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I want to be out, Vinnie. I don’t want to live the next ten years of my life afraid of who’s going to see me and my lover in public. I’m working on an out set, with out actors, and an out director.
I’d seen Carter and Levi the day before, eating their lunch on a corner of the set. Levi had been frowning as Carter popped a mushroom in his mouth, and Carter had been going on and on about the hummus. Finally, Levi—dark, brooding Levi Pritchard—had deigned to chew, and you could see when the taste kicked in.

And the smile he’d given Carter in return—it had brightened the set.

Such a small moment—intimate but not dirty, not secret. And they’d had it because they were living in the sunshine. Yeah, sure—Levi might not get another gig after this one. But he might. Or he might just follow Carter around as Carter’s star rose higher and higher.

That was their decision and nobody else’s.

And they didn’t have to change it based on what the world thought about their relationship—it was
their
relationship. Telling the world just let them have it in peace.

The water turned cold, and I reached behind me and shut it off—but I wasn’t ready to get out yet.

“Connor?”

Noah’s voice from inside the bathroom startled me.

“Sorry,” I mumbled, sticking my head out of the curtain. “I was thinking.”

“Yeah?” he peered at me, concerned, and then he grabbed a clean towel and thrust it at me. “What about?”

I took the towel and wrapped it around my waist shivering a little.

“About doing the thing that I don’t want to do so I can do the things that I do want to do,” I said, climbing out of the tub with my body but my mind was still elsewhere.

He walked up to me, dripping skin and all, and wrapped another towel tightly around my shoulders. “Stop,” he said into my ear. “You’ve already done some of that this weekend. Leave the rest of it for later.”

I leaned back into his arms. “I really want to go shopping with you again.” I closed my eyes, excited by being naked and held by a man. “I want you to grab my hand and kiss me on the cheek and nag me about my spending and—”

“Yeah,” he murmured, nuzzling my temple. “That’d be nice.”

“So I have to—”

“Not worry about it right now. C’mon down and get brunch, okay? You haven’t eaten yet and you’ve had a big morning. Simple things, Connor. Simple things get you from one step to the next.”

He let go of me and walked out of the bathroom, and I brushed my teeth and combed my hair and applied moisturizer while the air dried me completely off. Finally I was ready to wrap the towel around my waist and venture into the bedroom, and I laughed a little at what I saw on the hastily straightened comforter.

Yoga pants—and that horrible T-shirt he’d bought me after Jillian had broken into tears and made the “clown cum rag.”

You know that was
our
thing
, Vinnie said bitchily from a corner of my mind.

It’s a good thing, Vinnie. It can be something I do with him too.

’Cause I just wasn’t that special, was I.

I sighed and picked up the T-shirt.

You were. You really were. But so was I. And I want to wear the fucking T-shirt.

And yeah, there was a pouty silence in my head, but by the time I finished with the boxer shorts and the yoga pants, even that had faded.

I was going to spend a day in with Noah, my new lover.

Vinnie really had nothing nice to say about that, so it was just as good he kept quiet, wasn’t it?

Noah had opened the back door and set the pastries and a couple of cowboy sandwiches on the small glass-topped table on the patio, along with the milk and a few glasses as well as napkins. I knew that the service (or, well, his grandmother who only came when I was out) kept the patio and the table clean, and the chairs aired out and dust-free, but I’d been gone so often I hadn’t had much chance to use them.

Today was warmish—high seventies—but Noah had laid a hoodie on the back of my seat anyway, which I put on before I sat down in the shade.

“Wow,” I said, smiling at the spread. “Al fresco. Awesome.”

He twisted his full mouth, and I had a flash to where that mouth had been two hours ago. “You know, so you don’t feel trapped.”

“Oh!” I reached over and grabbed his hand. “Oh no. No, Noah—no. I’m . . . I’m not feeling trapped. Not by you—not by what happened.” I blushed. Inane. “Not by making love. I mean . . . you know.” I smiled winningly. “I’d like to do that
again
.”

