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  The center’s lobby was crowded with kids and parents, pickups from the after school care programs. I smiled and nodded my way through, following Ellie down the left hall to the offices where only volunteers and staff could go. Past our bathroom, a small break room, and another office to Lou’s half-open door. Voices inside made us both stop.

  Ellie knocked.

  “Come on in,” Lou yelled.

  We did, and I nearly fell over for the second time today. Adam was sitting in a molded plastic chair across from Lou’s desk, and Lou was grinning like he’d cheated the devil. Lou always reminded me of the guy who played that gray wizard, with his craggy face and long, silver hair.

  “Ellie, Ryan, my new best friends,” Lou said with energy in his voice I didn’t recognize. “You did good, kids, real good.”

  “We did?” Ellie asked, while I stared dumbly at the side of Adam’s head. He stood up but didn’t look directly at me.

  “You sure did. Mr. Langley here has come with a fantastic proposal for us and our fundraiser.”

  “You did?”

  Adam nodded slowly, his expression as flat as it had been earlier, and I kinda wanted to poke him in the eye just to see his face do something else. “I presented your ideas to our senior partners, and they’re on board with my thoughts,” he said.

  “Which are what, exactly?” I asked.

  His cold blue eyes flashed at me, then fixed on Ellie. “LQF will sponsor the event in its entirety. Other businesses can donate to your silent auction, but we’ll be the underwriters on the fundraiser itself.”

  I didn’t get it. “Would you have jumped on this if you didn’t know us?”

  “Perhaps. The fact that we went to high school together made me pay closer attention, yes. But working on this fundraiser with the center will help my degree and my internship credits, so I’m getting something out of this, as well. And LQF gets the publicity.”

  Ouch. That couldn’t have hurt more if he’d gored me with a bull’s horn.

  “Wait,” Ellie said, catching something I’d missed. “Working on this with us?”

  Balls.

  “Yes,” Adam said. “I’ll be coordinating the event with the volunteers here at the center. It’s my company’s money, and I want to know how it’s being spent.”

  Your father’s company, jackass, not yours. I kept that whopper to myself, though.

  “Sounds reasonable to me,” Lou said. “You’ll be working with Ellie and Ryan here, ‘cuz they’re our theater experts. The other two on the committee aren’t here right now, but you’ll meet them.”

  “I look forward to it.”

  Smug bastard. Ellie gave me a look, and I shoved my hands into my pockets before I twisted my wrist off. This was gonna be a right nightmare, working closely with Adam when I was torn between hugging him tight and punching his porch light out.

  “If Adam is going to be working on the committee with us, then I have a request,” Ellie said. “More like a requirement, since the other committee members have agreed.”

  Adam arched a single eyebrow. “And what’s that?”

  “You have to perform at least one number during the benefit concert.”

  The eyebrow flattened. He actually went pale, and I’d never seen that happen in real life. He pulled himself together pretty fast, but I knew him well enough to see the fear. “I, um, I’ve never sang in public before.”

  “But you can sing, and we know it.”

  He could. His voice gave me chills, but he wasn’t lying. For all the rehearsals, Adam had quit Rent a week before the actual performances. Quit theater altogether, even after doing stage crew since freshman year. All because I got my queer ass outed at school. He let his bigoted father flush three-plus years of friendship straight down the crapper like it was nothing, and then I went and got us both bashed.

  “Sounds reasonable to me,” Lou said, making the decision for all of us. “Larry and Susan can’t sing for shit, but they’re doing a number as well.”

  “Um, all right,” Adam said. “One number.”

  “Excellent. Ryan, why don’t you show this young man around the center? Give him a feel for the place, maybe observe the art class?”

  I’d rather stick my hand in a hornet’s nest, but I didn’t say that to Lou. He needed this fundraiser to work, and I wouldn’t let my tangled mess of a history with Adam ruin it. I was almost twenty-one years old, and I could act like a fucking grownup. “Sure,” I said.

  “It was a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Paige,” Adam said.

  “Lou, please,” he replied.

