In that moment, Truman forgave Guy for not inviting him to trim the tree. His boyfriend was fastidious and exacting, and he’d wanted to do it precisely as he wished—an ode to the beauty of order rather than a romantic and cozy tradition. It was cute that he had things like this he kept just for himself. Charming.

Smiling, Truman began to turn from the window. He couldn’t wait to kiss the hell out of his endearing weirdo. But movement in the room caught his eye, and he ducked out of sight automatically, mortified at the idea of being caught peeping.

But when he peeked again, he saw the movement was Guy, in all his handsome glory, walking into the room. Truman couldn’t help gazing at him.

As he watched, someone else entered. Truman had been sure that Guy said he was meeting his brother, not having him over…

The man slid an arm around Guy’s waist, and not in a brotherly way.

Truman’s stomach lurched.

The man was blond and brown-eyed. He was talking on the phone, and every few words, he looked up at Guy and rolled his eyes. Guy’s face crinkled into the exact expression of warmth and amusement that Truman had thought belonged to him alone.

For a moment, Truman tried to come up with alternatives to heartbreak: it was Guy’s brother, and they were just very close. It was a friend who had stopped by unexpectedly, just as Truman had, to drop off a gift. It was a coworker who needed Guy’s immediate input on an important business matter. It was…it was…

As he watched, Guy pulled the man closer and kissed the top of his head. When a girl of seven or eight walked into the room and held a jar of peanut butter up to Guy, he opened it for her like it was the most natural thing in the world. Then he tugged her ponytail affectionately.

The girl screwed up her face, but Truman had no trouble recognizing the word she said.

Dad.

Truman threw up in the hyacinths.

***

“You did what?”

Truman banged his forehead on his friend Ramona’s bedroom door.

After leaving Guy’s, desperate for space to think, he’d tried to take refuge in the cemetery, but there had been too many people there, wending their way through the crypts, tipsy from twenty-five-cent martinis at Commander’s Palace. The idea of being seen in general made Truman’s stomach threaten to lurch once more. The idea of being seen by one of Guy’s friends, who all lived in the neighborhood, because of course they did…unbearable.

If he’d gone home, he would have sunk into tears and despair. So he’d headed to Ramona’s place in St. Roch instead.

“Nothing,” he mumbled.

“You did nothing.”

Depends. Does vomiting into someone’s flowers count as something?