by Kilby Blades
“Remind me again why this can’t work?” The words came from Adam just as the sun was rising. Levi was thoughtfully awake. Just as Adam hadn’t spoken quickly, neither did Levi answer that way.
“Because right now exists in a bubble,” Levi answered from the crook of Adam’s arm. “And outside of this is time and place.”
“Remind me again,” Adam commanded softly, minutes later.
“Because I know myself well enough to know that if I go back to New York to be with you, I’ll end up hating you for it. Because I love it here and you love it there and both of us love what we do and where we need to be is in different places.”
“Again,” Adam commanded one final time, his voice choked with tears—tears that Levi wouldn’t give himself the permission to shed.
“Because if this was really how it was supposed to be, we’d never have survived the past nine months apart. But we did. And we were fine. And we’re gonna be fine again.”
Chapter Twenty-Four: Ordinary World
“CONGRATULATIONS, sweetie!” Javi exclaimed, handing Levi the first flute. Seconds before, he’d shooed the waiter away. It was Javi, Darius, and Levi in their usual spot at Sanctum. Javi had insisted he’d pour the champagne.
“Now it’s official.” Darius leaned over to squeeze his shoulder and threw Levi a proud smile—the kind of smile Levi should have been feeling inside. It wasn’t every day that the child of immigrant parents—ones who had worked as a porter and a maid—signed an accepted offer to buy a two-and-a-half-million-dollar house. It might never have happened on the very same day that the very same child of the very same immigrants signed a three-year agreement to be the president and artistic director of a nonprofit.
What had his mother always said? Be careful what you wish for? Never had Levi gotten what he’d wished for so fast. He had full creative control over the project of his heart with the support of a backer willing to handle all the administrative things Levi didn’t want to so he could focus on the art. A backer who had all the political connections that would allow their work to change the lives of queer artists in San Francisco, and who believed in him completely.
He’d even gotten the house—the house he’d loved, the house he thought he’d lost. The same day Adam had left for New York, Levi had gotten the call. Not from Timothy, as he’d expected, but from David number one, who had put in a good word on Levi’s behalf.
Things had happened quickly from there: he’d made an appointment with the seller’s agent, expecting the third degree on just how far above asking he was willing to pay. Instead, he’d been graciously shown inside by the couple who owned it, Shane and Dom, who lived there with their two young children. Dom was really Dominique, a native Frenchman who had convinced Shane that they should raise their children in France. They’d decided to move back to Dominique’s ancestral home in the Loire Valley before their son started kindergarten in the fall.
After a leisurely tour that ended with them chatting over coffee around the kitchen table, the owners confessed that they were fans, confessed that they liked him and wanted Levi to have the house. A third confession—that they’d secretly been showing the house for six months but had never found the right person—led to an incredible offer: they’d take $250,000 below asking if Levi would shoot their portraits for life.
Even with the discount, Levi had spent every penny he’d saved to put 50 percent down on the house up front. Working crazy hours at the gallery would leave him little time for freelance work, which would mean at least a six-figure pay cut. Levi’s new circumstances would find him paying down the mortgage for years, but passion over money still felt like the right choice.
So why can’t I be happy?
Even as he thought it, he smiled widely, accepting his friends’ excitement for him and keeping up the ruse. Even Adam had called Levi earlier to say his own congrats. It was the first time they’d spoken. Had it really been two weeks? It felt like eons since Adam had gone. They’d texted a few times, both of them a little awkward and stumbling. Returning to the way things were—the way things had to be—would take time.
Adam had promised he would fly back for their art debrief. The review meeting with his PR agency would happen in three days. At the time, the notion of Adam’s swift return had softened the blow of his departure. Now it seemed too soon. To see Adam in three days would only amplify his loss. But what he felt now wasn’t just loss. Whatever this was gave him jitters in his chest. It stopped him from sleeping. It made a fog in his brain that prevented him from thinking. It wasn’t supposed to hurt like this.
