“Still…twoweeks?”
“Turns out you can’t fly with a newborn. And, actually, the doctor is worried about her undeveloped immune system and flying at all when she’s this young. So I’m trying to arrange a private flight back to New York.”
“Aprivateflight. Fancy.”
“Expensive. Worth it, though. There’s a lot I have to handle here in the meantime. She’s going to stay in the hospital another day or two. And I still have a bunch of forms I have to sign. I’m going to relocate to stay with friends of mine in West Hollywood because they have a spare room and a crib I can use. They have two kids of their own, so I plan to pepper them with parenting questions.”
“Sounds like a good plan.”
Nolan wanted to say something about how he felt about all of this to Grayson, but he couldn’t quite formulate words. So he just said, “I really appreciate you helping me the other night.”
“It was no problem.”
“I know, but… I didn’t ask you to do any of it. You just… did it. You’re pretty good in a crisis, you know.”
“Well, I can think pretty fast on my feet sometimes.”
“Thank you.”
Grayson was silent for a moment but then said softly, “You’re welcome.”
WHEN RACHELwas a week old, Nolan rented a car and drove her out to the cemetery where Ricky was buried.
It had been an intense week. Rachel never slept for longer than two hours at a time, and learning to care for her—while everyone around him gave conflicting advice—was thrilling and exhausting and amazing. His mother turned up two days after Rachel was born and got to work explaining to Nolan exactly what to do and cuddling the baby as much as possible. She was overjoyed to have a grandchild, and Nolan valued her help. But now she was threatening to move into the loft, which was too much. “You can visit,” he told her, “but I have to figure out how to be a father on my own.” That, and he wanted to work out whatever was going on with Grayson before introducing his mother to that whole situation. But he let her have her fill of her granddaughter while she was in California.
Now he put Rachel in the carrier that strapped to his chest. It took a few yoga poses to get himself into it on his own, but he did it and walked with her out to Ricky’s grave. He still remembered exactly where it was from all the times he’d come out here when he’d lived in LA. He hadn’t been here at all in nearly six months, though, so though the path out to the section where Ricky’s grave was located felt well-trod, it felt a little different too. Different flowers were blooming. New headstones populated the landscape.
But there he was: Ricardo Vega. Someone, probably Ricky’s sister, had left flowers recently, but they were half-wilted. Nolan replaced them with fresh ones and then sat at the foot of the grave.
“Hi, Ricky,” he said. “I want you to meet Rachel. You should be here to meet her in person, but since you aren’t, I brought her to you. She’s so tiny. She weighs just over six pounds. She eats like a champ, though, so she’ll grow in no time. She looks a lot like her mother. I want to give her the best home possible.” Nolan sighed. “That home should have been the one I shared with you. I still wake up some mornings angry that you were taken too soon. But it’s… it’s getting better, I guess.”
Grayson popped into his head then. Nolan imagined what he’d tell Ricky about Grayson if he’d been here.
“I’ve met a man. I don’t really know what will happen, but I think he’s something special. I never intended to move on so quickly from you, nor did I think it was possible, but I guess sometimes these things just happen. He’s young, but I think that might be good for me. He reminds me that I have to live and have fun. I had drinks with him and his friends a couple of weeks ago and then we went to a drag show, and it was the most I’ve laughed in what feels like two years. I mean, when was the last time you and I just… laughed? Had fun? I think it was that night we went to Megan’s house, right before you got really sick.”
Megan had been a close friend of Ricky’s. She was an editor at a teen magazine; she and Ricky had met during the height of his stardom when she’d interviewed him for a feature article, and they’d hit it off so well, they’d stayed friends. She’d since risen in the ranks to be a senior editor and lived in a gorgeous apartment near the Grove. That night she’d invited a few people over for drinks, and she and Ricky’d had so much fun reminiscing that she’d pulled a plastic bin full of back issues of her magazine out of a closet and they’d howled over old photos of Ricky, his awkward model poses, and the goofy things he’d said in interviews. Nolan hadn’t ever laughed so hard… until Grayson had taken him to that drag show. Grayson’s friends had been fun and open and game for anything, even the straight guy who had tagged along. The queens were hilarious and talented and had put on a big campy spectacular that Nolan had thoroughly enjoyed. And they’d just… had fun.
“Grayson reminds me to live,” Nolan said. “I think I’d forget otherwise. And designing with him has been really rewarding. I didn’t think I’d want a partner or that I could handle a relationship with another designer, but it’s working well. For now. We’ll see what happens when I bring Rachel home. But I just never imagined I’d find someone I connect with again.” He took another deep breath and touched Rachel’s head. She stirred under his touch but was otherwise pretty deeply asleep. “I did this for you, Ricky. When they called me to tell me they had a baby for us, I thought only of you. But I realize now that I did it for myself, too, because something was missing from my life. Not just you, but that vision we always had for what a family would look like for us. I wanted a family. I want to make my own family. And I’m almost there. But I will never forget you, okay? You will always be part of me, part of my history and my future. But I’m going back to the East Coast in a week, so I probably won’t be visiting you here much anymore.” He sighed, caught between loss and life. “I hope you’re somewhere blissful and painless. I hope you’re so happy it never occurs to you to look in on me. But if you do, I hope you can see that I’m trying to be happy too.”
Rachel started to wake up. She squirmed against Nolan’s chest and then began to cry. He managed to stand up and rock her a little. “Okay, baby girl. We’ll go back to the car in just a second.”
Nolan dusted off the seat of his pants and then turned back to the headstone. “I love you, Ricky. I will always love you. But I also know you wouldn’t want me to stop living when you left, so I’m trying hard to move on and figure out how to make sense of this life I live now. I wish you were here still, with every fiber of my being. But since you aren’t, I’m going to keep living. I’ll tell Rachel about you someday when she’s old enough to hear it.”
Rachel’s cries became more demanding. If Nolan had anything else to say, it fell out of his head as his attention focused back on the baby.Hisbaby. Then he walked her back to the car.
Chapter Twenty-Two
GRAYSON WOKEup in his bed in his apartment and could hear voices. It sounded like his roommates—Jenny and Kyle—were having an argument.
Grayson pulled the covers over his head, but they were too loud for him to block out. He glanced at his phone. No word from Nolan, who was scheduled to return home tomorrow. With Nolan out of town, Grayson had basically been at loose ends for two weeks, and he’d fallen into some bad habits, like sleeping until lunchtime. Setting up the nursery at Nolan’s place had given him a project, at least, but even that was over now.
Grayson made himself get out of bed, and after a quick shower and changing into jeans and a T-shirt—very Nolan of him—he decided to see what Jenny and Kyle werestillarguing about.
“What’s going on?”
“Hello, sleepyhead,” said Jenny. “The fridge is broken.”
“Oh. That sucks.”
