It was destroyed."

"No, the station still stands. But it stands empty."

"I meant destroyed, like, almost the whole crew were killed."

"That's right." Owen rubs his hand up and down TK’s spine, turning soft with him. "I've been approached by the Department of Justice and the Deputy Chief from Austin. They want me to build the 126 up again, virtually from scratch." Owen rests his hand gently on TK's neck. "I could do with the company, and you need out of this city."

"Austin?"

"Yes.

"Austin? Texas? Austin?"

"TK."

"What about Mom?"

"I already spoke with her in length. She knows I want you with me."

"That's why she was crying?"

"Well, that – and you nearly died." Owen’s tone is almost jokey. It occurs to TK just how absurd he’s been as a person for most of his life.

“God. I bet if you had your time again, you wouldn’t have had a kid.”

“Stop. There’s a lot I’d have done differently with you, but I’d always have had you.”

“I’m a nightmare you weren’t prepared for,” TK scoffs at himself.

“Stop,” Owen demands – tough, a fire captain, his boss, his dad. “Nothing prepares you for fatherhood.”

TK chews on the knuckle of his forefinger, nervous and numbing, wanting desperately to flinch at the sharp edge of his teeth so he knows he can still react to something excruciating. “You really want your adult son to go with you?”

“I didn’t stop being your dad the day you turned eighteen. You didn’t stop being my boy.” Owen pulls TK’s finger away from his mouth. “I will always want you near me.”

TK sniffs a panicky breath and starts to break down. "And Mom’s okay with me going? She wants me gone?"

The sight of TK crying so sadly chokes Owen up. "She wants you to be happy and alive, baby. That is all either of us want. And you'll still see her a lot. She'll visit. You'll visit. Supervised like you're six."

TK chuckles a little through his tears. "Tough love."

"Yep."

"I'm scared," he whispers.

"So am I."

Tuesday April 26, 2022

The half-sliced apples, unpeeled bananas and mini Kilner jars of fenugreek are discarded messily on the breakfast bar. It wasn’t a spring smoothie that TK needed, and he knows Owen knows it – he just had to stick a paring knife into a Granny Smith and let himself spill into an emotional breakdown.

“I miss mom so much.”

“I know. Me too.” Owen gently rests his chin on the crown of TK’s head, Buttercup whines and paws at TK’s knee. He reaches down and strokes a floppy ear.

The loss of Gwyn had been so sudden, the shock of it has lingered. Both TK and Owen are still shivering, still trying to regain focus and make any sense of the sheer randomness of it: To step into a street like normal, but never make it to the other side. “She loved you more than anything,” Owen whispers, “From the moment she saw you. And I did too. Being loved is the first thing that ever happened to you. How about that?”

TK folds harder into Owen and howls.

“Well….” Owen speaks over the noise, “I didn’t think I’d have you sobbing into my chest this afternoon. But here you are anyway.” Owen sounds so matter-of-fact, hugging him tight and stroking his hair.

“I’m just so sorry,” TK groans after a minute, exhausted from his unexpected massive cry.

“Stop being sorry.”

“You found me dead.”

“I found you when I could save you.”

TK leans back, out of Owen’s arms, gazes up at him red-eyed and wet and blotchy. “When I was a teenager, how did you deal with me? I was such a nightmare. I was a nightmare right up until we moved to Austin. I’m still a nightmare now, coming here and doing this.”

“TK. For the thousandth time, you are not a nightmare. Especially not now. You couldn’t make me any prouder.” Owen squishes TK’s cheeks, but observes him seriously, peering into the clear green eyes he inherited from his mother, and then lets him go.

TK picks at a slice of apple before abruptly eating it, craving the sugar.

Owen does the same – reaches for an apple slice. They’ll share it like this, father and son eating the whole thing between them. The smoothie is long abandoned.

TK runs his tongue over his teeth, dislodges apple from between his molars, and thinks long and hard.

Thursday December 8, 2016

The prick of the needle frightens him every time he does it. He’s heard friends say that they’re addicted to that little spike of pain and the adrenaline it brings in itself, but he can’t seem to get used to the moment before the high. Still, neither can he go back. The high from snorting is nothing compared to injecting now, and as much as he wishes he’d never taken it further than rolling up George Washington’s face and pressing the paper tube to his nostril by way of an entry point, he supposes needles were an inevitability, and it’s just the way it is.

Some days are clearer than others – he can see things almost normally, like he used to. Today, tightening the rubber bungee around his right bicep, he realizes how badly his muscles have atrophied and the condition of his skin has deteriorated. It wasn’t obvious to him yesterday. He was going up and down steps in an apartment block after a hoarder knocked her electric heater into a towering stack of Daily Stars, and he was aching and shaking by the end of it, wondering why the hell his legs seemed so weak and why his turnout gear was looser on his body than it’s ever been.

Today, somehow, somewhere, he has lost his shoes. The soles of his feet are zinging, bleeding.

On her knees beside him, on a mattress in a condemned basement apartment, is a girl called Sophie. He’s worried she’s only in her late teens, though looks older and rumpled with pockmarks on her cheeks and open sores on her forehead, nose and bottom lip. She smiles at him, stretching the sore on her lip so it blooms crimson. Her dark eyes swim in her head. She siphons the syrupy gold heroin out of a soup spoon and into the syringe.

“Promise you won’t use the needle after me,” TK says while peeking curiously at his injured feet.

“I went to the exchange,” she tells him, “I’ve got four brand new.”

Sophie slaps hard at the underside of TK’s right elbow, getting his vein good and pronounced. TK feels a little sick when he looks at it – a green and purple mass with bubbly burst vessels like worm casts surrounding. Sophie herself has an abscess now that she keeps injecting into, like a nightmarish natural cannula.

Into TK the needle travels, with some difficulty on Sophie’s part. She has to waggle it to hit the vein good and proper. TK cries out but she giggles and then there’s a tightening in his groin and in his chest. He convulses for a moment before the release of the high and flops back onto the mattress, breathing a lungful of wonderful oxygen. He’s wandering an ancient forest and not lying in a dirty drug den that reeks of body odor and various human spills and oil and gunge.

Sophie is on top of him a second later – a few seconds – a minute – time is unknown. But she’s on top of him and grinding into him and kissing him. He kisses her back for the sole reason that he’s high out of his mind. Somehow, he has the wherewithal to pull away, grimacing. Girl-faces are very soft compared to boy-faces. Kissing her makes him feel squirmy and wrong inside.

The warm press of Sophie’s body on this freezing day vanishes from him – suddenly gone, like she popped and became air. Within the air is high-pitched screaming.

“Sophie?” he feels like he’s calling to her, but it’s barely a whisper.

“Get away from him!” That sounded a lot like Owen.

TK opens an eye. He isn’t sure which one. Maybe his right eye. It’s like he’s looking through frosted glass at a man’s silhouette high above. Far away. TK might be raising his left arm to reach up, he isn’t sure. He doesn’t know that Owen burst through the door and lifted Sophie off him, manhandling her, frankly. He doesn’t know that Owen removed the needle from his arm. Doesn’t know how the hell Owen found him; that Owen tracked down Dan and made all sorts of threats unless Dan gave him addresses for anywhere TK might be.

“I think he goes to Atlantic Heights lately,” Dan told Owen through tears. Owen had yelled in his face, saying he’d found heroin in TK’s bunk at the firehouse. “He’s talked about it. People fuck around over there because the whole place is empty. I’ve told him not to go, believe me. I told him only to get high with friends. He doesn’t listen anymore.”

Images, then, and strange sensations – heavy and sharp, bone-cracking pain. That scene in Terminator when the titanium alloy endoskeleton is crushed in the hydraulic press. But he’s not in a hydraulic press, he’s in his dad’s arms, hurting as he’s hauled to his knees.

“Get up! Get up!” Owen has the bark of a rottweiler this afternoon. Or maybe there is a dog barking somewhere? There’s usually a dog barking in the building. A dog barking ‘get up, get up!’

“God, you’ve had too much.” Owen’s hands are freezing and kind of amazing, patting TK’s sweaty brow, but his skin is all-over sore.

“Hi, Dad,” TK says out loud, like talking in his sleep, remembering saying ‘hi, dad’ when he ran towards Owen at Little League so many years ago.

“Don’t you hi, dad me like we’ve met for coffee!” says Rottweiler Owen. “Put your arm around me.”

“No.”

“Put your fucking arm around me. Where are your shoes? Jesus, TK…”

TK doesn’t comply, so now he’s somersaulting, upside down. It makes him hiccup and giggle. His stomach is sore, but this is exciting. The euphoria is pulsing in and out. He hasn’t felt this before with heroin. But he hasn’t had too much before. It takes some seconds to register that Owen has him in a fireman’s lift and is carrying him, staggering under his weight despite the weight loss. Last time Owen held TK aloft like this he was a kid, a pre-teen. They were playing around in the park.

Out in the winter sunlight, TK gets a headache in his eyes and in his jaw, like he’s on a descending flight and he’s hit by the swing in pressure. He screws his eyes shut, pawing at Owen’s back as he’s carried in full view of anyone stopping to watch.

TK throws up on himself in Owen’s truck. It’s just a little – he hasn’t eaten since…since…there was an apple. Green apple. And a banana and a plain toasted bagel. This morning.

The traffic is bad this afternoon, they’re trapped for a while in gridlock. Owen opens his window to let in freezing air that dissipates the foul, acidic smell. When TK has to throw up again, Owen opens the passenger window all the way down and forcibly pushes TK’s head outside. They hear an onlooker say something like, “That’s nasty, buddy!”

“Where are we?” TK asks, sitting back in his seat, gasping. If this question is coming from a place of coherence or incoherence, it’s impossible to say. Owen could answer “Fifth Avenue”, or “The moon,” and both would ring true.

Owen wipes around TK’s mouth with a brown napkin saved from Black Seed Bagels. “We’re nearly at my place.”

“Take me home.”

“I am.”

“Take me home.”

“I am, TK. I am.”

Owen won’t call Gwyn until 8 p.m., when he’s sure she’ll have finished at the office for the day. She’s working a complex yet strikingly dull white-collar crime case. He and TK are well aware she’s been up to her neck in manilla files and team meetings for the past few weeks. Before she arrives, Owen puts TK in a warm bath and sits on a plastic foldaway stool, monitoring him like he’s four years old, but he makes TK do the work of washing himself with a flannel.

“Please, Dad,” TK cries, “Please, Dad!” his mouth is wide open, tears rolling straight inside like they’re magnetized. He doesn’t elaborate on what he’s pleading for.

When TK is done in the bath, Owen finds a pair of his own boxers, a white t-shirt, heather gray sweatpants and an FDNY sweatshirt. He helps TK dress into everything except the sweatpants, because he needs to resume cleaning his wounded feet, having wiped them with antiseptic tissues and applied waterproof Band Aids for a start.

TK sits on the stool and Owen on the marbled floor tiles, with TK’s feet bleeding into his lap. He uses tweezers and a flashlight to assist his search for broken glass within the red and mangled mess that used to be his son’s small, adorable feet he’d put tiny socks and shoes on.

"Jesus, TK. I used to help you buckle your summer sandals,” Owen says, a devastated shake in his usually confident voice. “You look like you’ve been chewed up, spat out and stepped on.”

He sticks a fresh Band Aid over the pad of TK’s right foot, which is even more of a disaster than the left. Did he clamber shoeless over a jagged stone wall and then get tangled in barbed wire? The answer could be yes, because he can’t remember.

Owen cups TK’s left heel in his palm, moving the flashlight over it again, inspecting close. “God. I see another piece of glass,” he sighs, “You’ve stepped in who-knows-what. When’s your last tetanus shot?”

TK, who can barely recall his own name, wails at his dad to take a chill pill, and he’s so ridiculous it actually makes Owen laugh.

“There’s my boy,” he says, “You’re going to be okay.”

Owen finishes patching up TK’s feet quietly, then helps him hobble across the living space to his bedroom. TK hasn’t spent the night here since he moved into his own rented apartment. The space is pretty much the same it’s been since his late-teens.

Off-white walls are decorated with posters of Nirvana, Death Cab, Eminem, Muse, and shirtless Brad Pitt.

A bright yellow comforter covers the bed in the corner, the foot of which meets the window. TK has often sat at the end of this bed, staring at the street below, people watching, alone but not lonely.

The pinewood desk is long-free of schoolwork, neat now with a mug from the Guggenheim that is full of colorful pens, and a few old books about photography, human biology, twentieth-century American literature, with a battered copy of The Catcher in the Rye on top.

A rug of muted rainbow squares remains on the hardwood floor.

And here is his shelf of well-squeezed plushies.

Mr. Bear the polar bear, missing an eye.

Rory the lion whose mane he trimmed short with the kitchen scissors.

Montgomery ‘Monty’ Morgan the moose, a gift from Aunt Elinor, who moved to Montreal to work at a research station when TK was eight. She mailed the silky-soft, sweet-faced moose with floppy antlers to Gwyn – a lifelong lover of perplexingly cute giant creatures like moose, manatees, walrus, sloths. Gwyn named him Montgomery ‘Monty’ Morgan and gave him to TK; TK took Monty Morgan with him to Owen’s because he helped with his homesickness when he was away from her.

TK grabs Monty Morgan for something to press against his sore stomach before he crashes onto his old bed, his face twisting. He’s felt so unwell since he had to stand up again. To Owen, his son could be the colicy baby he once was, the way he’d thrash and his face would contort with pain. The way his tongue would jut in and out of his mouth. His mouth is dark red today. The skin around his lips blotchy as if zits lie below the surface, ready to erupt. His tongue is cracked like sun-dried earth, and earthish in tone, just a hint of its former pinkness. Slowly – yet it’s strikingly apparent – TK lies before his father and drains to gray.

Gwyn arrives at 8:30 p.m on the dot. She made it here as fast she could, trekking across town in gridlock traffic. She jumped out the cab on Madison and ran the rest of the way in her smart black brogues and pantsuit, over-heating in her faux fur coat while simultaneously experiencing severe Raynaud’s in her toes. TK is awake and sucking on a cherry Twizzler when she enters. He doesn’t know why she shuffles into his room in a pair of Owen’s woolen boot socks. Her dark hair is messy around her head. Lines of mascara spider-leg down to her cheekbones.

She comes bearing the gift of hot chamomile tea but the scent makes TK gag, so she takes the mug back for herself. TK panic-sucks on his Twizzler. He only wants fruit candy or something salty and crunchy.

Gwyn hugs the mug of tea with both hands and holds it against her chest, as if to warm her core. She sits down on the end of TK’s bed, looking at the pretty Christmas lights that surround apartment windows across the street. “Your dad and I have been talking,” she says, glancing now to the doorway, where Owen leans wearily against the frame. “I’m still paying off the St. Maximilian rehab, so–”

TK stops chewing his Twizzler. His eyes glaze. He does a quick calculation in his screaming brain. He was at St. Maximilian February 2014. How much did the fucker cost if a Manhattan lawyer is still indebted? How badly has he harmed the people who love him most?

“You’re staying here,” Owen says, “We’re going to look after you and get you through this. We’re both taking time off work. You’ll never be alone, not for one second.”

“Cold turkey,” TK gristles and starts to cry. He doesn’t have the energy to be terrified. All he can do is pathetically whimper into a bag of candy.

“I’ve locked your window. I have locked the front door and my bedroom door. I have removed every sharp object and medication I could find. You are not leaving here until you’re well, and then your mom or I, or both of us, will take you to the Y. TK, you will do ninety meetings in ninety days. It did so well for you last year.”

TK nods his agreement, feels like he’s signing his life away.

Friday 9 December, 2016

At midnight he’s curled up in a ball, hugging into his mom’s abdomen, pleading for relief. At 8 a.m., Owen is sitting behind him in bed, holding him as he writhes with cramps. Within half an hour, he’s in the bathroom on the toilet with a bucket on his lap. Gwyn is changing his bright yellow comforter for one with jungle animals. He hasn’t had the jungle comforter on the bed in years – never knew Owen kept it. When he crawls back into the room he collapses crying when he sees it, lies down on his muted rainbow rug wishing he’d die.

TK wakes up on the floor with a pillow under his head and the jungle animal comforter over him. He can hear Owen and Gwyn arguing in the kitchen. They sound frantic. He finds the strength from somewhere to drag himself along the floor so he can see into the living room, reaching the door as Gwyn strides out from the kitchen and becomes visible, with Owen in pursuit. She collapses her face into her hands, turns around into Owen’s embrace. He watches his mom cry on his dad’s shoulder, his dad kissing her hair. Out in the street, a series of emergency response vehicles hurtle by, their sirens a piercing scream.

Saturday December 10, 2016

TK Strand is twenty-three years old today. He has spent his birthday begging his parents to release him from the apartment because he just needs one more hit. When they wouldn’t answer him, he called them cunts, he called them useless, repeated fifty times that they didn’t love him and only ever loved themselves. His crying was relentless in the morning. He vomited so violently he got a nosebleed. A feverish dream about being chased in the dark had him whining and begging for forgiveness. Twenty-three years old, he pisses the bed. It’s not much, and the sheets are already soaked with sweat, but still. Owen puts him in the bath again. Gwyn changes the sheets again. Dark blue with cartoons of little planet Saturns and crescent moons and red rocket ships.

Calmer in the late afternoon. Everyone, exhausted. TK is torpid on the couch with his bandaged feet in Owen’s lap. An episode of The Golden Girls is on TV. Gwyn kneels on the floor by TK’s side, presenting a plate that displays a chocolate muffin with one pink candle in the center, lit for his wishes.

“Oh, wow!” Owen says with enthusiasm, as if he’s looking at a magnificent three-tier cake, covered in candy flowers and elaborate icing. In fairness, a muffin with a birthday candle aglow is the nicest thing the three of them have experienced for a couple of days.

Gwyn takes a deep breath, looks into TK’s bloodshot eyes. In a broken voice, she begins to sing HaYom Yom Huledet, making it only a short way through before she has to stop. “Do you want me to blow your candle out for you, honey?” she asks tearfully.

TK nods, not knowing that her wish is for him, and that it will come true – although not straight away. A few years will need to pass. He will need to move far away from Gwyn, to Texas, and begin a new life with Owen, reinstating a station called the 126. But Gwyn’s wish for TK will come true, and she will recognize the wish when she sees it in human form walking towards her with a nervous smile: A beautiful, muscular man with his large hand holding her son’s.

“Mom,” TK will say, gesturing to the wish, “I’d like you to meet my boyfriend, Carlos.”

The wish called Carlos will let go of TK and try to shake Gwyn’s hand, but she will give him a hug.

Tuesday April 26, 2022

There’s a firm knock at the door when TK is at the kitchen sink, sponging Buttercup’s drool from his jeans. He ignores it.

Owen and Buttercup get up and answer to whoever.

He’s feeling better, although still a little shaky. It’s not often that the event of his 2020 overdose gets to him so badly these days. It’s disturbing that he’s been so triggered now.

“Babe?”

TK startles, whips around. His boyfriend is standing in front of him with Owen patting his shoulder.

“I took the liberty of calling Carlos while you went to wash your face,” Owen says, “Thought maybe he should come and pick you up.”

TK gasps a breath through a flood of emotion and dives into Carlos’ arms.

“Baby,” Carlos whispers, “I should have canceled my shift. I should have stayed with you.”

“No, it’s okay. I needed to be here,” TK sniffs against Carlos’ shoulder.

Carlos cups TK’s face in his hands, sweeps his thumb across a shining tear. “I got an Uber so we wouldn’t go back in separate cars. Let me have your keys and I’ll drive us home, okay?”

TK nods, relaxing to the sensation of his jawline moving against Carlos’ palms. He loves it when Carlos drives his car. There’s something powerful and intimate about it. What’s mine is yours.

The journey to the loft consists mainly of Carlos giving TK a rundown of events from his shift, as requested by TK, to take his mind off things. By the time they’re home, TK isn’t sad anymore so much as riled and raging.

“Those homophobes!” He wrestles his way out of the hoodie and slings it over the couch.

Carlos picks the hoodie up, goes to hang it neatly on a hook. A bakery hadn’t realized they were making a wedding cake for a lesbian couple. When they found out, they ceased the cake mid-bake, but the wedding is tomorrow morning. The couple complained, so the bakery called the cops, claiming harassment and death threats.

“What are they going to do now? A bunch of lemon drizzles from Whole Foods?” TK picks up a spatula and wields it, just for something to do with his hands, then drops it onto the countertop. Carlos picks up the spatula and puts it back in the utensil pot neatly.

TK opens the fridge door so angrily the unit shakes and bottles in the door compartment clink. Unable to find anything he wants, he lets the door swing shut, abandoning it. Carlos presses the door shut properly, making sure the seal is tight. He follows TK closely as he whirls around the living space like a hot blast of wind. When he starts slowing up, Carlos puts his arms around him from behind and holds him still, kissing his neck.

TK tries to twist in Carlos’ grip but he won’t let him; starts walking him towards the bedroom.

“I’m desperate for you,” TK says, his blood hot, cheeks red, eyes pricking with tears.

“I know.”

“Make me forget everything.”

“I will.”

“I only want to think about you.”

“You will.”

Carlos stops for a breath. He smells TK – his clean hair, his evanesced cologne, his natural man scent, his salty tears that have imbued his skin, the sweat of stress, sad but still beautiful to Carlos. TK, delicious. “I never thought I’d have you. I never thought–” he can’t speak anymore. He pushes TK until they collapse onto the bed, and finally he lets TK twist around. Their kiss is voracious, agonizing, their mouths hurt. The sheets beneath them scruff and tug away from the corners Carlos had folded this morning. He likes to be messy in this way, sometimes. Sometimes, Carlos just wants to fuck because his eighteen-year-old self could not. Sometimes, TK wants to fuck like it’s a kind of revival. He wants it like a life-force. He wants the fuck to make everything feel red and orange and yellow.

When they’re naked in their north-east facing bedroom, there is enough chill in the air for Carlos to pull a thin sheet over them. He lies on top of TK, chest to chest, their centers touching. Carlos lubes up and enters him easily – TK thought he wouldn’t; he’s surely too tense? But there he is, thrusting with focus and control, holding TK’s eye, covering TK’s mouth with his hand because he likes it when TK licks and bites him. He likes the vibration of TK’s moan shivering across his palm. He does this until TK begs to be kissed. TK’s begs are basically orders, but they sound so pleading that it makes Carlos’ cock harder every time. The man beneath him is peachy, glowing, eyes wide at the intensity, mouth open, neck arching back. Carlos devours TK’s neck first, because it’s stretching so beautifully for him. He rasps his fine stubble over the thin skin, leaving it pink and TK trembling. Then he gives TK the kiss he craves.

“You’re so good,” Carlos says into it, “You can have everything you want today.”

“Just make me forget,” TK says, his voice cracking, “Just make me forget.”

Carlos strokes his hand across TK’s brow, splays his fingers into his hair. “Close your eyes.”

TK does.

“I want to make you remember something.”

TK squints up at him. That is not what he asked for.

“Close your eyes,” Carlos tells him loudly, rolling his hips. “Think about our first time. Think about when I took you home. You were so good, baby.”

“God, Carlos.”

“Remember fucking my mouth.”

“Yes.”

“And then we started off like this, but you said you’d come too soon, so we changed and sat up and I fucked you like that?”

“Uh huh.” TK whimpers, feeling his cock wet and hot at the tip. He swallows hard. “And the angle drove me fucking crazy. I was fucking screaming.” He laughs. “I wasn’t even embarrassed.”

“To slow it down I told you to ride me so I lay back and you were so fucking good.”

It works. TK forgets everything else apart from the current sex they’re having and their very first. The way he pushed himself up and down on top of Carlos. How Carlos gripped him by the wrists so he couldn’t touch himself. How Carlos’ eyes gleamed black, stared hungrily at TK’s long cock slapping against his abdomen as he bounced. How he lost it when TK came hard in a long clean splash over his stomach. How he pushed TK over onto his side and all but screamed too, in his low Carlos-tones, really having a holy moment, hollering oh my god! out of the open bedroom window until his orgasm filled TK deep inside.

The next morning, wandering dazed and achy downstairs, Carlos found a note slipped halfway into the letterbox.

“Please can you keep it down next time? This was not very neighborly of you.” Carlos read the note out loud to TK, who laughed as Carlos cringed.

“It says something on the other side of the paper,” TK said, directing Carlos with his finger to unfold the page.

Carlos cleared his throat to read aloud. “Corinthians 6:9. Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither the immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor sexual perverts, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor robbers will inherit the kingdom of God.”

“Cool.” TK nodded. “Want to do it again sometime?”

Carlos scrunched the note in his fist. “How about now?”

TK laughs into Carlos’ shoulder as Carlos flattens him, holding his head in a gentle scoop of his arm. “I remember,” he says.

He knows Carlos is close. When they’re doing it like this, Carlos likes to cover TK’s body completely with his own before he comes inside him, holding him in place.

“It’s okay. You first,” TK tells him, using his begging tone. “I want to feel it. I fucking love it.”

Carlos meets the plea – couldn’t really pull himself back from it anyway now. He rushes into TK with furious pounding thrusts to get him screaming with surprise and delight.

Spent and dreamy, Carlos collapses onto his side, falling out of TK and away from his warmth. TK takes the opportunity to push Carlos flat on his back while he finishes himself off, coming in bliss over Carlos’ clavicle and laughing because he’d missed the intended target of his face.

It’s only ten minutes, inevitably, until the concerns of the day become the topic of conversation once more, but it’s always different when they discuss things in bed while cuddled up. TK lies with Carlos’ head on his chest, clawing his hand to massage his scalp through his mussed curls. “Oh, by the way–” TK starts, then smirks, grabbing Carlos’ face and pulling him up. “When Cooper was here last night – when you left and you kissed me on the cheek – this is how I wanted to kiss you back.” He shoves his tongue into Carlos’ mouth for a rough kiss that lasts just under a minute. When he pulls away, he stays close so they can rub noses.

“That seems extreme,” Carlos starts, breathing heavily, “Even by our usual standards.” He puts a hand on himself to encourage his cock to harden for another round of forgetting everything. “Especially if we’re saying goodbye in front of people.”

“No. It’s what I should have done,” TK says definitively, leaving it at that. Case closed.

Carlos smiles in an accepting way. “I better brace myself, then.” He licks at TK’s mouth in a sloppy frenzy until TK is grimacing and laughing and pushing him, wrestling until he has Carlos on his back and TK is sitting on his thighs. They have sex again the way they did the first time, more than three years ago, only louder – so loud that all TK can think about is Carlos as he rides him, and all Carlos can think about is TK.

Thursday November 9, 2023

Carlos had listened, captivated and pained as TK spoke, not then expecting him to launch into a sex-memory. He’s emotionally confused now, sitting with a semi-erection in a diner booth. TK is a little frustrated himself and shifts in his seat, staring at Carlos with blown pupils. Between them on the table is a stainless-steel canister full of white sugar sticks and pink sachets of Sweet'n Low, all packed in so tight that TK fights to remove a sugar stick to fiddle with. This is a lifetime habit that became a particular feature of his time in rehab. He’d sit in the TV room, tipping two sugars into black coffee and retaining three other paper sticks just to squeeze and twist between his thumb and forefinger. Sometimes he'd mangle the sticks until they burst and sprayed granules over his legs or the side table. No matter. On the table he'd draw snow angels in the mess.

"Here's something we've never talked about," TK says as he finally extracts a stick and twizzles it to his satisfaction, "When's the first time you got drunk?"

The question pushes Carlos back in his seat like a physical thing. But it also makes him smile. He doesn't know why. "Sorry," he says, rubbing his face. "It's not funny at all."

"It's okay," TK says, reflecting a warm smile back at him. "Sometimes I laugh about the stupid stuff I did. Like, the sheer nerve I had–"

"Here, boys," Mandy wanders over from the counter, startling them, "Have a sucker for dessert." She presents them each with a hard, round lollipop – orange with black triangles. It takes TK a moment to realize they're pumpkin heads.

"Usually we save these for kids," she says, "But we’ve got surplus, so happy belated Halloween." She walks off, pleased with herself.

Carlos, like TK with his sugar stick, fiddles with the small lollipop in his big hands, untwisting and re-twisting the wrapper. "I was sixteen," he says, "And it was the day I came out to Michelle and Iris."

"Get out of here," TK perches in his seat, excited, nervous. Carlos doesn't like talking about those days. He's good at giving a broad overview about that time in his life, rather than the details. "Tell me everything."

"Really?"

"Really. I want to know."

Carlos takes a deep breath. He's not smiling anymore. "I got in so much trouble with my dad later on."

"Baby. Don’t tell me about later on. Take a deep breath, and start at the beginning." TK puts his hand on Carlos’ fingers that fiddle with the lollipop, once again making his husband go still.

Chapter Text

Saturday February 12, 2011

Fuck Valentine's. Fuck loveheart balloons. Fuck rows of pink and white teddy bears on Target’s shelves with ‘I Love You’ embroidered into their paws. Fuck Hallmark cards. Fuck storefront decals of lace and bows and bells. Fuck pink lemonade. Fuck strawberries dipped in chocolate. Fuck red roses. Fuck it all.

He's out for a walk with Rocky, storming through the muddy field off Hope Road, dazzled by low winter sun. There's only a couple of other people around; dog walkers in the distance. He can more or less be free.

This morning – early, he'd insisted, so they wouldn't be seen by anyone from school – he'd taken a trip to the mall with his mom to buy new sneakers, a couple of pairs of jeans and sweatpants. His feet have pretty much doubled in size overnight (or that's how he'll go on to remember it) and all his pants have become awkward-length ankle flappers.

They made a beeline for Macy's at the back of the mall, although Andrea kept getting distracted and saying things were “nice” and would “flatter” him – prompting Carlos to try on X Y Z garment that he thought was better suited to his dad or even his abuelo.

"No, Mom!" He snapped. "I only need new jeans, God!"

"Carlitos. If you don’t want me to shout at you in public – don’t blaspheme,” she warned with a crackable smile. “The sudden growth of your legs is one thing…but your torso is about to catch up." She laughed at him then, taking in his screwy proportions and coltish movements. "Oh, don't be so sensitive about it, mijo, we've all been there."

Carlos stood gangly and sixteen outside the changing rooms, holding a pair of distressed indigo jeans up to himself. "I think these ones will be too short as well," he said.

Jeans, sweatpants and sneakers were acquired after a painful try-on session, but then it meant leaving the mall, which meant again being subjected to Valentine's everything, all around. It made him nauseous with rage.

"What a stupid commercial holiday. What an obnoxious society we live in."

Andrea didn't say anything in response as she backed the car out of the parking lot. Rather, she acknowledged the sun breaking through the ashy clouds.

This afternoon, Andrea and Gabriel have met with friends for a stupid couple's Valentine's lunch gathering at Nicolás and Lori’s – Carlos only half-listened when they told him about it – and he's been left with the responsibility of taking Rocky for a walk. Fine by him. It's no chore to hang out with the sole member of the Reyes family that he can actually have a conversation with. Most importantly, Rocky is a fantastic keeper of secrets. Black mouth curs are a wise, loyal breed. He sat with great patience when Carlos snuck a bottle of tequila from his parents' liquor cabinet and slotted it into his backpack, and made no fuss when Carlos stopped under an ash tree to take a swig. It was disgusting, he hated it, but he needed something. Did it take the edge off? Maybe. How do you know where the edges are? When does the booziness kick in? He popped the top back on. They carried on walking. Now they're halfway across the field, Carlos wishing he'd asked his mom for new boots too, with his clown-sized feet stuffed into these old hikers, pinched-sore all over.

His stomp through the squeaky grass becomes more of a limp. He just wants to cry. He wants to claw his own chest open so he can breathe better, but has to settle for unzipping his parka.

"This is a total nightmare," Carlos says.

Rocky makes a boof noise as though in commiseration, like he knows that Carlos' sexual desires almost reached fever pitch yesterday at school. First, he nearly slipped a pink paper heart into the gym bag of Scott Fitzsimmons after wrestling practice. Second, his eyes accidentally fell on several dudes in the locker room while dressing. They were all startled by the thump of a bird flying into the clerestory window, so he turned around – at which point his body extremely unhelpfully gave him a substantial boner out of nowhere. He thinks some of the guys noticed but said nothing (to his face). Later, in the bathroom at home, he put a finger inside himself for the first time to see how it felt, and he closed his eyes and imagined it was Scott Fitzsimmons’s finger, Scott Fitzsimmons’s dick. He came so hard he made a noise maybe his mom could have heard in the kitchen.

He tries not to think about it. He focuses on the sharp taste of tequila on his tongue.

Rocky's sweet brown ears prick up. His pace slows, then quickens, like he’s seen a rabbit – Carlos watches for brown fuzz hopping in the grass, but there’s nothing. Nothing, until gray clouds cover the sun and the human-and-dog silhouettes in the distance develop features. The people – two women – are calling out excitedly. Michelle and Iris Blake, in matching black puffer vests over striped sweaters and skinny jeans tucked into rubber boots. Michelle’s are olive and Iris’ are magenta. Rocky starts to run towards Molly, the Blake family’s German Shepherd, who bounds towards him with equal dog-excitement.

"Hi, Carlos!" Iris shouts, swooping her arm into a big wave.

Carlos seethes through the pain in his feet, picks up his pace, barrels over to them. He's rose-cheeked from the cold and sweating as though feverish. He can't smile back. Can't wave. His fists are clenched and buried deep inside the quilted pockets of his coat.

Closer, their happy faces fall. Michelle in particular frowns with concern at the embattled boy who seems to be forcing himself towards them. She calls Molly to heel, but Molly doesn't come, absorbed in play with Rocky.

"Carlos – are you okay?" Michelle asks.

Iris looks at him with curious horror. "Has something happened?"

"I'm GAY!" he screams. The force of his voice scares two nearby pigeons into a chaotic flap from the grass, squawking as they collide midair.

The Blake sisters stare at him, pale-faced, pink-nosed and wide-eyed. Their dark hair is blown back from their faces by a cold wind that seems summoned by his mood.

Carlos bursts into tears, covering his miserable face with shaking hands.

"Oh, honey, it's okay," Michelle says, instinctively reaching to hug him. He jerks away. She settles her hand on his shoulder instead. "That's alright, Carlos, there's nothing wrong with it."

"Please don't cry," Iris implores, and although he tries to avoid her hug too, she doesn't give up. Eventually, he tips into her and lets himself be held, with Michelle hugging them both from side on. It lasts for a minute until he springs up, breaking the embrace and forcing them to step back.

"Sorry," he says, "Can you forget I said that?"

"Um, no?" Iris answers, her blue-green eyes watery because she always cries when other people do, even if someone is crying on TV for whatever reason. He knows this about her.

"Honey, why don't you come home with us," Michelle offers. She's older, pragmatic, talking to him softly. "Mom isn't home. We can have some hot cocoa and talk this through."

"No. No. There's nothing to talk about," Carlos says, "Sorry. I didn't mean it."

"What?"

"Just forget it. Rocky, come on!"

"Carlos–" Michelle calls to him, her soft voice suddenly firm.

But he doesn't stop – only turns around to say, "Don't tell anyone about this!" in a tone that accidentally sounds threatening.

He abandons the Blake sisters where they stand in the winter chill, boots sucking down into the mud, their dog whining, confused over Rocky's sudden departure.

Why did he just blurt it out like that? What was he thinking? How do you retract your sexuality? How do you undo the act of screaming I'm gay in a field? As Carlos hurries home with stomach cramps, he decides to take a vow of silence. He is literally never going to say anything ever again.

He gets back home okay, ignoring dozens of text messages chiming from his pocket. He doesn't have time to remove his boots because he has to race to the bathroom, flicking mud along the hallway floor. After, still with the house all to himself, he raids the medicine cabinet for Pepto Bismol and Tylenol. It's when he swallows one foul tasting liquid that he remembers another: There's still a bottle of his dad's tequila in his backpack.

He checks his messages. Iris and Michelle asking if he's okay, saying they won't tell anybody, but please will he talk to them? Okay, but, what if they do tell somebody? What if they tell their mom and ask her to keep it a secret? There's no way Theresa Blake wouldn’t spill. Maybe they've already told her, and she's already told his parents. Maybe all the couples at the Valentine's lunch thing know, and Gabriel and Andrea Reyes have never been more humiliated.

Carlos swipes the bottle from his bag, closing his bedroom door behind him. He leans against the door while sitting on the floor to form a human lock against Rocky’s whining, and he swigs and swigs again, tears rolling down his cheeks as he tries to understand what this feeling is – when you don't want to die, but you also don't want to live. He exists in some mid-space between the two states, and cannot even for a second imagine the future.

A couple more hearty swigs of the tequila, and he realizes that half the bottle is gone and he can't remember how to stand up. There's a strange pressure at the back of his head. Not unpleasant. The pressure drifts frontwards and his eyes go swimmy. He wants to flop into bed and sleep.

But he has to get from here on the floor by the door to the bed, and the bed's over there in the corner? That's a hell of a lot of effort.

Never mind.

He rolls up onto his hands and knees.

But he mustn't forget the bottle because. You know. Don't worry. He's got it. Got it by the neck like a chicken. He laughs. He's crawling like a baby across the cold floor to his nice warm bed. This is pretty funny, to be fair. He can see himself, out-body, ridiculous, as he drags himself along. He kind of wants to tell Iris about it, but what if she tells Michelle and what if Michelle tells their mom?

Shh, what's that noise?

Tires on gravel – the growl of a car engine, the sputter of an ignition switching off, the thud of a car door shutting. Footsteps outside. Oh no, quick! He rolls the sloshing bottle under his bed and hoists himself up onto his mattress. But it's not good enough – because he should be at his desk!

He dives up in a motion that makes him queasy, clattering across to his desk chair. When he topples down onto it, he thinks of catching a baseball in a glove. He doesn't know why – but he feels like he's a small thing caught in a bigger thing. He tries to balance himself on the chair as it swivels at the impact of him.

"Carlitos?" his dad is in the hallway, "It's just me. Your mom decided to–" he knocks only once and opens up, popping his head around the frame. Carlos hates how he does that. One useless knock. There's no privacy in this stupid house. "Your mom's still over there, but I've got some work to do. Why is there mud everywhere? Carlitos?"

Carlos swings his head, smiling at him. "Hi, Dad."

Gabriel straightens his posture as he fully enters the room. "What's going on? What have you done?"

Carlos tries to look at him blankly, but it's hard to maintain eye contact. His vision blurs like his eyeballs are going off in different directions. He remembers, then, that when he cries his eyes stay puffy for a while. His skin shows tear-streaks like stains, or scars. He becomes ashen and sickly.

"I'm doing my homework!" Carlos tries to respond enthusiastically, slurring every word as he points behind him at his desk, which right now hosts no such homework. The space is near-empty except for a pot of pens, a plushie tiger he's had since he was four, and a small, light up globe – all tucked in the left hand corner. "I mean, I'm thinking about my book report."

Gabriel looms over him. Enormous in a navy flannel and indigo jeans, he looks like night time. He takes Carlos' face in his hands and drags at his cheeks to widen his eyes and force him to focus, but Carlos can't – everything is watery.

"You've been drinking," Gabriel says. He's not asking.

"No," Carlos starts.

"Don't you lie to me!" Gabriel roars, an inch from him. "You stink of it. Where is it?"

"What?"

"The tequila, dumbass."

Carlos stares up at him, whimpering, his mouth squished by Gabriel's increased grip. "I don't know."

"Carlitos."

"Under the bed."

Gabriel lets go of Carlos. The force of the release makes Carlos wobble in his chair. He just can't stabilize.

Gabriel grabs the bottle from where it shines silver in the shadows. Carlos watches him inspect the contents, or lack of.

"We leave you alone for one afternoon and you raid the liquor cabinet?" Gabriel’s anger has staved into shock and disappointment, which is even worse.

"I'm sorry," Carlos snivels.

"I'm sorry is not an explanation."

Carlos shrugs, "I'm…like…stressed right now. I think. With school. I don't know."

"And I don't care," Gabriel booms, "How stressed you are. You never, ever, ever do this. This'll break your mamá’s heart."

As soon as he says it, Carlos stands up in a pleading panic – and Gabriel seems to rethink.

"Okay. No. Look–” Gabriel sighs, backtracking with grumbly reluctance. “Maybe…maybe this does need to stay between you and me. I'll tell Mamá you cussed at me and I've had it up to here. You're grounded for a whole month. School, and wrestling and swim practice, and then you come home, and do extra chores, and that's it. And no TV. I want to know everything you're doing on your laptop and everyone you're texting."

"What? Why?" Carlos finds himself questioning this out loud like he has a death wish. "It's not like I'm drinking with other people."

"It's about trust, Carlitos, and you've completely broken it. You're never being left in this house alone again!"

"Dad– uh–" Carlos belches.

"I mean it."

"I'm gonna throw–"

"Bathroom!" Gabriel sticks an arm out, pointing to the door. But Carlos can't. Grateful now for his opaque plastic waste paper basket, instead of wicker or mesh, when his mom had asked him to select one at Target.

Carlos plummets onto his chair and Gabriel steadies the wastepaper basket on Carlos' lap. He spasms and chokes, hurling over a screwed-up poem he discarded midway through, yesterday evening. It seems apt.

Gabriel strokes his hair, sighing. "We'll also tell Mamá you've eaten something bad."

"Yes, sir," Carlos gasps between heaves. He spasms a couple of times over the stinking basket before his body relaxes.

"Any more?" Gabriel asks.

"I don't think so."

"Okay, mijo. You stupid boy." He rubs Carlos' back tenderly, though his voice is severe. "Let's get you cleaned up."

Later, Gabriel asks to see Carlos’ phone. He finds generic messages between Carlos and his teammates, and a flurry of worried texts from the Blake sisters – though none use the word gay. Gabriel passes Carlos his phone back as if there is no concern, and tells him to wash the kitchen floor to save his mamá a job.

Thursday November 9, 2023

Behind the counter, Mandy fiddles with a switch that dims the lights, softening the place now the evening has shifted into true-black night. TK turns to his right, sees their reflections in the dark window appear near-sepia. It’s like he’s watching old, rickety footage of them having this present conversation in the past. Late visits to retro diners will make time feel peculiar. Elastic, electric, glitchy. The big window could be an old TV screen about to blink on and fill with static fuzz.

"He made me eat an entire loaf of bread before mom got home,” Carlos says. “Then I had three Pop-Tarts. Kind of worked wonders."

TK peels away from the window, facing his husband in all his vividness of burgundy sweater, gold-brown skin, black hair, deep brown eyes slightly honeyed in the softer light. "So, your mom never knew?"

"Never. Not to this day." Carlos swings his head and bows it in shame. He faces the pure creamy surface of the table, tapping his finger nervously over the laminate. "And maybe that's why I never told you, either.” He flicks his eyes up for a second. “Because it was just between me and Dad. Our secret."

"I know what you mean."

"It mattered to me. I felt exhilarated in a weird way, even though it was bad."

“Carlos. Look at me.”

Carlos doesn’t. He appears fascinated by the plain, dull table.

“Your dad saw some pretty worrying texts from both Michelle and Iris, and he just…ignored them? He gave you your phone back, like there was nothing going on?”

“Yep,” Carlos says hurriedly. "Probably thought it was some dumb teen drama. Anyway, I didn't get drunk again until I was twenty-one. I don’t know if you ever noticed, but I never drank tequila straight–"

“Oh. Yeah. You’d always have it in a cocktail, if you have it–”

“–until you and I broke up,” Carlos says definitively.

The words ‘you and I broke up’ go through TK like he’s a hollow frame of a man. “Jesus.”

“I got shit-faced.”

These words catch TK in a different way. It’s morbid, but he laughs. His husband doesn’t usually sound so uncouth in public. “Want to talk about that?”

“Don’t know.”

“Come on.”

“Do you really want to dredge that up? It’s a very normal thing to get drunk after a breakup. Or when someone dies. Or when you’re–”

“A terrified gay teenager crying alone on your bedroom floor?” TK concludes for him.

“Well…”

“That isn’t normal,” TK says firmly, “If we’re using the word normal to mean acceptable.” He feels at the collar of his sweater, hot and bothered – angry with Gabriel in a way he thinks he’s on the verge of showing. Owen and Gwyn gave TK plenty of privacy and freedom in his teens. They never checked his phone, but if they had, and if they’d found several panicked messages from his friends, they’d have encircled him and said, “Talk to us, baby, we’re here for you. You can tell us anything.” If Gabriel were alive right now, TK would be summoning the courage to demand an explanation for why those texts were ignored.

But if Gabriel were alive, he and Carlos wouldn’t be having this conversation at all, and he steadies himself with a deep breath, keeping that in mind. Some good things only happen because bad things have happened first.

"What about Michelle and Iris?” TK asks, tentatively making reach and putting his hand over Carlos’. “Did you talk to them again about what you said?" Beneath his fingertips, Carlos’ knuckles tremble.

"A bit. Yeah. Michelle, being so much older…she was like a mentor in a way. The Blake sisters were the ones who encouraged me to tell my parents. But I couldn't. Not until, like, the fall."

"Why did you tell your parents, in the end?" TK asks, realizing he’s never asked why before. He only knows the how: Carlos snapped. Ran away one rainy October night. Gabriel found him, brought him home. Later, Carlos knocked on his parents’ bedroom door after packing a bag in case he was about to be kicked out. He thought they’d wish his runaway attempt had been successful. He said the words “I’m gay,” to them for the first time – and what would be the only time for a long while. They hugged him and sent him to bed. The next day, it was like nothing happened. A year later, in a diner not dissimilar to Blue Moon, he was proposing marriage to Iris over Coke floats.

"I just had to,” Carlos says, shrugging because he knows the explanation is so vague. “It was killing me. Like, literally destroying my body, to keep it in. Do you know what I mean?"

“Yeah. I do,” TK says, and finally Carlos looks at him again. “It’s funny you never told me that, when you know how I came out.”

“You screamed it too,” Carlos smiles sadly.

TK laughs. In a way, he feels bad, because his story is sweet and funny and Carlos’ is laced with fear and pain.

To his surprise, Carlos says, “Tell me again.”

Monday March 3, 2008

“Hey, son. Come on in. How was school?” Owen says, opening the door to his apartment. He ruffles TK’s rain-wet hair as he crosses into the living space, unzipping his soggy parka and dumping both his overnight bag and school bag on the floor.

“Mom’s here too,” TK tells him.

Owen peers around the door, spying her in the hallway – she’d lingered, shaking raindrops from her blue umbrella, while TK went ahead and tore up the stairs. “Gwyn!” he calls, happy to see her. “I thought you were dropping him off outside?”

“I can’t stay too long,” Gwyn says, “But the two of us have something to tell you – don’t worry, it’s good news.”

“Oh, well, let’s have at it!” Owen takes Gwyn’s white trench coat from her, hanging it up on the back of the door.

Gwyn, pristinely turned out in a gray pantsuit and silky lilac blouse, beckons TK so she can stand with her arm around her son, slubby in an oversized blue hoodie and torn jeans. He doesn’t think he needs a hug, but goes to her all the same, because maybe she does. “You ready, sweetie?” she asks him.

TK nods, nervous and hesitant, but excited enough to tingle. He’s ninety-eight-percent sure that Owen will react positively. He’s discussed this in length with his mom, and if in some weird event Owen loses it and kicks him out of the apartment, he’ll just go to the office with Gwyn and do his homework at her desk. But it’s only now that the reality of the possible two-percent outcome is setting in. What would it mean if Owen does hate this? Will they ever speak again? Will he have to mourn a father he hasn’t technically lost?

Yesterday, in the middle of the street while walking back from Trader Joe’s with Gwyn, TK saw a young pair of guys being giddy and romantic with each other. He blurted it out right there: “I’m GAY!” Gwyn grabbed him into an enormous, swinging hug, kissed him all over his face desperately. Love and only love. Acceptance was instant. Her reaction was so extreme, he went red with embarrassment, but felt more connected to her than ever.

“Honey, I’m overjoyed for you. I’m over the moon. I’m over–” she stilled, trying to think of something else to be over. “I’m over the biggest star in the universe.”

TK giggled, asking, “Really?” as she tickled his ribs like he’s seven and not fourteen.

“Of course!” She gestured to the canvas shopper over her shoulder. “This stuff will keep – I don’t want to cook. Let’s go to the Spring Street place later to celebrate.”

It was over Spring Street’s finest dim sum that TK confidently announced he wanted to tell Owen too.

“Are you sure?” Gwyn counseled, “He’ll be as happy as I am, but there’s no pressure to tell him right away.”

“No. I really want to. I don’t want it to be a secret anymore, Mom. It’s been driving me nuts.”

“Oh, my sweet boy. I’m sorry to hear that.”

“I’m ready,” TK grinned, collecting a bao bun into his pincered chopsticks. Boosted by her love, he felt invincible.

In front of his other parent – and following a day at school where he was shoved into a locker and called queer (not because anyone there knows it’s true – it’s just a word that gets thrown around non-stop) – he’s upset by his sudden fragility. The tears in his eyes surprise him.

“TK, are you okay? Come here.” Owen opens his arms. Gwyn nudges him forward, letting him go, passing him into his father’s embrace. “You can tell me anything. Hey, hey. My boy. I thought this was going to be good news?”

“It is,” Gwyn emphasizes, stroking TK’s hair.

“I’m gay,” TK says into Owen’s armpit.

Owen pushes TK back, taking him by the shoulders. “TK! That is great news. I’m thrilled for you.”

“We’re both so thrilled,” Gwyn says.

“TK, all I want is for you to be happy, and be yourself, and be able to tell me things. Anything that’s going on with you.” Owen squishes TK’s face, wiping his tears with his thumb. “I love you so much.” He kisses his forehead. “You don’t have to cry.” Owen bursts into tears and hugs him tight.

This moment, to TK, is even more embarrassing than coming out in the middle of the street and having his mom practically knock him to the ground with excitement.

“This is a cause for a celebration!” Owen cries, letting go of TK so he can rush at warp-speed to the kitchen, where he does a lap around the table in a merry panic. “Let’s get takeout! Gwyn, how about you stay for dinner? We haven’t eaten together, the three of us, since this one’s birthday.” He points at TK dramatically.

“I can’t, I have to go back to the office. I’ll be working into the night. But you two–” she kisses TK’s hair, “You two have the best time.”

“You know what?” Owen says, bounding over to his laptop on the couch. “There’s a group called PFLAG. It’s for families of people in the community. I’m going to become a member right this second.”

“I can see your dad is on an unstoppable mission,” Gwyn whispers, “Call me if you need me for anything. I love you.”

“Love you, Mom,” TK says, wishing she didn’t have to work all the time. She even spent five hours on Saturday at the office. He watches her take her coat and umbrella and shut the front door behind her.

TK walks over to Owen and drops next to him on the couch. It takes him a moment to swallow away a lump in his throat. Shakily, he says, “Thanks, Dad.”

“Are you kidding? This is great. Wow – did you know PFLAG has been active since 1973 because a school teacher wanted to proudly march alongside her activist son, so everyone would know she supported him? TK, we are on the shoulders of giants.”

Owen starts reading aloud every word on the website. TK nods along.

“The parade this year is June 29,” Owen tells him, “We should go!”

“You don’t seem very surprised that I’m…you know,” TK says. If anything, it’s like Owen has been biting his tongue, waiting for this moment. Now, he can finally cheer.

Owen smiles, half-folds his laptop and places it on the coffee table so he can give TK his full attention. He shifts to sit sideways on the couch, studying him with his eyes. “I guess that’s because I’m not surprised at all.” He gently pushes TK’s shoulder with his fist. I’m your best pal, the motion says.

“Is it obvious that I am?” TK points to his chest, as if gesturing to his gayness deep within. He’s not sure why he can’t say the word. “I don’t think Mom was surprised either.”

“I’ll be honest with you, son, she and I have had a few conversations about it.”

TK raises an eyebrow. “She didn’t tell me that.”