He laughed and laced our fingers together. “Good.” He kissed my knuckles.

“I . . .” I grimaced. “See, I wanted to come out. And Jillian wasn’t sure my career could take it—and, you know, ten years ago, five years ago—”

“You had to be sort of a superstar, or someone with a track record. I get it.”

I nodded. He’d pulled his glossy, curly hair back into sort of a man bun before he’d gone out, and I wanted it down again. I wanted to play with it, now that I had the right, but it wasn’t the time.

“And Vinnie—he
really
didn’t want to come out. Because that would mean his family would know.”

Noah closed his eyes. “Connor—”

“I’m not going to lie forever,” I said quietly, because I could see it now, flashing before his eyes, his entire life held captive by the fear of a dead man.

He opened his eyes and gave a relieved nod. “Good.”

“There’s a thousand things I can say, a thousand ways I could spin it for the press, so that Vinnie’s name doesn’t have to be mentioned. And speculation can remain just that—”

“But that’s not
fair
!” Noah burst out, letting go of my hands and standing up.

I smiled uncertainly. “To—?”

“To
you
! Damn it— You . . . you were
mourning
for a
year
alone. You were . . . two months ago, you could barely say his name because you were so afraid someone might guess what he was to you. I mean,
Connor
! You have to know coming back from that sort of thing—that’s
hard
. Don’t you want people to know how strong you are?”

My mouth went slack, and I felt my face light up, like sunshine. “You think I’m strong?”

Noah had been pacing, and he came to kneel at my feet. “Yes,” he said, like he was talking to a child. “Yes, baby, I think you’re fucking strong. You didn’t start your career once—by my count, this was your fourth try. You held a relationship together when it probably should have disintegrated after the first fuck. You held a
man
together by the sheer stinking strength of your love. Of
course
I think you’re strong. But I’ve heard the gossip—same as you’ve imagined it. People see that video, and they think you’re a drunk. They see the track record, and they think you’re a flake. And everything I’ve seen from you shows me that you—you’re a
hero
. Don’t you want the world to know who you really are?”

I thought about it. “I don’t know . . . I guess if I’d wanted
that
, I wouldn’t have become an actor.”

He stared at me, openmouthed, as though he couldn’t figure out what the words meant.

“Connor, what’s wrong with who you are?”

I tried to give him an answer—something insouciant, light, something that would wash the statement away. In the end, I just shook my head and turned toward lunch.

I really was hungry. “So . . . doughnuts for appetizers or breakfast?”

He stood and grasped my chin, making me face him. “Connor Mazynsky, there is nothing wrong with who you are.”

My sunshine smile returned, and I bit my lower lip to keep it from stretching to goof-ball limits on my face. “Not when you look at me like that there isn’t,” I confessed, and then I couldn’t look at him anymore. I decided savory for the meal, and sweet pastry for dessert. I grabbed one of the cheese and sausage croissants and blew on it a little, sank my teeth in, and closed my eyes.

“This is really lovely,” I said after some chewing and swallowing. Noah was still staring at me, face inscrutable, so I fixed my attention on what I’d come to think of as “my island.”

It always looked so peaceful. I bet there was someone out there who could swim that distance, right? Maybe a wet suit, or chicken fat or something for insulation. Maybe a boat? Yeah . . . but swimming seemed personal. There were fish under the water—swimming made you one with the fish.

“Connor?” Noah was saying, and the tone of his voice was at “I’ve called your name three times and you were in la-la land” timbre.

“Sorry,” I said, licking my fingers. I seemed to have finished my croissant.

“Where were you, man?”

I looked back out at my island. “I bet I could swim there,” I said, nodding.

“No, you couldn’t,” he said, like it was a flat-out impossibility.

