I.

This is the joke:

Every day starts the same. Chris gets up around ten, takes the dogs out for a run along the lake. Three miles, doctor's orders, and then he scrambles two eggs and eats breakfast in what the last owners called the sun room. It's a glass-walled area at the back of the house and even on cloudy days he can see halfway to Michigan. Chris calls it the lake room. Graciela, his housekeeper, calls it la sala de vidrio. No one else has much occasion to speak of it.

He spends another hour after breakfast working out, Stairmaster and the bike and squats against the wall because the stronger his quads are, the less his knees hurt, and then he showers, dresses, and drives into the city. He's usually at the bar by two, sometimes just before Claude, the manager, gets there, sometimes right after.

Every day at the bar starts the same. Claude says, "So a guy walks into a bar," and Chris tells him a joke. If the joke's a little funny, Claude smirks and tugs at one of his long dreads, his creased black face crinkling around the eyes. If the joke is really bad, Claude shakes his head and says, "Oh, man, man." If the joke is actually really funny, which isn't all that often, Claude waits a second, then nods seriously and says, "Yeah."

They talk about the bands that played the night before, about the crowd, about how many days it's been since the sun's shown through the gray matter that hangs over Chicago five months out of the year. Chris is the only one who lives someplace cold and for a while he thought that was a self-punishment trip, but he's spent almost three years there now and he's happy more days than not.

Most days that's all nestled safely in the past, anyway. Best years of his life and all that and last month he turned forty. If this is what the rest of his life looks like he figures that's okay. It works for him.

 

So a guy.

Claude buzzes upstairs. "Someone's here to see you," he says, and Chris marks his spot fifty pages into Hemingway's complete short stories. He could read at home, he could stay at home all day and night if he wanted, because he's still got a fuckload of money in the bank and Claude does a pretty good job of running things all by himself. But Chris likes to feel like he goes to work, like he has a job to do, even if most days he locks himself in his big office on the second floor and works his way through every book by an author in chronological order. So far this year it's Dostoevsky, Dickinson, Plath, Wilde, and now with Hemingway he'll start on the short stories and move on to novels.

He uses the torn edge of an old flyer for a bookmark and climbs down the stairs, wincing a little because he maybe overdid it this morning with the running and working out. Twenty-first century and all and you'd think they'd be able to replace a couple of worn-out knees so they'd work right again. Down the stairs and around the corner and he stops short when he sees who it is.

It's Lance. Lance fucking Bass is standing in his bar. Lance motherfucking Hollywood Bass is standing in his bar wearing ripped jeans and a leather jacket. He's got a black duffel in one hand and a hanging bag slung over the other shoulder. Lance Bass, standing in his bar, with two bags and no clue, and it's like a joke.

"Hey," Lance says.

Chris blinks and watches Claude stack shot glasses on a shelf. Lance is standing in his bar like it hasn't been six years, like he isn't the guy whose name Chris has silently cursed ever since the phone rang and Justin went back.

Chris turns to Claude and says, "So a guy walks into a bar."

So a guy walks into a bar.

It's been six years since he's seen Lance and eight years since the five of them decided to quit while they still could and Chris blinks again, shoves his hand in a pocket so he doesn't actually rub his eyes to make sure Lance is real.

"Forty looks good on you," Lance says, smiling, and he knows Lance is real. Always open with a compliment, that's what they learned in pop star boot camp, how to make twelve-year-olds your fans and influence record execs. Lance grins on one side of his mouth. He puts the duffel down and says, "How's the view where you're standing?"

Lance and his snarky tone are definitely real. But maybe all the rest of it's not, Chris thinks, if they're just standing there in his bar and talking like guys do.

"Fine," Chris says. "Good, good, it's fine," he says, and then nods at Claude. "Uh, can you --"

"Sure." Claude picks up a stack of invoices off the bar and heads upstairs. Lance shoots him a look that might mean he's impressed and Chris feels like an ass. No way to run a place like this without a guy like Claude and he just dismissed him like the hired help.

Chris kicks at the wood floor and a jolt runs from his toe to his knee to his hip and he thinks the view from forty is maybe different than he expected. He looks up and Lance has set down the hanging bag and seems kind of nervous. "We said," Lance starts, and then sighs deep and shaky and that part's real. It's really real, maybe too real, and Chris takes a step forward, then stops himself. This is Lance, after all. "We always said, if we needed. If we had to. That we'd be there."

Chris takes another step and the rest of it's all bullshit, it's been a long time and Justin went back but Lance is in his bar about to cry and the rest of it just blows away like smoke.

"I'm here," Lance says, and Chris puts a hand on his shoulder.

"Okay," he says. "You're okay here."

 

So a guy walks into a bar and puts down his bags.

Lance leaves his luggage in the middle of the floor and claims a stool like there's a line of people around the block trying to beat him to it. He puts his elbows on the counter and holds his face in his hands. His hair is dark brown and his bent neck is exposed and soft and vulnerable.

Chris steps behind the bar. He needs something to do with his hands so he straightens the angle of the taps, blows water through the gun, knocks a couple of glasses together.

Lance raises his head and Chris says, "So. What happened?"

Lance grimaces.

Chris has seen Justin once without Lance, at some awards thing maybe five years back. Lance was there, someone said, in some other room, and Justin had tugged on Chris' sleeve and furrowed his brow and said, "You doin' okay?" and Chris said sure, fine. Good.

"He doesn't exactly call me," Chris says, and Lance nods slowly.

"It's over."

Chris thinks he figured that much, what with the bags and the hangdog look. "When?"

"I don't." Lance rubs his thumb into the curved dark wood and Chris wonders if maybe Lance doesn't want to look up and see his reflection in the mirrors. When he meets Chris' eye it's with a tight, bitter frown. "I don't remember when it wasn't," he says.

Lance looks his age, Chris realizes. Finally. Looks thirtysomething, has crow's feet around his eyes and he's got a tan but that doesn't really smooth the wrinkles at the edges of his mouth. They're laugh lines but they look out of practice.

Chris slaps a coaster on the bar. "Lemme make you a drink."

Lance says, "No, I." He clears his throat. "I don't."

At that award show, Justin was sky-high, and the next day some paper ran a blind item about a curly-headed singer-actor belting out "Cocaine" at the afterparty. Chris points his index finger and 7-Up shoots from the soda gun and runs down the drain. "Okay," he says. "Shirley Temple?"

Lance squints, annoyed, and that at least is familiar. "I'm not, Chris, I'm not five," he says.

Tall glass with Coke and a lemon twist and Chris sets the drink in front of Lance with a flourish. "You got a story goes with that?" he asks.

Lance flicks a finger at the thin straw. "Not a good one."

Chris runs soda into a tumbler and they bump glasses after an awkward, mid-air pause. "I don't either," Chris says. "Now, I mean."

"You got a story?"

"Nah," Chris says. "I just. Just quit." Woke up on day sixty-seven of his trip around the world and couldn't remember the last time he'd been sober for a sunrise and just quit.

Lance takes a drink and leans back a little, his shoulders looser. "Occupational hazard?"

"Or something, yeah," Chris says. He'd been happy as a silent partner until Jake died and Jake's wife wanted to sell. Chris bought her out three years back, and he can mix drinks like a pro but mostly books bands and reads in his office. "Gotta make peace with yourself sooner or later," he says, more truthfully. "Later, I guess."

Lance nods sincerely and Chris thinks, AA. Lance went to celebrity AA or some fancy rehab clinic and why shouldn't he, god knows he can afford it. Of any of them it's Lance who's probably got a billion bucks stuffed under his mattress. Chris isn't opposed to paying people to help out, he's just not very good at it.

Lance stirs ice in the now-empty glass and nods again. "Later's better than never," he says.

Chris coughs and runs his finger through a drop of Coke on the bar. "Want the nickel tour?"

 

So a guy walks into a bar, puts down his bags and has a drink.

Chris has always liked how his bar looks during the day, when it's empty. It's not as magical, there's no thrumming bass, it's just a big room with a lot of wood and an empty stage. Sometimes he's got bands up there auditioning for one of the local artist opening act slots or doing a soundcheck but still the songs echo, no audience to muffle the sound.

"VIP room," he says, nodding at the balcony as they climb the stairs. "The money guys sit here" -- two desks in a windowless office -- "and Claude and the shift managers are here." Claude looks up from his desk and Chris introduces Lance as an old friend.

"You were one of the guys in the group," Claude says.

"One of 'em, yeah," Lance says, and Chris keeps the tour moving.

"And on our right we have the Lincoln Bedroom," he says, and Lance actually cracks a grin, looks around. Chris split his band stuff between work and home, so there are a few platinum albums on the wall, a few award statues, a couple nice framed group portraits by the better photographers. Shots of runway models in FuMan clothes, a shirt signed by the whole staff after the last big show. A photo of Dani and her kids is on his desk next to one with all his sisters and theirs from Christmas two years ago.

Chris has never had someone in his office who knew all the faces in all the pictures, other than his mom and even that was before he'd really settled in. "How's Diane?" he asks, suddenly. That's the kind of thing you talk about with old friends, their folks, their sisters. No use wondering if they're still standing in front of the Herb Ritts photo because they miss their boyfriend. Ex-boyfriend. Whatever. As long as Lance doesn't start crying.

"Good," Lance says, but he does sound choked up, at least a little. "And Stacy and Ford, and my dad, yeah. They're good. Yours?"

"Yeah," Chris says. "Everyone's happy and healthy as a horse."

"So this," Lance says, looking around. "This is what you do."

There's something in Lance's voice that still doesn't make sense to Chris. It's not defeat. It's not hate. "Yeah," he says.

"You're doing well."

"I do okay," Chris says.

"You've got another, right? Toronto?"

"Yeah," he says. "It does just fine when I leave it alone." Maybe it's resignation, Chris thinks, or maybe that's how he sounds when he talks about the past and it just bounces off Lance like harmony used to.

Lance walks out of the office and Chris follows. Lance is leaning on the balcony surveying the space below, and he turns. "Just the two bars?" he asks, and Chris nods. Lance shakes his head in disbelief. "You could have made a killing," he says.

It's distance, Chris decides. Lance is very, very far away from this moment, this place, this time. Chris squeezes the bridge of his nose and steps back. "Yeah," he says. "How'd that work out for you?"

Lance grips the railing tight and doesn't answer and it's like Chris is watching himself watch Justin walk away, except that was in LA and it was years ago and they'd only had three months. Lance and Justin had eight years together, almost nine, and Justin will probably call and Lance will go back. Chris doesn't know why Lance is here, why it's him and not Joey or Diane even, but it's him and they promised and he lays a hand on Lance's shoulder. "I'm supposed to go hear this band play across town," he says. "Throw your shit in my office and I'll let you buy me dinner on the way back."

