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George slid the business card across the table to Adam. “Take a week to think about it.”
It was Tuesday night. They were at Alma’s in Morningside Heights, and so was the rest of Columbia’s student body. Adam and George had only secured a booth by the grace of Alma herself, a reward for Adam’s religious patronage at her diner, twice-weekly after his late-night shifts. Around them, bodies milled and moved and laughed. The jukebox blasted out hits from the fifties.
But a mood of relative sobriety enveloped their booth. The business card sat at the centre of the table, between a plate of fries and another with onion rings. It was easily more elegant than all of its surroundings. The black cardstock looked heavy, suggesting money to burn, and it was embossed with five words in silver ink—Declan Lynch. Partner. Phoenix Law.
Adam knew the name. Every law student in New York State knew the name.
But the card didn’t look new. It had the kind of bend that came from a few months in someone’s wallet. He looked up at George, with his serious face and kindly disposition.
Adam didn’t have much time for friends, but in his first week, he’d picked a desk on the fourth floor of the law library. It was out of the way, and most people never ventured past the third floor. George had been sitting at the desk immediately to his right. Day in, day out, they sat next to each other, and one day they started talking. The next week they grabbed lunch. They’d now been friends for three years.
And not once had George mentioned knowing—knowing!—Declan fucking Lynch. Yet here he was, transferring custody of the man’s business card and asking Adam to call him, without explaining why.
Adam narrowed his eyes. “Is this gonna be a weird sex thing?”
“You honestly think I’d lure you into a weird sex thing?”
“It would explain why you’ve never brought him up.” Adam pointed out, although George’s horror at the suggestion had seemed genuine enough. “I mean, you never namedropped him. Not even once.”
“Do I strike you as the type of asshole who would?”
“Yes.” Adam shot back. “Also, we’ve known each other for three years. His name’s come up. You had your chances.”
George reached for a few fries, dunked them into a small bowl of aioli, and unceremoniously downed them. “I’ve only known him for a year.”
“Is that a rebuttal?
“Yes.”
“It sucks. Do better.”
The bunched-up napkin in front of George received its dying swipes. He discarded it into an empty burger basket and reached for another. He met Adam’s gaze. “Look. A year ago, a friend of mine named Frances was about to graduate, like me. We met here at Alma’s, and she gave me the card that I’m now bequeathing to you. She told me to call him.”
That was better, thought Adam, but it still wasn’t much. “Was she this cryptic?”
“She was. It killed me at the time.” George managed a dry smile. “It’s something of a tradition, apparently.”
“I’d be more honoured,” Adam said, “if I knew what was going on.”
George tapped twice on the business card. “Declan prefers to explain it himself. All he wanted from me was a name worth referring.”
Adam sat back in his seat and digested what little he’d been given.
As he thought, he glanced over the rest of the diner. It swelled with laughter, but Adam felt like he was observing the mirth from outside a window. The feeling was uncomfortable, if familiar. His unchallenged berth at the top of his class had come at the cost of a deep isolation.
He looked back down at Lynch’s business card. It was expensive, a relic from a social stratum so far above Adam that he doubted he would see it, were he to look up.
And George was offering him a key. It was a kindness, but it set off a warning in Adam, like a foot hitting a tripwire.
“If it helps,” George began, slowly, like this next disclosure might be outside his brief, “you will be very, very, very well-compensated for your time.”
“Give me a ballpark figure.”
“You’d be able to quit both your other jobs.”
Adam stilled. It shouldn’t have mattered, but it did. Money always mattered. He reached over to the centre of the table and slid the card over, placing faith in the reserves of goodwill he had for George.
“If this is a weird sex thing,” Adam threatened, “I will club you to death with my laptop.”
Lynch’s business card burned a hole in the back pocket of Adam’s jeans for 24 hours. Then, he shot his nerves and made the call. Two days after meeting with George, on the Thursday morning of that week, Adam walked back to Alma’s to meet Declan Lynch.
A woman named Emily had answered his call on the sixth ring. She barely sounded older than he was. Her voice was crisp and professional, much like the air-conditioning of the office in which she probably sat: pleasant, if a little cooler than it needed to be. Emily identified herself as Declan Lynch’s senior executive secretary, and Adam wondered how many secretaries a man needed to keep.
He pushed the thought away, and mentioned that he was calling on instruction from George Madson. It was the only firm instruction that George had given him. Apparently, it would make the difference between a polite refusal and thirty minutes of Declan Lynch’s precious time. He waited for a sign that spoke to his suspicions—maybe a mote of recognition in Emily’s voice, or for her to let slip a knowing breath.
Emily did none of those things. After politely asking Adam to hold while she checked Mr Lynch’s calendar, she asked whether 11am on Thursday morning would be suitable. It wasn’t, but Adam wasn’t going to bend Declan Lynch’s calendar for his own convenience.
And so, Adam found himself walking to Alma’s on Thursday morning, instead of attending his contracts tutorial. It was a cool, sunny morning, blue-skied and entirely oblivious to how he was feeling. His breath rose in a fog over the scarf wrapped around his jaw. His coat, a black knee-length number without a hood, was his best but far from his warmest.
He felt like he was about to put a shoe on the wrong foot. Lynch’s business card was still in his back pocket, and Adam thought about dropping it into every single garbage can on the way from his apartment to the diner door. He thought about turning around, calling George and saying thank you but no. He thought about explaining it to him, pleading the fact of the pooling dread in his gut. Adam thought about other things too, like whether choosing a diner for a venue had already sealed his unsuitability. Alma’s was kitschy and brimming with students, whereas an hour of Lynch’s time was worth thousands.
He arrived fifteen minutes early.
His anxiety crested as he entered the diner’s warmth, and subsided a little with the comfort of its familiarity. The scent of coffee lingered in the air, sharp and inviting. From the kitchen came the hiss of meat landing on hot metal, and a voice calling for fries to table 24. Hovering above the madness was a song from the jukebox, a lilting melody as bright as the day outside. It might have been a Beach Boys song—but Adam’s attention had already drifted elsewhere, narrowing on a man at the far-end booth.
Declan Lynch was already here, and perusing the menu. He was a tall young man, thinly-muscled and only just past his thirties. Like Adam, the entire diner was staring at him.
