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Alana shrugged and didn’t spout off a quick answer. That was never a good sign.

“Okay, really, why are you here?” Sean asked again, this time actually stopping what he was doing to look at her.

“My mom has a date. She’s cooking him dinner at the house.” Alana scrunched up her nose. “She didn’t tell me until this morning.”

“And Travis actually has his own date at the apartment because he knew I’d be gone tonight,” Sean finished for her.

“Don’t tell him. You know he works too hard. He hasn’t had a girlfriend since before the accident.” Alana shrugged. “Plus the small practice room is empty in a couple hours. I need to work on that combination for Steph’s piece anyway. If I have to overhear Amy say I don’t have enough classical training to do it one more time, she might have to accidentally fall down the stairs.”

“So you’re going to sit around for two hours?” Sean was going to hate himself for it later and he knew it, but he picked up his phone to text Jaime as Alana shrugged and laid down on one of the long benches.

Is it okay if Alana comes with? If not, it’s okay. But she’s kind of stranded with nothing to do for 2 hours. I feel bad even if she will make me regret it if I invite her.

Jaime’s reply was fast enough that Sean hoped he was already parked.

Why would you regret it?

She will probably tell you embarrassing things about me on purpose.

She is officially invited.

“You want to come with me?” Sean asked. She was still going to mortify him, but it was worth it to get the genuine small smile she didn’t usually let out.

“Thanks.” Alana sat up and Sean turned away to give his hair a final check in one of the mirrors while she slid back on the mask of sarcasm they were both more used to. “Seriously. Your hair is not that long. You only have so many options, but you spend more time on it than I do.”

Jaime was already out of the car when Sean and Alana turned the corner. His trunk was open, and the brunette Sean recognized from the picture was unloading equipment and handing it to him. Sean didn’t have time to try and figure out how to get around the bulk in Jaime’s arms for a greeting kiss before she was pushing a bag at him.

“Jaime probably left out the part where you both have to carry all my stuff. He’s using you to not have to carry it all himself.” Aleksandra pulled a tripod out of the trunk and handed it to him before he could respond. “If that bothers you, blame him for going on about how you’re a dancer and you have all these muscles.”

“It’s no problem.” Sean glanced at Jaime, who tried to manage a shrug under his own load as Aleksandra closed the trunk and walked around them to lead the way.

“I can take something.” Alana offered Jaime, whose load seemed more awkward than Sean’s own.

“Oh, don’t let him,” Aleksandra interrupted. “He needs the workout to keep up with your boy if he’s going to kick me out of the apartment for hours on the weekend.”

“See! Other people talk to their friends.” Alana glared at Sean before moving around him to walk in front with Aleksandra. “Seriously. Help. We can’t get details out of him. If I hadn’t seen Jaime with my own eyes, I wouldn’t even know what he looked like.”

“I was hoping Alana would cancel out Lexi. They’re just going to multiply each other, aren’t they?” Jaime whispered.

“Probably.”

“T
HIS
IS
awesome. This is ten times cooler than go-go dancing in stupid cages,” Alana whispered. She was sitting next to Sean on the floor in the corner of the studio where Aleksandra was taking pictures of various dancers. The studio wasn’t too different from the one where they’d had class earlier. Mirrors lined every wall, but instead of barres bracketed to the walls, six shiny metal poles stretched from floor to ceiling around the room.

“Which is already something Travis does not want you doing for extra money,” Sean pointed out. Travis was going to kill him when he found out Sean had taken Alana to a pole-dancing studio. “And I’m pretty sure his argument that you can’t do it because you might get injured and end your career actually applies in this case.”

“Hey.” Jaime sat down next to him close enough that their shoulders pressed together. “She’s good without me until she finishes the group shots. Sorry that she’s extra intense today. I should have remembered not to introduce her to people when she’s working. Bored yet?”

“Bored?” Sean watched as a dancer climbed up a pole and flipped upside down into a pose. “I’m not sure how you were impressed with us. We can do that, but not while hanging upside down.”

Jaime laughed and gestured around the room of women with his hand.