 

So a guy walks into a bar, puts down his bags, has a drink and takes a look around.

Dinner is four courses of traditional Italian in the back room of this place owned by a lady Chris knows from waiting around the office of the state liquor authority. It's still early even after the semi-crappy rock band audition and Lance and Chris have the space to themselves. A pretty girl who's maybe his friend's daughter pops her head in every five minutes to see if they're okay.

They're okay. Chris is okay, at least, he's over the shock of still Lance after all these years and has officially tabled the question of why him and not Joey, no matter what, or Diane or --

"Oh," he says. "Have you talked to JC?"

Lance hasn't, and the way he says it sounds like Lance realizes maybe JC's not a guy whose life he can walk back into quite so easily. JC's in Italy, probably on some boat with his boyfriend, this guy whose dad owns half the ships in the Mediterranean. Lance nods like, of course, of course that's where JC is. Nobody calls it running away but Chris knows part of what JC ran away from was the kind of light Justin and Lance turned toward when left to their own devices.

"So you, he, like, calls? You talk to him?" Lance asks.

"He still calls at four in the morning," Chris says. "He doesn't really get time zones."

"I, in Germany, I remember," Lance says. "I tried to explain the international date line and he thought it was a way to pick up chicks."

They both laugh a little and Chris wonders how long they have till they run out of things to laugh over. Ten years of being a band so maybe between remembering the old and catching up on what came after they've got a while. They have a lot of after.

Lance tries to pay for dinner before the check even comes and Chris gets to say, "Don't worry about it, we're taken care of here," and something in that feels good, feels successful without being an asshole, and Lance nods.

Back at the bar, Lance sits at the end of the counter and watches Chris greet the bands, introduce the night's acts, shake hands and point out people for the bartenders to comp. Chris feels him watching, feels that cool green gaze slide across the back of his shoulders. Feels it slither away sometimes when there's a cute guy draping himself over someone within his sight range.

Chris grabs one of his waiters around the waist, this young blond guy named Dylan who always flirts like it's gonna get him a raise. Dylan smiles at Chris and shouts over the din, "Your friend is hot." Chris shoves his chest playfully. Dylan's barely legal to work there and he was maybe fifteen when the group broke up. He doesn't seem to recognize Lance. "No really," Dylan says, leaning in again. "I'd do him."

Chris thinks he feels Lance's stare like a laser on his back and he lets Dylan go, but when he turns around Lance is just picking at his fingernails and stealing glances at his watch. Chris taps him on the arm. "You wanna bail?" he says.

"Sure," Lance answers, too quickly, and catches himself. "I mean, yeah, if you're, if you're ready."

Upstairs, Chris takes the duffel and Lance hoists the hanging bag and then stares at his shoes.

"I should probably, just, you know, tell me a good place cause it's been a while since I've been in Chicago and I'll --"

"Don't be an idiot," Chris says, and Lance looks up. His eyes are shining and he looks all of sixteen fucking years old again, like his mom just got on a plane by herself.

Lance says softly, "Don't be a jerk."

 

So a guy walks into a bar, puts down his bags, has a drink, takes a look around and says he'll buy you dinner.

They don't talk in the car, Lance just watches waves crash on the beach under the moonlight as they wind their way up Lake Shore Drive. Chris can make this drive with his eyes shut at three a.m. after the bar's closed up, even when it turns into Sheridan and the road weaves through thick trees and big lots with bigger and bigger houses spread farther and farther apart.

He opens the gate with the remote and drives slow the rest of the way to the house, thinking about Manderley and how Daphne DuMaurier really didn't write all that much at all. Though The Birds was one hell of a scary movie and he never walks down to the water without thinking of Rebecca.

His garage is a triple and the only other thing in there is his bike. Lance gets out and stands by the trunk until Chris unlocks it and they carry the bags in through the side door. He's been in the house for nearly three years and there are things that must seem out of place to someone who knows Chris lived in crappy apartments longer than he should have, but also longer than he had to. Chris will probably stay here but you might not know it for looking.

The house is big, not huge, four bedrooms and a den. The big living room is the music room now, with a baby grand JC bought from Richard Marx and then left to Chris for safekeeping, and built-in floor-to-ceiling shelves lined with records and speakers, the only thing Chris has ever really spent money on. The three dogs rush to greet them and Jenny, the little one, jumps all over Lance, licking at his jeans. Lance drops to his knees for a second and the other two dogs crowd around him, sniffing. They go through the big, open kitchen and a dining room he never uses and there's a deck with wooden stairs down to the private beach. Actual art on the walls, some stuff JC did but mostly things he found on the eighty-day grand tour, and all the group trophies and albums are in his office again, a wide, high room with books and a drawing table and a speakerphone on a round table. Mostly he reads his books and plays with the dogs but once those things were necessary for Chris to do the work he'd thought would come next, until he remembered that just meant whatever he wanted to do that day.

There's a picture on his mantle in the living room of himself on top of Machu Picchu. It's his survivor picture, that's what he always calls it. All those fucking stairs and it was really the last gasp for his knees but it was after Justin went back and he needed to prove he wasn't dead, so he did it alone. He didn't go back to Peru on the big trip because he knew he'd never make it all the way up again and that wasn't the kind of truth he was looking to find by then.

Lance doesn't say anything, just nods and points and nods and lingers in front of things for reasons Chris doesn't understand and isn't sure he wants to.

At the top of the stairs, Chris says, "Take this one," flipping on lights in the room at the far end of the hall. "It's got its own bathroom and everything should be clean."

"Before," Lance says, and Chris tenses. They have a lot of before, too. "I didn't, you're not a jerk."

"No, I know." Chris means it when he says it but then he's not so sure, because there's Lance lost and lonely in his big house and Chris doesn't know what the fuck that means Justin is doing or how much he cares. He thinks he's a little out of practice with juggling so many emotions at once. Juggling so many people.

"I mean, you're," Lance gives Chris half a hug and their chests touch briefly. "I'm just here and you're being really, you're. You're not a jerk and I don't deserve this and I don't want you to think I don't know that."

They have a lot of before to get through, Chris thinks, and maybe they'll have to do that before they can laugh easily at all the rest.

"I go running," he says, the words out of his mouth before he can stop them. "In the morning, I take the dogs out and we run. Should, do you want me to get you up?"

 

So a guy walks into a bar, puts down his bags, has a drink, takes a look around, says he'll buy you dinner and makes himself at home.

Lance is sitting on his living room couch wearing track pants and a hooded sweatshirt when Chris comes downstairs. He'd stood in front of the guest room for five minutes debating whether he should actually wake Lance up and there he is, ready to go. Chris feels late.

Late and, yeah, Lance looks pretty fit. He nods hello and Chris says, "Okay, so, when I said I go running every morning?"

The corner of Lance's mouth lifts slightly.

"What I meant was, it's like, two miles walking and a half-mile jog. And then another half-mile walking."

"Okay."

"Doctor's orders," Chris mutters, pointing at his knees, and Lance just says okay again.

Chris feels like an old man walking next to Lance. The dogs run on ahead and Chris keeps a brisk pace but he can tell Lance is coiled like a spring. There's a bounce in his walk, but it's not joy, it's impatience, and Chris figures that's what he probably looked like all those years ago back when he was the hyperactive one.

"You don't," he says finally. "You should go your own speed here, man." Maxim, the Great Dane, bounds up with a stick between his teeth and Chris wrestles it free, throws it down the beach. "Go ahead," he says, looking at Lance.

Lance stands on tiptoes and rubs his arms. "It's just, man, it's fucking cold here," Lance says and smiles.

He chases after Maxim and Chris looks down to where Jenny, the little Corgi, is looping circles around his ankles. "Let's go catch up, sweetheart," he says, but they don't meet again until Lance has doubled back.

Lance puts his hands on his thighs and catches his breath. He stands up, sniffs the air and casts around like one of the dogs in patch of wild grass. "What's that smell?"

"Gary," Chris says.

"Who's Gary?" Lance says this like he's waiting for the inevitable punchline and Chris thinks some things never change, he's always had a joke at hand. Lance was always a pretty decent sidekick.

"No." Chris points south. "On windy days you can smell the steel factories. Gary, Indiana."

Lance hums The Music Man, "Gary, Indiana, my home sweet home." Chris sings the last three words over him, high on low, harmony like their second language. On good days, maybe their first. "Lord," Lance says. "Can you imagine that being where you live?"

"That'd be even worse than whatever happened in LA, I bet," Chris says, kneeing Maxim in the chest and biting down at the pain. He glances up and Lance has gone all distant in the face again.

"What happened in LA?" Lance says.

Chris swallows. "To you. You two."

Lance bounces up and down again and kind of jogs in place. When he stops, he looks at Chris and says, "I'm not sure we can blame that on LA. I think, uh. He. We did it to each other, I think."

It took Chris six months flat on his back after replacing both his knees and eighty days around the world to get that far. He thinks maybe Lance wasn't being dramatic, after all, when he said he couldn't remember when it wasn't over, and then he thinks maybe he doesn't know a damn thing about it. He takes a stick from Maxim and throws it far out into the water where he knows the dog won't chase it.

Lance wrinkles his nose again and looks down the shore. "That smell is seriously foul."

 

So a guy walks into a bar, puts down his bags, has a drink, takes a look around, says he'll buy you dinner and makes himself at home. He stays for breakfast.

Chris can't remember how Lance likes his coffee. Which isn't that big of a deal, because when he sets the cup on the breakfast bar, Lance asks for sugar and now he knows.

But then he realizes he can't remember how Justin liked his coffee. Ten years on the road and three months locked away in the same hotel room in Beverly Hills and Chris thinks it's those little things you know like secrets that make it feel as if no one else has a clue what it's like in your world.

Chris can't remember how Justin liked his coffee or his eggs or if he ate the crusts of his toast. But he thinks if he holds his breath and stands very still, he can still feel Justin's hand on his lower back as he sat up in bed to sign for room service. Three months in a hotel in Beverly Hills and he should have known it was doomed for that fact alone. The best years of his life hadn't been far enough behind him yet to think he and Justin would have trouble taking ten years of being best friends and making something more of it.

Graciela comes in through the front door, keys jangling on a cord around her wrist, and Lance jolts up off the stool. She's already halfway through a story about the new gardener when she stops, sees Lance, back in his seat drinking coffee. She smiles apologetically.

