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The wedding had been a nightmare from the moment in their first meeting when the bride had leaned confidentially toward David and told him, like she was gifting him with exclusive celebrity gossip, that she had decided on a Chicago-themed wedding.
“Mm-hm,” David had said, “And when you say ‘Chicago,’ you mean…the musical?”
“Oh god, no!” The bride, Marianne, laughed. “Can you imagine? How tacky.”
David—staring down at the folder with the bride’s details while he schooled his face out of a wince—quickly decamped from his vision of 20’s-era sequins and exquisite finger waves with a protective internal shrug. He had endured many of life’s disappointments and had learned to tamp down on any inconvenient, errant desire. He was already on to imagining something Windy City-themed: cute and kitschy, maybe a couple of hot dog vendors scattered throughout the venue selling ketchup-only mini dogs on artisanal brioche buns, groomsmen in matching sportsball-themed boutonnieres. It wasn’t to his taste, but he was good at turning a theme into something subtle and sweet, with a hint of good-humored irony.
Marianne, a cute, sandy-haired sorority type, leaned forward and began speaking with the relish of someone who had finally found an audience for a well-practiced monologue.
“Well I was conceived to “You’re the inspiration,” and at first I thought it would be nice to have a little homage to them as I walked down the aisle, but then I thought, why not go big? This day wouldn’t even be happening if my mom and my dad hadn’t bonded over their shared obsession with Robert Lamm.”
“Ok,” David said. “I’m a little confused, ‘You’re the inspiration’? Is that, like, a sports song? A fight song? Or a…victory dirge? I’m sorry, I’m not sure I know the correct terminology here…”
“No, no,” Marianne laughed. “Chicago! Like Chicago the band? Banging horn section? “Hard to Say I’m Sorry?” The song everyone’s aunt liked to put on in the 80s to cry to after they’d had two wines at Christmas?”
David stared at her, doing a quick flip through his mental pop culture rolodex, and cast his eyes around the modest storefront he’d fought hard to be able to kit out tastefully—mid-century vintage, mostly, and here and there burnished gold accents. It didn’t seem appropriate to mention that the Roses had always gone to St. Barth’s at Christmas, and for musical entertainment tended more toward privately-commissioned string quartet performances or backstage passes to arena shows where the concert was really just an excuse to get dressed up and do a little recreational cocaine in the vicinity of Karlie Kloss. He repressed a sigh. He missed recreational cocaine. He missed Karlie Kloss.
The longer the silence went on the larger the bride’s eyes got. David braced himself for incensed yelling, like his mother would have done—though not before outfitting herself in her yelling stole—but the bride (Marianne, David reminded himself) just seemed to get more excited, bouncing a little in her seat.
“Oh my god,” she said. “You’ve never heard of Chicago? We’re going to have so much fun!”
“Oh god,” David said to himself.
It was like looking into the eye of a storm. There was no force more powerful than the fervor of a true believer. This was true of religion, true of wedding planning, and especially true of fans.
++
David had once tried to penetrate the solid wall of adoration that Alexis had erected for her guru Robert and it had gone about as well as any of his conversations with converts—or family, for that matter—ever did.
“First of all,” Alexis had said from deep within her bathroom where she was applying a complicated looking feather contraption to her hair. “…he prefers to go by River, now, David? So if you could like, respect his very spiritual journey which is reflected in his name change…?”
Alexis’s voice traveled out to him, thin and annoyed and laced with concentration. They were big feathers.
David smiled in spite of himself, sprawled out on Alexis’s very comfortable California King, and settled in for the ride.
“Okay, well River was just out behind the boathouse furtively eating a meatball sub in 90 degree heat, like an actual serial killer, and yelling on the phone to someone about immediate asset liquidation, so…”
“Okay, David, are you sure that was River? Because we just shared a very filling smoothie bowl and also River would never pollute his body that way, it’s against his tenants.”
The smirk David had been wearing deepened into a smile. Alexis was still in the bathroom; it wasn’t like anyone would see.
“I think you mean tenets.”
“Mm, no, I’m pretty sure I mean tenants, David.”
Alexis’s voice had gotten closer, like she couldn’t help herself and had traveled to the edge of the gigantic bathroom to deliver her retort, still out of David’s eyeline, but nearly in the bedroom. A classic Rose power move: feigning incuriousness or even contempt to the point of sounding so bored you could die, while internally spinning on a hamster wheel of panic and one-upmanship.
