What Adrian Never Managed to Hide

On his tenth birthday, Adrian Hayes received a bicycle, a watch, and a neighbor.

Jamie Bennett appeared in the garden next door carrying a box too large for an eight-year-old. His knees were scraped, his hair was in his eyes, and he wore the determined expression of someone preparing to argue with gravity.

The box fell.

Books and plastic dinosaurs scattered across the grass.

Adrian pushed through the hedge to help. He gave Jamie every dinosaur he could reach, then the bag of candy from his own birthday.

"Don't you want it?" Jamie asked.

He did.

Mostly, he wanted Jamie to stay.

"I have more."

It was a lie, but Jamie smiled. Adrian discovered that some lies produced immediate rewards and began a regrettable career.

That week, Jamie cried because Adrian won a board game.

Adrian let him win the rematch.

Jamie noticed and cried harder.

The solution was to let him choose their next game. Adrian spent half an hour on all fours in the grass, playing horse for a boy who shouted military orders and laughed with his head thrown back.

When Jamie was called in for dinner, Adrian was left with grass on his knees and a wish that evening would take a little longer to arrive.

The wish never went away.

He grew up and learned a great many things: swimming, driving, accounting, how to talk to adults without showing his boredom.

He never learned to say something simple to Jamie without damaging it on the way out.

When his neighbor began losing his baby teeth, Adrian told him his smile looked like a broken piano keyboard.

He received a slap on the arm.

He considered the conversation a success because Jamie stayed another ten minutes explaining that pianos didn't have teeth.

Years later, he found Jamie's father shouting at his son for skipping a dance rehearsal. The man held Jamie's arm, and Jamie was trying to pull free with tears in his eyes.

Adrian stepped between them without thinking.

There was an argument, a broken flowerpot, and eventually two families in the garden.

Adrian left with a scratch on his shoulder. Jamie appeared the following morning with bandages and a look of concentration that made him catch his tongue between his teeth.

"Does it hurt?"

It did.

Adrian looked at the worried face in front of him and said no.

He would have preferred a medal to Jamie's tears.

In his early teens, Jamie developed an interest in a boy on the basketball team.

Adrian, who played football, made disparaging comments about basketball until his mother asked whether a hoop had personally offended him.

Then he learned to play.

He practiced for weeks, invited Jamie over, and performed a sequence he'd rehearsed until his fingers hurt.

Jamie watched with a friend by the fence.

Adrian approached, sweaty and hopeful.

"Well?"

Jamie buried his face in his hands.

"You look like a peacock. I would never date you."

His friend laughed.

Adrian didn't.

That night he posted a gloomy sentence about broken hearts and changed his profile picture to a black square.

It lasted until the following afternoon, when Jamie asked him to reach a box.

An existential crisis was difficult to maintain with someone holding a ladder and complaining that you were slow.

When Jamie enrolled at his university, Adrian decided he finally had a chance.

He was already managing a small inheritance. With the solemnity of someone who understood almost nothing about romance, he assembled documents to demonstrate that he intended to take care of Jamie properly.

He brought flowers.

He found Jamie arranging petals in a romantic message for another student.

The world became small and ugly.

When Jamie stepped away, Adrian changed a word.

He was discovered, insulted, and shoved out of the scene.

He went home with his own flowers.

For years, he remembered the humiliation of being rejected before he could speak. It took him longer to recognize that Jamie had been humiliated too, and that it had been his fault.

With Cole, he managed to do worse.

He thought exposing how readily the guy would accept an advantage would prove him unworthy. He imagined Jamie would understand.

Jamie brought a dog to his office and said he never wanted to see him again.

The dog didn't like him either.

Adrian deserved both of them.

During the months of silence, he opened the blocked conversation so often that he memorized the last message.

His mother found him standing outside a bakery, staring at the little cakes Jamie liked.

"You can buy them without him here," she said.

"I don't like that flavor."

She watched him for a while.

"Adrian. Is there something you'd like to tell me?"

He told her.

It was the first time he'd said aloud, without turning it into a taunt, that he loved Jamie.

His mother heard him out. Then she asked whether he would prefer to apologize or mount a diplomatic operation between two families.

Adrian, who had never been good at choosing the simple solution, asked what the second option would involve.