Adam studied from afar. Lynch wore a well-fitting navy suit, and a white shirt that seemed impossibly bright against the red leather and chequered wall of the booth in which he sat. Meanwhile, Adam—even in his tidiest black slacks and sweater, and his nice black coat—felt as ordinary as the grease on Alma’s griddle.
Lynch’s face was a pleasing, symmetrical arrangement of sharp lines under bold brows, currently creased in concentration over the menu. Adam searched for traces of distaste in his expression and didn’t find them. Lynch flicked through a page, and then another, and if he knew how out of place he looked in his surrounds, the knowledge didn’t burden his shoulders.
Adam hovered by the door just a little too long—long enough for Lynch’s eyes to drift up from the menu and catch him. They were a shock of blue, even from this distance. Something in them intuited that Adam was the person he’d been waiting for, even though they’d never met, and even though to Adam’s knowledge, Lynch had never seen a photo of him.
Still, Lynch raised an eyebrow in recognition, as if to say, Well?
Adam breathed in and walked towards him. He was going to kill George. Kill him. As Adam crossed the length of the tiled floor, and the direction of his passage came clear, he felt the eyes of the diner fall on him too. He slipped into the opposite side of the booth, still in his coat, and was glad that he had his back to everyone.
A few moments passed where each studied the other. Adam had no criticism of Lynch’s face, beyond a mild annoyance that someone this clever and successful also had the nerve to be this good-looking. He wondered what Lynch made of his dusty hair, and the freckles that refused to subside even at the beginning of winter. Adam wasn’t sure why he cared, but only knew that he did.
A few beats later, and the full line of Lynch’s mouth relaxed. He didn’t quite smile, but he wasn’t far off it.
“You must be Adam Parrish.” He said. His voice was pleasant, and he spoke with familiarity. He extended a hand across the table. “I’m Declan Lynch.”
Lynch’s handshake was as firm as his voice. Adam made sure that his grip was tighter. “I know.”
“George speaks very highly of you.”
“He refused to say a word about you,” said Adam. “Or this.”
“Yes,” said Lynch. The corner of his mouth tilted further upwards. “Those were my instructions. It seems he obeyed them a little too well.”
“That’s a—“ and Adam paused. He was about to say, that’s a first, but caught the observation before it slipped from his mouth. It would have been too casual, too akin to a joke. It wasn’t appropriate for a first meeting with a stranger.
But Lynch finished it for him, sharp and amused. “A first? Yeah. That’s George.”
Adam stared at him for a long, long moment. He’d had two days to map out this conversation. It had been a futile exercise, with a straw-man in place of Lynch, and projected directions that went from bad to worse. He had prepared so well for things to go wrong that he had forgotten they might not.
And now, because they were off-script, the next thing he said was the first thing that came to mind. “Did you just crack a joke?”
It implied that Adam had expected him to be humourless, which wasn’t far off the mark. But if Lynch was offended by it, he hid it well. His amusement stayed right where it was.
“Yes, that was a joke.” he said, wry. “You can relax, Adam.”
He looked so much younger than Adam had expected. Adam had known, of course, the ballpark of his age, but perhaps he hadn’t expected Lynch to act like it. If Lynch had worn a hoodie and jeans instead of an expensive suit, he could have passed for a postgrad, or a precociously young lecturer at most. He could have sat here with a basket of fries and a textbook, and no one would have thought him out of place.
Adam wondered whether he should say so. Before he could think better of it, Alma came to their table.
Alma was a rakish and sly woman in her seventies. She was happily married and a great-grandmother to four, and she considered it her God-ordained right to take the order of any table with a handsome face on it. Adam had been coming here for three years, and he knew her type well. It looked very much like the blue eyes and sculpted angles of Lynch’s face.
Alma knew Adam well, too. When he came to eat, he usually sat at the bar and spoke to her. Now, her hazel eyes flashed at him reproachfully.
”Adam Parrish,” she said, with the tone of his mother, embarking on a lecture.
“Hello, Alma.”
A raised brow, a nod towards Lynch. When she spoke, betrayal lined every word. “How long,” she said, “have you been keeping this one from me?”
Lynch was clever. He could see where this was about to go, and the light in his eyes suggested that he didn’t mind. Adam wished he could say the same. He could feel himself blushing in the colour of the leather behind him. He wanted to sink backwards into it and disappear, but avoiding a topic with Alma was asking her to drag you right back into it, and publicly.
“This is Declan Lynch. He’s a lawyer.” And the Empire State Building was a sandcastle. “I met him three minutes ago.”
“And so?” She said. She was enjoying herself immensely. Oh, he could see it in the glint of her eyes. He would leverage a year’s worth of curly fries, just out of this episode alone. “Are you going to introduce me, or did you forget your manners?”
Personally, Adam thought she was doing just fine without his help.
Lynch’s hand reached up for hers. She gave it, expecting a handshake, like Adam was. But then—Adam’s eyes widened as he realized what Lynch was about to do, moments before he actually did it. Lynch brought Alma’s well-weathered hand to his lips and kissed it lightly. He saw her game and he played, it and Alma lapped up his calculated attention with delight. She rewarded him with a round of her jubilant, powerful laugh, and it rang out over their heads and the rest of the diner.
“My, my, my.” She said, once she’d recovered a little of herself. “Adam, you’re forgiven, but only for bringing him to me. Is this a date I’m interrupting?”
Lynch’s shoulder twitched. It looked like the muted shake of a suppressed laugh. Adam was deeply offended that he had taken Alma’s side.
“It’s an interview,” he said, in sterile tones.
She raised her hands to the ceiling, towards whatever god might be waiting there for her. “You kids call it a different thing every week. I can’t keep up,” she said. “What can I get you, then?”
“Coffee?” Said Lynch. He had taken a visible shine to her. Irritating though it was, Adam notched it down as a trait in Lynch’s favour. Adam remembered the first time he had set foot in Alma’s, and the similar roasting he had received. Sometimes she picked people as her own, and there was no rhyme or reason to it—only volume—but Adam was inclined to trust people who understood it for the compliment it was. He hadn’t expected to count Lynch amongst them.
“I’ll have coffee too,” he said. He didn’t particularly feel like one, but he wasn’t about to get choosy. He was too busy dismantling the Declan Lynch in his head, and replacing him with the one that sat in front of him. Any warm mug in his hands would do. “Thank you.”
She winked at them both, and left.
