Lonely Hearts (32 page)

It was, to put it mildly, a fucking fabulous performance. It was fun and felt edgy without being controversial at all for an LGBT event. College kids in drag, grinding on each other and singing RuPaul. Who cared? A bit of harmless, topical fun.

And
yet
.

Not everyone in the audience felt that way. Yes, the room was full of liberals, but they were older, rich liberals, and only a handful were LGBT themselves. This wasn't the polite, polished,
poor little gay homeless kids
sanitized rainbow they'd signed up for. Certainly no one had ordered up Damien and Marius making an obscene drag-queen sandwich out of Baz as he fanned himself in faux-overstimulation. Nobody asked for Marius to fluff his breasts proudly as he bellowed the bass line.

The best part, though, was the way Baz sang right to his mother during “Sissy That Walk”. Delivering the line about only caring about the opinions of people who pay your bills—which, technically, was Gloria. Baz sang the line right at her, as if to say,
Go ahead. Cut me off and see if I care.

When he sang the line about his pussy being on fire—using the word, not muffling it or bleeping it out—he looked Gloria in the eye, grabbed his crotch and told her to kiss the flame.

Elijah laughed. And clapped, and whooped, and catcalled his heart out.

As the last note rang, the stage full of performers struck a pose, lifted their chins and basked in their applause. It was decidedly choppy—some tables, like Elijah's, whistled and shouted their approval. Some clapped more quietly, and a few individuals looked decidedly strained. Gloria Barnett Acker was one of them.

Baz took the microphone, out of breath and smiling.

“We're so proud to be here tonight, raising money for the LGBT youth of the Twin Cities. Saint Timothy was given a stipend to bring us here, but we wanted you to know every penny is going directly to Avenues for Homeless Youth and the Halcyon Center, and after passing a hat around the music building, we'll be adding a not entirely insignificant additional donation of our own.”

He paused for applause. Two figures moved out front to stand at the edge of the stage and watch: Ed and Laurie. When Baz spoke next, his smile had faded, his expression serious.

“The truth is, ladies and gentlemen, tonight in this very metropolitan area, possibly in the alley behind this building, young men and women not yet old enough to vote, maybe not even drive a car, are homeless and alone. Some were kicked out of their homes because they're gay. Some left because it was too dangerous to stay. Some will find help at the community organizations you're supporting tonight. Some won't, because there are sadly more LGBT homeless youth than there are people willing to help. Some aren't homeless but living in a different, equally awful kind of hell.”

He indicated the line of Salvo and Ambassador members behind him. “We're asking you to do more than write a check. Volunteer at your local centers. Give your time as well as your money. If you have space in your home, become a host home for Avenues and foster some of these youth, to show them love and acceptance in person. If you're a member of a faith organization, ask them if they're doing as much for the homeless youth of Minnesota and Illinois and Wisconsin and Iowa as they are for people hungry in faraway lands.”

His gaze flashed like the flicker of a candle toward Elijah. “A lot of us know firsthand how difficult it is to grow up gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender. We know what it's like to fear simply being yourself, to know that can be not only scary but dangerous. Life can be hard, and lonely, and cruel. But what we've learned by singing together, by being together, is when we face adversity
together
, we can overcome almost anything. You don't have to put on drag and sing and dance to make a difference. You only have to open your hearts.”

Replacing the mic, Baz stepped back into the line of performers. He hadn't given them a clear indication he was done, and before they could fumble around to applause, the soft note of a pitch pipe cut through the silence. Damien, standing next to Baz, counted out quietly, “One, two, three, four.”

The tenors and altos began to sing a chord, the goofy
deh, deh, deh, deh
they used to make background notes. Aaron riffed over the top of it, a lot of
yeahs
and
hey-ey
noises before launching into the first verse. Elijah recognized it right away because it was the only song of Baz's favorite artist, Maino, that Elijah liked: “All The Above”. It was kind of a half rap, half R&B, with a guy singing falsetto between Maino rapping about surviving. How he'd been through pain and sorrow, how he'd experienced loss, been covered with scars, but he made it. He gave thanks for his struggles because they defined him.

The song as it was recorded on the album had always given Elijah a slight thrill and a shiver of hope, but when he sat in the front of a rainbow room watching his boyfriend rap in drag about how no matter what happened to him, he would keep going, he would survive—Elijah was moved to his soul.

It was more than an emotional moment. It was a
connection
. It was the song of anyone who had made it, who had been through hell and out the other side again. It was
Elijah
. And Baz, and Aaron, and Giles, and Lejla…it was everyone.

I'm not outside. I'm inside. I'm included in that “all the above”. I don't have to be on that stage singing with them. I am with them. I am them.

I belong.

I'm home.

Elijah cried silently, wiping his tears away as discreetly as he could so he could keep watching. So he could see his boyfriend singing to him. Looking right at him, belting out that song for Elijah. For anyone who had survived, who was still working on getting through to the other side.

