“Oh. Because you could put photos up if you wanted to. He was a big part of your life.”
“Maybe I will someday. It’s still hard. I’ve got a bunch of photos in a box in the closet.”
“Your loft has a closet? I mean, besides that little joke of one in your bedroom area?”
Nolan chuckled. “That door next to the kitchen? It goes to a walk-in closet-slash-storage room.”
“Oh! I wondered where that door went, but I didn’t want to ask and seem like a creeper.”
“I figured, you know, when I felt like I could look at a photo of him and not lose it, I’d put a few out. But I’m not quite there yet.”
Now Grayson felt bad again. Maybe his insistence on being in a relationship with Nolan was pushing Nolan for too much, too soon. What was an appropriate amount of time to mourn someone? Maybe one didn’t exist. A year seemed like a reasonable amount of time before the one left behind started dating again, but with the baby coming, the situation was weird. If not for the baby and the fact that Nolan and Grayson spent so much time together, maybe this relationship wouldn’t feel so important. It would just be two guys casually seeing each other.
But this relationshipwasimportant. Grayson didn’t want to push Nolan into anything he wasn’t ready for, but he wasn’t going to let Nolan push him away either.
Not that he was doing that now. Nolan actually seemed lighter and happier than he had in a few days. Maybe that talk with Mikehadhelped.
“So how are you feeling now?” Grayson asked.
“About Ricky?”
“About everything.”
They emerged from the tunnel and right into a traffic jam. Nolan sighed. “If I haven’t said so lately, I really hate Canal Street.”
Grayson paused while Nolan focused on getting out of the tangle of streets where the tunnel dumped them, near Chinatown. Once they were headed uptown toward the Restoration Channel offices, he said, “So?”
“How am I feeling? I don’t know. The last couple of weeks have been intense. I appreciated Mike talking to me, although of course now I’m thinking about Ricky again. And I’m thinking about you, and how much I like you. And I’m thinking about the baby. And the show. It’s a lot, all happening at the same time. It’s hard to sort through my feelings about everything sometimes.”
“Yeah. I never expected to feel this way either, for what it’s worth.”
“And what way is that?”
Grayson wasn’t completely sure how to voice how he felt. “I want to be with you, and only you, for as long as you’ll have me. How’s that?”
Nolan smiled. “I feel pretty good about that.”
“Good. But, just, I want you to know, you don’t have to hide Ricky away. If you find a way to honor him that you’re comfortable with, I won’t have a problem with it. He was an important part of your life.”
“Thank you. I’ll think about it.”
“Okay.” Grayson sighed. “What else is on the agenda for tonight?”
“Ugh, I don’t know. I have to talk to Helena about buying plants. Then we have to make the final call on tile for the Dunlop kitchen backsplash. Helena said more samples arrived yesterday and she’d put them in the studio.”
“What color were you thinking?” It felt a little strange to shift from an emotional conversation to a work one, but here they were.
“I saw these tiles in a catalog that are kind of long hexagons? I want them in a light minty green.”
“Mint? Really?”
“What would you do?”
“I think green is on the right track, but more yellow than mint. Like, uh, pea soup green.”
“It’s not 1977.”
Grayson laughed. He loved arguing about colors with Nolan. “I can picture the exact color in my mind, but I don’t know what it’s called. Yellower than mint is all I can think of. A very light green, so light that it might look white unless you held it up against something white. Like the pink paint we picked for the bedrooms at the Dunlop house that only looks pink if you look at where it meets the pink ceiling. Subtle color, not gross like you’re thinking.”
