Baltimore was all around him, in that fecund and foul interplay of life and decay, and he thought about Cork and the way it had seemed so alive—even at two in the morning, all the kids lined up to get fast food, eating fried chicken sandwiches and letting the grease soak up the booze. Everything seemed so bright there, and it was just as blinding here, sometimes, but he missed it, oh God, he longed for the life he had before real life reasserted itself.

Before he started hiding. Before he came home. Before Jack left.

It seemed almost like a dream. Like he hadn’t done any of those things. He’d signed his soul away—for the Beaumont family, for a wife, to have a child, to fix everything, to deny himself because it was just so much easier—and maybe that Theo who lived in Cork with Jack Gardner in his bed had never really existed at all.

But Jack was waiting for him in the coffee shop, his shoulders strong, his hair going just a little bit gray. Jack was evidence—Jack was proof.

Theo closed his eyes. How much was he willing to fuck his life up, now?

He remembered when Jack had asked him the question—the question that many newly out or not quite out yet people probably asked—when did you know?

“When was the first time you—when did you realize you were...different?”

They were sitting on the stoop outside his apartment building, smoking and drinking from bottles of pear cider, five in the afternoon and pregaming for a night out.

“You’re just digging for compliments, aren’t you?”

Jack rolled his eyes, shook his head.

“I could blather on about a certain oddly attractive black-haired asshole. I’m not naming any names.” Jack laughed. “But I think I always knew.”

“I always thought—you and Genni—”

“Yeah.” He took a drag from his cigarette. “I thought me and Genni, too. She certainly thought it. But there was always something—”

“Missing,” Jack spoke, looking somewhere in the distance.

“Yeah.” Theo scowled, still feeling bad about leading his best friend on. “I thought I could make that work.”

“But?”

“But.”

“Mm.”

“You?”

Jack frowned, looked down at his lap. “I guess—I—I never got the chance to think about it. And there was always—”

There were things he wasn’t saying, and he didn’t say her name, some sort of mutual agreement to make them both comfortable.

“I’m not very good at the whole feelings thing.” Jack said it lightly, self-mockery covering discomfort. Insecurity.

“I wouldn’t have known.”

“Nice.”

“I guess it doesn’t really matter, in the end.”

Jack looked at him, questioning.

“What difference does it make? We know now, right? And we can—” Theo gestured with his cigarette. “Live.”

“Yeah.” Jack smiled, slow, but there was something reserved about it, like he didn’t know if he could believe it, yet.