Chapter 6 #2
“I was nervous,” Hank said, with a dignity that was both genuine and completely absurd, and Chad felt the first loosening in his chest. Not resolved. Just loosened.
“What happens if people find out?”
Hank’s expression became careful, precise. The senator-face. Chad was starting to recognize it.
“My seat is up for re-election in November,” he said.
“Forty-eight days from now. Georgia is—” He paused.
“Georgia is not Colorado. The district I represent is not a district where this is—” Another pause.
He seemed frustrated with his own careful language.
“It would cost me the election. Almost certainly.”
“And after the election?”
“After the election, I have six years before I need to worry about re-election again.”
Chad looked at him. “Six years is a long time to stay closeted.”
“I know that.”
“I’m not going to pretend to be something I’m not,” Chad said, flat and clear, because it needed to be clear. “I’m out. I’ve been out since I was seventeen. I’m not going back into a closet for anyone.”
“I would never ask you to,” Hank said. “That’s not—” He shook his head. “That’s not what I’m asking.”
“What are you asking?”
Hank was quiet for a moment. When he spoke, his voice was measured, but what was underneath it was not.
“I’m asking if you’d be willing to be careful.
For a little while. Forty-eight days. After the election, I—” he stopped.
“I want to figure out how to do this properly, Chad. I want to be honest. I’ve spent a very long time not being honest and I’m tired of it, and then I walk into a bar on a Tuesday night and you hand me a drink and look at me like I’m a person, and I—” He stopped again.
Chad looked at his hands around the mug.
His knuckles. The small smudge of cadmium yellow that hadn’t quite washed out from yesterday’s studio session lodged in the crease at the base of his thumb.
He thought about Tuesday night. He thought about the gallery.
He thought about Hank’s face when he’d looked at First Kiss—unguarded, slightly undone.
Forty-eight days. Not even two months. He’d waited longer for financial aid paperwork.
But the math wasn’t the problem. The problem was what forty-eight days of careful meant—not going to dinner, not walking together, not being visible.
Being someone’s secret. He understood the reasons.
He understood that discretion for your career and hiding because you’re ashamed were not the same thing.
But they lived in the same neighborhood. They shared a wall.
“Forty-eight days,” Chad said.
“Forty-eight days of being discreet. Not hiding, not—I’m not asking you to lie to anyone. Just—” Hank searched for the words. “Not making it easy for someone to make it into a story.”
“And then?”
“And then I’d very much like to take you out for dinner somewhere that people will see us.”
Chad looked up. Hank was watching him with that careful optimism—the same look he’d had last night pulling the CVS bag from the drawer. Hopeful. A man who’d spent a long time believing hope was not available to him and was still not convinced it was.
“You have to be straight with me,” Chad said. “About everything. I don’t care how awkward the timing is, I don’t care if it’s a bad moment. If there’s something I need to know, you tell me. That’s a rule.”
“Agreed,” Hank said. No hesitation.
“And I want to meet this Frannie person. Eventually. I want to know there are people in your life who actually know what’s going on.”
“She would love you,” Hank said, with a warmth that suggested he’d already imagined the introduction.
“And your ex-wife.”
“Shelby would absolutely love you. Possibly more than she loves me.”
“That checks out.” He set his mug on the coffee table. “Okay.”
Hank looked at him. “Okay?”
“Forty-eight days of being careful. And then dinner somewhere public.” He raised a finger.
“But I want to be clear that I’m not agreeing because I’m afraid of the complication.
I’m agreeing because I think you’re worth forty-eight days of patience, which is not something I’ve historically had in large quantities, so you should feel—” he gestured vaguely “—appropriately honored.”
Hank’s face crinkled comically with consideration, and then he laughed—a real laugh, surprised out of him. Deep and sudden. The laugh lived in his beard for a second after his mouth closed. “I feel appropriately honored,” he said.
“Good.” Chad picked up his mug again. “Now. You said you were from Georgia.”
“I did.”
“Are you going to cook me breakfast or not?
Hank cooked eggs the way Chad imagined he did most things—thoughtfully, without rushing, with a seriousness of attention disproportionate to the task, and entirely charming.
He’d found an onion and a bell pepper in the refrigerator and diced them with a focus that suggested the knife work mattered, and now a cast iron pan was on the stove doing something fragrant with butter.
Chad sat on the counter. Hank had looked like he might say something about it and then decided against it. Second cup of coffee. Quiet for a while.
“Scrambled or over easy?” Hank asked.
“Scrambled.”
“Good. I’ve never successfully managed over easy.”
“Your Senate bio leaves that out.”
“My Senate bio leaves out a great deal.” Hank cracked eggs into the pan with one hand—a small trick he didn’t know he was doing. “I should warn you that I have very strong opinions about scrambled eggs.”
“Tell me your scrambled egg opinions.”
“Low heat. You have to be patient. People rush scrambled eggs and then they’re rubbery and terrible and nobody says anything because it’s rude.” He tilted the pan, working the eggs with a wooden spoon. “My mother made them this way. Low and slow. Same with grits.”
“Do you have grits?”
“Not at the moment. No. This is a grits-deficient apartment, which is a situation I should rectify.”
Chad smiled into his coffee. “What else would she make?”
Hank considered this while he stirred. “Biscuits. Real biscuits, not the tube kind. Sausage gravy. Sliced tomatoes from the garden in summer—she’d just put them on a plate with salt and black pepper, and they were better than anything you could order in a restaurant.
” He was quiet for a moment. “She died fourteen years ago. My father, too. Car accident.”
“I’m sorry,” Chad said. And meant it. And felt the small, involuntary flinch—mothers, kitchens, recipes handed down or not—that he put away before it had a shape.
“They were good people,” Hank said. “They would have had a complicated time with—” He tilted his head in a gesture that encompassed the apartment, the morning, Chad on the counter.
“This. But they were good people, and I think they would have come around.” He moved the eggs around in the pan.
“My father voted straight Republican his entire adult life and also made sure every person who worked on his construction crew got paid a fair wage and got home safe on a Friday. People contain multitudes, as they say.”
“As they say.” Chad watched the steam curling off the pan. “Did Shelby know? About you? Before you got married?”
“Not consciously. Not explicitly. I think she knew something wasn’t quite—aligned.
But we were twenty-two, and we loved each other genuinely, and being married seemed like the right thing.
The expected thing. And I was very good at not knowing things about myself that were inconvenient to know.
” He served the eggs onto two plates he’d already set out with toast—Chad hadn’t noticed him making it.
“She figured it out over time. She didn’t say anything for years, and then finally she did, and it was—” He handed Chad his plate.
“It was a relief. Both of us, I think. She married Lowell a couple of years ago. He’s a good man. She’s happy.”
“And you?”
“I’m working on it.”
Chad took his plate and slid off the counter. The small table by the window. Two chairs. He doubted they’d both been occupied much before this week.
The eggs were good. He didn’t say so immediately, but after a moment: “Okay, the scrambled egg opinions are justified.”
Hank looked pleased in a restrained way. “Thank you.”