“May I sit?” came a third voice, the voice of Paul, who he’d surmised was buzzing around somewhere.
“You sent over the champagne.” Javi winked and handed Paul a glass. “You can sit wherever you want.”
Paul took the seat closest to Levi and waited until Javi had put down the bottle. Paul turned toward Levi, poised to make a toast.
“To the gallery.” He raised his glass and smiled well-wishes toward Levi. “And to the community it will serve.”
“Hear, hear” came from all around the table, even from Levi’s own lips, though he felt estranged from his body.
The place was hot tonight—slam poetry, and the person on the mic had gotten a little loud. The performance wasn’t to Levi’s taste, and it baffled Levi a bit that several other patrons clapped at dramatic parts and gave approving nods. What the performer lacked in talent, apparently, he planned to make up in volume, Levi thought sourly.
Paul put his arm around Levi and leaned in closer—all the better for Paul to actually be heard.
“What we’re doing… it’s gonna be great,” Paul said a bit loudly and with a pat on the back.
And Levi really believed that it would be. Despite insinuations by nearly everyone that Paul was interested in more than Levi’s talent, he’d suddenly and abruptly backed off. It was the one development that week that had brought Levi comfort.
“Where’s your boyfriend?” Paul wanted to know, smiling a bit. “Mr. Slam Poetry? I’ve gotten multiple requests for him to come back.”
Levi had to smile at the memory of a buzzed Adam getting into the groove after he saw some of the performances, walking up for open mic night, and spewing out the spoken word. “Of course you have,” Levi murmured, because Adam was Adam and of course he could be an overnight sensation at something others dedicated their life to doing half as well as him. “And he’s not my boyfriend. He’s my friend,” Levi clarified, or at least attempted to.
Paul broke eye contact then and looked out at Sanctum—his own creation. “He is anything but that.”
Levi didn’t know what to make of the comment. It had been a shit week and he was tired. The last time Paul had seen them, they were still playing house. Maybe that was how he’d gotten that impression.
“He went back to New York,” Levi said simply.
Paul studied him for a few seconds before casting his gaze back at the stage. “Oh, really? That’s a shame….”
Silence fell between them. Javi and Darius were still busy watching the show.
“He’s why I stopped hoping, you know,” Paul said, eyes still on the audience, but loudly enough for Levi to hear. “I’m a patient man, but I know when I don’t have a chance.”
With that, Paul gave Levi a pointed, rueful look, gave a brief pat to Levi’s leg, and rose to go.
Levi downed the rest of his champagne and sat, paralyzed by his own thoughts, able to do little else. Bent on buying him celebratory drinks, Darius and Javi kept them coming. By the time the literary readings were set to begin, Levi was done. He thanked his friends and made his excuses for why he needed to go home.
But arriving back to his place and taking Baxter out found Levi on a long walk. It wasn’t rare for him to wind up at his studio when he had something on his mind. Instead of doing an hour of editing, as he bargained with himself to do when he found himself in front of the building, he spent an hour looking at pictures of Adam. He
took the long way back, past the gallery, even emptier and lonelier at night, then past his brand-new house.
At first the vision warmed him. By then it was late at night, but lights were on inside, despite the hour. It made him feel stalkerish and creepy, peering into the house.
Looking much as they had ten days before on the day they’d shown Levi the house, Dominique and Shane moved around the kitchen. No—Shane moved and Dom stood, maybe rinsing dishes at the counter while Shane orbited him. Shane was the more animated of the two, with a mouth that moved a mile a minute. He stopped every so often to emphasize whatever he told Dom. Shane laughed and used hand gestures and told his story with a truly expressive face, all while Dom held steady. Dom stopped too, at points—to listen to Shane’s story, to put in his two cents, to stop what he was doing to turn to look. Levi loved this vision, because they looked happy.
