He drove his father toward his hotel out on Reserve. He’d offered to let him sleep on his pull-out couch, but Tom had turned him down, and Alex was glad he hadn’t had to make his place clean enough to host a parent.

“That was a good pick,” Tom said. “Good food. And, I have to say, your friend Kate is very cool.”

“She’s great,” Alex said.

In the silence that followed, Alex was seized by the urge to tell his father about their relationship, or whatever it was. But he couldn’t bring himself to breach that gulf. Let his father think he had a chance; or let him suspect, if only in the very back of his mind, what his son was up to.

“She’s my favorite person in this town,” Alex said.

He kept his eyes on the road but he felt his father’s glare in his peripheral vision. Alex turned and caught his eye for a moment.

“I’m looking forward to the grand tour,” his father said finally.

Alex pulled up in front of the hotel. He unbuckled his seat belt and leaned across the car’s center console to hug his father, who hugged him back harder than he expected him to, harder than he had in a while.

“Be good,” he said.

Kate carried two glasses of bourbon on ice into the living room. She’d changed into a sheer purple negligee thing, the kind of thing that Alex had only seen in the display window of Victoria’s Secret. She was playing the new D’Angelo album through her laptop speakers, and Alex got caught up in it, even in that tinny state.

“Family stuff stressful?” she said.

“I didn’t think so,” he said. “Do I seem stressed?”

“Preoccupied,” she said.

Alex took a sip of his drink. It was much better than that lousy gin and tonic he’d insisted on having at the restaurant.

“Do you like me, Kate?” he said. “I don’t mean love or anything. But do you, like, like me?”

“Aw, little baby,” she said. “What’s the matter?”

“I don’t mean for it to be a thing,” he said.

“Do you think I like your dad?” she said.

“I definitely didn’t say that,” he said.

“He’s sweet,” she said. “I mean, he’s got an ego, obviously. But so do I. I imagine we’d get along under other circumstances. You’re lucky you’ve still got all your hair.”