Chris introduces Lance as an old friend staying for a while and Lance takes her hand. "Mucho gusto," he says, and makes small talk with his housekeeper for an annoyingly long time. Chris is pretty sure Lance didn't used to speak Spanish. He remembers sometime toward the end, there was a benefit in Mexico for an earthquake or flood or some natural disaster and Chris was still the only one who could barter for anything more complicated than tequila.

It's a smart business move on Lance's part, he guesses, turning around to grab eggs and milk out of the fridge. Lance's accent is perfect and Chris scowls at the neat rows of condiments on the shelves. He probably hired some private Berlitz tutor so he could make even more money. Probably they have classes or shit like that at Betty Ford.

By the time Lance has asked after Graciela's family, her kids, her house and the work she does for "el viejito con las rodillas malas," Lance says, with a slim smile at Chris across the counter, Chris is done making breakfast. Chris bares his teeth and snarls in return and they all laugh.

He hands a plate of steaming eggs to Lance. "Let's eat in the lake room."

"La sala de vidrio," Graciela corrects.

Two chairs pulled out at the long oak table instead of one and it's been a while. Chris tries not to stare at Lance like he's an alien, doubling his planet's population in one fell swoop.

Lance stops a bite halfway to his mouth, sets his fork back on the plate. "I didn't -- I never asked. If you live alone."

He sounds exactly like Justin the way he says it, how Justin was always operating on simple assumption and then apologetically backing his way out of it. At the beginning, the very beginning, before they all started sounding the same, Justin and Chris had always passed verbal tics back and forth like a cold. Chris taught Justin to swear in six languages and if he didn't watch himself, Chris caught that same earnest tone Justin wore for interviews.

"I live alone," Chris says.

Lance puts a hand face down on the table. "Always?"

Chris swallows half his coffee at once and burns the roof of his mouth. "Yeah," he says.

Lance looks around the room again, squints in the flat, white morning glare. "There's -- is there someone?"

Chris got laid on Saturday, three days before. Keith, this guy he met in physical therapy. Keith broke both arms and his collarbone in a car accident last year and the first time they fucked he was still in casts. He gave Chris the best blowjob of his life and laughed heartily when Chris called him "my armless lover." Keith lives way down in Hyde Park and it's been almost three months of every other Thursday and the occasional Saturday but no one's ever stayed the night. So there's someone. Sort of.

"Sometimes," Chris says.

"That's, that's good," Lance says. "I'm glad to hear it. I mean, you know, of course you do, yeah, it's been so... I just, you know. We didn't really know."

Chris knows "we" means "me and Justin" and he knows that once he would have slapped Lance upside the head and demanded an explanation for whatever he'd done to fuck things up, whatever he'd done to make Justin walk around like someone'd kicked him in the nuts. And Lance would have told him, and Chris would have said Lance was being an asshole and that he should apologize, and Lance would have. Even when Lance or JC bitched about it, they did what Chris said when it came to Justin because Chris was the only one who really knew what would work.

They'd been doing that in one combination or another since the first days in Orlando. Five guys who mostly loved each other but in different ways at different times, and even then it's five guys all thrown in a house or a bus or a hotel. No matter that you love each other, or how, that's bound to cause some kind of problems at least some of the time. Six years since he's seen Lance, five since he's seen Justin and maybe an eon or two since he understood how to keep all the balls in the air.

Chris thinks maybe it's still easy, or it could be. He could just say, tell me about LA, and maybe Lance would, and maybe that's all he needs, a little time, a little space, an understanding ear. That way when Justin calls and Lance goes back they won't fuck it up again. Maybe Chris drew the short straw and someone forgot to tell him.

Lance is staring out at the lake like there's an answer in the way ill-formed waves crash and fall on the rocky beach and Chris decides that when Lance wants to talk, he'll talk. Until then Chris isn't gonna ask why him, why now. He's out of practice with this shit.

"I gotta go into work," Chris says finally, pushing his chair back. "You wanna stay here or what?"

Lance sniffs and looks back from the lake. "Um, I'll. Yeah, I think I'll just chill, if, is that cool?"

"Whatever, dude," Chris says. "You need anything, just ask your new bestest amigo and she'll hook you up."

Lance turns his head away. "Amiga," he says, and he makes it sound like a ballad.

 

So a guy walks into a bar, puts down his bags, has a drink, takes a look around, says he'll buy you dinner and makes himself at home. He stays for breakfast. He stays a while.

Two weeks and Lance has bought a new winter coat with a brown fake fur collar, new boots, and four sets of hats and gloves.

"It's not the fucking Arctic," Chris says, home early because there's no band that night. Lance's shopping bags are all over the living room couch.

"I found an outlet mall," Lance says, shrugging. "I was thinking, you know, I might buy a car. People, it's a little strange to take a limo to the mall around here."

Chris wraps a lime green cashmere scarf around Lance's eyes like a blindfold and bops him on the head. Guy like Lance can probably buy new cars like scarves, and when it's out of season he pays someone to cover it or take care of it. "There's room in the garage," he says.

Two weeks and Chris hasn't asked and Lance hasn't told and every morning Lance runs ahead with Maxim and Sophie, the middle child mutt, and meets Chris on the way back. Breakfast and then Chris drives to the bar, tells Claude a joke and reads Hemingway. Hemingway was a fucking prolific writer and there's so much in every line that Chris is reading slower than he has in years. It's harder to concentrate when there's so much in every line.

When there's a band to audition sometimes Lance comes down with him, or meets him wherever, and they have dinner before or after the bar opens at five. Twice Lance has sat at the end of the bar and watched Chris do his thing. Every other night, Lance has been up when he gets home, sitting on the couch reading or poking idly at the piano or just staring out the big windows. Once Lance was maybe crying but he wiped his eyes and asked Chris how his night had been and they didn't talk about it.

Lance pushes the scarf up on his forehead and blinks like wool's caught in his eyes. Wooly eyes, Chris thinks, mornings on the bus Justin always had wooly, sleepy eyes like he'd cried himself to sleep. He wonders if Lance is crying himself to sleep, if Justin is thinking about this all or if whatever it is they did to each other in LA made him a totally different creature, some hardened guy Chris wouldn't recognize if they ever did see each other again. The last time Chris saw Lance was some dinner party a week before the breakup, the first breakup, and between then and now he's grown some kind of plastic casing, Chris thinks. So maybe the Justin that's left isn't even related to the fourteen-year-old Chris had chased through Disneyworld in a golf cart. The ex-girlfriend Chris had sweet-talked into looking the other way while he lifted the keys was waiting at the finish line, laughing, and Justin had given her a piggyback ride because he lost.

Lance blinks and grabs Chris' forearm suddenly. "You're gonna tell me when I've overstayed my welcome, right?" he asks.

Chris looks at the tissue paper spilling out of bags and the coat hanging on a hook in the hall and Lance in sockfeet on his couch. All this time since he's seen Lance and a couple of decades since they met and these two weeks have been like a millisecond.

"Fuck, man," Chris says, knuckles on Lance's head like they're still kids. "I'll just charge your ass rent. You can afford it."

Lance laughs easily, lightly, like it's a hundred years ago. "Okay," he says, and lets go of Chris.

"Watch out," Chris says. "This kind of star treatment don't come cheap."

Lance ties the scarf around his chin and sticks out his tongue. "It never does. Do you take American Express?"

Lance shows up the next day at the bar and drags Chris by the wrist to see the sleek silver 1963 Avanti parked illegally out front. He's wearing silver glasses to match and it's mid-December but the sun is out and Chris can see how Lance owned every room he walked into back in California. His smile's so bright it almost makes winter in Chicago seem like a joke.

Chris talks Lance into putting the car in an expensive garage and then they listen to a couple demos over the sound system. Lance has a really good ear for all that, has always known it takes more than a pretty smile and a decent voice, Chris remembers. Justin had both but there was something about seeing his face on a movie screen that pulled him away, and Lance had as good an eye as he'd had an ear so once Justin was taken seriously for something it was all she wrote.

Claude yells down from the second floor that there's a guy on the phone about the liquor order for the holiday party. "You think we'll have more people this year?" Chris asks, and Claude says yeah, goes back to the call. Lance quirks an eyebrow and Chris says, "Dude, Eddie Vedder's coming by. He's the surprise guest, so, shh."

"Who'm I gonna tell?" Lance says, with a little bit of a smile.

"Good," Chris says, "cause you're his date."

Lance rolls his eyes. "Yeah, me and grunge go way back."

"I'm serious. I'm gonna have way too much shit to do that night without being on babysitting duty. Besides, you, don't you know him or something?"

"We've met," Lance shrugs. "You've met him, I'm sure."

"It'll be fun, Lance, come on. You got other plans or something?"

Lance stares straight ahead. "When," he says. It's in a week. Lance doesn't have other plans.

"You didn't think you were getting a free ride, did you?" Chris asks.

 

So a guy walks into a bar, puts down his bags, has a drink, takes a look around, says he'll buy you dinner and makes himself at home. He stays for breakfast. He stays a while, but he doesn't get a free ride.

Chris comes home early one night that week, there's a band but Claude's got things covered so he can leave if he wants. Lance has made dinner. Graciela set the table in the lake room, Chris can tell from how the flowers are arranged, but it all looks nice and normal and almost frighteningly domestic.

"What'd you break?" Chris says, coming back to the kitchen, and Lance turns around. He's got an apron tied around his waist.

Lance smiles and shakes off the question. "Sit," he says, spearing meat and laying it on some kind of potato on a big pewter serving dish that Chris doesn't remember buying but guesses must be his.

"Can I --"

"Sit."

Chris sits, and around the corner and down the short hall he can hear Lance humming under his breath and talking to himself or maybe at the saucepan, telling it not to burn just because he used water instead of wine. There's a salad already on the table and the Christmas lights Graciela hung up reflect off the glass. Chris can see his reflection in the inky void and he squints, trying to make out the expression on his face. His eyes dart up and Lance is standing behind him, no apron, arms full of food. Chris sees himself smile at Lance and Lance smiles back and Chris thinks it's the opposite of distance, maybe. It's presence. Nearness.

"Eat," Lance says, and Chris doesn't make a Tarzan joke because it's some kind of pork chop stuffed with something that smells divine. It tastes better. It tastes better than anything Chris has had in months, maybe years, and he feels heady and drunk but it's just Lance refilling his wine glass with Perrier.

"Okay, seriously," Chris says, enunciating very carefully because he thinks that his mouth is maybe numb from overstimulation. "What'd you do?"

"I watched Joey's show today."

"Joey made stuffed whatever-this-was on his show today?"

"No," Lance says. "Or, well, sort of. He made it with lamb, but you didn't have any lamb. And anyway I just, um. You know. Wanted to cook. Or do something. Or something."