“All that matters now is what we actually know, not our speculation.” Owen shrugs. “But yes, we did speculate, because we know you. We noticed how uncomfortable you always got when people teased you about girls you were friends with. We noticed how uncomfortable you were generally, with certain things. It made us wonder. Actually, if it helps, I feel like your mom and I have gotten closer because of this. We’ve had some really good talks. We’re on the same page. We’re on your side.”

“Oh. Okay. Huh.” This is information TK can’t begin to process right now, but he’ll contemplate it throughout the night, and what it could mean. What he wants, so desperately, for it to mean. His mom and dad are closer than he’d ever realized. Maybe they’re falling in love. “Cool,” he finishes.

“Also…” Owen laughs, “Over the holidays, I may have found a certain magazine.”

“What? Dad!” TK thinks he might actually die. He remembers digging the magazine full of muscular male bodies out from under his mattress and swearing to himself that it was in a different place to where he’d left it – closer to the head-end of the bed.

“I was changing your sheets before you stayed with me those few nights. Remember? Where did you even get it?” Owen appears to be finding this very funny.

TK bites his lip. Probably shouldn’t admit he swiped the magazine while the cashier was distracted by another customer. He tucked it under his t-shirt, then purchased a bag of mixed candy as a decoy before he left the bodega.

“But it’s fine,” Owen says, “Magazines were a big part of my teens.”

“Dad. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“We probably should.”

“No.” This is the worst.

“We need to talk about you being safe, I mean.”

TK throws himself back against the couch and hugs a scatter cushion.

“Look, I don’t know anything about gay sex,” Owen goes on joyfully, “Although I did see Brokeback Mountain. Beautiful movie.”

“Dad!”

“But maybe I can connect to other PFLAG members and get their advice.”

“Can we choose takeout, now?” TK gets up – there’s a drawer full of takeout leaflets waiting to be rifled through.

Owen reluctantly drops the subject, for now, and they order curries from Radhuni on the corner.

Tuesday October 5, 2021

The autumn sunset on the day TK Strand and Carlos Reyes break up is beautiful. A painting. A piece of nostalgic pastoral art from a different age – dusty colors, frothy yellow clouds. TK misses all of it, although he is outside in the backyard. Sitting on the deck, hunched in a black sweater, he becomes a raven, staring ahead at the dull brown fence instead of the magnificent sky aglow.

Buttercup finds him first – sniffs him out as soon as he arrives home with Owen and charges through the patio doors. He circles TK, snuffling him all over, trying to understand where it hurts.

“There you are,” Owen’s voice calls from inside. “Where’s Carlos? Hello? Earth to TK?”

TK can’t move. It’s weird. When he proposed to Alex, and Alex responded by dumping him, TK couldn’t stop moving. He stormed out of the restaurant, stormed to Soho, to Spike. Stormed around his apartment swigging bourbon and slinging back pills. Hurricane Tyler Kennedy. He didn’t stop moving until his body crapped out and collapsed, until he was whizzed back to life again by his father and a Narcan and a destiny that would bring him to Austin, to Carlos Reyes. Maybe it’s different this time because he’s the one who ended it.

“I don’t know where Carlos is,” TK says after an elastic minute.

In an annoying twist, this response provokes a plethora of further questions from Owen. Eventually, he sits down next to TK and puts his hand on his back, rubs his shoulder. Buttercup sits too, looking between them both.

“I left him,” TK says, “I’ve left Carlos. It’s over.”

“You– what–” Owen too becomes completely still. It’s eerie. Glitchy. The world has been glitchy all day. When TK fled the loft, the street outside curled bendy at the sides. He had to buy a Mountain Dew from a street vendor because his blood sugar plummeted.

“Are you okay, buddy?” the vendor guy had said, probably because tears were pouring into TK’s open mouth when he apologized for not having exact change.

Owen springs back to life after a moment of silence. The questions resume. He wants to know what happened, and exactly what has TK been doing all afternoon? Then he has hands on him, pawing at his pockets, patting down his hoodie.

“Are you serious?” TK jerks away, stands up. Buttercup quickly springs to his feet, mirroring his favorite boy.

“TK, come on.”

“I’m not using. I haven’t used the whole time we’ve been in Austin!”

“Baby–”

“Don’t fucking call me baby. I’m twenty-seven.”

Owen folds his arms. His expression tightens from worried to stern. “Old habits.”

“Well, I’ve kicked my old fucking habits!” TK yells, doesn’t care if the neighbors can hear.

“TK. Last time you went through a breakup–”

“I know!” TK roars, and Buttercup whines, and Owen bites his lip.

“I am sorry that you and Carlos have broken up,” Owen says, a faintly perceptible tremble in his voice, a tremble because his own heart is burning at the edges. Carlos Reyes had felt like a second son to him, very quickly. “But you are not leaving my sight for the next week.”

“Dad. I am clean.”

“And we’re keeping you that way.”

“I have been clean since April 2020. Don’t fucking patronize me.”

“I am your father!” Owen shouts. TK jumps in his skin. Buttercup woofs with concern. There’s no tremble now, just scythe-sharp clarity. “You do not talk to me like that.”

“Dad.” TK wipes his mouth with his sleeve dampened by tears and snot. “I don’t need to be held prisoner for a week like I’m in withdrawal again.”

“You can leave the house. But on my terms. You’ll come to work with me tomorrow.”

“Okay,” TK says. This is fine, at least, because it means he won’t have to watch Carlos packing up his stuff. Although, he’s wrong about that. He doesn’t know yet that Carlos will be running late because of a bone-aching hangover of his own. He’ll find him in the bedroom breaking into sobs while he folds his pajama pants. It’s an image he’ll never shake, not for his whole life.

“You want to tell me what happened?” Owen asks again.

TK shakes his head. “I can’t,” he whispers.

“One minute you were fleeing your burning house and declaring your undying love for each other, and the next you’ve left the guy?”

TK is still shaking his head, becomes more and more violent with the action, swinging it. His shoulders go next, up and down as he tries to catch his shuddering breath. Everything falls dark. Owen is around him, holding him steady, pressing his face to his shoulder. In the darkness it is clear, at least, that this is another thing they will go through together as father and son, while Buttercup loyally headbutts their knees. Safe with that knowledge, TK sinks into Owen’s embrace, and hopes that Carlos has gone to his parents’ place tonight. He hopes that Carlos is receiving his mother’s cooking, wisdom, and hugs. He’ll miss that, of Andrea. He wishes Gwyn were still in Austin too. Or maybe not, actually.

“Don’t tell Mom about this,” TK says.

“What?”

TK pulls away from Owen, gazing at him with serious, shining eyes. “If Mom finds out, she’ll think I’ll relapse too.”

“She might not think that. I don’t even necessarily think that.”

“She will. And yes, you do.”

“I just can’t–” Owen swallows his words. TK feels on fire in his stomach. This is the horror he’s caused. This is what he’s left his father with. Images of him aged seventeen on the bathroom floor with puke down his glow-in-the dark skeleton sweatshirt, day after Halloween. Images of him in the emergency room, cackling while an overworked nurse stitches up a bloody leg, and he has no memory of what caused the wound. Images of him screaming and writhing in his bed like he’s a burning man. Images of his soiled sheets. Images of having to be bathed as an adult. Images of him lying on a grubby mattress in a drug den with a needle in his arm. Images of him crying, begging. His pathetic voice crying please please please.

Carlos Reyes got his ass dumped by TK Strand today lol.

Carlos is taking a wobbly pee in the bathroom of the honky-tonk off Shoal Creek. All the graffiti on the wall in front of his urinal is talking about how stupid and pathetic he is. There’s reams of it. Every patron in this place thinks he’s a chump.

Carlos’ eyes blur – then extra-blur, and then focus – like he’s looking through googly lenses at his optometrist’s office. When he blinks again, the words on the wall stretch and change. ‘Carlos Reyes got his ass dumped by TK Strand today lol’ in fact says ‘Ben Garrison is a cocksucker who loves sucking cock’ – and all the other graffiti doesn’t name Carlos or TK either. But it feels like it should. Carlos puts himself back in his boxers and forgets to zip up his jeans. He sways his way back to the bar, flying low.

Smiling politely but tearfully at the barman, Carlos orders a tequila slammer.

The barman blinks. “Excuse me?”

“One tequila slammer, please,” Carlos repeats, “Actually make that two!” He’s only ever had a tequila slammer during Austin Pride, at a pop-up bar with rainbow awning called Mermen on the Rocks. The silver tequila was mixed with red food dye, turning it pink.

The barman raises an eyebrow. He’s an older guy – a gray-bearded biker type in a leather waistcoat. His arms are covered in aged, greening tattoos of snakes curling around daggers, thorny roses growing around crucifixes. “How about one shot for the road, and then you get a taxi home and drink lots of water, son?”

“No, no, no!” Carlos appeals with flare. “I can’t go home. I have to stay right here.” He spirals a finger and then bounces it against the bar. “Right here.”

“Why can’t you go home?”

“I don’t have one. I mean I do. I’m a homeowner.”

“Okay.”

“But I was staying with my…my…” Carlos keeps swirling his finger in the air, like he’s aiming to land on words visible only to him. “But! You know. Sometimes.”

“Ah. Yeah,” The barman smiles. He has a gold tooth. Shiny. “I think I get what you’re saying.”

“Thank you. You’re the only one who does.” He’s also the only person Carlos has talked to since TK fled from him at 2 p.m. this afternoon.

“Women trouble,” the barman says definitively.

“Something like that.”

“We’ve all been there.”

“I haven’t.”

“No?”

“I mean. I have. Literally with a woman.”

“Uh huh.” The barman surreptitiously fills a glass with water and passes it to Carlos slowly.

“But this is different. TK’s different.”

“Flowers. Chocolates. A groveling apology. That's all we’ve got.”

“But I didn’t do anything wrong.”

The barman stifles a laugh. “You almost certainly did.”

“All I did was buy an apartment for us. Without mentioning it. But like…it was meant to be a happy thing. A nice surprise. It was meant to be, like…hey I got you a piece of forever, and this piece of forever has great light, and it’s near clubs and that really good bakery. You know?”

“Sounds like a good forever to me.”

“I thought so.”

“Have a little water, son.”

Carlos seizes his glass of water in both his large hands, like he has the dexterity of a three-year-old. He sips from it gently. “This is good,” he says, as if the barman has given him something new and delicious. “My partner is totally sober. My ex, I mean.” His voice cracks as he cries. “I haven’t been drunk like this in a long time.”

“That does not surprise me.” The barman sighs and hunches, leans his folded arms on the bar to create a little privacy with his shadow. He lets the strange man cry in his presence, as many have done before.

“We had our first dance here. First kiss. First–”

“Son, look at me and listen,” the barman says firmly. Carlos does. He looks into friendly blue eyes surrounded by crinkled skin. “Tomorrow is a new day. You sober up yourself, and then you take that pretty girl the biggest box of chocolates your money can buy, and the biggest motherfucking bunch of roses too. You get down on your knees and tell her you love her with your whole dumbass heart. I’ve got no other advice for you, than to try.”

Carlos does take the barman’s advice to his dumbass-heart. He drinks the whole glass of water while he listens to the guy talk about his first marriage to a nurse called Mary.

Amazingly, Carlos does not throw up, and suffers instead by sleeping the night fully clothed on the concrete floor of his new loft apartment, with a coat under his head for a pillow. It’s like a penance. Not at all how he thought the day would end. He’s so twisted, achy and nauseous in the morning that it takes him much longer than he thought to get his shit together and head back to the Strand house. TK sent a cold text to say he’d be at the firehouse most of the day with Owen, so please can he pack up and leave his key on the kitchen counter.

TK walks into the bedroom they shared to find Carlos folding up his pajama pants that were tucked under his pillow, where he always keeps them. TK’s mouth opens at the sight of it, because it was bad enough he spent last night in sheets that smelled of Carlos, let alone next to those damn cozy pants that he looks so cute in. In some ways, it’s a similar torture to sleeping on a cold, concrete floor.

Carlos is still wearing the same clothes as yesterday, when he took TK to the loft and did the big reveal. “Surprise, it’s ours.” But now his smart navy button up is stained with something weird. His chinos are totally creased. His hair is poofy. His stubble is thick. His usually warm skin is spookily gray and his eyes are red. He’s exhausted, shaky, trying to hold back tears – but there are simply too many.

“I didn’t know you’d be here now–” TK says, turning on his heel, “I’ll give you some space.”

Carlos wants to call out to him, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t know that if TK had heard him, he would have come back. He finishes packing up his bags – which doesn’t take long, because not much other than clothes and some books and a new laptop have been acquired since the fire. He leaves without letting it be known that he has gone.

Carlos places his bags in the trunk of his Camaro and drives away without knowing that TK is watching him through his bedroom window.

TK does not know that on the passenger seat next to Carlos, there is a huge box of chocolates and a giant motherfucking bouquet of red roses.

Thursday November 9, 2023

TK’s eyes are shining – the most beautiful, soft green – under the dimmed ceiling lights of Blue Moon. “You bought me roses, baby?”

“Would it have made a difference?” Carlos asks. His own, lingering hurt is apparent in the way his big eyes don’t shine at all.

TK is cut by the question. He answers honestly. “I don’t know. Probably not. Not that day.”

“I left the roses on the porch of some random house. I hope they liked them.”

“What about the chocolates?”

“Ate them in one sitting. Regretted it. Needed a chewy Tums after.” Carlos laughs. The tension lightens, the way the sun burns away clouds. “Hey. I’m sorry your dad thought you were going to use again after we split.”

“Didn’t you think I would, too?”

Carlos sits forward, stunned, cut by the question. He answers honestly. “No. TK. Oh my God. I never did.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“You’re probably the only person who kept the faith.” TK looks at him. The saddest, smiling eyes. The most beautiful soft green. “When you told me you didn’t want kids, I thought it was because you didn’t want to have them with an addict.”

Carlos launches his arm across the table, takes TK’s hand with such strength that it almost hurts. “No. That wasn’t it – it wasn’t about you at all, baby.”

“I know. Now.”

“That was my shit. You just got caught up in it. Again. You know I believe in your recovery with my whole heart, and that’s what I tell everyone.”

TK pops his hand out of Carlos’ sweaty grip, placing it on his soft sleeve. He holds his husband’s forearm still. Like this, he can feel Carlos’ watch ticking against his own skin like a heartbeat, time going around and around like blood in a body. The thing is, TK believes in his own recovery too – he’s at that destination now, though reaching it meant a steep path and a series of setbacks across a rocky terrain of years. How long is it going to take Carlos to believe in his own recovery – recovery from grief, from fear, from guilt? It’s taken the guy his whole life to believe in something as simple and obvious as his goodness.

“I know you’re ready to be a father,” Carlos had said, bringing TK a bearded dragon as a pet offering, something to shower with love and care. “And I have no doubt you’d be an amazing one. But I’m not there yet. And I don’t know if I ever will be.”

TK had smiled. He said okay. He kissed Carlos and hugged him and rubbed his back a little – because a backrub is one of their most important unspoken ways of saying I love you. But inside, deep down –actually maybe not that deep down – he wished he could have a very open conversation with his soon to be father-in-law, Gabriel Reyes.

Chapter Text

Sunday April 19, 2009

Andrea sits down on the couch beside Lori, who lays Nicolás Jr. onto a gray elephant pillow and places him on her lap.

"Come here, little man. Hola, mijo." Andrea strokes the baby’s squishy cheeks and tickles his feet, upon which hang red and white striped socks too big for him. He is ten days old and making the strangest sounds, like he finds oxygen disgusting and is trying to say something.

“Finally a boy.” Lori reaches across to pick yellow crust from his eye.

Andrea beams up at Carlos, who hovers by the shiny oval coffee table. He watches his mom look down at her honorary-sobrino with the same all-consuming joy. "Oh, Lori."

"I know." Lori sighs with contentment, exhausted but happy. "He's the most beautiful creature I've ever seen." She winks at her youngest daughter. "Other than you, Verónica."

"All of our children are perfect," Andrea says, "But oh–" Andrea hunches to smell the baby's head. "When they are brand new..."

Verónica hugs Carlos' legs, naturally gravitating to him for some semblance of comfort and normality. He's the only person who hasn't gone totally weird. All the adults and the older girls are acting so over-the-top, cooing and crying. It's a lot to get your head around when you're five years old – a sudden kid brother upon whom all attention surrounds and all happiness seems to depend, like they’ve been sent a prince or a demigod. Carlos, reliably fourteen and stoic, thinks the baby boy is cute, but all he truly cares about is how hungry he is. He could eat seven cheeseburgers right now and still have room for an ice cream sundae.

"Carlitos," Andrea says, "Hold your newest little friend."

She doesn't wait for him to say yes or no before she lifts the baby up – the assumption is that the newborn must be held by all. Verónica looks at Carlos with a shade of disappointment as he sits down on the edge of the couch and accepts her brother. She wants him to go with her into the backyard so she can play on her swing set. Traitor.

“Hola, mi amigo,” Carlos says to impress everyone, playing along. But, in a strange contradiction, mixed into Carlos' disinterest is a sense of unignorable love and protectiveness. When he cradles Nicolás Jr., he gets it. He understands why people want these peculiar little aliens. Ears, but miniature. Everything miniature except for the eyes, which are bushbaby massive. Carlos places his forefinger into Nicolás Jr.'s miniature palm full of miniature creases. Nicolás Jr. squeezes with everything he's got.

Carlos glances up at Gabriel and Nicolás Sr., who both smile at him in a teasing way.

“Suits you, son,” Gabriel says with an unusual warmth. He and Nicolás Sr. are drinking black coffee from fine white porcelain. They gently clink mugs, cheersing each other.

Nicolás Jr. closes his eyes, cozy in Carlos’ arms, too exhausted to take in anything more. Verónica wanders over on a mission, pulls at the untucked hem of Carlos’ blue t-shirt. Remember me. I was here before this strange baby. Love me too. Want me.

No. I can't want kids, Carlos thinks. I can't. I can't.

It's half an hour before Verónica is allowed to drag Carlos outside with her. She wants all the big sisters in the room to come – but it's drizzling and baking-humid for April, like Louisiana swamp heat has drifted west, and Carlos’ sisters in particular are too old now, too cool, too into the idea of sitting with Lori and Andrea like they’re junior members of an exclusive club.

The sky is white-gray and low – as though the clouds are settling over the roof of the house. Carlos half-watches Verónica on her swing, half studies the house.

Nicolás Sr. – with his smarts for geology and his job with Shell and this home with a staircase and a basement and four kids and a loving marriage. All our children are perfect. Finally, a boy. Everything is perfect. It has to be. There have to be boys to carry on the good family name. There are no other options to consider.

"Watch me! Watch me, Carlos!" Verónica chuckles. "Watch what I can do."

She rushes backwards on the swing and catapults herself into the air as if to somersault like a gymnast. Too slow to catch her, Carlos watches open-mouthed and static as Verónica topples. She lands hard and awkward on her ankle, crumples onto the grass, shrieks herself blue.

It's Gabriel who comes running.

"She jumped from the swing," Carlos says, lifting Verónica onto her right foot. She can't put weight onto her left.

"I saw – I was at the window."

Carlos tries not to react outwardly, but on the inside he painfully recoils with shame. The idea that he was unknowingly watched by his father makes his eyes burn and his throat tighten.

"You were supposed to be supervising her, not staring off into a daydream, Carlitos."

"But, Dad, she suddenly jumped. I had no time."

Gabriel scoops Verónica into his arms. She screams and claws at him. "Okay, baby, let’s get some ice for that ankle." He rushes her away.

Carlos doesn't know whether or not he is supposed to follow. His hesitance keeps him inert, pressed down by the heavy and windless air through which the sound of a five-year-old crying and a newborn crying travels with clarity beyond the open windows of the perfect house. Somehow, the swing is still rocking jerkily, on its own, as though moved by a ghost.

Morning at the Rivera Ruíz household tips over into the afternoon. Carlos watches it happen. He’s escaped to the kitchen because here he can hang out with their elderly golden retriever – a glamorous white-coated lady called Zelda – and he’s massaging her head with salad tongs when he notices the time change on his digital watch. For some reason it makes him fiercely angry, and it’s the exact moment Gabriel wanders in to find him like this: Crouched on the terracotta floor tiles, looking furious, while an ancient pup appears to be in a state of total ecstasy because her ear is being rubbed by a large wooden fork.

“There you are,” Gabriel says, carrying his empty coffee mug to the sink. “Everyone was wondering where you got to. Give me that.” He scoffs and snatches the salad tongs from Carlos, dumping them in the sink with his mug.

Zelda whimpers at the loss, so Carlos strokes her snout soothingly with his thumb.

“When are we going home?” Carlos asks it like a challenge, stares at the time of his life ticking away.

12:01, his watch says.

He’s expecting his father to huff, to stretch out a pointing arm and demand he get his moody ass back into the living room and coo over the boring baby, but that doesn’t happen. When it doesn’t happen, Carlos finds the courage to glance up. Gabriel is drying his hands on a red gingham seersucker cloth, regarding him with a half-smile.

“Not really your scene, huh?” Gabriel says.

Carlos shrugs with one shoulder.

“I get it. But the girls want to stay.”

“I know.”

“How about you and me go for lunch?”

Carlos gazes at his dad distrustfully, rising to his feet. “Just us?”

“Yeah. I want to take my boy for some food.”

“I’m really, really hungry,” Carlos tells him, quiet and ashamed, like it’s a terrible secret, even though him eating everybody out of house and home is probably the most well-established fact about Carlos Reyes.

Gabriel laughs, slapping the cloth down. “I’ll take you to Mockingbird,” he says, “It’s been a long time.”

Mockingbird Diner. Sometimes, when Gabriel’s shifts had allowed it, he’d meet Carlos at the school gates and take him for a milkshake. When did that stop? It feels like forever ago, but when Carlos thinks about it, he can smell salted fries. He can feel himself holding an ice-cold glass. He’d always get vanilla. If Gabriel had a milkshake too, he’d always get chocolate.

It’s a hectic weekend lunchtime at Mockingbird, but a booth by the window becomes free as they enter. A friendly college-age boy buses them over. The table is still messy with evidence of its former occupants. Carlos watches with interest as half-empty lemonade glasses and plates scattered with crumbs are lifted out of sight. He likes the boy’s hands – the way they open and close and flex as he works to clean up. The way his tanned forearms, with a clear seam of defined muscle, protrude through rolled white shirt sleeves. He probably plays sports at UT. Carlos imagines him as a baseball player.

“I’ll grab you some menus, sirs,” the boy says cheerfully after spritzing and wiping down their table.

Carlos accidentally follows the boy with his eyes as he walks away. When his gaze finally travels to Gabriel, Gabriel is staring back curiously. He doesn’t know for how long his dad has been observing him.

“Busy today,” Carlos says quickly.

Gabriel sighs, takes his eyes off his son to glance around instead. Mockingbird has cream walls and booths with deep pink vinyl seats. The tables are a sort of mottled chrome – within them, Carlos can see a spooky version of his reflection. The local amateur artists group have their paintings displayed across the walls (Andrea bought one, once. An oil work of splashy, colorful paint strokes. It hangs in the hallway next to Carlos’ bedroom door), and there’s an ease to the place, a community spirit that Carlos can feel like a warm breeze. People of all age groups are drawn here. There’s him and his dad, and across from them there’s an elderly couple, and in the booth behind them there’s a gaggle of what he imagines are high school seniors, lively with laughter. One of the girls is holding court, a comedian in the making. Something ridiculous happened at school this week, so she’s recounting the tale with a bard-like gusto. Her friends listen like they’re here for storytime.

“…So we had to walk into class like that!” The girl seems to do an impression of herself and her friends trudging morosely. “Ashley was like, if we just walk in normally, maybe nobody will notice…” They all screech. “But obviously we were leaving a trail of sparkles everywhere.”

“Only Bianca could accidentally set off a glitter cannon with people standing right in front of it,” one of the group cackles. “Are they taking her off the committee?”

“I hope so,” a different girl says, “I mean, she’s such a fucking lesbian anyway, so who could she even go to Prom with?”

At this, the group laughs after a second’s awkward pause. Carlos averts his gaze from Gabriel, swipes a laminate menu from their waiter and studies it urgently. He leans his elbows on the table, perching his chin in the V of his hands, smushing his cheeks with his fists while he reads, although he already knows he wants the Everything Burger. Food was the only topic on the ride over, other than Gabriel’s weather-related small talk and Carlos’ attempt at a supportive laugh. ("Sky looks stormy to the east." "HA! Yep." Silence.)

Gabriel orders for them. One Everything Burger with fries and one bowl of three bean chili with nachos, because Gabriel promised Andrea he’d watch his red meat intake.

“It’s been a while since we’ve talked, just the two of us,” Gabriel says out of nowhere, dropping the eye contact he’s held so steadily. He turns to the window. Misty rain clicks against the glass. Beyond the parking lot, cars buzz along the main stretch. Green trees bend in the wind. Gray clouds overhead tumble against each other violently. “What’s been going on with you, lately? You doing better in track?”

“Just can’t meet Christopher’s time,” Carlos says, “But I beat my own record on Thursday.”

Gabriel nods. “Keep working on it.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Christopher is as arrogant as his father. Remember that. It’ll be his downfall.”

“Year, sir,” Carlos says again.

“He won’t train as hard as you if he thinks he doesn’t have to. Like when you won the spelling bee over Cora McPherson. Same principle. People have natural skills, sure – but you win if you work the hardest.”

Carlos winces. The fifth grade spelling bee is not something he’s proud of. A haunting experience for both of them, really. He nearly threw up beforehand; Cora cried afterwards. Carlos thinks she did study hard.

“What about wrestling?” Gabriel asks.

Carlos swallows. “Um–” he gazes out at the rain clouds. They’re the same heathered gray shade as his school’s wrestling singlets and gym sweatsuits. In his mind’s eye, he sees himself tumbling over Scott Fitzsimmons, knowing his cheeks are hot and his eyes are wide and glassy and he has to think about entirely unsexy things on purpose until he gets home. “Wrestling is–”

He’s interrupted by their handsome waiter with great arms, who brings over a Diet Coke for both of them. Carlos pulls a pink straw from a white ceramic pot, dips it into his Coke, looks into his father’s watchful, dark eyes. Carlos has his mother’s eyes in shape, but his father’s in darkness.

Even with the sounds of nearby chatter, the jukebox playing cheesy pop, the rain on the window, the fizz of the sodas, the clink and crack of ice in their glasses – it’s like there is a silent forcefield around the booth, oppressive as the thundery air outside.

"Wrestling is my favorite," Carlos says, stirring his Coke like he's more interested in creating a frothy whirlpool than drinking it. "And then swimming. If you want me to give up one, I’d want it to be track."

“But your track time is still faster than your swim time,” Gabriel says.

“I’m getting better. I like it better.”

“Well, I don’t think you need to cut anything now. Let’s talk when it comes to junior year.”

Carlos wants to quip about cutting math. A couple of weeks ago, Iris Blake said to him, “Why are people punished all the time for wanting to do things that they enjoy, and forced to do shitty things that they hate, like it’s some kind of status symbol?” Iris is a junior but takes elective sociology with Luisa, a senior. Luisa and her snooty senior friends say Iris is weird. Carlos met Iris in September because they were both hanging out at recess in the library. He doesn’t think she’s weird. No weirder than he is. They still hang out in the library sometimes, and she watches out for him more than Luisa does anyway. Iris doesn’t know what path she wants to follow once she graduates – she’s stressing about it a lot these days. Her older sister is a paramedic with the city. There’s pressure for Iris to do the exact same thing. Weirdly, Carlos wants to more-or-less do the same thing as Gabriel, but the pressure is totally off, like Gabriel would rather Carlos did anything other than become a cop.

“What about girls?” Gabriel asks.

“Girls?” Instantly, Carlos wants to smack his own head onto the chrome table.

Gabriel is laughing but trying not to. “Yes, Carlitos. Girls. The ladies. If you’re…uh…sweet on any of the girls in your classes, I want you to know, you can talk to me about it.”

Sweet on.

“Okay,” Carlos says. He immediately slurps up half his glass of Coke until he has to stop for breath.

“I had my first girlfriend when I was just a year older than you,” Gabriel adds, which is highly unnecessary. “She asked me to go together.”

Go together. Carlos doesn’t understand why Gabriel is talking like he’s from 1952.

“Her name was Miranda. It happened in the art supply closet. I thought we were only going in there to select watercolors. She left me for the captain of the basketball team.”

“Okay.”

“Had a fight with him outside a Dairy Queen. Not my finest hour.”

At this, Carlos breaks into a grin mid-drinking and has to swallow fast. Gabriel tips his head back, laughing loud.

“Is that a funny thought?” Gabriel asks as the waiter deposits their plates in front of them.

Carlos nods and gasps. There’s bubbles fizzing in his nose.

“I’m much better off with your mamá, anyway.”

“Does ma know you lost a fight outside a Dairy Queen?”

“Hey! Did I say I lost?”

“Well, you did, right?”

Gabriel folds his arms, shakes his head at the cheek of it. “She does not know, in fact, and she never will, sí? So shut up and eat your burger that I’m paying for.”

Carlos has to stretch his hands wide to pick up his burger. The thick bun is impaled by a long wooden stick flying a purple flag – a flimsy core that somehow holds together a chunky beef patty, melted mozzarella, crispy bacon, tomatoes, lettuce, pickles, caramelized onion, mayo, French mustard, guacamole, slaw.

Gabriel stabs daggers of nachos into his bean chili, hums his approval of the taste, even sans meat, and looks out at the spring storm contemplatively. When he returns his focus to his son, Carlos is wiping guacamole from his lips with a napkin. In an astonishing feat, his Everything Burger has been completely demolished, as if he’d opened his jaws wide and swallowed it whole like a snake with a rabbit. Then he burps triumphantly, in the way only a fourteen-year-old boy can.

“Carlos!”

“Sorry, sir.”

“How many bites of that thing did you take?” Gabriel looks down at his barely-touched chili.

“Sorry,” Carlos says again more desperately, grabbing his glass of Coke with one hand and digging into his basket of fries with the other. He can’t stop.

Gabriel swirls a nacho into his chili but quickly seems to give up on it, lets it sink. He smiles at Carlos. Lots of smiling and laughing right now. It’s totally weird.

“You know…” Gabriel starts uneasily, as if finding his way to words is like walking down steps in the dark. “Remember how we spoke before, a while ago, about how to make a baby?”

“Dad–” Carlos tries through a mouthful of fries to stop his father in his tracks. Gabriel knows full well Carlos had to endure sex-ed classes in sixth grade – once you see an ovary, it never really leaves you. Gabriel was actually the one that signed off the parental approval form, which was awful enough in itself. Carlos lied, said the form related to a school trip to the history museum, hoping his dad wouldn’t actually read the details. Gabriel read both sides of the form thoroughly.

“There’s the…practical side to it,” Gabriel says, “As you’re aware. But you also have to make sure you…” He shakes his head, as if to erase the moment and start again. “Look, before you go too far with a woman – in case you have other girlfriends before you meet the woman who becomes your wife – make sure you do love her, and she loves you. And if there’s anything you need to talk about when you start dating, you just let me know. I’m not going to interfere. But you let me know. If you need…advice. Or…”

Carlos looks at him in horror, waiting for the or.

“It’s important that you use protection, every time,” Gabriel goes on, “I know you’ll have been told about eggs and windows.”

“What?” Carlos squints at him before he remembers. “Oh. Yeah. It’s called ovulation.”

“Yes, I know, Carlos, I have three children.” Gabriel shuffles in his seat like he’s sitting on something sharp. “I wasn’t expecting this to be easier with your sisters,” he mutters.

Carlos sips his Coke, tries not to appear crestfallen. Everything seems to be easier with Ana and Luisa. They’ve always been besotted with Gabriel, and the feeling is clearly mutual.

“Sex,” Gabriel says, low-voiced, “Should happen with your wife when you’re married, but I’m not naïve. I remember what it’s like to be a teenager. You’re brainy, your grades are high, but your body is about as dumb as a bag of hammers, and it doesn’t know what it’s doing. So, if you can’t resist temptation, make sure you use protection every time. And we can talk about that. When you’re ready.”

“We had to do the banana thing in school,” Carlos says, squirming with nausea flavored onion, beef and guac.

“I have never considered the banana in an educational setting to be an accurate representation of…you know. In the moment itself. But we can talk. Whenever you meet a girl. Me and your Mamá are here.” Gabriel looks a little hopeful, suddenly. “Or you can talk to the sex education specialist at school, and not us. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“You got a crush on anyone at the moment?” Gabriel asks, probably more aggressive than intended. Gabriel spends working days interrogating criminals. Sometimes he slips into that tone. Carlos is trying to get better at giving him a pass.

Carlos’ eyes swim with Scott Fitzsimmons; the look on Scott’s face when he’s really concentrating on a half-nelson.

He hangs his head, because everything he says and does is a lie – his whole body is full of lies. His body. Dumb as a bag of hammers. Only attracted to bodies like his. He knows it for sure now. And he’s really regretting the Everything Burger.

“But you’ve been spending time with Iris Blake, no?” Gabriel pushes, gentle now, but keen.

“Uh huh. We’re just friends,” Carlos says to the table, the word friends disappearing into a sigh. It does occur to him though, for the first time, that when he’s seen with Iris, people view them as going together. People see him as sweet on her.

Interesting.

Carlos studies his reflection in the mottled chrome tabletop. Something shadowy in fog. Featureless. Unrecognizable. The reflection of a bad man, who aged eighteen will buy Iris Blake a Coke float and propose to her in this same diner. They will sit in the pink booth where currently six high school seniors laugh about a classmate who may or may not be queer. Aged twenty, he will be in a gross motel room off Highway 35 with a guy called Joshua, an Academy peer. He’ll be thrusting his dick into Joshua’s ass, which he’s never done to anybody before. He’ll be so hard he’ll amaze himself. He’ll last three minutes until he orgasms, whereas two years previously, he went soft and small, trying to have vaginal sex. Never found out what that felt like. Couldn’t even get inside. Iris and Joshua. He won’t love either of them, not really, not romantically. He’ll leave Iris after seven weeks. Joshua will dump Carlos because he wants to marry his girlfriend, Abby. There will be tears and bitterness and fury and secrets and lies, lies, lies.

Thursday November 9, 2023

They’re both sucking their round pumpkin lollipops. TK taps his against his teeth, Carlos holds his steady while he thinks, his tongue pressing the smooth dome to the roof of his mouth. The lollipops taste unsurprisingly of orange, and have a subtle sherbet fizz. Lollipops have become a dietary staple for TK since the California rehab in 2017. He likes the ones that taste of Coca-Cola best.

Carlos shucks the lollipop out of his mouth and shakes it at TK when he speaks. “I think that was the last time me and my dad went for lunch, just the two of us…until I was…I don’t know. Might have been when I was twenty-four. I’d just bought the Camaro. He took me for food and gave me a hard time. Gave me a big lecture. I argued that I’d bought the house with the inheritance too, which was sensible, and I just wanted to do something fun. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime car. He said I was an idiot. Years later I still have the car, but the house burned down. I feel like there’s a life lesson in it.”

“Which is?” TK asks.

“Oh. I have no idea.”

TK sits forward laughing, snorting grossly around his lollipop. “I guess it’s that you never know what’s going to happen, so you should treat yourself when you can?”

“And always take out insurance on expensive purchases. But luckily I didn’t have to learn that one the hard way with the house. Otherwise, we’d still be shacked up at Owen’s.”

“That wasn’t so bad, was it? Living with my dad?”

Carlos smiles. “I just wish he didn’t hear us have sex that time.”

“Oh yeah. I mean, you weren’t talking dirty – you were screaming dirty.” TK nudges his foot up the side of Carlos’ calf.

“Exactly,” Carlos whispers, reaching down to shove TK’s foot away. “Stop. You know that tickles.”

“It’s such a weird thing to find ticklish.” TK knocks his foot against Carlos’ ankle and resumes his journey.

“TK.” Carlos fumbles his way out of the booth in a hurry, stands by TK’s side and motions for him to scooch up farther. “It’s impossible to sit opposite you. Move over.”

TK slides from the middle of the seat all the way to the rain-mottled window. Carlos sits next to him, looking at him like he’s in trouble, then rests his arm along the backrest of the seat. TK smirks, sucks at his lollipop, bides his time as if weighing his options. Ultimately, he decides to be cuddled, so re-scooches close. Carlos drapes his arm around TK’s shoulders. Side-by-side, they watch the rain.

“He was going to take you for lunch after the honeymoon,” TK says out of nowhere.

Carlos shifts against him, like the mention alone has made him antsy and restless. “My dad was?”

“He told me he was going to.”

“When?”

“When I tried to talk to him about…God…”

“You tried to talk to him about God?”

“No–” TK sits up a little, turning so he can look Carlos in the eye. “Don’t hate me for this. But I tried to talk to him about us having kids. Or not having kids.”

“You talked to him about that?”

“Maybe.”

Carlos frowns, astonished. “TK, that was our business.”

“That’s what he said.” TK picks up Carlos’ hand and kisses it, so he can’t be mad. “I don’t remember the last conversation I had with my mom. But I do remember the last one I had with Gabriel, just me and him.”

Sunday April 23, 2023

TK dries his hands on a sky-blue towel and fixes his hair before he leaves the guest bathroom; forced to use this one at the far end of the hall because of some leaky cistern in the main, which Gabriel hasn’t ‘problem-solved’ yet. (“You know what also counts as problem-solving? Calling a plumber,” Andea had quipped as she mashed potato into a smooth whip, seemingly without effort. Gabriel grumbled and took the chicken out of the oven. TK and Carlos made eyes at each other as Carlos uncorked the Chablis).

As he steps into the hallway, TK is brought to a standstill by what sounds like the frantic scrabbling of papers and a few gruff cusses. The noises are coming from Carlos’ childhood bedroom.

Walking slowly, careful of tattletale floorboards, TK listens a little harder.

“I’ll do it – yes…No…you don’t have to worry.” It’s Gabriel – and he’s talking on the phone, agitated but quiet. “Leave it with me…Hey, when in twenty years have I ever let you down?”

TK stops, waits, listens. No more words. Only scrabbling. Then a thud and the dry-splash of papers flopping onto the hardwood floor.

Confident Gabriel has hung up on whoever he was talking to, TK wanders to Carlos’ old bedroom and ratters on the doorframe.

Gabriel glances from where he’s crouched on the floor, scooping up a few documents and what could be a black and white surveillance photo peppered with age. The breast pocket of his red plaid shirt is plump with an oblong shape, which wasn’t there earlier, but it’s too small to be his iPhone.

“TK!” Gabriel greets him with friendly surprise, stuffing the documents and photo into a battered box file.

“Hey – sorry, I thought I heard something fall. Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, I dropped this.” Gabriel closes the lid of the file and stands up, wincing as he straightens his deteriorating right knee. “I’m storing excess paperwork in Carlitos’ room these days.” He hugs the file to his chest. “Something’s come up. I have to kiss goodbye to the rest of my Sunday. You know how it goes.”

TK nods and steps all the way into the room – into this museum of curiosities, where once dwelled the man he’s marrying in three weeks’ time. Blank white walls, sage green curtains. A white comforter patterned with horse silhouettes is on the rickety single bed that has groaned under his and Carlos’ adult weight more than once. This room is full of secrets, and some of them are TK’s. Most of them are Carlos’. At least one of them is Gabriel’s, clearly, given how protectively he holds that file.

The shelf above the oak desk still proudly hosts sports trophies that Andrea polishes from time to time while watching TV, because it’s hard for her to watch TV and do nothing productive with her hands. On the desk is a light-up globe that no longer lights up, a couple of tatty stuffed animals, and a police car paperweight, which Ana gave Carlos when he graduated from the Academy. The corkboard on the wall next to the desk still displays photos of Rocky and a few inspirational quotes that Carlos wrote in his neatest cursive as a teen. Always interesting is the faded photo of a swimwear model in a bikini that Carlos cut out of a magazine when he was fifteen, trying to be both subversive and hetero. Nobody has ever removed it.

Tracking TK with his eyes, Gabriel flips the question back on him. “Is everything okay with you?”

TK turns to check over his shoulder. There’s nobody in the hallway. He’s been waiting all day for a moment alone with Gabriel. He’d missed a chance to speak to him earlier, when Andrea took Carlos into the yard to pick fresh herbs. They were back within all of two minutes, happy with green sprigs in their hands. TK had spent the whole time trying to breathe through a tightening throat.

“No. I’m not, really,” TK replies, the tremor in his voice unfortunately apparent.

Gabriel nods knowingly, like he’s sensed something has been off all day. “Talk to me, son,” he says.

A fairly generic phrase, and yet it hits TK in the chest with a sharp blow. He feels like he’s full of lightning. It takes a lot of effort to keep his voice quiet and steady as he asks, “Did you know Carlos doesn’t want kids?”

Gabriel’s brow scrunches. Whatever he thought TK might say, this wasn’t it. “Not until last week, no.”

“That makes two of us.”

“I’m sorry if it came as a blow.”

“If?”

“He doesn’t want them right now, but he might someday, according to his mama.” Gabriel sighs. “It’s not like he’s discussed it with me.” He steels, stands a little straighter. “And with every respect, TK, I’m not sure why you are. Isn’t this between you and Carlos to work out?”

“Yes, and we will,” TK answers, a little firmer. “But I…” His eyes fall again on the bikinied woman on the corkboard, on the frayed teddy bear on the desk, with one green glass eye bulging and a puff of white stuffing protruding from a paw.

Gabriel shifts, moving slightly closer to him. “What, son?” Son.

TK takes a breath. He’s wanted to ask this for so long. Part of him can’t believe the moment is here, as if he’s dreaming. “When Carlos married Iris, did you think he was…you know…?”

“What?”

“Straight?” TK whispers it like a dirty word.

And as if it is a dirty word, Gabriel widens his eyes with some degree of distress. “Oh. I – I think I thought it was a phase. It was a long time ago, but yeah. I figured he was growing out of a teenage…something. I realize how naïve that sounds, now.”

“Figured, or hoped?” As soon as TK blurts it, he feels like he shrinks by inches and Gabriel increases by feet, like he’s puffed up by the confrontation.

“What is this, TK?” Gabriel’s voice is just a shade too loud, given Carlos and Andrea are in the living room sedately discussing books they’ve read. "If I could go back in time knowing what I know now, I would. So would any of us. So would you, I’m sure. But I can't." Gabriel shrugs, like he’s trying to be dismissive, like it doesn’t matter – but the heavy sadness of it betrays him. "Carlos made his choices. He chose to marry Iris and he chose to leave her faster than you can blink. But, ultimately, he met you. So, what does it matter?"

“Actually, I wouldn’t want to go back in time–” TK starts, swallowing a hard lump in his throat, “I wouldn’t do even one thing differently. Because what if it meant I’d never meet Carlos?”

Gabriel smiles, pleased enough to hear it. “I understand. Look, I really have to work. Maybe you–”

"Did you think Carlos and Iris were going to have kids?"

The question is a cold blast that makes Gabriel step back. He looks hard at TK, considering him seriously. “Yeah. I did. Because that’s what he said they were going to do. Start a family. A man and a woman get married, that’s usually what people expect.” As if sensing the gritty wave of nausea pulsing through his almost-son-in-law, Gabriel approaches again, taking one hand off the precious box file and laying it on TK’s shoulder. “Expectations were what he was trying to meet. Carlitos was always very good at telling me and his mamá what we wanted to hear – and we were always very good at hearing it.”

TK bites his lip, wants to kick himself for his watery eyes, for his cheeks going pink. “I’m doing my best to respect what Carlos told me, and to accept it, and everything. But honestly, it all seemed pretty abrupt. Like, maybe, he’d only just fallen on the side of not wanting to have kids.” He swallows again, hard. “With me.”

“Maybe so,” Gabriel offers, “But he didn’t actually want them with Iris either. Hey – he didn’t.”

TK rubs his face. “Yeah, yeah. I know. It’s just–”

“Think of it this way. You’ll be married soon. Having a family isn’t so abstract anymore. Maybe it’s become more daunting as a real prospect, that’s all. It’s a lot of work. A lot of responsibility. I wasn't ready when we had Ana, but she took us by surprise and–" Gabriel cuts himself off and looks at TK a little desperately, "Please don't ever tell her I said that."

TK smiles softly, brings his hands away from his face and lets his arms swing. “I promise.”

"What I mean is, he might come around,” Gabriel says, “You're still young. There's plenty of time."

"I know, but I just feel like something has got lost."

"I don't think I can help you with that."

"But maybe if you spoke to him–"

"Me?" Gabriel looks genuinely bemused. "Andrea already had a heart-to-heart."

TK stares at him, mouth open, mirroring the same confusion until the realization comes like another lance of lightning. He might as well be alone in a field during a severe thunderstorm. It’s that same kind of exposure – which could lead to extreme trauma or no harm at all.

Carlos spoke to Andrea about his concerns. How he didn’t want to have children of his own because of his example of what a father is; because his relationship with Gabriel only really improved when he met TK, who Gabriel happened to love instantly. But whatever Andrea relayed back to Gabriel that evening – some key facts were omitted, clearly.

Very good at telling Gabriel what he wants to hear.

And Gabriel is very good at hearing it.

Gabriel thinks Carlos isn’t ready, but he doesn’t know the reason why.

The oblong in Gabriel’s pocket enlivens with a basic beep-beep text tone. The noise knocks Gabriel out of his confusion and lands him in what TK reads as alarmed and uneasy.

"TK, it's a busy time,” Gabriel says, furtively laying a hand over the cell phone in his pocket – a no-frills work phone, TK supposes. Gabriel presses the phone against his heart, through which he will be shot just days before the wedding. “One thing at a time. Let's get you guys married. When you're back from your honeymoon, I'll take my boy for lunch. Okay?"

"Yeah." TK whispers.

A foot falls mindlessly on a squeaky floorboard in the hallway. TK turns to Carlos’ voice calling out, “Babe?”

"I'm in here," TK replies, awkwardly looking back at Gabriel and smiling.

Carlos peeks around the doorframe of his former bedroom, cheerfully confused by his fiancé and his dad shooting the breeze in here.

"Just telling TK about your trophies,” Gabriel says, delivering the lie with an actor’s precision.

"TK already knows about my trophies.”

“Yeah? Well, I like to reminisce about your achievements.” Gabriel perfects his bit by wandering to the shelf and adjusting the silver cup Carlos earned for wrestling as a junior.

Carlos smirks. “I seem to remember your disappointment that I didn’t bring home gold.”

TK shoots him a look.

Gabriel stops touching the trophy, a little deflated. "Anyway. I needed to grab a file. I have to work this evening."

Carlos regards this casually, like he knows the score. So many evenings, growing up, when Gabriel was called away. It was the same for TK in New York as a latchkey kid.

Carlos rubs a knuckle down TK’s arm. "I was coming to find you because we should get on the road. I got an alert about a pile up, so we can take the scenic route."

TK looks at Gabriel, as though for permission to be on their way.

Gabriel grants it nonchalantly, reminding them to pick up leftovers on their way out. They are both embraced with a dude-like shoulder-bump-hug before he heads off to his study.

He lives for fourteen more days.

Thursday November 9, 2023

“I guess he was talking to Gutiérrez. But I – I never figured it was actually a burner phone.”

“It’s okay,” Carlos whispers shakily, “Don’t worry.”

A heavy tear slips from TK’s eye. Carlos catches it with his thumb and presses it to his finger like it’s something he can crush and destroy. But when a second falls, he misses. It sort of feels like that tear will be in the air forever.

“You’re not mad?” TK asks, “I thought you’d be mad?”

“No. No.” Carlos takes TK’s face in his hands. “I get that you were going through it, at the time. I know I hurt you. And I like that my dad wanted to take me for–” the word lunch disappears when he tries to say it. He pauses for a second to compose. “I like knowing that.”

“Good,” TK whispers, feeling unbearably, implodingly sad, like his chest is about to fold inwards with a snap.

“I don’t know if I’d have brought up the kids thing,” Carlos goes on, “Or Dad either, actually.”

“Yeah. Maybe not.” TK smiles now, thinking Gabriel and Carlos would have ended up discussing literally anything else over spaghetti and meatballs.

“But I always liked it when my dad took me for lunch. To begin with, anyway.”

TK takes a deep, shaky breath and slowly releases. For six months, it had felt wrong to keep his final conversation with Gabriel secret from Carlos, but too scary to share. Now he’s told him, the sense of relief is similar to relaxing back in a warm, aromatherapy bath. While crying.

“Also – what my dad told you was true,” Carlos says, “I did tell my parents Iris and I were going to start a family, but I didn’t really want that then, either.”

“Okay. I know.”

“No, really. I don’t want you thinking I wanted kids with someone else, but specifically don’t want them with you.”

TK looks at him with stinging eyes. Everything goes dark and blurry as Carlos moves in to press a lingering kiss to his forehead. He puts his arm around TK’s shoulders then, sitting the way they were before. They are back in the present, back with the rain on the window and the deep night sky.

“Hey. Something I’ve wondered,” TK says, playing with Carlos’ left hand that hangs against his chest, touching his warm wedding ring. “After you and Iris got married, was it ever an option for her to move into your parents’ house? Why did you go to the Blakes’?”

Against him, TK feels Carlos shrug and sigh. It’s a weary, dragging feeling. “Michelle was living there after a breakup. Their mom loved me. I think everyone saw it as nice to have a man around.”

“Sure.”

“Couldn’t even look her mom in the eye, when I left.”

“Oh, babe.” TK tucks up against him, rests his hand on his thigh.

“But I did fix the rain gutter without her having to call anybody. So. Yeah. Anyway, I think it would have been worse to kick Iris out of my parents’ place. Or maybe I wouldn’t have had the guts to end it, if I was trying to play house in front of Mom and Dad. Does that make sense? I just don’t know.”

“Kind of a wild thought, to think you might never have left her,” TK says.

“But I still would have fallen in love with you. I’m certain of that.”

“Me too,” TK says, “And then where would we be?”

Carlos lifts his hand out of TK’s. He strokes his fingers through his soft brown hair. Usually, he can’t stomach the what ifs. What if he’d managed to have sex with Iris and she had fallen pregnant? What if TK had died from his overdose in New York? Or, what if Alex had accepted TK’s proposal? What if Gabriel never uncovered corruption in the Texas Rangers – or never pissed off the wrong people from ex-cons to cartels? What if the cyclist had swerved, so Gwyn made it to the other side of the street? Or, what if the fertilizer facility never went up in flames, and the subsequent explosion never happened, so the crew of Station 126 never perished? What if 9/11 never happened, and Station 252 never perished either? Suddenly, the deaths of thousands of people become apparent to Carlos as a force of change, which directly meant Owen and TK Strand came to Austin. It’s a stark, brain-breaking reality. His entire relationship with TK always hinged on two different deadly disasters, as well as personal heartbreak that had a knock-on effect of its own.

Sometimes, when Carlos feels like this, he wishes he could talk to Rocky. He wants to feel his old dog’s head rest on his knee. He wants to see those round, brown eyes peering up at him. Unbelievable that dogs don’t live forever. Just completely astonishing. Stupid and wrong. Rocky had passed a month after Carlos proposed to Iris, elegantly taking his last dream-breath in front of the fireplace, the night before Christmas Eve. Nobody was brave about it. Gabriel insisted on going into the yard alone to dig the grave. He chose a spot without consulting anybody. Carlos wanted to help, but Gabriel angrily pushed him back by the chest, didn’t look at him. Carlos went to his room and cried into his pillow like a child, his pillowcase being his favorite from childhood, covered with silhouettes of horses. He couldn’t tell Iris about Rocky until the day after Christmas. They were meant to be dog walking together, but he turned up without a dog, so they wandered arm-in-arm around the field just talking and crying. Molly led the way, perhaps a little bereft herself, sensing her playmate gone forever.

