In the living room, I went through his albums and picked the Eurhythmics, a group he had introduced me to. I slipped the record onto the turntable and Annie Lennox’s voice filled the room: Here comes the rain again. I couldn’t sit still. I studied the Angel Island photos on the wall, ran my hand across the spines of the books on his bookshelf, picked up the framed picture of Adam and his college girlfriend. Candace, not Candy. I hadn’t really looked at her closely but now I did, as if she hid some secret about Adam. She had a determined intelligence about her and the kind of strong-featured face that time would settle into a mature beauty. I imagined a brisk personality—definitely not a Candy—but her eyes were sympathetic. Perfect combination for a physician. Adam had chosen a strong woman, someone for the long haul.

“Hey, dinner’s ready,” he said, behind me, and then he was beside me. He took the picture from me. “I talked to her on Thanksgiving.” He set the picture on the bookshelf. “Come and eat.”

We squeezed into the little kitchen table. He’d made a dish of chicken and mushrooms over pasta; my stomach growled at the scent of garlic and lemon and olive oil but although I was hungry, I had no appetite.

“You talked to Candace on Thanksgiving?” I asked, as he served me.

“Yeah. She’s coming home for Christmas.” He dug into his food, glanced at me. “Eat.”

I took a bite, tasting nothing. “I guess you’ll see her.”

Still eating, he said, casually, “We talked about getting back together.”

I feigned equal casualness, asking, “What about the long-distance issue?”

“I’m going to look at some biz schools on the east coast, see if I can get in, and she’s ready to come back to California after med school, so…” He looked at me. “You’re not eating. You all right?”

“I’m fine,” I said, digging into the food. “This is really good. You should put it on the menu at the diner.”

I was crawling inside my skin. I got through dinner and the dishwashing, but I knew I couldn’t stay. The obliviousness with which he’d talk about his girlfriend forced me to see what I hadn’t wanted to see—that whatever my feelings were for Adam, he did not return them. Of course, he didn’t. He wasn’t gay. He had told me that at the beginning and if I was blinded, it was only by the intensity of my feelings, not by anything he had said or done. I felt like a fool.

As I dried the last of the dishes, he came up from behind and wrapped his arms around me.

“It’s good to see you,” he said.

“Good to see you too, Adam.”

“Can you spend the night?”