When she was gone, Lynch turned to him. A kind of steel had returned to his attention, though it bore the softening marks of his amusement. He watched Adam for a long moment, and Adam wondered whether Lynch was waiting for him to fidget under his gaze. Just in case, Adam held himself still, and waited. He had no idea what first impression he’d made, or whether he’d undone every good word George had put in for him.
But Lynch hadn’t turned up his nose at meeting in a diner, and he had kissed Alma’s hand, and he’d made her laugh. It wasn’t enough to bring down Adam’s walls—not even remotely—but it was enough to make him look through the gaps between them. George had alerted his fear, but Lynch had sparked his curiosity.
Eventually, Lynch leaned forward. He dropped his tone to a volume that only Adam could hear.
And then he told Adam his proposal.
Adam lay in bed for a long time that night, and sleep wouldn’t come.
Lynch, or Declan, as he insisted Adam should call him, had laid out his proposition with all the organisation of a business case. He explained, in fluent and neutral terms, what he was looking for and why he needed it. The only pause he took was to smile at Alma when she brought their coffees, with two plates of pecan pie on the house.
It wasn’t Declan’s style of presentation that bewildered Adam. No—it was the substance of what he wanted.
In effect, Declan Lynch was asking him out.
Sort of.
Lynch—Declan—didn’t want an actual relationship, but rather the appearance of one. He told Adam that he didn’t have the time to give or the energy to spare, but being single in his field—and with his stature—invited more unwanted attention than he had the ability to refuse. The attention was given without grace or subtlety. Declan had found himself running out of patience in dealing with it, and so, like all rich men presented with a problem, he had found a way to plug the hole with money.
Declan had said, I need someone to act like a barrier, someone by his side to deflect the majority of what came his way, the appearance of a relationship without any of the emotional labour. He called it an arrangement, and it would involve attendance at whatever dinners, balls, and charity events made their way into his calendar.
The arrangement would be contractual, terminated at the convenience of either party. There would be no strings attached, no expectations beyond the convincing appearance of a liaison. George also hadn’t lied to Adam about the money. Declan floated a sum in the air like it was dust, and Adam, mid-sip of his coffee, did well not to inhale it.
It did not help him sleep.
Adam turned to his side and noted that the clock on his bedside table had long passed midnight. He scowled in the dark, and flipped its face down onto the wood.
He closed his eyes and tried to imagine himself on Declan’s arm. Every image he summoned seemed like a parody. He’d never been in a ballroom before, and drily marvelled that any such room had survived the nineteenth century to reach his New York. He couldn’t imagine what a ballroom might look like, let alone what he would look like walking into one, let alone on the arm of someone like Declan Lynch.
Never mind getting away with it.
He had said as much to Declan. By that point, Declan had demolished his pecan pie and glanced over at Adam’s untouched slice. Adam pushed the plate across to him and said, No one would fall for us.
Lynch had squarely met his eye over the table, and with a dry smile, answered, it won’t even be the fakest thing in the room. Don’t overestimate them.
That last word had stuck with Adam. Them. He hadn’t expected Declan to draw a line between himself and the people with which he fraternised.
He had left with a promise to think about the offer. In reality it was the same kind of promise that he had made to George: an unnecessary one. Adam had already made up his mind. All he needed was time to come to terms with it.
For this choice at least, the rest of the day was enough. He wanted the dubious honour of rubbing shoulders with New York’s elite. He wanted to see whether Declan’s withering use of them stood up to scrutiny in a room full such people.
Adam picked up his cell-phone. Declan had asked him to message as soon as he’d made up his mind. He decided to test whether Declan liked being taken literally.
Two words would be enough.
I’m in.
Adam had never been to a bespoke tailor before.
He’d never had cause to. The first set of formal clothing he’d ever owned was his high-school uniform, purchased second-hand from a shop on the school grounds. The two suits he now owned—one black, the other a bland navy—had also been obtained second-hand, but this time from a thrift shop. They fit him as well as could be expected from items moulded to other people’s bodies: unremarkably, sitting well enough to afford respectability, but not so well as to confer grace. He looked after them like relics. They were by far the most important clothes he owned.
Till now, anyway.
Morgan Henry & Sons was in Declan’s end of New York, in his version of the world. It was the kind of place with private fitting rooms, where a task was described as an experience, as if that somehow made it any less of a task. Declan occupied one end of a chesterfield sofa; in front of him, a repurposed trunk fashioned into a coffee table, laden with expensive china, tea and coffee, and a selection of sweets.
Adam stood at the centre of the room, in the heart of a Persian rug that felt like marshmallow under his socks. He wore nothing but his boxers and a white t-shirt. In front of him stood a full-length mirror, which reeked of antique value even to his uninitiated eyes.
Next to him, and then behind him, and then in front of him, was no other than Mr Morgan Henry himself. Or the fifth one, at least. He was a kindly man with a London accent, and a tape measure that he used with the speed of a hummingbird beating its wings.
Adam counted thirty measurements, and then lost track. Behind him, Declan sat next to a pile of ready-to-wear garments suitable for more relaxed occasions. Adam was a fish out of water, and Declan had led him onto the sand, but if he was enjoying himself, he had the grace to hide it. Mr Henry took two final measurements—around each one of Adam’s wrists, because why not—and recorded them in a notebook.
Adam wondered if he had to worry about gaining weight around his wrists.
“Well-proportioned,” Mr Henry declared, “if a little on the lean side. I’m glad you brought him to me, Declan.”
Declan smiled. Adam was coming to learn that Declan smiled often, and sincerely, with people who were serving him. It was another dissonant point, furthering Declan from the version of him that Adam’s mind had constructed.
“I wouldn’t have brought him to anyone else, Morgan.”
“Good,” said Mr Henry. He clapped both hands together and rubbed them, a portrait of excitement. “Now, gentlemen. I believe the fabrics book is in one of the other rooms. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll be back with you shortly.”
They nodded and he left, and the door slipped shut quietly behind him. Adam stared at it, and supposed that he could have fared worse than well-proportioned but lean.
Declan’s gaze was waiting for him in the mirror. “Your shoulders.”
Adam coloured. So did his shoulders. “What about them?”
Declan stood up and came behind him, standing very close. Adam watched the movement of his eyes and guessed, with a sinking feeling in his stomach, that his posture was being assessed.