“No, seriously—a wet suit, some insulation—”

“The water is fifty-eight degrees on a good day. If you jumped in and screamed your way out, you
still
wouldn’t see your balls for days.”

I jerked back involuntarily. “I just rediscovered my balls,” I said, wanting to cup my hands in front of them. “I would like them not to disappear.”

“Then stop focusing on the island and listen to me
here
. Connor, why are you disappearing from me?”

I took a deep breath, the kind you use to center yourself in yoga, and tried to put together the threads pulling my brain to that peaceful, isolated little spot of redwood heaven.

“I’m not that strong,” I said apologetically. “You looked at me and thought I was strong, and I could list all the ways I’m not, but that wouldn’t help. Because the thing is, I still want to come out. And I want to do it and keep Vinnie’s name out of it. His family—” I closed my eyes, and I could hear them, kids calling to each other, brothers and sisters and in-laws all telling jokes in the kitchen.

I kept my eyes closed and said, “I’m in the movies, Noah. They’re as close to a movie family as you’ll get. And . . .” they hadn’t called me for Christmas, or Vinnie’s birthday last July, or after the funeral at all. “Maybe they don’t know about their son, but they’ve got this picture of him. I know—” cheating and rehab and weakness oh my! “—
so
many bad things that would rip apart that picture. So I need to come out, and I need to do it in a way that doesn’t hurt them. But I want to . . .” I shuddered, in the good, ecstatic way. “I want to . . . have a lover who’s proud to be mine.” I gave him a watery smile. “And I can’t do that in the shadows.”

“And I told you that you didn’t need to do it right now,” he said softly. “I meant that. If we just stop talking about it, will you come back from the island today?”

I nodded and took one of the doughnuts, because that was my dessert. I nibbled on it experimentally, and it was
really
yummy, so I took a small bite and let it melt on my tongue.

“These are really good. Where’d you get them?”

“This place that just opened up—Cookie Crumbles—got a real ‘rainbow vibration’ from the owner, if you know what I mean.”

Huh. “Yeah, well, this whole town is under the rainbow. I’m not even looking that shit in the mouth. But we’ll definitely have to go back to his place—I can totally stand it.”

“Good—so civilized conversation progressing nicely. What else do you want to do with your day?”

I thought about it. “Maybe a bike ride,” I said after a moment of pointedly
not
looking at the island. “Not too far—twenty miles maybe? And then we can come back and . . .”

Noah’s laugh was evil. “Do stuff that would make it hard to ride a bike after.” He nodded and raised his eyebrows.

I blushed. “Pretty much exactly.”

He leaned forward and brushed my cheek with his thumb. “You blush so pretty,” he said, like a wondering little kid. “I mean—how does that keep happening?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know—I didn’t used to blush with Vinnie . . .” I thought about it, hard. “Not even back at the beginning.”

“So just me, huh?”

I bit my lip and looked away. “It’s just . . .” I shrugged. “You’re . . . a really decent person. When we first met, and you were all fanboi, I thought, ‘Oh, what a nice kid.’ And I wanted really badly to keep that . . . that new-movie-star gloss on, you know? So you would always think I was . . . Connor Montgomery, movie star!”

“You think I don’t have my—”

“Your slutty college days?” I said dryly. “That’s not turning tricks to make rent, Noah. Or paying off your parents or . . . any of the other things we just agreed not to talk about. That’s . . .” I shrugged, uncomfortable. “That’s what growing up should be like. So no. You sleeping around in college didn’t make me think any less of you. So it matters what you think of me. And . . . I just keep being afraid that the next thing out of my mouth is going to be the one that lets you down.”

He looked at me soberly, taking me serious in a way I wasn’t sure anyone else in my life ever had. “Remember what you said last night, about Vinnie?”

So many things about Vinnie . . . “That he did the one thing I couldn’t forgive?”

Noah nodded. “He left you. I get . . . I get that you’re still healing. And I get that I might be your healing guy and it might not last beyond that.”