Step Out of Line

Chapter 1

The Check Engine light had been on since Bridgeport, and Jamie was choosing to interpret that as a metaphor.

Connecticut in July. God, he'd missed exactly nothing about this.

His phone buzzed in the cupholder. He glanced at the screen—Sasha, third call in twenty minutes—and picked up on speaker.

"You're stalling," Sasha said, no preamble.

"I'm driving."

"You should have been there an hour ago. Google Maps says Westport is ninety minutes from your apartment, and you left at noon. It is now—"

"I stopped for gas."

"For an hour?"

"There was a line." There had not been a line. There had been a Dunkin' Donuts parking lot where Jamie had sat for forty minutes eating a stale everything bagel and staring at the steering wheel like it might offer him an alternative plan for his life.

"Jamie." Sasha's voice downshifted into the particular frequency they reserved for when Jamie was being a disaster and they loved him anyway. "It's six weeks. You go in, you eat the man's food, you design his pretty invitations, you collect your check, and you come home. That's it."

"What if he's awful?"

"Then you'll have material."

"What if he's one of those guys who calls my dad 'babe' in front of me and touches his lower back while they're cooking?"

"Then you'll have incredible material."

Jamie smiled despite himself. He took the exit for Westport and immediately felt his shoulders crawl toward his ears. The trees were aggressively green. The houses were aggressively large. Everything looked like it had been pressure-washed that morning by someone named Kyle.

"What if my dad is weird about it?" he asked, quieter now.

"Your dad is always weird about it. That's his whole brand."

"I mean weirder than usual. He sounded—I don't know. Nervous on the phone. He kept saying 'I really want you two to hit it off' like he was setting me up on a date."

"That's because your father has the emotional vocabulary of a golden retriever, and 'I want you to hit it off' is the most intimate thing he's capable of expressing. You know this. You've had twenty-six years of data."

Jamie turned onto his father's street—or what used to be his father's street. Tom had moved two years ago, sold the cramped colonial Jamie had grown up in, and bought this place with the fiancé's help. Jamie had seen photos. He had not been prepared for the reality.

The house was beautiful. That was the problem.

It sat at the end of a curving driveway behind a low stone wall, a big white colonial with black shutters and a wraparound porch and the kind of landscaping that said someone here gives a shit in a way Jamie had never associated with his father.

Tom Cole's natural habitat was takeout containers and ESPN with the volume too loud. Tom Cole did not have hydrangeas.

But there they were. Fat and blue, lining the front walk like a welcome committee.

"I'm here," Jamie said.

"How's it look?"

"Like a Pottery Barn ad fucked a New England postcard."

"Lovely. Call me tonight. I want a full report—physical description, vibe check, any and all red flags. If he's wearing a fleece vest, you leave."

"It's July."

"I don't make the rules. Love you. Be nice."

Sasha hung up. Jamie sat in the driveway with the engine running, looking at the house that was supposed to feel like coming home and felt instead like visiting a set from someone else's life.

He checked himself in the rearview mirror.

Dark curls doing their usual thing, which was whatever they wanted.

Faint circles under his eyes from the three AM panic-spiral he'd had about this exact moment.

Tongue piercing clicking against his teeth—a nervous habit he'd never broken.

He was wearing a black t-shirt, jeans, and the silver rings he fidgeted with when he didn't know what to do with his hands, which was most of the time.

He looked like what he was: a twenty-six-year-old freelance designer who lived in a Brooklyn studio apartment with a shower that only produced two temperatures (scalding and arctic) and who was about to spend six weeks in his father's fancy new house designing wedding invitations for a man he'd never met, because saying no to Tom Cole required a kind of emotional directness that neither of them had ever been capable of.

He killed the engine. Grabbed his overnight bag and laptop case from the back seat.

Walked up the front path past the hydrangeas and the porch with its Adirondack chairs and the doormat that said WELCOME in sans-serif, which Jamie clocked as Futura Bold and immediately resented for being a good font choice.

The front door opened before he could knock.

"Jamie!" Tom Cole stood in the doorway in a new shirt—Jamie could tell it was new because the collar was still crisp and his dad ironed nothing—with a smile that was trying so hard it made Jamie's chest ache. "You made it. How was the drive?"