David lifted his sneakered feet off the ground and planted them directly on top of Alexis’s very nice duvet cover.
“Wasn’t Robert like, a tax accountant, just like two weeks ago?”
“Ugh, accounting? Ew, David. River was a financial consultant for Bear Stearns, until he gave up all his worldly possessions, and now he follows the four tenants of the Higher Vision, and I’d really appreciate you respecting my spiritual journey, just like I respected you with your little art thingy last year.”
Alexis was shouting a little bit now, and seemed like she might be on the verge of giving up her hidden position and stalking into the bedroom to stand over him and yell directly into his face.
David closed his eyes. He was so relaxed he felt like he could drift off right there. Familial yelling had always had a very calming effect on his psyche.
“Well,” he said. “you might want to check with Robert about those tenants. My guess is he’s less of like, a landlord in this scenario and more of a squatter. Spiritually, I mean.”
Robert had absconded with the $5,000 down payment for Alexis’s Spiritual Enlightenment Package a week later, before his services had been fully rendered, so Alexis had, unfortunately, remained unenlightened. This had been back when money didn’t matter because there was so much of it, so Alexis’s insistence that River was probably trying to teach her about the nature of impermanence had been a touching affectation, self-delusional in a way that David had always found to be a central piece of Alexis’s character, charming and disturbing by turns. When it came down to it, David could admit to himself that he really liked his loved ones to be a touch overinvested in their interests and pursuits. It was nice to be next to that kind of passion. Like a bonfire. You wouldn’t want to jump in or anything, but it was festive from the sidelines.
++
The bride, Marianne, had begun by lending David the entirety of Chicago’s discography on vinyl, insisting that digital couldn’t do justice to the “sonic experience, David, the bangin’ horns section is only the beginning!”
From there it had been just an absolute slow descent into insanity, with Marianne dragging David into ever more remote lacunae of Chicago-themed trivia, including a bachelorette party where David had procured identical 80s-era Robert Lamm wigs for all ten bridesmaids, which was like a man’s version of the Farrah Fawcett haircut. The pictures from the night should have been burned. Marianne was really going to be made to suffer if she ever appeared as a bridesmaid in any of her bridesmaids’ future weddings. Though Marianne was, in general, so good-natured, and so clearly a giant, wonderful nerd that she probably wouldn’t care.
Now it was the day of the wedding and the horned chuppah was broken and David wasn’t sure why he’d allowed himself to be talked into a chuppah with miniature plastic versions of brass instruments hot-glued all over it, but here he was, in possession of a chuppah covered in horns that were falling off and unattractively wilting and everything was terrible. If that two-bit Etsy designer Marianne had insisted was “so cute,” thought she was going to be walking away from this transaction with a good review she was going to be very surprised by the one-star review featuring a variety of colorful, four-letter words David was currently viciously stabbing out on his phone.
“I’m here to fix the chuppah?” a man’s voice said.
“Is that a question,” David said, still immersed in his digital shock and awe campaign.
“More like a polite inquiry issued in the hope that you’ll stop standing directly underneath the chuppah,” the voice smoothly replied, and then added after a significant pause, “So I can fix it,” and David looked up and there was the cutest man in a pair of the straightest-legged jeans he’d ever seen. He was holding a toolbox right out of some of the more butch fantasies David liked to entertain.
“Wow,” the man said with the wide-eyed air of a deeply sarcastic child at his first fair, “Are those tubas?”
“They’re an assortment of saxophones, trombones and French horns,” David said, annoyed and flustered and trying to figure out how to elegantly extract himself from underneath the chuppah with this little clean cut boy scout blocking his way and staring up at him with very brown eyes. He looked like a catalogue model for Land’s End. David despaired of himself and his proclivities.
To stop himself from asking for the terrible attractive man’s name, David called upon a hauteur that he hadn’t attempted since he’d been kicked out of the Chateau Marmont for drunkenly insulting members of The Wanted at an after party The Wanted had thrown themselves for something they’d done that David still couldn’t remember but knew he hadn’t enjoyed. The hauteur he summoned followed a script (a loose monologue gleaned from years of watching Moira Rose throw a fit) that normally began with a gasped, “How dare you,” and featured at least one dramatic moment where he donned sunglasses so large they immediately made the bridge of his nose hurt. He’d lost the sunglasses in the repossession of the house and a lot of the speech didn’t apply here, so he’d have to truncate it.