"I was kidding about the no free rides thing," Chris says. "I mean, good food, good eats, good god don't let me stop you from cooking every night if you want, but you really. You don't, I don't expect." Chris closes his mouth. Sometimes that helps.

Lance swirls the sparkling water and it spins in eddies around the lime at bottom of the glass. "I know."

"Shit, Lance, it's nice having you here. You know."

Lance swallows the rest and smiles softly. "Thanks."

Chris rubs his belly and tries to remember the last time he ate like this. "You talked to Joe?"

Chris and Joey talk, more than Chris talks to any of the others outside of the last few weeks with Lance there. Joey and his two daughters, two different moms and no wife, two big houses and Joey in his own place square in the middle. Family and the Food Network and it's half cooking, half talk show and people love it. Joey makes his own rules, as usual, and makes it look so damn appealing that people's only question is how to make it work for them, too.

"Um," Lance says, but Chris knows already. Chris and Joey talk, but Lance and Joey do not, not really, not in a while. A long while. Lance says, "I was thinking, you know. Maybe I'd go down there for, um, the holidays. For Christmas."

"You planning to stand up Eddie Vedder?" Chris asks.

"No, I just. After that. After this weekend. You're gonna go see your mom, right, and I thought." Lance shakes his head, looking down at the table. Chris looks in the window and back at himself. Three weeks and he still hasn't asked and Lance hasn't told but Chris feels full and confident and like maybe he has something to say on the subject.

"Lance," he says. "You can't keep just showing up on people's doorsteps, you know. People you don't, I mean, people you don't even really talk to anymore."

"I know," Lance says, biting his lip. There's a streak of some reddish spice along his left eyebrow and when Lance touches his face reflexively it smears.

"You're not. What about Mississippi?"

Lance shakes his head, hard, like he's trying to break his own neck or something and Chris lays a hand on Lance's forearm. "I'm not, Chris, I can't, I can't go home. I. My mother."

Lance is thirty-three years old and he's run away from home, Chris realizes. He's run away and he's afraid his mom is gonna yell at him for not making things work with his little pissant of a boyfriend, Chris thinks, and then puts his hand to his mouth. Sometimes even when he's not talking out loud that helps.

"Come with me," he says instead. "I usually leave the morning after the party and, yeah, you should come. We can take your shiny new car if the weather holds."

Lance sighs. "Okay. Okay, yeah. Okay. And, uh."

"What."

"I didn't make dessert, I just realized."

"That's it," Chris says, and Lance's head pops up. "You're so fucking fired. I'm getting me a new houseboy tomorrow."

Lance pushes his plate to the center of the table. "Fuck off," he says amiably. "I'm a good deal and you know it."

 

So a guy walks into a bar, puts down his bags, has a drink, takes a look around, says he'll buy you dinner and makes himself at home. He stays for breakfast. He stays a while, but he doesn't get a free ride. He makes himself useful.

Three days to his party and Chris has forgotten how much work throwing a big shindig is, even with a staff and it's not like owning a bar isn't kind of like throwing a party every day. Even so. Even so, he's glad to have Lance around. It didn't take much staring at the TV and going to the mall and buying things that slowly filled the guest room closet for Lance to get bored, so he's been helping Chris plan things.

Chris comes downstairs, Hemingway on hold because the goddamn phone hasn't stopped ringing for two hours straight, and Lance is holding an order slip up in a delivery driver's face. "Do you see twenty-four cases here? Because, there are four stacks of five, so unless you've got four more in your truck, this is not twenty-four. This is twenty. Twenty."

"Lance --"

Lance puts one hand up in Chris' direction but doesn't look away. Chris really kind of hopes Lance is overcompensating for not having had any real work to do in a while. It's been a while since Chris was in LA but he remembers now that he didn't just leave because Justin went back, he left because it was hard to stay and not sound like that, too.

The driver shifts from foot to foot and finally mumbles. Lance leans forward with restrained intent and the guy says, "Lemme call and see if the other truck can bring the rest by today."

"Good," Lance says, turning around. "Hey," he smiles at Chris.

"You know, uh, usually Claude or one of the shift managers handles this kind of thing." Chris isn't sure he's read a packing slip since maybe his first month in Chicago, since he realized Claude really knew about a hundred more times about running a bar than Chris ever would. Jake had been the only one out of all the old friends who came calling for a piece of the action who Chris had liked to start out with. He asked for some cash down on this little bar in Chicago to bridge that city's old-school blues establishment and its impossible-to-kill indie rockers.

It was the kind of favor Chris liked having the means to accommodate. He did enough business with friends already and Jake got that, sent quarterly updates, never asked for a penny more and tried a couple of times to pay off the loan. But Justin had gone back and his knees were wrecked and Chris said, "It's good to have a backup plan," and offered to throw in another chunk of change if Jake ever wanted to try something more. Jake was happy with what he had.

"Claude had to go deal with the catering people," Lance says. "There's some, like, new strain of flu or something and half your waitstaff is out sick so he's hoping they can cover with extra folks." Lance shrugs. "How's it going up there?"

Chris shakes his head. "It's, it's fine. One of the managers is being a dipshit about dressing room space."

"You don't have a dressing room."

"Yeah, well, exactly. I told him his twelve-year-old wunderkind guitarist could have the walk-in freezer all to himself if he needed a place to jerk off."

Lance snorts. "Sometimes," he says. "It's like, sometimes, do they honestly think we haven't heard this before? I can't tell you how many times I had some girl walk into my office like she could get whatever role she'd set her pretty little heart on just by throwing some attitude."

"They have no idea," Chris says.

The driver comes back in from making his call and tells Lance the extra beer will be there by three. Lance manages to smile when he says thank you and Chris decides he's just glad to have the help. It's not LA but Lance is a quick study, he can maybe unlearn all that like he picked it up so quickly before.

Claude comes back ready to bash all twenty-four cases of beer over the head of the caterer and it's Lance who hmmms and huhhhs and leans across the bar and tells Claude they'll work it out. Chris goes back up to his desk, makes three calls and when the phone doesn't ring again right away, opens his book.

"Oh, I see how this works." Lance doesn't knock and Chris kicks his chair back and almost flips over. He slaps the book shut and tries not to feel guilty. "I'm pretty much just doing your job for you here. Or is Hemingway writing bar guides now?"

Chris rubs his shin where it connected with the desk top. "Hemingway's dead. But this one takes place in a bar. What's up?"

"So," Lance says, sitting down. "I figured out the staffing thing. I think."

"Okay." Claude really deals with all this stuff, but Chris thinks he said that already.

"Here's the deal. You can have eight of the waiters from your good pal Charlie's club for the night of the party if you'll loan him three bartenders tomorrow." Chris just stares at him. "What? It's a good trade. And, really, he's happy to do it, cause he's totally up shit creek otherwise. I could've gotten him to promise his first-born if I'd wanted. You get what you want, he gets what he wants, our problem is solved, call it a day. I'd say let's go have a martini at Lola's but, yeah, you know. A long way to drive for somethin' we don't drink anymore."

"We," Chris says, and when he tries to sit back he slams his left knee cap against the desk and curses under his breath. He looks up and Lance is leaning forward, one palm on his edge of the desk, waiting. Chris breathes in through his teeth and waves a hand to say he's okay. "You, you wanna go to this thing tonight? I have to go to this club in Lakeview and see this guy who runs the bar association and kiss his ass a little and, you know. It's a party thing."

"Sounds like LA," Lance says, and Chris thinks, twice in two minutes. "Only we'll have fun," Lance amends, and Chris nods.

They go to the thing in Lakeview and then to another thing in Lincoln Park because it's that time of year and everybody and his fucking cousin is throwing a holiday thing. Chris says, "This is Lance," and sometimes adds, "We were in this little band together," with a smile if he knows the person. One lady says it's great they're still friends after all this time. One guy looks from Chris to Lance and back to Chris and just says, "Who knew?" Chris does a pretty piss-poor imitation of the guy's bowlegged walk when he's gone but Lance laughs at his jokes like how JC always would. JC always laughed, and Lance would just raise an eyebrow and wait till later, then try to one-up him like they were a couple of comedy writers sitting around a sitcom set.

Lance finds two more guys willing to work Chris' party as long as they get the VIP area and Chris doesn't even want to know how that happened exactly. Everywhere they go, Lance asks for Coke or 7-Up or tonic and lime with an easy smile and Chris just drinks whatever Lance is having because if he thinks about it too much he remembers how some things are easier when you've had a few. Chris nods across the room when he's bored and Lance touches Chris' elbow softly when he's ready to go.

Two a.m. in Lance's Avanti because they drove in together that morning and Lance really is a quick study. He handles the curves like it's his own private road. Chris stares at the streetlight thirty yards out and then the next and the next until he almost feels drunk. He leans his cheek on the cool glass of the window and says, "So are we gonna talk about him? Like, ever?" Chris closes his eyes because he doesn't expect a reaction. Of all of them Lance always had the best poker face and Chris doesn't figure that all these years Lance spent making girls sign on the dotted line made him any worse at saying only what he wants.

"Well," Lance says, stretching the word.

Chris knows the only reason he ever beat Lance at poker was that he was more stubborn. He waits.

"I figure," Lance says after a few miles. "He got enough already. Enough time."

"Glad to see you didn't grow out of holding grudges," Chris says.

"I'm not. I'm -- how long did it take you?"

"To what," Chris says stubbornly.

When Lance finally looks away from the road it's with a cool, even stare.

"It took a little while," Chris admits.

Brake lights up ahead and Chris puts a foot down on the floormat. Lance slows with two quick taps to the pedal. "How long?"

Chris loosens his fists. "Fucking longer than it should have, okay?"

Lance pushes the heel of his hand up on the wheel and they glide around a row of flares in the damp street. There's mist on the windows and the lights from a police cruiser split and reflect like a kaleidoscope.

Lance breathes in through his nose, intense and loud even above the rebuilt engine. "That's probably more than enough, then," he says.

Chris closes his eyes again and the asphalt is a steady hum that shakes his bones and rattles his teeth but it's soothing, it's familiar, it's every road they took from here to there. Lance touches his shoulder when they're pulling into the garage and he comes awake, if he was asleep. Maybe he was just lost again. "Chris," Lance says, voice rumbling in the small car. Chris blinks and they sit until the garage light turns itself off. Lance dances on the brakes in a familiar rhythm and the crimson glow bounces like a strobe.

"Chris," he says again. "I don't, I don't think talking about him really. It doesn't help. Me. But." Lance rubs his own mouth and squints a little. He faces Chris and stares him straight in the eye. "I loved Justin for a really long time. I loved him after we'd, long after we'd kind of stopped knowing why we were still together. Okay? And it's, he's maybe not even really why I left. I don't know. That was maybe only part of it. I don't know, I'm not saying I have it all figured out. But I knew him for half my life and loved him for at least half of that and it's just. It's just enough."