  “Call me Adam, then. Mr. Langley is my father.”

  “Will do, son. Thank you, and thank your father for me.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  We three tumbled out of Lou’s office and into the hall. Ellie checked her phone for the time, and too late I remembered why.

  “Shit, I can’t hang for a tour,” Ellie said. “I have to be at work in thirty minutes.”

  “At night?” Adam asked.

  She shot him a look. “Yes, Mr. Silver Spoon, some of us have jobs that require nighttime hours.” He flinched. To me she said, “You okay taking the bus home?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “I can drop you off,” Adam said.

  “You don’t know where I live.”

  He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter.”

  Taking a ride from him sounded about as much fun as a poke on the ass with a branding iron, but it beat risking our crappy bus system. They never ran on time, and I was as likely to get home in thirty minutes as three hours. “Okay, fine, Adam will bring me home.”

  “See you later, then,” Ellie said. She planted a kiss on my cheek, then left.

  Adam leveled me with an intense stare. “You two live together?”

  “Yeah, so?” I saw the questions in his eyes, the gears turning in the wrong direction. “We’re not together like that. I’m gay, remember? She’s my best friend.”

  His mouth went flat, like he was mad I had a new best friend. Well, tough shit, hoss. He lost the right to care who my friends were years ago. So why did I have the weirdest urge to soothe his ruffled feathers?

  “Anyway, this is the staff area,” I said, pointing out rooms as we walked. “There’s a room across the lobby for sign-ups and stuff, so only volunteers can come back here. Gives us a place, you know?”

  The faded linoleum and twenty year-old microwave in the break room had to look like shit compared to the fancy chrome kitchen his father’s building probably had—along with pretty tables to eat their sushi and Thai food, or whatever. Our little eating area smelled like someone’s Burger King bag.

  The lobby was mostly empty when we came out, and I led him past the main auditorium, down a longer hallway dotted with doors. I felt him behind me like an electric fence, buzzing with energy and almost close enough to shock. “These are the classrooms. They see more kids during the day and weekends, but Cindy Winchester is doing a painting class tonight.”

  I stopped in front of room six and opened the door. A dozen kids of all ages were standing behind wooden easels, each with a palette of colors in one hand and a brush in the other. They were painting a still life from a collection of sports items on a center table—baseball gloves, a basketball, part of a hoop net, stuff like that. Stuff that interested kids more than bowls of fruit or flower arrangements.

  Cindy waved and came over. She was a wide lady with a gentle smile and big, strong arms. “Hey, honey bear,” she said, giving me a signature hug. I liked her hugs. She was everyone’s momma bear, and everyone else was her honey bear. “Who’s this?” Her wide smile hoped he was someone special, and he was, but not that someone. Most folks here knew I was queer, and they didn’t care.

  Scratch that. They cared when they were trying to get me to date, which I didn’t like to do much. Mostly I scratched an itch, then went home. Sex was a lot simpler than feelings.

  “Adam Langley, ma’am,” he said when I didn’t. “I’m working
with the fundraising committee.”

  “Langley.” Her red eyebrows pushed together. “As in Langley-Quartermaine?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She turned wide eyes onto me. “Does that mean we have a sponsor for the benefit?”

  “Yep,” I replied.

  “That’s wonderful! Oh my, Adam, you’ll enjoy working with our Ryan here. The kids adore him, and he has a beautiful voice.”

  “So I’ve heard,” Adam said.

  Oh, it was gonna be like that, huh? Pretending we didn’t have a three-year history between us? Fine. “Maybe we can get the elder Langley down here to see what we do,” I suggested. “Meet the committee and some of the other volunteers.”

  Adam’s brief flare of panic did not disappoint. “He’s pretty busy this week, but I’m certain he’ll attend the benefit itself.”

  “Either way, I’m grateful to have a sponsor,” Cindy said. “The kids here deserve to keep the center open.”

  “Ryan! Come see!”