Carlos adjusts with TK next to him, grunting as if in discomfort. TK moves, although Carlos doesn’t mean for him to. He doesn’t want to say sorry, I was daydreaming about my dead dog, for the sheer bummer of it, but TK knows Carlos’ mind has drifted someplace sad like that. TK twists to face him and puts his thumb on Carlos’ chin to get him to focus.

“What are you thinking about in your thoughtful head?” TK asks.

“Rocky,” Carlos says after a moment. It can be hard to speak his name. “And Rubí after him.”

Saturday February 23, 2013

Carlos wanders back and forth across the living room floor, worrying the tip of his thumb against his front teeth. Rubí whines up at him from her basket, ears pricked, confused by his movements. She's still unsure of him – this human who is apparently sticking around a while. She was adopted by Gabriel and Andrea only a couple of weeks ago; a one-year-old border collie that a neighbor in poor health couldn't deal with. Andrea was desperate for a new dog. Rocky had been gone since Christmas, buried under the cedar elm, and the youngest Reyes child was flying the nest. Only, he's come crash-landing back again.

Rubí jumps out of her basket when Andrea walks in. She paws at her heel as if for comfort.

"Mijo, stop pacing around," Andrea says to Carlos, hugging the house phone to her chest for a few thoughtful seconds. Carlos watches her return the phone to its cradle on the wine table next to the couch. "That was Papá calling from the road,” she tells him, “He'll be back soon."

"Did he say anything? Do you think he smoothed things over?"

Andrea bows to scratch Rubí under her chin. "I don't think so. But it's a shock for them, all this. We have to give it time."

"Mom. Are you okay?"

Andrea stands up straight, as if to be defiant in the face of her obvious sorrow and tiredness. Then she shrugs with defeat. "I'm going to run a bubble bath, read my book for a while."

"Oh. Okay."

"It's been weeks since I treated myself to something like that."

"Sure." Carlos wonders if they need to hug. He wonders for too long, because she starts walking away to the bathroom. Rubí looks at Carlos suspiciously, then goes after Andrea.

The dog doesn't like me, he thinks. But dogs have always liked me. Rocky loved me. His chest hurts as if it's old concrete cracked in summer heat. Perhaps Rocky was a dumb dog and Rubí is intuitive. She knows a good soul when she meets one. She will turn her back on a human she suspects of dark acts and deviance.

Andrea is in the bath when Gabriel arrives home. Carlos has moved to the veranda overlooking the backyard, where he smells the day's rain on the grass. The sun is setting behind sad blue clouds. The light is murky purple.

Behind him, Carlos hears the crack and hiss of a can being opened, followed by another. He turns and finds Gabriel stepping outside from the kitchen, two pale ales in hand.

"Here," Gabriel says, handing one over.

"Really?"

"Don't tell your mother."

Carlos accepts with hesitation, as though this is a test – but he doesn't know if he'll win or lose by drinking. He's been allowed a little wine with Sunday dinners since his early teens, but beer at the table, while less alcoholic, was deemed too mannish or boisterous – like it represented something different to wine. The blood of Christ it ain't.

"I'm underage," Carlos says, thinking too of the tequila incident, 2011.

Gabriel rolls his eyes. "Fine, I'll drink it. I could use more than one anyway."

Carlos smells the lid of the can and then takes a sip. It's bubbly and refreshing. "No, it's okay. I’ll have it. Thank you."

"We're not making a habit out of this."

"Was it bad – with Tío Nicolás and Tía Lorena?"

Gabriel swigs from his can and pulls at the collar of his blue plaid shirt, undoing the top button. He seems uncomfortable in every way. "All I can hope is that they’re saying things out of shock, and they’ll come around to the idea of you, uh, not being with Iris anymore."

“I wasn’t really with her anyway.”

“Nicolás and Lori didn’t know that though, did they?”

“No, sir. But I don’t know why they care so much. It’s not like I’m their kid.”

“They loved you like family!” Gabriel’s voice climbs, latches to the air and echoes.

Loved. Past participle. “Yes, sir.” Carlos shivers like the echo of Gabriel’s shout has reached his body.

They’re quiet for a long time, swigging beer, thinking. "I want you to know, I believed I was doing the right thing with the TV," Carlos says once he’s halfway through his can.

"I’ve no doubt." Gabriel huffs a laugh. "It's fair to say you misjudged that one. But, look, son. It’s important that you stay away from them. Don’t go near them. Don’t try to call them, or write to them. Leave them the hell alone. For your own good."

“What does that mean?”

“It means they won’t become a problem to you if you let them go.”

“A problem to me?”

“Carlos.”

“You make it sound like they’re going to throw a Molotov cocktail through the window.”

“Let them go.”

"I'm sorry, Dad."

“Forget about it.”

“They’re your closest friends.”

“They were.” Gabriel stares out at the darkening yard. The deep blue cedar elms bend to an easterly gust of wind. "You walked out on your wife seven weeks after your wedding. Did you consider the consequence might be anger from every corner? Did you stop to think, at all, that running around town returning wedding gifts might be a slap in the face to everyone who supported you, despite us all thinking you were rushing into it?”

Carlos fiddles with the ring pull of his can until it snaps off. The only person who acted negatively towards the engagement and wedding was Michelle, which he put down to being Iris’ protective older sister more than anything. He didn’t take her concerns seriously, because between the Thanksgiving proposal and the early January wedding, he convinced himself that he and Iris would be married ‘til death do they part. That was the whole point of the endeavor. A lot of people ‘settle’ into marriages for the sake of it. Maybe even most people settle? He’s wondered about this. It’s just he’d tried to do it at the age of eighteen instead of thirty-two.

“The last thing I wanted was for you and Tío Nicolás to fall out. For anyone to fall out.”

Gabriel takes a long swig of beer, enough to half-empty his can, enough to squeeze a dent in the metal with his thumb. The yard is invisible now. The amber lights of the house do nothing to touch it. He and his dad could be floating through a black hole for all Carlos knows. A black hole would probably feel like this.

“You just have to forget it now. Move on. You've got plenty ahead of you. Blink and you'll be at the Academy. If that's really what you want, still."

"It is.”

"It takes a lot of hard work to be a patrol officer in the city. It’s a tough beat. You're going to find yourself in difficult and dangerous situations every day. You can't just run away the moment things scare you. You can’t be such a soft touch."

“I won’t,” Carlos insists, “I’m not.”

Carlos wants, more than anything, to assure his father that he wasn't running away from Iris by leaving her – he was setting her free. The words are clear in his mind, but he cannot speak them. Sometimes words, for Carlos, are like big-bodied hornets with stingers pointed, trying to fly through a closed window, tapping again and again at the glass.

It's easier to ask a question than it is to answer something himself. "Dad – when did you know you were in love with Mom?"

The question knocks Gabriel back, but in a smiley, surprised way. "Oh. Well." He rubs the stubble on his jawline, thinking about it as he squints into the soft blackness of a drizzly nightfall. "You won't believe me when I say this. But the moment I saw her. Then I spoke to her, and she made me laugh. She's always been funnier than me. Smarter, too."

Carlos smiles genuinely for the first time in what might be weeks. "I do believe you."

Tell me – Carlos thinks – tell me I'll have that too. Allow me. Say it's all you could ever wish for me.

But Gabriel swigs at his beer. Carlos doesn't ask any more questions. He simply wonders if it's him or Nicolás and Lori who has let Gabriel down the worst.

When Andrea is done in the bath, she sits close to Gabriel on the couch to watch TV. The show is something Carlos isn't interested in, but it's making them laugh. Carlos, unnoticed, goes to his room. It's only his second night back since he moved out seven weeks ago. Everything is as he left it, except on the floor next to the dresser there's the addition of a widescreen TV wrapped in black garbage sacks. Carlos puts the TV on Craigslist, then gets ready for bed. He lies down underneath his comforter – another childhood staple, dark blue and patterned with white moons and stars, and turns off his bedside lamp. It's not late, but he wants to soothe himself with his own touch. If his mom or dad happen to stride in, darkness offers extra protection. He thinks about Scott Fitzsimmons. What would it be like to feel himself slide into that firm, round ass? What begging noises could he get Scott to make? Imagine Scott, the wrestling team champion, on his knees.

Carlos ejaculates into a handful of Kleenex and resumes his old ways of balling it up and hiding it temporarily under his bed. Tomorrow, he’ll take it with him to the gym, throw it into the trash there. Since coming out, he’s been even more diligent about hiding any and all signs of masturbation. Before, if his parents had happened to find something like an ominous stain or crusty tissue, they’d have assumed he was being a normal teenage boy with normal urges. The moment he told them he was gay, the stakes were higher. Possible evidence of jerkoff was even more controversial and mortifying. They’d know what he was envisioning, or what materials he was using. He’s not a normal person in their eyes anymore. His urges are unrelatable, unallowable. He disgusts his own family and their friends. But he cannot help it, and when all is said and done, he doesn’t want to help it. With Iris, he’d assumed he could simply keep his eyes shut and have sex with her.

A hole is a hole? Boners come on easily and strong? He’s eighteen and horny all the time? Nope.

Everything he thought he’d be capable of died a floppy death. The soft texture of her small hands on him made him curl away like a creature with a shell, though he had no shell to hide in. Her tongue against his lips sent him icky. He hated himself for it – objectively, he knew she was beautiful and that he was lucky – but he just wanted a man.

Each night, he slept on the tipping edge of the bed. He woke up on the floor one morning – hadn’t even realized he’d fallen. If he lived to be ninety-eight, there would be twenty-nine thousand more nights just like it. The calculation made him sweat. The next night, he tried to spoon her. He closed his eyes and pretended she was Scott. But Scott is a big, hard guy, and Iris is a slender, soft woman, and they smell very different. When Carlos started thinking deeply about Scott, his dick got hard. Iris felt the bulge against her buttock and jolted away from him. Recent attempts at a sex-life had left her just as scared and humiliated as Carlos, but arguably a lot more confused. Carlos kept saying he wanted to try, and then kept saying he’d failed.

He'd failed.

Carlos washes off in the bathroom while his parents laugh at the TV. By the sink, he stares at the upturned Gillette razor next to the soap dish. The cap is missing. The blades shine silver. He folds his arms as if to protect the soft flesh just below his elbow from his ugliest thoughts. No. Things are not that bad. They've never been that bad.

He all but runs back to his bedroom.

His bedroom is safe and full of nice, familiar things. He’s supposed to be back here with his parents to heal, not harm.

Heal me, he thinks. Heal me, heal me, heal me.

Chapter Text

Sunday October 10, 2021

Late in the evening, after a rough shift that included being kneed in the balls by a house robber who ran away with a Louis Vuitton suitcase, Carlos gets showered and unpacks fresh comfies from a cardboard box that’s still in the living room. He fights the urge to order takeout for the fourth evening in a row, and makes himself cook.

Slumped at his new stove, he stirs a pot of pozole verde, sips from a large glass of chilled white wine, and hums to himself sadly. Mid-hum, he pauses. An erratic brown movement flickers in the corner of his eye. He glances to his right, focusing. A male huntsman spider the size of his hand jerkily scrambles along the kitchen counter, his legs so long and bendy it’s as though he can’t properly angle or control them.

If this had happened a month ago, Carlos would have leapt skyward, yelling, his soul shooting into the roof of his mouth – Sauvignon blanc slopping and wineglass shattering into specks on the concrete floor. He’d have flung something. Anything. The lid of a saucepan, a spatula, a bunch of bananas. Whatever reachable object. He’d have called for TK. TK is brave enough to approach spiders and centipedes and hellish-whatnot with an upturned glass and a piece of card to slot beneath. He’d take the creature outside and place it onto the grass. Let it go. Carlos’ instinct is to flee. He can’t even get close enough to trap things.

But on this day, when he is flooded with heartbreak that feels like a fever, he doesn’t flee – not for a whole twenty seconds. He stands still, in a trance, watching the spider lumber towards him. Then he thinks of TK and the spell is broken. He yelps, seizes his recipe book and slams it onto the worktop. The spider stops still and seems perplexed. Carlos missed the target. He bursts into tears. He wants to call TK so badly. Longs for him. Wants to say, “TK, I know you hate me, but can you come get this giant spider out of my kitchen?”

The spider turns around and limps off in the other direction, as if he’s realized he’s intruding on something. Carlos sees now that he only had seven legs.

Thursday October 14, 2021

While he’s dusting, Carlos finds the spider dead in the corner of the bedroom, curled into a skeletal ball – that sad way they do. He looks small and thin and crooked, like something that could blow away in the wind. Carlos wants to call TK and say, “Hey, I spent three days knowing there was a massive spider in the loft and I got on with my life – I think that’s progress. Are you proud of me?” Carlos imagines TK appreciating this. How he’ll laugh and banter back. Maybe the conversation will go so well that Carlos could ask him out for a coffee, just as friends. Maybe they really could be friends again, like they always were? Maybe his best friend is what he’s missing, even more than the sex? He thinks hard about this all day. He doesn’t call him.

Thursday November 9, 2023

“What are you thinking?” TK asks after a quiet pause.

“I was thinking…You’re the only person I’ve slept with who has been my friend too,” Carlos says wistfully, then frowns as if questioning himself. “I mean, Iris doesn’t count because–” he floats his hands around in an awkward motion.

“You never consummated your marriage,” TK finishes pointedly.

“Right. Not like you and I did.”

TK grins with pride, stirs his straw in his glass and clinks the lingering ovals of melting ice. “Nobody has ever consummated a marriage like we did, baby.”

Carlos cracks a beautiful laugh. “That’s for sure.”

TK takes a small sip from his iced tea, thinking. He swallows and says, “Same for me, with you.”

“I thought you had friends with benefits in New York?”

“That was different.” TK pauses to ache a little for Dan. He doesn’t want to let himself wonder how he’s doing these days. “I’m talking about a best friend. A true friend who wasn’t going to hand me a tab of ecstasy at three o’clock in the afternoon.” He shivers. “And then Alex…I thought he loved me. But I question now if he even liked me, in the end.”

“Unthinkable.” Carlos shakes his head. “I couldn’t dislike you if I tried. I did try, once.”

“I know. Me too.”

“Failed.”

“Me too.”

“I love you.”

“I know.” TK leans into Carlos, looking hard into his eyes, so close he goes blurry and their noses touch. “Me too.”

“You two lovebirds want a refill?” Mandy approaches with a mischievous grin, reaching for their near-empty glasses.

TK hands them over, tilting his head and glittering at her. “Thanks, Mandy. Can we get one slice of the red velvet cake, two forks?”

“One slice, two forks coming right up,” she says gleefully. “I love it when folk ask for two forks. It’s just the sweetest thing.”

TK and Carlos sit in comfortable silence for a moment, watching raindrops bead against the window and collapse into silver streams, flowing into each other.

Mandy saunters back, competently carrying with one hand a circular tray. Two glasses of unsweetened ice tea and their shared dessert are set down in front of them. “Y’all enjoy now,” she says.

TK and Carlos grab a fork each and hunch slightly over the table, sliding the side of their forks through the soft red sponge. TK watches Carlos take his mouthful first.

“Good, right?” TK asks, and Carlos nods with firm agreement, diving in for his next bite. TK wholeheartedly agrees with Mandy – one plate, two forks is the very sweetest. There’s an intimacy to sharing dessert. This might be one of TK’s favorite things to do, now he’s considering it. When is the first time he shared dessert with Carlos? Probably…

They’d been sleeping together a few weeks. One evening, Carlos presented TK with a vintage-looking Christmas cookie tin containing almond polvorónes left over from his cousin Adriana’s wedding. The two of them were at the dining table, full from lasagna, so Carlos split one polvorón in half. TK’s eyes rolled back in reaction to the taste.

He’s always tried to cling to memories of his firsts with Carlos, even when he told himself that nothing was of any real significance. He knows now that everything was. Everything from first sex to first cookie. Firsts that linger, last forever, like the rain – soft silver beads that suddenly spill and flow and join up and create something much greater, like a river.

“I wish I’d known–” TK says through a mouthful of cake.

“Known what?”

TK swallows, takes a sip of tea. “I wish I‘d known that it was always going to be you. I’d have saved myself.”

“You did save yourself.”

“No, I mean – for sex. I’d have lost my virginity to you when we met.”

Carlos barks a cough, nearly choking on a crumb. He holds up a finger to signal to TK to be quiet a moment, let him catch his breath. “You would have been content with being a virgin until you were twenty-six?”

TK laughs, imagining his teenage-self faced with that concept. But in seconds, his laughter fades, and he’s back there. Back there, in that room. His chest fills with years’ worth of untreated pain so jagged that he puts a hand over his heart. He looks into Carlos’ eyes – nothing blurs this time. Everything is perfectly clear, and razor sharp.

Sunday February 6, 2011

The tall, naked man who sits on TK’s thighs – pinning him to the blue-sheeted mattress in a dorm room that smells of weed and dirty socks – is called Nate. He has side-swept black bangs, a silver lip ring and a gold barbell through his septum. TK wishes that Nate was Fox. But he isn’t – he can’t be. That’s fine. That’s life. Time to move on. Time for TK to accompany a few guys from school who just about pass for over-eighteen and con his way into a ‘Superbowl Party’ in the dorms of New York University. Time for TK to immediately spot a hot emo in the corner, who had ignored the TV and stuck his tongue out for something blue and dissolvable that a girl with long red hair placed directly into his mouth. TK already chugged Kraken Rum while pre-drinking, so was feeling bold. His gaydar pinged so strongly he thought he could also inadvertently pick up nuclear submarines and UFOs over cornfields in Philadelphia.

Nate has a plastic bottle of something green on his bedside table. He unscrews the cap and holds it out to TK, who leans up to put his lips to it. Nate feeds him a few sips before pulling it away and drinking himself. The green liquid is sharply alcoholic with an industrial bleach afterburn. TK asks what it is, but Nate doesn’t know.

“I have condoms,” TK says. They are the condoms he never got as far as using with Fox. He’s never used them with anybody.

Nate shrugs. He opens his bedside drawer, removing a bottle of lube and a string of condoms of his own.

“Mine are ribbed,” TK says.

Nate pauses, thinks, gets off him. TK retrieves his condoms from his backpack while Nate snaps his fingers at him to hurry up. TK doesn’t know if it’s playful or serious but he does kind of like the command. Nate leans back on the mattress, propped on his elbows, waits for TK to roll the condom on him.

TK has never put a condom on anyone else before. He’s experimented with putting them on himself, and he’s trying to think back on sex-ed and bananas. It takes him a moment to figure out the right way around. His fingers are shaking. He rolls the rubber on a little askew. Nate has to finish the job. But it’s alright.

TK climbs into Nate’s lap, wraps his arms around his shoulders and kisses him. It’s alright. It’s sloppy. It’s not like kissing Fox. It’s fine. Nate tastes of weed, and TK isn’t too convinced he likes weed, even though he smokes himself. He likes how it looks. He likes how he feels when he thinks about how it looks to smoke – but the actual weed itself is never great.

Nate tries to enter TK’s hole from this angle, so TK can straddle him or ride him into the mattress, but TK can’t sink onto him. He’s too tight, even with Nate’s cock lubed up. And he really has no idea what he’s doing. Nate smiles. It’s unfriendly. Maybe condescending. TK is trying to read Nate’s face when suddenly he’s pushed down onto the mattress. Nate grabs his hips, steering and positioning him, lifting him up, knocking his knee between TK’s legs to get him to spread. He opens his lower bedside drawer this time, rummages through numerous clattering objects until he pulls out a purple vibrator. On its lowest setting, he starts teasing TK’s hole. It excites TK so much he squeezes the pillow in his fists and bites his lip and moans and tries not to come. Nate starts opening him up. A hot, splitting pain. He’s only ever felt his own fingers inside him before, but that was gentle and he built up his tolerance over time. The vibrator isn’t large but it’s certainly larger than a finger. It feels crazy to be doing this. Dirty and scandalous. He grins through gritted teeth as Nate works the vibrator back and forth inside him. He wants to ask him to switch to a stronger vibration, but he’s scared. Instead, he pushes back into it, rocking his hips. This gets a keen response from Nate – a turned-on grunt.

The vibrator lands on the sheet beside TK. Now it’s the warmth of Nate around him, pinching his nipples and fondling his balls and then fucking him.

A different sensation, an actual cock pushing apart his tight muscles.

Unbelievable. Unreal. He’s actually doing it. He’s having sex. Real sex with a real boy.

He’s popped his intercourse cherry in a college dorm and he’s only a high school junior. It’s like a movie.

Nate pounds into him harder now. Harder. Too hard? What’s too hard? What’s too gentle? TK doesn’t know yet. Nate grabs the back of TK’s neck, grabs his hair, pulls. TK…likes this? Does he? He doesn’t know. Nate likes it. Nate starts straining and groaning and tightening his grip on TK’s neck. His hand tilts leftwards, the motion of it forcing TK to look at the other side of the room. White walls. A messy desk, cheap-looking wood finish. Shelves above, the same. Books on limnology, hydrology, ichthyology. So many -ologies. How do people ever learn these things? There’s a corkboard on the wall between the desk and the shelves, covered with pictures of rock and indie bands that TK cannot name. He thought he knew more about the scene than most people. Suddenly he doesn’t feel so good. His chest is tight. He’s hot and turning pink. He hates turning pink, it’s so embarrassing. He feels young. Stupid. What the fuck is ichthyology? Midway through his first sex, he wants to pat the guy on the arm and ask, “Hey, what’s ichthyology?”

Nate starts actually making noise – a high pitched, shrieky fuck fuck you’re so fucking good fuck. His entire weight crashes down over TK, flattening him onto the mattress, his neck crooked at an awkward angle. Nate pulls out, wheezing, and goes for his bedroom drawer again – this time removing an asthma inhaler.

“Are you okay?” TK asks.

Nate takes a second hit of Primatene Mist and gives him the thumbs up. He stands, heads to the small ensuite bathroom in the far corner of the room, tossing the used condom in the wastepaper basket next to the desk as he goes. TK sits awkwardly on the bed, woozy and hard and confused by Nate’s lack of interest in his cock or getting him off. TK had assumed that was part of the deal.

With Nate gone and running the faucet in the bathroom, TK helps himself to a large swig of whatever the green drink is. He opens the bottom bedside drawer and finds a bright pink vibrator that looks more shapely than the purple one, more like a penis, ridged tip and all. He quickly slips it into his backpack. In the top drawer, Nate has a prescription bottle of Oxy. TK puts this into his bag too. On the desk – a Hershey’s bar. He takes the chocolate and puts it in his bag and zips up. His jeans are halfway buttoned over his wilting boner by the time Nate emerges from the bathroom.

“Oh – you’re leaving?” Nate says.

“Yeah. My friends are still out there.”

“I can play us some music. I hate football.”

“Okay,” TK says, because he still has an erection. Maybe Nate just needed to get off first, and now it’s going to be all about TK.

TK sits down on the edge of the bed they’ve made messy. A white comforter sticks out of its blue case, every popper burst open. Blue elasticated sheet corners have snapped away from the mattress. Nate pulls on a pair of black satin shorts and slumps onto his desk chair, opens his laptop.

“Have you heard of The Smiths?” he asks.

“Uh, yeah.”

Nate smirks and hits the play button on his iTunes. Based on the corkboard display, TK was expecting something similar to Nine Inch Nails but more underground, or maybe some kind of electronic screaming grindcore while he lies back and has his dick sucked. Instead, he sits quietly on the bed, and Nate sits quietly on his desk chair. They listen to melancholy, British, ‘80s indie music for forty minutes. By the end, TK kind of wants a double-decker bus to crash into him. He wasn’t sure if he was allowed to put on his sweater this whole time, and now he’s goosebumped and shivery. Sleet hits the window at a diagonal.

“Have you heard of Joy Division?” Nate asks.

This is exactly the right moment for TK’s phone to ping with a text message. “where r u strand?” it’s Mike. TK could happily dive into Mike’s arms right now.

“Sorry, my friends want me,” TK says.

Nate shrugs – shrugs as if TK could have left immediately, ages ago, and Nate wouldn’t have cared. TK makes a note to himself to always leave immediately in the future.

He puts on the rest of his clothes and grabs his slightly heavier bag, swings it over his shoulder with the satisfaction that he has a chocolate bar to eat, pills to swallow, and a vibrator to try out.

TK finds Mike and the others in the communal kitchen – someone has left a New York University hoodie on a stool – gray with purple lettering, school colors. TK foolishly says he wants one. Mike loops the hoodie under his arm as they make their exit. It's Mike’s now. He puts it on once they’re downstairs and flips TK the bird. TK decides not to share the stolen Oxy with him. Later tonight, he’ll steal the stolen hoodie back from Mike. Wednesday in American Lit, Mike will steal TK’s green New Era Yankees cap by way of revenge, and that is their friendship.

TK Strand has had anal sex. He received. He bottomed. It doesn’t matter that it wasn’t good enough to make him orgasm. He almost orgasmed, and that’s surely something? The point is, he is no longer a virgin. He wants to tell Mike and everyone about it. He wants to brag, and he could. It’s not like they’re getting any. But they don’t mind him being gay so long as he isn’t gay-gay, and it’s pretty gay-gay to have gay sex. He holds his tongue.

Curfew is 11 p.m. It’s usually 10 p.m., but Owen generously approved an extension to accommodate the Superbowl fun. TK barely makes it on time, staggering through the door of his dad’s apartment at 10:58 p.m.

Owen is in his usual La-Z-Boy chair that faces the entryway. He’s wearing his comfies, asleep with the remote control on his chest. Recap coverage of the game is muted on the TV. He’s been at work all day, and it’s clearly wiped him out.

TK’s balance evades him as he tries to unlace his Docs. He tumbles into the bookcase with a thud. Nothing falls, but Owen wakes.

“Sorry,” TK slurs, “Just going to bed.”

He blinks at Owen with wide, unfocussed eyes, pupils dilated to the point where his ring of green iris is nearly invisible.

“I let you go to Mike’s Superbowl party on one condition,” Owen says, heaving himself out of the chair. “No substances. And you promised.”

“I didn’t, I didn’t.” TK smiles and nudges Owen’s chest. “I’m just tired. I need to go to bed.”

“TK. Look at me.”

“Noooo I’m fine.”

“TK!” Owen grabs TK by his backpack. TK struggles and jerks his arms around until his backpack and coat come away in Owen’s hands. Owen lets both items clatter to the floor – and when the bag smacks the floorboards, there’s a strange buzzing sound.

“What’s that?” Owen asks.

“I don’t know,” TK says quickly, launching for the backpack at the same time as Owen – his blood running cold when he sees the black canvas undulating.

The Oxy has dulled his reaction times. Owen snatches the bag and unzips.

There it all is. A half-eaten Hershey bar. A green tube containing pills (opened). A strip of ribbed condoms (eleven serrated squares out of twelve). And a pink vibrator that is accidentally vibrating and thrusting at its highest setting.

Owen takes the vibrator out of the bag, stares at it moving in his hand like a living thing, and then switches it off with some difficulty.

“I can explain,” TK says once the room falls blessedly quiet but for street noise below.

Owen looks at the vibrator, looks at TK, looks at the vibrator. Looks at TK. “Did you get this the same place you got that?” he nods at the New York University hoodie that TK stole from Mike when Mike wasn’t looking. He put it on over his sweater and under his coat for extra warmth, which he thought was sensible. “Same place you got the pills?”

“And the chocolate bar,” TK admits. “Look–”

“You told me you were going to Mike’s, and you went to fucking New York University and came home with Oxy and a sex toy?”

“Like I said. I can explain,” TK says, even though explaining would mean repeating everything Owen just said. Because that is what happened.

“This is going in the trash. All of it.” Owen stomps away to the kitchen with TK in wobbly pursuit.

“No! I should be allowed to have that,” TK cries, more fussed about the vibrator than the pills at this point, because he had grand plans.

Owen pulls the garbage can out of its hideaway cupboard and dumps the condoms and vibrator into the sack – the vibrator springing to life again among egg shells and scrapped leftovers. Owen looks at TK seriously. Holding eye contact, he shuts the garbage can away while the vibrator carries on singing, slightly muffled. It will keep going until the battery dies.

Owen reads from the prescribed Oxy. “Paulson, Nathanial B. You know this person?”

TK shakes his head. He doesn’t, really.

“Don’t you dare fucking cry, TK.”

He’s trying not to. He turns away, hunches over the kitchen island. But his ass is sore, and actually it hurts less if he’s upright.

“Every time you are caught out, you cry. So, you know what you’re doing is wrong.”

“Dad, please.” TK turns to him again, paws at the blue fleece sweater Owen wears around the apartment on freezing nights like this. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

TK wants a hug. He wants to be held and rocked. Normally, even after indiscretions, Owen would relent and embrace him and kiss his hair and say soothing things. But not this time – and if TK could see properly through his bleary eyes, he would know how heartbreaking Owen finds it to resist holding his crying child.

“I had sex today,” TK says through a cracking voice while the vibrator he stole merrily hums in the background.

“Yeah. I figured.”

“For the first time.”

Owen goes still while his mind boggles. “The first time?” he repeats.

“Uh huh.”

“I thought – I thought you slept with Fox?”

“We never went all the way.”

“But you did today?” Owen asks in a measured tone, keeping his cool. “You had intercourse?”

“Yes, Dad, God – do you want me to paint you a picture?”

“Who did you have sex with?”

“Just some guy.”

“Son.”

TK takes a gasping breath. “I think I hated it.”

“Oh, my baby boy.”

“He made me listen to The Smiths.”

“What?”

“So I stole his vibrator.”

“Uh–”

“No. Wait. I stole that before.”

“I think we might need to refocus,” Owen says kindly.

“I’m forgetting. Everything’s jumbled.”

Owen reaches out and grabs TK by the stupid stolen New York University hoodie, which is about two sizes too big for him and probably belonged to some poor girl who is now missing it, judging by the orangey-beige foundation staining the collar. “Come here,” Owen says begrudgingly, and TK flops into his arms.

“I hate myself so much,” TK wails into his dad’s shoulder.

Friday May 22, 2020

The tall, muscular, beautiful naked man who TK straddles – rocking him into the queen bed mattress in a room that smells of clean sheets and sandalwood cologne – is called Carlos Reyes. He’s a patrol cop with the APD and he’s so good-looking TK kind of wants to laugh.

Carlos usually has neatly gelled black curls, but right now they’re sprung loose and messy from TK’s hands working through them. His large brown eyes are wide open, staring into TK – not at him – while his hands grip TK’s hips and he thrusts up.

TK thought that he wouldn’t have sex for a long time in Austin. Or, couldn’t. He thought he’d wish the guy was Alex and become distraught.

Carlos though. Officer Carlos Reyes. He finds he does not wish that Carlos was Alex at all.

TK hadn’t realized Carlos was gay, at first. His gaydar was glitching, needed a little maintenance. It took Carlos approaching him at the honky-tonk and outright asking him to dance for TK to have that eureka moment. Now, here they are – first intercourse after their first official date because it turns out bar darts is a sexier sport than TK ever gave credit. He’d ranted about Judd Ryder being insulting and obtuse, but Carlos didn’t take any of TK’s shit, and it’s possible TK never wanted a dick inside him more. Fortunately, Carlos seemed to read his mind. “Want to get out of here and go back to my place?” he said.

TK slung his last dart, didn’t look to see where it landed. He took Carlos by the hand and marched them out of there. It was so abrupt and obvious that both of them started laughing. TK’s grumpy mood shifted rapidly as they joked all the way back in the car.

The first time they’d hooked up at Carlos’ place, they burst through the door kissing, tumbled through the house and ended up writhing on the floor in an insatiable sixty-nine. TK came first, hard, into Carlos’ mouth. Carlos, quite by accident, gave TK a pearl necklace he had to wash off at the kitchen sink.

This time, their entry to the house was slow. Carlos tenderly ghosted his lips against TK’s neck. His left hand pushed up his back, inside his shirt, explored the feel of his firm, warm skin. Something gently electric traveled through TK’s body. Something softly fierce and hot. Up in the bedroom, Carlos pulled TK’s clothes off like he was caring for each garment, taking sweet, excruciating time. He moaned lavishly when he put TK’s cock in his mouth, as if he was getting the same orgasmic build as TK – the one who was being sucked.

“Oh– oh– uh– Carlos–” TK breathed, tugging his hair to bring his face up and away. “Can we fuck?”

“Is that what you want?”

“Yes. Yes.”

Carlos pushed TK flat on the bed, traversed his body with kisses and landed his tongue into his mouth, TK licking up the salted silk taste of his own precum.

“You, er – how do you like to…?”

TK wasn’t sure if Carlos was asking his preference – if he’s top or bottom or versatile. He thought he’d made it clear that he wanted Carlos to fuck his brains out. Though, to be fair, he hadn’t conveyed that with actual words. He took Carlos’ face in his hands, smoothed his palms over Carlos’ ears and felt him shiver. In a soft voice he said, “Right now, I feel like coming with you inside me. I want to feel what you’re like in my body. I want to know if you’re like I’ve imagined.”

Carlos blushed, laughed, nodded, kissed him, seemed nervous and excited. “Okay if we use condoms, right?”

“Definitely.”

“And if you want us to stop at any point, I want you to know that’s totally fine and I’m happy.”

“Me too. Same to you.”

Carlos kissed him, then, and there was a lot of emotion in it. A kiss that shook. The shake passed into TK. When Carlos condomed up, lubed up, watched TK stretch himself, and licked his lips at the sight of TK’s cock getting wet at the head, TK felt bizarrely not embarrassed. He used to get a little embarrassed, even with Alex, displayed on a bed, legs wide open, fondling his own asshole unprettily. Carlos just looked totally enamored and – maybe – grateful for the image. When TK told him he was ready, he was surprised by how waterlogged his voice sounded, shocked by the tears that filled his eyes as he got into Carlos’ lap. Carlos held the base of his cock and carefully entered him with a low grunt. TK buried his face into Carlos’ shoulder so Carlos couldn’t see his face. Physically, it hurt to begin with – it’s been a while – but the burn soon became its usual oddly satisfying thrill. Now, TK is close, and brave enough to stare into Carlos’ eyes.

“You’re so fucking good,” Carlos whispers, nuzzling TK’s jaw where his evening stubble feels amazing and raspy. “You okay?”

“Yes– stay– keep– there–”

“Here? Like this?” Carlos smiles, knows he’s got the angle. He quickens beneath TK, rocking upwards and bouncing heavily on the mattress.

“Yes! Yes!” TK hollers, beginning a pattern of intermittent gasps and high-pitched screams that also don’t embarrass him. “I’m gonna come!”

Tuesday February 22, 2022

“I’m gonna come!” TK yells, throwing his voice up to the high ceiling of the loft.

They’re fucking raw in missionary on the end of the bed that TK has only slept in once – and that was last night. The same bed Carlos has slept in all alone for four months.

Carlos has only been inside TK for about two minutes, desperately trying to keep a slow and steady pace. TK is fairly recently recovered from a coma, and neither of them has fully recovered from their breakup, and he too thinks he might explode if he so much as thrusts a little harder than he already is.

But when TK says he’s going to come, Carlos exhales with relief and collapses over him, orgasming hard at the same time that TK cries out his name and he feels warmth spread across his stomach.

“It’s okay – shh, baby, it’s okay,” Carlos soothes, kissing the tears that are rolling fast down TK’s red cheeks. TK’s face is screwed up, he has the heel of his palm pressed over his left eye.

“You’re crying too,” TK says, looking up at Carlos as Carlos’ tears drip onto him.

“I missed you so much,” Carlos shakes his head and drops his face into TK’s neck.

“Baby.” TK rubs his hair and kisses his head. “Everything’s going to be okay from here on.”

They should get up to use the bathroom, but they don’t for a while. Carlos stays semi-hard and remains inside TK, and TK thinks it would be unbearable to feel Carlos pull out now. While he was still recovering in hospital, after he told Carlos that he wanted to be his boyfriend again, they talked a lot about sex. At one point during a conversation, Carlos had to excuse himself and go to the bathroom because TK was driving him insane. They both imagined what it would be like – first sex after so long apart, with TK weakened from hypothermic-related organ failure that nearly killed him. Carlos wanted to light candles and scatter rose petals on the bed. TK wanted a dirty fuck. In the end, both sort of happened. Not rose petals, but tenderness. Not candles, but evening sunlight falling in gentle amber beams over the mattress. They went without a condom because neither had another partner during their four-month split, and TK whispered in Carlos’ ear that he wanted to be his whore again, his and only his.

Sunday May 14, 2023

“I’d rather be his whore than your wife!” TK shouts, throwing an arm into the air. He’s sitting on Carlos’ thighs in a swanky hotel room belonging to the estate where they got married yesterday.

The intent this morning was to roleplay “TK is a virgin groom”, but it simply didn’t work out, so now they’re doing Titanic. Except Carlos keeps laughing, spoiling the mood.

“Baby, I need you to focus.” TK pinches Carlos’ left nipple like that’s of any help.

“But when Kate Winslet delivers the line, she doesn’t yell or throw her arms around.” Carlos didn’t expect to be wheezing into his pillow for this reason, but he kind of loves it.

“She wasn’t straddling you either,” TK counters with a serious frown.

Carlos grabs TK’s wrists and tugs him until he topples, landing on Carlos’ bare chest with a thud. TK kisses him angrily, saying “I love you so fucking much,” when he rises for air.

“I never imagined my sex life ending up like this,” Carlos says.

TK laughs at the phrase ending up. He strokes Carlos’ face, looking into his eyes. “Neither did I.”

“There was a time when I didn’t imagine having a sex life at all. I mean, I did imagine it. But I thought imagination was all it would be.”

“I know what you mean. I think that’s why I popped my cherry at the first opportunity.”

“Same.”

“I wonder what that guy is doing now.”

“Hopefully treating his lovers with more respect.” Carlos huffs, thinking about it. TK told him the story, and he told TK the story of his virginity loss in a dank motel off Highway 35. Sometimes he sees the guy – Joshua – out on calls so complex that police units from all over are required. A couple of years ago, he saw Joshua and his pregnant wife, Abby, at the farmers’ market. He hid behind a cheesemonger stall that reeked so bad the odor imbued his clothes.

TK loses himself in thought for a moment, remembers wandering home to Owen in sub-zero February windchill, his gait tilted by the pain of being fucked badly, his mind sore in a different way. Carlos, too, is thinking back – not to Joshua, but to Iris. A wedding night spent looking at each other with fear, which became bewilderment, which became them sharing a box of hard pretzels and watching two-and-a-half episodes of Friday Night Lights. It’s funny that it wasn’t so different from his wedding night with TK. Not the fear and bewilderment, but snacks and TV in bed.

“Do you mind if we don’t have sex tonight?” TK had asked with a sigh, even though his hand was already deep into the pants of Carlos’ wedding suit. “I’m so tired.”

“Oh my god – thank you–” Carlos paused to kiss him, “–For saying that. I’m wrecked.”

“Totally.”

“In the best way.”

“Best night of my life.” TK gave him a closed-eyed grin, so sleepy.

“We should never have sex unless both of us want it,” Carlos said, repeating a well-worn phrase of theirs.

“I know. But it’s our wedding night. We’re young, virile men.”

“We danced our asses off to ‘70s disco and spent virtually every hour of the day making sure our guests were happy,” Carlos said, “Kinda just want to cuddle.”

“Me too. And I’m hungry. Are you hungry?”

“I could eat. I packed those oat bar things, just in case.” Carlos got out of their wedding night bed and went to fetch the box.

Now, the half-eaten box is on the bedside table, ignored, and two husbands are kissing passionately, grinding within the smooth sheets, getting hard. There is no roleplay to this. They are Carlos and TK. They are men who have been through sham marriages and rejected proposals and overdoses and injuries. TK lost his mom last year after she was hit by a bike while crossing the street in downtown Manhattan. Carlos buried his dad days ago, after he was shot in the heart on his own doorstep by an ex-con or ex-cop out for revenge. They are Carlos and TK and they are in bed the morning after their wedding, holding each other, making love, making each other laugh. Carlos is the caretaker of TK’s wild heart. TK is going to take care and nurture Carlos’ heart for the rest of his life, as if it was his very own.

Monday January 31, 2022

The snow stopped when TK woke from his coma, and Carlos believed in God again.

But when Carlos falls asleep in the early evening, it starts coming down in huge white chunks. TK finds himself questioning what this means in a spiritual sense, his head tilted towards the snow-pocked hospital window. In the foreground, there is the soft gray chair that Carlos has occupied almost the whole time TK has been comatose. The chair is now empty, but TK can see the indentation of Carlos within – an indentation like an incantation, or a scripture in stone, the sponge of the chair de-bounced and sunken from holding the weight of a man whose heart is broken. For four months, he was a man living on the energy of anger and confusion alone, until Nancy told him TK had gone into a frozen lake to save a boy. TK had hypothermia. TK’s organs were failing.

Since TK jolted awake, retching around his intubation and wondering what the fuck was going on after a very weird dream, he has achieved three things with his afternoon:

1. He has eaten four spoonfuls of strawberry jello.

2. He has successfully answered a few key questions – the year is 2022, the president is Joe Biden, the last thing he remembers before waking up is eating a snickerdoodle and being mad at Nancy.

3. He has told Carlos Reyes that he is in love with him. He never stopped loving him.

It's almost 7 p.m. now – and TK hears Owen, Gabriel and Andrea before he sees them arrive at the door of his private room. All three of them fall still and silent as they reach the threshold. Carlos is on top of TK’s bed with him, although the nurses told him not to do that. He has an arm slung over TK, his face mushed into TK’s shoulder. His chest rises up and down. Peaceful, shallow breaths. He sparked out mid-conversation, despite it being a complex and important talk about resuming their relationship, which TK found slightly frustrating, but mainly adorable and funny.

“Oh, you’re tired?” TK whispered sarcastically as Carlos huffed in his sleep, pushing warm breath against TK’s skin. “Nah, I get it. I haven’t slept well these past few months.” It’s true. To achieve pure, unbroken sleep, he’d literally had to slip into a coma.

Nobody wants to wake Carlos, so Owen, Andrea and Gabriel inch their way into the room. Gabriel takes Carlos’ chair and Andrea sits beside him, holding his hand. They give Owen the space to hug and kiss his son around Carlos’ committed grip.

“Your mom still can’t get a flight out to Austin,” Owen whispers, stroking TK’s hair. “But she knows you’re okay, and she and Jonah will be here, soon as they can.”

TK squeezes the collar of his dad’s snow-soaked coat. “Mom…she…”

“What, TK?”

“Oh. Nothing. I feel like…I feel like she was here and just left the room.”

“No. She’s at home in New York.”

“Huh.”

Owen spends a little time perched on the edge of TK’s bed, holding his hand and whispering in a gossipy way about everything he’s missed, like Grace Ryder gave birth to a baby girl in a bus, and Paul got hypothermia too.

It all sounds exciting and horrific, and by the end of his monologue, Owen is yawning. Everyone quietly laughs at him.

“Go and get yourself a coffee,” TK says.

“You sure?”

“Yes, go. You’re no good to me like this.”

Owen doesn’t take much more persuading. He heads down to the cafeteria, and Andrea follows him out to use the bathroom. TK is left in the company of a deeply-snoozing and cuddly ex-boyfriend – and his ex-boyfriend’s serious-looking father.

“He could always fall asleep anywhere,” Gabriel says. His voice has an extra growl to it when he’s trying to be quiet. “Even when he grew older. When he was eighteen, I found him sleeping out in the yard, on the grass, over where we buried one of our dogs.”

“Rocky,” TK whispers.

Gabriel flinches a little at the name, but ultimately ignores whatever sharp pain spreads through his chest. “Andrea just told me y’all broke up.”

“I didn’t know he’d kept it from you, all this time.”

“Well, this is Carlos we’re talking about.” There’s a challenge to this. TK can sense it. A game of Who Knows Carlos Reyes Best? “I wasn’t expecting to…” Gabriel squeezes the armrests of the chair, “…Feel the same way as when my daughters had their hearts broken by their dumbass boyfriends.”

“Different for boys,” TK whispers.

“Exactly. Except it’s not.”

TK can’t help but smirk. This is not the first angry parent he’s faced down. “Fortunately, I’m already in intensive care, so do your worst.”

Gabriel grins. “I’m so happy you’re okay, TK, there aren’t even words for it. But break my son’s heart again, and you and me are going to have a conversation.”

“We are having a conversation.”

Gabriel glares at him.

“Okay, deal,” TK says quickly. “He broke my heart too though, you know.”

“Well then, both your turnipheads need knocking together.”

TK leans a little bit away from Carlos then, stretching in his bed, as if to tell Gabriel something secret or dangerous. Gabriel leans forward in the chair, all ears. “I’m in love with your son,” TK says, “And we’re going to take good care of each other now.”

Gabriel’s eyes flick to Carlos’ sleeping body. “I know.”

Andrea wanders in a second later, looking between them hesitantly, like she can tell she’s interrupted something private. She walks over to the left side of the narrow bed so she can stroke the hair of her adult son while he sleeps – not something she ever gets to do these days.

“He can sleep anywhere,” she says, “Once, I found him asleep face-down in a plate of waffles.”

TK smiles and nods. Andrea went for waffles; Gabriel went for grave.

“Thank you both for coming,” TK says, looking at Gabriel too. Gabriel – the man who never gets to be TK Strand’s father-in-law – stands up out of the chair, walks over to the hospital bed, and gives him a hug.

Thursday November 9, 2023

Carlos has his arm wound around TK; his hand planted over TK’s right pec. His face is in his hair. TK isn’t sure if he’s crying. The tricky thing about Carlos moving so they’re now sitting next to each other is that it’s harder to see his face, pick up on micro-expressions. TK wonders if that was partly why Carlos did this. To cuddle can also be to hide. He’d never told Carlos that story before – how he’d had a clandestine conversation with Gabriel, and effectively gained his respect and permission to rekindle their relationship.

Carlos kisses TK’s hair one more time and lifts up his head, takes a deep breath like he hasn’t breathed for minutes. He’s not crying, but he’s dazed, emotional. He raises his right hand from where it rests on his lap and feels at his own neck, as if to play with the gold cross necklace he no longer wears. A habit he hasn’t shaken.

“Dad actually said you were no better than Ana and Luisa’s boyfriends?” Carlos asks, computing it. “And he felt the same as when my sisters had their hearts broken–”

“In the sense that he wanted to throw me through the window for splitting up with you, yeah.”

“Wow. That’s–”

“It was terrifying. But I held my own against Gabriel Reyes when I’d literally woken up from a coma five hours ago, which is pretty badass if I do say so myself–”

Carlos shoves his tongue into TK’s mouth. At the abrupt force of it, TK sinks, and they both slip a little down the blue vinyl upholstery with a squeak. It’s a kiss that makes TK feel confused and tingly, warm and wanted. He’d like to know what the kiss is for, but that would mean pulling away to ask, and it’s nice to just kiss in the booth of a near-empty diner like a couple of teenagers.

“I love you so much,” Carlos murmurs into TK’s mouth, and reluctantly becomes the first one to break the embrace. It always has to be someone. He holds TK’s beautifully bewildered face in his hands, because there’s something else TK doesn’t know, and maybe it’s time that he does.

Chapter Text

Wednesday October 29, 2003

Carlos wakes curled up in the dark, off his pillows and in the middle of the bed, his horse comforter so violently kicked away that it forms a frozen waterfall hanging off the mattress onto the floor. Shivering in his green pajamas patterned with soccer balls, basketballs and footballs – which in his opinion aren’t as good as horses, dogs, cars or planets – he sits upright. Wide-eyed, he gazes around at the craggy shadows that could be his desk chair, or his dressing gown hanging from a hook, or big Bobo Bear who sits in the far corner. Or, the shadows could be many other things that only exist when nighttime turns the world into a strange and lonely place.

Once, a long time ago last year when he was a much smaller boy, Carlos would have woken to a purplish swirl of Saturns, pale yellow stars and small blue crescent moons floating around on his ceiling. When he turned eight, Mamá said, “Do you still need your nightlight, mijo? How about we try without it tonight?”

“Big boys don’t need a nightlight,” his dad added in his angry voice.

Carlos sucked thick vanilla milkshake through a straw and looked down at the rainbowy ‘birthday boy’ badge pinned to his bright green t-shirt. It was a beautifully warm and sunny day – a day in which monsters couldn’t possibly be real, or survive in tranquil conditions such as these if they were. He agreed to the proposition heartily, letting his legs swing high above the floor from the tall barstool in Mockingbird Diner, and his parents looked pleased. Luisa – and Ana to an extent, but mostly Luisa – teased him about being a big baby, young for his age. He didn’t want to be ‘young for his age’ if the other kids in class weren’t. The accusation was getting frustrating. Somehow, everyone figured out before he did that Santa Claus wasn’t real. One of the boys came to school with a picture of a woman with her boobies showing. One of the girls was already finishing books the size of ones his parents read.

The first night without his nightlight was daunting, though not in a scary way so much as sad. He missed the friendly galaxy that circled slowly above him, and didn’t really understand why adults wouldn’t want their own ceilings made so friendly in the dark. But he slept – he slept well once he grew used to it. As time passed, he steadily forgot about the stars that used to look after him.

But when he dreams of monsters, he remembers the gifts of the light, and the darkness is full of voiceless things that will grab his legs.

If he makes a jump for it, he’ll be at his bedroom door in seconds and he can run to Papá. No Mamá tonight, which makes everything worse. She’s with her own Mamá, helping her for a couple of days after an operation nobody will give Carlos details about.

Carlos thumps down onto the floor, dashes for his door without looking behind him at the shadows that rise and groan. He bolts into the blackness of the hallway and straight into his parents’ bedroom.

The bed is empty.

“Papa?” he says anyway, “Rocky?”

No Rocky, either.

Carlos clings to the door handle. The metal is cold against his small palm.

Wait. Be still.

Over Carlos’ pounding heart, there’s a noise coming from somewhere. It sounds like Papá is talking…talking on the phone? He follows his dad’s voice.

“….And until I can determine who I can trust for the safety of myself and my family, I will trust no one. It is my intention to contact the federal agents, DEA and FBI, and then proceed with a plan of action.”

Carlos turns and races into the living room – Rocky stirs in his basket, stretching and snuffling at the interruption. “Papá, Papá where are you?”

“Hey mijo!” his dad calls to him, “I’m over here.”

The home office. But Carlos isn’t supposed to go into the home office.

He slows up as he approaches. When his dad sees him stepping into the light, he doesn’t look mad, and reaches out.

“Hey, why aren’t you in bed?” Papá asks in his nice voice.

“Monsters,” Carlos tells him simply.

“Monsters?” Papá questions, as if he can’t believe it. Carlos feels okay about getting into his lap. Sometimes when he’s working, Papá tells Carlos to get off and leave him alone.

The family camcorder is set up on a small tripod, positioned on top of the bookcase and pointing straight at Papá. This is something Carlos has never seen him do before.

Feeling a little silly and exposed, suddenly, Carlos tells him, “I had a scary dream.”

“Ah, no.” Papá gives Carlos a little squeeze. “Tell me what happened.”

Carlos looks into his dad’s eyes. Dark and shiny. Pinkish too, though, like they’re sore or he’s tired. “The monsters took me,” Carlos explains, “They dragged me away from you and Mama, and you couldn’t find me.”

“Oh no, mijo.” Papá hugs Carlos to him, snuggling close before he adjusts so he can look into Carlos’ eyes. Like this, they can talk – man to man. “That sounds scary.” He’s right, it was. Carlos feels a fizz of validation. “But you know what? Listen to me. Nothing could ever take you away from me. You know why?”

Carlos shakes his head.

“Because I would never stop looking for you.”

Carlos takes a second to think about this, looking up at his dad shyly. Papá is big, he’s strong, he fights bad guys. It seems feasible that he could take on monsters in real life, even if he couldn’t in a dream. “You promise?” Carlos asks, thinking it best to check. He doesn’t like it when adults say things they don’t mean, which happens an uncomfortable amount. Like Santa Claus being a pile of horseshit – which Carlos isn’t allowed to say the way Papá is, but he thinks the word horseshit defiantly. What a let-down.