Chris holds his breath. He isn't sure why, he isn't sure what is happening, but somehow he thinks breathing might interrupt it. So he holds his lungs tight and his arms still and tries not to swallow even when his throat burns. And then Lance opens his door, gets out and goes into the house. Chris gasps and shakes a little and hits his fist against the dashboard and, when he's done with that, locks the door behind him even though the car is plenty safe in the garage.

 

So a guy walks into a bar, puts down his bags, has a drink, takes a look around, says he'll buy you dinner and makes himself at home. He stays for breakfast. He stays a while, but he doesn't get a free ride. He makes himself useful, and he makes you think about things.

Chris thinks maybe it took him longer to get over Justin than he is used to admitting, even to himself. He doesn't think about it much, though, because holiday parties are a pain in the ass. Every year he forgets this until it's too late, and every year he swears it'll be the last time he thinks it's a good idea to have three hundred people pack into the bar and wait for some super-secret special guest to show up. He never remembers that, though, not when he can taste snow in the air for the first time after a broiling Chicago summer.

The day of the party, Chris wakes up at dawn. He goes downstairs and finds Lance leaning with one hand extended on one glass wall of the lake room. Standing there like that, shoulders full and strong, a long, clean line running from the cords in his neck down to where his hip peeks out between an old Popodyssey shirt and sweats, he looks like a young man again. Chris wonders when he started thinking of Lance as old. If Lance looks old, he must look positively statesmanlike. Or like a fucking dinosaur.

Thick carpet in the living room makes it impossible to hear someone coming up from behind. Chris fists a hand in his shirt and clears his throat. There's early morning sun glinting off Lance's steel green eyes and light reflected from the water below plays across his face and Chris clears his throat again. Lance's smile breaks like a wave and Chris can't help but wink back, no matter how tired he is, no matter how much his knees ache on cold, sunny mornings.

It's winter in the city of broad shoulders, and no matter that he's just remembered that the most important things, Lance only talks about once. It's been that way a long time, maybe ever since Joey sat at the end of a conference table with a clenched jaw, saying "this isn't just some girl, I can't ask her not to have it." It's not that Lance pretends the conversations never happened. He adjusts, changes, leans in instead of out. But once it's crossed his lips it's finished business. Its allotted disruption has expired, and so everyone else said congratulations, too, because that was what Lance had decided was the right answer. Chris thinks if he'd had that kind of emotional control after Justin he might have more to show for all the years after the best years of his life.

Lance smiles and Chris smiles back, he can feel the fiendish grin on his face, no matter what they've talked about. Lance says Justin's had enough time and Chris decides to believe him for now. "It's gonna be one long-ass day," Chris says.

Lance nods. "Maybe we should skip the run." Chris is pretty sure that Lance could run ten miles and make it till four a.m. without breathing hard but the same's not true for him. But Lance still insists on calling it a run and not taking el viejito out for some fresh air so Chris takes both as a gift and agrees. Somewhere between thirty and forty he learned there's a difference between pity and the kind of attention that comes wrapped in concern. Every evening they stand in the hallway and say goodnight and when Chris wakes up Lance is there, ready to run and eat and flirt with Graciela. It's been almost a month and then tomorrow morning they leave for Pennsylvania and his mom's. Justin's maybe gotten enough of them both.

Maxim bounds up and puts his paws on Lance's thighs, barking. "I gotta take them out," Chris says. "You want to eat downtown today?"

An hour into the party and Chris suspects he might be having something that resembles fun. Eddie Vedder and his wife are hidden away with Lance up in Chris' office. Lance says everything with a cool authority when he's at the bar, this professional voice that makes him want to be a star again because when Lance talks about it what he remembers most are all the good parts. Carey, the twelve-year-old who's actually really almost seventeen, he swears, is almost as cute as Justin had been at that age and hangs on every word Lance says.

Chris wonders if that's really how Justin used to look at him. "It's like you're the only one who speaks his language," JC said once, in exasperation because it was a day that Justin was driving everyone crazy. And Chris can't remember why, he has absolutely no idea what it was that Justin had done but he's never forgotten what JC said or how it never sounded like a compliment. Maybe that's why Chris remembers it so well.

There's a lot Chris doesn't let himself remember. Still, all that, how sometimes it's like having Lance around means that things he packed away a long time ago are on his fucking mantle or something, all that and still an hour into the party Chris is having something that feels a hell of a lot like fun. He circles through the main bar, the VIP balcony, over to his office with a quick nod at Lance to make sure things are going okay, and then back again. Everything's going okay with Lance.

Chris comes back down the stairs, really glad now that they'd gone for breakfast instead of working out because his knees are fucking killing him and, no, no quick shot of bourbon behind the bar to numb that, not doing that. Chris recognizes the back of Keith's head from twenty feet back and thinks, fuck. Fuck. Forgot the designated every other Thursday fuck and that doesn't mean anything, he's just been busy, but there's Keith and Chris remembers that he'd invited him way back when things seemed like maybe they'd be more than sometimes. He's on his way over to explain about the busy stuff and Claude grabs his elbow, wants him to talk with the opening act's manager.

When he doubles back a half-hour later, Keith is gone and Chris swears to himself he'll call when he gets back into town. He takes another swing upstairs and Eddie and the wife are sitting in a booth now, listening to the band, ignoring the spreading whispers when even the polite VIP types realize who he is and why he's there. Chris opens his office door and there's Lance. And Keith. Lance and Keith, talking, which is kind of weird but really shouldn't be, it's been a while but not forever since Lance met some guy Chris was sometimes fucking. Though back then it was mostly girls.

"Hello there," Chris says, and Keith stands. Lance is sitting behind the desk like it's an interview and Chris wonders what he asked, what he knows about Keith now.

Keith smiles widely and kisses Chris on the cheek. Over Keith's shoulder Chris can see Lance watching them. "I couldn't find you," Keith says, and Chris remembers that the second or maybe third time they'd hooked up he'd brought Keith back here for something to eat and they'd fucked on his office floor.

"Gotta press the flesh," Chris says. "You know how it is." Keith is a salesman, or was. Chris thinks he's some kind of vice president of something now, so he probably doesn't actually go door-to-door with a briefcase anymore. If he ever did. He doesn't actually know much of those kind of things about Keith, but then again he knows things like how Keith's sister, who'd been driving the car in the accident that put Keith in therapy, is lying in a coma in a long-term care facility in Skokie. So it's not like they don't know each other. Somewhere between thirty and forty Chris decided maybe the group ruined him for women but really no one's been an all-star contender in a while. Keith's not a bad guy.

"Yeah," Keith says. "Lance was telling me that things have been pretty nuts and that's why you'd been working out at home instead of coming in." Keith saying Lance's name so casual, like they've all been friends for years, is kind of funny and Chris laughs maybe a little too loudly because Lance's head pops up.

"I'm gonna go make sure everybody's behavin' themselves," Lance says, pushing back.

"Well, it's a party," Chris says. "So don't let them behave too well."

Keith says "real nice to meet you, Lance" like he's closed a deal, and they shake hands across Chris. Lance closes the door behind him.

"Hey," Chris says again, because Keith up close smells good, sweet cologne instead of post-workout sweat and soap. Not that he doesn't like that, too, but this is nice, somehow more grown-up and real and Chris puts his hand on Keith's bicep and kisses him. Keith is taller than Chris by a fair amount, and real broad through the chest. He pulls Chris to him and Chris lets himself fold into Keith's arms. Chris thinks he's spent so much time with Lance these past weeks, Lance who is taller but not much, still trim and curvy like he's been for years, that he's stopped feeling his size the way he does with Keith.

Keith breaks the kiss and touches Chris' jaw. He says, "I thought maybe you were blowing me off."

Chris swallows. "I was --"

"Busy," Keith says. "Yeah, your friend said."

It's a weird note for Keith to try for, this kind of jealous thing. Way out of range, Chris thinks. "You were on a first-name basis a few minutes ago."

"I didn't even think you guys were close," Keith says, sitting down again. Chris goes around the desk.

"We're. It's been a while," Chris says. "He and..." He stops when he realizes that he has no idea if Lance has told anyone else about Justin and the breakup, but if Keith thinks he has some idea of who's who after all these years, probably he doesn't need to know this. Chris doesn't cover his tracks, doesn't really care who knows who he sleeps with but then again it's been a while since he was on the cover of a magazine. Lance and Justin, Justin especially after the big movie came out, never went into retirement. "He's just visiting for a while."

"Okay," Keith says, evenly. "You want to have dinner next week?"

There's a break in the music downstairs and Chris glances at the clock, calculates how much longer before he can go home and ice his knee. "I can't, I'm --"

"Busy." Keith crosses his arms.

Chris looks at the photo of Dani on his desk. Dani and her three kids with her husband, this nice guy named Chad who isn't ever too busy for her. He doesn't have a tenth as much to do as he did those days and he's maybe still too busy for Keith. "We're going to my mom's tomorrow, for Christmas," he says, "so I'll probably still be gone."

"Okay," Keith says, rising, and Chris thinks, they never made a deal here, Keith shouldn't act like they've broken up, but he doesn't say it. "If you want, when you get back," Keith says, "call me. If you want." Chris just nods, and after ten minutes of reading and rereading the jacket copy to The Old Man and the Sea, there's a knock at the door.

"Yeah," he shouts over the din below, and Lance comes in.

"The guest of honor's almost up," Lance says, and Chris gets up. "I, um, I think Keith left, also."

"He's a busy guy," Chris says, taking off his suit jacket and hanging it on the back of his chair. "He sells things."

"Not very convincingly," Lance says, and smiles. "You ready for the slam-bang finish?"

Eddie's never really gotten over thinking Neil Young is his long-lost dad. So he and the band sing "Cowgirl in the Sand" and "Southern Man" and "Everybody Knows This is Nowhere" and then he calls Chris over for the encore. Chris pulls Lance up by the shoulder on his way to the stage and they share a mic for "Love the One You're With," hard and fast and rocking like Stephen Stills is there in spirit. Eddie's flying around the stage but Lance and Chris just sing right into each other's faces. Lance loops an arm around Chris' neck and it's been a long time since they did this but before that it was the best years of his life and he never really forgot what that felt like or stopped trying to get it back.

 

So a guy walks into a bar, puts down his bags, has a drink, takes a look around, says he'll buy you dinner and makes himself at home. He stays for breakfast. He stays a while, but he doesn't get a free ride. He makes himself useful, and he makes you think about things. He makes your life look different.