  I perked up at the sound of Tommy Orser’s pipsqueak voice. A little hand waved from across the room, and I went to him. Tommy was pint-sized for being eleven, and he had the excess energy of a newborn colt. His single mom worked two jobs, so Tommy spent a lot of time here, and he’d glommed onto me this summer.

  “I painted it pretty good.” Tommy pointed at his paper, which had a decent rendition of a football helmet done in acrylic paint.

  “That is pretty good,” I said. “Look even better with a Cowboys logo on it.”

  Tommy giggled. “Steelers all the way!”

  “Yeah, we’ll see, won’t we?”

  “Sure will.” He glanced past me. “Is he your boyfriend?”

  I almost swallowed my tongue. “What?”

  Tommy waved me down to his level, then whispered, “The guy with you. He looks at you like boyfriends look at my mom.”

  Something inside me tingled at the notion, while my brain put the brakes on any positive side of that. “No, Tommy, he’s not my boyfriend. He’s working here for a while this summer. I’m showing him around.”

  “Okay.”

  And like that, the matter was dropped. For Tommy, anyway. When I walked back to Adam, I didn’t see anything like that in his eyes or face. It couldn’t have been there. Cindy hugged us both good-bye, and I spent a few more awkward minutes showing Adam the rest of the center.

  We ended up in the empty auditorium last, near the stage. Blue mats were still rolled out from gymnastics, and stacks of chairs lined both walls.

  “This is where we’ll do the benefit performances,” I said, as if it wasn’t obvious.

  Adam turned in a slow circle as he gazed around. “How are the acoustics?”

  “Passable. We may need some microphones for the kids.”

  The floor of the stage came up to chest-height. Adam ran his hand across the scuffed surface. “I haven’t stood on a stage since the rehearsal before Thanksgiving.”

  The last time we’d ever sung together. “Never since?”

  “No.” He shrugged. “The little platform when I got my diploma doesn’t count.”

  “You walked that stage, and I walked this one.”

  He turned to me then, a whole lot of sadness in his face, turning what was usually beautiful into something ugly. “I’d have given anything to walk this one all the way with you.”

  My insides twisted up tight, and confusion sent my brain zinging sideways. “You’re the one who walked away. You chose… well, whatever you chose, it wasn’t me. It wasn’t us.”

  “I was scared, Ryan.”

  Red flashed behind my eyes. “Fuck you, Adam. I was scared too. Scared of the bullies at school who spit at me and pushed me into lockers after everyone found out I was gay. Scared of facing school alone every day after my best friend fucking bailed on me. Scared in the hospital after we were bashed, when all I wanted to do was talk to you, and I couldn’t. Don’t talk to me about scared, hoss, not ever.”

  I hadn’t raised my voice because I didn’t want our shit echoing all over the auditorium, but I’ll be hog-tied if Adam’s eyes hadn’t gone liquid. If he cried, I was gonna lose it. Really fucking lose it.

  “I’ll take the bus home,” I said. I turned neatly on my heel, even though my hands were shaking, and slammed out of the auditorium.

  Adam

  I couldn’t have been more stunned if Ryan had hauled off and punched me in the face. More than the words about fear, more than the anger in his voice, I was stunned by the anguish I’d seen in his eyes. Big, coffee-brown eyes that used to look at me like I was the only person in the world who mattered had silently accused me of stabbing him in the heart.

  I did, though.

  I hated that he’d been so scared. I hated that I’d spent two days unconscious after the bashing and had been unable to stop my father from spinning the story to blame Ryan. We had shared so much. I don’t know if I loved him romantically back then. I think I did. I know I loved him as my best friend and better half. We never had the chance to test the romantic waters. We never declared our feelings or shared a first kiss. Three bullies had stolen that chance away, and then my father had obliterated it completely.

  More than anything else, though, I hated seeing Ryan walk away from me. I may have walked away first, three years ago, forced in that direction by my father, but I’d be damned if I would let him do the same thing today. We needed to talk. Really, truly talk about those final few weeks that had ripped our friendship apart, plan or no plan. I didn’t remember the bashing. Father always said that my memory loss was a good thing. I silently disagreed. I didn’t want to lose a single memory of my time spent with Ryan, even if it was scary and violent.

