Chapter 9 #2
“Thank you,” Chad said, mouth half full. “You don’t have to do this every time.”
“I like doing it.”
“You like feeding strays.”
“I like feeding you. There’s a difference.”
Chad glanced up. The bartender’s read—quick, assessing. Whatever he saw, he didn’t comment on it. He just went back to his eggs.
They sat on the couch afterward. The apartment was quiet—the hum of the refrigerator, the distant murmur of the city. First Kiss was barely visible in the dim light from the kitchen, just the suggestion of blue against the wall.
“I had breakfast with Roy Bathum yesterday,” Hank said. “The colleague I mentioned. The one building the jobs program.”
“The homeless rehab thing.”
“It’s real, Chad. Park Service is on board.
They’re placing people—anyone willing to work, willing to stay clean.
Even people with histories. Substance issues.
” He kept his voice even. Factual. “Roy gave me a few of his cards. In case I came across anyone who might benefit. I gave one to my friend, Clyde, today. I told you about him. The guy at CVS who always says, Can’t complain. ”
Chad had gone still beside him. Not tense—just still.
A long moment passed. Then, quietly, he said, “Mac?”
“Only if you think he’s ready. Only if you want to.”
“I don’t even know where he is.”
“But if you see him again.”
Chad stared at the coffee table. Hank waited. He’d learned that about Chad—you didn’t fill his silences. You let them run and eventually he’d come back with something, even if it was only a sentence.
“Yeah,” Chad said. “Okay.”
Hank reached into his jacket on the chair and pulled out the card.
Chad took it. Looked at it.
“You didn’t have to do this,” he said.
“I know.”
His thumb grazed the raised lettering on the card.
“No pressure,” Hank said. “Just an option.”
The corner of Chad’s mouth twitched. Not quite a smile, but close.
He found his wallet in his bag by the door and placed the card inside. Then he returned to the couch where Hank held him for a while without talking—the painting on the wall, the city outside, and the space between them warm and undemanding.
Saturday afternoon. Hank’s apartment. Rain against the windows—the first real rain of autumn, steady and gray.
They were on the couch. Chad was reading something for class—a monograph on color theory that he held at arm’s length as though the book had personally offended him. Hank was pretending to review briefing materials and actually watching Chad read.
He’d been rehearsing.
Not obviously—he wasn’t the kind of man who practiced in mirrors—but for the past two days, he’d been assembling sentences in his head, rearranging them, discarding them, starting over.
He’d made notes on a legal pad, which he’d then thrown away because making notes about asking someone on a date was, even by his standards, excessive.
“You’re staring,” Chad said, not looking up.
“I’m not staring.”
“You’ve been on the same page for twenty minutes.”
“It’s a complex page.”
Chad set his book down. “What?”
“I wanted to ask you something.”
“Okay.”
“There’s a concert.” Hank set his own papers aside. Straightened. The formality was involuntary—the senatorial posture that crept in whenever he was nervous. “At the Kennedy Center. October 11th. Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony.”
“Okay.”
“It’s National Coming Out Day. I had mentioned us maybe doing something for it. The concert is that evening, and I looked into it. They have a private balcony seating—not completely private, but semi-private. Removed. We wouldn’t be in the main audience.”
Chad was watching him with an expression Hank couldn’t read.
“Classical music is—it’s important to me. It’s how I—you don’t have to say yes. I know it’s not everyone’s thing. If you’d rather do something else, or nothing, or if the timing is wrong—”
“Hank.”
“—because I realize the Kennedy Center is public, and we have the rules, such as they are, what’s left of them—”
“Hank.”
“—and I don’t want you to feel pressured—”
“Yes.”
Hank stopped. “Yes?”
“Yes. I want to go.”
“You do?”
“You’re asking me to share something that matters to you. On a day that matters.” Chad shrugged. “That’s not a hard yes.”
Hank sat there. He had prepared for negotiation. He had prepared for gentle rejection and gracious alternatives and a backup plan involving a quiet dinner instead. He had not prepared for yes delivered in five words, like it was the simplest thing in the world.
“I’ll need a jacket,” Chad said.
“You don’t have to—”
“If I’m going to the Kennedy Center. I’m wearing a jacket.” Chad picked his book back up. “Ricky Ricardo has a wardrobe for every occasion. He’ll have something.”
Hank blinked. “Ricky Ricardo.”
“That’s his name.”
“Your roommate’s name is Ricky Ricardo.”
“His parents are Cuban. Apparently, Desi Arnaz is a national treasure. His mother explained this to me once. At length.”
Hank shook his head slowly. “Ricky Ricardo.”
“You’re stuck on this.”
“I’m going to be stuck on this for a while.”
“Whatever.”
Hank chuckled—a startled sound, the kind that escaped before he could catch it. He was, he realized, happy. Not the careful, qualified version he’d been practicing for weeks. The real thing. Unguarded.
Rain against the windows. Chad reading. The painting on the wall.
“Thank you,” he said.
Chad looked at him over the book. “For what?”
Hank didn’t have an answer that wouldn’t sound like a speech. So he just shook his head and went back to his briefing materials, and they sat there in the gray afternoon light, not talking—not needing to.
Outside, the rain fell. October was settling in. Three days until the concert. Thirty days until the election.
Hank turned a page he hadn’t read and let himself, for once, not count.