But when Declan spoke, his tone was mild. “You hunch them. If you do that with a suit on, bespoke or not, you’ll look like you’re wearing it on loan. You need to occupy it. If you don’t convince yourself that you deserve to wear it, you won’t convince anyone else.”
Adam knew that the comment was offered in goodwill. He also knew that Declan was probably right. Neither of those truths stopped irritation from spiking across Adam’s skin.
He changed the subject to one where he stood on firmer ground. “I’m hunching because it’s too much.” It was a lie—Adam’s posture had always been terrible—but the point served his purposes for now. “You’re buying me a tuxedo, a suit, and a whole smart-casual wardrobe. Plus shoes. I can’t let you.”
The thought had been plaguing him since Declan had arranged to meet him here. Adam had looked up the website, and the cost per square metre of the fabrics that a place like this stocked. It had made his eyes water. They sold cufflinks for the price of his weekly stipend. When they’d arrived, and Declan had listed off what he wanted for Adam, and three store clerks had moved off in different directions to comply—the cost in Adam’s mind rose with a mortifying speed.
Declan paused over the comment, and when he responded, he did so thoughtfully.
“Adam.”
“Declan.”
“Think of it this way. I’ve hired you for a job, right?” He said. When Adam nodded, he continued. “Most jobs require uniforms. This one is no different. The tux is a uniform. So is the suit. So is every other item of clothing you’ve tried on. These clothes are the price of entry into every place I’ll be taking you. Without them, I’d be setting us up to fail.”
First a them. Now an us.
Declan’s world divided along unexpected lines.
Appointments. That was Declan’s term for their fake dates. It was a clean word, a triumph of administration over substance.
Their first appointment was La Traviata, a closed-house performance on a Saturday night. It was a society event. Declan had delivered that description with a sumptuous disdain.
The opera was another first. Adam wondered how many firsts were waiting for him in this strange, new job of his. He over-prepared, ready to attend the event armed with more knowledge than he would need to recall. He knew it too, but reading up about Verdi and studying the narrative made him feel better.
All that knowledge evaporated when Declan pulled up to the bottom of Adam’s building, at seven pm, in a black fucking Maserati.
It drew stares. Of course it did. Cars like Declan’s and neighbourhoods like Adam’s mixed as well as oil and water. Adam stepped through the open passenger door aware that he’d be fielding hard questions when he next visited the laundromat. He should have thought ahead.
After all—Declan was never going to arrive in a Toyota.
Someone else was driving. When Adam entered the vehicle, he saw a man no older than forty sitting in the driver’s seat. He doffed his cap in Adam’s direction and introduced himself as Marcus. Marcus wore a uniform too.
Adam turned to Declan, and found amusement playing with the corners of mouth. It didn’t soften the angles of his face—little could, thought Adam—but Adam liked what it did to his eyes. He looked irritatingly handsome anyway, his dark tux offset by a white scarf, which he had arranged around his shoulders like a stole. The remarks at Morgan Henry’s came back to Adam. Declan’s shoulders were a straight, raised line, and he wore his tux like he was born in it. Adam straightened up.
Mercifully, Declan talked the whole way. He asked questions, and in making Adam answer them, he kept him from thinking about what lay in store. He asked about each of Adam’s papers and his upcoming assignments, familiar topics that Adam could answer without hard thought. He was grateful. It was a thoughtful kindness. Normally, he took umbrage at being easily read, but the feeling of being in this car, with this man, on this appointment, gave him a vertiginous feeling that wouldn’t serve him once they arrived.
Shortly before they did, Declan gave him a small, sympathetic smile. “It’ll get easier.”
“I don’t think I believe you.”
“It does,” he promised. “The first time I picked up George? He threw up.”
Adam prayed a quick thanks to whichever god had shut his appetite that morning. “In the car?”
Declan nodded. “The very same one. We had to turn around and take him home.”
“Am I bad person if that makes me feel better?”
“No worse than me, for telling you.” And then, charitably, he gave a repeated comfort. “You’ll be fine, Adam.”
And Adam supposed that he would be. He thought about it a while, and realized that he had done something like this before.
He knew what it was to be stranded in a group of wealthy people, all dressed up in a uniform, waiting for them to pick up on his differences like a scent in the air. Back then, the uniform had been simpler and the auditorium a relative modesty, but in a way, this night was Adam’s first day at high-school all over again, amplified to grotesque extremes.
He’d done this before, and he’d done it well. He’d do it again.
The car pulled up to the Lincoln Centre. Its plaza was alive with light, which bathed the concrete arches of the opera house in a warm amber glow. It danced off the fountain at the centre of the plaza, suffusing the buildings with a life that stood beautifully against the inky night sky.
They walked together into the cavernous lobby, side-by-side rather than hand-in-hand. It was enough. Adam felt the attention of the gowns and tuxedos sharpen to a knifepoint in their direction. As one, he felt them note the inconsequential gap between his body and Declan’s, felt them measure it and draw their conclusions. He wondered whether any of them thought of George, or where he had gone.
In the flaring light of that attention, Declan turned to him and gave him a private smile. His eyes danced, a wordless toast to the health of their dupe. Adam returned it, dressed with heat in his cheeks. That would do nicely, even if the other guests would read different motivations into his blush.
He felt Declan’s hand, gently placed at the small of his back. Declan guided him to the first conversation of the night with all the practiced grace of a debutante. From the attention levelled their way, Adam could tell that a silent queue was forming for Declan’s company. He ignored it and allowed himself to be led to a Mr and Mrs Clifton, of the Clifton Shipping Company.
He also managed not to lose their game before it had properly started, holding himself still when Declan described him as “my better half, Adam.”
Mr and Mrs Clifton smiled at Adam, charmed, as if he’d won the lottery. Adam, who would have been on the third hour of a dish shift if not for Declan, supposed that he had.
Marcus picked them well after midnight. Declan sank back into his leather seat and smiled with his eyes closed.
“You did well.” He said. “We fooled them. Thoroughly.”
Adam’s head was light. He’d nursed two gin and tonics on an empty stomach, and his brain was a cacophony of loud music, new faces and names.
“Is it really that bad?” He managed. “When you go alone, I mean.”
“You don’t believe me?”
Adam felt light-headed. He should have had dinner. He rested his head back against the leather and it was marginally better than sitting upright, but not by much.
‘There are worse fates than having eligible bachelors and bachelorettes shoved at you, you know.”