“I promise,” Papá tells him, “But you know what monsters are really afraid of?” Carlos shakes his head. He’s about to say, “Angels?” But Gabriel carries on gustily, “Kique the koala! Because he would tear them up like what!?”

Carlos knows the answer. “Like a eucalyptus leaf!” You really don’t want to mess with Kique when it comes to eucalyptus leaves.

Gabriel laughs like he’s thrilled. “That’s right,” he confirms, “That’s right. So why don’t we go find him, and he can protect you all night, okay?”

“Okay,” Carlos says, absolutely jazzed he made his dad laugh. The last time that happened…He can’t remember. “Can you make him talk in the voice?” Carlos asks.

“Ay, mijo, so late…” Papá sighs.

Carlos dares to try, looking at him with wide eyes. “Please?” Sometimes his dad really doesn’t want to play, and asking more than once is bad.

“Okay…” Papá relents after only a second. Suddenly he’s delightfully Australian, switching his accent with ease. “I mean…Alright, but just for a little while, mate.”

Papá appears to find himself very funny. He hugs Carlos again while chuckling. “Ay, come on,” he says, letting Carlos slip from his lap so he can skip back to his bedroom, fearlessly leading the way now, knowing his dad is in pursuit.

“Papá?” Carlos asks as he clambers back into bed.

“Mm?” Papá pulls the comforter up to Carlos’ shoulders and sits next to him, stroking a flopped curl off his forehead.

“Were you making a video just now?”

Gabriel reaches for Kique, who has been sitting watchfully on Carlos’ bedside table. He’s a decent sized, roundish plushie with tufty gray fur and fuzzy white ears. Bright green eucalyptus leaves made of felt are stitched into his paw.

“Yes, ya little ripper,” Gabriel says in his enthusiastic Australian accent, handing the koala to Carlos. “I was recording a message for some friends of mine to say g’day.”

This seems odd to Carlos. He hasn’t known his dad to do that before. “Why didn’t you call them on the phone?” he asks, pulling at Kique’s eucalyptus leaves for comfort. He likes the slightly rough texture of the felt.

“Well, ya see, mate, this time…This was a different sort of message. A special message.”

“For someone’s birthday?” Carlos asks.

Gabriel smiles, going on Australianly, really in the zone, “Yeah. Yes. That’s right, mate. I was recording a message for someone’s birthday because…I forgot to buy them a gift because…er, my diary was chockas this arvo, mate. Bonzer.”

Carlos frowns. “So, you’re giving them you?”

Gabriel tips his head back and belts a laugh. Carlos doesn’t understand what’s so funny about what he just said. He’s simply imagining another grownup in receipt of a recording, in which Gabriel Reyes says, “Happy birthday!” and it’s a very strange thought.

Papá doesn’t answer, choosing instead to attack Carlos’ ribs with tickles. Carlos squeals and writhes beneath his comforter, hiccupping and gently batting at his dad with Kique.

“Okay, conejito,” Papá says in his normal accent. He doesn’t usually call him conejito anymore. He still calls Ana and Luisa conejita, even though they’re older and really tall, but lately Carlos is just Cariltos or mijo. Carlos looks up curiously as his dad bows down to kiss his cheek. “Time to go back to sleep.”

“Will you stay with me?”

Papá looks at him sympathetically, and then turns to the door. “I need to work,” he says, “You have Kique with you now.”

“But–”

“Carlitos. I need to work.” Papá’s nice voice is gone. “But how about we keep the door open, and the hallway light on, hm?”

Carlos swallows. He makes his body rigid to stop himself from crying.

As soon as Papá stands up, all the shadows in the room move a little closer.

“I would never stop looking for you,” Papá says firmly as he walks towards the door, “Remember that.”

Out in the hallway, Papá flicks on the light. Through the dull amber glow that encroaches into his room, Carlos can make out the fuzzed lines of every surrounding object. There is nothing here to take him, and his father is in the office, awake and working and recording birthday messages for his friends.

Still, though. Still. Carlos wants to jump out of bed again – run to his dad again. But he can’t. Carlos knows Papá might yell. He’s used up his one chance. He has to spend the night here, all on his own.

Carlos closes his eyes. The action pushes out his silly unshed tears. He wipes his face on Kique and takes a deep breath. He’s not going to cry. He’s not a baby. He’s alone on this.

Friday September 29, 2023

Carlos is lacing his sneakers in the gym locker room when he hears the chiming sound that always makes his throat go tight.

It’s been a long, heavy shift. TK is working nights and pulling overtime – Carlos is too – so they can chisel off another chunk of wedding debt. An end-of-week workout has cheered him up considerably, but now there’s that chime, and he immediately falls through a crack in time: Once again, it’s the day after he buried his dad, dead from a gunshot wound to the heart. Carlos has found a burner phone, hidden beneath the false bottom of a drawer in Gabriel’s home office.

Carlos keeps Gabriel’s burner phone on him at all times to communicate with Gutiérrez whenever, but it’s rare that Gutiérrez makes first contact. He grabs his backpack, doesn’t bother to lace up his other sneaker and rushes into a bathroom stall, locking himself away so he can read the message.

It simply says, “Fell through. Sorry kid.”

In that moment, Carlos’ iPhone buzzes in his pocket. It’s TK answering an earlier text about going to the farmers’ market on Saturday. “I’d like that, baby. I want one of those croissants. Are you thinking of doing that thing with artichokes? Love you!”

Carlos pockets both phones and runs – runs out of the locker room, down the corridor, out onto the concourse and through the parking lot. He jumps into his car like it’s a getaway vehicle and violently starts the engine – and it kills him with the deepest ache to keep to the speed limit while making the drive home. As soon as he bursts through his front door, he dumps his stuff and whips out the burner phone. He dials for Pablo Martinez.

“What the fuck do you mean fell through?” Carlos growls before Gutiérrez can say anything. “You said it was promising – you said it was the best we’d got.”

“It was,” Gutiérrez sighs down the line. “I wish I had a different story for you. The guy washed up on Horseshoe Bend with a bullet in his head, self-inflicted, last Christmas Eve. It wasn’t him, unless you want to account for time travel.”

“Shit.”

“That’s what I said.”

“You’re sure you were looking at the right guy?”

“He changed his name after he completed parole. That’s why it took me a while to track him. But I’m a hundred-percent, mijo. It’s a damn shame.”

Carlos squeezes the phone in his hand so hard he could crush it like a beer can.

“Listen. We’re burning through leads like tinder. I think we need to rethink. Change tack. Take a breath.”

“Take a breath?” Carlos snaps, “You know who can’t take a breath?”

“Your dad.”

“Oh, fuck you.”

“Fuck you too. Goodbye.”

“No – wait.” Carlos cringes and bumps his head gently against the cabinet above the sink. “Don’t go.”

“Kid. I have got nothing for you right now. You knew it could be like this. I warned you. Hello? You still there?”

Carlos can’t answer because he’s leaning full-body against the refrigerator now, crying into a note TK fixed to the door with a novelty Pride flag magnet. He hasn’t read the note yet, but when he does, he will see that it says, “I made jello if you want any. It came out really bad but help yourself. Love you.”

Carlos hangs up on Gutiérrez and tosses the phone onto the counter; regrets tossing it because the last thing he wants to do is cause damage to their one mode of contact. He inspects the phone. Casing seems fine. He puts it back in his pocket. Walks to the bedroom.

Before he reaches the door, he turns around and walks back to the kitchen.

He removes a bottle of Absolut vodka from the bottom tray of the freezer.

He unscrews the cap and drinks it straight.

Vodka is far from Carlos’ favorite liquor, but it’s the strongest substance they have in the loft outside of Drano, and he wants to get hammered.

After another swig, it doesn’t taste too bad. He likes how cold it is. He likes how quick it is. He wants to be in the bedroom. He doesn’t know why. He goes into the bedroom and shuts the door even though he’s home alone. He opens Spotify and puts a playlist on shuffle – TK’s Golden Gays. The first song that comes on is Papa Don’t Preach. It’s enough to make him laugh. The laugh becomes a heaving sob. The sob doesn’t stop. He slumps sideways onto the bed in some phantom physical agony, like his chest has been operated on without anesthetic, and the surgeon sewed glass and stones and rusty nails into his skin. Is grief supposed to feel like this after months have passed? TK lost Gwyn in March ’22 and was proposing to Carlos by May. But TK is strong, and Carlos is drinking vodka like juice. TK Strand is the strongest person Carlos knows. He’s married a really tough cookie. People might mistake TK for being weak, but they’re wrong. They should have seen TK when he did all that stuff with the thing and then there was all that other. You know. Should have seen him. TK – he’s so beautiful and smart. He’s the best Carlos has ever had, that’s for sure. In every way. Good cuddler, too, and let’s face it, that’s worth all its weight in gold. Wouldn’t kick him outta bed as Tía Lucy would say. Tía Lucy. Fucking joke, man. Read Gabriel’s palm and told him he’d live to be a hundred. Andrea laughed and said, “Hypertension.” Carlos didn’t find it funny but everyone else did. Gabriel did. Sometimes Carlos is the only person at the dinner table who doesn’t find things funny and he doesn’t know why. He thinks he has a nice sense of humor. TK says he does. TK laughs at his jokes all the time. TK is funny. TK is a nice person. You can’t ask for better than that. Gabriel liked TK. Loved TK. Loved him instantly. Carlos loved him instantly. Maybe everyone does. Of course everyone does. It took Gabriel a while to warm up to Ana and Luisa’s husbands but he liked TK the moment he shook his hand.

Saturday September 30, 2023

Carlos wakes on the bathroom floor when it’s still dark out. There’s a taste in his mouth like he’s licked brown vinegar out of an exhaust pipe.

He cleans up, cracks a window, washes at the sink – fills the sink with cold water and dunks his face, holding his breath until he can’t anymore. He changes into his pajamas and makes the bed a little rumpled so it looks like he’s slept there. He thinks about this coherently, but doesn’t think about the vodka bottle. Out of sight, out of mind.

Finally – desperately – he sits at the breakfast bar with his coffee, warming his hands on a wedding gift mug that says ‘Husband No.2’ on it. He manages one shaky sip before TK rolls the door open.

“Hey, baby!” TK grins. “Oof – what a night! Kappa Alphas hazing like nothing I’ve ever seen.” He kisses the back of Carlos’ head. “Mmm that coffee smells good. We had to rescue a guy from an incinerator chimney inside that haunted abandoned psychiatric hospital. I mean, I don’t know if it’s actually haunted, but it wouldn’t surprise me. Hopefully I haven’t brought a poltergeist home. Sorry if books suddenly fall off the shelves.” He chuckles and walks around Carlos to the sink for a glass of water.

“Or something writes my name on the steamed-up mirror,” Carlos says, trying to joke along like a normal person.

TK looks at him through pink, tired eyes. “Is something wrong?” He sips his water. His gorgeous husband looks exactly like he did the night following Gabriel’s funeral. Disheveled, sweaty, unwell, a constant glaze of tears in his eyes.

“No,” Carlos shakes his head, which really doesn’t help the gathering storm in his sinuses. “Well. I had a rough night too. Something I ate.”

“Did you use that lunch truck outside the library again?”

Carlos feels genuinely queasy then, remembering the worst burrito of his life. “Yup.”

“Oh God, Carlos – were you sick?”

“No. I mean, yes. But I’m fine now.”

“You shouldn’t be drinking coffee, baby, you need something gentle on your stomach.”

“I really want coffee.”

“I’ll make you a peppermint tea.”

“Coffee’s fine.”

“No it isn’t, shut up.” TK grabs the tea kettle and starts filling up. The blast of water from the faucet is too noisy.

Carlos can never tell if TK turns into his mother or his father in moments like these, but in any case he’s unstoppable, and Carlos is too hungover and drained to insist on coffee after he lied about a lunch truck.

Within a few minutes, he’s sadly blowing steam off the peppermint tea, which TK made in the mug that says ‘Husband No.1.’ He watches TK pour his beautiful coffee down the drain.

“At least you’re not working today anyway,” TK says, “I’ve got to catch up on sleep. We can snuggle up.”

“Ah, I can’t. I’ve got errands,” Carlos says, trying to sound breezy.

“You want to run errands on a sick stomach?”

“It’s not that bad.”

“What’s going on?”

“Nothing. I’m fine.” He smiles and swallows hard. “Just a couple of things I need to do and then I’ll rest. I promise. But I can sit with you until you fall asleep?” he asks hopefully.

TK sags a little where he stands, his arms limp. So tired. “Okay.”

Carlos heaves himself up, his bones creaking, and holds out a hand for TK to take. They walk together to the bedroom. Carlos helps TK strip to his boxers and get into bed.

“Want to spoon me?” TK asks, and Carlos knows what he’s doing – he wants Carlos to lie down so he’ll fall asleep – but there really is something he needs to take care of right now, so he just can’t. He can’t let himself do his favorite thing in the world and spoon his husband.

Instead, he kisses TK’s hands and forehead. He tucks him in cozy, and massages his brow. “I love you so much,” he whispers. But I can’t take you with me, because you’ll stop me.

When TK doesn’t respond to him, Carlos is sure he’s out cold. Quietly, he dresses into jeans and a blue sweater that smells like TK because TK wore it recently, and he leaves his husband to sleep alone.

Gutiérrez – the man Carlos must know out loud as Pablo Martinez – opens his front door, stricken. This morning, he is like Carlos: Cool and handsome as ever, but scruffy and weathered. Carlos is unshaven, hungover, hair fluffing in different directions; Gutiérrez has salt-and-pepper stubble and gray bags under his eyes. He’s wearing beaten-up blue jeans with a green plaid shirt too big for him over an untucked white tank top.

Before Carlos can take a breath to greet him, Gutiérrez sticks a skinny arm out through the half-open door, grabs Carlos by a handful of soft blue sweater and drags him into the hallway with impressive wiry strength.

“Christ, I told you to always call me first.” Gutiérrez thumps Carlos against the creamy interior wall. The impact of Carlos’ broad back shakes an arty photo of palm trees that tilts on its hook.

“I’m sorry – I just had to–”

“You didn’t drive yourself here, right? Tell me you were smart enough not to drive.”

“I got an Uber. I had eyes on the rear-view. We weren’t tailed.”

Gutiérrez breathes out, lets go of Carlos’ sweater and slaps his shoulder. He goes to say something else but stops himself, shaking his head. He seems, to Carlos, exhausted – and on edge in a way he hasn’t yet seen. In May, during Carlos’ first encounter with the guy, he pointed a pistol at his head and accused him of his father’s murder. Gutiérrez was pretty cool about it overall, once the initial shock and outrage wore off. He had the good grace to forgive Carlos over a beer at Joe’s Ale House, and Carlos wonders if it’s partly because TK charmed him. TK had charmed Gabriel and Andrea the moment he met them, and then Gabriel seemed to like Carlos more from that day on.

Two games of eight-ball at Joe’s later, in which TK watched Gutiérrez whip Carlos’ ass by potting every ball with immediate effect, Gutiérrez agreed to aid Carlos’ search for Gabriel's killer. Now, their best lead, an ex-Ranger called Worthing, has proved the most useless lead of all. Another promising trail, another dead-end. One more impenetrable wall of steel they can only bang their heads against.

“What’s going on?” Carlos asks, keeping his voice low. “Are you being watched?”

Gutiérrez shrugs. “Scales are tipping. There’s movement on the border and a lot of white noise that’s got everyone shitting their shorts. Doesn’t help at all that my jefe’s dumbass son is having an affair with the daughter of one of the more psychotic tenientes on the other side.”

“Sorry,” Carlos says, commiserating for lack of knowing what else to do.

“Also doesn’t help that the guy who discovered the affair had his head detached from the rest of his body yesterday.”

“Oh. I heard about it. Decapitated head found in a pumpkin patch at Wheeler’s Fun Farm?”

“Yup, that’s the one. I mean, there aren’t many.”

“Came through on dispatch.”

“Some poor college girl working there found it,” Gutiérrez says, “We’re expecting the rest of the body to show up bit by bit all around town. So far, nothing else has.”

“It could be the same guy who killed my father, for all we know.”

“Very different M.O., don’t you think?”

Carlos ho-hums. This is a fair point. At least his mom didn’t find his dad’s head staring up at her with cloudy eyes while she was pruning the begonias.

“I know you want every killer to be your father’s killer, mijo.” Gutiérrez slaps him on the shoulder again, annoyingly astute. “Come through. Don’t know about you, but I need caffeine.”

Carlos follows Gutiérrez through the bright hallway to the much duller kitchen, roller blinds closed to the world. He thinks he’d follow Gutiérrez to the ends of the Earth right now if it meant coffee.

Gutiérrez switches on the ceiling light, illuminating oak laminate cabinets, beige floral tiling and a matching tile-top kitchen island, upon which tightly-packed rectangular parcels of pale-beige powder are stacked in brickwork formation.

“Are you fucking serious?” Carlos asks, his eyes popping at the sight.

“Oh, relax. What do you think I do here all day – listen to true crime podcasts and make friendship bracelets?” Gutiérrez swipes an upside-down sepia glass coffee pot from the drying rack. In reaction, a stack of ceramic plates and cutlery collapses in a cacophonous domino effect. He ignores it. “Anyway, it’s flour. Decoy drop this evening should get moles out of the hole. That’s what your daddy used to say.” Gutiérrez gestures behind Carlos. Sure enough, on the countertop next to a retro-looking brown microwave, are several empty packets of unbleached flour, covered in their own dust. “My requisition didn’t go through, though, so I’m out of pocket,” Gutiérrez continues, grizzling, “But Costco loves me. The checkout girl probably thinks I’m some master baker.”

Carlos watches Gutiérrez hunt around in a drawer for a fresh filter for the coffee machine, which is as equally ancient as the microwave, the fridge, and the sink. Such can be the austerity of public-funded undercover ops. Carlos wishes he didn’t like Gutiérrez. Thanks to the nature of his own job, and his father’s job – which included the whistle-blowing of corruption within the auspices of the Texas Rangers – virtually everyone in his life occupies a dangerous position. Tomorrow, he could read in The Austin Chronicle about a man called Pablo Martinez being gunned down in Chicano Park. A narcotics drop gone lethal. Carlos would have to grit his teeth while buttoning his shirt in the locker room at the precinct, listening to colleagues laugh and jaunt about another falcon removed from the streets.

“Take a seat,” Gutiérrez says, “Here, I’ll move a few of these out of your way.” He bundles up a dozen heroin decoy parcels and dumps them next to a ceramic cookie jar shaped like a football.

Carlos sits down on a stool at the island and listens to Gutiérrez chitter-chat while he makes the coffee. He seems emotionally invested in the affair of the drug lord’s son, like he’s recounting the last episode of a hot TV drama. It rings true enough. The biggest water-cooler gossips at the precinct are the detectives.

“So, a head in the pumpkin patch sends a message to the whole city,” Gutiérrez passes Carlos his coffee in a glazed terracotta mug. “The press are reporting it as a man’s body for now, making out he was some drunk guy. I don’t know how long that’ll hold up.” He sits down on the stool across from Carlos with his own coffee. “So. Yep. That’s what’s going on with me lately. How’s married life treating you?”

Carlos smiles, sliding his thumb up the handle of his mug. Four days ago, when their shift patterns meant they could actually wake up together and linger in bed, TK roused him with all-over kisses. “I’m very lucky.”

“His name’s…Tee…TK, right?”

“Yeah.” Carlos blushes. He doesn’t know why someone saying TK’s name makes him coy, but it always does.

“He seems like a great guy. I got a good feeling.”

Carlos looks at Gutiérrez’s left hand. There’s no ring, no tan line or dent to suggest one gets taken on and off. He asks with care anyway, “Are you married?” because he’d asked it once before, menacingly, when he thought Gutiérrez was Gabriel’s murderer. He didn’t get an answer because Owen showed up to stop him from making the biggest mistake of his life.

“I was. Divorced by thirty. She said I was married to the job. Said it was like I left her for another woman when I climbed the ranks.” Gutiérrez flicks his eyes up, looking hard at Carlos. “Don’t let that become you.”

Carlos stills, unshielded and chastised, like Gutiérrez is looking into the darkness of him. “I won’t.”

“If you want to make your dad proud, that’s how. He might have been a bulldog in his day, but your mamá was worth a hell of a lot more to him than his job. And you and your sisters, of course.”

Out of nowhere, Carlos smells his father. He thinks of the last time they hugged – when Carlos asked him to be his best man. Musky aftershave.

He has to fight to get his words out. “My dad. He talked to you about me a lot? I remember you saying when we were at the bar.”

“He did.” Gutiérrez smiles, reflecting on things. It’s warm. “You won the silver trophy for wrestling in high school, right?”

“Right.”

“He was so proud of that.”

Carlos stares at him. The exact moment when Carlos placed his glinting, silver trophy onto his bedroom shelf is seared into his memory forever. Gabriel, over his shoulder, saying, “Scott Fitzsimmons got the gold, huh?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well. Okay.” Gabriel said. “Silver’s good.” He walked away then, adjusting the light-up globe on Carlos’ desk as he went, suggesting not even the position of that was correct. Carlos stood alone, quiet as a mouse and desperate to burst into a window-shattering scream.

“Did he tell you that I’m gay?” Carlos asks, catching Gutiérrez off guard. “I mean, you weren’t surprised to meet my husband.”

Gutiérrez frowns thoughtfully. “Yeah, he did.”

“When?”

“Years ago.”

“How many years ago?”

“Must have been…I don’t know…the early 2010s,” Gutiérrez says this cautiously – like he knows. He knows that a wave of emotion is crashing through Carlos’ body.

“I came out to him in 2011.” Carlos’ voice breaks, his eyes filling with tears. He doesn’t fight it. Gutiérrez has seen him cry before.

“Hey, hey,” Gutiérrez whispers, “Look, I’m not going to lie to you, mijo, he had a hard time with it.”

“That’s the thing – I don’t want you to lie to me,” Carlos says, “And I feel like you’re the only person who won’t.”

“What is it you want to know here? That your father loved you?”

“No,” Carlos cries into his coffee and takes a small sip. He looks into the color of his own eyes and says, “I want to know that he hated me.”

Gutiérrez sits back on his creaking stool, placing a finger to his lips, thinking. He lets Carlos cry and snivel for a few seconds before he gets up and draws down a couple of sheets of paper towel from the bracket on the wall. He hands the towels to Carlos to dry his face with, and sits down again, this time on the stool close beside him.

“You want to know that Gabriel hated you?” Gutiérrez says hesitantly, repeating it back like he’s trying to understand a new language.

“It’s just– everyone always tells me he loved me, but it doesn’t make any sense. I mean, later on, yeah. Since I met TK, everything has gotten better. He loved TK. So, I kind of feel like, if it weren’t for TK, everything would have stayed really hard and weird between us.”

“I get that,” Gutiérrez says, “Maybe that’s right. Maybe he needed to see you happy with a good man before he could understand that you were basically just like him. But I can’t tell you that he hated you. Because he didn’t. That is fundamentally untrue.”

“Disappointed, then?”

“Would it really help you if I answered yes to that?” Gutiérrez shakes his head at Carlos like he’s an idiot, but there’s an affection there. “We all disappoint our parents. Our parents disappoint us. That’s family. That’s life. You’re not unique, Carlos. Your father was a guy who didn’t realize he knew any gay people until you came out. You said you were gay – then you married a woman. Then you said you were gay again and you left her, and Gabriel lost his oldest friend over it. I know the whole story because he chewed my ear off on a stakeout at the riverside. Had to pretend we were night-fishing. Actually caught a huge bass. Your mom cooked it.”

Carlos sits back in disbelief. “He felt comfortable telling you all of this? Why?”

“My trustworthy face, I guess.” Gutiérrez sniffs out a laugh, his own dark brown eyes glittering. “He was a good buddy, Carlos. We went through a lot together. We even fell out a couple of times, too, and it hurt – the way it can only hurt when someone’s close, you know?”

Carlos nods, setting down his coffee, queasy and unsettled. “He never forgave me about Nicolás.”

“Ah, it was Nicolás he couldn’t forgive.”

“No. It was me too!”

“Listen. Gabriel didn’t understand how people can play for the other team. He also loved you. Both things can be true, even if it’s confusing. From my point of view, I say live-and-let-live and fly the flag, power to the people, whatever. But then, I also slept with a guy in college.”

“You did?” Carlos leans forward, keen for all the information.

“He looked like River Phoenix. I pretty much cartwheeled up and down the Kinsey Scale back then.” Gutiérrez wafts a hand back and forth, as if to represent a laid-back flipflop of sexuality. “I met my ex-wife a few weeks later, and that was that.”

“Fair enough,” Carlos says as he goes to take another sip of coffee.

“So, I’m open minded. And that’s what your dad did – he talked to people who were open minded. I guess, bit by bit, by the time you met your husband, he was feeling better about it all. The fact that he wasn’t seeking an echo chamber should mean something to you. He probably did hate that you were gay, to begin with, but he never hated you.”

“But I can’t be separated from it,” Carlos says, setting his mug down again. “I tried, when I was eighteen.” “He realized that.”

Carlos looks down at his hands. Twists the turquoise ring on his little finger. His inheritance. “But why didn’t he ever talk to me?”

“That, I do not know.” Gutiérrez lands a hand on his shoulder. “Look at me. Carlos. Look at me.”

Carlos turns away, face crumpling. His right hand – the hand that wears Gabriel’s ring – rises like a shield.

“Oh, mijo,” Gutiérrez sighs sympathetically, “Are you trying to find your father’s killer, or are you trying to find your father?”

“Urgh. Shut up.” The question makes Carlos laugh through his tears. “Both,” he says, “Both can be true.” But neither are anywhere, and he just wants to go home to TK. He says as much.

Gutiérrez tosses the remainder of their coffee into the sink and swills out the mugs beneath the faucet’s low-pressure flow. “Leave through the back yard and go down the alley. Pop out on Chapel Street and get your Uber from there.”

Carlos almost laughs at this too. “If anyone is scoping you, won’t it look weird that I walked into your house but never walked out again?”

“Ah. They’ll assume you’re being buried beneath the patio,” Gutiérrez replies casually. “And, for your own sake, it’s probably better that they do think that.” He reaches out to shake Carlos by the hand. “If any fresh leads come up, let’s speak. But we should avoid each other for a long time now.”

Carlos aches in his gut. The operative word is always if, not when. If any fresh leads come up. If, which has the potential to mean never.

“I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to me,” Carlos tells him, “Thank you for being a friend to my dad all those years.”

“I miss him.” Gutiérrez nods, choking up. “Good luck to you, mijo.”

“You too.”

Carlos leaves the way he was told, crossing through Gutiérrez’s yard of patchy grass and hopping a chest-high wooden fence into the alley beyond. The alley is empty of anybody. He hears birdsong, dogs barking, the laughter of children at play – maybe the creak of a swing set in action. Overhanging trees shed their first brown leaves onto a ground of cracked concrete and yellowing weeds. Some of the fences that border the alley are chain link, others are wood, and anything wooden is coated in graffiti ranging from highly artistic to “Lynx Woz Here”. When Carlos nears the exit that spills onto Chapel, he kicks a masonry nail and sends it spinning across the ground – the metallic echo seems to go on forever, and suddenly he’s on high alert. His own footsteps are too loud. So is his heartbeat. He looks behind him. Someone is there. No, they aren’t. Any movement is the shadows of trees in the wind. He hurries to the end of the alley and stops. What if Gutiérrez is being watched? That means he could have been bugged. Out on Chapel, anyone could be waiting for him. The other end of the alley leads to Cardinal. That could be a safer bet. Or not. Carlos grabs his phone from his back pocket and calls TK. No answer – he’ll be sleeping. Calls Owen. No answer. He keeps making calls until somebody picks up.

“Carlos?” a warm, gruff voice says down the crackling line.

“Judd – thank God–” Carlos starts, and as he starts, he realizes there’s somewhere else he needs to go before heading home.

“Carlos? You still there?”

“Yes. I’m here.”

“Has something happened?”

“I hate to ask – but– but– but–”

“Carlos,” Judd snaps, “Calm down. Take a breath.”

“I need help. Can you drive me somewhere?”

“Where are you?”

“You can’t tell TK.”

Silence for a moment. “Where are you?” Judd repeats, “Where do you need to go? And why?”

Thursday November 9, 2023

TK’s mad. He’s in pain. Carlos can see it in his eyes. It’s not unlike the looks Gabriel and Andrea have given Carlos over the years. A sort of parental astonishment at the behavior of your baby. With great love can come great disappointment. TK shakes his head, looking out of the window, but he thumps his hand onto Carlos’. I’m upset with you. I love you.

“So…the day after you got drunk out of your mind and hid the vodka–”

“I was not trying to hide the vod–”

“You went to see Gutiérrez without me?” TK snaps, processing it, “Even though we were supposed to be a two-man team. And Judd never said anything either?”

“He pinkie swore,” Carlos says.

“What are you, five-years-old?”

“Well, we didn’t actually pinkie swear. He just said the words I pinkie swear without doing anything with his hands.” Carlos’ breath changes. He starts to tremble. “Listen. That day. I just needed to know my father hated me, and if I’d told you, you’d have spent the whole time insisting that he didn’t.”

“Yeah,” TK snaps, “Because he didn’t, baby.”

“Exactly. Sometimes, when you feel hatred for yourself, don’t you just want people to agree that you’re right to? Like, those dark feelings – there’s a reason for them, something tangible. Evidence behind it.”

TK sits back. Places a hand over his chest. His heart is beating fast. He knows the feeling Carlos speaks of all too well – it’s something that defined much of his younger life. The thought of Carlos experiencing the same kind of pain as a grieving adult is unbearable. He wants to punch something.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” he says.

“TK.”

“Can you move please?”

“Babe.”

“I’ll be right back. Carlos.”

“Stop.”

“Move,” TK hisses, shunting against Carlos, “Out of my way.”

Carlos relents and hops out of the booth, giving TK room to leave, his face crumpling a little as he watches his husband awkwardly make a getaway.

TK is surprised to find himself a little wobbly when he stands, as though his blood sugar levels have plummeted. He crosses the chessboard floor, watched by both Carlos and Mandy as he goes. His cheeks are hot. He knows he’s turning pink. The green vein on his forehead is popping. He pushes open a pale blue door with swirly lettering that says Gentlemen and W.C., and disappears from Carlos’ sightline. Left alone, Carlos smiles at Mandy as he sits back down, to let her know there’s no problem, and scrunches and squeezes a white napkin in his fist like a stress-reliever. He peers out of the dark window at the rain-washed parking lot. He can’t see much, with the lights blazing in here, but he can thinly detect rain sparking white against the hood of his own Camaro. He’d treated himself to the car in a rare moment of self-love that was still laced with self-destruction anyway, with hindsight, given that he was using inheritance unwisely according to his parents. They were probably right. He should have got a pre-owned Toyota from that dealership off Research Boulevard where giant red air dancers jerk around violently in the wind. But it was his birthday and he was all alone and just wanted something special that he could feel proud of and care for, even if the thing couldn’t be proud of him or care for him back.

Carlos looks at his watch, then at the blue gallery clock on the tiled wall behind the counter. TK’s been a little while. He discards his napkin on the empty cake plate and heads into the W.C. to find TK – even though TK will probably tell him to leave him be. He goes anyway. TK would insist on finding Carlos, and being there for him, if it were the other way around.

“Baby?” Carlos calls for TK on entry, but TK doesn’t look up from where he’s hunched over the sink in front of the circular mirror.

Carlos approaches him slowly – the floor in here is the same chessboard vinyl, but disturbingly sticky underfoot in a way it isn’t in the restaurant area. The walls are covered entirely with duck-egg tiles so the lighting is frosty and all noise echoes in a strange, close way. An echo that is physical, like a shiver.

He rubs his hands down TK’s back and then hugs him from behind, scooping his arms all the way around, pressing one hand to TK’s chest and one lower, to his stomach. TK leans back against Carlos, lets himself be rocked.

“I’m so sorry,” Carlos says, kissing TK’s neck. There are no other men in Blue Moon right now, so he doesn’t mind doing this, and he thinks even if some guy did enter the bathroom, he still wouldn’t let go of TK. That’s where he is now, in his life. It’s taken all this time.

“I don’t like it when you remind me of myself,” TK says, looking at them both in the mirror. He’s flushed and glassy-eyed, turning in Carlos’ arms so he can face him instead of his reflection. “I never told you about how I got hooked on heroin, did I?”

Carlos thinks back. He’s aware of every drug TK has ever tried, but he knows more about TK’s time in rehab than the events that led to it.

He’s about to shake his head, say no, but TK frowns in pain or shame or some other emotion that Carlos can’t imagine, which is specific to a recovering addict – and he thumps his head onto Carlos’ shoulder.

“Oh, soulmate, I’ve got you,” Carlos says, nestling TK close. TK isn’t crying, but he’s writhing, like something inside him is trying to get out.

Chapter Text

Sunday September 11, 2016

At 6 a.m., on the fifteenth anniversary of 9/11, twenty-two-year-old TK Strand has been a fully-qualified firefighter-medic for exactly six months. At the memorial pool in the footprint of the South Tower, he stands shoulder-to-shoulder with his Fire Captain father. They are on their way to their firehouse together this morning. Owen needs TK’s help because he put in a large order of Danish pastries to collect for the 252 crew – a sweet treat on a sad day; it might be glib in a way, but Owen just wants to do something.

It's a beautiful, cloudless morning. Undisturbed sunrise climbs the silvery windows of One World Trade Center. Each pane turns pink, orange, gold, and then blue. The building is designed to reflect the sky back to itself. A place, TK thinks, where light comes to dance or relax. He’s been inside before – about hallway up, remembering right – because a copier caught fire. Everyone was fine; the fire put out by extinguishers by the time he arrived. A thundery day in spring created dreamlike dimensions. Rain poured down the windows so dramatically it was like being in an open plan office built behind a waterfall.

“Are you ready, son?” Owen says.

It’s then TK realizes he’s been staring at the skyscraper instead of paying attention to the memorial, the thousands of names etched into granite. It’s an elegant, attractive commemoration that Owen was moved to tears by when it was unveiled. TK remembers how emotional he became when he saw it in person for the first time. The way he spread a hand wide and planted it over the names of his fallen brothers from the 252. One of them, Lawrence ‘Loki’ Keery, was only identified by his somehow-intact left hand, because he had a small tattoo of the sun, moon and stars across the heel of his palm. Owen, perhaps recklessly, described this to TK when he was just a kid, and TK has never shaken the image of a family burying only a hand.

TK nods. The weather forecast says it’ll be mellow and warm later, but it’s chilly now. He shivers in his blue hoodie, his fists stuffed into his pockets. He hopes Owen isn’t picking up on him shaking more than normal. Hopes Owen hasn’t noticed his face drained of all color, the grayness beneath his eyes, how hollow his cheeks are these days. He hasn’t said anything – not yet anyway.

TK follows Owen, a little sore when he walks but trying to keep a straight back and a good pace. Two nights ago, he got loaded on pills and had sex with a guy called Todd or Toby, but then there was this other guy – he’s not sure where he came from? A roommate? Anyway. This other guy materialized, stripping naked to join in. TK didn’t question it because it was sort of funny and wild, the way the guy took his shirt and shorts off. He had a thick cock, a really good-looking cock. He started eating the other guy’s come out of TK’s ass and it was hot, honestly, at first. Then he called TK a whore and started lubing up, but without a condom.

“Hey, can you – can you –” TK slurred, his face buried against the vine-tattooed bicep of his original lover – Todd-or-Toby. Todd-or-Toby was falling asleep. “Can you use a rubber?” TK asked.

“Oh fuck,” the guy whined, “Okay.” He put a condom on and TK felt happier, and he liked it when the guy pulled his hair and moved him so he was on his hands and knees.

“You’re such a filthy whore,” the guy said, rolling his hips magnificently. TK held on tight to the headboard, making high-pitched noises that the guy praised him for. “That’s right, you want it, you want all I’ve got. Fuck you’re tight. Fuck you feel good. Where did he get you?”

“What?” TK whimpered prettily.

“Central Park?”

“Oh – oh–” TK breathed a laugh, really getting into the stranger’s fuck. “I’m not actually a sex worker…uh…there…”

“Uh huh.” The guy pulled out, wrecking the stimulating rhythm.

Then – a strange, wet, plastic noise.

The stranger re-entered TK hard, shouting, pounding into him. It felt different. TK shouted too. It felt amazing. Then he saw the condom was on the pillow, wrinkling there, horrible and lame and baggy. TK stared at it silently as the guy came inside him, calling him a good boy.

TK hovered where he was, on all fours, his cock leaking as he stared at the condom. The guy slumped over him, reaching around for TK’s cock.

“No,” TK said, batting him away.

“You haven’t come yet – I want to see you come,” the guy panted, still jolting inside him.

“You took the condom off,” TK said.

“I hate them.”

“But–”

“I don’t have AIDS,” the guy snapped, offended. “I get tested all the time.”

Even in TK’s high state, the flawed logic shone through to him. The guy thinks I’m a sex worker and doesn’t know anything about my STI status.

He started jerking TK’s cock. “That’s it. So fucking and hard for me.”

“Wait…stop…uh…fuck…” TK ejaculated with a muffled cry, biting his lip out of spite, breaking his skin and tasting blood.

It’s TK’s second day of taking PEP after possible exposure, and it’s making him feel sick to his stomach. Or maybe it’s because he’s gone gold turkey, not wanting to risk anything to potentially interfere with the treatment. Maybe it’s because his ass is still sore, and he can’t stop thinking about how the stranger made him come and how dirty he feels.

He wishes he’d got up as toon as Todd-or-Toby started dozing off.

As soon as the stranger didn’t pay attention when he said he wasn’t a sex worker, he should have got up and fought him off, if that’s what it would have taken.

He should have got the hell out of there.

He thinks he should have done so many things differently.

He doesn’t think about how Todd-or-Toby or the other guy should have done things differently.

TK is holding a large, white box of Danish pastries when he starts to cry. They’re in the middle of Trinity, but it’s okay – the city is a ghost town this time on a Sunday morning.

Owen notices TK’s tears glinting in the September sunshine. “Son?” he says gently. He’s holding a box of pastries too, so can’t put a soothing hand on him. “Oh, son. I know it’s an emotional day.”

TK lets Owen believe he’s crying because of the memorial fountains. But he wants to confess. He had sex with a stranger who didn’t use a condom, and he’s so sorry, and he isn’t sure if it was good sex that became bad sex that became assault. He just doesn’t really know how to define it mentally – but physically it’s making him feel very weird and surprisingly lonely.

All day, TK’s work is sloppy. He eats three of the pastries himself, but nothing else. His blood sugar goes hoo-ha. He’s uppity with Probie Simone who worships him, and feels shit about it.

Then, at around three o’clock, something bizarre happens.

TK stirs cream into his fifth coffee of the day, watches inky blackness turn earth brown and delectable. He smells it and is revived. He’s been pottering sleepily, doing little tasks while he waited for his drip filter coffee to fill his mug. The whole time, he’s been thinking about the stranger’s hand around his cock. Breaking himself apart over how good it felt, and how bad.

“Hey, TK – quickly!” It’s Owen, calling from the firehouse entrance – the cry of his voice bounces harshly all the way to the kitchen. Owen is shadowy, backlit by the bright afternoon light. He has someone slightly smaller under his arm – someone limping. TK’s eyes adjust to a mop of murky blond hair and a pulped face, blood staining a Rorschach butterfly onto a white t-shirt, splatter traveling all the way down pale blue jeans to a pair of Converse All Stars.

TK slings his coffee mug into the sink and runs towards them.

“This guy says he knows you?” Owens is dragging the young man now, taking all his weight.

“I need to sit–” the man garbles, fainting into Owen.

“Get him down,” TK instructs, grabbing a jacket from a nearby chair to fold into a cushion.

Owen eases the man’s head onto the jacket, tilting him to the side so he doesn’t inhale his own blood.

There’s a noise from behind – TK looks up to see Pete, Louise and Simone running down to join them.

“He came to find TK,” Owen tells them, “And then he passed out.”

TK stares at the smashed-up mess beneath him. Thick, golden hair matted with blood. He knows. He knows the guy beneath it all.

“It’s Fox Richardson,” TK says, staring up at Owen, whose blue eyes widen and blaze.

TK, with Louise, captain of the E.M.S. crew, start checking Fox out – the left side of his face is particularly wounded, though the majority of the sticky dark blood on his clothes has pumped from a shallow stab wound below his left shoulder.

Thirty seconds later, Fox opens his right eye. A golden hazel glow that TK has never forgotten. He sees everybody hovering over him.

“Am I dead?” Fox gristles.

“No, you’re hurt. You collapsed, sir,” Louise tells him. “I’m Captain Schmidt. I’m going to help you.”

Fox’s left eye is good. He focuses on TK. He takes a deep, wet breath, as if to say something major, but out comes a very polite, “Hello, TK.”

“I’m worried about his head,” TK says.

“Fox – can you tell us what happened?” Owen asks, and simultaneously looks up at the crowding 252 crew around them. “Come on – you all know better. Give us some space.”

The fire crew reluctantly recedes to the kitchen, close enough to rubberneck, with only Owen remaining alongside TK and the paramedics.

Fox stares solemnly up at the high ceiling.

“Who did this to you?” TK asks.

Fox’s one good eye flashes yellow. He flips further to his side, heaving the green bile of a foodless stomach onto the floor. “Came on to– the– wrong– guy,” he says between spasms.

TK rubs his back, letting him bring it all up – such as it is – and sits back on his heels, thinking.

Over the gross commotion, Pete nudges Owen. “Cap, what the hell is going on?”

“TK and this guy knew each other in high school,” Owen says.

Fox stops puking, as if confusion possesses some kind of anti-sickness effect. “How do you know that?” He asks Owen.

“This is my dad,” TK says, pointing at Owen the way a child would point.

Fox struggles to look between them, examining their faces with a bleary eye – seeing double, quadruple, octuple Strand men. “Huh?”

“Sorry, but, if you come looking for me, you find my family too.”

At this – with his sickness passed and wounds clotting and consciousness returning and adrenaline plummeting – all Fox can do is cry, like it’s the only functionality he has left. “I didn’t know where else to go. Saw you in the paper because you rescued that BASE jumper. I couldn’t think of anyone else who could help me.”

TK tries not to feel flattered – it seems inappropriate. But part of him wants to high-five Louise. He looks at Owen instead, who grants him a small, proud smile, knowing what this means.

Fox holds onto TK’s arms and sits himself up with Owen crouching to support his back.

“You need to tell us what happened,” TK says, “You’ve been stabbed.”

Fox peers at TK through his teary left eye. His right is swollen shut and dark purple. A cut above his right eyebrow bleeds around his socket, a wound possibly dealt by something sharp like a knuckleduster ring, and his nose is bloody, his lip is split. “I just misunderstood someone. I was in a bar. He had a knife.” The action of speaking stretches his split lip. What was brown and congealed becomes glossy and scarlet. “His buddies were laughing. They were laughing at me.” His smile becomes a shrieking sob. “Knocking some sense into another homo.” His shrieking sob becomes open-mouthed silence. TK puts his arm around Fox so he can cry on his shoulder. He’s as skinny as he ever was. He feels the same, smells the same.

Owen has to turn away. TK notices it, if nobody else does, and knows exactly what his dad is remembering.

Tuesday November 17, 2009

The day begins like any other for TK. He and his mom eat an oatmeal breakfast at the kitchen table and talk about how sophomore year is kicking his ass. She says it kicked hers too, to begin with, but she found her feet in the end. He appreciates the understanding and listens to her mull over a case her firm has lost, and what she’s personally learned from it.

“Not everything goes to plan, but you still need a plan to begin with,” she tells him, “You still need a goal.”

“When will I need an A grade in trig when I’m a firefighter?” TK asks.

“It’s not just pointing a water cannon at a flame, you know,” Gwyn says, taking TK’s empty breakfast bowl and dumping it in the sink. She hands him a green-tinged banana because she knows he’ll be ravenous for it in roughly five minutes. TK can only tolerate bananas that are greenish. It’s a texture thing. Nice and firm. “No matter what situation you’re in, it’s better to be one of the smarter people in the room.”

TK tips his head back and groans. He does want to be smart, but he can’t prioritize that over being cool and sexy right now, which he is – it’s official. He’s been rated a 10/10 by Libby and her clique, and they all know he’s gay and they love it. Being swarmed by the popular girls is pretty exciting, even if he wishes the constant texts asking him to ‘go shopping’ would stop.

The only problem is, he didn’t willingly come out to them. Sarah, his best friend since elementary, panicked during a game of truth or dare at Libby’s birthday slumber party. She blurted out that TK liked boys, but only to deflect from her – it turns out – liking Libby’s crush, Quarterback Kyle.

Sarah meets TK outside his apartment as usual so they can walk to school together, but things haven’t been the same in the three weeks since she outed him. They used to bounce along the sidewalk to the subway, chattering wildly about this and that, laughing at nonsense, talking in stupid voices, gossiping about the other kids in class and psychoanalyzing their teachers. He greets her now in a friendly tone, but gives nothing away. They talk about The Catcher in the Rye, for they are in tenth grade. TK is pissed off by the constant use of the word phony, but Sarah has a literary crush on Holden Caulfield. The conversation peters out quickly. TK is bored by the time they reach the school gates. He wants to open up to Sarah the way he used to. He wants to laugh with her. But he can’t. Those feelings have gone.

Walking up to the high doors that lead into the never-ending corridor of mismatched blue lockers, TK wishes he’d worn his winter jacket instead of denim with shearling. Last week was mild for November. This week is bitterly cold. A wisp of northerly wind raises brown leaves from the ground. The leaves skip and clatter around TK’s feet like skeletal faeries. He crunches over them in his high-top Nikes. The sky is leaden, full of heavy rain. It’s a relief to step inside. The radiators are on full-blast. He makes headway to his navy-blue locker, nodding hi to a few acquaintances as he goes, but none of them meet his eye. Weird. Tom McNear shoves past, knocking his arm and pushing him sideways. Even weirder. It seemed deliberate, but Tom’s a good guy. Then Ben Lanzinger does the same thing and calls him the F-slur under his breath – TK could swear he heard it. But Ben’s a good guy too.

“Is something happening?” TK asks Sarah, who shrugs, but he can sense what she can’t. The day continues with variants of him being shoved around or called names, with nobody stopping to explain why he was popular on Monday but a pariah on Tuesday. At 3 p.m., after last bell, he receives a text from Libby, asking him to meet her behind the bleachers. She has something important to tell him.

“No matter what situation you’re in, it’s better to be one of the smarter people in the room.” He’ll wish he’d listened to his mom.

He ventures to the bleachers dutifully. Libby Hirsch is one of the most popular girls in school. Whatever she has to say always seems to matter, even if it’s only something about her hair.

Libby isn’t behind the bleachers when TK arrives. He tucks himself beneath the rutted wooden beams to shield himself from the arctic chill, popping the shearling collar of his jacket. He waits patiently, eyeing cobwebs and wind-blown litter. After a minute alone, he checks for a message from Libby about being late. Nothing. Two more minutes, he texts her to see if she still needs to talk to him.

Another minute. A noisy fleet of footsteps tap over the concrete, stamping over crisp fall leaves. TK peeks out from his hiding spot – he knows what’s about to happen. For three terrible seconds, he is given the gift of seeing the future. Quarterback Kyle and nine members of the football team have clocked him. They are all so much bigger, stronger and faster than TK. They are fifteen, sixteen, seventeen-years-old, and they all look twenty-five, standing six-foot tall with round, muscular shoulders and giant hands balled into fists.

“Hey, Strand!” Kyle yells.

TK runs because his best shot is to run. It doesn’t do any good.

“You’ve got a crush on me, pervert.” Kyle easily pulls TK by his backpack as he tries to scramble away.

TK whimpers at the force it. All the guys laugh and imitate the pathetic noise.

He’s on the ground, on his knees. Kyle grabs his neck and swings him around, dangling a kitten he’s about to drown in a bathtub.

“We’ve all been in the showers with you!” Richie Smith cackles over Kyle’s shoulder.

“Do you want to suck my cock?” Hunter Iwanski yells, rubbing at the zipper of his jeans. Half of the other guys laugh awkwardly. The other half give him the side-eye.

Kyle grips TK by the jaw, digging his nails into his skin. TK instinctively holds onto Kyle’s wrists, but the action of it makes Kyle roar, as if he can touch a queer however he wants, but a queer can’t touch him back.

“If you ever come near me again, I’m going to cut your dick off and force you to eat it.” Kyle isn’t whooping and laughing like the other guys. He’s quiet, serious. There is a true violence in him. TK can see it now. Since eighth grade, whenever TK looked at Kyle, he was astonished by his gorgeous face –his tanned skin and light blue eyes and yellow hair and tall, muscular frame. He represented, purely, the strength and beauty of young men. Looking up at him now, revealing his innermost self, Kyle is incredibly ugly. Repulsive. TK regrets the entire past two years spent fawning.

“Fuck you,” TK says.

“I know you want to fuck me.”

“I don’t.” He really doesn’t.

“I want to fuck you up.”

In his naivety, TK thinks this is more hot air. He isn’t actually going to be forced to eat his own dick. That’s just a stupid, nasty thing that people say. Kyle isn’t actually going to fuck him up.

Kyle backs away. Maybe he’s going to spit and swagger off with his crew, throwing TK vaguely threatening warning looks.

But it isn’t a warning, or an empty threat. TK sees a wild blaze in Kyle’s eyes. Backing away gives him a run up – a perfect angle for slamming the sole of his tennis shoe into TK’s face. TK topples from the force, cushioned by his backpack that possibly saves his life. His head knocks against the concrete hard enough to make his brain wobble in his skull, but not bleed.

They all set upon him then, like vultures, like he is a dead thing. Kyle’s friends are here for the sport of it, but Kyle himself wants to feast, and wants to watch. He steps back to allow Richie space to kick TK’s ribs and someone slams their boot into his balls. Pain rips sharply through TK’s body as if a sword was stabbed through him lengthways. It’s a cold burning. He’s trapped beneath ice. He can’t see. He tries to feel for the ground to push himself up. Someone stamps on his fingers and they crunch and splay and bleed and he screams silently, his mouth open. He can’t close it. His stomach jumps with a volcanic burst of nausea and now he’s spewing up his lunch of PB&J and milk. At the sight of him vomiting, everyone stops. It’s the second random thing to save his life. The boys around him do suddenly become boys, and not these hulking giants who could kill him with a punch. Everyone runs away – Hunter only gets a few paces away before retching himself.

“Eww, it’s on my shoe!” TK hears Kyle say, and it’s kind of funny – TK would laugh if he wasn’t ensnared by terror and pain and sickness – how Kyle could be so precious about his stupid white canvas tennis shoes that he’s willfully covered in blood and puke.

Then there’s nothing. No human noise other than the wet bubbles of TK’s own shallow breathing. All the guys have scattered like the leaves. The situation has become too big and scary for them. They started something and lost control and now it’s gone too far.

Two minutes from now, teachers and the school nurse will be by his side. A couple of seniors making out on the bleachers rushed, unseen, to fetch help. TK won’t know this for a while.

How Kyle found out about the crush will also remain a mystery to TK until he’s fully recovered from his concussion, at which point Sarah will be bold enough to confess.

The Monday evening before the bashing, Sarah had been chatting with Libby on MSN and happened to mention that TK’s biggest crush was Kyle. It was an innocent mention, she thought, a humorous little fact, something TK and Libby had in common. Libby finding it a threat was not something that Sarah saw coming. Then, Libby telling Kyle – a total surprise. Kyle telling everyone else – a grave misfortune. Kyle using Libby as bait to lure TK to the bleachers – a twisted betrayal. Sarah will never forgive Libby. TK will never forgive Sarah. The blame goes around in a circle. TK will be removed from Lincoln High and sent to John Jay High. He will never speak to Sarah again. In her place, he will become friends with Fox. And Mike. And Dan.

