Fourteen years ago.
Since that first day of school, Danny has looked for Lance every time he climbs to the top of the bus’s stairs, and Lance has made sure there’s always an empty seat next to him.
Over the first couple of weeks, they sometimes didn’t speak—just took turns casting shy looks at each other and then hastily looking away. Gradually, they spoke more and more. First, they talked about The Team, then other books, and then their teachers and classmates. By September, there were no more shy looks, and they were together as much as possible both on and off the bus. It filled Lance with his first taste of joy, something so bright and incandescent that he didn’t know how it could be caused by just one person.
By November, Lance is running out of excuses for why he has to turn down Danny’s daily invitations for getting together outside of school.
But we’re neighbors, Danny would exclaim, and Robbie already said okay!
So, Lance comes up with a plan.
There’s no way his father will tell him that he can go to the Chases’ house for a playdate, so Lance hasn’t bothered to ask. But, on Saturdays, his father almost always sleeps until noon, and Lance has been playing in the woods without his father interfering for as long as he can remember. Lately, he’s done so with more purpose, exploring the property line. He knows the spot where the trees break and he can see up the far bank to the tight strands of wire fence that border the Chases’ spread. He’s pretty sure he can walk there, cross the creek, get to Danny’s, and be back before his dad wakes up.
He’s told Danny his dad will drop him off—a lie he’d rather not have told. What he and Danny have feels too precious to jeopardize with untruths, like even a small betrayal could poison the pure, perfect thing between them. But, he has a feeling that certain truths could kill it, too. Danny looks at Lance with the biggest grin, the brightest light in his eyes. Lance has no idea how he earned Danny’s attention, or why Danny enjoys being around him as much as Lance enjoys being around Danny, but whatever cosmic misunderstanding is working in his favor, he wants it to last as long as possible. If Danny knew the dirty, ugly truth about what Lance goes home to, he’d see Lance differently.
So, Lance is willing to lie, but only when he absolutely has to.
The first part of the walk is easier than he thought it would be. He reaches the creekbank, stepping across where the silt is piled high in waves like squishy stepping stones. He doesn’t get his socks wet, which is an accomplishment in his old boots. Even though he’s patched them up with tape and glue, they still have a zillion tiny holes in the soles. He has to wear two pairs of socks just to keep every rock he walks over from making him wince.
Once Lance has safely crossed that obstacle, heart thudding, he realizes that the hardest step is still before him. The bank is steeper on this side than the other. It towers over his head, studded with roots and stones, but he knows by the loose look of the soil that those will be poor footholds.
He has to trek downstream about a quarter-mile before he finds a better approach, a slope he can almost walk up, leaning far over his knees; two small trees grow out of it, and he grips their trunks like they’re rungs on a giant ladder and vaults himself upward as fast as he can.
He’s almost there when his feet lose traction and he lands hard on his knees, skidding in the damp dirt, which is wet enough that he instantly feels it seep through the worn-thin knees of his jeans, cold on the skin beneath. Scrambling up, he grips the top of the ledge with hands like claws and drags himself the rest of the way with a desperate gasp.
He rolls over onto his back at the top. He’s made it. The sky is blue overhead, and the air is misty and cool—a stark contrast to his body, which was heated by the climb. Sweat dries fast and tacky on his forehead. He can feel something rough against the back of his head, and, grimacing, he sits up to find that he now has a clod of mud and a few twigs in his hair. He tugs them loose as he gets to his feet and walks slowly toward the tree line. He’s disoriented, but he thinks he should still be pretty close to the Chases’ place.
And he is. He wriggles through the fence and finds himself in a narrow pasture that wraps around smaller, dirt corrals attached to a massive old barn. He’s seen stone barns before—they’re fairly common—but never one this big and meticulously preserved.
Similarly, lots of people keep horses, but he can tell instantly that there’s a higher standard of care going on at the Chases’ as he takes in the pens of sleek animals about fifty yards away. Set apart from them is a working round pen, where a horse the color of a sunbeam, pale gold with a silver mane and tail, trots in a circle. In the middle of the pen, pivoting to watch the animal’s every move, is Danny’s brother Robbie.
On the top rail of the fence, Johnny is perched, watching Robbie carefully. Lance can hear the low murmur of their voices but not their exact words. Wherever Danny is, he’s out of sight.
Lance thought he’d emerge from the creekbed further from the Chases’ home, but because of the curving orientation of the creek, he’s actually nearer. He’s also opposite the property from the driveway, where he’d planned to appear and claim his father had dropped him off at the road, like the school bus would have.