“Not exactly my type. But if you want to try and get up there, I’m sure Lexi would help you for me when she’s done, if there’s time.”

“I’ll do it,” Alana said.

“Travis would kill me for the injury risk first, and then he’d kill me again for letting you do it.” Sean turned to Jaime. “Travis doesn’t actually hate you. Let her get on a pole, and he will hate us both.”

“Seriously? I think she scares me more than him,” Jaime said as he took in Alana’s glare.

“It’s cute how you think it’s about letting me do anything. You know I can just come here and take classes if I want. My contract does not actually ban outside classes,” Alana answered.

“It would be like encouraging Lupe to do it,” Sean said. Jaime cringed.

“Understood. Not letting either of you pole dance.” Jaime ignored Alana’s groan and leaned closer to whisper, “But if you want, I could set something up later for you. She has her own pole at the apartment.”

Sean couldn’t help letting a shiver go through him as Jaime grazed the back of his hand down Sean’s arm. Jaime leaned in to brush their lips together for just a moment before Aleksandra motioned for him.

“Fine. Because you are cute, and I don’t actually want Travis to kill your boyfriend, I will wait and do this behind your backs. I do so much for you,” Alana said as soon as Jaime was out of earshot.

Jaime didn’t make it back to them until he was finished with his own shots and Aleksandra was working with the last remaining dancer. Jaime had packed up the equipment they were finished using, and sat down next to Sean with one of the digital cameras. It was fancier than anything Sean had used, but he took most of his pictures with his phone. Jaime tilted the camera so Sean could see one of the pictures on the small screen as Aleksandra finished her work and walked back to them.

“His are just as good as mine. I keep telling him to stop wasting all his time doing stupid corporate website graphics, but he does not listen,” Aleksandra said, tilting the camera to look at few herself. “
Takoy glupynik.
”

“Was that offensive?” Sean looked from Aleksandra to Jaime.

“Probably. Dirty generally has a different tone,” Jaime said as he started to get up and gather the equipment together.

“Well, I don’t know if I can recognize how good you are. I’m not a photographer. But if you’re good, and you love it, I think you should go for it. I couldn’t stop dancing because it wasn’t practical.”

“It’s different.” Jaime shook his head and handed Sean an assortment of equipment.

“Because you are too scared of failure,” Aleksandra said, picking up the same bag she’d carried before and turning to face Sean. “Teach him that passion is worth something, and maybe you will actually stay.”

S
EAN
SQUINTED
at the dim light as he woke up and adjusted to his surroundings. He turned to his right side to check the time before he remembered he wasn’t home, and Jaime kept his alarm clock turned to the wall where the light wouldn’t bother him.

“Hey. Sorry. Did I wake you up?” Jaime asked as he swiveled his desk chair around to face the bed. Only his desk lamp was on to supplement the glow from his computer, where he had one of the pictures from Thursday’s shoot pulled up.

“Maybe. Time?” Sean stretched and sat up.

“Three-thirty. Sorry. I couldn’t sleep, and I need to get these retouched and sent back early. Lexi showed them to the studio with some of hers, and they picked mine for the ads they’re putting out.”

“Is she mad?” Sean asked. The last he’d heard, it was her job she’d just conned Jaime into helping with.

“No.” Jaime chuckled and shook his head. “She’s using it as an argument that I shouldn’t take the web design job I already have lined up after graduation. She’s trying to convince me that photography is practical if I apply to ad agencies or magazines or something. It’s her new angle.”

“But you don’t agree?” Sean inched to the edge of the bed, taking the blankets with him.

“Breaking into magazines and ad agencies means interning. Usually for credit and not money. The internship I did last summer for the web design company actually paid enough that I could fill out the rest of the rent bartending on weekends. Magazine internships are for the kids whose parents can pay their rent while they work for free.”

“But Lupe’s managing hers. We’re not exactly paying her.” He was pretty sure they weren’t—though Travis might have tried if she’d started to turn it down.

“I’m helping her with food money.” Jaime shook his head when Sean opened his mouth to answer. “I shouldn’t have told you that. She doesn’t want you guys to know.”

“Why?” Sean was sure if Travis knew he’d probably feed her as often as he did Alana.