Suddenly Levi became so certain that this was how things were supposed to be that he could no longer picture himself in the house. Dishes weren’t meant to be washed alone in that house. The bedrooms weren’t meant to be extra offices. There should be no painting over the gorgeous mural of a juvenile royal court. There should be no singletons living in this house—no just-a-man-and-his dog loners. The only person who Levi wanted to complete this vision was Adam.
“I’m in over my head.” Levi said it out loud, with a scratchy voice, phone at his ear and still staring through the window. They were the first words he’d spoken aloud in what felt like hours. He scarcely even knew what his epiphany referred to most. In over his head financially? Check. In over his head accepting a job he’d never done? Check. In over his head for knowing what the fuck he was supposed to do about Adam? Double check. But everything was all fucked-up and Levi didn’t have the faintest idea how to fix it. Worst of all, he couldn’t even call on his best friend.
“Cy.” The second words out of his mouth were spoken into his phone, past dry lips and eyes that were getting wet. He’d started walking again. He scarcely knew to where.
“Levi?” Cy’s surprised voice came. “Is everything okay?”
Levi shook his head, then remembered Cy couldn’t see him.
“No.” Admitting it felt like relief.
“Where are you?” Cy asked cautiously.
It was a simple enough answer to a simple enough question, but Levi couldn’t manage to spit it out. Besides, there were matters more problematic than Levi’s location.
“I fucked Adam,” he said to Cy, certainly on the brink of tears. “And now everything is all messed-up.”
“I SLEPT with Adam.”
Cy blinked. “I don’t understand.”
“I. Slept. With. Adam,” Levi repeated slowly. “Adam Kerr. Your college roommate. My best friend.”
Cy blinked again. “I’m sorry….” he trailed off.
But Levi didn’t get why this was hard to understand. “When he was here for three weeks, Adam and I fucked. A lot.”
Cy shook his head as if clearing a fog from his mind. “You fucked for, like… the first time?”
Conscious of Dan, and an Erykah who should have been fast asleep, Levi lowered his voice, whisper-shouting his frustration, “Why the hell else would I be freaking out?”
Dan chose that moment to walk into the room, baby bottle in hand and some sort of towel with elephants on it thrown over his shoulder.
“Oh, hey, Levi,” he said casually, as if Levi had shown up at dinner time rather than one in the morning. Cy hadn’t been joking about the late-night feedings. Dan nudged Cy over and joined him on the couch, lounging back a little even as Cy sat forward, with interest.
“Levi and Adam just fucked for the first time,” Cy revealed to Dan, still seeming incredulous.
Then it was Dan’s turn to shoot Levi a fast, astonished look. “For real?” He sounded betrayed. After Levi nodded in miserable confirmation, Dan turned back to Cy with an accusing look. “You told me they were friends with benefits.”
Levi leveled a small glare at Cy before wiping his hands over his face. He was a little drunk, more than a little tired, and still didn’t know what to do.
“What? I thought you were,” Cy defended, not looking apologetic in the least, though he did hold his hands up in surrender. “And don’t look at me like that,” Cy scolded a second time. “Adam always had that ‘hands off my man’ kind of vibe when it came to you.”
Ignoring that Darius had once told him the same thing—ignoring all that Adam had said about Leila—Levi sputtered out the obvious. “But we dated other people,” he pointed out in breathless astonishment. “Dozens of other people. He was with Leila for, like, two years.”
“I never thought you cheated,” Cy was quick to clarify. “But, in between other partners, hell yeah I thought something was going on. I figured you were too discreet to kiss and tell. But based on what you’re telling me, a few other things make sense, like why he called me the other day.”
“Why? What’d he say?” Levi asked with embarrassing swiftness. He stopped just short of asking, Did he say anything about me?
“I thought it was strange that he asked how you were doing. I figured he talked to you more often than he talked to me.”
Levi hadn’t the faintest clue what he should say to any of this. It was the fifth time in as many weeks he’d felt that when it came to key facts about his own life, Levi himself was the last to know.