He realizes his mistake too late. Before he can escape back into the trees, the golden horse sees him. It shies violently, kicking out with its rear legs and veering so closely to Robbie that he has to step back.
Then, both Robbie and Johnny are looking to where the horse looked, and Lance is caught lurking in the trees with muddy knees. He curses himself, filled with the urge to cry or run and never come back. He’ll just look down the next time Danny gets on the bus. He’d rather do that than try to explain what he’s doing in this moment. Even if things had gone exactly according to his plans, though, would it really have worked? I’m an idiot, he thinks bitterly, beginning to backpedal.
Before Lance can turn and run, Johnny raises his arm in a friendly wave, jumps off the fence, and lopes toward him. Robbie climbs out of the round pen and follows Johnny at a regular walk, the horse’s halter dangling from his hand.
Johnny reaches Lance first, smiling. “Hey,” he says happily. At thirteen, he’s already as tall as some of the high-school kids who ride the bus. And he’s—well, there’s no other word for him, really, but pretty, with his wavy, dun-colored hair and the bold lines of his face and his sun-kissed skin. Every girl who Lance has ever seen in Johnny’s presence whispers and giggles as he passes by, and their voices get high when they talk to him. Today, like most days, he’s wearing a denim jacket and his usual easy smile. His glance skims over Lance’s knees and his smile turns wider—knowing. Lance freezes.
“You walked over, huh? That’s smart. It’s not even that far. I told Danny that you live so close, he should just walk to your house if he wants to see you so bad, but he didn’t believe me. He thinks he knows everything, but he has no sense of direction. Absolutely none. You should see him play that ‘pin the tail on the donkey’ game. Or even worse, with a piñata.” Suddenly, Johnny’s arm is hooked around Lance’s neck, and Lance doesn’t even know how it happened. But he’s falling into step beside Johnny, who’s taking small, slow steps that don’t fit his much taller, leggy body, and which make it obvious that he’s guiding Lance along. “Glad you’re here. Danny’s been even more annoying than usual all morning. ‘When will it be ten? What does it mean when he says ‘around ten’? Do you think that means he could be earlier?’” He rolls his eyes, grinning all the while, until Lance, helplessly, finds himself smiling, too.
That was actually a pretty good impression of Danny, Lance thinks, but obviously he’d never admit it. He likes Johnny, but Danny is his best and only friend. Lance will always be on Danny’s side.
Robbie has made his way over to them and the sun is right behind his head, so Lance has to squint at him for a second before his face comes into focus. When it does, Lance’s heart skips a beat.
His heart hasn’t done that before. It’s frightening, like something just snuck into his chest and closed a tight fist around his heart, seizing it briefly, and it has to hammer to catch back up to its usual tempo. The moment steals his breath.
Robbie is smiling at him the way Lance has seen him smile at his brothers. It’s like his heart is in his eyes. Lance has imagined it before, inserting himself into the space occupied by Danny and Johnny when their brother looks at them, so many mornings at the end of the Chases’ driveway. But the reality is something else. Something beyond imagining.
“Lance,” Robbie says, his voice soft, like the wind in the lilac hedge. “I’ve heard so much about you. I’m glad to meet you.” He passes the halter from his right hand to his left so he can hold it out to Lance for a handshake.
When his heart is done short-circuiting, Lance blinks and solemnly takes Robbie’s extended hand. He’s never shaken anyone’s hand before, and his is so much smaller than Robbie’s. He more or less clutches Robbie’s warm, work-rough fingers, never reaching his palm. Lance blushes, but just as Johnny put him at ease about emerging dirt-stained from the trees like a wild animal, Robbie’s smile ensures he’s unselfconscious about their handclasp.
For once, the words that Lance has to say come out easily—perhaps the only time they have in the presence of a grown man. Maybe that’s because he already thought Robbie was as different from his father as a man could be, but now he knows for sure. “I’m glad to meet you, too.”
Today.
Lance wakes up face-down on the most comfortable mattress he’s ever slept on in his life, which is saying something, considering that three weeks ago he was living in the penthouse of an upscale apartment complex in Chicago.
But he doesn’t smell Niall’s starched linens and furniture polish. He smells—
Robbie.
With a jolt, Lance wakes up fully, pushing himself up so that he’s sitting on his heels, blinking into what looks at first like a wall of sunshine. After a second or two, he realizes it’s actually the glass panels over the bed in the hayloft of the Chases’ barn.
He tries to orient himself, still not entirely sure which of the events floating like wraiths in his recent memories are real. Apparently, in the ‘real’ column is the one where Robbie retrieved him from the Trace County courthouse and drove him through a snowy oblivion to the hayloft of the old barn.
