“No, I do. Well, we do. Which is… kinda the point.”
“What is?” He looked genuinely confused.
“Thewepart. As in, me and Noah.”
“Ah.” There was weight to that single syllable. Not anger, maybe disappointment? I couldn’t quite tell. “Are you planning to go back to Virginia?” he asked, his voice the kind of carefully even that I knew meant he didn’t like something.
“Well, actually… I was kinda hoping that maybe he could?—”
His head snapped up. “He can stay here,” he interrupted, and he sounded almost excited.
“It’s not just Noah,” I half-mumbled. It was really awkward inviting people to stay at someone else’s house. “It’d also be Lulu.”
“Noah’s partner?”
I nodded.
“Sure. Great.” He grinned at me, then frowned. “What’s Lulu’s last name?” he asked.
“Fontanelle.”
He nodded, committing it to memory. “By the way, you all will most likely be subjected to the unique holiday hell that is the Hart-Bergmann Family Christmas.”
“The what?”
“It’s like National Lampoon, only more midwestern and Teutonic.”
I couldn’t help an incredulous little laugh. “Teutonic?”
“The Hart-Bergmanns aresovery German,” he said. “So very, very German.”
“The Hart-Bergmanns?”
“Ma’s maiden name,” Elliot replied, pulling a piece of gyro meat off his plate with two fingers and eating it. “It’s… something.”
“So it’s both sides of the family?” I asked. “Judy and Marshall?”
“Yup,” Elliot replied, eating a chunk of feta, this time. “Mom and Dad and I used to all go. Henry, sometimes, but usually his sister and her kids come down. And now their kids, so he has a house-full.”
“That’s nice,” I said, wincing a little at how platitudinous that sounded, even though I meant it.
“Yeah,” Elliot agreed, then grinned at me again. “What’s your brother like?” he asked.
“Noah?” I had somehow forgotten that Elliot had never actually met Noah. “Short.”
Elliot snorted. “You’re a giant.”
“I’m shorter than Hart,” I pointed out. I did not add the fact that it was only by an inch.
Elliot rolled his eyes, awkwardly tearing off a piece of pita bread soaked in meat-juice and tzatziki sauce. Mine did not have tzatziki. I took a bite. “Hart is a gangly elven freak,” Elliot replied. “Where on the spectrum ofshortis Noah?”
“Hmm. Around the same height as Marshall Hart? Maybe a little taller.”
“And he’s trans, right?” There was no judgment in the question.
“Mmhmm. And Lulu is enby.”
“And rich, since I seem to remember they took Noah on some sort of cruise?”