“You’re awfully sure of yourself for a service person,” David said.
The man smirked. “I’ve got a healthy sense of my own self-worth.”
David bit back a smile. The man was not budging and David was still trapped under the chuppah with no source of egress. He worried that he was going to have to back up from beneath the chuppah like a confused Labrador.
“Mkay, well, good luck with all of the tubas,” David said pointedly, and the man stepped back, arm extended, in a deeply ironic “after you, madam,” gesture, to allow David to pass.
As David was walking away, the man said, “I assume you want the horns to be a bit more…”
“…Attached?” David finished, turning back to the man, who was now standing under the chuppah with a wide-eyed mirthful expression.
“And what about these?” the man said, pointing to a little outcropping of flaccid-looking trumpets. “Would you like me to…?”
“Make them a little less tragic?” David said.
“How so,” the man said, still smiling that maddening small little smile.
“Um, if you could just make sure they’re not listing southward. No one likes a sad horn,” David said, now trying to tamp down on an answering smile of his own.
“So what angle would you like the horns to be at, exactly,” the man said. “Just for reference.” He was so relaxed, so clearly enjoying himself at David’s expense. It should not have been as cute as it was.
“Okay,” David said abruptly, to the little shit in front of him who was evidently not going to let him walk away without saying something ridiculous about the horns’ relative level of erection. “I think we both know the difference between a sad horn and a happy horn,” and he stalked away.
++
David was directing the flower delivery when the Smirking Toolbox—as he had privately decided to refer to him—showed up again.
“Now this? This is a little extreme, wouldn’t you agree?” Toolbox said, gesturing to the bouquets of black roses affixed with little pennants of Chicago’s first tour poster that were currently being attached to the end of each pew.
“Some brides have a vision, and I happen to think that Marianne’s attachment to her interests is meaningful and…tasteful,” he tried, trying not to make eye contact with Toolbox man, who, he could feel, was staring intently and somehow laughingly at him.
“Oh, very tasteful, I agree,” Toolbox said. “And just for my own personal edification, can you confirm that what I saw in the foyer was indeed a blown up Rolling Stone cover image of a man sporting a large amount of moist pubic hair?”
“Marianne has a very sentimental and totally normal attachment to Peter Cetera who is, I’m told, a preternaturally talented…oh my god, why am I arguing with you about this? Is there something I can do for you?” David said, covering up the weird buzzing his body apparently liked to do around insouciant cornfed-looking handymen with his best defense: a healthy layer of feigned annoyance.
“I think that’s my question,” the man smirked back at him.
Who did this handyman belong to? Was David going to have to call someone to come collect him?
“Ok!” David said, “That will be all, thank you for your very valuable critical eye and I’m just going to…put these programs up at the front of the church,” and then somehow he didn’t manage to step away from the man, who was standing too close, and who, David could tell now, was wearing mid-range denim and an Old Navy t-shirt. Which was absolutely fine and not at all appalling.
“Oh those programs?” the man said, glancing down between them at where David was trying not to white-knuckle the programs to death. “Those tasteful programs that say “set list” on them?”
David glanced down at the programs, marshaling a comeback, and his gaze caught on the banner at the top of the page proclaiming, "Can you dig it? Yes I can!" being cheerfully tooted out of a french horn. “Mm, ok, I’ll just…goodbye.” David said.
As he fled for the front of the church Toolbox called after him, “I fixed the horny chuppah! You’re welcome!”
David stifled a laugh and didn’t look back.
++
A half hour before the ceremony David had changed into his suit and had cornered the flower girl in a Sunday school room and was currently attempting to prevent her from taking her dress off without actually wrestling a small child to the ground when Mid-Range Denim showed up in…a really nice suit. It was sort of shocking, the body that he was hiding underneath the dad-cut jeans. David was defenseless against it and annoyingly, couldn’t even manage to suppress the way that lust, effervescent, seemed to be languidly filling every single part of his body.
“Uncle Patrick!” the girl squealed and leapt from the back of the couch into his…Patrick’s arms.
“Oh my god,” David involuntarily said aloud. “You’re not the help, you’re a groomsman.”
“He’s an UNCLE,” the little girl yelled.
“I prefer to think of myself as a full-service groomsman,” Patrick said, swinging the terror of a flower girl around and depositing her safely on the ground. When he glanced up at David the smirk was there, on his pouty little mouth.