  I wanted to take that anguish out of his eyes. I wanted to see him smile at me the way he used to, once upon a time. Maybe we wouldn’t solve our problems tonight, but I couldn’t let him walk away angry.

  This is going to fuck up the plan.

  He was already on the sidewalk, heading south toward what I assumed was the nearest bus stop, when I caught up with him. The hot, humid summer air pressed down on me from all sides, and even with my suit jacket off, I broke a sweat in the twenty steps it took me to get in Ryan’s way. He stumbled to a stop and glared. In the shadows of a nearby streetlight, he looked fierce and stunningly handsome, and my stomach did a somersault.

  “You’re right,” I said. “I did walk away. I let my father scare me, and I walked out on you. I walked out on us, Rye, and I ruined the best thing I’d ever had.”

  “We ain’t doin’ this tonight,” Ryan said, his voice ice cold, which made his accent that much thicker.

  “Why not? In a few sentences you told me more about that night than I knew before.”

  He hesitated, eyes searching. “What do you mean?”

  I glared, sure he was having me on. He was right there when I was hit in the head. “I mean they scrambled my brain with that brick, Ryan. The last thing I remember is wanting to talk to you the night of the last performance. I missed you. I hated myself for not sticking up for you after Thanksgiving, and I wanted to talk to you, and then I woke up in the hospital with a broken arm and a skull fracture.”

  Ryan looked ghostly ill beneath the streetlights. “You don’t remember anything?”

  No, you don’t because you didn’t want to remember it, coward. Remembering means admitting your feelings about Ryan, then and now. None of that is part of the plan.

  “I only know what the police told me. I went to see you at the cast party they held at Pizza City. We were talking. Chad and the others saw us, jumped us, and we fought back as best as we could.”

  “That’s the condensed version, all right.”

  “So what’s the full version?”

  Ryan looked up, down, everywhere around us, as if the answers were written down somewhere, instead of locked inside of his head. Clearly I’d forgotten something important, something more than just the exact sequence of events while we were beaten up, and he seeme
d at a loss as to how to tell me about it.

  Don’t do it.

  “We talked, right?” I asked.

  “A little, yeah. You apologized for not stickin’ up for me at school after I got outed. Said you were a shitty friend for that, and for quittin’ the play.”

  I remembered wanting to do that—wanting to do that so badly. I’d left home, apparently for Pizza City, with the sole purpose of getting forgiveness from my best friend. Getting forgiveness and trying to understand the thing that had changed between us the first few months of our senior year—something that had slowly changed inside of me from the moment Ryan told me he was gay, only a year before. A gradual understanding of my feelings for a boy whose smile lit up the world.

  My feelings for a young man who made my knees weak with his proximity.

  “Did you forgive me?” I asked.

  “Course I did. I hated every single second that we weren’t talkin’, like I’ve hated it these last couple of years. More than anything, I wanted you back.” His voice cracked with emotion, and I wanted to hug him. I wanted to make all the hurt go away, and I didn’t know how.

  “So were we friends again, before Chad and his pals showed up?”

  Ryan made a pained noise. “Somethin’ like that.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Between me forgivin’ you and Chad beatin’ on us, somethin’ else happened.” He didn’t sound scared or angry—simply sad.

  My pulse jumped. “What happened?”

  He hesitated, then determination washed over him. He reached for me, and I didn’t have enough sense to dodge him. He put his hands on either side of my face, and then he leaned down and kissed me.

  Chapter Four

  Ryan

  I was a bleeding heart fool, but this big fool kissed Adam anyway. Telling him we kissed in the parking lot outside Pizza City would have been easier, but I’m not big on easy. Maybe it’s why I fell for him in the first place. It’s definitely why I stopped walking toward the bus station and talked to him again, when my brain told me to flee. My stupid heart kept me there, and my stupid heart made me kiss him for the second time ever.