Lance has deemed the weather clear and dry enough that they can take the Avanti and they're on the road by one, which isn't bad at all given that they didn't get home from the bar until almost four in the morning.

"One thing I don't miss is the fucking hangovers," Chris says, and Lance hums in agreement. Chris wants to ask how long it's been for Lance, what hitting bottom looked like after so long on top and if he spent the whole night before wanting a drink, too. Chris thinks maybe Lance has more motivation to stay sober, something more than stubbornness. But he's not sure if Lance can talk about drinking without talking about Justin, so he doesn't say anything else, and neither does Lance, and the Indiana dunes rush by on their left. Lance digs in his shirt pocket for sunglasses and Chris leans over to hold the wheel steady.

"I got it," Lance says, when he's done, and Chris lets go. Whoever owned the car last put in a modern stereo, thank fucking goodness, so for the first leg, down through Chicago and around South Bend, Chris mostly plays DJ. It's not the quietest ride Chris has ever been on but Lance isn't really in a talkative mood, it seems, and Chris puts his head back and sleeps a little.

It's dark by five and Lance convinces him they're close enough, they should drive until they get there. They switch places in Toledo. Dinner somewhere before Cleveland at this Mexican place advertising free margaritas all night and Chris pulls in the lot before he realizes. They drink coffee and Chris takes the last stretch, too, because this is the part he knows.

"Did you ever drive cross country?" Lance asks lazily, at the crest of a hill. His head is propped on one of Chris' sweaters against the window and Chris looks away from the road for just a second.

"Other than the eight thousand fucking times we did it on tour, you mean?"

Lance chuckles. "Yeah, like, before that. Or after?"

"Yeah." Chris waits, for a second, and then he remembers that Lance doesn't ask unnecessary questions any more than he answers them. "Yeah, in, I don't know. I was twenty-one, twenty-two. I was in Florida, and me and this girl I was, I thought I was in love with, and her sister moved to San Francisco, so we went out to see her. We had to take her this, like, this fucking humongous African violet, I remember."

"Mmm," Lance says.

"Annie," Chris says. "That was her name." Chris looks over and Lance is smiling with his eyes closed and Chris thinks about how his mom told him once that when the girls were crying she'd vacuum the house because it made a noise like babies hear in the womb. Relaxing, oceanic, pre-natal and Chris thinks maybe that's what the road sounds like to them because of all those years.

"You've traveled a lot," Lance says, not a question. He opens one eye and looks over. "All the -- you've got all those pictures in your house. All those things, the masks and the rugs and everything."

"Yeah," Chris says.

"Where'd you go?"

Chris watches the center line disappear over and over and over like Morse code and remembers driving through Eastern Europe by himself in a little old Mercedes. "I went everywhere," he says, and Lance sits up a little, scrubs at his eyes.

"Everywhere where?"

"Everywhere everywhere," Chris says. "Around the world in eighty days. Maybe four years back? After the surgery. Too much fucking time on my back, you know? I was ready to gnaw my arm off from all the fucking self-awareness."

"You did it alone?"

"You know, I actually really loved traveling alone. I wasn't sure, you know, I'd never really, we all always went everywhere --"

"I meant." Lance coughs a little and then fiddles with the heater. "I meant, you know. Your knees."

"I paid a nice man with a medical degree," Chris says. "You think I'm really that crazy?"

"Sometimes," Lance says. "I was asking, who took care of you after?"

He takes care of himself, then and now, Chris thinks. It works better that way. "JC came for a while," he says. "The first couple weeks, when I couldn't tie my shoes or walk or whatever. I went to this specialist in New Mexico, so I was there with Jayce for a while, and then I went to Florida and Joey came by to make me dinner every few nights."

"I didn't even..."

"Yeah, I know," Chris says. "It's no big deal. I wasn't good company anyway."

Lance is quiet a while. "So that picture, on the fireplace? Of you at Machu Picchu. That's after that? You climbed all that after?"

Chris laughs and tries not to sound bitter. "No, man, no. That was before."

"Oh," Lance says. "Okay."

"That was the first time I decided Justin'd had enough," Chris says, and Lance says "oh" again softly. "I guess I just had a little trouble remembering it."

Rain that might soon be snow or at least sleet spatters on the windshield and Chris fumbles for the wipers. "Under, on the left," Lance says. Slick arcs across the glass and then Lance says, so quiet it's almost swallowed by the sounds of the car, "I forget sometimes, too."

 

So a guy walks into a bar, puts down his bags, has a drink, takes a look around, says he'll buy you dinner and makes himself at home. He stays for breakfast. He stays a while, but he doesn't get a free ride. He makes himself useful, and he makes you think about things. He makes your life look different, but he doesn't have all the answers.

Chris maybe forgot to tell his mom Lance was coming with him. Everyone's asleep when they get there and the note on the table just says, "The second guest room on the left is yours." His sisters and their boyfriends or husbands are in all the other rooms and Chris tiptoes back downstairs and whispers, "It's okay, I'll take the couch."

Lance says, "Don't be an idiot," and carries Chris' bag, too.

Chris changes while Lance is in the bathroom. He brought a long-sleeved t-shirt and pajama pants and his scars throb against the soft cotton, too many hours in too small a car with his knees pulled up like a bored little kid. Lance flips off the light, crawls in and fluffs his pillow once. "G'night," he says, rolling onto his side and away. Chris murmurs good night back.

Tomorrow they'll wake up and it will be Christmas Eve. There was some holiday party, nine, maybe ten years ago, all of them at Joey's house, or it could have been Justin's. There was too much eggnog and Lance had kissed Chris under some poor excuse for mistletoe they'd swiped from an MTV promo. Lance'd kissed Joey right before Chris and JC right after and then Lance and Justin made out all night. Chris honestly can't remember now if the kiss was any good or if he really wanted it to go any further.

And anyway it doesn't seem long after that when Lance was kissing Justin for real and the rest of them all started making plans for what a future without a group might look like. He can't remember how Lance kisses but he pulls the covers up around his shoulders and thinks to himself, don't be an idiot.

Chris sleeps tucked up in a little ball like a beetle. He always has. It's one of the few things he still blames his mom for. He'll never say that to her face and it's such a petty fucking thing to blame on a parent when plenty of kids have real reasons to be fucked up for life. But there's how he gets nervous when there's less than twenty bucks in his wallet and the way his first instinct is to lie when asked if he's already paid for something, and there's sleeping in a compact tiny package so everyone can fit. Otherwise they're just fine and the older he gets, the closer in age he and his mom seem.

Since the surgery he usually wakes up with one leg extended out of his little pod, because it doesn't matter how he goes to bed, he'll wake up how his body's trained. It came in handy for the bus, and when Justin's long feet would be poking out between the curtains and he'd get bumped every time someone walked by, Chris always silently apologized to his mom for being anything but grateful. In Chicago, he's got a king-sized bed to come home to every night, and no matter how sprawled he starts out, no matter if he's got someone else in there with him, he wakes up the same.

It's been a while since there's been someone with him, though, and when the alarm goes off in the morning he's not sure which is more confusing, the warm heat of a hand pressed against the middle of his back or that his alarm now sounds a hell of a lot like Lance's cell phone. Chris sits up straight and pokes Lance, who's kind of curled into a half-moon around Chris' body.

Lance doesn't stir, and Chris pokes him again, whispers hoarsely. "Lance. Wake up. Wake up."

Lance grumbles low in his throat.

"Phone," Chris whispers, tugging on the sleeve of Lance's t-shirt. "Your phone is gonna wake up my whole goddamned family, Lance."

"Why'nt you answer it then," Lance mumbles, rolling up and away and toward his bags.

"I'm not gonna answer your phone," Chris says. "What if it was, it's not, it's not my phone."

Lance sits down on the carpet next to his jacket and pulls the phone out of the pocket. He looks at the display and sighs heavily and Chris is really glad he didn't answer the phone, because, of course, of course. Justin is calling and Lance will go back and Chris has known this all along but it doesn't mean he wants to be the goddamned receptionist again. Chris pushes back the covers and stands next to the bed. "I'm just gonna --"

"It's my mom," Lance says, wearily, hand covering a yawn. He's wearing pale blue boxers and a white v-neck undershirt and Chris' toes are cold but Lance is always hot.

"Oh. Oh. I'm, still, I'm just gonna --" Chris starts toward the bathroom door and Lance grabs his ankle.

"I haven't," Lance says. "She doesn't know. 'Bout Justin, I didn't tell her." He sighs again. "Yet. I didn't tell her yet."

Chris looks down at where Lance has fingers looped around their tattoo. He crouches down so they're at eye-level. The phone rings again and Lance muffles it with his other hand, pressing it into the carpet. "Do you want me to stay?" Chris asks.

Lance looks like he catches himself wanting to say yes and so he shakes his head emphatically no. Chris stands back up and his left knee pops loudly. Lance lets go of his leg and Chris goes in to take a shower.

When he comes out, Lance has tucked in the covers but is gone. Chris finds him downstairs making pancakes with his mom and Emily, laughing and having a good old time. Chris feels old and grumpy, like Papa Bear. "Someone's been sitting in my chair," he says to Lance, catching his mom in a hug from behind. She turns in her arms and kisses him on the cheek, holding floured hands up and away from his shirt.

"This boy almost scared me to death, Christopher," she says, swatting at Lance's mixing bowl. "You think just cause you bought this house you don't have to give your old lady a heads up on how many people to expect for Christmas dinner?"

"Sorry," he says, leaning elbows on the counter. "Me and Lance failed Mama's Boy 101, didn't you get the note?"

"Bullshit," she says, and Lance just keeps pouring batter into dollar-sized drops on the griddle. "But you know it's okay anyway." She runs her hands under the sink, touches a finger to Chris' cheek. She smiles and Chris still doesn't take those for granted. "It's nice to see you, honey. You look good."

It's kind of like the old days again, because after the first few years when they were stranded in Europe together none of them had been able to live through a winter break without eventually making their way to somebody else's house. They usually went to Joey's or Lance's though, something in those happy, intact nuclear families serving as the bridge between what their lives looked like and what they'd all grown up seeing in the movies. This is kind of nice, having Lance there, because it's not like a new girlfriend or someone you gotta keep an eye on all the time to make sure the family's not eating her alive. Lance already knows everyone and he's telling movie star stories.

The house is full up all day with his sisters and their families and by noon Chris is ready to take a nap or run away, so it's just like old times. He sits in the big living room with Hemingway's short stories, back to those because The Old Man and the Sea was just a little vacation and not his favorite anyway. He opens the book for the first time in weeks and it falls to another story about Africa. A lot of these are about Africa and Chris spent twenty-four of his eighty days in Africa so he reads them closely, maybe trying to get something back.

