Chapter 8
The apartment smelled like garlic.
Ricky stood at the stove with the intensity of a man defusing a bomb, phone propped against the backsplash, George’s voice memo playing on a loop. “Low heat. Don’t rush the onions. If they stick, add a little wine—not too much. You’re cooking, not drinking.”
“He says not too much wine,” Ricky said, pouring liberally.
Chad leaned against the counter with his own glass. He held up a box of Mueller’s spaghetti. “If George gave you a whole tutorial, why did you ask me to help?”
“I can’t do everything. And I need you to be here for moral support.
There’s a difference.” Ricky adjusted the flame, squinting at the pan like it owed him money.
“He sent home the sausage, too. Spicy Italian. He bought a boatload of it—had plans for some food-truck situation that never happened. Said he couldn’t just have Italian sausage on the menu, though Mikey would approve. ”
“Mikey still makes people weep at the occasional Tuesday Tunes. He belted out Memory from Cats last month, and one guy put down his drink and genuflected.”
“The man has a gift.” Ricky poked at the onions with a wooden spoon. “George said to cut these smaller. I cut them smaller. They still look like sad little onion chunks.”
“That’s because you cut them into rectangles. Onions aren’t bricks.”
“Don’t critique my knife work. I’m following instructions.” Ricky gestured at the phone. “Add the garlic when the onions go translucent,” George’s voice said again. “See? I’m waiting. I have patience.”
“You’ve had wine. I don’t believe you.”
It was rare that both of them had the same night off—Sunday nights were usually busy for BJ’s and David’s alike.
But Tim had overscheduled and sent Chad home, and a plumbing snafu had closed David’s early.
So, they found themselves in the apartment at eight o’clock with nothing to do, which felt almost unnatural.
The apartment showed its usual signs of shared habitation—Ricky’s collection of moisturizers colonizing the bathroom shelf, Chad’s brushes soaking in a jar by the window, a stack of art history textbooks serving as a side table because the actual side table had been claimed by Ricky’s speaker and three half-empty water bottles.
The couch had a permanent Ricky-shaped indentation on the left side.
Chad’s easel stood folded against the far wall, a drop cloth underneath it spotted with cadmium yellow and phthalo blue.
Home, such as it was.
Ricky’s phone buzzed, and he glanced at it. He smiled softly—a recalibration that was nothing like his usual grin.
Chad noticed. Three years of living with someone taught you their frequencies. This was a new one.
“What?” he said.
“Nothing.”
“That’s not a nothing face.”
“I don’t have faces. I have moods. They’re curated.”
“Who’s texting you?”
Ricky hesitated. Which was also wrong. Ricky didn’t hesitate. Ricky filled silences the way water filled cracks—instantly, completely, and often with dramatic overflow.
“Wilson,” he said.
Chad watched the onions starting to go clear at the edges. “Wilson Alford-Keegan? Demarco and Jack’s kid?”
“The very same.”
“What’s he want?”
“Costume advice. He’s doing Cher at the open mic next month—he can’t decide between two Bob Mackie looks.
The black sequin gown or the Turn Back Time bodysuit.
” Ricky held up the phone: two photos, side by side, of a young man in full drag.
The gown was a cascade of black sequins, floor-length, architectural. The bodysuit was sheer ambition.
“The gown,” Chad said.
“Obviously, the gown. The bodysuit requires a confidence that takes years to develop. You have to earn that bodysuit.” Ricky typed a response, sent it, and set the phone down.
“He’s good, though. Wilson. Zsa Zsa St. Clair—that’s his drag name.
Natural stage presence. George lets him close the open mic most Fridays.
He’s too young for most bar venues, so David’s is where he practices. ”
The way Ricky said Zsa Zsa St. Clair—with a flourish, yes, because Ricky put a flourish on everything, but underneath it almost careful. Like handling someone else’s good china.
“Didn’t know you two talked,” Chad said. Neutral. Bartender-neutral.
“We talk. Sometimes. He comes in with the family. And the drag thing—he started asking me about makeup techniques a few months ago, and it just...” Ricky waved a hand. “Continued.”
“He’s what, nineteen?”
“Twenty. Yes, I’m aware of how old he is, Chad.”
“And you’re twenty-six.”
“Twenty-six and aging gracefully, thank you.” Ricky took a pointed sip of wine. “It’s not like that.”
“I didn’t say it was like anything.”
“Your eyebrows said it. They went up. I have witnesses.” He gestured at the empty room. “Ghost witnesses.”
“His dads come into the restaurant?”
“Yes. Demarco tips me. I can’t date someone whose father tips me. It would be weird. It would compromise the entire economic structure of the relationship.” Ricky delivered this with the authority of a man who’d thought about it.
Which meant he’d thought about it.
“Since when has weird stopped you?” Chad said.
He meant it lightly. A lob. Three years of patter—easy and weightless, part of the rhythm.
Ricky didn’t hit it back.
He was quiet for a moment, staring at his wineglass on the counter. When he spoke, the performance was gone. What was underneath was smaller. Younger. Very still.
“Since I started wanting something that might actually last.”
The kitchen went quiet except for the onions. Chad turned the flame down.
“Okay,” Chad said.
“Don’t make it a thing.”
“I’m not making it a thing.”
“You’re making a face.”
“I’m making pasta. There’s a difference.”