Lying alone by the bleachers before the paramedics arrive, before he is given wonderful painkillers that set him up for full-blown addiction in a couple of years, TK is aware only that the wind has picked up. Heavy rain that bulges the clouds is finally starting to fall. The drops are painful when they hit him, like someone is throwing little silver knives. He has a thin awareness that autumn leaves and litter collects against the curved windbreak he’s formed on the ground. He’ll be found within the indignity of this: Empty snack packets and dead leaves and cigarette butts pooled by his hip, his head inadvertently flopping into his own vomit, which seeps into his hair and wounds. Even when he’s clean and bandaged in hospital, and able to speak and move, he will still feel like a disgusting heap.

In some ways, TK remains curled up on the concrete like a roadkill cat forever. Even much later into his life, after he’s married, he’ll wake up in bed and think he’s down by the Lincoln High bleachers. He’ll sadly edge across the mattress until he can drop against Carlos and be the big spoon. It’s hard, in his tired state, to understand that there are no autumn leaves or grimy pieces of plastic in bed with them. He will hug his husband against his body, just in case their door is about to burst open and homophobic mercenaries storm the bedroom with rifles and flamethrowers and machetes. There are many, many people who would do that if they could, in the name of righteousness. Which is the most chilling thing of all. Kyle and his buddies did not think, at any point, they were the bad guys in the situation. They thought they were the heroes, ridding the school of a perverted individual like TK Strand.

Sunday September 11, 2016

Fox is taken by ambulance to Mount Sinai Hospital, much against his will.

TK and Probie Simone clean blood from the floor while Owen fills in a report sheet and speaks to a cop he knows well about the incident. Father and son make eyes at each other across the large space of the firehouse. They’re far apart, now, but TK can feel Owen’s concern and he almost can’t stand it. When it’s time to rotate off, Owen asks TK to get food with him, but TK says he needs to go home and rest. Owen asks to come with him – he’ll cook for him from scratch instead. TK says no.

TK doesn’t go home, because he’s lying.

After Fox was taken away, TK texted Dan and said, “Something fucking crazy happened today. Fuck I’m on PEP from the other night as well. Feel so sick man.”

“ur on pep? fucking idiot. r u ok?” Dan responded instantly because he always responds instantly – he is never not on his phone.

Before TK could reply, Dan texted again, “Come over 4 bible study.”

‘Bible study’ is code for Spike paying a visit with pharmaceutical wares, both tried and tested and new and intriguing. TK is over at Dan’s at 9 p.m., drinking a classy glass of dry white wine because Dan has decided he’s “into wine” these days. He’s taking a tasting course after he briefly dated a guy who went to an Ivy League. Dan dumped him because he was a boring, tight son-of-a-bitch, who for some ungodly reason liked golf. But the wine was undoubtedly good. The glass from which TK drinks was stolen from the Ivy League guy’s kitchen.

“I can’t even remember if I consented,” TK says, “I know I was laughing for some of it.” He puts his wineglass down on the hardwood floor. “I just can’t get into this damn drink. It tastes like gasoline.”

“I’m so sorry, darling,” Dan squeezes TK’s knee. He’s had a shellac manicure, glitter over obsidian. TK admires and sometimes envies Dan’s ceaseless radiance, his flamboyance, his bohemian flare. He does comms for some dumb hipster start-up company, spends most of his spare time clubbing, and his parents pay two-thirds of the rent for this cold, damp but not-too-tiny apartment. Dan personally knows, TK thinks, all one-and-a-half million people living on Manhattan Island, and at least a dozen people from Brooklyn, but he says TK is his best friend because he knew him from high school days. TK hadn’t really wanted to become friends with Dan when he transferred to John Jay High – he found Dan annoying until he reconciled with his own internalized homophobia, and then he found him funny and charming and loyal. But Dan’s an enabler too. In April 2020, TK will overdose and nearly die, and then he’ll move to Austin. He’ll get a new phone with a new number. Dan won’t know for a long time what happened to TK. Dan will shed tears when he realizes he’s left town for good and purposefully didn’t say goodbye. In March 2022, Dan will attend the funeral of TK’s mom, expecting to see TK, but TK won’t show. He will leave roses on Gwyn’s grave. She was always nice to him during high school days, even if later on she’d beg TK and Dan to stay away from each other. Dan will miss TK for the rest of his life, and sometimes TK will think about Dan and feel incredibly sad.

“You definitely didn’t consent to the condom being removed,” Dan says, “A couple of guys have done that to me. It’s so scary.”

“Yeah. I was really scared.”

“Sorry I called you an idiot.”

“It’s okay. I am an idiot.”

“You’re not, sweetheart.” “I am.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“Yes it was,” TK whispers.

“It’s good you’re on PEP. You did the right thing.”

“But… I don’t know. Seeing Fox again like that, after what happened.” TK sniffs, dabs at his eyes with the sleeves of his blue hoodie, and knocks back the last of his wine, which suddenly tastes like sour apple juice. “I just need something.”

“Well, you’ve come to the right place,” Dan says, “Eh, Spikey, baby?”

Over by the window, Spike is smoking a joint and staring mournfully at the distant Tribute in Light – two blue beams like endless neon rods piercing into the night sky.

“Can’t believe it’s been fifteen years,” he says, wandering to the couch to pass the joint to TK, who takes a hit and passes it to Dan. “Sorry, Strand. I’m sorry that happened to you,” he adds, “The bashing, too. Fuck.” He crouches by TK; TK watches as Spike drags at his lip to reveal a missing molar. “Had my tooth knocked out that way.” Spike shakes his head. He’s only twenty-eight, but he seems fifty for all his lived experience. “I do have something that’ll make you feel a lot better, though.”

One charming thing about Spike is how he carts drugs around in one of those old lady red-white-blue bags. He keeps a bed sheet poking out of the half-zipped opening, so it always looks like he’s on his way to the laundromat. With his bony fingers he hoists the bag from where he dumped it aside the couch, and from a black sack within, he withdraws a packet of something pale beige.

“Heroin?” TK asks. He’s only half-sure. He hasn’t fucked with heroin before. All sorts of pills, booze, cocaine, concoctions of purple drank, sure, but never heroin or meth, and he’s never huffed solvents or computer cleaner. That shit’ll kill you.

“With a wee bit of powdered milk,” Spike says, “I call it Cream. And, ladies, a little bit goes a long way.”

“I’m not injecting shit,” TK says, “I’m on fucking PEP. Last thing I need is an infected needle.”

“Who said anything about injecting?” Dan tuts, “I’m not collapsing my veins.”

Spike cuts the ‘Cream’ on the kitchen counter with his library card and Dan rolls the dollar bills – he’s got a knack. Spike is meticulous, very keen that they don’t overdose. He’s quite thoughtful for a dealer. But then, it’s a smart business investment for his clients to live. They snort what TK thinks must be exactly the right amount, because they’re all sitting on the kitchen floor now but it also feels like floating on a warm jet of air. TK has no regrets. He forgets about Fox Richardson. He doesn’t feel bad at all about what happened to him a couple of nights ago. He doesn’t care that he’s paying for heroin out of the $50 a stranger gave him because he thought he was a sex worker, and TK accepted the money as a fuck you. He doesn’t care about Quarterback Kyle. He doesn’t know what strength of mind it will take to overcome an addiction to this.

Spike and Dan somehow have sex in the shower that barely fits one person. TK sits in the bedroom, cheering them on. He’s never had sex with Spike, but he and Dan used to fuck in senior year as a friends-with-benefits thing, and it was okay but never great. He doesn’t mind that he’s not having a threesome, although he was invited. He’d rather relax back in Dan’s bed and not feel any hands on him.

He wakes up at five o’clock the next morning to an alarm he somehow remembered to set, with Dan in the middle of the bed and Spike on the other side. He kisses them both on the forehead and leaves the apartment for work.

Three hours later, he texts Spike about meeting for bible study.

Thursday November 9, 2023

“By December, things had got really, really bad,” TK says as he runs the faucet. He scoops cold water into his palms and splashes his face. “Hence spending my twenty-third birthday in withdrawal at my dad’s apartment.”

Carlos hands him a scrunch of paper towels to pad his face dry with.

“I honestly don’t think I’d have tried it, if I hadn’t been in that situation with those guys. And then seeing Fox like that. It triggered me so bad, you know? I couldn’t get Kyle out of my head. When Spike had heroin to share, it was like, meant to be.” TK balls up the towels and throws them in the trashcan, hard, his sadness flaring into anger. “So, you see now, why it scared me so much when I found the bottle under the bed. Because I know what it’s like for only a couple of things to cause you to make a decision that you can never un-make. And I know you have it in you, Carlos, because you nearly killed Gutiérrez for the same reason that I nearly killed myself.”

Carlos rolls his lips. He's trying very hard not to seethe. "What those men did to you…"

"I know," TK whispers, reaching to touch Carlos' shoulder, but Carlos is starting to pace around now – and quickly.

"…If I'd been there!"

"If you'd been there? Baby, there are no hypotheticals. That's what my therapist in St. Maximilian always said. I was there. Me. You were hundreds of miles away and we didn't know each other existed. It was a shit situation that wasn't my fault, and definitely wasn't yours."

"I want to squeeze something!"

"Squeeze me?" TK opens his arms. Without hesitation, Carlos dives into him, knocking him against the sinks and bear-hugging him into a state of near-wooziness.

"Baby." TK croaks, tapping his shoulder. "Air..."

"Oh. Sorry." Carlos reluctantly loosens his grip, but keeps hold of him around his waist. He kisses TK's nose and nuzzles him, forehead to forehead. "Ever since we met, I've wanted to go back in time and meet you so much sooner."

"I know. Me too. Although, maybe I wasn't ready for a guy like you back then."

"A guy like me?"

TK shakes his head. "I don't even know what I mean by that." He thinks of himself at fourteen, seventeen, twenty-one...twenty-three. Maybe he didn't deserve a guy like Carlos. Maybe that's what he means. Or maybe, just by thinking that, he’s undoing all the hard work that went into loving himself enough to let Carlos in, in the end – both of them lying on the hood of the Camaro, watching the aurora borealis grand finale of the solar storm. How it was like the universe spoke to them in its only known language of color and light, and for the first time in TK's life, what the universe said made perfect sense. TK took Carlos' hand and asked him to be his boyfriend, beating Carlos to the same question by a matter of seconds.

TK looks into Carlos' large, watery, sad eyes. "That time...that particular threesome...I didn't realize how much it messed with my head until I was in rehab in California. This girl in a group meeting talked about a virtually identical experience, and she was crying. I thought – why don't I cry anymore? Afterwards – there was a small, young olive grove on the grounds – I went for a walk with my counselor. I remember staring at this baby olive tree and thinking...fuck. It wasn't my fault. It wasn't even about me. I happened to be there. I was only a hole to that guy. But because I'd become nothing but a hole to myself, I thought it didn't matter. Do you know what I mean? Actually, don't answer that."

A single tear slips from Carlos' eye. Years ago, there was a young man in New York City called TK Strand and he had no idea that in Austin, Texas, a stranger called Carlos Reyes was aching, yearning, pining for exactly him. He had no idea how loved he was going to be by someone he had yet to meet. He had no idea how wonderful he was as a person with or without a partner – but he was about to find out. That's why you have to keep living, Carlos thinks, so you can find out.

Chapter Text

Saturday September 30, 2023

Carlos and Judd don't speak much during the drive from the southeast to the northwest suburbs, but when Judd turns his truck into Walnut Avenue, there is a distinct, mutual intake of breath – as if preparing to face what they must in the way a choir prepares to sing. That last moment of silence until voices blend and unify and call upon stronger air deep within the lungs.

Nicolás and Lori’s home in the amber light of the September morning is perhaps more idyllic today than Carlos has ever seen. The sunshine, dark shadows, and brown leaves that spiral to the grass make the road look like a moving Thomas Kinkade painting. It's like being inside a jigsaw puzzle or an illustration on a kitsch display plate. The perfection of it is eerie to Carlos, because he knows that sometimes the doors of this street close on very painful and harmful things, and they are about to force those doors to open.

“You don’t have to get out and come with me,” Carlos says as Judd switches off the ignition.

“Yes I do,” Judd huffs. “It’s one thing me pinkie swearin’ not to tell TK about this – but I’m gonna stay right by your side until I walk you back into that loft myself.”

Carlos nods, breathlessly says a thank you. He’s never been great at admitting when he needs a friend, and he has relied all too much on people like Judd to realize it for him.

Carlos leads the way to the porch with Judd behind, keeping close, and Carlos can hear Judd stifle a laugh when he dongs the bell – because it really does dong with a somewhat pretentious churchlike tolling that sends a chill through Carlos. He's wearing a sweater in warm sunshine, but he shivers.

Footsteps pound across the hallway floor in a surprising charge – the door is practically ripped from its hinges.

"Verónica!" Carlos remarks.

"I saw you pull up," she whispers, her eyes wide and fearful. She has her mother's eyes, a swirl of gold and gray. Her willowy bloom of long black curls is held back from her face by a floral red and yellow headband and she’s wearing pajamas – Victoria’s Secret pink striped pants and a thrifted purple sweatshirt with a motif that says "Get out of my way, I'm going to Bingo!"

"What are you doing here?" Carlos whispers back.

“Me?” Carlos’ beautiful, nineteen-year-old family friend, who he hasn’t seen in over a decade, almost laughs at how weird the question is. “I’m back for my mom’s birthday. It’s the big 5-0.”

“Oh – no.” Carlos cringes and looks at Judd, who is being stared at suspiciously by Verónica. Lori’s birthday. September 30. Carlos had long forgotten.

“Look. I really don’t think you should be here,” Verónica says, stepping a little further out and checking behind her, “It’s real nice to see you, Carlos, but my parents–”

Another set of footsteps fills the hallway. Nicolás and Lori stride out onto the porch and suddenly Judd is in front of Carlos with his arms out, blocking him from Gabriel’s ex-best friend.

"You!" He hollers at Carlos over Judd’s shoulder. "How many times do I have to tell you to stay away from my kids?"

“I need to talk to you just one more time.” Carlos tries to move Judd out of the way, but Judd starts fighting him down too.

“And who the hell are you?” Nicolás yells up at Judd, fearless, like he could take on a man eight times Judd’s size. He looks at Carlos furiously. “Is this your husband?”

Carlos and Judd glance at each other, both of them too confused to say anything before Lori is muttering that she’ll complain harassment to the A.P.D. She’s gripping Verónica by the elbow.

“Mom, get off me!” Verónica fights back hard, digging bright green manicured nails into her mom’s blue cashmere sweater.

“Get off her!” It’s Nicolás Jr., now, bursting outside to defend the big sister he’s adored all his life.

“Get inside, both of you!” Lori shouts at her children.

But they are fourteen and nineteen-years-old, and they both look at her with shock and annoyance, perfectly capable of debate.

“I said get inside.” Lori sweeps her arm towards the door as though they need directions.

“Do as your mother says, right now.” Nicolás addresses them while still squaring up to Judd, locking eyes. “Unless you want to be grounded for a month.”

“You can’t ground me, Dad, I’m in college,” Verónica replies, standing proud and haughty in her ridiculous pajamas.

Nicolás tightens his jaw as he regards his headstrong youngest daughter with frustration. “I can stop paying for your car, though. I can cancel your Amex.”

“Go ahead.”

“Obviously you don’t mean that,” Lori says.

“You will anyway.”

“Why?”

“Because…!” Verónica screams, “I support gay rights! I always have!”

Everyone spins and stares at her. Lori wobbles backwards, elbowing a potted bay tree beside the door.

“I kissed a girl during spin the bottle – and it wasn’t too bad!”

“For crying out loud, Verónica,” her father says, “Shut up.”

“I support gay rights too,” Nicolás Jr. says bashfully.

Lori glares at her son. “Excuse me?”

“Ignore them,” Nicolás huffs, “They always need a cause.”

“No, we don’t,” Verónica argues.

“Really, Little Miss Abolish SeaWorld?”

Out of nowhere, Lori pushes forwards, blowing past Judd, who has eased down due to bemusement, and grabs Carlos’ arms. “What do you want?”

The tips of Lori’s fingers press hard into Carlos’ muscles. He recognizes her fury and adrenaline and hatred and ignorance – and he remembers how loving she was towards him as a little boy, a true tía. He feels compelled to hold her, so he does. It’s only six seconds until she wriggles away, slapping at his chest and seething, but he’d needed to tip the scales back so that love was winning.

“Carlos,” Lori says with a snivel, wiping her nose on the posh fabric of her sweater, “We were sorry to hear about Gabriel. But that doesn’t mean you can just turn up and expect everything to be fine between our families, because it’s not and it never will be.”

Carlos takes her hands in his. This time, she doesn’t pull away, and holds a tearful stare as he tells her, “I’m not here to try to repair things again. It’s too late. I’m here because I need to ask you something, and I need you to tell me the truth.” He looks away from her then, turning his attention to her husband. “I need you to tell me that my father hated me. I know that he did – but I just need someone to say it. I need you to tell me that he hated me. My father hated me, didn’t he?”

“What?” Judd nearly slips backwards off the porch step. “Carlos, you gotta be kidding me.”

“Gabriel?” Nicolás Sr. asks with a quizzical raise of his graying eyebrows, “Gabriel hated you?”

“Yes.”

Lori slips her hands out of Carlos’ and steps back to loop her arm with her husband’s. Verónica takes Nicolás Jr.'s hand, and big sister and little brother hold onto each other the way Carlos and his sisters did not. Seeing them all like this, he stings from old wounds.

“I met your daddy once or twice,” Judd starts, “And the only thing I know about him is that he loved you.”

Carlos blinks. Tries to ignore Judd and focus on the people who were once like family. “You were the closest friends my parents had, back then. Back when I married Iris. I need to know what he said about me. What he told you. Because everyone is saying the same thing. That he loved me.” He looks at Judd. “And I know he loved me when he died.” His voice goes. His knees almost go. His tears hold firm in his eyes, welling bright but never spilling over, the last semblance of control. “But I think he only loved me when I was really young, and then again after he met my husband. There’s the whole rest of my life in between where it’s like…it’s like…he thought I was soft and stupid and pathetic and he didn’t want me and he wished I’d never been born and I let him down so much. I just need you to say it.”

“Carlos,” Judd says like he’s in charge, “That’s enough now. Come on. I’ll take you home.”

“No.”

“Carlos.”

“I need them to say it.”

“Carlos.”

“Mijo,” Nicolás lets go of Lori and steps forward. The man hasn’t called him mijo since Carlos was twelve years-old. He was staying the night here, in this house, because Gabriel and Andrea were out of town. Carlos remembers it, suddenly. Nicolás walked into the den and found Carlos weeping towards the end of The Green Mile – the part where John Coffey is explaining how lonely he’s been all his life. “I’m tired of bein' on the road, lonely as a sparrow in the rain. I'm tired of never having me a buddy to be with, to tell me where we's going to or coming from, or why. Mostly, I'm tired of people being ugly to each other. I'm tired of all the pain I feel and hear in the world every day. There's too much of it – it's like pieces of glass in my head, all the time. Can you understand?”

The monologue broke Carlos. He didn’t want to die like John Coffey did, but he understood. ’90s Tom Hanks looked at John Coffey with understanding, too. A moment of silent, calm fear. Silent, calm fear. There’s something about it, and it gets him every time.

“Mijo,” Nicolás had whispered with a smile, regarding him as a sensitive little boy, like being sensitive was a good thing. When does it stop being a good thing? What age? Carlos has never figured it out.

But now he’s a grown man, and he’s still sensitive, and he’s strong and he’s scared, and he’s tired of the pain he feels and hears in the world every day. And Nicolás Sr., who has thought he was a freak for so many years, is calling him mijo as if he loves him – his voice not that dissimilar to Gabriel’s. He steps towards Carlos, being a dad.

“Get inside,” Lori says again, low and tearful, and this time Nicolás Jr. obeys, because he must, but Verónica does not.

Nicolás Jr. looks over his shoulder at Carlos as he passes into the gray shadows of the house, as if he has something to say too, but all Carlos can do is give him a subtle wave goodbye.

Nicolás Sr. sends Verónica a warning look, but still she stays. He gives up and turns back to Carlos.

“Gabriel chose to end our friendship because we knew someone up in Round Rock who successfully did gay conversion therapy and then married a woman.”

“They’re divorced now,” Verónica chimes in, “You’ll never guess why.”

“Verónica, zip it for once in your life,” Lori hisses, stepping an inch closer to Carlos herself. “Our friend became close with one of the therapists, and we’d got to know him too. So, I had every faith it would work. I still believe it does, if people want it bad enough, which I thought you would. We thought you should give it a shot – you’d made a commitment to that poor girl, in front of God. We wanted you to save your marriage. We were so scared for you. We were going to take you there ourselves if your parents wouldn’t.” Lori looks at Judd then, at the tattoo Psalm 31 in bold black lettering across the back of his right hand. “But Gabriel…He went mad at us. He went crazy. He accused us of plotting a kidnap.”

“I’d never seen him like that,” Nicolás says, “He said things. I said things. He turned into a raging papá bear in a way I’d never seen. And then so did I.”

“We laid it on the line. If you weren’t going to partake in conversion therapy and fix it, we didn’t want you coming around here and seeing our kids,” Lori adds, matter-of-fact and without shame. “And Gabriel didn’t want you coming anywhere near us. It was unbelievable – just so insulting after everything; we were just desperate to help. That’s all. He could be harsh to everybody at times. Not only you, Carlos. So, I gave as good as I got and we severed ties.”

Carlos stares at them – and it’s like he can see himself staring, outside of his body. His face is still and expressionless. “You were going to take me to conversion therapy yourselves?”

Lori smirks. “We weren’t going to take you by forceful measures, contrary to what your papá believed, but yes, we would have done. We still will.”

“You are a sinner,” Nicolás says, “But Gabriel didn’t spend one day of his life hating you. Sorry if that’s not what you want to hear. And sorry that we can’t abide by your lifestyle. But if I told you Gabriel hated you, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself, because it would be a lie and I’d be a sinner too.”

Lori begins to pull Nicolás back by the arm. Judd does the same thing to Carlos. Lori visibly winces at Carlos being touched so tenderly by his giant, angry quasi-husband.

“Come with me now, Carlos,” Judd says, “It’s over.”

“If you ever want help up at Round Rock, you let me know. But until then, this needs to be goodbye, Carlos,” Lori says emphatically.

The good old days are long, long ago. Nicolás doesn’t say anything. Verónica shakes her head in frustration.

Carlos is vaguely aware of Judd turning him around so they can walk down the porch steps, and then Verónica is by Carlos’ other side, holding his elbow to help steer.

“Verónica, what are you doing?” Lori asks, which snaps Carlos out of his weird faraway state.

“Uh! You zip it, Mom!” Verónica rolls her eyes and keeps Carlos moving. It feels incredibly disarming and embarrassing to be physically walked by Judd and a college student who is practically a stranger now, but he’s grateful for the literal support.

Verónica accompanies them all the way back to Judd’s truck and opens the passenger side door for Carlos. “Hey, listen,” she says, checking over her shoulder. Her parents are on the porch, watching. “Carlos, can I tell you something?”

“Yeah,” he whispers.

Verónica bites her lip, thinking. “Okay,” She takes a quick, deep breath. “I’ve got a feeling my brother is gay. I don’t know for sure – but I can’t ask him, not right now.”

Carlos nods. A few minutes in the guy’s company as a teenager, and he had a feeling. He doesn’t know how to explain it – there was just something he recognized.

“But I just want you to know that if I’m right, if he ever does come out, I’ll be there for him and look after him, and our sisters will look after him. He won’t be all alone. And he’d be going to that place in Round Rock over my cold dead body.”

Carlos smiles at her tearfully – wants to hug her, but doesn’t dare. “You’re a good sister, Verónica.”

She shrugs, coy about it. “I’ve thought about you a lot over the years. I remember the argument your dad had with my mom and dad. Me and Nic sat on the stairs and listened. They yelled so much – and I swear I remember Mom saying they’d drag you kicking and screaming if they had to. Your dad was so mad. It was really scary. Little Nic started crying. Anyway.” She tries to smile warmly at Carlos and then at Judd, “Y’all make such a cute couple. I’m glad you found each other. Maybe one day we can meet again?”

She turns around quickly then, as if she can’t stand to wait for Carlos to say yes or no, and she hurries along the snaking flagstone path back to the porch where her parents stand completely still, like time has stopped.

The noise of an old vehicle’s engine makes Carlos turn around. A grinding splutter. A squawking brake. A beaten-up green jeep that used to be his. His eighteen-year-old-self steps out of it, into rain that falls only onto him. Carlos watches himself lift from the trunk a flatscreen TV covered in trash bags. He watches himself walk nervously towards the beautiful house that he’d visited throughout his childhood. He is about to be turned away for the first time. He can’t watch anymore.

He slips into the passenger seat of Judd’s truck and shuts the door, tugs at the seatbelt that is a little sticky to release from its bracket.

“I can’t believe I caused all of that,” Carlos says, his voice sodden and claggy from holding onto a cry that won’t release.

Judd rests his large hands on the steering wheel. “You didn’t cause anything,” he says, looking at Carlos sternly. “People make their own stupid decisions, and everyone is entitled to their own wrong opinions.”

Carlos rests back in the passenger seat, staring straight ahead at the road. “The night I came out to my parents, I ran away from home.”

“I know.”

“I mean, before I came out to them. I ran away before I even said anything.”

“Sounds like an unusual way to go about it.”

“I thought, maybe, I could just leave home and they’d never know why. I’d never have to tell them anything ever again.”

“But your daddy caught you,” Judd says.

“He did. So, I went back inside and–” Carlos turns to him with a raised eyebrow. “Wait. How’d you know?”

“TK,” Judd smiles.

“TK told you how I came out to my parents?”

“TK talks about you all the time,” Judd answers wearily, “And plenty of it’s even more personal than that.”

Carlos bites his lip and wouldn’t mind if a tornado blew through the street out of nowhere.

“Y’all need to listen to me now, Carlos. Focus.” Judd starts the engine, lets it warm up for a moment. Carlos obediently turns to him as a tearful captive audience. “I figure you’ve been running around town on a little tour of shame trying to find evidence that your daddy hated your guts. Well, newsflash, Einstein, he never did. He thought you were a dumbass, which I also know because TK told me, and he loved you more than anything from the moment he laid eyes on you, which I know because I’ve got my own babies.”

Carlos rolls his lips, trying to think coherently while stunned. “Let me ask you this. If Charlie ever tells you she’s a lesbian, how would you really feel?”

“I’m here for her happiness,” Judd tells him immediately. “I’m giving her a big hug, and I’m vetting every girlfriend she ever has to make sure she ain’t getting her heart broken ever.” He’s angry now. “Just like I would with boyfriends. Actually.” He pauses for a second. “She needs to be totally disinterested in relationships of any kind.”

Carlos laughs breathily. “That is a possibility. But she doesn’t get to choose – and neither do you.”

“Sounds like your daddy figured that out too. If he went ballistic over those dumbass folks wanting to force you into conversion therapy. Plenty of parents in Gabriel’s position would have taken them up on that offer, you realize? But he didn’t. For whatever his reasons were, he didn’t.”

Carlos drops eye contact with Judd, looking one more time at the big, beautiful house as they drive away. A curtain moves in an upstairs window. He wonders if it’s Nicolás Jr. watching them leave.

Beneath a vast sky of marbled purple clouds and yellow rays, in a large truck that smells like a pine tree air freshener, Judd eases Carlos out of Walnut Avenue for what really will be the last time. They cruise south towards the heart of their city.

This stretch of road is long and wide, cutting between flat meadows that are growing green again from the recent rain, though had burned in July – the month where both Carlos and Gutiérrez went hard looking for clues and turned up sweet fuck-all, and the 126 firehouse was scarily busy every day, and Carlos started having two or three glasses of wine when he dined alone instead of rationing himself to one.

“Maybe we could stop for a drink someplace and take the edge off?” Carlos suggests. He feels the need to sit in a gloomy bar and listen to the sound of cue balls potting billiard balls while twangy country music plays and buddies tell jokes at the bar. He wants to share a packet of chili peanuts with Judd and talk through the events of the morning with an investigative rigor. He wants to say thank you.

Judd glances at him quickly and incredulously before turning his eyes back to the road. He squeezes the steering wheel. “It’s a little early in the day, don’t you think?”

Embarrassed, Carlos looks at the clock on the dashboard and then his watch, corroborating 11 a.m. “Sorry,” Carlos says.

“Don’t be sorry.”

“Thank you for this, Judd.”

“Any time,” Judd replies, “Although, not too often.”

Carlos laughs and promises.

When they arrive at the loft, Judd doesn’t come up with Carlos like he said he would, but he does stand by the door to the building, keeping watch like a sentinel while Carlos disappears inside.

Carlos will never know that Judd waited fifteen minutes before leaving, in case he came back down.

“Hey, baby, how are you feeling?” TK yawns from the couch when Carlos enters. He’s still in his pajamas – still trying to reset his body clock after his final night shift for a while – and he appears to be eating red jello from a glass dish. “I made jello. Don’t know if you saw my note on the refrigerator. Cap had a clear out and asked if we’d want a jello mold shaped like a hippo, so obviously I said yes. It doesn’t really look like a hippo – it’s more like a blobfish. But it’s delicious and will be easy on your stomach. How’d your morning go? Baby?”

Carlos can’t speak. He swallows. His throat hurts. He wanders over and slumps down next to TK on the cushions.

“You’re puffy,” TK says, “Tell me why you’re puffy?” He places his jello dish onto a coaster on the coffee table so he can freely stroke Carlos’ hair.

Usually, Carlos would sigh or hum with pleasure at the sensation of TK’s fingers working over him, but today he whimpers.

Staring mournfully at the jello, he thinks it wobbles like a struggling, living thing, but shines like cut rubies where the sun catches its nebulous edges. Grossly beautiful. TK made a hippo jello. Life goes on in this way.

“Tell me why you look even worse now than you did earlier?” TK prompts softly. "Tell me why you look like a blobfish?”

“Gutiérrez texted.” Carlos’ voice hits the words and cracks. He hears himself, squeaky and weak. “That lead we thought was sound…It was no good.”

“Baby.” TK snuggles up to him a little closer. "I’m so sorry."

Carlos sleepily drops his arm over TK’s legs, tugging at the soft brushed cotton of the pajama pants patterned with blue diamonds. A surprise replacement gift for TK after the fire. He’d never bought TK pajamas before, and it felt so intimate in a new way.

TK hadn’t said anything about Gutiérrez’ lead when it first came through, but he’d thought it was one hell of a longshot even though Carlos became excited and determined. Now his husband is a crumpled heap on the couch. “Do you want me to rub your back?” TK asks.

“Head,” Carlos says.

“In bed?”

“Okay.”

TK gets up first and leads Carlos by the hand to the bedroom. Carlos lies on top of the bed with his jeans on, which is unusual, so TK unzips them and takes them off, and he helps him strip off his sweater and t-shirt beneath, doing for Carlos what Carlos had done for him. The early afternoon sun brightens the room white, but Carlos falls asleep quickly to the sensation of TK’s fingers stroking his brow and down his nose, mirroring Carlos’ loving touch, which might as well be a general anesthetic for how well it works.

TK hugs up to Carlos as the big spoon with no argument.

Thursday November 9, 2023

TK leaves the bathroom slowly. Carlos hovers close behind. When they step into the quiet restaurant, Mandy gives them a concerned glance from where she’s wiping down their table, using a microfiber cloth to brush crumbs into her palm. They’ve been in the bathroom a long time and maybe it’s highly obvious there’s been crying.

“I’ll get the check,” TK says.

“No – I’ll do it,” Carlos says.

“No.”

“Just let me.”

“It was my idea to come here,” TK insists.

“Yeah, but I just made you cry, so,” Carlos insists harder.

TK relents and lets Carlos settle up. He strides outside for some fresh air without him. This close to the river there’s a strong, mulchy after-rain scent. The downpour has fuzzed out into fine, cold mizzle. Behind him, the diner’s glass door opens and the bell above it rings twice. Carlos steps out, folding his arms against the chill in the breeze. They look into each other’s eyes, visible only because the retro diner shines softly next to them like a giant incandescent bulb.

“Say something.” Carlos steps up and puts his hands on TK’s ribs, squeezing his soft sweater. “Please?”

TK slumps, leaning so he headbutts Carlos’ shoulder. “You went around begging people to tell you your father hated you.”

“I know how it sounds.” Carlos lifts TK’s head away from him, strokes his hands over his ears and then cups them around the back of his neck. “But it’s like – I needed to know, for my younger self. My teenage-self needed to hear it.”

TK drops his hands hard onto Carlos’ warm chest and presses over his heartbeat. “Our young selves can’t hear anything. They can’t ever know what we know now, baby.”

“Okay, but–” Carlos doesn’t know why he’s trying to argue, but there’s part of him, however stupid it sounds, that doesn’t agree with TK. He can feel his younger-self in his proximity so much of the time, waiting for him to send messages backwards through the years. “Sometimes, I think, I hated myself because he hated me. So it was, like, justified, and agreed. Do you know what I mean?”

TK makes a face of disbelief. Carlos is talking to a guy who used to provoke barroom brawls as interactive self-harm. Carlos is talking to a guy who used to slide razor blades across his ribcage. He’s talking to a guy who drugged himself up to the eyeballs with Class As. He’s talking to a guy who was suicidal. And still, still, Carlos thinks TK might not know what he means when it comes to the rot of self-loathing.

“Carlos. I’m going to say something to you now,” TK starts, holding onto Carlos’ shoulders like they’re both about to ping off into space if he doesn’t. Carlos is on high alert, ready and waiting. “Sometimes Gabriel Reyes was a shitty dad.”

Carlos' face pinches with confusion. He nearly laughs. “What?”

“He was a shitty dad.”

“TK, come on. What are you doing to me?”

“What are you doing to yourself? You were not a shitty son, Carlos. I mean…You’ll have had your moments, like I did. But you were a kid who was badly hurting and so lost you didn’t know he was there for you. He was your dad, and you didn’t know that he’d gone looking for you. You didn’t know that he was protecting you from people clearly wanted to fucking kidnap you and covert you into some hoity-toity straight guy. But…Before then!” TK pokes at Carlos’ chest, “Before then! Both your parents knew you were gay, and when you married Iris, they didn’t do anything. All it would have taken was one conversation, right? One sentence: We know you’re gay and it’s okay with us and you don’t have to marry a woman to undo anything.”

“TK.”

“Maybe that’s why your dad freaked out about the conversion therapy. Because he’d seen you try to do it to yourself.”

“Ouch,” Carlos says under his breath, “Fuck...”

But TK is on a roll. “…And he saw you fail. He knew how much it fucked with your head to go through with that marriage, and still he never talked to you about any of it. He’d have been fine all along with you having a boyfriend. But it took so much before you felt comfortable introducing them to me properly – after ten fucking years of being out. God damn, it, Carlos!”

“I get it, okay. Stop!” Carlos pleads, his hands shaking against the sides of TK’s neck as he cups the back of his head.

“No. Carlos!” TK raises his voice, pawing at Carlos’ sweater. “Your dad, Gabriel Reyes–”

“Stop, TK, please stop.”

“You don’t need to hear that he hated you. You need to know that he loved you, and the reason you don’t is because sometimes he was fucking shitty, baby.”

Carlos’ eyes widen and he grunts like he’s just been hit in the stomach by a hard object. His hands drop from TK’s neck. TK is a little heartbroken to feel them go.

Carlos leaves him then, storming off to the Camaro as misty drizzle visibly fills the air. TK thinks Carlos is about to get into the car and drive away without him. But something else happens.

Carlos raises his foot.

He swings his leg.

He kicks the back left tire and the trunk – kicks and thrashes and punches and kicks some more – the Camaro throwing out metallic, booming shouts in response.

“Carlos,” TK says gently, “Carlos, don’t.”

Carlos doesn’t. He beats up his beautiful car, which his father chastised him for buying.

The sound of the kicking echoes far – desolate as a gunshot.

Saturday July 26, 2014

“A Chevrolet Camaro?”

“Yeah! Isn’t she a beauty?” Carlos pulls at the sleeve of his midnight blue sweater, which matches the paintwork of his new baby, and gathers the hem into his fist so he can polish a small patch of the roof. The model is second hand, but pricey, and he does cringe a little at a few nicks here and there. He tries to romanticize it. The car is already an adventurer and has a history.

Gabriel folds his arms over his white seersucker shirt, shifts from foot to foot in his brown boat shoes. Dressed up like a yacht owner for his and Andrea’s wedding anniversary lunch, his mouth is downturned and there’s anger in his eyes, like the Camaro is the ugliest vehicle to ever park this close to his house.

Carlos was so taken by the way his car glowed in the golden sunshine, it’s only now he realizes how upset both his parents seem, and how quiet all the party guests have become because of it. A bizarre twist. He really hadn’t seen this one coming when he texted to say he was on his way and would finally reveal the car he’d been teasing. All his parents knew was the color – midnight blue – and that it made him happy to have sold his jeep to a guy who intended to use parts to turbo-charge a truck he was building from scratch.

“Everyone’s here,” Andrea had replied, “I’ve told them all to expect a gold McLaren.”

“Ha ha,” Carlos responded, fronting up with sarcasm but giddy with excitement as he hit send.

When he cruised up to the house and switched off the engine, Andrea ripped the front door open and skipped out. Grinning guests filtered out behind her and gasped at the chic, sleek model. Carlos got out of the driver’s seat and greeted everyone with a wave, coolly taking off his sunglasses. Carlos’ eyes, though, fell onto Gabriel, who was the last to leave the house. He trudged slowly towards him, clearly unimpressed. He stopped by Andrea’s side and shook his head.

Now, Andrea is awkwardly playing with her long beaded necklace and cringing. Rubí at her heel boofs judgmentally, her black ears pricked and head tilting from side to side as she senses the confusion of the people around her. She’s never been keen on anything Carlos does. She hasn’t even approached to sniff the car, and usually she’ll sniff anything new.

Carlos wants to ask, “You don’t like it?” to verify, but fifteen people are present and they’ve all changed their stance from eager to ogling at perceived drama. Crestfallen, Carlos doesn’t get what’s happening at all. It’s never been a secret that Camaros are his favorite. He’s always wanted to own one and has mentioned it many times – how his dream car would be something dark blue and sporty. Gabriel was nothing but supportive of the notion.

Carlos supposes it was the same ‘notion’ as him taking up sports in high school. Swimming, track, wrestling. Gabriel was jazzed about it, told all his friends that Carlos excelled, like a triathlete, might even get a scholarship for college. But when the reality of Carlos always coming second place (or lower) set in, Gabriel was vastly less enthused, even though Carlos found fitness and friendship through all three activities. The idea of Carlos has always been better to Gabriel than the real thing.

“Mami?” Carlos nudges.

“Ay. It’s very pretty,” she says, stepping closer to him and putting her hands on her hips. She’s wearing a purple linen dress, her favorite colorful bead necklace and matching earrings – dressed up nice for her and Gabriel’s wedding anniversary meal. Suddenly, all colors in the flowery yard, which is rich with green trees and sun and shadow, fades to murky gray. “But this is expensive, no?” She looks behind her at the murmuring guests to smile like everything’s fine before turning back to him. “Too expensive, Carlitos? I was joking about the McLaren.”

“It’s not a McLaren, Mom.”

“It looks a little like one.”

“No it doesn’t.”

“It’s a poor man’s McLaren,” Gabriel says quietly, “And yet still very expensive.”

“Dad, I–”

“We’ll talk about this later on,” Gabriel says, and turns back into the house, trailed by his daughters who both look back at Carlos and smirk. Ana of the Mazda hatchback, and Luisa of the Honda Accord. Gabriel went with both of them to the dealerships and helped them choose.

It’s a long time until ‘later on’ happens. The anniversary is lunch out on the veranda, decorated with gold balloons, colorful paper lanterns and pink roses. The food is as delicious as all Reyes-related potlucks are. In addition to Malbec procurement, Carlos’ contribution was paella, which at least was a huge hit, but he didn’t want much of anything. Carlos’ appetite isn’t easily destroyed, but knowing his parents are upset has made him queasy, and for some reason Rubí is constantly at his side whining and begging for food despite seventeen other people being at her disposal.

After dessert, everyone receives a small glass of port of 1984 vintage, which Gabriel and Andrea were given by her father as a wedding gift.

Gabriel and Andrea stand up, Andrea tucking perfectly beneath Gabriel’s arm, and Gabriel clinks the edge of a spoon against his glass to silence everyone. Oddly, Rubí rests her head on Carlos’ thigh, which she’s never done before, usually tolerating his scritches for less than a minute before backing away from his touch like she’d briefly forgotten her stance on him. Rocky used to cuddle up to Carlos voluntarily all the time, to the extent where Carlos sometimes had to push him away and then withstand the look of utter dog-heartbreak in those huge, confused, loving brown eyes. He misses Rocky more than he can fathom. It feels like being stabbed in the gut every time he remembers him, but he’d always rather remember. He’d rather have the pain than never have had Rocky at all. His best friend and confidant between the ages of six and seventeen.

He deigns to pet Rubí’s head and gently tugs her ears. She closes her eyes. He wants to thank her. Whatever she feels about him, it’s as if her dog instincts have taken over in another way. She knows, just like Rocky knew, that he needs a buddy.

“Exactly thirty years ago today,” Gabriel begins over some unnecessary shushing along the table, “I married this beautiful woman by my side. Some of you were there. Some of you weren’t even born. All of us who were there had a lot more hair, and I’d appreciate it if everyone could forget my choice of electric blue suit. There’s a reason all our wedding photos on display are in black and white.” He stops to let people laugh. “Life has been full of ups and downs over the decades, but I don’t think I’ve ever once been unhappy in all that time, no matter what’s been going on, because Andrea has been there to advise me and keep me smiling. I want to thank you, mi amor, for everything. For this home you’ve made so warm and inviting. A place where we can host all of our friends. And for our children – our beautiful, strong, smart daughters, Ana and Luisa,” he pauses then, holding his port glass up to signal them, and has to take a breath. “And our son, Carlos. Andrea, everything good starts with you. Thank you for being my wife, my rock, and the best friend and Scrabble component a guy could ask for. Everyone, please raise your glasses to my wife of thirty years, Andrea Reyes.”

Andrea blushes and laughs and tells everyone to stop as the whole long table cheers and whoops and calls her name.

Carlos downs his port. He’s never actually had port before, and this is how he learns it’s meant to be a beverage of sophisticated sipping.

Tía Lucy, sitting to his right, pokes him with a red talon fingernail and winks with her left brown eye, her right green eye is focused on him and sparkling. “Want a refill?” she reaches for a bottle of Malbec, which Carlos accepts in lieu of port. Her silver, gem-stoned bangles clink as she tips the berry-bright drink into his glass, stopping near to the brim because Carlos didn’t indicate she’d poured enough. She fills her own glass halfway, then, and flashes him a bright smile.

Lucy went gray young, and subsequently dyes her hair all sorts of colors using D.I.Y. home kits. Today it’s lilac with some patches of peach that didn’t wash out. She wears glasses with multi-colored tortoiseshell frames and dresses exclusively in primary colors, apart from when she wears black veils and Victorian lace and conjures the dead. Carlos thinks she got into witchy things because of the heterochromia and the way she was bullied for it, but her true self is a happy-go-lucky illustrator of children’s books.

“I like your car,” she says.

“Thanks.”

“Fancy.”

“Uh huh.”

“New car and a new house. You must be relieved.”

“Yep.” Carlos sighs, “Mom and Dad aren’t.”

“Ay, they’re old stuffies. Ignore them.”

“I can’t ignore my parents.”

Tía Lucy shrugs. “I always ignored mine. Never did me any harm. Remember when I got that scooter with the sidecar? Everyone thought I was nuts.”

“I remember you driving it into the river and everybody losing it. I remember you cackling in hospital because you insisted on laughing gas.”

“Yes,” she sighs fondly, wistful in her memories. “But that wasn’t the fault of the scooter. That was because some monster truck overtook me and the guy honked his horn so loud I jumped out of my skin. But if I’d swerved in a car, I’d have been trapped under the water with no way out. The scooter saved my life, if you think about it. I swam to safety.”

Carlos considers her story for its irrelevance, vaguely annoyed – but he’ll think about this conversation six years later when his crush, TK Strand, a firefighter from New York, sees the Camaro for the first time and immediately wants to have sex in it.

“You in touch with Iris?” Lucy asks.

Carlos jolts at the mention of her name. “No.”

“You’re not discussing divorce yet?”

“No.”

“It’s been…two years?”

“Can you keep your voice down, please?”

Lucy ho-hums. “I saw her recently.”

“Yeah. Mom told me.”

“She was exercising in Republic Square, but…Star jumps, lots and lots of star jumps. She was sweating like a hog. Didn’t look happy. I went to say hello but it was like she didn’t recognize me for a moment, even though we always got on so well. It was strange. I got a feeling.”

“A feeling?” Carlos takes a gulp of wine.

Lucy gazes into the distance, thinking, her green eye fixed on the past. Then she shakes her head, dismissive of herself. “Oh. I don’t know. Anyway, how are you finding it, living alone? I know it takes some getting used to, but it must be nice to finally have your own place and not be under your mamá’s feet constantly.”

“I was hardly under her feet. I was at the Academy and studying and working most of the time.”

“Ah, yes. She said you were incredibly keen.”

“Just want to keep improving at what I do.”

“Prove yourself.”

“Isn’t that what everyone wants?”

“You like living alone, though?” Lucy presses, ignoring the question.

“It’s different.” Carlos smiles to placate her, and feels the smile disconnecting from the rest of his body. As abruptly as she decided to be affectionate, Rubí shuffles away from him and follows Andrea into the house when she wanders off to fetch something.

It’s the absence of Rubí’s warmth that makes him realize – he and Lucy are the only two single people at the table. Everyone else is paired up. Man, woman; man, woman; man, woman. All snuggled close even in the July heat, all happy, like they each married their best friend and live the most normal and yet most fantastic and exhilarating lives because of that love. Everyone – except Lucy, who never wanted it, and him, who always wanted it but can never have it – is adored by a romantic partner. The romantic love fills the air with a citrus zest, a sultry, summer feeling that makes Carlos shiver cold.

Lucy is the last guest to leave, like always. Carlos, Ana and Luisa linger to help tidy up. The girls are in the kitchen washing dishes and singing along prettily to pop on the radio, laughing and screeching when a large moth flies in through the open window. Carlos is out on the veranda, gathering up stained paper tablecloths and slapping mosquitoes from his bare arms. The night is hot and humid. He can smell warm earth and something sweet. The bark of dogs and motorbike engines and the thrum of another middle-aged party carries on the air – clucky laughter and jazz.

Carlos steels himself as Gabriel and Andrea walk out to join him. They’re both tipsy and overheated. The veneer of joy they’ve upheld all day has slipped.

“How much was the car?” Gabriel asks outright.

Carlos rolls his eyes. “Did you have to be so weird about it in front of everyone?”

“How much, Carlitos?” Gabriel steps up close to him.

“Gabriel, easy,” Andrea chides, holding his arm.

“Hurt did it? Showing off your new car and not getting the fawning reaction you’d hoped? Everyone knows where you got the money – everyone knows that you’ve blown your inheritance.”

“I also bought a house outright. Like we agreed I would. I didn’t realize the rest of the money came with rules.”

“We trusted you to be sensible, mijo,” Andrea says, “We taught you to be.”

“I am!”

At this, Gabriel scoffs, and the cruelty of it hits like the sharp strike of another knife. Carlos thinks of Rocky buried beneath the cedar elm.

“I never treat myself, ever,” Carlos insists, “You know that. Make-do-and-mend. You did teach me. But maybe I was sick of driving around all the time in that stupid jeep you forced me to have. It broke down once a month and sucked up my savings. People laughed at me.”

“Oh, grow up!” Gabriel snaps.

“Dad! I just wanted to buy a car I’d actually love. Just once in my life I wanted to have something... I’m going to take great care of it. Again, like you taught me. I intend to have it for years.”

“You do not have the kind of salary for the upkeep of a car like that. And you didn’t answer my question.”

“It was over twenty-thousand!” Carlos blurts. “It was one of the cheaper options.”

Gabriel puffs a breath and shakes his head. Andrea makes the sign of the cross.

“That would have been a real good chunk of money to save for a rainy day, no?” Gabriel growls. “Like when you finally divorce poor Iris. When you finally grow the cojones enough to face her.”

“Gabriel!” Andrea shouts, her voice cutting the air in a way that makes everything collapse.

Carlos turns so they can’t see his tears fall. Crying in front of his father during an argument is the worst thing that could possibly happen. He might as well be eight-years-old, afraid of the dark, unable to self-soothe.

“Oh, mijo,” Andrea pushes past Gabriel and grabs Carlos. She tries to turn him to face her, but he brushes her off.

“Stop. Just leave me alone, Mom.”

Gabriel pulls him now. “Don’t talk to her like that.”

“Would you fuck off?” Carlos spins on his heel and pushes Gabriel’s shoulder. “Just fuck off.”

Gabriel’s face lights up with rage, but he catches himself before he can retaliate with a shove. He treads backwards with his hands up. He and Andrea look at each other and back at Carlos – the low lights of the paper lanterns warping their stunned expressions into something nightmarish. Carlos has never spoken to them in this way. He’s never pushed his dad, although has come close to exploding. He’s been reprimanded and he’s snapped, and then reprimanded some more for the snapping – but he’s never told them to fuck off.

“Sorry…Sorry.” He sniffs, letting go of the bundled paper tablecloths which sway down to his feet. “I better go.”

“No, please–” Andrea tries, “Carlos.”

“Happy anniversary. See you.”

“Just let him go,” Gabriel says curtly. “He’ll be back.”

I won’t. I will not, Carlos thinks as he flees, ignoring his sisters who call after him. This is not the first time he’s run away from home, but this the first time he gets to sit in his beautiful Camaro and drive himself to his own townhouse, where he gets to shut the door on the whole world. It will be weeks before he returns with hunched shoulders and cow-eyed apologies and a bunch of flowers.

When he was seventeen, he did not have the luxury of choice or a safety net when it came to his own life.

Gabriel pursued him when he ran. He found him out on the dirt track headed towards the woods. He brought him home. The image of it is vivid in Carlos’ mind – the bouncing circular beam of Gabriel’s torchlight hitting the ground in front of them, the way the light was freckled black with October rain. When they got indoors, Carlos packed a bag full of necessities and imagined seeking a bed for the night at the Y. He spent some time saying goodbye to Rocky, who did not understand but cried with him, the way he always did when Carlos was upset, licking up his tears like trying to clean a wound.

Carlos knocked on his parents’ bedroom door.

There they were, both of them surprised and innocent-looking in matching blue plaid pajamas.

“I’m gay,” he said.

So clearly horrified, they hugged Carlos anyway. They hugged him anyway, and then let him go. They sent him to bed. Carlos can’t be sure, but he thinks all hugs since have been a lot looser, like they’d rather he was further away from their bodies.

After a night of sleep, it was like Carlos’ coming out had never happened. He ate Frosties at the dinner table. His dad read the paper, jeering at sports news. All the teams he supported never seemed to win. They got so close, but always missed taking home the gold.

“I never back a winner,” he tutted, “Carlitos, drink some orange juice.”

“There’s some in the fridge, freshly squeezed,” Andrea said, joining her husband and son at the table with a plate of eggs each for Gabriel and herself. “Time of year when colds are going around.”

Carlos obediently got up and slumped his way through the joining arch into the kitchen, the tiles cold through his socked feet. Behind him, he heard the comforting clatter of Rocky’s claws.

He poured himself a glass of pulpy juice and gave Rocky a treat without his parents seeing.

In one way, it seemed to be a morning like any other. Life was the same. But in another, it wasn’t the same at all. Broken but somehow functioning. A clock whose hands still ticked, but the glass face was cracked and webbed so badly, it was impossible to tell the time.

