Red, White

Have you ever considered there might be more than one path to use what you have? Or to get where you want to be to make the most difference in the world?”

You engross my thoughts too intirely to allow me to think of any thing else—you not only employ my mind all day; but you intrude upon my sleep. I meet you in every dream—and when I wake I cannot close my eyes again for ruminating on your sweetness.

“Alex?” Henry’s voice sounds scratchy and bewildered across the line. “Have you really rung me at three o’clock in the morning to make me listen to a turkey?”

“Yes, obviously,” Alex says. He glances at Cornbread and cringes. “Jesus Christ, it’s like they can see into your soul. Cornbread knows my sins, Henry. Cornbread knows what I have done, and he is here to make me atone.”

“C’mon, it’s like, in the hips. You have to loosen up.” He reaches down and puts both hands on Henry’s hips, and Henry instantly tenses under the touch. “That’s the opposite of what I said.”

Hey, don’t threaten me with a good time.”

I can love you and want you and still not want that life. I’m allowed

Okay, so,” Alex says. “Yeah. So here’s what we’re gonna do. You are gonna go be, like, five hundred feet away from me for the rest of the night, or else I am going to do something that I will deeply regret in front of a lot of very important people.”

“All right . . .”

“And then,” Alex says, and he grabs Henry’s tie again, close to the knot, and draws his mouth up to a breath away from Henry’s. He hears Henry swallow. He wants to follow the sound down his throat. “And then you are going to come to the East Bedroom on the second floor at eleven o’clock tonight, and I am going to do very bad things to you, and if you fucking ghost me again, I’m going to get you put on a fucking no-fly list. Got it?”

Henry fumbles with his shirt tail, eyes wide, and starts humming “God Save the Queen” under his breath.

“What are you doing?”

“Christ, I’m trying to make it”—he gestures inelegantly at the front of his pants—“go away.”

Alex very pointedly does not look down.

Henry’s retort comes two days later by way of a screenshot of a Daily Mail tweet that reads, Is Alex Claremont-Diaz going to be a father? The attached message says, But we were ever so careful, dear, which surprises a big enough laugh out of Alex

I thought, if someone like that ever loved me, it would set me on fire.