“Mm,” David said. “Ok, well it seems like you have this…under control, so I’ll just go see if Marianne…”
David was sort of at a loss with children unless they were the creepily worldly kind who knew about the latest Valentino resort collection, and even then he felt like he was in the presence of great, mysterious power, like they could turn feral at a moment’s notice and rip him to shreds.
“Oh, actually I’m under strict instructions to help you babysit,” Patrick said with a grin. “And I don’t really think you’d be earning your wage if I let you skip out on your most important duty.”
“Uncle Patrick!” the little girl breathlessly squealed. “You said DOODY,” and then she erupted into giggles and David had to watch helplessly as Toolbox—Patrick—chased her around until his nice suit was wrinkled.
“Thanks for your help,” Patrick leaned in to whisper to him as David was lining the groomsmen up for the procession into the sanctuary 25 minutes later. He smelled like Old Spice and his eyes were earnest and kind. David repressed a shudder that had nothing to do with banal scent that smelled, somehow, really great on Patrick.
“Children are disgusting,” he replied reflexively and then his eyes widened in horror when he realized what he’d said. “Uh, but you’re good with her...with your, uh, little…thing…niece.”
Patrick laughed when David turned abruptly around and walked away, and David felt Patrick’s eyes following him as David went from one member of the wedding party to another, adjusting pocket squares and tucking bra straps in as he prepared to send them into the fray.
++
The ceremony went off without a hitch, including the moment halfway through when Patrick pulled a guitar and one of the Farrah Fawcett/Robert Lamm wigs out of a guitar case stashed underneath the pew, stepped up to the microphone, and played a truly tender and not at all funny rendition of “I don’t wanna live without your love.” He looked terrible in the wig.
“Oh my god,” David whispered from the back of the sanctuary, because Patrick was making aggressive, piercing eye contact with him. And it was—mid-range denim notwithstanding—definitively gay. Also, hot as fuck, and somehow the sweetest, corniest, most baldly affectionate thing that had ever happened to him. David felt like he was going over a roller coaster. Something crazy and warm was liquefying in his gut. Who was this guy?
“Oh my god,” he heard someone echo behind him, and jumped in abject terror, then turned to find an older woman standing directly behind him, staring at Patrick. He squinted. Someone’s Aunt Karen? If this was her, he’d been warned to limit her to no more than two glasses of wine before the speeches were through in order to prevent embarrassing stories or blue humor, he couldn’t remember which. Aunt Karen continued in a too-loud whisper, “Please tell me you’re tapping that maple tree.”
Definitely Aunt Karen.
“Um, that’s disgusting, we’re in a church, also I don’t know what you’re talking about,” David whispered. But he couldn’t stop the tiny smile that threatened to overtake his face.
Aunt Karen let loose a truly astronomical belch that she tried to swallow, attempting a closed-system ventilation burp in a failing effort not to sully Paul & Marianne’s nuptials with her gastric juices. When she was done with her elaborate display she squinted at Patrick and said, “Well shit, if you’re not tapping it, maybe the song’s for me?”
“Absolutely not,” David said to Aunt Karen and the entire conversation, and made a mental note to divest her of her flask the next time she left her bag unattended.
“No sweat off my nose, kid, I already got an offer from the florist so my bed’s warm either way.” Aunt Karen sniffed and looked a little superior. “But take my advice: prime real estate like that isn’t going to remain unoccupied for long.” Her v-neck dress had slipped a little and the black lace top of her bra was showing at her bustline.
“Ok, wow.” David hissed, affronted for some reason, on behalf of a man he hardly knew. “He’s not a craftsman home, he’s a sarcastic jack-of-all-trades who doesn’t even know the difference between a French horn and a tuba.”
Aunt Karen took a moment to appraise the situation, as Patrick finished up the song to raucous applause and then shot David an abashed little glance. Was Patrick blushing? Oh god. David strangled a pleased noise that tried to escape his throat.
“You’re right, he might not have a lot of experience with a brass section. Seems like he’s keen on learning, though,” she said and started to walk away.
“Come back here!” David hissed. Aunt Karen turned around, a little wobbly. He pulled out a pin from the emergency kit in the inner pocket of his suit, and Aunt Karen flinched.
“Oh my god,” David whispered, trying not to roll his eyes, “I’m not going to attack you with sewing implements. Would you like me to fix your bra?”