Chapter Text

Thursday November 9, 2023

“Damn it!” Carlos cries, flopping exhausted against the Camaro. He leans over the low roof of the car he loves so much and has to take in for cosmetic repairs now, all because he’s an idiot and everything is wrong.

“You got drunk and went on a mission to prove your dad hated you,” TK says, approaching carefully from the side, as if attempting to tame a wild, terrified horse. Carlos turns to him, eyes black and glossy, breath heavy and loud. “Because you had a reason to believe it.”

“Yes I did,” Carlos bows his chin into the crook of his elbow and looks so wretched that TK is compelled to hug up to him from behind.

“And that’s shitty,” TK says, resting his own chin on Carlos’ drizzle-damp shoulder. He can feel his husband shivering through his sweater. “You can still love your dad anyway,” TK says, “Like he loved you, whatever issues he had.”

Carlos doesn’t respond for a moment. Maybe a whole minute passes before he says, “Fuck.”

“Mm hmm.”

Carlos turns around, facing the diner, and rests his back against his battered, beautiful car. The diner is a black box framed with neon rods of pink and blue. A series of oblong windows show off pale blue booths and cream table-tops and dark blue walls dressed with pop art, and the Bubbler jukebox – glass tubes illuminated with pastel rainbows. Above the door on steel stilts is a spherical, blue neon sign containing the words BLUE MOON. Carlos thinks they could have gone back in time – back to the early 1960s, back to when their own parents didn’t yet exist.

“I proposed to Iris in a place a bit like this,” Carlos says, “It was called Mockingbird. It closed down around the same time you came to Austin.”

TK looks over his shoulder at the diner too, fuzzy-blue in his tearful eyes. “I proposed to Alex in a fancy restaurant.”

“Yeah. Because you were an adult. That’s what adults do.”

TK shrugs. “When I look back on it, I see myself as so small. Like, physically and mentally. Still a kid, really. Crushed like a kid. I couldn’t withstand what happened.”

Carlos puts a hand on TK’s shoulder. It’s pally. Sometimes they just need to be pals. TK smiles at him then, and Carlos wonders how smiles can look so sad – how smiles can reveal pain more than crying will. Carlos removes his hand from his best pal’s shoulder and puts his arm around him, bringing him in for a squeeze, kissing his hair.

“If it makes you feel any better – I hated my dad for a little while,” TK says, “Because of Alex. Because he was right.”

Saturday November 30, 2019

At daybreak, horizontal sleet is pin-sharp. The dark blue sky creaks open with purple light. Shadows deepen the flat cityscape. Black water turns gray.

Owen and TK stand on the banks of the Hudson, watching two boats smolder because three college students decided to perform a Viking-style ritual for a friend who died. The problem with being someone who symbolically douses a dinghy in gasoline, lights a match and then nudges the burning vessel into the water with a hockey stick – is that you're probably not taking fire safety into account, or currents. All three students sustained burns to their arms, legs and torsos; one lost their eyebrows. The dinghy collided with a large boat revamped into an oyster bar. Up it went.

"Nothing like firelight to bring out your glare," Owen says to a slightly sooty TK as he begins to snake a black hose back into the truck.

TK frowns, keeps reeling the hose in, feeding it through his gloved hands competently.

"TK."

"Cap."

"Son!" Owen whisper-shouts, looking over his shoulder to check that the rest of the crew are occupied elsewhere. "Please can you tell me why you're mad? You've been giving me the cold-shoulder for two days."

TK keeps his eyes on the hose as it smoothly curls into its bracket. "You still don't like him, do you?"

Owen makes a petulant sound somewhere between a sigh and a groan – like he’s had enough of this bullshit already. Even though he started it.

Another dinner between TK, Alex, Owen and Gwyn had been stilted. TK tried everything to keep the atmosphere bright and conversation flowing. He feels like he virtually talked non-stop because he had no choice. He could swear Owen and Gwyn were agitated, making eyes at each other. At first he thought it was because they'd had an argument. Then he realized they were in agreement.

"I still don't know him," Owen says simply.

"That dinner was all about getting to know him."

"And yet." Owen shrugs. "I still do not know him."

“You’ve had all year, Dad, and it’s like you won’t even try.”

“Me?”

TK abandons the hose and moves closer – stepping up to his father, unafraid, pointing a thickly-gloved finger at him. "Have you been speaking to Mom?"

"No," Owen answers, and seems genuine. "But I know she feels the same way I do. Doesn't that tell you something?"

Quickly, TK doesn't feel tough so much as despairing. Gutted. "Dad. I've never felt this way before about anyone. Alex – he's different. He makes me feel... as soon as I met him…like I wanted to change. I'm sober. I'm doing well. Don't you see that? I'm better at work now. You can’t tell me you haven’t noticed." He knows how pathetic and pleading he sounds, and he hates it.

What's worse is that Owen smiles at him. "That's down to you, TK. Not Alex or anyone else."

"No!" TK insists, his voice rasping and loud enough for a couple of people to turn around. "It's Alex."

"TK." Owen puts a hand on his shoulder rather than pointing a finger in his face. "I know how you feel about Alex. That much is clear. But–"

"But what?"

Owen stares at him with foregone sympathy. "He's just not that into you."

"What?!" TK yells over the noise of the truck engine and squawking seagulls and a passing boat's foghorn and bridge traffic. Yells like he's been holding it back for so long, the sound of it even takes him by surprise.

"Calm down," Owen says through a gritted grin. He waves at their colleagues in a nothing to see here kind of way.

"He's just not that into me? Are you serious?"

"It’s a little one-sided," Owen says, then ponders. "Actually, it’s a lot one-sided. I wish I wasn’t telling you this, TK, but I think you can do better. I think you should end it. Seriously. before it goes on much longer. Like you said, it’s been the best part of a year."

"No. I can't do better." TK isn't yelling now. He's frighteningly quiet. "I can't."

Owen can't hear him, can only see his mouth forming the words. He instinctively reaches for his adult son, as if to bring him in for a hug, but TK shoves him away in full view of everybody, including early-bird New Yorkers gathered on the bridge to ogle the boat fire. Now, they have themselves a little firefighter soap opera to watch for free.

"TK, don't!" Owen says sharply, snapping back into Captain mode.

"Fuck off."

"I'm writing you up."

"You are not."

"You haven't told me to fuck off since you were seventeen."

"You deserved it then and you deserve it now."

"Oh, I deserved being spoken to like that because you did something wrong and you got caught?” Owen counters with a level of sarcasm that makes TK want to scream. “I don't think so, kiddo."

"You're writing me up because you can't ground me," TK replies, leapfrogging over Owen’s statement. He did do something wrong – and oh boy did he get caught.

"I don't want to see you waste your life with the wrong man – not after everything you've been through." Owen tries again to reach for him. "I don't want you to get hurt."

"It's a little bit fucking late for that." TK slaps his hand away. "I'll see you back at the firehouse."

"Excuse me?"

"I have to go."

"You can't–" Owen walks backwards, keeping in front of TK as he starts to head around the other side of the truck. "TK, I would not tolerate this from anyone else, and I'm not tolerating it from you."

"Fine."

"I'm writing you up."

"Yeah, you said."

"Firefighter Strand, stop right there!" Owen shouts, "We are not doing this. Get your ass in the truck."

TK does stop, his glare shimmering, eyes full of tears.

"Don't you dare cry," Owen says, sounding on the edge of it himself. "We're not doing that either."

TK takes a deep breath. His dad's hand comes down around the back of his neck and gives him a squeeze.

TK does get in the truck, then – and later on, Owen does write him up.

Morning sleet becomes afternoon rain set to stay. Rain will fall steadily every day until the middle of next week, when it will become snow, but the atmosphere in the city will stay quiet and dark and moody in a way TK loves – a way he'll miss when he moves to Austin, Texas in the spring.

Alone in the bunk room, he sits upright on the edge of his bed, hands planted on the gray blanket either side of him. Rain taps the skylight in the center of the ceiling. He’s sought solace in the sound. Half an hour ago, he texted Alex, and Alex has not replied. It's okay. Half an hour is nothing, really. Sometimes it takes the guy a lot, lot longer.

TK is staring at his black phone screen, willing it to light up, when Owen walks in with a steaming mug of something that turns out to be hot cocoa.

"Simone made a batch," he says, handing it over.

TK accepts the cocoa wordlessly, with a small smile, and takes comfort in the sweet, warm scent rising into his face.

Owen strokes TK's hair, kisses his head, and leaves him with his thoughts.

Thursday December 10, 2020

TK watches Carlos pull the closet door, peer inside, click it shut. This is the second time he’s done this – like he’s near the fridge and can’t decide on a snack. He pushes the sleeves of his new dark green sweater up his arms, then tugs the cuffs down to his wrists again, smooths creases in the merino wool. In front of the mirror in the corner of his room, he begins a slow, anxious twirl. Carlos Reyes has been TK Strand’s boyfriend for roughly three months officially, and TK has never seen him twirl before.

“Are you sure I look okay?” Carlos asks for the eighth time in ten minutes.

“Yes, baby,” TK sighs from his position on Carlos’ side of the bed, where he lounges against Carlos’ pillow, butt-naked after his shower. Elegantly, he sips from a glass of ice-water that Carlos insisted on fetching for him, just for something to do with his nervous energy.

“Do I sound okay?”

“What?” TK snorts into his glass, fogging the sides. This question is new.

“My voice.”

“What about your voice?”

“Is it annoying?” Carlos asks, deliberately deepening his tone.

“You have the least annoying voice of anyone I know.” This is true. TK loves Carlos’ voice. He thinks Carlos should get a side-hustle recording audiobooks. He stares at his boyfriend as he returns to the mirror and pats his fingers over his gelled hair. “And both of my parents have heard you speak before. Baby, you’ve literally had long conversations with my dad. You spoke to my dad before you ever spoke to me.”

“Yes, but not like this!” Carlos, for some reason, flaps his arms. “I just want them to like me.” He approaches TK, sits down hard onto the bed, and grabs his shoulders. Wide-eyed and intense, he quietly says, “I want them to think I’m good for you.”

TK tries to hold a serious expression, cracking into a wheezy laugh within seconds. He can’t look at him, so picks up Carlos’ left hand and starts kissing it adoringly. “Believe me, baby–”

“Why are you laughing?”

“–They already think you’re great for me. And I’m laughing because I’ve never seen you like this before.”

“Will they do a good cop, bad cop thing?”

“I love that you – a cop – are asking that.”

“TK this is serious!” Carlos jumps up and starts straightening out the bedside table. “Maybe it was a mistake to say I’d host. We should be meeting at a restaurant. They have to drive all the way here.”

“It’s like twenty-five minutes. And they’d have to drive to a restaurant too.”

“I should have booked Uchi.” Carlos laments.

“The most expensive restaurant in the city? No, babe.”

“Your mom is a New York lawyer!” Carlos cries, remembering with alarm the time TK breezily told him that Gwyn’s friendship circle had included Anthony Bourdain.

“She’s not going to sue you for cooking a casserole instead of spending $800 in a restaurant she won’t have heard of before.”

Carlos ignores him, moves over to the dresser, opens a drawer, folds a t-shirt.

“Baby, my parents are not going to come into the bedroom. You don’t have to tidy up in here. You definitely don’t have to refold shirts the Marie Kondo method.”

“It’s called KonMari,” Carlos barks, “And I’m folding this my mom’s method.”

TK sips his water quietly.

“Are you getting dressed soon?”

“I’m in my birthday suit.”

“Ha ha.”

TK has a few things that he leaves here these days. A spare pair of jeans – ever since an incident with a jar of salsa. A few t-shirts in the drawer above the sex toys. A couple of hoodies. A toothbrush, of course, in a little blue cup alongside Carlos’. A raincoat – ever since an incident with a torrential downpour. Knowing he’d be staying over a couple of nights, and that they’d be hosting his parents for his birthday meal, he’s arrived with a duffle bag that contains his favorite pink button up. But it’s cold in Austin today – the first true cold snap he’s experienced since moving from New York in the spring. He gets up from the bed, slips on a pair of gray boxers, smirks as he catches Carlos checking him out in the mirror, and opens Carlos’ closet door.

“Can I wear this, this evening?” TK asks, picking out a black sweater with thin white horizontal stripes.

Carlos stops fussing over himself and turns to TK, looking at him with shiny-eyed wonder. “You want to wear my sweater?”

“Do you mind?” TK asks while in the process of putting it on and returning to the bed where he’d dumped his jeans.

He hears Carlos’ tread – and already knows what’s going to happen before Carlos’ strong arms scoop around him. He howls a laugh when he’s thrown onto the mattress, bouncing as Carlos collapses over him, pushing his hands up inside his own sweater on TK’s body. TK opens his mouth, inviting Carlos to shove his tongue inside. They laugh into a sloppy kiss, Carlos’ hands feeling around under TK so he can squeeze his ass.

TK screeches and Carlos accidentally headbutts him – proceeds to cover his forehead with kisses, kissing his nose for flourish. “Sorry I’ve been grouchy on your birthday. I’ve never done the whole meeting-the-parents thing before, like this. A boyfriend’s parents. It’s just–” suddenly, he clams up. Swallows hard. Gazes into the corner of the room like a ghost stands by the mirror. His expression is enough to make TK turn to face whatever Carlos is looking at, but it’s nothing. Only shadows. “It just matters,” he finishes.

“I know,” TK whispers, “It matters to me too.”

TK’s genius plan to distract Carlos by being cute in his sweater worked for about fifteen minutes. Both of them are fully dressed and downstairs now – Carlos paces around, wrings his hands, tells TK about his elementary school presentation on volcanoes. How his face became red hot when he started to speak. His hands shook and sweated with an icky coldness he can still feel sometimes, like a phantom. The papier-mâché volcano his mom and Ana helped him make – which he’d been so proud of – looked like a lump of shit the more he stared at it.

“I’ve never seen you this nervous,” TK says, wishing he could take it back immediately when Carlos drops onto the couch and sits in the crash position. “Sorry. I know that’s not helpful.” His phone pings in his pocket. He checks it. “They’re a minute away.”

Carlos takes a deep breath and sits up straight, gathering himself. TK watches him close his eyes and maybe say a prayer under his breath. “Okay,” he mutters, then rises to his feet, standing tall. He looks at TK with a smile that seems genuine, with his eyes in it, as if he’s never worried about a thing. When there’s a knock at the door, Carlos walks to answer it eagerly, without hesitation, and greets Owen and Gwyn on the doorstep with a confident, “Hi! Thank you so much for coming out in the cold to be here this evening! Oh – Malbec, that’s perfect. Gwyn, I’m really happy you’re here. That brooch is beautiful.”

“Thank you,” TK hears his mom say with surprise and delight, “It belonged to my grandmother.”

“Please, let me take your coats,” Carlos says, smart and polite as an Edwardian butler.

It’s the strangest moment. TK bobs on the spot, trying to make sense of things in the split second before his overjoyed parents stride towards him. Moments ago, Carlos was experiencing a very strong bout of anxiety, and now it’s like he’s never been anything but cool. How is that possible? Where does he put it all? TK hugs his Mom and Dad tight and keeps asking himself these questions as Carlos holds court – charming everybody with the reveal of his slow-cooked casserole and polite and flowing conversation. If TK didn’t know any better, he’d say it’s like Carlos is a detective deep undercover, acting the part of a confident man as if it’s a matter of life-or-death.

TK listens to Carlos and Owen chat about cookbooks and modifying recipes with family secrets. He keeps his arm around his mom the whole time, relaxing into the peace of her company. He only said goodbye to her this morning before heading to Carlos’, but after being without her physical presence since April, he clings like a kid. This evening, she’s opted for a cozy sweater of her own – mauve wool jazzed up with her heirloom brooch of teardrop rubies set into gold – and black skinny jeans and Gucci loafers. Owen is in a navy button up and chinos. TK thinks they wanted to make a good and lasting impression too. Like they did with Alex. He can see it now, the way they tried. The way Alex tended to regard Owen especially with a little sneer, not really getting his humor or enthusiasm. Carlos, on the other hand, has been awestruck by Owen from the moment they met on a call one rainy evening.

“He’s an impressive guy,” Carlos had said, turning to TK.

“He’s my dad,” TK replied with heart-squeezing pride for the man who had given him life and saved it, and saved so many other people every day.

These were the first words between him and Carlos, and it means everything to TK that he remembers the moment so clearly; that the first thing Carlos said to him was something kind about his family.

Carlos leads everyone to the dining table, pulling out Gwyn's chair for her, then TK's for him. He hops around the table to pull out a chair for Owen with flair, making a joke of it, and Owen laughs, honored, getting a real kick out of the gesture.

"I can't leave you out, Captain Strand," Carlos grins, making eyes at TK.

“Thank you, Carlos. Please call me Owen – I think we’re on a first name basis now, if you’re feeding me casserole.”

Carlos nods attentively, like a waiter.

"This is a lovely home, Carlos," Gwyn says as Carlos carries his red Le Creuset crock pot to the center of the table, positioning it between two lit pillar candles. He got the pot on Facebook Marketplace for a steal, but nobody needs to know that.

Owen makes agreeable noises as he uncorks the wine and pours it into three glasses, and TK watches Gwyn look around. She probably doesn't find the place lovely. She's not a great fan of modern eclectic and dark color schemes like these gray walls, and she thinks black leather couches are an abomination. Her taste is ornate, vintage, French, art deco, light colors. But she's taking it all in, smiling like she’s happy with where her son spends so much of his time.

"Thank you," Carlos says, over by the refrigerator now, fetching sparkling cider for TK. "It means a lot to me to have this place. My grandparents and my mom's oldest brother had some ranchland, and they were very generous in their wills. I hope they'd be happy to know they helped set me up with a home – and I bought my car with the inheritance, too."

“And it’s amazing,” TK adds, “I always feel like a million bucks when we cruise around with the windows down.”

“Oh, his car’s a beauty,” Owen gushes, “A Camaro, Gwyn.”

"I'm sure it's everything your family could want for you," Gwyn says, although TK knows she’s cordially apathetic about Carlos’ car, as she is about all cars. Carlos’ home though – her appreciation is fast-growing. She smiles at TK, watching him accept the sparkling cider from Carlos with a blush. He catches her looking and feels a little giddy – like he must be gazing at Carlos with enormous, cartoonish heart-eyes. He simply can't help it.

“And I imagine your parents are relieved, Carlos, that you have a place of your own, so young,” Gwyn goes on, “In this economic climate.”

"Mm hmm. They are. And how are you finding Austin?" Carlos begins to serve up the casserole, neat about it, concerned with the presentation. "Very different from New York, right?"

"Yes. Very different – but it's wonderful, and fun, and it's where my son is."

"I'm so happy you're here," TK says, taken aback by a sudden swell of emotion. Out of nowhere, there's a lump in his throat. Next to him, his mom reaches and squeezes his arm. Opposite him, his boyfriend taps his calf with the side of his shoe three times. I am here.

Gwyn laughs lightly and gives Owen a playful glare. Carlos sees so clearly where TK inherited his glare from, it makes him smile too.

"Didn't think I'd be shacked up with my ex-husband after nearly twenty years," Gwyn says, "But here we are. We've only had...ten arguments so far..."

"And that's just today!" Owen chimes.

Everyone laughs – and it's easy. It's neat and soft and natural. Back and forth like a relay team, TK and Carlos jointly tell a story about a runaway golden retriever they found and returned to the owner. Owen and Gwyn do the same thing, embarrassing TK with stories of little league and how, aged three, he decided to get naked at a funeral wake.

"It was August," TK defends haughtily, "And the aircon was broken."

"He was on his own when he took his clothes off and somehow made them all vanish," Owen laughs, "You know, the way kids lose things in the most insane way?"

"An entire little suit and his potty-training pants. He was a little late in that way–"

“Mom!” TK snaps.

Carlos does his best to hold a steely expression as he listens intently.

Gwyn shakes her head. "Gone. He was the only kid at the wake – so we ended up putting him in a white t-shirt belonging to my best friend. It went down to his ankles. He was wandering around looking like a tiny ghost. I still have it."

"You still have that shirt?" TK asks.

Gwyn shrugs, takes a sip of wine and plays with her hair, picking at the end of her dark braid that rests on her shoulder. TK picks at his hair too when he's feeling upset, Carlos knows. "It wasn’t just any shirt – it belonged to Jerry," she says, turning to Carlos sadly. "Jerry and Joe. We called them the Js. Jerry I knew from high school. He passed from AIDS in ‘97. I think about him every day."

"Oh, Gwyn, I'm so sorry for your loss," Carlos says. On instinct, he reaches across the table for TK's hand, surprising himself and looking a little freaked out when TK takes it. But he entwines their fingers anyway, because it's okay to hold his boyfriend's hand at this table.

The casserole is a huge success. Carlos insists he'll send Owen and Gwyn away with leftovers, and he enters into a charming ramble about a particular set of Pottery Barn Tupperware that he can utilize for the occasion. Then it's birthday cake time – a round, shop-bought angel sponge covered with blue royal icing, yellow stars, and gold edible pearls. Carlos sets two gold candles in the middle – the candles are silver and look very smart, shaped into a 2 and 7. Owen takes a photo of Carlos and TK standing over the cake; another photo of TK blowing out the candles and making a wish. Without hesitation, Owen uploads the photos to the Station 126 Whatsapp group.

"Such an adorable cake." Gwyn grins, and rubs Carlos' arm affectionately.

"I know it's for children," Carlos says, "But it was meant to symbolize the night we met. Which…Well, it was rainy. But it’s hard to find a cake with raindrops."

TK grins, licking buttercream from his finger after plating the first slice. "The night Carlos asked me to dance."

Carlos scrunches his face. "He said he’d get back to me within five business days."

This gets a big laugh from Gwyn especially.

"Nah." TK strokes a hand up Carlos' spine, working his fingers over the soft wool of his sweater. "Easiest question I've ever had to answer, because you beat me to it."

“What?”

“I’d have asked you.”

“You would not.”

“Would too.” TK laughs and bumps himself against him. “Once I’d figured out, you know–” he pauses and gestures to his own body “–that you were into what I got going on here.”

Gwyn clears her throat, but she’s still grinning. Carlos feels red hot with the adrenaline of embarrassment, and fetches the knife to cut the cake so he has something to occupy his mind. He’s never met-the-parents before, not like this, and didn’t realize how easy it would be to slip into flirtation mode with TK, right in front of them.

The starry birthday cake is sickly sweet and tastes chemical and plastic. It doesn't matter. TK and Gwyn sit on the couch – Gwyn smiling graciously as she lowers herself onto her least favorite kind of seat – and Carlos goes to make coffee. Owen follows him, even though coffee isn't a two-man job.

"Colombian beans," Carlos says, removing a packet from a cupboard and a cafetiere alongside it, roiling internally when he realizes he doesn’t know if Owen prefers French press over moka pot. He’s seen him with a moka pot before(!). But he unclips the little wooden peg he uses to secure the packet, and passes the beans to Owen to smell.

"Real coffee," Owen says as he closes his eyes and breathes in. "Nothing like it." He hands the packet back and watches Carlos meticulously tip beans into the grinder. They make a satisfying tapping noise as they drop out, and Carlos smiles at Owen.

"I don't think TK's enjoyed a birthday this much since he turned ten," Owen says quietly, leaning against the worktop. He gazes at their translucent, yellowish reflections in the darkness of the window that faces the invisible yard.

"I guess birthdays lose their shine as we grow up," Carlos offers, starting to feel hot and itchy in the green sweater he spent an hour choosing for the occasion.

"Four years ago, on his birthday. Exactly four years ago..." Owen shakes his head. "TK’s addiction was..."

Carlos secures the lid onto the grinder but does not press down. "Heroin," Carlos whispers. Owen nods.

"He's told me some of what happened."

"I know he did. And I appreciate it wouldn’t have been easy for you to hear. Honestly. If I sat and wrote down everything that went on, it would be like an encyclopedia. It's taken his mother and me a long time to deal with–" Owen stops, points to his temple and circles a finger "–These things can stay with you a while. The things Gwyn and I have seen. The people he was around. What I'm saying is – I'm happy he met you, Carlos."

Carlos bites his lip and looks away, feels himself going shy. The wall he put up, so flimsy. "That means so much to me, Captain Strand. I'm happy you brought him here."

Owen looks over at Gwyn and TK chatting on the couch. They look back at him and smile shyly, as if they sensed being watched.

"What's taking y'all so long?" TK teases.

"Y'all!" Owen tuts, returning his attention to Carlos. "Okay. Let's see this grinder in action. I want to know how it compares to mine."

Carlos nods seriously, the terrifying challenge accepted. He presses the beans into a beautifully soft powder under his future father-in-law's watchful eye.

An hour later, he and TK are on the doorstep, shaking Owen's hand and hugging Gwyn goodbye, thanking them for coming – TK thanks them as if he lives here with Carlos, instead of with them. He's sending his divorced parents off to their own home as if they're still a married couple, just like he always wanted.

As soon as Carlos shuts the door, TK knocks him into the frame with a powerful hug from behind.

"They love you!" TK pecks kisses over Carlos’ ear, getting him to squirm.

"That went well," Carlos agrees, his voice lilted with laugher at the tickle of TK’s kisses. "Not that I have anything to compare it to."

"Well, believe me, I do!" TK hugs him tight, smushing his face into the back of his shoulder. "Dinner with them and you today. Clubbing tomorrow. Best birthday ever."

Carlos turns around in TK's arms, kisses him slowly on the lips. "Want to cash in on that birthday backrub?"

"Want to screw my brains out?"

"Let's go!" Carlos yells happily, taking TK's hand and dragging him to the stairs. They tumble upwards, kissing and dry-humping on the top step, both of their sweaters off before they enter the bedroom and crash onto the mattress, laughing.

"I hope it's like this after I meet your parents," TK quips, widening both his hands so he can grab as much of Carlos' ass as humanly possible.

Carlos hums, devouring TK's neck and his mouth before he can say anything more – anything other than “God, that feels good, keep doing that, fuck – you’re so fucking sexy, the way you touch me, baby”.

There were maybe five or six times that Owen and Gwyn asked Carlos about his parents. If anyone noticed the way he played a game of dodge, they didn't let it show.

TK was right earlier: Carlos knew Owen and Gwyn already liked him, and that hosting dinner would only make him seem more impressive or sweet or...whatever nice thing it is people typically think. He's competing with TK's aloof ex, who kept him on a short leash, blew hot and cold, cheated on him and rejected his proposal. TK nearly died over it. Carlos probably looks godlike compared to that Alex bozo.

What had troubled Carlos the most was the idea of being grilled, even in a good-humored way. Grilled about his parents, his wider family, his upbringing, his friends, his high school experience, and maybe even his own romantic history, such that it is.

New Yorkers. They surely are sophisticated, cultured, open-minded and worldly – but there are certain things they can never understand.

Carlos proceeds to screw the birthday boy’s brains out. Not once but twice.

Thursday November 22, 2012

Carlos wakes at 8:46 a.m. on Thanksgiving morning. This is late by his standards, but he’d struggled to fall asleep until the early hours because of a nervous stomach, chest-crushing dread and a headache behind the eyes. The feeling he wakes with isn’t too dissimilar to the early days of flu, and for a moment he wonders if that’s what it is, coincidentally, and his proposing to Iris over milkshakes and Coke floats at the diner yesterday evening isn’t actually the source of feeling like he’s been hit by a cement truck.

He lumbers into the kitchen, legs like lead, still in his pajamas and dressing gown. Only his parents and Rocky are around; sisters arriving later. He’ll tell Ana and Luisa separately anyway – separately from each other. He thinks they’ll freak. They’ll have strong and probably opposite opinions and argue with each other about what Carlos should do. He doesn’t want to hear it.

Andrea is at the sink, poised to soak a pan she’s used for oatmeal. Gabriel is on a stool at the island, reading the Austin American-Statesman and drinking black coffee. He sees Carlos first.

“Son,” he says with a wince, “You look terrible.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

“Carlitos, you’re not feeling so good?” Andrea asks, putting the words into his mouth.

“I think I’m coming down with something,” he says, stroking Rocky’s ears.

“Ah, on Thanksgiving – you poor thing. Why is that always the way?” Andrea tuts with sympathy. Last Thanksgiving, she had a nasty bout of tonsillitis and could only tolerate chicken soup while on the couch with a lap tray; the rest of the family feasted at Tía Elena’s. “You better stay in bed today.”

“I don’t think I need to do that. I want to help you.” Carlos looks around the kitchen. They’re hosting this year and relatives will be descending upon the house in just a few hours.

“Maybe you need a big cup of coffee,” Gabriel says, getting up to fetch him one.

"No thanks, Dad.” The idea of coffee, which he’d ordinarily love first thing, makes him queasy. “Actually, I've got some news.” His voice judders through the words so harshly that Andrea drops the oatmeal pan into the sink from a height, spraying her sweater with suds.

"Carlitos." She puts her hand on her heart. "What is it?"

"No, Mamá. It's good news." Carlos contorts a smile. "Yesterday, I asked Iris to marry me."

Gabriel doesn't drop the large red coffee mug he’s picked from the cupboard, but rather sets it down onto the counter so slowly that the motion seems to warp time. Father and son stare at each other for five seconds that is also an eternity. "Carlos–"

"Really?" Andrea interjects, in the same tone she uses for when he’s left a wet towel on the bathroom floor.

"But you're–" Gabriel steps towards him. "You're–"

Carlos stares at him and backs away. He can't believe it. His father is about to say the word. Gay.

"You're only just eighteen, son."

"Oh." Carlos huffs a deep breath. He isn't sure if what he feels is relief, or the opposite. "You were nineteen when you got engaged," he answers.

Gabriel walks a few paces to Andrea and puts his arm around her. They stare at him like he's a weird painting that they don’t get.

"This is really what you want? To marry Iris?" Andrea asks, her eyes glittery with hope. “You’re being truthful?”

What a question. To say, “It’s not true,” is to say, “I am a liar.” They’d never forgive him for that.

"Yeah. She's– she's amazing," Carlos says, "I feel so lucky." He quivers like a north wind has blown into the house and swirls around him and only him. "I love her." These words, he thinks, are arguably so much stronger and more meaningful than I'm gay. He’s decided now that you can un-say your gayness if you tone it right, and everyone else shows willing.

"How did it happen?" Andrea is starting to smile. "Did you buy her a ring?"

"Not yet. We're going to the mall tomorrow to pick one out. Black Friday sales."

“The sales?” Gabriel quips, “Wear your riot gear.”

“Yeah!” Carlos laughs, and his parents laugh too, shaking their heads with astonishment.

Carlos' palms are sweating. He swings his hands behind his back, standing up straight. "I proposed at Mockingbird’s. You know, that's always been our place."

Andrea frowns. "The diner?"

Carlos couldn't afford Uchi, but thinks maybe he shouldn't mention that.

Gabriel lets go of Andrea and approaches Carlos, steady. Sometimes Gabriel walks towards Carlos like he’s an injured animal. It’s something Carlos has often found unnecessary, and patronizing, but today there’s some sense to it. He is an animal. He is injured. His dad is about to pick him up and look at where it hurts and help him get better – or put him out of his misery. There is a split second where Carlos really believes it’s about to happen, until Gabriel holds out his hand for him to shake.

"This is unexpected – I can’t deny that. But we're happy for you, son," he says, "Congratulations."

Carlos shakes his father’s hand weakly.

Andrea walks over too and gives Carlos a hug, kissing both his cheeks. "We'll have to call everybody. Have an engagement party."

"I don't want a fuss."

"We'll need to talk to Father Michael – we'll need to set the date. Maybe in the fall, or next spring? Gives you plenty of time. You don’t want high summer. Too hot. That’s what I regret about our wedding day – late July and a heatwave like you wouldn’t believe."

"Actually, we're going to do it right after Christmas," Carlos says, "We really want to be married and get on with our lives. I've already left a message with Father Michael. A weekday in January will be affordable for us. Otherwise–"

"Oh. Well, we can help!” Andrea interrupts, swinging a hand back and slapping Gabriel’s chest, a little panicked. “You don't need to rush – unless." She freezes, then grabs Carlos by the elbows. "Is Iris pregnant?"

"No!” Carlos twists out of his mother’s painful grip. “It's nothing like that, I promise."

Andrea gives Gabriel a look, and he gives her a look back. Carlos can’t read it at first, but then he finds himself recalling the time Gabriel talked to him about the birds and the bees after Andrea had spent an evening telepathically messaging Gabriel with her eyes. Speak to your son. Yes, that’s the look – it’s the same one. Teach your son. As before, Gabriel seems reluctant, but the moment dies on its ass anyway because the doorbell rings and Rocky with his sore hips tries to race off with excitement.

“I’ll go,” Gabriel says.

“Someone’s here early.” Andrea looks at her watch. “It won’t be your sisters–”

She’s right. Rather, it is Iris’ sister. Michelle follows Gabriel and a very curious Rocky into the kitchen. She masquerades a friendly smile but is dressed in black leggings, dirty sneakers, a pilly blue sweater too large for her. Unwashed hair, no makeup. Iris just told her the news too, clearly, and she fled the house.

“Good morning, Mrs. Reyes,” Michelle says, all rosy-cheeks and southern charm. “Happy Thanksgiving!”

“Happy Thanksgiving, sweetheart.” Andrea warmly hugs her. “Carlos just told me his and Iris’ news.”

“Yes.” Michelle grins, but her eyes aren’t in it. “I couldn’t believe my ears. Wow.” She looks at Carlos with desperation. “I was hoping to talk to Carlos, seeing as it sounds like plans are already underway. I’d really like to help.”

“Of course,” Andrea says, “Gabriel, let’s get Michelle some coffee.”

“Come into the living room,” Carlos says, ushering Michelle out of the kitchen alongside Rocky while his parents still have reason to stay behind. In a loopy panic, he links his arm with hers like they’re Victorians on a promenade, pulling her along the hallway and letting her go once they’re through the threshold. He spins his way through the room, dumping himself down onto the far end of the couch, where Rocky puts his head on his knee. Michelle stands before him, her hands on her hips, an eyebrow cocked.

“What are you doing here?” Carlos whispers and gesticulates desperately, eyes filling with tears.

“What do you think?” Michelle drops her frustrated stance and sits next to him, taking his trembling hand. “Carlos, you asked my sister to marry you and she said yes – but you weren’t even dating. Because you are gay. I’ve just been talking to Iris for an hour and I can’t make any sense out of her.”

“Is it such a big deal? Plenty of people marry their best friend.”

“Yes – but they also have a romantic relationship and physical attraction at the very least?” She poses this like a question. When he has no answer, and can’t hold a stare, she says, “Carlos, Iris just seems so lost at the moment. I’m worried about her. And now I’m worried about you.”

“You don’t have to worry. I’m going to look after her.”

Michelle gazes at him with disbelief, but turns with a put-on smile when Gabriel and Andrea join them, carrying coffee on a tray patterned with red maple leaves. Carlos awkwardly tightens the cord of his dressing gown as Andrea sets the tray of mugs onto the coffee table. The smell of coffee, usually Carlos’ favorite thing, turns his stomach.

“Sorry, I just have to use the bathroom,” he announces, and hears Andrea say, “He’s not feeling so good,” as he strides out of the room and down the hall.

He locks the bathroom door behind him and clings to the basin, breathing in through his nose and out through his mouth. This is what it feels like to be tied with rope to railway tracks. No, to be tied with rope to the front of the train that is hurtling across tracks that haven’t been finished, a bridge across a chasm only halfway built. Either way, he thinks, there’s no stopping now.

Thursday January 3, 2013

Iris wears her aunt Mary's wedding dress. Everyone thinks it's charming – a family connection, something old and borrowed. "Something free!" her mother chokes on her sparkling wine for the sake of a quip. The dress is an ivory satin shift, hitting at the knee with a subtle A-line, and it needed minimal tailoring on Andrea's part. Iris scored a shoulder-length veil of misty lace for $3.50 from Goodwill, and Tia Lucy made a flower crown out of ivy and paper violas. None of it really goes. Carlos wears the suit Gabriel bought him for his high school graduation. Something relatively new. The cerulean tie belongs to Gabriel; Gabriel helped Carlos put it on although there was no need, securing it tight as a blood knot.

The municipal hall has seen better days. Like the last good day it saw was in 1979. They'd hoped to rent Joe Warren's rustic barn for cheap, like Ana did, but Joe recently cut his losses and it houses cattle now. Still, Iris' vision has brightened the place, with its murky walls and scuffed flooring and a ceiling beam that flickers every thirty seconds. The finale of Footloose served as her inspiration, a make-do of rainbow fairy lights and pastel-toned balloons, and a playlist of mariachi and funk and pop. Everyone does a haphazard macarena and a more successful Vibora de la Mar. When the 2000s pop kicks in, Carlos dances with Andrea and Lucy and Theresa and Michelle and Lori, and Verónica dances with him by way of standing on his feet as he shuffles around. The ladies spin in and out of his embrace while Iris dances with Gabriel. Carlos keeps an eye on his father and his new wife, periodically looking away from them to smile at his dance partner.

Gabriel and Iris appear to be having a pensive conversation even as she slowly twirls beneath his raised arm.

Eventually, Gabriel deposits Iris beside Carlos and takes Andrea's hand instead. Carlos kisses Iris' hair, her veil long abandoned. They're both wet with sweat. Carlos doesn't want to remove his suit jacket because everyone will know he's soaked through his off-white shirt.

"Was everything ok with my Dad?” he asks, “You seemed–”

"It's gone pretty well, right?" Iris interrupts, looking up at him with watery eyes and blushing cheeks as the playlist switches to Bleeding Love. "I think everyone's having a good time."

"Yeah. It's been a nice day," Carlos confirms. “The food and…I still can't believe we got a TV."

Iris laughs, glancing at the table in the corner, upon which stands their sole gift from Nicolás and Lori. "They've been good to us."

Carlos throws an arm around her shoulder. The move seems to catch the attention of his mother, who has been pleasant but quiet all day.

"What were you and my dad talking about?" Carlos probes again.

"Oh, nothing. Just small talk," Iris says vaguely.

"I thought you seemed kinda sad."

"Sad? Me?" she arches an eyebrow at the accusation.

Carlos stops himself from saying, "And Dad, too."

"He's a little intimidating, is all," Iris says, "I was trying to be on my best behavior."

Iris curls into his arms demurely, then, and it's strange. He's not used to her being shy with him. They sag against each other and slow dance with exhaustion, lifting from foot to foot and swaying a little.

"I can't wait to get a place of our own," she says, "Get a dog."

Carlos watches his parents dancing. They kiss. He doesn't usually see them kiss on the lips – like a proper, long kiss followed by them touching foreheads. "I really want that," he says.

Wednesday April 1, 2020

TK gets to the place on Spring Street slightly late. Rough traffic between the Diamond District and Chinatown meant he walked from Bowery. Walked – he practically skipped like he was in a musical.

He hides the gunmetal gray bag with silvery rope handles behind his back as he enters, catching Gwyn’s eye and calling a loud, “Sorry, sorry! Got caught up!”

He passes Yeong at the counter, greeting her with a friendly, “Nǐ hǎo,” when he sees her jotting a paper receipt. She acknowledges his custom by shaking her pen at him before tucking it behind her ear.

Gwyn has snagged the best table, the one tucked in the corner. She’s sitting on the cushioned bench, her back pressed against the wall painted with thick stripes of cream and brown. She half-stands when TK arrives, reaching for his hand as he leans over the rickety wooden table, and they air-kiss like fabulous lunch friends. She’s dressed in black pants and a silky teal blouse with a fuzzy beige sweater tied around her shoulders. Her hair is up in a bun, a touch messier than usual, like she quickly stuffed it into an elastic before running out of the office. TK knows from this outfit that she doesn’t have meetings with clients today, and she seems all the happier for it.

“I just got here myself,” Gwyn says as he sits opposite her, catching his breath while removing his long black coat and crimson scarf. He’s wearing a thrifted black cashmere sweater and chinos, and his smartest shoes. He wanted to wander around jewelry stores looking like he could afford anything his heart desired.

“You look nice,” Gwyn acknowledges, rubbing her hands together. “Chilly today!”

“Yeah,” he grins, “But so beautiful.”

“I know! When’s the last time we had a cloudless day?” She’s practically cheering, “Listen – my diary got moved around so I’m all yours until three o’clock. How about we hit Macy’s after this? We haven’t shopped together since the holidays. Or we could get a manicure?” She dances the fingers of her left hand at him, flaunting a chipped French tip.

“I’d love that. Either. Both.” TK’s grin is starting to hurt, but he can’t help it, like he has to compete with the sunshine. “It’ll have to be window shopping for me, though. I’ve dropped a lot of money recently.”

Gwyn’s relaxed face sharpens. “Oh, TK. What have you been buying now? Tell me you didn’t get a dog?”

“Unfortunately no dog,” he laughs. “But I could be in the market for a tuxedo.”

Gwyn frowns at the tease. “A tux? What are you–”

TK lifts the gray bag out from its hiding place and rests it on top of her laminated menu.

Gwyn’s eyes narrow. She briefly pinches her top lip with her bottom teeth, thinking, taking it in. “You went to Roman Malakov?”

“I’m going to ask Alex to marry me tomorrow.”

Gwyn lifts her eyes away from the bag and looks at her smiling son, his nose and cheeks rosy from his quick walk in the cold. “Is this an April–”

“–April Fools joke,” he says at the same time, wafting a hand. “I knew you’d ask that, and no it isn’t. This is for real.”

Slow and dubious, she double checks: “You and Alex have been talking about marriage?”

“Well–” TK sits forward in his creaky chair. “Okay. I know it seems–”

“Since when?”

Yeong arrives at their table with a ceramic jug of tap water. She pours from a height like always. Slices of lemon and lime slip out of the spout and land in their squat glasses with a sloppy splash. Yeong is wearing her usual work attire – a hand-sewn linen t-shirt over dark blue pants embroidered with flowers, and TK notices a large white Band-Aid on her bicep. “New tattoo?”

Yeong rolls her eyes. “Don’t remind me. Itching like crazy.”

“What is it?” Gwyn asks, inspecting her forearms, line-drawn with vines, birds and stars, “I remember you saying you wanted a tiger.”

“Nah. Outline of a red heart with the word Māmā in it,” Yeong chuckles, “My mom hates it.”

TK and Gwyn crack up. They love being served by Yeong. She works for her parents to help pay for dance school, and she’s trying to break into the New York comedy scene. “Usual for you?” she asks.

“Dim sum lunch special and chrysanthemum tea,” TK beams at her, “You got it.”

Yeong acrobatically skips away in raggedy ballet slippers and yells the order through the swinging door to the kitchen. A man, likely her father, yells in response. The yelling continues, muffled behind the door, like a warped kind of ambiance.

Gwyn sits back, leans against the wall and folds her arms.

“I knew you wouldn’t be ecstatic, but…” TK says sheepishly, taking a sip of his water.

“Have you or have you not been discussing marriage with him?” She asks again.

“Alex likes surprises. Most of the time.”

“Didn’t he dislike it when you sprung the moving in question on him?”

TK grimaces. She just has to remember everything, doesn’t she? “That was months ago!” he argues, “I didn’t pitch it right.”

“He turned you down on your birthday.” She clicks her fingers, recalling the details. “Ah! That was the last time we went shopping! Retail therapy.”

“Mom!” TK catches his raised voice and looks around at the other patrons, who appear to mind their own beeswax, even if they are eavesdropping now. “This is different,” he says quietly, “I’m taking him for dinner at Andesine. I’m going to show him I love him. Show him I’m serious. I mean, of course he didn’t say yes to moving in with me. I asked him while I was wearing a crown made out of balloons.”

Gwyn looks at TK sympathetically, feeling for his hand across the table. “Your headwear should not have factored into that decision, sweetie.”

“I just think I need to prove my commitment,” TK goes on, picking up the paper-bound chopsticks beside the menu with his free hand, desperate for something to fiddle with. “I think the reason he’s been pulling away lately is because he thinks I’m not serious. About him. About anything.”

“This is just like when your father married Lorraine.”

“Um! I think it’s not.” TK’s mouth falls open with outrage. He pulls out of her grasp. Her hand slaps sadly onto the menu.

Gwyn points at the bag from Roman Malakov and beckons for him to pass it over. “Come on. Let me see the ring.”

TK scrunches his face with annoyance, but shows her anyway, withdrawing a patent black box and holding it out to her. The box opens smooth on its hinge. A white gold band set with harshly sparkling rectangular diamonds is regarded by Gwyn with a tiny nod, like she’s seen enough. He snaps the box shut.

“See?” She says, “Your dad bought Lorraine a sapphire. He actually thought about her birth stone. And I got–”

“He proposed to you with Bazooka Gum wrappers twisted into a circle. I know. I know.”

Gwyn slaps at the table, satisfied. “Yes he did. And you know what? I gave him back my diamonds when we divorced. But I still have the gum wrapper ring in my jewelry box.”

TK glares at her, but the silent treatment only gives his mother free reign to carry on.

“Lorraine thought your dad wasn’t serious. And I’m going to tell you what I told him. I warn you, though, Owen didn’t want to hear it either.”

TK shrugs. “Do your worst.”

Gwyn briefly looks pained. She shakes her head, her mouth slowly rising into a soft smile. Imploringly, she tells him, “You deserve so much better.”

TK’s jaw twitches. “Cool. And what did Dad say to that?”

Gwyn’s smile wobbles, her eyes glazing with tears. “He said, ‘If that’s true, then why did you leave me?’”

TK swallows. “And what did you say?”

“I told him he was my best friend. But I couldn’t be a wife to a man who wasn’t really my husband. I reminded him that he left me first.”

“Oh God, Mom,” TK dabs his pointer finger under his left eye. “You’re not supposed to be making me cry for these reasons.”

“TK–” Gwyn says firmly, pulling herself together in time for Yeong to reappear with tiered bamboo steamers full of the best dim sum in the city.

“Hey, why are you crying?” Yeong jibes, “You haven’t even eaten yet!”

She’s so goofy that Gwyn and TK crack up again, wiping their eyes.

Warmly, Yeong rubs Gwyn’s shoulder. It’s the most familiar she’s ever been. “Are you okay, though? Can I do anything?”

“No, we’re fine,” Gwyn says, smiling to send her on her way. When she’s out of earshot, Gwyn hunches up and whispers, “You see that? That was love. And if you think Alex has ever shown you love as naturally, you go ahead and ask him to marry you.”

TK sighs and smirks like she’s talking horseshit. He splits apart his chopsticks and collects up a slippery rice noodle roll. “You cannot compare my long-term relationship with one moment between you and a waitress you hardly know. You might not like Alex, but I love him. You think I shouldn’t have to prove it to him? Well, I shouldn’t have to prove it to you, either, Mom. Maybe it’s really you. You’re the one who doesn’t take me seriously.”

Gwyn sips from her too-hot cup of chrysanthemum tea, licking her lips as she places it down. TK is expecting a rebuttal, but she fiddles with the lid of the faux-jade gaiwan and asks, “Have you told your dad?”

“Not yet.”

“Want me to be there when you do?”

“Er, no!” TK exclaims. “It’s not like when I came out to him. I’ll be seeing him at work tomorrow. I’ll tell him then.”

“Well. Just don’t expect him to be ecstatic either.”

“Obviously not,” he scoffs, “You’re the hardest people to please, I swear to God.”

“I love you more than anything,” Gwyn says, almost casual, as she digs into a bao bun. “So does your dad. Remember that, okay?”

“Yeah, of course.”

She looks into his eyes then, focused as a hunting cat. “I mean it, TK. Remember we love you.”

“Yes, Mom.”

“Say it.”

“What?” TK smirks.

“Say it to me,” she says, waving her bao bun for emphasis.

“I love you?”

“No.” She rolls her eyes. “That we love you, silly.”

“You love me.”

“Yes.”

“You love me,” TK repeats to placate her, “You love me. You love me, silly.”

Saturday May 21, 2022

Carlos thinks his parents’ front yard is most stunning in May, when the tall trees are richly emerald and the flowers in the bushes along the path to the doorway are the deepest pink and the softest purple. When he pulls up to park in their drive, the sight of the yard and the buttermilk bungalow with a terracotta roof takes his breath away. He grew up here, but somehow it looks new to him today, and splendid, like a storybook cottage. But then, everything he saw on his journey looked perfect too. Heat shimmers and long straight roads and dappled sun through overhanging trees. Even the huge, pillared M of the McDonalds drive-thru evoked fond childhood memories, the bright yellow contrasting so beautifully against the blue sky.

How this house and the ramshackle but lush landscapes of its edges feature in the storybook of Carlos’ life is both happy and sad, loving and frightening. Today, he feels happy. Very, very happy; very loving, also. Undeniably, though, a touch of sadness and fear is creeping in. He wishes he was already on the other side of telling his parents the news. Wishes they were making margaritas to celebrate. The only way to a margarita is through.

Andrea, colorful in a long magenta cardigan over a patterned dress, opens the door to the house the same second Carlos locks the Camaro. She seems to have a wolfish sixth sense for when her children have arrived, whether she’s expecting them or not.

“Carlitos!” She yells at him, then tips her head back into the house. “Gabriel! Carlitos is visiting!”

She runs out onto the path. Mother and son are so pleased to see each other, he lifts her off her feet into a swinging hug, her hands pawing at his green Henley.

“Buenos días, Mamá.”

“Mijo,” she kisses his cheek and plants her hand where the kiss was, as if to seal it in. “¿Estás bien?”

“Sí, sí.” He kisses her too. “Everything’s fine.”

“Where’s TK?”

“He’s working this morning. I’m sorry I didn’t call first. I wanted to surprise you.”

“You know you’re always my favorite surprise,” she grins, and he knows she’s referring in part to him being an unplanned pregnancy.

“Thanks,” he cringes.

She takes his hand and brings him into the house, shouting again for Gabriel, who emerges slightly flustered from the home office, his cell phone pressed to his chest. He’s still in plaid pajama pants and a loose white t-shirt, as if a work call caught him off guard hours ago and he’s been snowed under ever since.

“Can I have five minutes?” he asks gruffly, nodding at Carlos, “Hola, Carlitos,” he says, also gruffly, and hurries away from them.

Andrea leads Carlos through to the kitchen, offering various hot teas, coffee, juice, water, a glass of milk for his bone health, iced tea, a strange red smoothie she got from Whole Foods and doesn’t like; or there’s food: Anything from the fruit bowl, or brioche, or leftover ham – she can carve some off and make a sandwich with red lettuce from the vegetable patch. Snails did eat half of the lettuce, but the other half is sound. Or there’s a Pot Noodle in the tall cupboard.

Throughout all this, Carlos has consistently requested iced tea.

“Ice tea it is,” she says, retrieving the glass jug from the fridge and carefully peeling Saran Wrap from the top. Gabriel enters with a weary stoop.

“He’s been working flat out,” Andrea explains for him, “Today’s meant to be his day off, but.”

“Got a big case,” Gabriel says.

“Want to talk about it?” Carlos asks.

“No.”

“Okay.”

“Were we expecting you?” Gabriel asks, confusedly looking around while scratching his stubble. “TK not here?”

Carlos shakes with nervous excitement, taking a deep breath to gear himself up. “You weren’t expecting me, and TK’s not here, because he’s bringing Owen home from the hospital.”

“Oh, thank God!” Andrea chimes, “We’ve been praying.”

“I know. Thank you.” Carlos stuffs his hands into his pockets and paces back and forth a few steps. “And I have something – something else good – to tell you.”

Andrea sets aside the jug, covering her mouth with both hands. “Are you–?”

He knew she’d know. He knew the light in his eyes would give it away. “Yes,” he says, turning to his father as she gasps. “TK and I are engaged. We’re getting married.”

“Carlitos!” Andrea fixes him in a bear hug, squishing his arms hard against his body. “Oh, my baby. I’m so happy!” she steps back, wiping her eyes and smearing brown mascara. “You and TK! It’s perfect. Perfect! It’s what we’ve wanted since we met him.”