“She wants him to offer her a spot in the company because he wants her, not because if she doesn’t get something from a company right after she graduates, she’ll have to go back home. But she’s willing to hope and risk it. I can’t do that. I can’t start focusing on some hope I’ll get a job in an industry I haven’t interned for, and then go home if I fail.”

“If I ask why again, are you going get annoyed with me? Because there isn’t another train back to New York until tomorrow, and I’m kind of afraid of what Aleksandra will do to me if I’m on the couch.” Sean added the small smile that could usually keep Alana from sighing and declaring him a total lost cause to whatever she thought he was wrong about.

“No. Maybe annoyed, but I’m too selfish to send you to the couch, and if I did and you explained why, she’d just bring you to her side even more. Not a risk worth taking. I’m already annoyed she’s clearly recruited you to this argument with one conversation.” Jaime turned back to the computer and started saving the files he had open. For a minute, Sean wondered if he was waiting for Sean to actually come out and ask, but when Sean opted to stay silent, Jaime seemed to take that as enough of a prompt.

“I’m out here. Even with Lupe here, I only see her a few times a week. If she signs with the company and moves to the city, it’s still a big enough city, or if it seems not to be, there are a lot of web design and development jobs in California. I can get something with it, I’m sure. I do graphics at school, but I’ve done programming at work and on my own. If I go home, out isn’t an option. It’s just not. As long as I’m a thousand miles away, it’s easy to separate.”

“You’re never planning to tell them?” Sean forced himself not to choke on the words as he tried to ignore the weight on his chest that shouldn’t be there if Jaime was throwing out the option to move to California without even thinking about him.

“There’s not really a point. I know how it would go, so why bother? We’re Catholic. Eventually, I might have to say I broke up with Lexi or something, but they’ll get over that.” Jaime hit the button to turn off his monitor and turned around to face him. “As long as I have a job and I’m doing what I’m supposed to, they don’t ask about anything else. I only see them once or twice a year.”

“Don’t you want to tell them the truth?”

“It’s not just about what I want, Sean. My mom worked hard so I can be here, so I could even go to college, because she never could. The church helped her do that. It would kill her if I just left it.”

“You don’t have to pick. There are out Catholics. People change.”

“Your people change. Not my people,” Jaime said. “Drop it, okay? It doesn’t matter if they know.”

Sean swallowed his instinct to ask how it could not matter forever, and moved up the bed as Jaime lay back down next to him.

S
UN
WAS
already streaming through the window when Sean stretched and rolled over to reach the other side of the bed to find it empty. As he woke up, he could hear voices in the kitchen but couldn’t make out any words. His clothes were still on the floor were they had fallen as Jaime stripped him on the way to the bed, but his phone had been left for him on the nightstand. He had one message from Alana from late the night before.

I talked Travis into making steaks tomorrow night. Will you be home by 7 or should I pretend I need to eat later so he doesn’t say it’s Jaime’s job to feed you if he keeps you all day?

He sent off a text that he’d be home by five before sitting up in the bed. He should probably go out there. Maybe Jaime had gotten up because he was hungry or bored, and if he’d tried to wake Sean up, that probably hadn’t worked well. He knew halfhearted attempts to wake him up were usually so unsuccessful that he didn’t even remember them, and the last time he’d stayed over, Jaime had needed to get up early for a meeting, so Sean had known in advance he’d wake up alone. This time, he’d hoped for a lazy morning in bed without even realizing it. Maybe Jaime was just a morning person. He’d never actually known a morning person before. Even Travis slept until nine on Sunday mornings unless he had a reason not to. It was only ten now. He would have rolled over and gone back to sleep if Jaime had still been asleep next to him. Once, Travis had dated a girl who got up every morning at eight and ran a mile. What if Jaime was like that?

Or maybe he’d decided to get up because lying in bed with Sean in the morning without sex wasn’t something he was interested in. Maybe a few weeks into dating was too early for Sean to sleep over a second time. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d thought a guy wanted him around more than he really did, but Jaime couldn’t have thought he’d have enough time to go home when he’d invited Sean to come over the night before.