He didn’t realize he’d zoned out until Cy clapped him on his shoulder and handed him a glass of water, which meant he’d been in a daze long enough for Cy to get up and grab something in the kitchen outside of Levi’s notice. Cy wasn’t a water kind of person. If you went over to his house and he didn’t ply you with alcohol, he thought you were either dehydrated or drunk.
“What was my endgame?” Levi finally asked, ignored water in his hand as he looked over at his seated friend. “In your version of the truth—the friends with benefits version—why would I risk the most cherished friendship in my life if I knew it could get fucked-up like this?”
“Because you and Adam have never, ever been just friends. Not in college, not in New York, and definitely not now. And when it’s really the right one, you can’t stay away.”
“Look at his life and look at mine. There’s no way it’s gonna work,” Levi protested.
“I call bullshit,” Cy shot back. “Couples with a lot of love and a lot of complicated logistics make it every single day.”
“You know him,” Levi said quietly, finally. “You know how his personality is. If I walk in there and tell him I’m in love with him—” Levi didn’t want to finish the thought. “You know how it’ll all end up. With me back in New York and him leading his big life and me having nothing of my own.”
Cy took a minute before answering, seeming to choose his words carefully. Whatever it was, he seemed to want Levi to really hear. “The logistics aren’t the problem between you two, no matter how tough San Francisco versus New York looks. Adam is a billionaire. He has a jet. I’m pretty sure you’ll be able to see one another. You just said yourself what the problem is: when he does his thing, there’s no room for you. So call him up and call him out. You can be together if you fix that.”
Chapter Twenty-Five: The Real
CAN we talk?
Levi’s text to Adam was as good an opening move as any, though he still didn’t know how he wanted this to go down. It had been his own rule that whatever happened between him and Adam those weeks, it had to end swiftly and forever.
Barely making it two weeks without reneging on his own rules was kind of a joke. But Levi knew it to the marrow of his bones: letting Adam go had been a huge mistake. He wasn’t going to wait another ten years to make it right. He wasn’t even going to wait until they saw each other day-after-tomorrow. He’d tell Adam how he felt now—give him time to mull it over. When Adam came, they’d really talk.
Only if you’re not pissed, came Adam’s responding text.
Levi frowned in confusion. Why would I be pissed?
Levi shot back.
Exactly, Adam returned a minute later.
Levi rolled his eyes. No, I mean, literally, *why would I be pissed?* I have no clue what you’re talking about.
Levi nearly jumped out of his skin when, instead of an answering text, a call came in. It was from a New York number—not Adam’s cell, but it could’ve been a landline from the corporate office.
“Levi?”
Levi recognize the voice, but the voice wasn’t Adam’s. It was his real estate agent, Sal.
“Hey, Sal. I’m a little tied up right now. What’s going on?”
Sal said excitedly, “We got a cash offer.”
Levi blinked in shock. It had only been on the market for a day.
“Why do you think it sold so quickly?” Levi quizzed Sal, wanting to ignore his own dawning comprehension long enough to hear some alternative explanation.
“Motivated buyer,” Sal said simply. “He wanted the house, sight unseen.”
“You didn’t even have to show it?”
“Show it?” Sal laughed. “I was gonna start showing it this weekend. I’m not even in New York right now.”
Levi got a sick a feeling in his stomach. Only one person could ever try to dissuade him from selling—the one person he hadn’t told.
“What’s the buyer’s name?” Levi braced himself for the answer as papers shuffled on the other end of the phone.
“Adam Kerr.”
At that moment, a competing call came through on Levi’s line—the caller ID told him it was Adam.
“Thanks, Sal. I’m not taking the offer. I’ll explain later, but I gotta go.”
With that, Levi pressed the button that allowed him to switch calls and did his best to scrub the anger from his voice. Levi wondered what Adam could possibly have to say on his own behalf.
“Why would I be pissed?” Levi asked, foregoing a greeting altogether in favor of picking up where their text conversation had left off.