Ricky drained his wine with the decisiveness of someone closing a chapter and set the glass down. “Anyway. Enough about my hypothetical tragic love life. Let’s talk about yours. How’s your senator?”
“He’s not my senator.”
“You’ve slept with him. That makes him at least partially your senator. It’s in the Constitution. I checked.”
Chad added the garlic to the onions, listening to it hit the oil. He could feel Ricky watching him—Ricky, who read people almost as well as Chad did, who’d spent three years learning exactly how much silence to leave before Chad would fill it.
Don’t do it. Don’t go all soft and verbal. You’ll regret it in the morning.
“It’s good,” he said, now adding the sausage. “It’s—yeah. It’s good.”
“Elaborate. You’re an art student. Paint me a picture.”
“He called me from Georgia last night. We talked for almost an hour. He told me about his ex-wife’s house, his godson grabbing his beard.
” Chad kept his eyes on the pan. Easier to talk to sausage than to Ricky’s face when Ricky’s face was analyzing.
“He mentioned bringing me down there sometime. Meeting people.”
“That’s serious.”
“I know.”
“That’s meet-the-family serious.”
“I’m aware.”
“How do you feel about that?”
Terrified. Hopeful. Like showing up to a final and realizing you studied for the wrong exam.
“Fine,” Chad said.
“Liar.”
“I feel fine about it, Ricky.”
“Your shoulders are up around your ears. You look like a very tense coat hanger.”
Chad exhaled and made himself relax. The problem with living with someone who knew you was that they knew you. Every tell. Every dodge.
“I like him,” Chad said. Which was true, and also the understatement of the century, and also all he could manage out loud.
The rest of it—the way Hank looked at him like he was the answer to a question Hank had been afraid to ask, the way Hank opened car doors and blushed often, the way Chad had caught himself sketching Hank’s profile in the margin of his art history notes like a teenager with a crush—stayed interior.
Where it was safe. Where he couldn’t jinx it.
“You like him,” Ricky repeated. Flat. “You like him. Like you like pizza. Like you like sleeping in.”
“What do you want me to say?”
“I want you to say what’s actually happening behind that bartender poker face you think nobody can see through.”
Chad pointed the spatula at him. “Drop it.”
“Dropped.” Ricky held up his hands. Then, after a beat: “You’re falling for him.”
It wasn’t a question.
Two for two. Your goddamn picker.
Except it didn’t feel like the picker this time.
Mac had been chaos dressed up as chemistry.
Jonathan had been a con in a good disguise.
Hank was—what? A man who bought condoms at CVS and called it hopeful.
A man who said I’m a senator after sex because his brain short-circuited and the truth fell out.
“Yeah,” Chad said quietly. “Maybe.”
“Maybe.” Ricky’s smile was small and real. “Okay. Maybe.”
He didn’t push. That was the thing about Ricky—for all the theater, all the noise, he knew when to stop. He’d found the edge, and he’d stepped back from it, and the stepping back said more than any follow-up question would have.
Chad poured the crushed tomatoes into the pan. They hissed and settled.
“Oh,” Ricky said, in a deliberately different register—lighter, brighter, subject-change energy.
“George is doing a whole thing at David’s for National Coming Out Day.
October 11th. Rainbow menu, open mic special, Mikey’s probably going to sing something that makes everyone weep into their moussaka. ”
“Guaranteed.”
“Are you and the senator doing anything for it?”
“He mentioned wanting to do something.” Chad shrugged. “I don’t know what yet.”
“But something.”
“Something. A step. Obviously, he’s not ready to come out officially, not before the election, but he wants to mark it somehow.”
“Good for him.” Ricky nodded slowly. “And you? How are you with it?”
“I told him I wouldn’t go back in the closet for anyone. And I meant it. But being discreet isn’t the same as hiding. I can do discreet for a few more weeks.”
Ricky was quiet for a moment. Then he raised his glass. “To discreet.”
“To discreet.”
They clinked. Ricky took a sip, made a face. “This wine is terrible.”
“George picked it.”
“George is a chef, not a sommelier. Different skills.” But he took another sip, anyway.
They ate at the coffee table because the kitchen table was buried under Chad’s printmaking project, and Ricky narrated a review of the meal as though he were filing a restaurant column. “The sausage: rustic. The sauce: adequate. The company: unparalleled.”
Ricky’s phone buzzed twice more during dinner. Both times, the face that wasn’t performing. Both times, thumbs hovering before typing.
Chad said nothing.
After the pasta was eaten and the wine was gone, Ricky delivered his usual dramatic exit: “I’m retiring to my chambers. Do not disturb me unless there’s a fire or gossip.”
Chad washed the dishes alone. He dried his hands and picked up his phone. One message from Hank, sent an hour ago: Campaign dinner survived. Green beans were optimistic. Hope your night off is treating you well.
Chad typed: Made spaghetti. Ricky cooked. Well, kinda. Your ears ought to be burning.
He sent it and leaned against the counter. The response was in under a minute.
Should I be worried?
Depends. How do you feel about being called “my senator”?
Conflicted. Grammatically and politically.
Goodnight, Senator.
Goodnight, Chad.
Chad set the phone down. The kitchen was clean, and the apartment settled into its nighttime register—the hum of the refrigerator, the neighbor’s TV through the wall, the quiet of a Saturday in Foggy Bottom when you were usually at work.
He turned off the light.