“I do know,” conceded Declan. “But not when it happens all night, two or three times a week, every week for five or six years. After a while, it makes you want to barricade yourself in your office.”
It was the first note of bitterness that Adam had heard in his voice, and in truth, even his presence on Declan’s arm hadn’t been enough to deter them all. He’d spied them, sharp and beautiful, hovering near Declan’s orbit. But to Adam’s surprise, they focused most of their attention on him. At best, they gave Adam looks that poorly feigned indifference. At worst, he found himself staring down outright hostility.
“I would have thought you’d be used to it.”
“My family isn’t old money. We did well enough, but I grew up on a farm in the countryside. All of this—” he said, waving his hand indistinctly, searching for the right phrase, “—all of this social politicking was new to me when I moved here.”
“Your parents aren’t in New York?”
“My parents are dead,” he said. It came out like any other sentence he could have said in its place. Adam knew that tone. He used the same one, wiped clean of emotion, in the occasional instances when he had to say, I don’t speak to my parents anymore.
The tone was light, and for its intentional lightness, all the heavier. Adam slid the conversation back to their earlier topic.
“I’m not sure we fooled the whole crowd,” he said. “But I think we definitely confused them.”
“Even better,” said Declan.
Adam checked his bank account the following morning.
He found a new number waiting for him, one with more digits than he was used to. Enough digits to need a comma. Enough digits for him to exhale, financially, for the first time in three years of living in New York.
He stared at the figure till his coffee went cold.
“Come here,” said Declan. “There’s someone I want you to meet.”
Tonight: a lavish country estate in Chappaqua, ninety minutes away from New York. Adam felt like he was back in the countryside, but a very different kind to the one he was used to. The green in Chappaqua was hand-tamed and ornamental. It was consistent and emerald, and bent easily to the will of its occupiers, who shaped its beauty into symmetrical forms. Where Adam was from, the land rolled up and down, and the hues of green changed from one angle of the horizon to the next.
Still, it was nice being close to the outdoors, even if Adam was forced to enjoy it through the windows. The house belonged to the New York Attorney General, and the event was a charity fundraiser for the Legal Aid Society. Earlier, in the car, Adam asked Declan about the cost of a plate at the event. Declan pointed out that he would enjoy the night more if he didn’t know.
But Adam stopped thinking about it when, after they had arrived, Declan’s hand slipped into his.
It was subtly done, and necessary. The house, spacious as it was, was too densely packed for Declan to lead him with an arm around the elbow or a hand at the small of his back. Declan led him from room to room and between bodies in single file. Adam examined the knot in his chest and decided that he didn’t mind. He nursed a fear that he’d be separated from Declan in these crowds, that he’d have to make small-talk or find his way back by parting this strange sea of affluence on his own. People moved for Declan in a way that they wouldn’t for him.
So Adam allowed himself to be led, his mind going no further than Declan’s hand in his, the way their fingers seamed together in Declan’s firm grip, and the warmth of his palm against Adam’s.
They stopped at one of the drawing rooms to the back of the manor house. Appointments with Declan were a continuous education, and Adam was surprised to learn that people still had drawing rooms—or indeed, that they needed more than one in the same residence. The walls of this one were panelled in a dark, lustrous wood, a shade that bled contrast against the rich gold and reds of the furniture.
There were fewer people here, enough for a conversation to be spoken in reasonable tones rather than half-shouted. Declan led Adam to a man standing alone by a window—and for once, with a flushed jolt—Adam knew exactly who he was about to meet.
“Adam, this is Senator Glyde. I told him about the paper you were writing on therapeutic courts.” Turning deftly to the Senator, Declan smiled, “Senator, allow me to introduce you to my boyfriend. This is Adam Parrish.”
Adam should have been used to it by now, with all the introductions that Declan had made. He wasn’t.
The problem was—Declan was good. He was too good. So good, in fact, that for a beat too long, Adam forgot to disbelieve him. It unsettled him that the charade was this charming, even from his vantage point within it.
Begrudgingly, Adam let go of Declan’s hand. He didn’t want to, but it would have been awfully rude to leave the Senator’s outstretched hand unshaken.
Senator Glyde looked younger than his fifty years, with a thick head of entirely silver hair. It sat in pleasing waves around his dark eyes, which seemed genuinely pleased to meet Adam. Oh, Adam knew all about Senator Glyde alright. Glyde chaired the Senate Committee on the Judiciary. He’d written countless papers on therapeutic justice in the district courts. Adam had pored over them till the early hours for one of his theses.
“It’s an honour, sir,” Adam said, and meant it. Somehow, it came out far smoother than he felt. Maybe Declan’s grace was infectious.
The Senator’s grip was firm enough to form a clot in Adam’s fingers, but his eyes were kind. “Declan’s told me very good things about you, young man. I hear you have an interest in restorative justice?”
Adam flicked a glance to Declan, who looked every inch the proud boyfriend. Adam’s heart tripped on its feet. “Yes sir, I do.”
He had to remind himself that technically, he was working. All that stood between him and Declan was a contractual arrangement, terminable at either party’s convenience.
But god—in that moment of gratitude, Adam could have pushed him against the wall and kissed him.
Two days before their next appointment, Adam woke up with a scratchy throat. The next day, there was a hammer pounding at the front of his skull. He missed class and called Declan, ready for his congestion to speak for itself.
But Declan was delighted—not by his illness, but because of the excuse to skip the event. The aristocracy, it seemed, liked cancelled plans as much the proletariat. Adam gave his blessing for Declan to lie about staying at home to take care of him.
Then, he went back to bed and wondered what that lie might look like, if it were true.
Adam still felt like hell on the morning of the gala they’d missed. He woke up to a knock on the door, and forced his eyes open just enough to read the time on his bedside clock: half past nine. It was an outlandish hour for anyone to be knocking on a sick man’s door.
He pulled stale sweatpants and a hoodie over his febrile form, and shuffled to see who it was.
It was Marcus, Declan’s driver, in his uniform. He smiled sympathetically at Adam, and his arms were laden with a black box.
“Morning, Adam.”
“Good morning,” he responded, though it came out closer to goob mordib. “What’s,” and he paused, and waited, and sneezed three times in a row. “What’s this?”
Marcus held out the box to him. “Delivery for you.”
“I didn’t order anything.”