“It is?”

“Yes,” Gabriel agrees with a cheesy grin, taking Carlos’ hand to shake and grabbing his elbow for reinforcement. The handshake quickly proves inadequate, so he drags his son in for a hug.

Tears prick Carlos’ eyes as he embraces his father. He tries to say, “Thank you,” but it doesn’t come out.

Gabriel pushes him away but doesn’t let go entirely, squeezing his shoulders and then his face. “When did this happen? How did you propose?”

“Yes!” Andrea hugs Carlos from behind and rocks him. “Tell us everything, conejito.”

Carlos chuckles at the pet-name he’s had since he was born. “Actually, TK proposed to me.”

Gabriel’s smile fades minutely, though enough to be perceptible to Carlos. Gabriel seems to consider the admission carefully. “Huh. Well. Good man.”

“Have you started planning yet?” Andrea asks, grabbing her iPad from the kitchen island and yanking it from its leather sleeve. “I’ll look up florists. Do you know when, where?”

“No, Ma,” Carlos laughs, “We’ve barely caught our breath since it happened.”

“Never mind when or where for now,” Gabriel says, “Isn’t the main question…how? You’re already a married man, son.”

“Yes. I’m aware.”

“Oh, don’t pour cold water on it, Gabriel.” Andrea snaps. “Here, a mix of pink and peach roses would be gorgeous. Very in right now.”

Carlos glances vaguely at Andrea’s iPad screen, then back at Gabriel, who is standing with his arms folded, waiting. “Obviously, I will get divorced now.”

“Opposed to ten years ago,” Gabriel snipes, “When you actually separated.”

Emboldened by the high of the proposal, Carlos straightens his back and proceeds with the speech he practiced in the car. “Dad. Iris developed severe schizophrenia and became a missing person for years. Do you have any idea how serious that is? How awful her life got? We all thought she was dead. The least I could do was stay married as long as possible so she could use my medical insurance. For all I know, she could end up back on the streets without it, so I need to think about how best–”

“For all you know,” Gabriel interrupts with a grumble.

“It’s not like you’ve been to visit her either.” “Ay, mijo.” Andrea hits Carlos with a dishtowel.

“Me?” Gabriel barks. “Why should I?”

“You’re her father-in-law.”

“You’re her husband!” Gabriel retorts, silencing him.

“Stop it!” Andrea shouts, eyeing both of them. “You’re going to give me a headache. Gabriel, Carlos is going to divorce Iris now. Then he’s going to marry TK, and everything will work out fine.” She rubs Carlos’ arm tenderly. “How was TK when you told him about her? Was it as hard as you thought?”

“That’s the thing,” Carlos grimaces, starting to feel sweaty of palm, ass and armpits. This is the really hard part. “The proposal was so unexpected.” He looks at Gabriel. “And I always thought I’d be the one to ask him, once I’d sorted everything out. So–”

“You still haven’t told him,” Gabriel growls, “About her or the marriage or anything?”

Carlos shakes his head, shame-faced. “That’s why I’m here without him. I need to ask you to keep it to yourselves just a little while longer. I need a minute to figure out how to– how to–”

“Clean up your mess,” Gabriel finishes.

The phrase hurts, but it is basically the gist. “Yes, sir.”

Andrea is looking at the floor, muttering her disappointment. Somehow, this is even worse than Gabriel staring at him like he’s about to ground him and set him chores for a week. “Carlitos,” she says, elongating the word – a sign he’s in trouble. “We have held our tongues since we met TK. Because you asked. We’ve always respected your private business and your decisions. We’ve done our best not to get involved. But accepting a proposal from someone who doesn’t know you’re already married…”

Nobody speaks for a moment, until Gabriel sighs and pats his shoulder again. “Look. I always liked Iris and her family. The fact that Theresa Blake didn’t string you up by the balls when you left her daughter showed impressive restraint,” he says as Andrea groans at the choice of words. “I’d be happy to pick up the phone, call in some favors, see what help I can get Iris myself. But the person I’m most concerned about right now is TK.”

Carlos swallows. Gabriel’s appreciation for TK makes him emotional in a way that’s hard to hide. “Thank you. That actually means a lot.”

“You already screwed things up once with him,” Gabriel says, “Buying the loft without telling him and–”

“I know what I did, Dad!” Carlos cracks.

“Then don’t do it again!” Gabriel yells. This time, Andrea does nothing to stop him. “We love TK! And I am happier for you right now than I’ve ever been, son! But you have to get your shit together, mijo. You’re not a kid anymore.”

It’s funny for Carlos to hear these words when he feels eight years old. “Yes, sir,” he whispers.

Andrea wipes her eyes and tugs on Carlos’ sleeve with her dampened fingers. “Still want that iced tea, mijo?”

“How about a margarita?” he half-jokes. It’s not yet midday.

“I’ll slice the limes,” Gabriel says.

It’s not every day TK’s father ends up under the rubble of a collapsed building, but it has happened more than once, and one of them was the South Tower on 9/11. Owen keeps trying to quip that what happened this time was small-fry, but his voice is thin every time he says it. In some ways, the event was the same magnitude, because what happened this time brought 9/11 back in razor sharp colors fogged by white grit in the air. For that reason, TK waits for Owen to settle onto his couch with Buttercup chewing a rawhide at his feet before he says, “Dad, Carlos and I are getting married.”

Unfortunately, immediately afterwards, TK bursts into tears. He falls to Owen’s feet alongside the slobbery dog.

An aching Owen shifts forward in his seat. The combination of the healing cuts on his face and his concerned frown makes him look fragile and devastating, and not at all indestructible. The ugly spot on Owen’s lung is a fungal infection, but they won’t know that for a short while yet. Right now, TK believes it’s his cancer rolling out of remission and down his visceral pleura like a slipped boulder. It makes him cry more.

“Oh, son,” Owen says, reaching to pat his shoulder. “I’m so sorry.”

“Sorry?” TK asks wetly, catching a tear on his sweater sleeve.

“I can’t believe Carlos said no too.”

“No?” The surprise makes TK snottily laugh. “He said, yes, Dad!”

“Oh!” Owen cringes. “Right. I thought you were crying because–”

“No, no. Not this time.” TK grins through his tears. “I finally got my yes. And from my actual person.”

Owen slowly slides down onto the floor to sit with both his pups. Buttercup tries to join in with their hug as it happens, but he’s so tired he flops heavily on top of TK, forcing him to lounge back on the floor, propped on his elbows.

“You’re going to have to let me go soon, boy,” TK says, playing with Buttercup’s ears. He looks at Owen. “Carlos is telling his parents, and then we’re hosting a hang and we’ll start telling everyone else.”

“That’s so cool,” Owen says, reaching to stroke TK’s hair and then Buttercup’s head. “I’m so happy for you, son. Tell me everything.”

TK does. He sits with his dad on the floor – the two of them like gossipy teens at a slumber party – and he details the way Carlos sprung awake, thinking TK had roused him at three in the morning because the lizard had returned; how Carlos cried and laughed and said, “Yes, a thousand times yes.”

Wobbly as he speaks, TK says, “I wish I could tell Mom.”

“Me too.” Owen squeezes his knee. “She’d be over the moon. You know she adored Carlos and loved you as a couple. Believed in you. You keep proving her right.”

“I miss her so much,” TK caves his crumpled face into his hands. He’s cried plenty with joy the past few days, but he’s needed to release his sad and scared tears since Owen walked into that exploded building and got stretchered out. “Do you want to come back home with me and join the hang?” TK asks, calming down as he has the idea. “We’ll have plenty of food. And Carlos bought that Taleggio cheese you got him obsessed with.”

“Ah, Taleggio.” Owen sing-songs. “Thanks, but nobody needs the boss around on their day off.”

“What do you mean? They all love chilling with you. And you’re my dad.”

Owen squeezes his lips together, stroking the back of TK’s head. “Buttercup, get off TK,” he says in a low voice, and the huge dog woozily heaves off TK’s legs and flumps onto the floor. “We have to let him go soon.”

Friday March 29, 2023

Six long weeks after filing for an annulment, Iris turns up to the courthouse in a long white dress. It’s casual and strappy – floaty and summery – but ornate broderie anglaise allows for a flare of pazazz. Carlos and TK both wear sensible black suits, but TK sits outside of the courtroom, nervously tapping his brogue while his fiancé and his fiancé’s wife explain to a judge that Carlos is gay, sex was a total bust, and the reason they couldn’t apply for an annulment sooner was because both their mental states were in the gutter. TK thinks it’s probably the closest Carlos has come to therapy. The judge yawns his way through the hearing, declares their marriage a load of hooey, and sends them on their way. Carlos exits the court slightly dazed, falling into TK’s arms with Iris close behind.

“Thank you, Iris,” TK says.

“Oh, anytime. It was no sweat.” She swats Carlos’ arm. “But seriously. You guys know if you ever need me for anything, I’ll be around.”

Carlos looks at the woman who, legally, never was his wife, even though she has legally been his wife for ten years. It’s too much of a trip to think about deeply. She’s holding down a job that covers medical insurance, her treatment is working wonders. She’s still the funny, silly, caring person he met when he began high school – just bruised around the edges, older and wiser and ready to get on with her life, and now she’s also free to marry if she meets someone she wants to spoon forever. Carlos and Iris have been through so much, either while bound together or unraveled but still attached at either end of a long thread. They faced the daily existential crisis that is high school. They attempted to live like “normal” people and decided a bogus marriage was the way to do it. What followed was a long estrangement; seeing other people; schizophrenia and living on the streets; truly embracing sexuality; housefires; breakups; an awkward reunion culminating in Carlos rescuing Iris from a serial killer and then getting kidnapped by the guy himself (and the guy’s mom). It’s a lot to wrap his head around.

“We should probably get going,” TK says, checking his watch. Previous hearings overran, so they’re cutting it fine to make their table at Uchi.

Iris had the idea to go out and celebrate the annulment, which TK casually mentioned to Owen and his new girlfriend, Kendra. Kendra in her blithe, billionaire-heiress way, flicked her tousled blonde hair and said, “Fantastic. My treat. Just name the venue.”

TK hesitated and said, “Maybe that nice bakery with the cronuts?” because all other Austin eateries fell out of his head.

“With every respect, I’m sure we can do better than that,” Kendra said, “Come on. Where have you always wanted to go?”

“Well…Carlos has always wanted to try Uchi. But it’s super hard to get into and it’s the most expensive–”

“Consider it done,” she told him as Owen merrily put his arm around her. “For however many people. They’ll accommodate.”

However many turns out to be: TK, Carlos, Iris, Owen, Kendra herself, Andrea and Gabriel…And Paul, Marjan, Nancy, Mateo, Tommy, Grace and Judd. Everyone freaked out when they heard about it, and things kind of spiraled, and Kendra didn’t care at all about buying sushi for fourteen people. The food is exquisite and the restaurant is both classy and fun. The group is seated along the bar, where they get a full view of chefs working behind a domed glass display. Chatter rumbles pleasantly back and forth along the table, but conversations largely skip over TK. He’s deep in his thoughts, feels guilty for ordering a chrysanthemum tea and missing the place on Spring Street.

“You okay, TK?” Gabriel asks, touching both TK and Carlos on the shoulder as he wanders past on his way to the bathroom.

“Sure,” TK says. He feels Carlos’ right knee knock against his left.

“This has been a big day.”

“It has,” TK says, “But I think it’s really nice we’re all doing this.”

“Me too,” Gabriel smiles. “Iris has been a good sport. And now I’m really letting myself look forward to you boys getting married – because you can.”

Gabriel gives Carlos an extra pat on the back before walking on. TK observes him as he goes and quietly resumes his chrysanthemum tea.

Watching Gabriel disappear too, Carlos turns to Iris, sitting to his left. “Hey,” he says, accidentally pulling her away from a conversation with Grace.

“What’s up?” she asks, smiling at the sight of TK leaning his head against Carlos’ shoulder.

“Something I always wondered,” Carlos starts, “At our wedding reception, you danced with my dad and you were talking. You said it was small talk, but I…No offense…”

“You didn’t believe me,” Iris says, “I know. Well. He asked me if I loved you. Like, was I in love?” At this, TK lifts his face, and she meets his eye. “Can’t remember what I said. I guess I sort of blathered. The question threw me, and he seemed a little mad.” She smiles. “I never was much of a people pleaser. What tea is that, TK? Not sencha?”

“This?” TK asks, nodding at his cup. “Chrysanthemum. Want to try some?”

She nods happily. “Yeah! I love tea I’ve never tried before.”

The statement makes Carlos laugh.

Carlos strokes TK’s back as he pours Iris a cup from the white porcelain teapot and hands it over proudly, like an offering. None of this has been easy on TK, but here he is with his great big heart.

If ever asked, the question wouldn’t throw Carlos, and the thought of it washes him with warmth. TK Strand isn’t just a man, he’s a miracle. That’s what he’d say. Yes, I love him. Yes, a thousand times yes.

It’s then he realizes he was asked the question, in a round-about way. Tied up in the kitchen of a serial killer, whose mother he was trying to befriend so she’d take pity and set him free.

“Did that sweet boy lose his mother?” Trudie wanted to know all about TK. She seemed taken by him when he knocked on the doors of her neighborhood, asking if anyone had seen his fiancé. Everyone likes TK when they meet him.

“Last year,” Carlos said. Nearly one whole year and the rest of his life without her. And now TK was about to lose him too.

“That’s so sad,” Trudie said kindly, “She won’t be at the wedding.”

“No, I think she will be,” Carlos told her, his cow-eyes wide and pleading as he followed with a thought he’d never spoken aloud before. It had seemed a strange and dismissible notion until then. Until he was about to fight his way out of a serial killer’s kitchen, no idea Gabriel and TK were going to burst in and save his life. In that moment, washed in a hazy gold light that fell like the fog of heaven through the window, he needed her to know. “Sometimes I feel – all the love she had for him. She’s sending it through me. Otherwise, I don’t know where all this love comes from.”

Chapter Text

Wednesday May 10, 2023

He’s drunk on bourbon and he’s in a home garage full of home shit. Bicycles. Board games. Stacks of Marazzi tiles – this guy is redoing his bathroom like a normal fucking person. Plastic storage boxes on timber shelves. Spare wiring for all-sorts, looped and hanging from brackets on the wall. Caged light bulbs glowing. Toolbox. Beers. Plastic laundry hamper. Paint cans. The space smells like oil and wood varnish.

“Tell me something. Are you married?” Carlos nearly disintegrates into sobs as he says it, pressing the pistol into the man’s throat.

Ringing in his ears like tinnitus are the screams of his widowed mother who he loves with all his heart.

Has this fucking asshole ever loved anyone or anything with his entire heart? This asshole who has distractingly soft and kind brown eyes, who in a catastrophic twist actually wears the same cologne as Carlos’ stone-cold dead father?

Pablo Martinez doesn’t answer the question. Carlos has him cornered in the shadows. The garage door is wide open and Peach Street is lit bright with late-afternoon sun, but Carlos has such a strong sense of being invisible behind darkness, he doesn’t consider how exposed they are. He figures the gunshot will echo through the neighborhood, sure. Nothing unusual around here. People might look up for a second before going on about their business.

Carlos wants to press his pistol agonizingly hard against Martinez’ temple, that soft part, where it would hurt like hell.

What was it like for Andrea Reyes to see her husband of nearly forty years gunned down in front of her in her own home? What was that like? What was THAT like? What would it be like to see TK going that way? Murdered in cold fucking blood, and Carlos unable to do one thing about it except scream his name – scream his name and shake him like it’ll make him get up off the floor? Andrea met Gabriel when she was sixteen and he was eighteen. They married when she was nineteen and he was twenty-one. Her entire adult life was Gabriel Reyes-centric. They had three children. Daughters – Ana Gabriella, Luisa Ines – and then, quite by surprise, Carlos Tomás Reyes. He knew he was unplanned. His mom called him a serendipity. Her favorite surprise ever. God wanted him to be on the Earth. A son – a man to carry through the good Reyes name. Reyes pride.

On his little finger, Carlos wears the turquoise and silver signet ring belonging to his father, which he was not supposed to inherit for maybe three more decades. When he squeezes the handle of the gun, the silver of the ring tightens as if having the mind to tighten, sharply cutting into his circulation like it wants to remind Carlos of what he wears and why.

“Do you have a wife? Or a girlfriend?” Carlos asks, his jaw clenched so tight a searing pain shoots upwards into his ears. “Someone who loves you?” He thinks of his mother tucking him into bed, kissing his forehead, telling him his father will be in to give him a kiss when he gets back from work. “Yeah – you know what – they should be here. Like my mom was when you gunned down my father in front of his house.”

Martinez trembles and denies. Carlos, only son of Major Gabriel Reyes, clutches a fistful of the guy’s open, striped button-down shirt. Carlos Reyes, only son of Major Gabriel Reyes, breathes his bourbon-breath into the guy’s face. Carlos Reyes, only son of Major Gabriel Reyes, can feel Martinez’s fear transcending everything, traveling even through the fibers of polyester. In this moment, Martinez doesn’t seem like a killer. Not at all. It’s weird. Carlos has faced his share of killers in his years as a patrol cop in Austin. Some of them are clinical, cold, arrogant. Some of them are so shocked by their own behavior they are in pieces by the time the police arrive, on their knees, crying, confessing. “I didn’t mean to. I just snapped.” He’s stared into eyes that weep, and eyes that shine with glory. Martinez just looks kind of dumbstruck. Maybe because it was a paid job? But he’s the guy who left a message on Gabriel’s burner phone, telling him not to appear in court to testify against Santos. Telling him to catch a flu. He’s the guy. The only guy. The only guy. The only guy. The only guy. He’s the only person who could have killed Gabriel Reyes. There isn’t anyone else. There just isn’t. There’s only Pablo Martinez. He’s the only lead Carlos has uncovered during his sleepless night on the couch digging into files, cracking passwords. Pablo Martinez. He’s the only guy.

“Mijo–” Martinez begs, “Mijo…”

“Don’t call me mijo!” Carlos screams in his ear. Not even Gabriel called him that so free and easy, and this fucking asshole thinks he can just–

“Carlos! Stop!”

There’s a dad.

A dad from nowhere. A dad dropped from the sky.

Carlos blinks. Owen is running towards him from a car slung into the driveway at a nutso angle.

“Owen, what the hell are you doing here?” Carlos asks, as if the specter conjured by sleeplessness will pixelate like a bad hologram and disappear. He steps back from Martinez, stretching his strong arm that shakes like a spindly sapling branch in winter winds, pointing his gun with dead aim at Martinez’s terrified face.

Owen runs into the shadows of the garage. “I’m here to help you,” he answers.

“I don’t need your help.”

“I can do it by myself, papá, look, I can tie my shoes. Watch me – papa, watch me.”

Behind Owen, Sergeant O’Brien and his stupid peroxide blonde Eminem buzz cut and serious black jacket is raising his own firearm, pointing it at Carlos, shoulder-bound. A life changing injury. Potential death if the bullet catches his neck. “Officer,” O’Brien growls, “I need you to put your weapon down slowly.”

Carlos gulps for air, exhausted, his lungs constricting. “No!”

“Carlos, give your sister her shoes back!” Gabriel roars. “No!” Carlos roars back. He is six years old, and Luisa has stolen Kique the Koala, so he’s taken her favorite gold ballet pumps.

“Is that really necessary?” Owen asks O’Brien, eyeing the gun trained on his almost-son-in-law’s head, like maybe it was a mistake to involve another cop in this fucking shitshow.

“Yeah, I think it is,” O’Brien says, icy and unruffled like always, like this isn’t a different situation to any he’s been in before. “Lower your weapon now,” he repeats at the same time Martinez raises his voice, demanding Carlos puts down his gun.

“I said no!” Carlos snaps, staring between Owen and O’Brien – Owen in particular – with the indignance of a six-year-old being told to go to bed when they swear they’re not tired – and much like Carlos’ household twenty-three years ago, suddenly everyone is screaming.

“Put the gun down!”

“I said no!” Carlos roars. He’s the biggest man in the space. He’s stronger and louder than everyone and the most heartbroken person in Peach Street. “He murdered my father! He murdered my father!”

“Hey!” Owen yells, “Hey, hey, quiet! Listen to me.” Quieter. “Listen to me.” It’s the quietness that Carlos hears. Carlos points the gun at Martinez and stares at Owen like he’s the most terrifying person on Earth that he loves. It’s the moment Carlos realizes it’s true – the most terrifying person on Earth that he loves is no longer Gabriel Reyes, but Owen Strand, TK’s father.

“I need you to listen to me,” Owen says, softening, like what’s said now is only between them. “I don’t know what it is that you think that you know. But this is not you, and Gabriel would not have wanted it.”

“Gabriel’s not here right now, is he?” Carlos’ voice when he says this comes from a different, unknown place inside him. It sounds like a double-voice; his own, inosculated with a demon’s.

“But I am,” Owen tells him.

“No,” Carlos says. He’s the one begging now. He wants to stamp his feet. He’s six years-old – he’s tiny – nobody will believe him that Luisa stole his Kique teddy. “He killed my father.” He can hear how weak he sounds. The gun in his hand shakes so roughly, if he fired he’d miss Martinez’s head and hit a tattered box of Scrabble. “He killed my father.”

“No,” Owen whispers, staring at him hard. “No. You have the wrong guy.”

“How can you know that?” This makes zero sense.

A car door shuts close by. Carlos skittishly whips his head around – watches the familiar man stride confidently across the grass of the front yard, all white Stetson and brown jacket and tie and decades of experience culminating at the zenith of the Texas Rangers. Bridges. Carlos’ daddy’s Big Boss. The man who took Carlos aside at Gabriel’s funeral and handed him his Ranger Star for him to keep. A consolation prize because nobody had a single lead on who the killer could be, until Carlos bothered looking into it himself, and unearthed corruption and cartels. Nobody could be trusted. Nobody. “I’m alone on this!” he’d snapped at TK after his breakthrough, discovering the name of Pablo Martinez.

“You’re not alone,” TK replied strongly, “I’m right here with you.”

TK.

“You called him?” Carlos watches Bridges stride on over, cool, in no hurry, seen it all before. This is small-fry stuff. He leads the organization full of corrupt rangers that likely helped slaughter Gabriel. Carlos is shit on his shoe.

“I did,” O’Brien says, a hint of pride to it. “You’re damn right I did.”

Carlos looks defiantly into the barrel of O’Brien’s gun. “Why?”

“Because you’re not in the right frame of mind, son.” Son. Don’t call me mijo.

Carlos turns to Owen, whispers his name, pleading.

But Owen says, “I need you to listen to this man. He has something that he needs to tell you.”

“Owen,” Carlos tries again desperately. Nobody is listening. “There are things you don’t know. The Texas Rangers, they can’t be trusted. I have proof! My father, he’s–”

“Your father,” Bridges interjects, drawing to a standstill inside the garage, “Helped weed out corrupt officers in three agencies, over fifteen years ago.” He steps a little further towards Carlos, nodding acknowledgement to Martinez, who nods back in gratitude. Pulling something from the inner pocket of his brown jacket, he says, “Gutiérrez, here, helped him do it.”

Gutiérrez?

The object Bridges retrieves is his phone. He opens an image, shows it to Carlos. It’s a photograph of his father, posing next to the man who is currently trembling before him, perched against stacked boxes of bathroom tiles.

This man and Gabriel. Much younger. All broad smiles and thick dark hair. In uniform.

Carlos turns to Pablo Martinez. Gutiérrez.

He keeps his gun pointed at him, his arm screaming like he’s lifting a kettlebell. “You’re a cop?”

“Was,” Bridges says, and Gutiérrez keeps nodding. “D.E.A., now. Right on the front lines. So, y’ mind lowering your gun from this man’s head?”

Carlos takes a sharp breath. His arm swings down. It’s at once an experience of palpable relief and gut-aching regret. “You’re undercover.”

“Well, I was,” Gutiérrez says, a little pissed, which is fair. “Hopefully my neighbors just think I’m being rousted again.”

“No, but–” Carlos runs through it all in his mind in a few awful seconds – everything from the moment he and TK arrived at his childhood home to see his father being removed in a body bag, to the reveal of Pablo Martinez’s mugshot when Carlos discovered who called Gabriel’s burner phone. “You left threatening messages for my father. You did!” he shouts.

“She stole Kique!” he cries to Gabriel. “She says she didn’t, but I know she did.”

This isn’t funny anymore. Gabriel needs to step in now. He needs to appear from nowhere, like he always used to, and break up the stupid fight.

“Those weren’t threats, mijo,” Gutiérrez says, “I was warning him.” He raises his voice right back, cutting through the crap, “Santos and his people were going to put out a hit on your dad if he testified.”

Carlos turns to Bridges quickly, his brain blizzarding with confused thoughts and wrong calculations. “So – this is the cartels?”

Bridges looks at Carlos sympathetically. He has a grandfatherly demeanor; Carlos has known him since he was knee-high to a grasshopper, and now they’re here, like this, doing this. “Your daddy never took the stand. Didn’t need to. Santos cut a deal.”

“So…then…who did it?” Carlos asks. Tell me, please, just tell me.

“We just don’t know,” Bridges replies – for all his power as the man at the top, he is powerless to end the nightmares of the children of rangers.

“Okay, son,” O’Brien steps up, lowering his gun and holding a hand out for Carlos’. “Give it to me. It’s alright.”

Carlos looks at Owen, as if for permission. When Owen gives him a sad smile, Carlos takes a breath and passes his pistol to O’Brien, slow and conscientious, the way he’d been taught at the Academy. When O’Brien picks it away from his shaking hand, Carlos feels somehow free. Something in his brain snaps back into place. He starts to cry.

“You were my dad’s friend?” Carlos asks Gutiérrez, who is welling up himself and can’t answer with words, but the devastation on his face speaks of decades of banter, laughter, support, trust – all snatched away in an instant.

“All of us were,” Owen says, taking Carlos’ arm and pulling on it until Carlos looks at him through his blurry, stinging eyes. “Come here. It’s going to be okay.”

Carlos’ face screws up, goes red hot. He finds himself in Owen’s embrace, locked tight in a dad-hug, in front of everybody, crying on his shoulder. He hears Owen ask if he can take him home.

“He should be under arrest,” O’Brien says, and everyone gives him a disgruntled look. “Hey. He nearly killed a D.E.A. agent.”

Gutiérrez sighs. “Well. I’m kinda willing to let this one go.”

“Excuse me?” Few things may truly ruffle O’Brien, but this is one of them.

Bridges pats Carlos on the arm. “Long ago, I told your daddy I’d look out for you and your sisters if anything happened.”

“So did I,” Gutiérrez says, “Not that I was expecting this.”

“For Chrissakes!” O’Brien yells, his voice bouncing around the garage. “Talk about corruption.”

Carlos pulls away from Owen. He stands before them with a bowed head and hunched shoulders, his red flannel shirt crumpled and drenched in fever-like sweat. He is disgusting and stupid and sorry. In a tiny, boy-like voice, he asks, “How did you know I was here?”

“TK was worried, so he came to me. We figured it out,” Owen says.

“Son, what you have here is another chance,” Bridges tells him, “Anyone else–” he glances at O’Brien, “Might not give you one.”

O’Brien looks at everyone like they’ve gone bananas. “Yeah. Because he almost shot dead a D.E.A.–”

“Sargent,” Bridges holds his hand up, “We got here in time.”

Carlos turns to Gutiérrez, who acknowledges his sad gaze with, maybe, fondness. Like he understands. Like maybe he’d have done the same.

Would Carlos have done it? Would he have pulled the trigger and fired a bullet into this guy’s head if TK hadn’t asked Owen for help?

Would he be walking out of this garage now, leaving footprints of blood along the drive?

Or would he have caved, fallen to his knees while Gutiérrez stood over him and softly called him mijo?

He honestly doesn’t have the answer, but his destiny today was steered by TK. His soulmate knew where to find him, once again.

Carlos glances over his shoulder as he gets into the backseat of the car. He tries to give Bridges a look of thanks, tries to offer Gutiérrez a look of shame, but he just retains the same thousand-yard-stare of shock at his own wrongdoing. An innocent man almost died by his hand. This is not you, Owen had said. True. But who is Carlos now? He might not be a cold-blooded killer after all, but he isn’t the same Carlos as he was even first thing this morning, when TK found him manically working the case on the couch.

TK had suggested that Carlos take his discovery to Detective Washington. She’s in the missing persons division, but she and Carlos enjoy a strong working relationship. TK was so sweet when he said it, Carlos flickered with a smile and told him it was a good idea. But it wasn’t. Because it would become like everything else: Snared in the sharp ligature of red tape, unprioritized against other cases that are easier to solve so targets can be met. Carlos and his family would have to wait and wait and wait for justice, while Carlos already had the perpetrator’s name and address… No. No way.

Looking into TK’s worried eyes, Carlos realized he needed to get his pistol out of its case, swig as much bourbon as humanly possible without getting sick or passing out, and take an Uber to the house of Pablo Martinez, 3020 Peach Street.

“I should have listened to TK,” Carlos says, pulling on his seatbelt and struggling to slot the buckle into the lock, his hand-eye coordination repelling like two north-north magnets. He’d felt weirdly sober in the garage, and now it’s like alcohol jets through his bloodstream once more. “TK tried. He really tried. He was saying things that made sense. I lied to him. I love him so much. He’s my best friend. He’s so unique. There’s no one else like him, don’t you think, Owen?”

“Yes, Carlos, I agree,” Owen says, his smiling eyes visible to Carlos in the rear-view mirror.

“I let him down so badly,” Carlos snivels.

“Just try to relax now. It didn’t go any further than it did, and you’re going to be okay.”

“I love him.”

“I know.”

“The first time I saw him – I just knew. I can’t explain how. I felt so drawn to him. It’s not just because he’s so handsome. He was…I don’t know… Glowing. Shining. He lit up. I saw him. He saw me. I wanted him for one dance, followed by a lifetime. Do you know what I mean? I wanted to talk to him forever, and hold him, and wake up with him. I wanted to bring him coffee in the morning, and–” Carlos' voice cracks harshly, “–make him pancakes.”

“Carlos, it’s okay. You still get to have all of that. You still have your life with TK.” In the side compartment of the car door, Owen finds a small packet of tissues and slings it behind him. Carlos catches the packet and unfolds a tissue into a square, presses it over his face.

“I remember the first time I cooked for TK. I mean. The second time, when he actually stayed to eat. It was only chili. But Mom’s recipe. You know?”

“Oh, I do,” Owen answers enthusiastically, “She’s treated me to it.”

“TK loved it. He was so beautiful. We talked about New York. He opened up a bit. Just a bit. And then more, later on. He’s been through so much, and today…I was about to put him through the worst thing of all. It was bad enough I told him I can’t go through with the wedding right now. You should have seen him, Owen. You should have heard him. He was being so strong. He was really there for me. The man you raised. You should be so proud.”

“I am proud,” Owen says.

“We were sitting on the couch. I was naked. I mean, I was dressed in bed, but then I got so hot and claustrophobic, I had to get out of bed and take everything off and then I sat there, with Dad’s Ranger Star, staring into it like a mirror that didn’t show my reflection, like I didn’t exist. TK came to get me. I told him I couldn’t do it. He said we’d postpone. He wasn’t going anywhere. We had a moment where we just clung to each other. But then, suddenly, like out of nowhere, I got cold – I was freezing. I started shuddering. It was like my body was dying. Like I was the one who had gone into the frozen lake. I was feeling TK’s hypothermia, and all that pain. TK grabbed me and bundled me up and was rubbing me all over to get me warm–”

“Hey!” O’Brien yells from the driver’s seat, “These are details I don’t need, Officer Reyes.”

“Let him talk,” Owen sighs, turning to look at Caros properly, “Go on, Carlos.”

Carlos glumly shakes his head, hurt from the abrupt chastisement. Even though they’re in O’Brien’s car and O’Brien is operating the vehicle, Carlos has kind of forgotten he’s here. “TK is my best friend. He’s so amazing.”

O’Brien brakes gently, drawing up to a red light. “Well. I guess it does sound like you’ve got a good one.”

“The best,” Owen says.

“Best in the world,” Carlos cries, catching a tear on his tissue. “I don’t deserve him.”

Owen turns around, sits back in his seat and watches the road. “Let’s have a drink at mine before you head home.”

Carlos goes quiet and stares out of the window. A scrubby grass strip divides the highway. Trucks with orange clearance lights pass, thick wheels four-feet tall. Number Plates from Mississippi, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona. Tall billboards advertise attorneys in business suits, arms folded, grinning with white teeth – get cash for your car wreck, for your injury. Gabriel had suggested to Carlos, a few times, that he become a lawyer instead of a cop. He had the brain for it, the grades, the interest. Things would be so different if he’d taken that path. Gabriel still would have died, but he wouldn’t have met TK.

Buttercup meets them at the door when Owen opens up. He whines, ignores Owen and circles Carlos, as if trying to find the place where his love and concern for him begins and ends, but really it’s an eternal loop, because he is a dog. Carlos crouches and fusses Buttercup, who puts his front paws on Carlos’ thighs and tries to get into his lap, pushing him onto his ass on the floor – and Carlos finds himself taking the load of all 110lbs of Bernese Mountain dog. Owen gives Buttercup a stroke behind the ears and then wanders off to the kitchen without saying anything, just lets man and dog have their moment. He selects for himself a glass bottle of sparkling water and looks at the photos of TK stuck to the side of the fridge. Baby – child – teen – adult – the greatest love of his life, and Carlos’ too. TK in full dress the day he graduated from the FDNY Academy. TK in his turnouts, grinning, holding a tabby cat he literally rescued from a tree.

It’s a little while before Buttercup releases Carlos. The sun is going down. Owen turns on the lights in the kitchen, setting them low so the white subway tiles become creamy, and he digs an old bottle of bourbon out from the booze cabinet that he keeps locked. When Carlos became a temporary resident here after the housefire and before he purchased the loft, he and Owen did this once before – cracked open a bottle of cognac he kept hidden.

“I don’t mean to suggest anything,” Owen had said, “But at the same time, I just can’t risk it.”

“I never locked liquor away at the house,” Carlos told him, raising the brandy balloon glass to inhale the angels’ share of cognac.

“Well, you never saw him back when he was–” Owen stopped, grunted as if in pain. “It’s just for my peace of mind, that’s all.”

Carlos sits on a stool at the kitchen island and watches Owen pour a slug of bourbon into wide lowball glasses. Down at his feet, Carlos hears Buttercup snore. He looks down briefly, sees paws cycle the air, like the dog is running in his dreams.

“How’s B.C. doing?” Owen asks in a whisper, “If I use his actual name, he’ll wake up.”

“He’s okay,” Carlos says as Owen deposits his glass in front of him. He stares at the shining brown liquid, beautiful in the soft lights. “I forgot, you know, how nice it is having a dog around.”

“You and TK will have one of your own, someday.”

“I hope so. Bearded dragon for now. I forgot how much they sense peoples’ pain.”

“Bearded dragons?”

“Dogs,” Carlos says bluntly, “Rocky was kind of obsessed with me when I was growing up. I think it’s because he knew all my secrets.”

“Probably.”

“Loved me anyway.”

“Carlos, there was nothing not to love.” Owen takes his own drink and relaxes against the counter across from the island.

Without smiling, Carlos laughs a little at his own expense. “There’s plenty not to love now.”

“You’re wrong.”

“I was going to pull that trigger.”

“I don’t think so.”

“The fact that I was even there.” Carlos’ fingers twitch. He takes a sip of his drink, sets it down. The alcohol burns his dry throat. He should have asked for water. In his mind’s eye, he sees himself press the trigger, feels the resistance of it against the crook of his finger. He feels the weight of the gun, how warm and slippery it became in his sweaty palm. He hears the bang. It stuns him. He grits his teeth, grinds them. His jaw aches. The man who is not called Pablo Martinez is on the floor, eyes wide open, a black hole in his temple pumping scarlet blood that runs beneath Carlos’ shoes. On a nearby shelf, there is a tattered board game of Scrabble, and Carlos has killed an innocent man, a D.E.A. agent, a friend of his father’s for at least the past twenty years. “How could I have been so wrong?” Carlos asks the distant space he stares into.

On behalf of the distant space, Owen answers the question. “Hey. Let me tell you something about obsession.” He leaves the counter and starts to walk around the island, getting nearer. Carlos carefully follows him with his eyes, full of tears and shame. He’s finding it hard to look at Owen and hold his gaze, but finally, he does. “You might think it’s sustaining you,” Owen continues, “That it’s giving you purpose. But what it’s really doing is just eating alive everything that’s good in your life. Believe me. Eventually, there’s nothing good left.”

Carlos knows Owen is speaking of 9/11 and the aftermath. How it wiped out almost all of the 252. How Owen rebuilt the crew and gave the firehouse everything he had. How Gwyn divorced him. How his only son longed for him. How all the fumes and dust he inhaled when the towers collapsed gave him lung cancer years later. Timebomb.

“But somebody murdered my father.” A murder twenty years in the making. Timebomb. “How can I just decide to move past that?”

“That’s the only way you can get past it,” Owen persists, “To decide to.”

Carlos looks up at Owen in horror. Owen, the most terrifying person that he loves, who has the daring spirit to say these things. Anyone else, Carlos would throw his drink in their face. But he opens his mouth as his eyes flood with tears. “And forget about it?” he cries, because he’s fighting with everyone in the world, and they’re winning.

“No,” Owen answers quickly, “You won’t forget it. None of us could. But the brutal reality is – you might not ever know who did this. If you can’t make peace with that, then your father’s life isn’t the only one the gunman took.”

Carlos doesn’t want Owen to be right. He stares up at him, helplessly realizing that he is. Grief hits him in another way, now. He doesn’t know what it is, but it’s starting to become something else. Something slower. Heavier. Slow, heavy grief is moving behind him to attach to his back and whisper in his ear. Earlier, grief like a barbed, quick, scrappy thing had been in front of him, gripping him by the neck and dragging.

Owen takes a seat beside his second son, raises his glass. “To Gabriel.”

Carlos twizzles Gabriel’s turquoise ring on his little finger. It’s loose now – can spin all the way around easily. In Gutiérrez’s garage, when Carlos had been red hot with stress and adrenaline, the silver band constricted so violently, his little finger had started to turn purple. “I’ll give this to you, one day,” Gabriel had said to Carlos as a boy, for as a boy he loved to pick up his father’s hand and inspect the ring closely, touch his fingertip to the smooth, bright stone.

Bewildered, Carlos stares at his whiskey and lifts it – can’t believe what he’s toasting to. “Te quiero siempre, Papá,” he whispers, clinking his glass with Owen’s.

There’s a look in Owen’s eyes of admiration and sorrow, thinking so fondly of his almost-consuegro. “He knows,” he says.

Carlos takes his drink then, knocking the whole double-measure back like a shot. His face bunches up – eyes squeezing and mouth puckering like he’s downed pure lemon juice. “Why did I do that?” he wails.

“Grief.”

“I hate grief.”

“Don’t. Don’t hate it,” Owen says, “If you hate something as natural as that, that’s where the real trouble starts.” He thinks about it, and shrugs. “Hence what happened today, I guess.” Owen sips only a little more of his drink, showing restraint, as if merely to experience the warming tingle on his lips. He checks his watch. “Hey, as much as you’re always welcome here, I know another guy who’ll give you a really big hug. How about you go home to him?”

Carlos wipes his face on his sleeves. Part of him wants to ask to spend the night here, sleep on the couch, because he doesn’t know if any such hug is waiting for him. Doesn’t know if he’d be in the doghouse back at the loft, and would have to sleep on his own couch anyway. Coward, he thinks to himself, go home and marry that man. “Yeah, I’m ready,” he says and stands up, mindful not to step on Buttercup who still dreams at his feet.

Five ways Carlos Reyes had imagined proposing marriage to TK Strand:

1) In a rainbow-striped hot air balloon flying over Barton Creek Nature Reserve. This was vetoed when Carlos remembered he's not the best with heights, unlike TK who once rescued a window washer from the forty-fourth floor of the Chrysler. Carlos went from reverie to nightmare, picturing himself curled in the fetal position in the balloon basket while TK laughed at him and asked the balloon guy if he could take control of the burner for a while.

2) After a candlelit home-cooked meal, for which he would make dim sum from scratch to rival TK's much missed spot in Spring Street, Manhattan. His very favorite. There's an amazing pan-Asian superstore uptown, and there's a recipe he found on a food blog that looks ideal. This option was never vetoed, it was just difficult to find a moment to learn how to make literally perfect dim sum without TK appearing in the kitchen to hang out with him while chatting about his day.

3) Wrangle their friends and set up a treasure trail of clues. TK would arrive at a coffee shop thinking he was meeting Carlos. Paul would be there with a map for him and clue number one. TK would be sent on an odyssey around Austin, arriving eventually at his favorite bench in the park, flanked by a pretty Victorian lamp and a pecan tree. On the bench, Carlos would be waiting alongside Buttercup, a big red bow tied around the dog’s soft neck. Buttercup would be released, floppily running to TK like he always does. When TK knelt to pet him, he’d find a box containing a smart platinum band dotted with small diamonds. Carlos really liked this idea, but the concept of project managing it right down to the behavior of a dog made him have a minor panic-attack in the shower randomly one morning, so he shelved it.

4) Strip it all back. Keep it super simple and unexpected. He'll come home to TK as normal; TK will be at the table having prepared dinner. "Hi baby," TK will say while drizzling dressing on their salad. "Hey, babe," Carlos will say back without expression. "How was your day?" TK will ask. Carlos will not respond. TK will turn around to see what he's doing, and will find him down on one knee. Carlos vetoed this, feeling like the idea was coming from a place of overwhelm, and it simply wouldn't be special enough.

5) TK's birthday. A massive, beautifully wrapped box on the dining table – the biggest possible box Carlos could acquire – maybe one of the moving boxes left in the garage to use what they already had. Sustainable. TK would wake up in the morning, sleepy and mussy-haired, and Carlos would (blow him, obviously) bring him coffee and croissants in bed, and then lead him by the hand to the table. TK would become adorably bewildered and excited, probably performing his terrible impression of Brad Pitt in Se7en, which he does whenever there's a mysterious box around. Opening up, the enormous box would contain in its center a tiny red velvet box, and inside it, the ring Carlos always imagined, plus a small folded note that read, "I think we make a pretty good team." This one, he thought, this one.

As it happened, none of these came to fruition, because TK proposed first – and his method was to scare Carlos awake at 3:18 a.m. with firm hair-ruffles and a joke about being ready to make his will. ("It'll be easy - because I'll just leave everything to my husband"). Then he said, "Marry me." In an instant, all the ways Carlos had imagined proposing paled in comparison. It was perfect. No better proposal had happened in the history of mankind. He was sure.

"Baby, my life has been scarred by loss – and at times, it’s felt inescapable. But that’s the risk of love, right? But for the first time in my life, the love that I feel is infinitely more powerful than the fear of losing it. And every day that we’re not married is a wasted moment. And baby, we only get so many. And every day–”

“Tyler,” Carlos said seriously, grabbing TK’s face and squishing. “Can I say yes now?” He shook him playfully. “Can I say yes now?”

Nonetheless, and most unexpectedly, it turns out that Carlos has to propose anyway a year later, and there is no hot air balloon, no delicious dim sum, no friends including Buttercup and treasure trails, no very ordinary quiet evening, no giant fake birthday gift to unwrap. There is only him walking into the loft slightly hungover, shaken to his core, stinking of sweat, his face wan and hair knotted and shirt rumpled and hands shaking. There is only TK at Lou II’s tank, glumly holding the lizard’s basking lamp over his apricot scales, waiting for Carlos to come home in one physical piece and a thousand emotional shards impossible to place together.

He stops in the middle of the floor of their living space, some distance from TK. Normally he’d stop when only inches away, slide his hands onto TK’s waist. Kiss him hello.

“You talk to your dad?” Carlos asks. His voice sounds so far away, even to himself.

TK turns to face him. He’s guilty and he’s angry. A tricky combination that Carlos has caused him to reckon with.

“You mean, did I rat you out?” TK puts his hands into the pockets of his jeans. Closing himself up, tucking himself inwards. “Or did he call me as soon as you left his place?”

“You didn’t rat me out,” Carlos tells him. Wishes he could raise his voice. Shout it from the rooftops. It’s taking all his energy to stand upright. “You kept me from making the biggest mistake of my life.”

As Carlos says this, TK steps towards him, taking his hands out of his pockets, opening up. Carlos looks him square in the eye. “You saved me today, TK.”

“You saved me first, Carlos,” TK says, his New York accent coming through adorably, like it does sometimes when he’s tired or emotional. It’s such an unexpected response that Carlos has to ignore it, because if he thinks too hard – if he thinks about what it was like to ask a broken-hearted, self-destructive, lonely and prickly TK Strand to dance at the honky-tonk three years ago, he might never stop crying.

“And now I need you to help me keep from making the second biggest mistake of my life,” he says quickly, taking hold of TK’s hands in his while TK watches on, bemused.

As Carlos drops to one knee – all but bowing to worship TK like he deserves – time collapses slowly with him. He feels his whole life folding in at the sides, and within the sound of it, like strong winds, he hears the echo of TK's voice saying "Marry me."

"Tyler Kennedy Strand."

Marry me.

"If you're not doing anything this Saturday-"

Marry me.

"Will you still marry me?"

"Marry me," TK says. "Marry me," he says forever.

There's a moment where TK can't believe it, like Carlos couldn't believe it when TK proposed to him.

Carlos rises to his feet. It turns out going down on one knee on a concrete floor when you're already highly-strung and in pain all over hurts like hell on your kneecap. "I've never been more sure about anything in my life," he says.

"Yes!" TK answers brightly, and it's the most beautiful sound. TK's happy voice, his worried face blooming into a grin that infects Carlos enough to smile back like he smiled at 3:18 a.m. a year ago, when he grabbed TK’s face and said, "Tyler, can I say yes now?"

Owen was right. Owen has been right a lot today. TK kisses Carlos’ lips and pulls him into a bear hug. Carlos is too shocked to cry, too squeezed to breathe. He stares over TK's shoulder at the familiar, dimly-lit brick walls of his home, and he flattens his hands against TK's back. Here, safe in his fiancé’s arms, which he never should have left, he feels baffled by the luck of it. The luck that TK knew he was up to something; that TK went to Owen; that Owen and O'Brien and Bridges came running and showed him compassion instead of jail time or a bullet in the shoulder.

What Carlos gets to have this Saturday is a moment alone with his mom in her sparkly powder blue dress while she helps him get ready. He’ll get to tell TK that he vows to be the caretaker of his wild heart. He’ll get to dance and be silly, and rub wedding cake into TK's beautiful face, and kiss him in front of everyone. He’ll get to listen to Tommy sing Being Alive, Gwyn’s favorite song from Company. He’ll get to cry – he's allowed to grieve at his wedding. If anything, TK will make sure that they both have time to grieve. They will make room for Gwyn and Gabriel at their table. When toasts are made, Carlos will run a fingertip across the new gold band on his ring finger, and twizzle his father's turquoise signet on his little finger, a little blue moon that he carries everywhere with him, and he will look at TK and smile.

Thursday November 9, 2023

Carlos sighs heavily, leaning back against his car with a slight slump, as if he’s too exhausted to stand up straight. TK rubs his shoulder. Small, soothing circles. Sometimes, when Carlos is huffy like this, TK teasingly calls him his, “Big, grumpy bear,” to get him to smile. Carlos wants TK to say that now. If he’s called a big grumpy bear then it will mean the situation isn’t serious, the problem isn’t really a problem.

“I can't explain why, but it's like I was in a better place with dad's death during our wedding than I am now. It’s months later. How does that make sense?"

"Well. It was the best day of our lives,” TK says reasonably, “But it was only one day."

In a way, Carlos is annoyed by TK’s wisdom, which in turn makes him feel guilty, because he knows he’s lucky to have a partner in life who won’t just brainlessly agree with him. But sometimes he wants TK to say, “Yeah, baby, you’re right to think you’re super weird. You should be fine by now and it makes no sense that you’re not, so just snap out of it.” He wants TK to say all the things he wishes he could say to himself – and that’s what draws the line, no further discussion. Then he’ll be okay and happy every day. He won’t care so much about the terrible blunt instruments that chip away at his core. It would be like a magic spell has been cast, eradicating the pain.

Hesitantly, Carlos says, "When your mom died, you told me it wasn't stages of grief, but like a spinning wheel."

"Yeah. Wheel of Fortune."

"And every day you didn't know where you'd be with it." He sniffs. Tips his head and stares down at his body in the shadows. Thinks he’s ungainly and stupid. Thinks he’s going to cry. "It broke my heart."

"Hey,” TK hushes, “Carlos–"

"How are you today?" Carlos asks TK quickly, before he can say anything else annoyingly wise.

"Wheel of Fortune has been stuck on acceptance for a while, baby. Don't worry," TK smiles the saddest smile. His eyes shine even in the darkness, and desperately search Carlos’. "I just miss her," he says plainly, being so strong, so factual. "I miss her so much. She was my mom."

Carlos raises a hand and touches TK’s cheek softly. “Strong bear,” he says.

“What?” TK flutters a laugh.

"I'll go back to N.A. with you. And I’ll go to grief counseling."

"You–" TK stops giggling, computes this. “You’ll go–”

"I will," Carlos says – clear and definitive and sure.

"Really?"

"I'll try it. I’ll try, TK.”

"Baby, that's all I could ask." TK hugs him, slipping his arms around his shoulders so that Carlos’ hands can drift around his waist. "Do you want me to come with you to grief counseling?"

Carlos pulls back, blinks at him. "Oh." He stares away from TK then, into the darkness, really thinks about it. TK has to smile, because maybe there isn't anything more adorable on Earth than Carlos earnestly thinking about an answer. "Yes," he says, "Come with me."

"Think about the kind of counseling you want,” TK says, “If you want to try a group meeting for that too, there's a grief support group at the Y. Cynthia said it really helps her. Or, the one Tommy took me to – both she and I got a lot out of it."

Carlos considers this. "And then we can head here for omelets?"

"Absolutely." TK’s fluttery laugh comes skipping back. “I mean, priorities.”

Carlos smiles, shaking his head. “Maybe just us and a therapist, for now?”

“Sure. We can always come here for omelets anyway. It’s not like there’s a rule that says omelets are only for people who attend group counseling.”

"I can see why you like coming here with Coop," Carlos says, smiling up at the neon sign of Blue Moon. "There's something about it."

TK, too, grins at the place – proud of it, like he has some kind of stake in the diner’s success. Which, maybe he does – an emotional one. He hugs into Carlos, shivering. "Wow, it's so cold."

"Wind's changed," Carlos says, bracing against the chill that has curled from west to north. The wind makes his ears sore, and his eyes, and is icy on his scalp, pushing against his hair. Even his trusty wool sweater doesn't feel thick enough.

"I could use a hot drink," Carlos says. He could also use a whiskey, and ordinarily he might have one, but things aren't ordinary.

"Want to go back inside for a hot chocolate?" TK asks, "Or home for tea in bed?"

"Both," Carlos says, "Let's treat ourselves."

TK wraps his arms around Carlos' shoulders again and kisses his nose. He looks like he's about to say something, but he doesn't, just looks at Carlos in the darkness and sees him. They linger like this for a moment, TK holding onto him, Carlos with his hands on TK's waist, squeezing at the cozier, thicker wool of his sweater. TK slips away from his body and takes his hand, and side by side they walk across the parking lot into the strange liminal space of an empty diner at night, a lit-up cube in the center of blackness where – much like their bed in the early hours – they can tell each other anything.

Thursday September 24, 2020

The Texas TK had imagined when he imagined Texas was not this. He hadn’t spared a minute to think about this.

