Sally-Ann introduces him to the rest of the group. “Everyone, this is Adam. Adam, this is everyone.” She beams at the group gathered around them and straightens herself for what is clearly a rehearsed line. “Welcome to SYPLGBTSN.”

The crowd laughs dutifully, and a young guy Tyler vaguely recognizes from the Family Liaison Unit says, “OMG, people, we need a better acronym.” The guy catches his eye and winks.

Tyler does his best to smile and nod at the faces round the table. He recognizes some of them from the station. Civilians mostly, like Sally-Ann, but one or two are from Uniform. Conspicuously, there’s no one else from the Criminal Investigation Department.

After a while the group fragments into smaller conversations, and Tyler finds himself standing slightly apart, not quite part of any of them. Sally-Ann leans in to him. “I’m glad you came,” she says, “but don’t feel you have to stay if it’s not for you.” She’s intuitive, Sally-Ann. Whatever else they might say about her, she’s that.

He admits to her that none of this was his own idea, that the DCI made it clear she expected him to mix more. Minority groups being good for the public image and all, she feels he needs to make more of an effort when it comes to networking.

Sally-Ann laughs. “She’s making you go out to play, is that it?”

“She wants a tame CID-queer she can stick on the town hall steps at Pride and show off to the world.” He’s not being entirely fair, but there’s some truth in it.

“Poor Adam, a poster boy’s work is never done, eh?” She reaches across and ruffles his hair. She’s not the sort of person who can get away with gestures like that. “We’ll have you on a float lip-synching to Gloria Gaynor before you know it.”

“No,” he says. “You really fucking won’t.” He changes the subject by offering to buy her a drink.

—

“Bourbon,” he orders at the bar. “On the rocks with a twist.”

“My dad used to drink that.”

Tyler glances once at the man standing next to him and then turns to the mirror behind the optics to finish his appraisal. He noticed him earlier. He’s the sort of guy people notice. Pretty rather than handsome. All defined cheekbones and chiseled jaw, a triangle for a torso that ripples beneath a skinny-fit white shirt. He has a mop of shaggy-dog hair that frames a face with skin so pale he might have just stepped off the set of the latest teenage vampire movie. He’s a few years younger than Tyler. Twenty-three, twenty-four, maybe.

Their eyes meet in the mirror. Long enough for them to both know they’re not wrong. The man looks in and away, in and away, like a wildebeest checking for predators before dipping its head to the watering hole.