"Long. AC died."

"Oh no. We can look at that while you're here—Marcus is great with cars. Well, he's great with everything mechanical. Come in, come in."

Marcus. The name landed in Jamie's ear with no particular resonance. Just a name. Just some guy his dad had met at a fundraiser two years ago who apparently fixed cars and had great taste in hydrangeas and had somehow convinced Tom Cole to sell his house and start a new life.

Jamie stepped inside and was hit by the smell of something cooking—garlic, butter, fresh herbs—and under that, the clean-wood scent of a house that had been recently renovated.

The foyer opened into a wide hallway with original hardwood floors, a staircase with a refinished banister, and enough natural light to make a real estate photographer weep.

"This place is incredible," Jamie said, because it was, and because complimenting the house was easier than figuring out how to hug his father.

Tom solved the problem by pulling him into one—a quick, firm hug that lasted exactly one second longer than Jamie expected and two seconds shorter than he needed. Tom smelled like the same drugstore aftershave he'd been wearing since Jamie was a kid. That, at least, hadn't changed.

"Let me show you around. Marcus did most of the renovation himself—well, his firm did, but he was on-site for all of it. He's an architect. Did I tell you that?"

"You mentioned it." About eleven times, across six phone calls, with the specific enthusiasm of a man who had found someone impressive and needed everyone to know. Jamie had listened to all of it with a supportive expression that Sasha later described as "heroic in its fraudulence."

Tom led him through the first floor—living room with built-in bookshelves, dining room with a farmhouse table that seated ten, a half-bathroom with subway tile, and then the kitchen, which was clearly the jewel of the whole renovation.

White cabinets, marble countertops, a massive island that was only half-finished—raw wood and clamps on one end, polished butcher block on the other.

"Marcus is building that by hand," Tom said, running his palm along the finished section. "White oak. It's a wedding gift. He works on it in the garage on weekends."

Jamie looked at the island and tried to feel something appropriate, like appreciation or warmth. What he felt was a low, familiar ache that lived somewhere behind his sternum and activated whenever his father talked about someone with the tenderness he'd never quite managed to direct at Jamie.

It wasn't jealousy. Not exactly. It was more like watching someone walk into a restaurant you'd been turned away from and get the best table.

"It's beautiful, Dad."

Tom beamed. "He's running an errand—should be back any minute. I set you up in the guest suite. It's got its own bathroom, good light for your design work. Let me take your bag."

"I've got it."

"At least let me—"

"Dad. I've got it."

Tom raised his hands in surrender, still smiling. "Guest suite's upstairs, second door on the left. Take your time getting settled. Marcus picked up champagne—we're celebrating tonight."

Jamie climbed the stairs with his bag over one shoulder and his laptop case in his hand, studying the photos on the stairwell wall as he went.

Tom at a hospital gala. Tom at what looked like a wine tasting.

Tom on a hiking trail, laughing at the camera, looking more relaxed than Jamie had ever seen him in person.

And then, near the top of the stairs—a framed photo that stopped Jamie mid-step.

Two men, shot from behind, standing on a beach at sunset.

His father was on the left—Jamie recognized the posture, the way Tom held his shoulders.

The man on the right was taller, broader, built in a way that read even from behind.

Dark hair with a scattering of silver. One arm around Tom's waist, hand resting on his hip with a casual possessiveness that suggested this was a hand that settled there often.

He stood like he owned the ground under his feet. Not arrogant. Just certain.

Something flickered at the base of Jamie's spine. A quick, involuntary pulse that he couldn't name and immediately filed away under Not Relevant.

He kept walking.

The guest suite was better than his apartment.

Significantly, offensively better. Queen bed with white linens, a desk by the window overlooking the back yard, its own bathroom with a walk-in shower and actual water pressure.

The afternoon light poured through gauze curtains and made everything glow gold.

Jamie dropped his bag on the bed and stood in the middle of the room, hands in his pockets, taking stock of his situation.

Six weeks. In this beautiful house, in this beautiful suburb, with his well-meaning, emotionally inarticulate father and a fiancé named Marcus who built kitchen islands by hand and bought champagne and existed, apparently, at the center of a life Jamie could barely recognize.