This one is set in Kilimanjaro. He didn't go to Kilimanjaro because he was sick of standing at the base of mountains he knew he'd never climb, but he'd gone on safari in the Serengeti. Hemingway's got some writer dying of gangrene while his girlfriend shoots game and Chris reads most of the paragraphs twice to make sure he doesn't miss anything. The writer is rotting away and delirious and Chris remembers how for weeks the skin on his inner thigh looked like a raisin.

"What's that?" Lance says, perching on the broad ottoman next to Chris' feet. Chris holds up the spine so Lance can see and Lance looks thoughtful, like maybe he doesn't believe Chris is really doing this for fun, and not just to avoid work.

Chris goes back to his reading, and when Lance jabs his calf and says, "tell me a story," poking again and again, Chris sighs like it's a bother but then reads aloud, voice measured as if it's for TV: "It was not so much that he lied as that there was no truth to tell. He had his life and it was over and then he went on living it again with different people and more money, with the best of the same places, and some new ones."

"Oh," Lance says. "That's."

"Yeah," Chris says.

Lance stands up and settles into the chair next to Chris, stretches an arm out to touch Chris' armrest. "Read it again," he says, closing his eyes. Chris gets through three stories about bullfighters and game hunters and soldiers too shell-shocked to take out their fathers' cars and meet local girls before his sisters come back from the mall.

Nobody mentions Justin at dinner and Chris wonders if his mom said something, if Lance said something to his mom. He wonders what Lance's mom said on the phone that morning and when most everyone's packed into the living room watching It's a Wonderful Life, he asks.

Lance folds his hand on his chest and leans against the fridge. "Justin called her, so."

There's a burst of laughter and clapping from the other room and Chris looks back over his shoulder. He edges toward Lance and pushes up with his arms to sit on the counter so they're facing each other and he can get off his feet for a few minutes. "So..." Chris asks.

"So he told her it was just a fight and I told her he was full of it. And then she said I was overreacting and I hung up."

"Oh, Lance. You can't --"

"I called her back," Lance says. He rubs his own arms like he's cold and Chris shivers. This kitchen's always been drafty.

Chris waits. He doesn't know what to ask if Lance is so freaked out he's hanging up on his mom.

Lance says, "I -- it -- it really." He clenches his jaw and goes on in a rush. "I told her I walked in on him fucking some guy in our bed and. I didn't say 'fucking.' But."

"God," Chris says.

"No," Lance says. "The thing is. I -- I didn't care. It had been, really, I mean, it had been like a year since we'd been doing much more than just sharing space. So. And it's not like we both..."

"God," Chris says again.

"It was just the first time he did it like that, right there, where he knew I'd." Lance looks up and his eyes are bright but not quite mad, and Chris thinks, that's something. If he's not hurt or pissed about it, that's something. Chris isn't sure what, precisely, but he doesn't spend too much time wondering, because Lance says, "And, you know, I'd never really told her any of that and he's been this, like, I mean, she loves him and has forever, so that didn't really go all that well either but at least I didn't hang up. But I don't. I don't think she really gets it. All she really said at the end was that I had to tell her these things myself, and so I said I was here with you and she went to put in the turkey. She says hi, also."

"Hi," Chris says, weakly, and Lance is kicking his shoe into Chris' mom's polished tile floor and Chris thinks if he jumps off the counter now like he wants, he'll feel his kneecaps reverberating in his throat. Lance sniffs and Chris says, "Come here." Lance kind of shuffles over the few feet between them and when he's standing close enough, Chris puts his arms around Lance and hugs him long and tight. Lance stands there in the V of Chris' legs with his shoulders slumped and Chris says, "You know she loves you, come on."

Lance nods and his hair is in Chris' mouth. Chris tilts his neck and holds Lance like it can speed time, like if he doesn't let go they'll wake up in a year and all the ways this hurts will be kind of dull and faded.

Lance breathes out long and shuddering and then pulls back. "This isn't, I mean. This isn't really about him, you know. Right? It's not, really I left because I didn't care and maybe he wanted me to, maybe that's why he did it, but I didn't. I just didn't care about any of it anymore."

"Okay," Chris says, his hand still on Lance's bicep, like he might break the spell or something if he lets go for real. This is like Lance a million years ago when he would just walk in and sit down and say he was homesick again, when he trusted the four of them with the secret he was sure even a mama's boy's mom couldn't handle.

"I'm sorry," Lance says, waving a hand around and then letting it fall on the counter next to Chris' leg. "I'm fucking maudlin and it's Christmas and --"

Chris leans in and whispers, "You know I've always hated Christmas," and Lance smiles a teensy, weensy bit. "It's so full of expectations you can never meet. Just don't tell my mom, cause she still likes to make a big deal of it and everything. Cause of, you know, when she couldn't."

The lines around Lance's mouth crinkle and he kind of laughs into Chris' neck, hugs him again gratefully. "Somebody's got to tell her these things, you know."

"We could have, like, a trade association," Chris says.

"The mama's boy exchange."

"It's like a club."

"You can be the vice-president," Lance says, and Chris shoves him back, and then Chris' mom walks in talking about hot toddys and Lance is flushed and says, "Ask your son, the bartender. I'm out of the business."

They go up to bed before midnight because they know all the little ones will be running through the halls screaming about new toys as soon as it's light out. Chris is almost asleep when Lance says, quietly, "Thank you, for this. For bringing me."

"Yeah," Chris says, his back to Lance. "And. I swear, I thought I'd told her."

"I know," Lance says.

 

So a guy walks into a bar, puts down his bags, has a drink, takes a look around, says he'll buy you dinner and makes himself at home. He stays for breakfast. He stays a while, but he doesn't get a free ride. He makes himself useful, and he makes you think about things. He makes your life look different, but he doesn't have all the answers. He fits into your life.

The day after Christmas, Chris decides they should go to Florida and visit Joey. "All that's waiting back in Chicago is more fucking gray skies," he says, and Lance smiles and lets Taylor's baby boy draw bright blue swirls up his arm with a marker. Really it's about momentum, Chris thinks. He thinks they need to keep moving while they can and then he thinks he's being an idiot again.

They take I-95 down the coast and spend one night in Charleston. The suite is spacious and on the top floor of the hotel. Lance decides both of those things are necessary and has his Amex out before Chris can say anything. When Chris wakes up at six in the morning to take a leak he thinks for a minute they've got to rest up for a show or something. Lance's door to the living room is open and Chris watches the early morning news on mute, reading misspelled closed captioning.

It's after dark by the time they roll into town, because it may still be warm this time of year in Florida but they can't really avoid the axis of the earth entirely. Chris called Joey before they left and this time he knows he said that Lance was coming, too, because Joey asked him three times if he'd heard wrong. Chris finally said, "Look, they broke up, ask him yourself," and hung up. The moon is hanging over the skyline like a fucking establishing shot on MTV and suddenly it's all wrong, it's not where they should be at all.

They should have gone to Tanzania if they were looking to get away for a while. They could have gone and laid in the sun on a boat in the Aegean Sea with JC and it wouldn't have been as cloaked in memory. Decades, centuries, it seems, of driving around Orlando with the windows open, talking endless bullshit about how famous they'd be, Chris and whoever was in on the plan that week, MGD in a styrofoam cooler on the floor of the backseat and Led Zep on the radio. Except it wasn't bullshit, and it wasn't anything like what he'd thought. It wasn't even with who he'd thought it would be and still he wouldn't change a goddamned minute of those centuries, not even if they'd give him back his knees and all the years after the best years of his life. Not even if he got it all back intact. Not even then.

Lance has one hand out the window as they glide through town. They're early and Chris knows how to get to Joey's but Lance doesn't seem to be in any hurry. Chris guesses if he hadn't talked to his once-best friend in so long he might not rush it, either. Chris had spent a month in LA after Justin went back trying to figure out how to have that first awkward conversation, until he decided he'd rather drive hot nails into his kneecaps than watch Justin curl up to Lance like those three months had just been in Chris' head.

"When's the last time you were here?" he asks Lance.

Lance turns down the radio, because "you don't drive down the street in Orlando with a CD on, for chrissakes," Chris had said.

"Business," Lance shrugs. "I don't know. The last couple times I don't even think I spent the night, just went up to New York or back to LA the same night. We went out to Johnny's a couple years back when he was. Recovering."

"They think they got it all this time," Chris says, and Lance nods. His dark hair is feathered back from the breeze and for the first time Chris misses the incessant blondification those two insisted on long after Lou could dictate their hair color.

Chris has to tell Lance how to get to Joey's house and that's kind of a weird moment for both of them. But then they're there and the guard waves them in. Joey's standing in the driveway when they pull up and he whistles at the Avanti and says, "Jesus, Lance. Bout time you got a real car." Lance blushes like he always did when Joey said something manly and sweet all at once and Chris is slow getting out, ties his shoe and takes off his jacket. When he looks up Lance and Joey are still hugging. Joey claps twice on Lance's back and finally lets go. "You guys hungry?" Joey asks.

Joey's kitchen is huge, for the cameras, he says, from before he got the new show and the bigger set. "I hated having to keep the girls away so they didn't lick one of the cords or something," Joey says. Everywhere there are pictures of his girls, the girls and their moms, almost in pairs like he counted to be sure there were the same number of each. Chris thinks he probably did. "There's gotta be a way to make this work," Joey said after Melissa, the younger girl's mom, told him she was pregnant. Audrey is almost five now.

Five years and a stupid fight because Melissa wanted her cousin to be the godfather and Lance and Joey are best friends again in a matter of seconds. All these years of missing Justin and Chris gets lost in those naked moments, those minutes when he watched Justin sleeping in the big hotel room, skin smooth and tight across his ribs. Wrinkling his nose at the suggestion that they get out of LA for a while, just the two of them, grabbing Chris and tugging on his dick and saying, "What could you do to me there that you can't do here?" Three months in a Beverly Hills hotel and Chris has spent so long obsessing over a handful of moments that he's practically rewritten the time before that, the decade they spent attached at the hip and content to be fucking anyone but each other.

"What we oughta do is have a party," Chris announces. "Big motherfucking blow-out, you know? Invite anyone who's still around, put on some old albums. It'll be like a high school reunion. We can see who got married and who got fat. I heard Nick and his wife split up. Again. So, that could be amusing right there."

Lance stiffens and Joey puts his hands around his big, soft belly. "Yeah, or not," Joey says, looking at Lance and then back to Chris with a glare. Chris thinks Justin would've laughed.