He thought about cowboys. That was the first thing that entered his head when Owen told him they were moving from Manhattan. He thought about cowboys the way a Texan might think about the Statue of Liberty or the Empire State Building before they come to New York. He thought about Southern drawls and metal-toed boots and Stetsons and – absolutely – honky-tonk joints and grilled steaks the size of an entire dinner plate, drenched in sticky barbecue sauce. He thought about horses. Football. Trucks with wheels taller than he is. Country music with a particular twang. Enormous flat fields of dry grass. Dry heat. A harsher landscape for sure, although New York is hit by hurricanes and polar vortexes these days. He thought, and worried about, Conservatism with a capital C, and homophobia as a celebrated norm. If he’s honest with himself, he kind of thought Texas would eat a boy like him alive – even a city like Austin and its heart beating blue.

He was right about some of it. There are a lot of Stetson-wearers, and steak is a very big deal. He met the man beside him at a honky-tonk and they did a full-on line dance. He’s become swept up in the football thing, and hasn’t watched a game of basketball or baseball for a while. There is certainly more sky. But it rains here, and it’s green here, and his gayness is apparently fine, and what he never stopped to consider is that Texas would contain three specific things:

1) Breathtaking starry skies.

2) Aurora borealis that appear to net the stars within them.

3) A man like Carlos Reyes to stare up at the sky with.

“This looks like a good spot,” Carlos says, rumbling his car to a standstill on a dirt track some twenty-plus miles away from the city lights.

TK laughs, because the spot looks the same as everywhere else they’ve passed for the last five minutes, which is to say, a dark field with nothing and nobody around.

Carlos gets out of the car happily. Before TK has time to process it, Carlos runs around to the passenger side and opens his door for him, guides him out by taking his arm. TK needed a bullet wound re-stitched earlier…which is also something he never thought would happen to him…plus he saved a woman from drowning and told the whole 126 crew that he’s an addict, so it’s been a biggie. The fact is, he kind of does need helping out of Carlos’ low-to-the-ground sporty Camaro, and he accepts Carlos’ care with gratitude.

It was wild how it all played out. One moment, he and Carlos were sitting outside at a juice bar called NUDA, and TK was kind of breaking up with him because everything was so heavy and confusing, and Carlos was behaving like it’s all fine because he’s an easy-going guy who takes things in his stride and his heart wasn’t totally shattering at all. The next, a solar storm caused all the electronics in the city to go berserk. The stop lights started flashing like disco lasers. A shuttle bus crashed, toppled and spun onto its back, bursting a fire hydrant on impact. The inside flooded. Water and gas. Everyone got out except for the driver, pinned by wreckage. TK stayed with her, didn’t give up. Outside, Carlos directed traffic and pedestrians and TK got resourceful trying to free the driver, wrenching debris, creating leverage with other broken things. Nothing he did worked. A fire started when the gas caught. He got down into the water. He breathed life into her. Bit by bit, the stitches in the hole above his heart ripped away.

TK was sitting in the ambulance with the bus driver, about to head to the hospital, when Carlos appeared at the door with a small wave.

“Do you want me to meet you there?” he asked, “I can sit with you.”

TK realized, in that exact moment, how the concept of sitting in the E.R. with Carlos brought him a sense of great comfort and something else he couldn’t name at first. He figured it out later, when Carlos wandered back from the vending machine with a packet of strawberry Pop-Tarts for them to share. Hope. The feeling was hope.

They each ate a cold Pop-Tart and Carlos chatted about the dog he’d owned growing up, until TK rested his head on his shoulder in front of everybody in the waiting room and Carlos fell silent. A few minutes passed.

“Are you asleep?” Carlos whispered.

“No,” TK said.

“There’s somewhere I’d like to take you tonight. Would that be okay?”

“Yeah. It would be. Where do you want to go?”

“Can it be a surprise?”

TK stiffly raised his head from Carlos’ shoulder, looking at him with a groggy squint. Carlos was smiling. “Yeah,” TK said.

Sometimes, the best surprise someone can give you is the universe itself, in all its colors and complexity.

TK watches Carlos hop up onto the hood of his Camaro. He kind of grimaces as he does it, like he doesn’t really want to be lounging on top of a car he keeps so well maintained. TK laughs, because lying back on a car is what a cool person would do, and maybe Carlos is trying a little bit too hard now, unlike when he innocently bought Pop-Tarts and started talking about a dog.

“What?” Carlos laughs back.

TK shakes his head and gets onto the hood too, his back resting precariously against the windshield. The night sky, now, begins dropping towards them – squalls of gold, green and purple shimmers. It seems choreographed, somehow, like a magnificent lightshow put on by a theater troupe of angels. The rhythm of the colorful lights swirling in and out, dancing cleanly around each other, reminds TK of a murmuration of starlings. He’s seen that phenomenon before, one summer in Montauk. It was like a black, patchy version of the auroras, with the sky behind him and his mom purple, pink and white in the evening. One of the most beautiful things he’d ever seen, and it had been lost to time, forgotten until now – until Carlos brought him here, brought him back to a good memory.

“What are you thinking?” Carlos asks. He wants to know, because he feels like he can hear it already. He knows that TK is smiling.

“I’m thinking…” TK sighs, “We make a pretty good team.”

Carlos tilts his head so he can look at TK’s handsome face, lit up by the auroras. What’s happening in the sky is no longer important. “We really do, don’t we?”

“’Fraid so,” TK says, taking Carlos’ hand, locking their fingers together tight. “Carlos?”

Carlos glances away from TK’s face only so he can stare at how their hands look together. “Yes, TK?”

“I want to be your boyfriend.” TK’s voice trails off at the end, the word boyfriend making him more emotional than he could ever have anticipated, so happy and confident just seconds ago. “How, uh– how does that sound?”

“TK,” Carlos answers, accidentally stern, but he wants there to be no doubt. No second-guessing. No going back. “That sounds really, really great to me.”

“It’s just earlier, at NUDA, you seemed pretty chill about the whole thing. Not seeing each other, I mean.”

“Earlier, at NUDA, you said you didn’t know if you really saw us as an us.”

“That wasn’t it. Not really. I was struggling to see myself as a me. Do you know what I mean?”

Carlos nods in solidarity. “Yeah. In my own way. That actually makes sense.”

“But today I saw it clearly. I want to spend my career helping people. Saving people. I want to be in a relationship. I always wanted that. And I want that relationship to be with someone who I really feel is…”

Carlos laughs awkwardly, slightly worried by the pause. “Is…”

“Good.” TK lets go of Carlos hand and touches his chest, finding his heart. “Someone good.”

Carlos falls bashful. There’s a very slight, barely perceptible shake of his head, like he doesn’t believe TK could see him that way.

The night takes them back to Carlos’ place, to bed. They have slow sex. They laugh a lot, kiss a lot. Carlos has to be careful not to knock TK’s freshly gauzed and newly stitched bullet wound. In the end, they decide the best position is TK riding him while they hold hands to avoid Carlos accidentally grabbing at his chest. TK thinks of cowboys. They achieve mutual orgasm without either of them touching TK’s cock. Carlos thinks of magic.

The night takes them to a tub of Ben & Jerry’s New York Super Fudge Chunk and two spoons. They sit cross-legged in bed in their boxers and a slubby t-shirt of Carlos’ each, because it’s a touch chilly now, and they take turns scooping spoons into the softening cream. It’s a late, lamplit conversation about this-and-that. Carlos talks about how embarrassing it was to learn to drive. He accidentally hit a trashcan and in a panic set off the windshield washers, but now he’s someone who gets to drive a police car super-fast. TK talks a little about how Owen is doing after his cancer treatment and gets upset, which results in a scoop of ice cream so big he struggles to get it in his mouth, so they’re laughing again. Carlos talks about how proud his mom was when he graduated from the Austin Police Academy. He doesn’t mention his dad. TK tells him about crying in his dad’s arms after his overdose.

“Still want to be my boyfriend?” he asks.

Carlos answers by kissing him. He doesn’t tell him that he wants to be his husband. He doesn’t know that one day he’ll be saying yes to that question too.

Chapter Text

Friday May 1, 2020

There's a rushing, airy sound in his ears, like he's standing on the edge of a peninsula that juts into the ocean, above which a storm gathers pace. Or so he imagines the sound. He doesn't actually know what it's like to be anywhere near the ocean on a stormy day because he's an Austinite who has seldom traveled – hasn’t even been down to the Gulf of Mexico. But this guy – this firefighter who has moved from Manhattan, from the East Coast – he'd know about Atlantic storms. Carlos, for some reason, becomes fixated on the thought. He grew up in a state of plains and desert. What if that sort of thing defines a person in a complex, elemental way? If Carlos is low fire and scorched earth and the other guy is cool air and fast water, he doesn't know what they’d have in common. Or what the hell to talk to him about. He only knows that he must try.

The firefighter is alone now, leaning against a table and laughing because he's watching his dad line dance. He looks beautiful and adorable when he's laughing. That's one of the first abundantly clear thoughts Carlos has about him. He’d like to spend some time learning how to make him smile like that.

The firefighter had also cuddled up to his dad a moment ago, dropping his head against his shoulder while they had what looked like a serious conversation. A move so sweet and so strange, Carlos isn’t sure what to make of it. Last time he hugged his own father in public – he was probably eight years old. The reason might have been…he fell in the parking lot outside Mockingbird and cut both his knees? A memory rises in grayish tones now. Gray, but for the red of blood trickling down skinny shins. He's so embarrassed to have fallen, to be crying. He’s burying his face into his dad’s stomach. His also-embarrassed father is saying, “Ay, mijo, you tripped over your own feet. You have to be careful.”

Don’t trip over your feet, Carlos thinks, you have to be careful.

Carlos already knows the firefighter is gay because Austin is both a big city and a small town. There was literally water cooler gossip at the precinct about the new father-son duo at Station 126. He was intrigued – in the way he's always intrigued – to know the sexuality of men around him, to determine whether or not he has a chance. What he didn't know until tonight, at the rainy scene of a car wreck on I30, was how breathtakingly gorgeous the younger Strand man is. As much as he supposes this automatically reduces his chances, he's knocked back a whiskey for courage and he's crossing the honky-tonk floor. Don’t trip over your feet. You have to be careful.

Now he's right next to him, side on. There's no turning back. Does he look okay? Was this tight green shirt the good idea Michelle insisted it would be? Is he sweating through the cotton?

"Hey," Carlos says nonchalantly. Never cared about anything less in his life. No, sir.

"Hey," the firefighter says back, warm and friendly enough. He performs a subtle and certainly curious doubletake before he reverts to watching his dad.

Marry me. "Wanna dance?"

The firefighter looks at Carlos with surprise. And there it is – his smile. Carlos has made him smile immediately. He's so beautiful, lit up like that. Never cared about anything more in his life.

"Yeah," the firefighter says, apparently pretty keen. Yes, I'll marry the hell out of you, yes.

The firefighter follows him to the dancefloor, where it occurs to Carlos how strange this must be for a first dance, but how admirable to say yes. Someone who has clearly never line danced before is giving it a shot, spinning around accidentally when nobody else does, and sometimes shuffling to the right when he should go left. He’s so silly that Carlos can't help but crack a smile of his own as they shift into various moves, always out of sync. They shimmy their shoulders and clap their hands and, in the end, both start laughing.

The firefighter leans in, millimeters away from Carlos’ ear. Hot breath pulses against Carlos' neck. His hairs stand on end. "I'm TK," the firefighter says, pointing at himself.

"I'm Carlos." And we're soulmates.

"Where are the bathrooms here?" TK asks.

Carlos lifts an arm, gestures behind him, off towards the far-left corner.

"Okay," TK says, "Let's go." You saved me first, Carlos.

Carlos blinks at him. Mr. Manhattan does not mess around. TK beckons him with a tilt of his head, and suddenly he seems to glide away – a much cooler walker than a dancer, Carlos thinks as he trails after him, instant love-sickness wheeling in his stomach. Don’t trip over your feet. You have to be careful.

Part of Carlos wants to – and really should – reach for TK and pull him back by the elbow. Take a breath, tiger. He should ask him if he'd like to get out of here; can he buy him a drink somewhere else? If the conversation is good, Carlos will invite TK back to his place. Or maybe they could go to a bar or club downtown, for the type of dancing TK is probably more familiar with.

But Carlos also doesn't want to kill the moment when the moment itself feels this good and is actually happening, instead of another stupid fantasy to shake off. You are the dream I would not allow myself to have.

Carlos generally likes the color yellow in smallish doses, but the walls of the honky-tonk's bathroom are the sort of yellow used to paint markings on the highway. Always a dizzying experience to enter for a pee at the best of times. Now, the most beautiful man Carlos has ever spoken to is pawing inside his green t-shirt, hauling him into a stall. The door crashes shut, Carlos' back pressing up against it with a thud. He braces himself, slaps a hand against the grimly moist yellow wall tiles and wishes they were doing this someplace else, until TK kisses him. Now Carlos doesn't care about anything except that long, firm tongue licking at his own. Nothing matters except for the body that he wraps in his arms. He’s all but lifting TK off the ground, as if TK has totally sunken into him and needs to be held in place – TK, with his hands still inside Carlos' shirt, his hands warm against his back, then his abs, feeling purposefully at his ridges, drifting down to his belt buckle.

Something overtakes. Carlos turns TK abruptly, swinging him against the door. He collides with a smack, gasps into Carlos' mouth, bites hard on his lip. Carlos shoves his hand against the bulge in TK's jeans and he can't believe what awaits him. He moans loud, feeling it, and TK moans back like a relay, so ridiculous they're laughing again.

TK drags his wet lips across Carlos' cheek firmly, smearing saliva, "Want to suck my cock?" he says into his ear.

Carlos' erection grows impossibly mighty in his jeans. He leads TK's hand to it, and TK mercifully doesn't hesitate to unzip him and get him out.

"Fuck," TK says at the sight. "Actually, can I suck you?"

"Um, yeah, if you wa–"

TK has pulled a condom from nowhere and all but has Carlos' cock halfway into his mouth, hollowing his cheeks and moaning, before Carlos can finish saying the word want. He wonders if he's ever met a hornier person.

He hesitates a little before he places his hands on TK's head, pushes his fingers through his soft brown hair. TK seems to welcome the touch. He invites the gentle force, begins a back-forth rhythm that Carlos' hips tilt into. There it is. Carlos is fucking TK’s mouth and biting his own lip hard where TK had bitten it, tasting the sharp metallic tang of blood.

TK squeezes Carlos' ass like his life depends on the flesh of those cheeks moving against his palm, sending Carlos’ latexed cock to the back of his throat with a choking sound. Carlos' whole body goes taut and his toes curl in his boots. He manages to cry a brief warning of, "I'm com–"

The release makes him yell. He bucks and falls forwards, bashing his forehead against the door and gripping TK's shoulders to steady himself. When his vision sharpens and he pulls back, he reads a line of graffiti that says, "Home Sweet Home.”

He looks down at TK. TK looks up at him with glazed eyes and a swollen-lipped smile.

"Get up," Carlos says. TK does, though Carlos helps him. "You, now."

TK is stroking himself slowly. "Do you have a condom?”

“Oh. No. Uh – I don’t–” Carlos garbles, his face red-hot. “Was that your only one?”

TK looks a shade coy himself, as if to say “I’m not that horny.” What he actually says is: “Don’t really walk around with a strip of twelve in my back pocket.”

Carlos tries to think clearly, but his thoughts hit the floor like a snapped string of beads. Everything he’s ever known rolls away in different directions. There’s about five seconds until this moment dies, when this beautiful stranger called TK will politely kiss his cheek and make his exit. Because Carlos, like a fucking vanilla buffoon, doesn’t keep a condom in his wallet. Because when is the last time something like this happened during an evening out at the fucking honky-tonk? Never. That’s when.

But then, in some twist of glittering miracle, TK’s coy look turns into a wry smile. He doesn’t want this to be over yet, either. “Can we do something else?"

Carlos nods happily. "Like, get a drink?"

TK laughs, and Carlos blushes, feeling naive, but he doesn't know why.

"I mean–" TK flutters his eyelashes, moves in close again. "Your hands. Your...fingers." He takes hold of Carlos' right forefinger and middle finger, squeezing them in his fist. "Inside me."

It takes Carlos ten seconds to consent. Not because he has to think about it or doesn't really want to do it, but because he wants to feel the inside of this stranger so badly that his brain simply can't contemplate the drama of it, like trying to imagine the expansion of an already infinite universe.

TK takes Carlos fingers, warmed from curling in his fist, and puts them into his mouth, lathering them wet with his tongue. This in itself feels so good to Carlos, he doesn't think he's ever snapped back so quickly after an orgasm.

TK pushes his own jeans and boxers down and turns around. He juts his ass out, presses his right forearm to the door for leverage, uses his left hand to jerk himself. Carlos takes a deep breath as if about to plunge underwater. He presses his wetted middle finger inside him – it's a slight battle against beautifully tight muscles. He imagines those muscles encircling his cock. This whole thing is so rough and surprising and magical and fantastically dirty, he doesn't know who he is anymore, yet somehow he feels more complete and like himself than he has in years. Maybe ever. You are the key that unlocked me.

TK winces, rocking back as Carlos journeys upwards.

"There!" TK cries out. Carlos instantly pulses his finger to create a tapping motion. He watches TK bite at his own arm to muffle himself, hard enough to bruise. It's over within seconds – Carlos didn't even get a second finger inside. TK pours over his own fist, seething like he's in pain, and in a move that feels like the most natural thing in the world, in response to it, Carlos hugs him from behind.

TK goes still, then pats Carlos' arm with his clean right hand.

"It's...uh...thanks," TK says.

Carlos quickly lets him go. He isn't sure if he's meant to say sorry for the hug. I'm an idiot, I'm sorry.

TK looks at him with worried eyes and a half smile. I can't fall in love with another thing I know I'm going to lose.

"Would be good to see you again," Carlos says, cold and sweaty and exposed, his own pants still down, his own cock at full attention. Text me!

"I'm sure we'll run into each other," TK says, "Carlos – right?"

"Carlos Reyes."

"Okay. Yeah." TK puts himself back into his pants, starts zipping up. "I'll leave first." My life has been scarred with loss.

Carlos covers his cock with his hand when TK opens the door and slips out. He shuts it again quickly to block himself from sight. He hears TK use the faucet, pull out a few paper towels to dry off with. Footsteps. The door swings and bangs. There's nothing, now, but the sound of dripping water and muffled bluegrass. Carlos' ears fill again with his own heartbeat and something like the ocean. Something like his own future echoing. A shout from far away: Come on, baby, breathe, breathe; marry me; you have all of me, Carlos. Something like his mouth tasting of TK Strand. Something like the scent of cologne lingering in otherwise stale air. Something like a memory to relive tonight, sleepless and alone. Something like an unbreakable promise made wordlessly, a bond that was years in the making. Something like his hands feeling warmed through, because he'd just held his own future in them.

Sunday December 10, 2023

8 a.m.

Too tired to speak, he hums at the sensation. Carlos’ hand is pressed to his chest. TK picks his fingers away and leads him down to his erect cock.

Carlos’ breath changes – TK feels a rumble of air behind his earlobe as his excitement grows. Against the small of his back, Carlos starts to grind.

“Carlos,” TK whispers.

“Fuck, baby.” Carlos’ voice in the early morning is a low growl that makes TK’s spine tingle.

He shifts around in Carlos’ arms, enough to turn his head and meet him for a kiss, long and warm and moaning – exploring tongues, bitten lips. TK strains at the pumping of Carlos’ fist, and Carlos starts panting like it’s strenuous.

“My head is spinning,” Carlos says, “You’re so hard.” He swallows. “So fucking wet.”

“So are you.”

“What do you want?”

“Suck me.”

Carlos grunts and lets him go, pushes the top covers away so it’s just them together, naked and exposed on snow-white sheets in the gray winter light. Carlos takes a moment to admire TK. His hard, long, pink cock. What it tastes like. What it can do. He spreads TK’s legs with some force and lies down between them, holds the sides of his thighs, throbs his tongue against his balls. By TK’s sharp intake of breath, he knows this might be over quickly unless he really takes his time. So, he does. Steady as a prayer. In the years since the night they met – in their seven months of marriage – the noises TK makes when he sinks into whatever Carlos is doing to him – when he loses himself to his touch – have never grown old. Carlos pulls his mouth all the way up TK’s length, firmly licks the tip, and says, “Talk to me.”

TK squeezes Carlos’ shoulders as Carlos slips him back into his mouth. TK’s head rolls.

Throat exposed, chest rising, he lets out three sharp whines, then, “Baby, keep– keep– you feel–” he raises his hips, fucking Carlos’ mouth, and Carlos takes it, tightens the suction.

TK thinks, at once, of sliding inside Carlos, and also of Carlos thrusting into him.

He thinks of fingers pulling his hair, and Carlos’ mouth everywhere, and his own tongue all over Carlos, and the scent and the sounds and the sight of it all, and the sting, and the exquisite desperation of the build. He wants everything. To be consumed, and to devour.

“Carlos!” TK snaps his head up, focusing. “Get the box!”

Carlos grunts in TK’s ear and kisses him, licking his mouth. He backs away from TK, his cheeks flushed and eyes wide, wet lips smiling. The words, “Get the box!” are like a peculiar music to him. His dick strains as he hops down from the mattress and guides the black pleather box out from under his side of the bed. He lifts the lid. Both of them stare at the jewel-toned treasures neatly placed within:

· Silicon dildos x3, in fuchsia, blue and black, different sizes;

· One hyper-realistic dildo that freaks them out. They mostly use it to tease each other in the non-sexual sense. One time TK put it in the fridge next to a six pack of beer, but forgot, and it was discovered by Mateo halfway through a game of Catan.

· A classy and beautiful glass dildo, which creates such a weird but pleasant sensation it usually leaves them satisfied but confused. It was flagged going through airport security when they went on their honeymoon because a T.S.A. agent thought it was a bottle of water.

· Silicon vibrators x3, in royal purple, bubblegum pink, and black – the royal purple is favored for its narrowness, pulse setting, and smooth bend.

· Plugs x4 – the smaller black phallus (a classic), the larger metal teardrop, the famously bonkers beaded stick that once assisted Carlos to orgasm so hard he screeched and lost his voice for an entire day, and the slightly less intensely beaded pink guy that is in heavy rotation.

· Two cock rings, one each, seldom used by Carlos; TK likes his.

· One small leather flogger. Last time they used it, Carlos caught TK hard in the eye with a tendril and nearly died of horror thinking they’d need the emergency room. There was blood.

· One small feather flogger. The feathers are a rainbow ombre. It’s pretty and it tickles.

· Fluffy handcuffs x2; one set with purple fur, one with leopard print.

· Two sleep mask-style blindfolds – one dark purple velvet, one scarlet silk.

It’s the dark purple blindfold that TK reaches for. “This,” he says, “This.”

He closes his eyes. Without saying anything, Carlos settles the blindfold over TK’s head and kisses him on the nose.

“Wanna play the game?” Carlos asks.

“Yes.”

“Okay. Stand up.”

Carlos helps TK off the bed, pulling him gently by his cock instead of by his hand. He keeps jerking him for a moment, getting him good and hard. He puts his hands on his shoulders and steers him to spin around in a circle one way, and then back again, until TK is fully disorientated and wobbles cutely from foot to foot.

TK counts to thirty before he reaches his hands out, feeling only cool air in front of him. He begins to wander slowly – many bruises to his legs have bloomed this way, bumping off furniture. He does have a collision with the dresser, causing everything on top of it to shake. He knocks his knees against the bedroom chair before he finds his way out into the living room. He can sense Carlos over in the corner, but Carlos is allowed to move. He listens for the slow pad of his feet on the concrete floor. Nothing. TK bumps into the dining table and whips his head around – a noise, some distance behind him. He starts heading back towards the bedroom, he thinks, and nearly folds over when his shins hit the couch.

Within the darkness of the blindfold, he is starting to feel an exciting kind of fear. His throat is tight, he’s sweaty, his breaths are catching, his heartbeat pounds in his ears.

Another noise. A slow sort of…buzz. It’s coming from…

TK paces forward. He follows the noise. It’s moving around. It changes. A slow buzz to a quick, sharp buzz. Then not a buzz. An electrical pulse.

TK is fumbling towards the bedroom door frame when Carlos’ arm scoops around him – and suddenly the pulsing purple vibrator is against his dick.

“Fuck!” TK cries – jumping out of his skin and squirming at the sensation. “Fuck me with it.”

Carlos says nothing – all TK can hear of Carlos is his trembling breath in his ear. Carlos hurries TK over to the bed and throws him onto the scruffy sheets, front-first. He lands with a gasp, stays bendy and pliable as Carlos positions him so his ass is in the air.

“I want to fucking eat you,” Carlos says, “Can I eat you?”

“Yes! Yes!” TK cries his resounding consent.

Carlos plunges for his hole, tongue licking, smearing, jutting, muscle pushing against muscle, digging its way inside. TK screams and starts humping his own hand helplessly, the pressure too great.

Carlos pulls back, forcing TK’s hand away from himself. “I think we’re both going to come if I keep going.”

“Okay,” TK gasps, swallowing, “Stop.” He wants plan A as much as Carlos does.

Carlos reverts to the vibrator – switching to the pulse setting again and drawing it down TK’s spine – all the way from the top of his neck down to his crack. He drifts it around his body so it touches the soft spot of his lower belly. He drags it down his happy trail, works it along TK’s shaft, just lightly, the way he likes it. TK jolts and yelps when the tip of the vibrator touches his balls.

“Shh, steady,” Carlos whispers. He switches the vibrator off, pops the cap of the lube – the one that warms. TK hears the squelch of the gel coming out of the tube – they don’t have a whole lot left. Carlos is having to squeeze. When the vibrator is sufficiently coated, he slips it inside TK with a little resistance, holding TK by the waist and easing him backwards to take it.

In the darkness that surrounds TK – blindfolded, wrapped in the safe heat of Carlos, feeling the smooth silicon probe his prostate, TK swears and sinks his upper body so his head is on the mattress and his ass is in the air, exposed, vulnerable. He hums, murmuring at the slight crook of the tip that kisses his spot.

“There?” Carlos says, his voice weak now, like he can barely get it out. “TK, you’re so–”

“Yeah. There. Right there.”

Carlos bites TK’s ass cheeks and holds the vibrator just so. Without warning, he switches it back on. The pulse shoots up the length and punches out at the tip.

TK screams into the sheets, claws at them. The sensation is such a shock he tries to get away from it, but Carlos chases him up the bed, keeps the vibrator exactly in place, and then tilts it like a lever.

“Car-los!” TK’s cry is muffled. Carlos loves hearing his name come out broken, knowing he’s sending TK somewhere that words shatter easily as thin glass and everything he’s ever known and understood pools into this one sharp moment where his body rises uncontrollably towards the edge. Carlos lets go of TK and slinks under and between his legs, turning so he has his cock in his face. He puts TK in his mouth, dragging his tongue beneath the head. TK’s whole body stiffens and then jerks. “Oh my fucking God!” He screams as if for help, “That feels so– Carlos! I’m–!” He ejaculates into Carlos’ mouth, and outside of it. A splash of come goes up Carlos’ nose when he pulls away in surprise.

“Please–” TK says, falling and rolling onto his back. He’s trying to pick the vibrator out of himself – can’t stand it anymore. Carlos quickly takes charge, switching it off and easing it free.

TK is so beautiful lying like this, gasping for breath, rosy-cheeked, purple velvet blindfold askew but still covering his eyes.

“Can I come on you?” Carlos asks.

TK gulps and nods, hums his consent, then manages to whisper a clear yes.

Carlos knocks TK’s knees so he can get between his legs again. It’s over in a matter of seconds. A few firm strokes and Carlos is shooting over TK’s navel, dripping opalescent circles onto TK’s semi-hard cock. Carlos loves seeing his come on TK’s cock, has a thing about it. It makes him woozy. He collapses by TK’s side, dotting kisses against his shoulder.

It’s a while to recover. More than usual. Eventually, TK peels the blindfold away, squinting and blinking painfully at the pale light of the gray morning.

“Baby, that was so good. I don’t even know where I went. It’s like I wasn’t in the world anymore.” TK looks at him seriously. “How do you take me out of my head like that – like, to another dimension?”

“I could ask you the same,” Carlos says.

“Do you mind that you didn’t come inside me?” TK touches Carlos’ face, and Carlos chases his thumb so he can catch it between his teeth and nibble.

“No, baby,” Carlos says, speech distorted with TK’s thumb in his mouth. “That was perfect. And anyway. There’s always later.”

TK’s squinting eyes widen. He didn’t think his twenty-ninth birthday could be improved upon, sex-wise. They purposefully had no plans, so fucked hard and made soft love and hung out at home quite literally all day long. They ate leftover lasagna, so didn’t even need to put clothes on to answer to a food delivery. Sometimes doing nothing is the very best of all. Other times, an adventure into a new space-time continuum due to extreme sexual stimulation really does the trick.

10:08 a.m.

Last Christmas, Carlos bought TK a diamond earring that he wears all the time. Part of him wishes he’d kept it for this birthday, because he wasn’t sure how to outdo a diamond, and he’s nervous when he hands over a few little general gifts (novelty socks, a deep pink short-sleeve button up, a book TK mentioned wanting to read, a new Tom Ford cologne that TK asked for anyway). They’re still naked in bed, but with the covers over them for warmth. TK is eager and adorable as he rips away the recyclable balloon patterned-paper and thanks Carlos profusely for each item. He’s particularly taken with the shirt and the socks, which makes Carlos’ heart beat a little easier, because he’d chosen those without prompt. He just knew.

“There’s one more thing,” Carlos says, “And you might think this is…I don’t know.”

He hands it over – a larger rectangular gift box with a blue velveteen cover, a gold bow stuck to the top.

Inside, a picture frame with fine silver edges. Behind the shining glass, a busy cut-out collage of photographs. TK and Carlos are central, on their wedding day. Expanding from the center are pictures of TK not only with Carlos – but with his arms around virtually every person he’s ever loved. In each photo, he grins broadly. The theme is his happiness.

In the top left corner of the frame, he’s two years-old. He’s with his delighted bubbe and his beautiful mom. Bottom right, he’s eleven at a Knicks game, courtside with Owen. Up a little, it’s the shot Marjan took of Judd giving TK a piggyback after he twisted his ankle in the break room, tripping over Buttercup, and they’re laughing their asses off. Beside that, there he is hugging Buttercup. Next, he and Marjan are mid-skip down the rainbow-painted street at Austin pride, holding hands. Above that, TK and Paul are in full dress doing James Bond poses. And so many more. So many moments of joy and laughter and silliness, and not just in childhood photo albums or on his Instagram grid. He lifts the picture frame out of the box, holds it upright, shows it to Carlos as if he’ll have never seen it before.

“Honey, you made this?”

“A couple of weeks ago when you were on overtime. Your dad helped out with getting old film re-printed so I could cut these ones up.” Carlos points at the childhood photos. “Look…look at how loved you are, babe. By me. By everyone.”

TK shakes his head at Carlos’ audacity. The sheer audacity to be this cute. “I could stare at this all day,” he says, “It’s the most beautiful–” he feels himself going, tears pricking his eyes. He smiles, raising a finger to his lips to silence himself. Carlos puts his arm around him and kisses his cheek.

“Come here,” he says.

TK folds into him, hugging up tight. Thirty years old, and it doesn’t matter – he chokes back tears and is cradled.

11:49 a.m.

Carlos loves the artisan Danish bakery on 5th so much due to the quality of the food and the smart but cozy Scandi aesthetic – pinewood and amber lamps and pot plants and squishy moss green chairs – but also because between the loft and the bakery there is the park. Mornings when they're off work together, he and TK get to walk hand-in-hand along winding pathways and experience the seasons. He thinks the park has been designed specifically for romance. There’s a mix of native and non-native trees – cherries that froth with blossoms in March and maples that turn scarlet in October. There are ornate iron benches and Victorian-style lamps. The bandstand is always decorated in some way for a wedding or a local music event, and today they walk past while a couple of people are adorning the gables with poinsettia garlands and a giant holly wreath with a big red bow. Beyond the bandstand's shoulder is the duck pond. The water is sage green today, with the sun diffused behind thin gray cloud, and the air is humid and the earth smells loamy and dark and rich. Sometimes Carlos thinks rain-soaked earth smells like coffee – and now he really, really wants a coffee – so picks up his pace, happily swinging TK's hand in his.

"You okay there?" TK asks him, "Away in your daydream?"

Carlos laughs. "Actually, I was living in the moment."

TK squeezes Carlos' hand, drawing to a standstill, looking at the green pond and the people who are laughing because they set the holly wreath at an odd angle so they have to fix the position. "I can't believe this is my life," he says, sinking down onto one knee in the middle of the stony path.

"What are you doing?" Carlos chuckles, realizing TK ain't tying his shoelace.

"Carlos Reyes," TK kisses Carlos' knuckles.

"Yes, TK?"

"Will you marry me?"

"We're already married, sweetheart."

"I know, but I'm just really in the mood to propose to you." TK looks up at him with smiling, watery eyes. "I just love you so much I don't know what to do to show it, like, other than to tell you I'd marry you again and again, every day."

"Come here, silly bear." Carlos tugs TK upwards, into his arms, into a kiss. "It's a yes, by the way."

A clacking, echoing sound distracts them. The people at the bandstand and a few others dotted around on benches and the path are applauding.

"Congratulations!" A woman jogging with her Weimaraner yells. The Weimaraner looks confused.

"Thank you!" TK yells back, "He said yes!"

"A thousand times yes," Carlos adds, pecking TK on the cheek. "A thousand times," he whispers again, just for them.

"That was fun." TK grins as they walk on blithely. "I'm going to do that more often."

They accidentally remain hand-in-hand and side-by-side as they enter the bakery and become noisily stuck in the doorframe. Everyone stares at them while they laugh and jibe each other until TK pops himself free. They're usually served by Kara, who is by the counter shaking her head at them, her fists on her hips.

"I always hear you two before I see you," she says with a wink.

TK orders takeout coffees from Kara while Carlos collects his order of TK's birthday cake, listening as TK tells Kara all about the relaxing and civilized morning they've had at home. Carlos gives him the side-eye, and TK looks back at him, glittering with mischief, and when Carlos is handed the heavy pink box that contains three tiers of angel sponge, one for every decade of his husband's life, he kind of wants to cry. He thinks TK can tell, because TK's face changes. His smile quivers.

TK Strand thought he wouldn't make it to thirty. He has in fact made it to thirty as a thriving, happy person, in love and loved back. TK is a husband. He is a man with a career and a home, with family and friends who adore him. TK has made it to thirty liking himself for who he is.

Carlos holds on tight to the birthday cake box the whole walk home.

2 p.m.

Being blindfolded was fun and all, but lord knows there's nothing quite like it – for TK – than when he’s lying on his back with his head tilted up so he can watch Carlos' cock sink inside him. He's already open and hypersensitive from earlier, so Carlos is going slow – pulling out almost all the way and then thrusting back in, his arms braced like he's doing push-ups above TK, which TK is trying not to laugh about because he'll get distracted.

"Love watching you fuck me." TK gasps at Carlos disappearing into him.

"Do you want the mirror?" Carlos asks.

"Oh my God yes – good idea!" TK cries. He wishes he'd thought of it himself. He usually does.

Carlos delicately extracts himself from TK's tight grip and wheels their free-standing mirror so it's positioned next to the bed at a slight angle. The mirror is only narrow, but set right, they can see a lot of themselves.

"All fours?" Carlos asks.

"No, let’s keep going like this," TK says, legs spread wide and hand jerking his cock.

Usually, when they want to watch themselves, they'll go doggy-style and face the mirror directly. TK will observe himself getting fucked from behind. He'll watch Carlos' muscles flex and clench, watch his determined, serious face suddenly tighten and strain. His mouth will open and he'll say all sorts of wildly dirty and romantic things. TK will watch him buckle and shudder and collapse over his back. TK will watch himself come over the sheets. Other times, a straddle is good – both them a column framed perfectly in the rectangular glass. Today, like this in missionary, what they can see when they turn their heads is Carlos pushing TK flat, their hips rolling together, TK's left leg crooked and foot bouncing in the air. They are joined up puzzle pieces. Carlos is deep inside him, moaning into a kiss because the hardness and the tightness and the heat is unbearable. He wants so badly to come but he's trying not to because Birthday Boy needs to come first.

Birthday Boy happens to have a lot of stamina today, and when he slips a finger inside Carlos' ass, Carlos starts screaming.

"You're so good, TK! You're so good!"

"Thank you!" TK screams back, cracking into a laugh.

"I love fucking you. I love it when you're like this. I love feeling you. I love you."

"I love you too!" TK cries, watching Carlos quicken his thrusts.

He bends his finger.

"TK!" Carlos booms, "I'm not going to come! I’m not!"

"I think you are, baby."

"Uh, babe, you brat–" Carlos chokes, and TK is smug for three seconds until the wild jolting of Carlos coming hard inside him strikes his prostate with such hammering force he screams brokenly, ejaculates all over their stomachs, and then bursts into tears.

"Baby," Carlos says, kissing his tears away. "Was it too much?"

TK nods, catching his shaky breath. Carlos gets it, because he cries sometimes from intense internal stimulation, but TK usually doesn't.

Carlos stays inside him, runs his hand through his hair, waits.

"I just can't believe it. When I think about it all. Everything that's happened. Everything I did. I feel like I don't deserve–"

"Shh, no, no!" Carlos whispers passionately, "You deserve every good thing that's ever happened to you, my dude.

TK snort-laughs in Carlos' face, his eyes shining and cheeks pink as fresh tears slip heavily down into his ears. "I hate tears in my ears," he says, cutely shaking his head.

"Sorry. I didn't catch those ones." Carlos brushes his fingers over TK's face as if to dry him off. He kisses his nose. "You deserve every good thing that's ever happened to you," he repeats seriously, "My husband. Come here."

TK shifts to wrap his arms around Carlos' shoulders. Carlos lies on top of him, his face in his neck. He kisses TK where his tears have streamed, tastes salt on his lips and feels his cooling come spread between them. He doesn't care if it's a little sticky, doesn't care if ordinarily he'd have got up to get a washcloth by now. It's TK's birthday, and it's chilly, and he's crying happy-sad tears, and all Carlos needs to do is warm him through with a big, long hug – his greatest power – warming him through to soul-level – and he won't stop until he’s sure he’s done his duty.

4:38 p.m.

They take their time getting dressed, showing each other sweaters to veto, until TK settles for his black sweater with thin white stripes and Carlos complements him in plain black cashmere; both of them in dark jeans; TK in white sneakers and Carlos in black suede brogues. TK watches Carlos fiddle with his collar, pulling his gold chain and twisting it so the cross pendant is centered. He’s wearing the cross on top of his sweater today, for everyone to see, bright and glinting against the black. Since he started wearing the cross again these past few weeks, he’s kept it hidden. TK doesn’t ask him what’s changed, he just knows that something has, and in his stomach he feels one small butterfly take flight.

Carlos leaves for the kitchen to finish the party prep, kissing TK’s head as he goes. There’s a very serious charcuterie board to put together like an art installation, and a glittery Happy Birthday banner to hang, and colorful balloons to tie to chairs. TK busies himself with the balloons – insisting on it when Carlos gets a little flappy – pushing his husband away with a finger against his forehead, right between the eyes. Instead, TK suggests that Carlos wipe down the kitchen surfaces for the seventh time. Carlos grumbles but complies – and when TK has secured the last balloon in place, he finds his husband frozen on the spot midway through drying up a glass tumbler, staring into space. TK knows exactly where Carlos has gone. He walks up behind him and slips his arms around his waist, slots his chin onto his shoulder.

“You okay?” TK asks, swaying him, kissing his shoulder on the chin-warmed spot.

“Huh? Oh. Yeah.” Carlos laughs, resumes running the dishcloth around the glass in a circular motion.

It happens at this time in the afternoon a lot. Many hours of another day have gone by, and the dead remain dead. The questions remain unanswered.

Since their big talk at Blue Moon, Carlos has made good his promise. He’s gone back to the N.A. group meeting with TK twice, and they’ve had two sessions with a grief counselor called Eric. One session was just the two of them; Andrea came with them to the second. TK ended up crying the most because he’d had a tough shift, during which a seventeen-year-old-boy died from a meth overdose, and TK found it near-impossible to stop resuscitations when Tommy called it. Carlos told Eric that late afternoons and evenings are the toughest. Eric asked what he typically does to feel better.

“Sometimes whiskey,” Carlos told him flatly, and then looked at TK. “Sometimes a hug.”

So, TK is hugging Carlos, bringing him back – pulling him away from the gray image of his dad in a body bag being wheeled out of his childhood home while his mother cried on the doorstep, the hallway floor behind her bright red with blood.

“I am okay,” Carlos says, placing the glass down and turning around, “Hey, I am.”

He’s telling himself, TK thinks, not me.

Much later, tonight in bed, they might be sitting up drinking lavender-chamomile tea and reflecting on the day. Carlos might get upset then, because the adrenaline of hosting TK’s party will be fading. The absence of Gwyn and Gabriel will be strikingly apparent once more. Yet again. In a strange way – because it doesn’t sound like a good thing but it actually would be – TK hopes Carlos will break down crying in the middle of the night. A knotty aspect of Carlos going to grief counseling is that he’s bottling up emotions between sessions, like he thinks he’s supposed to save it all and spill only when Eric is present. Baby steps. What Carlos is doing is new for him, and big, and TK is more proud of his husband now than ever before.

7 p.m.

“God, TK. You’re so bendy.”

“I know,” TK smirks.

“How are you doing that?”

“Natural athleticism.”

“Urgh – your foot is in my face.”

TK cackles, almost losing balance from his noodley stance on the Twister mat. Nancy is beneath him, half-impressed and half-horrified by how good he is at this game, and definitely annoyed at how smug he is about it. On the red circle near her head, TK’s left foot is up on tiptoe, showing off one of his gifts from Carlos – a personalized pair of green socks, but Carlos had them personalized with his own name embroidered with a lighter green thread.

“Cute,” she says, touching the C on TK’s foot and setting off one of his worst tickle-triggers.

TK yowls and collapses, landing hard on top of her.

“My elbow!” Nancy cries. “Cap!”

“Nancy, you okay?” Tommy asks in a slightly tired voice while Carlos is midway through topping up her Champagne flute with bubbles.

“He fell on me,” Nancy groans, “Uh, get off.”

“You get off.”

“You’re on top of me.”

“Shut up.”

TK and Nancy squabble and wrestle a little on the mat, looking up grumpily to find Carlos, Tommy, Owen, Kendra, Andrea, Paul, Asha, Mateo, Judd, Grace, Marjan, Joe, Iris, Cooper and Buttercup staring at them from the couch area, where the board for Clue is unfolded on the coffee table. A variety of games have been set up for the party, but nobody had anticipated Twister would, A) be the most popular, or B) end with people falling out as quickly as they fall over.

Buttercup launches up from sitting and flops over to rescue TK by licking his face. But then he also rescues Nancy the same way. They both end up petting the dog together and laughing.

“I think these two might need a breather,” Owen says to Carlos, tilting his head to point-without-pointing at TK and Nancy.

“Okay,” Carlos laughs, “Who wants some birthday cake?”

Everyone in the room makes a collective, chiming “oooh” noise before following Carlos excitedly to the dining table. The colorful balloons attached to each chair offset the table decorated with a lilac tablecloth, purple asters in cylinder vases, and vanilla tea lights floating in glass dishes. The cake remains a pink-boxed surprise as a centerpiece. TK isn’t allowed to hug Carlos while he opens it, because his husband is being exact in his movements, and there’s no distraction quite like huggy-TK. So, TK puts his arms around Owen and Andrea instead, and in this moment he thinks this is the best birthday of his life.

Carlos peels away the last of the glittery tape around the box, pulls off the lid and unfolds the sides.

The cake is a tall cylinder, the icing around it a marbled swirl of greens and purples and dark blues, with edible silver stars dotted all around. On top of the cake, molded out of royal icing, is a somewhat goofy-looking blue car with two little human figures lying on the hood. It doesn’t go with the rest of the impressive and classy cake, and yet it’s the greatest thing TK has ever seen.

Everyone stares at it in wonder and curiosity.

“Baby–” TK says, “That’s us.”

“The night you asked me to be your boyfriend,” Carlos says.

What was a collective “oooh” becomes a collective “aww” – apart from Marjan, who tells them they’re so sweet they’re disgusting. “I think, in a former life, you were a bag of cotton candy,” she says to TK, who grins and nods.

TK wanders over to Carlos feeling like his legs are made of jello. Luckily, Carlos scoops him up for a kiss so he doesn’t keel over.

“Can I?” Owen asks Carlos when he picks up two silver candles shaped into a ‘3’ and an ‘0’. “Just want to light my son’s birthday candles.”

TK swallows, watches Carlos hand them over. Judd teases Owen about fire safety as he sparks up the candle lighter, and everyone laughs except TK, because he’s trying not to cry.

“TK, are you going to make a wish?” Grace asks him gently.

He smiles at her with a little shrug. “What if it already came true?”

TK wishes, regardless, when he blows out the candles.

He wishes for lots of things in a split second. World peace. For his dad’s cancer to never return. He wishes for Carlos to change his mind about them having kids, and he might feel guilty about that later, but right now it’s what he wants. He wishes for the health and happiness of everyone who surrounds him. He wishes that Carlos would forgive himself for not being able to save his father. He wishes Carlos would forgive himself for not finding the killer yet. He wishes Carlos could forgive Gabriel. He wishes for things that are completely impossible. He wishes for one more conversation with his mom. He wishes for his teen-self to have refused any drink and drug offered to him. He wishes his fifteen-year-old-self were with him now, just like Carlos had wished his seventeen-year-old-self had been present on their wedding day.

He cuts the cake with Carlos, both of them holding the knife. After cutting their wedding cake like this, it only feels right. Inside, the sponge is dense and white, layered with buttercream and strawberry jelly. Fancy though it may be, it still tastes like the birthday cake of childhood, which is the best thing of all.

“Speech!” Marjan hollers while TK has his mouth full of cake.

“Did this in the wrong order,” TK murmurs, chasing his cake with a swig of sparkling elderflower. “What can I even say? Just means everything to me that we all get to be here together.” He places a hand on the small of Carlos’ back, squeezes the cashmere wool of his smart black sweater. “With a couple of exceptions who couldn’t make it, the people I love most in the world are all here in the same room. And I get to be thirty after all.”

7:46 p.m.

TK and Carlos accompany Cooper to the door. TK removes Cooper’s leather jacket from the coat rack, handing it to him with a smile as Carlos says, "Are you sure you can't stay any longer?"

"I'm sorry to miss out on Clue," Cooper says, shrugging on his jacket, "But I've got to go hang with my girls now."

"Thank you so much for coming, Coop, I really appreciate it," TK says. They lock hands and do a shoulder-bump-pat-hug, which both TK and Carlos think is so adorably hetero, it always amuses them to do it with people. Sometimes they do it with each other as a joke. "Hey, bro, how was your day?" one of them will say in a super-deep voice, and they'll hug like they've never touched another male before.

Cooper reaches for Carlos' hand, which Carlos robustly shakes, because he still can't help himself, even though he genuinely likes Cooper and loved his gift to TK of a small art set.

"Carlos, you're an amazing host – everything I've heard is true," Cooper says, "Thank you for inviting me, man, I've had a great time."

"Come back and see us soon," Carlos says, meaning it, yet squeezing his hand extra tight in some weird alpha move that he'll eventually start dissecting with his therapist, although he doesn't know that yet.

Cooper leaves with a nod and a grin. TK and Carlos put their arms around each other when they turn around, taking a moment to gaze into their living room that is full of their friends and family engaging in playful arguments about how it's even possible to cheat at Twister.

"Having long legs isn't cheating," Nancy says.

"Having legs long enough so you can deliberately knock the dial with your foot," Paul replies, "Is."

"Shut up, you didn't see that."

"Anyone want drinks?" Carlos calls into the room.

It's a resounding yes from just about everybody – Carlos steers TK to the couch first, not letting the birthday boy help. This is Carlos in his element, being the one who manages it all. He opens a cupboard and takes out the large cafetiere for those who want coffee; he opens the fridge and grabs a Tupperware of pre-sliced lime, lemon and orange for the sodas.

"Start without me," Carlos calls, "I'll be with you."

The room is split up into four groups – Owen, Kendra, Andrea, Joe and Iris play poker at the dining table; Judd and Tommy are involved in a tense game of Guess Who? Grace and Asha are lazily playing snap and having a deep conversation about late-stage capitalism; Nancy, Mateo, Marjan, TK and Paul and Buttercup are poised around the coffee table with the Clue board spread out. The usual argument about who gets to be Miss Scarlet has already transpired – it's TK, again. By some miracle, he wins through rock paper scissors every single time. Carlos is going to be Mrs. Peacock.

Paul rolls the dice, skips his little figurine of Mr. Green along a couple of squares. Off to a slow start.

TK, on the end of the couch, looks over his shoulder and smiles at his husband as he wings around the kitchen, loving every second of doing something as simple as filling glasses with lemonade, because the lemonade is for their friends.

Carlos catches him looking, smiles back, winks. TK turns away, just for a moment, because Mateo speaks to him.

When he turns to Carlos again, everything has changed.

Carlos is a little hunched. Mouth open, eyes wide, staring directly at TK. Slowly, from his back pocket, he removes his father's burner phone. He keeps it on him at all times, on vibrate, just in case. Just in case.

TK watches Carlos read whatever message Gutiérrez has sent. He scowls at it for the best part of twenty seconds, his brow creasing, his jaw tense. TK imagines he's grinding his teeth; he'll have a headache later.

It's a long message, TK thinks, more complex than the usual, "New lead, meet at park" – park being code for Joe's Ale House.

Carlos swallows hard. TK sees his Adam's apple sink, the green vein in his neck is swollen. He's straining around whatever pressure he's feeling inside, and TK wants to get up and run to him and hold him but right now he can't. He can only meet his eye again, and nod.

Carlos nods back.

Two husbands stare at each other, spot lit, the room around them darkening.

"You're not alone. I'm right here with you," TK says silently.

"I know," Carlos replies, "I know."

Carlos doesn't respond to the text message. He returns the burner phone to his pocket and rolls up his sweater sleeves because he's clearly overheating, and TK just feels so sorry for him, watching him pull at his collar. TK wants to kiss at that hot, tightening throat and tell him to breathe, baby. Breathe.

Neatly, on trays, Carlos arranges the drinks for all the people in his home. He brings the full glasses and mugs around to everybody, trying desperately to smile, but he keeps losing it. Purposefully, he does not make eye contact with his mom, but she’s so absorbed in her hand of poker she doesn’t notice.

Carlos sets down the sodas for TK and himself last of all, and finally sits next to his husband, taking his hand. TK locks himself and Carlos together, slotting their fingers tightly, ignoring the sheen of sweat on Carlos’ palm. Carlos knocks his knee against TK's three times. I love you. It's enough to let TK relax a little bit. TK knocks back. I am here.

"Promise to keep me involved with whatever happens with Gutiérrez," TK had told him after they got home from Blue Moon a few weeks ago – it wasn't a question, and Carlos did promise.

Marjan scoops up the dice, passing them to Carlos, who looks bewildered when he accepts, as if he's finding it hard to tune back into what they're doing.

The dice drop into Carlos' hand. He makes a loose fist and shakes and then lets them go, rolling a perfect six and glancing at his father's turquoise ring as his fingers splay.

Everybody stares at him, waiting for him to move forward. He takes his time. It's okay.

When he sits back, he puts his arm around TK.

You're not alone. I'm right here with you.

I know.

In Carlos’ pocket, his father’s burner phone vibrates again. TK, sitting against him, can feel it too. Carlos gives him a quick, reassuring smile and kisses his head. He doesn’t get up. He doesn’t check the phone. Keeps playing Clue. It’s TK’s birthday, and everyone’s here. The husbands will talk later about Gutiérrez and what happens next, and they’ll hug each other, deep into the night. There’s no argument – TK will be the big spoon.

Whatever the future holds, we’ll face it together, TK.