When they finished, this time the room erupted. Walter and Kelly rose to their feet, whooping and calling out, and Elijah joined the chorus of joy. When Baz led the performers off the stage and into the audience, Elijah went into his lover's embrace with his heart glowing hot and full inside him.

He laughed when Baz pressed Elijah's face into his cleavage.

Walter and Kelly joined them, and Walter grabbed Baz's head and kissed the side of his wig roughly. “One hell of a speech, Acker. Out of the fucking park.”

Baz wrapped his arms around Elijah's waist and swayed lightly as dance music began to filter through the speakers. “It started as me trying to get back at my mom. To show her up.” He glanced at the room, his expression serious again. “Then I realized she didn't matter. Because all I could think was someone else's Elijah is out on the streets tonight. Someone's Aaron. Somewhere someone is getting smashed with a bat and they won't have a rich uncle to find them super surgeons. All I cared about was driving the point home.” He glanced at Elijah, eyes naked and squinting, his emotions bared for the world in the dim ballroom light. “I hope I did okay.”

Elijah held Baz's face in his hands, stared into those beautiful, fragile brown eyes. Saw the heart shining through them—Baz's huge, beautiful, perfect heart. “You were wonderful. You're always wonderful.”

Baz smiled at him, a bright, boyish beam firing straight into Elijah's soul. Out of the corner of his eye he could see reporters coming their way, and Gloria's staff, and half the goddamned event. Ignoring them all, Baz kissed Elijah. Right there in the middle of the charity ballroom, in full drag, while flashes popped around them.

Focus group that, bitches,
Elijah thought, and kissed him back with everything he had.

Epilogue

Sebastian Percival Acker graduated in a small mid-year ceremony on the sixteenth of December. It didn't have the full pomp and circumstance of a May graduation, but that was okay with him. His friends were there, and Damien's fiancée, who was graduating too. His favorite professors were all in attendance, as well as Ed and Laurie.

His family came too. His mom and dad were there in the front row, cheering and clapping, and afterward they hugged him, told him they were proud. Then his mom pulled him aside and dropped a bombshell.

“I told the Governor to remove my name from consideration for your uncle's senate seat.”

Baz did a double take. “You—
what
? Mom,
why
?” He took a good look at her face and got a bad feeling. “Do not say it's because of me. I know you were mad about the Burnsville event—”

She held up a hand to stop him as she shook her head. “It's true, at first I was annoyed with you for the drag stunt. It wasn't part of my plan or my vision, and I was sure you'd done it to get back at me. And then I started getting phone calls. Lots and lots of phone calls, and emails. People from all over the country, the
world
, saying they saw the viral video that university reporter posted of your performance and your speech. Telling me how they were taking action in their cities and states and countries. I can't go anywhere now without someone telling me what a good job I did, what a wonderful cause I've championed.” She clasped his hands in hers, and her eyes got damp behind her eighty-dollar mascara. “But it wasn't me who made that happen. That was you. You and your friends, but mostly you, Sebastian. You and your great big heart.”

His great big heart swelled in his chest. “But why in the world is it making you quit?”

“Because while I did care about the charities the event served, I was mostly thinking of myself. I wasn't appointed to anything yet, and this was how my career was beginning. I'd told myself all these grand stories of how I'd be a better politician than my brother, than anyone else in Washington—and I failed before I arrived.” She wiped at her eyes with a handkerchief Baz's dad passed her. “It made me open my eyes and reexamine everything, including admitting how much I'd already become part of the machine. I was never going to make the kind of difference I wanted. I was going to be exactly what the right-wing blogs said: a pawn to my brother and the party. That's not the career I want. I'm making the announcement tomorrow I'm withdrawing my name to focus on my family.”

Baz rolled his eyes. “They're going to think you got caught having an affair.”

Gloria pursed her lips. “It's true. I've been focused on my own ambitions and my drive to live up to the Barnett name. I need to shift my priorities.”

Baz would believe his mother would stay home and bake cookies and rub his dad's feet after a long day of work when hell froze over. Though his parents were in the same room, touching each other without a camera aimed on them. Would they be June and Ward Cleaver? No. Could they be something else, though?

He had found happily ever after. Who knows. Maybe they could too.

Sean Acker squeezed Baz's good shoulder. “We're going to stay in town for Christmas at the Barrington Hills house. Will you come?”

“No Christmas parties,” his mom said. “I promise. So you can bring Elijah.”

Baz ran a hand through his hair nervously.
Still politicking me. Yep, this is my family all right.
“We'll come, sure. But I'll be bringing a fiancé, not a boyfriend.”

He'd hoped they'd be excited for him, but it was still a relief to watch their faces light up, to hear his mother squeal, a splashy society wedding exploding in her imagination. “That's
wonderful
. Have you already asked him? How did you do it? Please tell me someone took video.”

