The alarm goes off early the next morning. Strider is curled on the rug in the dormer room, where he now sleeps. Evan scratches behind the dog’s ears, then makes the bed. Pausing, he realizes that the sheets are tight enough to bounce a dumbbell on.

Next time, he thinks. The two best words in the English language.

When he gets downstairs, he expects to find Jack at the stove, readying the omelet pan, but instead he has his keys in hand and is ready to go. They drive to a Veterans Day parade in town. Evan stands at Jack’s side, and they watch the open-topped cars drive by. There are fire engines and fried dough and soldiers with empty sleeves pinned up at the elbows. There are crying moms and old men with watery eyes, their hands over their hearts. There are babies in strollers and young wives with firm tanned skin and lush curls and golden sunlight falling across them, turning the tiny hairs of their arms white. Evan feels an odd sense at his core, a blurring of himself into something greater, all these people joined in common emotion, and the fine, fine flags snap overhead, and he breathes the powdered sugar and the scent of sunscreen and feels the pulse of all these hearts beating inside his own chest. That night when he slides into bed and gazes at the slanted ceiling, he feels the pulse still moving through his body, an almost sexual ache in his cells like the swell of an orchestra on Jack’s old record player, the sound track of desire, of belonging.

He thinks of Jack sleeping downstairs and how that makes him feel safe. Jack has cracked the world open like a geode, laying its glittering treasures bare. As long as Evan has Jack at his side, he can do anything. A sensation rolls through his body, unfamiliar and warm, and at last he is able to name it.

It is the feeling of being given a place in the world.

11. No Longer the Same Place

11

No Longer the Same Place

Evan came to lying flat on his chest, his mouth open against the floorboards. He shoved himself up and leaned back against the sleigh bed, letting the ache between his temples subside.

The cart was gone. Damp spot on the floorboards where they’d been scrubbed. No sign of Chuy’s body.

Serious room service.