“Excuse you, young man, you’re rather fresh.” Aunt Karen said. “I know what my bra looks like, how do you think I got the florist’s number? See to your own house, is my advice.” And she sauntered away, the sound of her heels on the parquet floor disrupting what little solemnity was present in the handfasting ceremony currently being completed at the altar by the officiant, who had also been roped into wearing a Robert Lamm wig.
++
In a small back room off of the kitchen at the reception hall David opened the cake box and saw his life flash before his eyes.
The cake was a mess, oh god, this was it, David thought, his career was over. What kind of amateur didn’t open the fucking cake box upon delivery?
It was a beautiful, beautiful cake: champagne flavored Swiss meringue buttercream icing, a delicate strawberry cake base, covered in tiny fondant horns surrounding the words “Life is so easy when you’re beside me,” a lyric from Chicago’s seminal hit, “Just You ‘n’ Me.” And in the bottom third of the cake, just underneath that beautiful sentiment, the bakery had drawn a giant hairy dick in garish bubblegum-pink icing.
When David had met with the baker he hadn’t expected to have a one-night stand with him but the whole scene had been very charming. The pastels and glitter details all over the place and a bakery case that seemed to glow ethereally had conspired with the samples of warm dark chocolate chip cookies to lure him into a weakened state. Plus, Jimmy, the baker, had had a few days growth of beard that looked very soft and David had thought perhaps he could let himself, just this once, since Jimmy wasn’t a vendor he worked with usually, and everything was so beautiful, and his life was a little bit short on beauty he himself hadn’t painstakingly curated into existence. He wanted to live in that dream for a little while: the sugar, the chalked-in menu specials surrounding by pictures of dancing baguettes, the man smiling warmly at him over a tart little cup of espresso; everything had been right out of a Hallmark movie and it had been eight months since he’d gotten laid.
When the particulars of the order had been hashed out and Marianne had left for a dress fitting, the baker leaned over and said, “Anything else I can tempt you with?” and despite his better judgment David hadn’t rolled his eyes, but had leaned forward instead, resting his chin on his hand and said, “I don’t know, what else do you have?,” a warm shot of anticipation running all through him that felt just as good and as illicit as the sugar high.
Everything had gone to hell in the little dingy efficiency above the shop where the illusion collapsed under the weight of Jimmy’s dirty low-thread count sheets and his insistence that they try a sex act David had never heard of. Cowed by Jimmy’s beauty and the panic of a situation that was fast spiraling out of his control, David had agreed to do it, then panicked because he didn’t know what “it” was and wasn't sure how to commence with the doing of “it.” Excusing himself to the bathroom, David sat shirtless on the lip of the bathtub and Googled it, praying for run-of-the-mill rope play and cringing away from the Dali postcard taped above the towel rack, which held a single moldering washcloth that he could smell from two feet away. PornHub had both enlightened him and convinced him that he was on a government watch list for even attempting to research the thing that he’d already agreed to do. He couldn’t do it. Stupidly he’d wanted a Hallmark movie and had wandered into a Lars Von Trier movie instead. A cold sweat had broken out all over his back, and that was when he saw the window to the fire escape, just big enough for a desperate, shirtless, sweaty man to squeeze himself through.
In retrospect, of course, David had regrets beyond the $500 shirt he’d left on Jimmy’s sticky floor. At the time, he’d consoled himself by imagining Jimmy frozen in media res, still waiting in the dirty bed for David to come back—frozen in time! No harm, no foul! But, he saw now, glancing at the giant pink penis whose grotesque ball sack was defacing the majority of Marianne’s cake, that Jimmy had been disappointed indeed.
“I just came in to check…oh wow,” said Patrick from behind him. “That horn is rather more literal than I’d been taught to expect from the theme so far,” he added, a smirk lacing his voice.
“I’m so glad one of us finds this calamity amusing,” David said flatly and then he turned toward Patrick and the door and moved to leave.
“Wait, hey, where are you going?” Patrick said, and he was reaching for David, his hand even now clutching at David’s elbow, solicitous and intimate though they didn’t know each other at all.
David shook him off and said, eyebrow arched, “I’m going to go tell Marianne and her new husband about the giant cock and balls defacing the cake, a cock which, by the way, I inadvertently put there by ghosting the cute baker because he wanted to engage in a sex act that I can’t pronounce much less perform without working on my flexibility and my tolerance for tentacle play—”
Patrick was very red, evidently embarrassed by the anatomical turn the conversation had taken, but he managed to recover enough to say with a grin, “Really? That’s a thing?”