Now that his face isn’t planted firmly into the sheets, Robbie’s particular, natural cologne isn’t the only thing Lance smells. He can also smell coffee, and when he twists around to look for the source, he finds Robbie himself leaning against the countertop in the kitchen area directly behind him, sipping from a mug.
“Hey,” he says. “You sleep okay?”
Lance wrinkles his nose. Sometimes, right after he wakes up, words are even harder to get out than usual, but after he swallows, he finds to his own surprise that he can speak easily. “Yeah. Great.” He doesn’t have to pretend otherwise to be polite; it’s the truth. “This bed is amazing,” he adds.
Robbie laughs. “Coffee?” When Lance nods, he turns toward a pot next to the sink, reaching into the cabinet underneath and straightening back up with an empty mug. “The only thing up here that I actually bought at a real furniture store was the bed. There are some things I’m just too old to get chintzy about, and a mattress is one of them.”
“You’re not old,” Lance says automatically, and then adds thoughtfully, “but you seem old when you say things like ‘chintzy.’”
Robbie turns back, his grin wide and making Lance’s heart wobble. “Nice. Johnny would be impressed.”
“How is Johnny?”
A complicated look passes over Robbie’s face, like a cloud skating over the sun. “I think he’s doing just fine. He’s definitely doing whatever he wants to do. Can’t be anything too unpleasant about that.”
Lance thinks about what he knows of Johnny’s life just from what’s on the internet, and wonders. But then again, Lance’s own internet presence hardly paints an accurate picture.
He chooses his words carefully. “You said you set up the hayloft for him?”
Robbie nods. “Yeah, got about this far with it before he decided to take off. That was two years ago. He’s an actor now, kind of. Did you know that?”
Lance nods, concerned he’s going to have to confess to the occasional, guilt-stricken internet search of all three Chases. But in Johnny’s case, there’d been some news Lance hadn’t had to go looking for.
Robbie nods with a strained smile. “I’m not sure, but…well, I hope he’s happy, that’s all. And that if he’s not, he knows he just needs to pick up the phone.” Robbie fills their mugs, then scoots one of them across the counter in Lance’s direction.
Lance forces himself out of bed. He’s wearing some of the old clothes of Johnny’s that Robbie offered, and they’re loose and comfortably soft. “Only coffee could get me out of this bed,” he murmurs, hoping a stupid joke can lighten the melancholy mood that fell during the subject of Johnny. “Seriously, it’s the best.”
Robbie laughs again, this time sounding a little more self-conscious. “I tried a bunch of mattresses.” He steps back and leans against the counter behind him. The kitchen is sort of galley-style, but without walls. It just has two parallel stretches of countertop over lower cabinets, but no uppers. The materials all look high quality, but Lance notices that there aren’t drawer pulls or knobs on the cabinets, and where a dishwasher is probably meant to be, there’s just a chasm.
“It’s a work in progress,” Robbie says, apparently noticing the direction of Lance’s gaze. He said the same thing the day before, Lance remembers, when Lance first saw the hayloft.
“I think it looks amazing,” Lance says honestly, perching on a stool and picking up the mug. He inhales the steam and groans. His eyes fall half-closed in dreamy anticipation, but he happens to see Robbie’s face over the rim of his mug, how his lips part and his gaze zeroes in on Lance’s mouth as he tips the mug against his lower lip to drink.
It’s almost like—
No, Lance tells himself viciously. You’re not going to slip back into that alternate reality.
But he’s not imagining the look of utter fixation on Robbie’s face. Lance knows that look. He knows it very well, and when he’s seen it on men in the past, he hasn’t hesitated to use it to his advantage. He knows exactly how he’d play this moment with someone he wanted. Well, someone he wanted who wasn’t Robbie. But with a little, terrible thrill, he suddenly has the urge to play it that way for Robbie, too.
Just to see. Just in case.
“God, it’s been a long time since I’ve had a cup of coffee.” He lets his eyes drift fully closed, only half-exaggerating what he imagines as a semi-rapturous expression, and takes the first swallow. After the hot liquid slides down his throat, he lets out a moan of appreciation.
If he wasn’t braced for it, carefully attuned to Robbie’s response, the sudden crash might have made him topple his own coffee into his lap. But as it is, he only flinches, managing to set the mug down without spilling a drop as Robbie swears.
“Sorry. Fuck. Sorry,” Robbie is muttering, grabbing a dishcloth and bending down to mop at the floor. “It just…slipped out of my hand.” He picks up the jagged pieces of ceramic that were previously his own coffee cup and mops up the spilled liquid. The back of his neck is bright red.