Grayson hoped it was a wrong number as he glanced at Nolan’s bedside clock, which showed that it was indeed 2:00 a.m.
“Hello?” Nolan said as he flopped onto his back with his phone pressed against his ear.
Grayson started to see through the fog of arousal and began to worry it truly was an emergency. Nolan was right; people generally didn’t call at this time of night if it wasn’t important. Or a drunk ex. Grayson had an ex who still periodically drunk-dialed him when he got out of the club without a man to go home with.
Shaking all that off, Grayson turned on his side and looked at Nolan beside him.
“Wait, she what? No, I’m sorry, it’s two in the morning here. I’m just not…. Oh. Yeah. I mean, it’s a six-hour flight, but I could…. Yes, of course. I’ll be on the next flight. I’ll call you when I land in LA. Okay. Yes. Thank you.”
Nolan got off the phone and got out of bed.
“What the hell is going on?” Grayson asked.
“The baby’s coming. Angela went into labor early. That was the case worker. Apparently she’s on the way to the hospital now. It could still be a while, but I need to get to LA as soon as physically possible.”
“Oh.” Well, shit. “I thought her due date wasn’t for another two weeks.”
“Babies don’t always adhere to strict schedules.”
Grayson sighed and got out of bed. “You want me to come with you?”
Nolan was in the process of pulling a suitcase out of the closet, but he stopped when Grayson said that. “Oh. Um. Well, no. No offense, just, I think this is something I have to do myself. Plus, someone has to be at the reveal tomorrow. Or later today, I guess. I’ll call Helena in the morning to let her know, if you want.”
It was very hard to process things when it was the middle of the night and Grayson was still trying to shake off sex brain. But he realized that they were supposed to do the reveal for Justin and Peter’s house in, yikes, eight hours. “You can’t wait until after the reveal?”
“No, I have to get to LA right away. Ugh, I have to book a flight.”
Nolan sat back on the bed and started tapping at his phone.
He and Nolan lived in different universes, didn’t they? Grayson had been avoiding going back to his shitty apartment in Brooklyn for almost a week, and here Nolan could just book a flight to LA without having a crisis about how to pay for it. Not that Nolan hadn’t worked for it, but Grayson wondered if half of why he found comfort in Nolan’s world was that it didn’t include the same anxieties Grayson dealt with daily. Thanks to Grayson’s new salary, he didn’t have to worry about making rent this month or for several months to come, but it was a state of being he was still getting used to.
He shook himself off and got up to find something to wear home.
“Don’t feel like you have to rush out of here,” Nolan said. “I actually had keys made for you a few days ago and forgot to give them to you. If you want to stay here while I’m gone, that’s fine.”
“Oh.”
“I trust you,” Nolan said. Then he held up his phone in triumph. “Flight booked. First one out of LaGuardia is at six. I’d better pack.”
Grayson sat back on the bed, feeling overwhelmed. Their idyll was over, wasn’t it? Nolan would be coming back from LA in a few days with ababy. That changed the equation here in ways Grayson probably hadn’t even thought of yet.
“You can do the reveal, right?” said Nolan. “I was looking forward to seeing Justin and Peter’s faces, but I don’thaveto be there. Nor do I want to postpone until I get back because we shouldn’t force the couple to stay out of their house an extra week or two on my account.”
“An extra week?”
“Well, yeah. I mean, I’m not set up here yet, and I don’t know if it’s safe to fly a newborn across the country and I… oh, fuck.”
Ah, there it was. Grayson had been wondering when the full force of this would hit Nolan. And something about watching the freakout play across Nolan’s face made Grayson snap into problem-solving mode.
“Okay. What still has to get done?” Grayson asked.
“Well, all the furniture is purchased, but I haven’t assembled anything. It’s just sitting in a pile over there.” Nolan pointed at a bunch of boxes stacked up just outside of the sleeping area screen. “And I haven’t even started interviewing nannies or babysitters or anything, so I don’t know what to do about childcare while we film. I’ll have to talk to Helena about postponing the consultation with the Chus. I guess I’ll have to do all that when I get back.”
“Tell you what,” said Grayson. “I can assemble the furniture while you’re gone.”
“Really?”
“Sure. How hard can it be to put a crib together? The box should have instructions, right?”