“What,” David snapped back. “Slutty wedding planners? Depraved cookie-wielding bakers? Tentacles…? It’s all a thing, and now I’m leaving because, frankly, you’re out of your depth and I’m out of mine.”
“Hey, hey, wait,” Patrick said, serious all of a sudden. “You’re right…I—I’m out of my depth.”
David, paralyzed as always by expressions of earnest emotion, had stopped moving entirely. Patrick took it as encouragement and got closer so that David could smell the Old Spice smell of him, then he placed his hands on David’s biceps, steadying him, a gesture which to anyone who happened upon them would look like an affirming manly gesture of support, but which was currently in danger of making David’s knees buckle. Patrick squeezed David’s biceps and David made a noise, a small exhalation of air, something between a sigh and a little groan. Patrick released a shaky laugh at that and stepped back from David, dropping his arms, his eyes wide, a bit shocked. No one spoke for a moment. David closed his eyes and waited and resisted the joke that rose to his mind that would explain it away, that would let them continue on as before…before Patrick had realized how easy David was for it. For him.
David had not often had success in this moment, the one where he wanted something a lot, and showed that desire to the person who might give him what he wanted. Not getting what he wanted, being mocked for it, even: it all seemed like a punishment for being foolish enough to want at all.
It was stupid to want. It was how you got a giant wang on your cake.
“I’ve never uh…worked with pastry before?” Patrick’s uncertain voice said, and his hand brushed David’s once, tentatively, so that David opened his eyes to see Patrick’s blushing face telling him it was ok, David was ok, and would David like to meet him where Patrick was standing, waiting for him?
“Well the first thing you need to know about…working with pastry,” David began, and he let his body unclench and let the smile steal over his face, until he saw an answering smile on Patrick’s, a little comma punctuating the end of the sentence that was his mouth that David had to touch, outlining it with the barest brush of his fingers so he could begin to know it. Patrick made a noise, a small one.
“The thing you need to know about working with pastry,” David said again, clearing his throat and turning to the cake, “is that it generally shouldn’t have a giant Barbie-pink schlong on it.”
++
Everyone clapped for the cake, which truly was beautiful. The black roses from the church made the cake look extra goth, or like a Betsey Johnson fever dream, and if the server noticed the dick after he removed the flowers and began slicing into it, he had a very good poker face.
++
“I don’t know what kind of message this song sends, but I’m not sure it’s the right one?” Patrick said later at the reception, sidling up to David.
Marianne and the groom, Paul, were dancing to “Here in My Heart,” leaning heavily on each other. Paul was joy-crying a little from underneath the feathered fringe of the Robert Lamm wig that he’d stolen from Patrick. It was sweet.
“So, um, this song is actually not a break up song, despite what it sounds like…?” David said. “Marianne invited me to do a close-reading of the song when I had similar objections,” he said to Patrick’s smirking face.
“Mm. You’re good at your job, David,” Patrick said. But the way he said it, it sounded a little bit like, “You should take your clothes off, David.”
David bit back a smile and looked back at the dance floor, if only to prevent himself showing Patrick whatever embarrassing thing was happening on David’s own face. One of them needed to keep it together, here. The affection in Patrick’s face was actually a little much…? Hadn’t David just learned his name only four hours previous?
“So this is actually where I leave you for the night,” David said. “Nice job on the chuppah, by the way. And the babysitting, and the song and the…cake,” he added, and couldn’t help the little blush he felt stealing over his cheeks.
“Oh, you’re off work now?” Patrick said, smiling openly at David now. “Were you aware that I have an unused plus one for this wedding?”
“Um, so I know that’s a joke but it’s actually incredibly rude to show up with a last minute guest to a wedding this size—do you know how much they spent per plate?” David said, trying not to smile but smiling so much that it felt like it was threatening to break his face.
“David,” Patrick said, holding out his hand. “You’re so, so beautiful, and smart, and, I suspect, you’re a lot of other things I’m probably going to like, so I say this with the utmost respect for you and what you do: I think you should shut up and dance with me now.”
When David put his hand in Patrick’s he felt the current that had been gathering in his body jump to Patrick. Their eyes met: yes. This was crazy. But he had been waiting so long, watching carefully, hoarding the little portions of himself to himself protectively. And Patrick’s eyes were so kind. So he took his hand and followed him onto the floor.