“I know.” He said. “This was sent by Mr Lynch.”
Of course it was. Adam flustered. Maybe he was growing feverish too.
The box was sizeable, and it looked heavy. The elevator in Adam’s building had stopped working a year ago, and pleas to fix it had fallen on the deaf ears of the building manager. He felt a pang of shame when he realized that Marcus had carried the box up seven flights of stairs.
A new worry also took root: that Marcus would return to Declan and tell him about the lift, and that Adam would wake up tomorrow and find it working. Declan seemed to enjoy throwing money at Adam’s problems.
But first: “Declan never said anything about a box.”
“I know,” said Marcus. “He said you’d argue."
Fair enough.
He stepped aside and let Marcus take the ten steps from the door to the kitchenette. Adam’s single table was next to it. It served as a dining table, and an extended kitchen counter, and when Adam was studying, a desk. Marcus deposited the box and wished him a speedy recovery, flicking at his cap on the way out.
When the door closed behind him, Adam looked around and tried to see the small, grey space with fresh eyes, as Marcus might have seen it. He expected that Marcus would report to Declan on that as well. The space was sparsely ornamented, but at least it was tidy and clean.
Adam didn’t know why he cared. He’d have to unpack that feeling later.
For now, he turned to the box. He pulled off the top and stared into the contents of the first care package he had ever received in his life.
There were too many things inside. It was an embarrassing abundance, a declaration of war against his impulse to restraint. Declan had supplied lozenges in four flavours and enough Vicks for Adam to start his own black market supply. There were raspberries, somehow, even though they were ass-deep in winter, and jars of Manuka honey that were too expensive for Adam to even look at and put back in the store.
Adam closed the box before he looked any further. It was unquestionably too much. It was also—easily—the kindest thing that anyone had done for Adam in recent memory.
Adam fought back his less generous instincts, the ones that took generosity and turned it over with suspicious eyes. He picked up his phone instead, and and sent a brief message.
Thank you, Declan.
He hesitated before adding,
You’re being too nice to me.
His body felt like rot, cranky and aching. He wondered whether a cup of his new, expensive teas might do him some good. He had barely shifted the box back onto the table, and put his phone down, when a violent buzzing sound shocked him back into the room
Declan had responded, immediately.
You’re worth being nice to.
Adam got better, and they fell into a pattern, to the extent that something this surreal could take on a shape.
Declan’s car—sometimes driven by him, sometimes by Marcus, depending on how stately their arrival needed to be—would turn up at the foot of Adam’s building once, maybe twice a week. They still fielded attention when they walked into an event, but far less than before, fading into the background as newer and far more scandalous couples took their 15 minutes. Declan told Adam that it had been the same when he had George or Frances on his arm. Attention was intense until it became fleeting, and then it was gone.
Adam would never fool himself with words like belonging. Still, an unexpected familiarity seeped into those evenings. He had cultivated a reputation for quiet observation, preferring to listen and allowing people to fill in any silences themselves. Most of them didn’t need much encouragement; they took gaps as an invitation to talk about themselves at great length. Whether their narcissisms derived from station or parentage, or beauty or money, or a combination of the lot, they were always reliably there.
Adam memorized names and faces, and any other details the jetset class offered him about their lives: holidays, business ventures, luxury villas under construction in tropical climes. They gave details freely. He learned these things like he might be quizzed on them, and asked about them at subsequent functions. It ingratiated him very nicely with the other guests—well enough, in fact, that he tentatively allowed himself to be drawn out of Declan’s conversations, and into circles of his own.
And yet—all the time, his eyes would search back to Declan.
More often than not, they were waiting for him. Little amused Declan more than Adam’s surprise at his own delicate integration, and at each event, the two of them exchanged more than one set of wry glances. It became a secret handshake across a crowded ballroom, a firm line between them that remained invisible to the bodies between which it passed. They never strayed far out of each other’s orbit, and always gravitated back within the hour.
Adam worried about how much he was growing to enjoy Declan’s attention.
While the evenings had become ritualistic, the feeling of being at Declan’s side had not. It was too easy to be around someone like him. Declan played the game of these functions as well as anyone else, but he expressed a venomous disdain for them in private, often in colourful terms. The more disdain he expressed, the more Adam grew to like him. His secret bonded them like conspirators.
Declan had arrived alone in New York, aged 18. No one wanted to know him, until suddenly, they all did. He said that they—and it was always a they, or a them—mistrusted each other, and fucked each other’s spouses, and then air-kissed each Saturday night and went on holiday together. He spoke about them with the abandon of a man draining out poison from his blood, and Adam couldn’t help but enjoy the fire it brought to his voice.
Adam enjoyed other things, too.
Most nights, they held hands. Declan often leaned in to whisper in Adam’s ear, either with things that he needed to know, or with unflattering observations about the people around them, using words that were best murmured under breath. Declan helped Adam into and out of his coats, and brushed tendrils of unruly hair from his eyes. Exactly twice, he swiped an eyelash away from the bridge of Adam’s nose, both times in front of other people.
Declan had long fingers, and he used them with an unthinking dexterity. Adam, touch-starved and solitary, began waiting for them to land on his skin with inappropriate focus.
He fell into a terrible, private habit of craving Declan’s attention and time, but he didn’t dare ask for more of either.
Things changed on New Year’s Eve, as they often tend to do.
This time, it was a party. Adam had had his fill of tuxedoed and suited events for one year, and took Declan’s advice to wear jeans and a good sweater like a man reaching water in a drought. The host was the senior partner of Declan’s firm, a beautiful, sly woman in her fifties named Eve, and Adam had met her enough times by now to be on first-name terms. She habitually roasted Declan with all the affection of an older sister, and Adam liked her for it.
Eve’s home was in Montauk, a hamlet on the furthest point of Long Island. Home was probably the wrong word. None of Declan’s associates seemed to own homes. They owned estates, and mansions, and every iteration of prime real-estate. Hers was a sprawling three-level mansion, overlooking Fort Pond Bay, the jewel of the two acres on which it sat.
This gathering was smaller and louder than most of the others, with only fifty people in attendance. Adam had been to enough of Declan’s work functions by now to know that the informality flowed freely, and so did the alcohol. He supposed that these people worked hard enough to feel entitled to a dose of debauchery. Professionally, he aspired to be on their level, but privately, their ease with excess raised the hairs on his arms.