She didn't promise him a wedding. She promised to talk, make it clear that Jamie could refuse, and ensure that no business agreement depended on his answer.

When Jamie agreed to hear the proposal, Adrian spent an entire afternoon rearranging his books.

He needed something to do with his hands.

At the engagement party, he received their agreed signal, watched Jamie embrace the banister, and knew he was lost.

Jamie could refuse the marriage. Adrian could not stand up in that room and announce that he didn't want him.

He couldn't tell that particular lie.

He told the truth as a joke.

Jamie heard only the joke.

Later, in the house, Adrian tried to be a husband who didn't ask for too much.

He bought the right cake. Left water by the bed. Learned to make the shrimp exactly the way Jamie liked it.

He said he didn't love him because he was afraid of hearing that he wasn't loved back.

Then he resented Jamie for believing him.

Seen from the outside, he realized later, it was a profoundly stupid strategy.

But he had never seen himself from the outside. He was always too busy looking at Jamie.

The night of the party, he came home determined to accept the invitation he'd refused.

He found Jamie getting dressed for someone else to collect him.

He waited to be invited again.

He wasn't.

Once the door closed, he buried his face in a cushion and screamed.

Jamie opened the door.

Adrian hid the cushion.

Jamie closed the door.

Adrian screamed again.

There wasn't enough dignity in the world to rescue that scene.

The terrace came next. The boot. The student calling him an uncle.

Adrian was certain he'd aged four years in that minute.

Instead of admitting jealousy, he talked about the company's image.

Jamie turned toward the window.

At the time, Adrian noticed the change but couldn't interpret it. Now he had a name for it: disappointment.

He fed terrible food to the man he loved to punish him for not understanding something he refused to say.

Then he decided he'd better become more attractive.

Then he decided he'd better learn the violin.

When Nora asked about the noise, he told her it was a relaxation recording. She began scheduling meetings at the other end of the floor.

His choices kept getting worse until the night he sat on the bed with a ribbon around his throat and realized he didn't know how to ask to be loved without offering something in return.

He'd seen Elliot's messages when he came downstairs to get Jamie. Read just enough to hurt himself. Gone back upstairs without asking for the rest.

He cried because Jamie kissed him like he wanted him, and still Adrian thought he wouldn't be chosen when the day ended.

Fear did the rest.

When Jamie mentioned separation, Adrian left so quickly that he tore the stop off the door.

On his mother's couch, he was asked a question irritatingly similar to the first.

"Do you intend to talk to your husband or renovate the entire house?"

He fixed the door.

Talking required a bigger disaster.

Now, weeks later, Adrian sat on the library floor in front of a box of books, trying to decide where to put a beginner's violin manual.

Jamie appeared in the doorway carrying two mugs.

"Your teacher confirmed tomorrow at six."

Adrian looked up.

"Will you come with me?"

"I'll drop you off. Then I'm going to find a coffee shop where I can't hear anything."

He smiled.

Jamie sat on the rug and handed over a mug.

"Your mom told me you cleared out a whole bookcase before the engagement party."

Adrian drank to buy himself time.

"It was badly organized."

Jamie looked at the space that now held his games, dance books, and a crooked wedding photograph.

"You left me the shelves I can reach."

Adrian didn't answer.

There was no longer any use in denying it.

Jamie rested his shoulder against his and stayed there, drinking coffee in silence. Adrian felt the warmth beside him, the easy familiarity of that weight.

For so many years, he'd wished Jamie would take a little longer to leave.

Now there was his mug on the floor, his slipper under the armchair, and their plans for the following morning.

Jamie picked up the violin manual.

"You can still quit, you know."

Adrian looked at the book.

"Now I actually want to learn."

"Good. Because I've already bought earplugs."

They laughed together.

Adrian leaned his head against the bookcase and closed his eyes for a moment.

Jamie touched his knee.

"Hey."

He turned.

"I love you."

There was still a small astonishment in hearing it. Adrian didn't think that would go away anytime soon.

"You've already said that today."

"I'll say it tomorrow too. Clear your schedule."

Jamie put down his mug and leaned in to kiss him.

Adrian caught him with both hands, smiling before he even reached his mouth.

This time, he didn't have to hide a thing.

THE END