“I could, I guess. Seems a shame. One of the virtues of the space is how open it is.”
“I’m still renting, so I don’t even know.”
Nolan heard the note of bitterness in Grayson’s voice. Grayson seemed pretty annoyed with his roommates recently, so maybe he was tired of that situation. Nolan opted to ignore it in favor of changing the subject.
“Any ideas for the design?”
Grayson did, in fact, have a number of ideas. Nolan couldn’t help but notice that he’d gotten more assertive about his opinions in the past few months. Really, ever since the reveal Grayson had done by himself while Nolan had been out of town, Grayson had acted more like a partner and less like a sidekick. It was an interesting change, watching Grayson’s confidence bloom.
“I’m excited to sketch it out in the studio,” Nolan said when Grayson finished talking. “What do you want for dinner?”
THE LASTstraw for Grayson was when he went back to his apartment that weekend to get some clothes and found Kyle making out with some girl in the kitchen.
“You have a bedroom,” Grayson said, maneuvering around Kyle to get a soda from the now-working fridge.
“Didn’t know you were coming home. It’s getting hard to predict. Um. I stored a couple of things in your room. Hope you don’t mind.”
Grayson went into his room and saw that Kyle had put his guitar case and a box of who knew what on the floor near the doorway. Grayson nudged those things out of the way. He put the soda on his desk and dropped his bag on the bed. Then he went to go use the only bathroom in the apartment and found that Jenny was in the shower.
Grayson had never minded roommates in the past. He’d felt pretty grateful to be able to pay for a roof over his head, in fact. Apprentice designers didn’t exactly make big salaries, so a room in a shared apartment had seemed like a gift when he’d first moved in. He and Jenny and Kyle had gotten along well in the beginning. They weren’t close friends or anything, but they could spend a few hours together watching TV or eating a meal and have a good time. But he was making pretty good money from the show now—money he wasn’t spending because he spent so many nights with Nolan, who seemed to pay for everything out of habit—and he could afford to move out. So if Kyle wanted to use this room and Jenny wanted to tie up the bathroom, well, they could have it.
The catch, though, was that Grayson didn’t know where he wanted to move. Should he get his own place? Or should he move in with Nolan?
Nolan had made his intentions pretty clear earlier. If Nolan and Grayson were simply dating, Nolan’s family would be an entirely separate entity. Grayson wasn’t Rachel’s dad, he was just the guy Rachel’s father banged sometimes. If that was still the case, there was no way Nolan would let Grayson move into his place. But if Grayson was part of the family, if he and Nolan were in a serious, committed relationship, that changed the equation, didn’t it?
Did Nolan want that? Did Grayson?
Well, where did he want to be right now? Not here. Even though Grayson had designed his bedroom, it was his old design aesthetic, before he’d really matured as a designer, and it was so… yellow. And purple. And it felt sterile and no longer like home. And, oh, there was a box of old kitchen stuff in the corner. The popcorn maker an ex-boyfriend had gotten Grayson for Christmas and an old coffee maker that Grayson didn’t think worked anymore, and a set of colorful spatulas Grayson had bought when he thought he was going to bake more. Grayson hadn’t packed up those things, so Kyle or Jenny must have. It was like they were trying to move him out too.
Grayson went to his closet and assessed what was there. About half of his wardrobe had already been moved over to Nolan’s, a few pieces at a time. Nolan had a washer and dryer in his apartment, so Grayson had taken to doing laundry there instead of the laundromat in his neighborhood, mostly so he wouldn’t have to hoard quarters anymore. And then he just… left his clothes at Nolan’s. He spent more nights at the loft than his own apartment. So of course Jenny and Kyle would think he had one foot out the door.
He had to get out of here.
He’d told Nolan he’d be spending the night at his own apartment tonight, thinking to give Nolan some space with Rachel, but now he regretted that decision. It slowly dawned on Grayson that he belonged in that loft with Nolan and Rachel, not in this apartment. This place had been great once, but he’d outgrown it.
But he didn’t want to intrude on them now, so he texted Danny instead.
He met Danny a half hour later at a bar halfway between their apartments. It was kind of a dive, but they made a good burger and had Grayson’s favorite beer on tap. It was early in the evening and not even completely dark yet, so the bar was far from crowded. He and Danny got a table in the outside seating area behind the bar, basically just a backyard with some picnic tables and fairy lights. It was a nice evening, though. Warm with clear skies and the beginning of what promised to be a technicolor sunset.
“Okay. Explain all this to me again,” said Danny once they were settled with drinks.
“I have three options, I think,” said Grayson. “Everything stays the same. I keep living with Jenny and Kyle, I keep seeing Nolan, I keep doing the show. It’s all the same.”
“I’m guessing that’s not really an option, though, if we’re having a conversation like this over beer.”
“Yeah. I don’t think anyone wants that. So I have to decide if I’mwithNolan, or if we’re just casually dating and I should get my own place.”
“What do you mean bywith?”
Grayson nodded, wondering how out of nowhere this conversation must seem to Danny. Even though Danny obviously knew Nolan meant a lot to Grayson, it hadn’t been so long ago that Grayson had found the idea of settling down completely terrifying. Danny had never been in a relationship that lasted longer than a month, and until Nolan, Grayson hadn’t really either. “I mean, if I’m with Nolan, I have to commit to being part of this family unit. I’d be in a committed relationship with Nolan, which sounds great. I don’t want to be with anyone else. But I’d also basically be a dad to Rachel. And, like, I watched my baby sister when I was fifteen and she was eight, but that’s not at all the same thing. And I guess I find that intimidating. But it’s not fair to Nolan or Rachel for me to make that kind of commitment unless I’m… committed. Like, I can’t decide to go for it and then flake in three months when it gets hard, you know?”
Danny frowned like he still didn’t get it. “Okay. What’s the other option?”
“We keep seeing each other casually and I get my own place. Probably when the show stops filming and we have no reason to see each other regularly, we’ll drift apart.”
Danny nodded. “Okay. I’m no expert. But my older sister just got married and I had to go to her husband’s bachelor party, where he got drunk and lectured me about love, so I have gleaned a couple of things.”
Grayson laughed. “Sure, okay.”