He and Declan arrived at five in the evening, hand-in-hand, prepared to endure a long night. It seemed to grow longer amidst the sharply plummeting sobriety of everyone around them. Before long, both Declan and Adam held the dubious honour of being the soberest people in every room they entered. It didn’t escape Adam’s attention that Declan kept him by more closely that night. Periodically, they’d grab a plate of something fried and retreat into a corner and talk.
The louder the room, the more intimate their conversation became, as though in direct rebellion to their surrounds. Each quiet admission by one of them pulled one out of the other. Declan told Adam about the crash that killed his parents, and Adam, quietly, told him about what sent his father to prison. Declan spoke of his brothers, of missing them, of their refusal to come with him to New York, and Adam spoke—maybe for the first time—about how isolated he he had felt for three years.
The room and the rest of their company faded into the background as they spoke. Adam didn’t mind.
He didn’t mind at all.
But it was New Year’s Eve, and as the hour tipped closer to midnight, Declan reluctantly pulled him by the hand towards the gathered crowd.
The party-goers congregated in the main living area, with a view of the bay for company. Their merriment rose to a deafening crescendo, and they began counting down to January from twenty.
—19—
—18—
Adam hadn’t been awake to see in a new year since his childhood. But now, in the midst of a horde of drunken lawyers, he noticed the crowd begin to split into pairs.
—17—
—16—
He thought to himself, people kiss at midnight.
—13—
—12—
He turned to Declan, who, if the strange light in his eyes was anything to go by, had reached a similar conclusion.
But there wasn’t a presumptuous muscle in his face. Declan looked gentle. Patient.
—11—
—10—
Adam wasn’t sure that enough seconds were left for him to ask.
—9—
—8—
Declan tilted his brows up, calm and querying. Adam flushed, rose blooming in his cheeks like he’d had too much to drink.
—5—
—4—
The crowd was loud enough to deafen all his thoughts. Declan’s eyes were a brilliant blue, and Adam wondered if he was imagining the assent he read in them.
—2—
—1—
And zero.
Adam leaned forward, cupped the sharp line of Declan’s jaw in his hands, and pressed his lips to him. The kiss he offered fell softer and chaster than every single one he’d imagined giving Declan, in private.
No one paid them any attention, but that was the point. Everyone around them was doing the same, kissing in various degrees of abandon, with their spouses or their lovers, or foolishly with their colleagues, confirming choices made long ago or making new ones, ones which they’d dearly regret tomorrow. The point was, as it had always been: to melt away unremarkably into the backdrop. To be an insignificant part of a scene.
But they were kissing. Declan brought a hand up to the small of Adam’s back, another to the nape of his neck, and pulled him closer. Their bodies stood against each other at the edge of the crowd. It was Declan who pressed deeper into the kiss, Declan who made the first quiet sound, Declan who took it all in a direction that made Adam wish that they were alone.
Adam hadn’t kissed anyone in a long time, and never, ever before like this.
“Hey—lovebirds!” A voice called out.
A foggy part of Adam’s mind registered that it belonged to Eve. He pulled away, but Declan’s gaze lingered on him for a moment longer, just enough to keep the match lit between them. Adam was grateful; it eased the nerves that had suddenly spilled loose in his gut.
Then Declan smoothed his expression. He turned to Eve. He had the wits to look like he’d been caught.
“Sorry.” He said. It was the first time that Adam had seen him act—well, shy. “It’s, uh—it’s our first New Year’s together.”
The performance had all the hallmarks of sincerity, a fact that Adam noted with admiration. And exasperation. Trust Declan to kiss a man to oblivion with measured intent, and then pretend like he’d gotten carried away.
Eve looked from one to the other, her thin brow arched to the heavens. She seemed pleasantly surprised. Adam wondered if this kind of behaviour was as new to Declan as it was to him.
“Yeah. I figured it was your first,” she remarked. “But if you intend to carry on as you began, the spare bedrooms are upstairs.”
They left Eve’s house at two in the morning. Declan drove them home to New York.
It was long drive, and they didn’t speak about the kiss on the way. They talked nonstop, but only about everything else. Adam asked every question that surfaced in his mind about the antics at the party—who was working with whom, on what, and whom they were seeing, or cheating on. Declan replied readily, often with more detail than Adam had asked for. It was the ceaseless conversation of two people avoiding silence at all cost.
And it worked, right up until four in the morning, when Declan parked the car at the foot of Adam’s building.
Adam unclasped his seatbelt but didn’t move. He looked out to the street and noticed a small group of people, no more than four or five, seated on the curb about two blocks away. He wished that he had Declan and the street to himself. It hadn’t seemed right to discuss the kiss while they hurtled along the highway. But now it didn’t seem right to avoid it.
And after all—he had been the one to kiss Declan. It was only right for him to raise it.
“I was too forward.” Adam said. He scaffolded the words with a certainty that he didn’t feel, but which he’d grown skilled at performing. “I’ve complicated things, and I’m sorry.”
He turned to look at Declan, whose face was mostly cast in shadow. The nearest streetlight was some distance away, but his blue eyes were bright in the dark.
“I kissed you back.” Declan pointed out. He spoke quietly, his tone more neutral than Adam would have liked.
“I know, but I crossed the line first. And this isn’t why you hired me. If you want to—“
“Adam.” Declan interrupted. The word fell firm, slicing through Adam’s thoughts like a clean knife. “You think I’m after an apology?”
“You should be.” Adam said. “If I was you, I’d want one.”
“Well, you’re not, and I don’t.” Declan answered. It was an expression of fact, gently put.
Fear flickered in Adam’s chest. It was four in the morning on New Year’s Day, and an apology was all he had to offer. Meanwhile, Declan’s eyes hadn’t shifted from him. It did unfortunate things to Adam’s conviction.
“Then what, Declan?”
A pause came. It was steady and unhurried, like all the rest of him.
“I'd rather kiss you." He said. "If you'd let me. If you like."
Adam hadn’t answered. He’d moved in lieu of yes, and wore their second kiss on his lips all the way up to his apartment.
He wore it to bed, and it was still there on his mouth the next morning, long after it had any right to be.
The second time Adam turned down an appointment, he had a paper to finish by Monday. Declan had said, study at mine, with an inflection upwards on the end, freezing the words somewhere between a question and suggestion. Adam had a no, thank you all ready for him. He was good at those.