“I haven't asked yet, no, and it's not going to be videotaped. I was going to take him out to the lake sometime. He wouldn't want anything big and flashy for a proposal, and no audience. We've talked about it, though—not in so many words, but we've made it clear we're permanent, and pretty much our friends are tired of waiting for an announcement.” Everyone except Aaron and Giles, who grumbled about why were people in such a damn rush to get married.

“All right. But I expect the two of you to do karaoke at our New Year's gala.”

He laughed and kissed her cheek. “Sure thing.”

She kissed him back and told him to call her the moment the engagement was official. And she promised
she
would be answering her phone, not an assistant.

They went home to Chicago, and Baz launched himself into his last days with his Ambassador brothers. He understood now they wouldn't be the last moments at all—the last
official
moments, yes, but he'd be jamming with Ambassadors past and present for the rest of his life. He wasn't moving out of the White House, though he would continue to have a daily commute into Saint Paul to volunteer at Halcyon. He'd met with Oliver Thompson, who had also heard about Baz's gala speech, and was impressed. There were good odds Baz would have a legitimate position at Thompson's charitable foundation before the summer.

The Christmas With Timothy concerts, which came after graduation, were rough. The last one on Sunday was mostly him choking his way through the notes.

It was okay, though. It was bittersweet, but it was still sweet. One part of his life was ending, and another part beginning. As he squeezed Elijah's hand before disappearing with the Ambassadors to sing “Goodbye, Cruel World” and receive his sending home, he reminded himself he wouldn't be facing this next chapter alone.

He was still wiped as fuck when he trekked home with Elijah to the White House. Somehow they ended up trudging through the snow just the two of them. It felt right to finish it with only Elijah by his side. If he weren't so tired, he'd suggest they go out to the lake so he could relieve himself of the ring he kept carrying around in his pocket.

“You doing okay?” Elijah asked as they rounded the corner to their street.

Baz nodded, pulling him closer. “Yeah. Endings are hard, but important. You have to have an end, so you can have another beginning.”

“You should put that on a pillow.”

Baz tweaked his nose. “I'll go on CafePress and put it on a mug. With me grinning at you beside it. You can drink out of it while you finish your memoir.” Fuck, he was totally doing that and rushing it for Christmas.

Elijah punched him lightly in the stomach, but when they stepped onto the porch of the darkened house, Elijah gave Baz a grin, making him look like a cat with a canary in his claws. “You know, I figured something out the other day.”

Baz was down for some nails in his back. “What's that?”

“I always make fun of Kelly and Walter for their sappy Mickey Mouse-company moments.” Elijah opened the door to the house, pausing with his hand on the light. “Then I realized. Studio Ghibli is based in Japan, but in the United States it's distributed by Disney.”

He flipped on the light and revealed a living room full of Salvo, Ambassadors, Walter, Kelly, Marius, Damien, Brian—basically everybody.

Damien hummed a note, and they started to sing.

Soft and slow, and after a few bars, Baz recognized the tune as “Paradise” by Coldplay. Even Walter and Kelly sang. In the corner, Susan Meeks had her camera rolling, and she was nothing but grin.

As Elijah led Baz to a chair and took off his glasses, Brian flipped the lights to a muted version of the one they'd used for the LGBT event and the singers hit the first verse. The opening had been rewritten to something similar but notably different than what Coldplay sang.

“When you were just a boy, you lost hold of your joy.”

The rest of the verse was the same, mostly—they sang at Baz how he couldn't reach happiness, so he'd dreamed of it instead. The second verse, though, departed from the original entirely.

“Then you met another boy, who also lost hold of his joy. But he didn't know how to dream, so he hid away in the streets. He had no paradise.”

Baz's breath caught, and he blinked as Elijah stood in front of him, looking a little nervous. He hadn't sung with them yet, but after the series of
la-la-la
s, he sang along with the others, exchanging their “him” for “me”.

“You showed me how to escape the lonely nights. You say, ‘Hold on, hold on, I know together we will rise.'”

Baz gave up, letting the tears well up as Elijah sang to him—words Baz knew his boyfriend had rewritten. Lyrics cheesy as
hell
. So fucking perfect, zinging right into Baz's heart.

“You taught me paradise.”

By the time the song finished, Baz was weeping like an idiot.

Elijah had got on his knees. With a ring, and as the last note rang away, he popped the question. “Sebastian Percival Acker, will you marry me?”

“
Yes
, you jerk. I was
going
to ask you tomorrow at the lake,” he said, his voice breaking, partly on a sob, partly on a laugh.

“I know, but it wouldn't have been right for
you
. You want a little bit of show. And yeah, maybe I like it quieter, but when you're part of the performance, I don't mind the stage.” Elijah kissed away his tears. “I know where you keep your heart, Sebastian.”

Baz dragged Elijah off his knees and onto his lap. “Yes.” He pressed the flat of his hand over the fluttering organ inside Elijah's chest. “It's right here.”