"He's just wired from being cooped up in the car for so long," Lance says quietly.

Chris crosses his arms. "I'm not a five-year-old, Lance. Also I'm standing right here."

Joey shrugs and says, "It used to work." It's too warm in Joey's house and everybody's tense and they used to be so goddamned good at this they never even noticed it was such work.

Lance says, "I don't think I'm really ready for the engraved divorce announcement, okay?" He looks at Chris and Chris nods, looks down. Lance used to be his friend, too. After they were supposed to all try going their separate ways, before the first split, Lance would meet Justin and Chris at the golf course and they'd all have dinner. Dinner and same old same old and it's not like Chris was waiting for things to fall apart. He was just there the first time Lance wanted too much, wanted Justin to have grown out of needing a girl at every premiere. Back when Justin still said no to Lance and he showed up at Chris' hotel with a hard, fierce smile and pushed Chris against the wall. Chris stopped him once, just once, and Justin said, "you've always wanted this." Chris didn't actually think that was true but he couldn't really deny that he did want it then. Three months and Lance called and Justin came, came out and told anyone who'd listen that Lance was the love of his life.

"Okay," Joey says. "Seriously? There is some bad-ass salmon with artichoke marinade out on the grill if you all are hungry."

"Fancy pants," Chris says, and when Lance looks up Chris winks at him because all these years and Lance should know that means he's sorry.

"You think I can just make spaghetti and meatballs on national TV every night and no one would call in a complaint?" Joey asks.

"So pretty much you go to culinary school for, what, like, a week?" Chris says. "And then we're just your guinea pigs for life."

Joey throws an arm around Chris' shoulders. "Come see what I did with the yard since the last time you were here, dude."

Dinner and they sit through a half hour of videos of the girls before Lance kindly points out that they'll see them in the flesh the next day. Chris comes back from the bathroom and Joey's got a hand up on Lance's neck, elbow on the back of the couch. Joey says, "Pete is a crappy godfather, man. I, I shouldn't've."

"Nah, it's okay," Lance says. "Audrey's got two folks, you can't win all of 'em. And anyway who's the one who hasn't done more than send birthday and Christmas gifts in five years to the goddaughter he does have?"

"She's gonna be so psyched to see you. Really."

"Yeah," Lance says, and Joey squeezes his neck. Chris waits a beat and plops on the sofa beside Lance, slaps Lance's knee. "Uncle Laaaaaaaance," he squeaks.

Lance shakes his head. "You're just jealous."

"Bet your ass," Chris says.

The next morning Lance says he's going to Johnny's and "this one I kinda gotta do on my own, guys, but thanks." Chris doesn't really know what that's about and just shrugs when Joey asks him.

"Lotta stuff Lance doesn't say to me," Chris admits. "I try not to let a bad breakup get in the way of riding someone's ass, though, so it's working out okay."

"He seems..." Joey stops. "He seems kind of okay about that part."

Chris bites his lip. "You talked to him about it?"

"Not really. A little. He said it'd been over for a while."

"Yeah." Chris debates telling Joey the rest. Or, well, the rest that he knows, anyway. He swears they used to have some kind of game plan for this shit, some rules for what was secret-secret and what was okay for the guys but no one else, and what was okay to turn into a tall tale to be told over and over on talk shows. There used to be rules, he's sure, rules and regulations and codes and covenants like zoning laws that mapped out their lives.

Now he just picks at his nails and hopes Joey will flat-out ask him, because they never lie. Not to each other, not even by omission, not even when they never quite told the truth to the rest of the world. "You know the rest of it?" Joey finally asks, so Chris tells him what Lance had said to Diane.

Joey whistles out low between his teeth. "I guess he's just more together than he used to be," Joey says, "cause he doesn't seem too broken to me. And, Jesus, if anyone knows what he's going through." Joey looks at Chris and Chris looks back and for a second it's serious, it's almost profound, but then it degenerates into this crazy staring contest. He and Joey don't really do profound except by accident.

Chris counts in his head and four minutes and thirty-eight seconds later Joey blinks and throws up his hands in frustration. "When the fuck did you get so fucking patient, man?"

"Six months flat on my back, buddy boy. It was either that or write Profiles in Courage, but, you know."

There's a hand on Chris' shoulder from behind and when he tilts his head back, Lance is smiling down at him, furrowed brow loosening like undone laces. "But you, old man," Lance says, "are no Jack Kennedy."

They go out to dinner, a nice place where Joey knows the chef and they get things not yet on the menu. More bullshitting and Chris sleeps lightly and frantically, like his body is desperately trying to milk relief from the off-time but can't ever slow down enough to appreciate it. He opens his eyes for the fiftieth time and Lance is at the foot of the bed, even after he blinks twice to make sure.

"What time is it?" Chris asks, because it's what he always says when there's no good way to ask what someone's doing in your room in the middle of the night. It's still dark. It's still the middle of the night, and there's Lance in his room.

"Five thirty," Lance says. He's wearing white boxers and a green t-shirt that says VIP on it in big movie marquee type.

Chris pushes himself up against the headboard and fumbles on the nightstand for his glasses. Once they're on he can see that Lance is stretching out a hand and in the hand is a cordless phone. His brain is still stringing pieces of information together in a fucked-up sequence and not really trying to make sense of the order or relevance. "What," he says.

"Somebody needs to buy the boy a watch set to one of our time zones," Lance says, putting the phone in Chris' hands. "It's C, man. Say something."

Chris brings the phone to his mouth. "What the fuck, dude, it's like the crack of dawn here." He licks his teeth and squeezes his eyes shut. Lance starts to walk away and Chris reaches out and snags Lance's wrist in a loop, shaking his head. "Stay," he mouths, and Lance stares at him. Chris rolls his eyes and points at the phone, covering the mouthpiece. "I can't be held accountable for shit I say when I'm not awake yet, okay?" Lance sits on the edge of the bed.

"Were you sleeping?" JC asks. Chris can't really remember the first time he saw one of those pin drop commercials but he knows it didn't used to be quite so true. There's no crackle at all.

"Yes, JC, I was sleeping," he says.

"What were you dreaming about?" JC asks, and Chris laughs and kind of leans his forehead into Lance's back. Lance turns his head and smiles sleepily.

"You, baby," Chris says. "I always dream about you, you know that." JC chuckles from the next room or five thousand miles away and Chris misses him like a fever. "Please tell me you're lying on some yacht naked right now or I might have to hang up in disappointment." Chris has a hand on Lance's back and he can feel the seismic shift of Lance's laugh before he hears it.

"Is Lance okay?"

Chris puts his hand on Lance's shoulder and squeezes. "Lance is right here," he says. "You talk to Joe yet or does he get to sleep in?"

"I'm talking to you. I can't tell, without. Without seeing him. Because, I mean. Man, it's, eight years, it's forever and they were the ones who were supposed to be, you know. Happy."

"You're happy," Chris says. He watches his hands draw little circles on Lance's warm back and wonders how many mornings they all spent like this, fits and starts of getting ready and cleaning up messes from the night before, wrapped up in each other for comfort or strength or distraction. He'd told Dani to live the life she deserved with JC's hair slipping between his fingers, sitting in the lounge on the bus between one city and another where he'd meet a thousand girls who couldn't light up a closet in comparison to the kind of woman she was. He'd hung up the phone and JC'd leaned his cheek into Chris' thigh and they'd sat like that until the next truck stop. He can't remember if he cried.

JC is quiet and finally Chris says it again, as a question. He doesn't want to know but he kind of has to. They don't lie to each other, not even by omission.

"I'm starting to dream in Italian," JC says. "And then I wake up and I forget how to think in English for hours at a time. It's wild."

Chris sighs. "Jayce." He rubs a hand up and down Lance's arm from behind and says, "He's okay, really." He would really, really kill for a strong cup of coffee and a real night's sleep and the chance to run his hands through JC's hair for hours on end.

"I just," JC says. "I knew that wouldn't be my kind of happy, what they had, there in the middle of it. I had to go so far away, and you're all on the wrong side of the day, and I wanted to think it could work there. For them. Like that."

Lance leans back against Chris' chest and pulls Chris' arm tight across his own body. "Yeah," Chris says. "I know you did, honey. I know."

Someone yells in Italian on the other end and JC laughs like the hook to a pop song, looping in Chris' head and he knows it will be days before he forgets the sound. "Okay, andiamo!" JC yells back. "Listen, we're, we have to go. Tell Joey to call me when the girls are there. Audrey can count to a hundred in Italian now, you should hear it, it's amazing. And, Chris, Chris -- make sure he stays okay, for me, right?"

Chris rests his chin on Lance's shoulder. "Not just for you," he says, and JC hangs up without saying goodbye. Chris drops the phone to the bed and there's Lance all in his arms, warm and smelling minty fresh and it's been a long time. It's been years and Chris had almost forgotten. JC's laugh is still in his head and coffee would be good for connecting words to meaning and not just in order, and he says into Lance's neck, "When did you brush your teeth?"

Lance's shoulders lift and fall. "He talked about this painting he sold for, like, ten minutes. He wasn't really letting me get a word in until he asked to talk to Justin. Also Joey used a lot of garlic on that steak."

"He thinks you're not really okay," Chris says, and Lance's hand slides over his own.

"Did y'all take a vote or something?" Lance says.

Chris pushes his knuckles up so they're kind of holding hands. "Joey thinks either you're doing the acting job of your life or you're okay."

"So what's it gonna be, tiebreaker?" Lance's voice is so low and it's really been so long and through the heavy curtains it's still pitch-black dark outside.

"I think..." Chris doesn't really think yet, not this early. Lance rubs his thumb against Chris' palm, back and forth like he's pacing. "I think you've always gotten what you wanted, and you want to be okay, and so you will be."

Lance is quiet a long while and Chris rests his cheek against Lance's back, closing his eyes and breathing steadily. "Are you even awake yet?" Lance asks, pinching skin on the back of Chris' hand, and Chris untangles himself and flops back on the bed. Lance stands up.

"Not really," Chris says. He's cold without Lance there and he rolls around until blankets cover most of his body.

Lance plucks the glasses from Chris' face, takes the phone and walks to the door. "Go back to sleep," he says.

Chris crashes until noon and when he wakes up this time it's because Joey spits water in his face. "What the --" Chris says, and stops because both the girls are peeking around Joey's back. He wipes his face with his sleeve. "This what you call setting a good example, dad?"

"You want them to learn it wrong?" Joey asks, and Brianna and Audrey giggle, come out from behind Joey. Joey looks down at them. "Don't listen to him, anyway. That's how he used to wake up Uncle JC. Where'd you think I learned it from?"