But Declan had a knack for asking questions that made Adam want to say yes. For a word with three letters and a single syllable, yes didn’t come easily to Adam, but no one had given him more practice in its art than Declan.
So he said yes.
He had been nervous about seeing him the whole week. This thing between them now, whatever it was becoming, was woven with tangled lengths of string. He couldn’t guess the strength of the threads, or how well they’d hold up to being pushed. He didn’t want to risk testing them beyond their limits.
But when Adam arrived, Declan kissed him on the threshold of his apartment. And then he’d kissed him again, before he’d even made it all the way through the door.
They ended up working near each other on that Friday night, at separate ends of Declan’s dining room table. It was a wooden expanse made to seat ten; an outrageous ship of a thing for a single man to have. Adam fanned out his books and papers in front of him like a deck of cards, and tried not to focus on Declan.
Mostly, it worked. Sometimes it didn’t. He learned that Declan worked by staring at his screen for extended periods of time, the dark line of his brow set with concentration. Then, without warning, he would start typing, dancing over the keyboard without pause or amendment. Declan, it seemed, approached his work like everything else in his life: at first with measure, and then, with firm direction.
He also got up on the hour, every hour, for all five hours that Adam was there. Adam could set his watch by it. Declan quietly brewed fresh tea for both of them, and brought over a little something extra with each mug: twice he brought cookies; twice a sandwich, cut into triangles; and once, a small bowl of blueberries.
It was effortless. It was thoughtful. And out of all Adam’s firsts where Declan was involved, it was easily the mildest. It didn’t involve expense or performance, and gained nothing by his status or work.
But it was an act of service, and its very simplicity broke an unbearable sweetness over something deep in Adam’s chest. It didn’t bear thinking about it.
“Declan,” he said. “I think you’re trying to ruin my figure.”
It was easier than saying stop, or I’m going to fall for you.
“Actually,” said Declan, with a fond, exasperated look, “I believe I’m trying to give you one.”
“I must say, Adam,” remarked Mrs Lazenby. “You’ve had quite the effect on our Declan.”
A waiter moved nearby. In the two seconds it took him to pass them, Mrs Lazenby expertly replaced her empty champagne flute onto his tray, and picked up a new one. The waiter barely noticed her effort. Adam tried not to look too obviously impressed, but hers was a practiced move, honed over at least forty years of attending soirees. She looked suitably pleased with herself.
That evening, Adam felt well-disposed towards life. They were at a rooftop bar, and Declan’s arm was tight around his waist. Declan had pressed a kiss to the corner of his jaw when they were alone in the lift, and Adam’s skin was still singing with it. Two grades had been released that morning, and he’d topped the class with both of them. Overhead, the sun was setting, pastelling the sky with hues of pink and orange.
If Adam looked happy, it didn’t hold a candle to what how he was feeling.
“Have I?” He asked. He directed the question to Declan as well as to Mrs Lazenby. The blue in Declan’s eyes danced for him. “What was he like, before?”
“Oh, you wouldn’t believe.” She rolled her eyes. She said it to Adam, as if Declan wasn’t there, but he made his presence known with an indignant sound. She continued, “You could time a perfect hour by noting exactly when Declan arrived, and when he left.”
“Lydia,” came Declan’s response. The affront in his voice didn’t have any heart behind it. “At least I always came.”
“Yes, darling, you did. But one would think your poor date had shackled your wrists and dragged you here,” she pointed out. “They always seemed to have more fun than you did.”
Adam turned to Declan, and grinned. Declan’s brows flew up at him. “Really, Adam? You’re going to let her corrupt you that easily?”
She made a loud, brazen sound. “Declan, my dear—if anyone’s corrupted the poor boy, I’m quite certain it’s you.”
Adam was in such good spirits that he entirely forgot to defend his own honour.
Luckily, Declan was on hand. He graciously conceded Mrs Lazenby’s point and changed the subject to her recent holiday in Malta. It was an excellent distraction.
Later, when Mr Lazenby returned to their conversation, bringing with him two of his business associates, Declan took the opportunity to excuse him and Adam both. They left Mrs Lazenby to her husband, and to the knowing glint in her eye.
Declan led them both through the crowd and pulled Adam away to the quieter edge of the gathering. But he didn’t stop them there. He kept walking along the outer side of the bar, pulling Adam through the narrow gap between it and the wall of the building’s edge. It was littered with empty crates, and clearly not meant for patrons.
But when they turned the corner, they were on the other side of the rooftop to the party. Here, they were alone. They had pipes and a sizeable generator for company, and a view of the East River all to themselves.
But Declan turned his back to it. He slipped his arms around Adam’s waist, and he picked up where they had left off in the lift.
His lips fell onto the distant corners of Adam’s jaw with lush, open-mouthed kisses. Adam breathed in and heard the tremor in it. He breathed out and heard the same tremor again. His fingers came up to lace in Declan’s hair, to push him on gently because he didn’t trust his voice to hold if he asked for what he wanted, which was more.
And it was the fact that Declan offered it anyway, without Adam asking, that prompted him to speak.
“Declan.”
“Hmmm,” came the response. Declan’s lips murmured it directly against his skin. Adam didn’t quell his shiver.
“I’ve been a terrible barrier,” he said. “I was supposed to keep this from happening.”
Declan kissed him for that, long and deep, and it went to Adam’s head like champagne fizz. It also made Declan’s point before he spoke it aloud. “No one has propositioned me in five months,” he said. “And I was supposed to keep my hands off you. We both made a mess of it.”
Adam thought that, as far as messes go, it was a rather pleasant one to be in. “What do we do, then?”
“We start again.” Declan said. It came out with a sense of promise that could have lured Adam into the sea. “Tomorrow, you come to mine without your books, and you let me make you dinner.”
Maybe it was the dusky hour, or the drink in Adam’s blood, or the result of being kissed to oblivion by Declan’s expert mouth with the Manhattan skyline for an audience—whatever it was, Adam found himself contemplating that word again.
Yes.
He didn’t give his trust wholly or easily. But for five months, he had placed rationed fragments of it in Declan’s palm. He had watched as Declan closed his hand tightly around them, keeping them safe. Now, Declan held something close to the complete whole in his hand.
“I’d like that,” said Adam, leaning into him again. “I’d like that a whole lot.”