“That guy held us together these last two years, you prick! He was my dad’s best friend, and he’s the one who fucking stepped up and helped us plan, so shut your fucking piehole.”

  Uncle Beto had the nerve to look affronted, but Kelly remembered his mother killing herself to make big batches of cookies to send to Beto and his family for Christmas every year and getting bupkiss in return, not even a Christmas card of his perfect kids all going to Ivy League schools and shit.

  Jesus, his mom, at least, deserved a gift certificate to Starbucks or something.

  Kelly gave zero shits about Beto and Cherise Cruz.

  His useless fucking brother was standing in his goddamned wedding suit, looking wrecked and sobbing constantly through the service. He’d gotten rehab and probation, with a day off for the service, because apparently the legal system was that fucking random, but Kelly gave zero fucks about him or his absent wife either.

  Seth stood quietly next to him, his hair buzzed super short, thanks to his dad’s clippers that morning. He was watching his father say goodbye with features made older by grief.

  Kelly should let him go.

  He should.

  God, he wasn’t eighteen yet, and he’d been broken twice, and twice Seth had been there to pick up the pieces and to tell him he’d be there, whenever Kelly needed.

  Kelly should tell him to go out into the world and forget about him, and forget about Sacramento, and get a big job and take his father with him into the wide world, because if anybody deserved a vacation at the beach, it was Craig Arnold.

  But he wouldn’t.

  He wouldn’t and he knew it.

  He’d been all talk the day before, about Seth needing him. Seth had bought it, eyes huge, pupils blown from orgasm, body offered up like a sacrament, a blessing to all of Kelly’s brokenness, and Kelly had taken Seth into his being like wine and bread.

  Kelly knew the truth.

  Seth’s father was comfort.

  Seth was hope.

  He couldn’t let Seth go. Not now. Not when he needed hope the most.

  Kelly was a bastard, a user like Matty, because he’d grab hold of that lifeline Seth was offering and drag him down.

  His mother had asked Seth to play.

  Seth was leaving right after the service. His packed bags were in his father’s car; his violin was next to him. He would play Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” at the end of the service, and his father would walk him out before the priest said the blessing.

  It was such a huge fucking imposition. Mom hadn’t realized what she was doing until it was too late and they’d made the plans, but Kelly had.

  And because his mother had asked it, had wanted Seth to be a part of Xavier Cruz’s goodbye, Kelly hadn’t been able to tell his mother Seth couldn’t do that.

  So Kelly sat, his hand in Seth’s, and silently willed his uncle Beto to piss off, because anybody who questioned what Seth’s family was to Kelly’s family could jump off a fucking cliff.

  And then the eulogy was done. And the priest was reading about the book of Timothy and zombies, and Kelly could do nothing but clutch Seth’s hand and hate the world.

  Now it was people telling their Xavier stories, and Kelly wanted to howl. He felt Seth’s squeeze of his hand and waited for the story of how his father had kept a coworker from leaving his wife, because apparently the man was that dumb and he should learn to cook himself if he didn’t like her cooking. As soon as that asshole wound down, Kelly stood.

  “When I was fifteen,” he said, not even sure where he was going here, but suddenly needing to say this so badly, he couldn’t stop. “I… I fell in love with my friend, and he fell in love with me. And we thought we were so subtle. But my family knew. And my friend moved away, and I missed him and needed him. So I took off one day, to spend all my money on a train ticket for twenty-four hours on his dorm room floor. And Daddy stopped me, and gave me a ride, and gave me food money, and told me he’d be back to pick me up, because he’d rather spend two hours in the car talking to me than doing anything else in the world. That was my father. The only man close to being as good as he was is my boyfriend’s father, but that’s another story. My father loved us. He wanted us to be happy. He’d teach us the best things about us so we could be. That’s what all these stories are—they’re Xavier Cruz, helping the people in his life be happy. We’re not going to be happy for a long time, now that he’s gone, but someday, someday we will be. Because that’s what he’d want. And I’d do anything to make my daddy proud.”

  The church was silent for a moment, and the priest asked everybody to stand for the hymn.

  Seth stood with his instrument and kissed Kelly’s hand before walking to the podium and morphing, like a caterpillar into a butterfly, into the magic music man that Kelly had seen since they were boys.

  He had more presence now, looking around the church with intense green eyes to make sure everyone was silent for him, and then launching into the plaintive song—not a hymn, really, but a lament, that people could not be their better selves.

  That was the moment Kelly saw people cry. Even dumbass Uncle Beto let the music touch him, let it say goodbye to the brother he must have loved at some point. Kelly couldn’t. He was all cried out. He wasn’t going to bleed for all these people, most of them strangers, when he’d bled in front of the people he loved the most already.

  But he loved Seth for his music, for this gift he could give the grieving, for this moment of mourning and solace.

  This was why his boy was perfect. This was why he was hope.

  When he was done, Craig and Kelly were behind the pews, waiting for him, moving swiftly as the priest gave the blessing.

  Isela might have been absent, but her father was there, and Kelly hadn’t missed him giving Seth the stink eye either. Of course, he’d probably been stewing in his own piss the minute Kelly opened his mouth. Kelly hoped Mr. Cortez got pleasure from that, because as far as Kelly could tell, not much else would make him happy.

  The heat of an angry June sun beat down on them, and Kelly cursed the damned suit and slick shoes that came with weddings and funerals. Girls got to wear dresses for this sort of day, even if they were black. Seth allowed himself to be steered toward his father’s car, while his father summoned a Lyft on Seth’s phone to take him to the train station. But when they got there, he put a hand on Kelly’s arm.

  “Dad, did you bring it?” Seth said, turning to his father.

  Craig smiled slightly, his face still bearing traces of grief. “Of course. Kelly, if you give me the keys to your mom’s car, I’ll take this there after you open it, okay?”

  “Open what?” Kelly asked numbly.

  “Your graduation present,” Seth said, handing Kelly a midsized, heavy package. “We… you know. We’d been planning to give it to you when you graduated.”

  “Today,” Kelly realized with a shock. Another year his teachers got to give him pity grades, but this one… this one should have been a celebration.

  “Yeah. Anyway, open it.”

  The only reason Kelly’s fingers functioned was that he knew Seth was there on borrowed time. He ripped through the incongruously bright paper, at a loss.

  “Oh,” he said when he saw it. On any other day, he would have cried. “Oh. You guys. This—this is… oh my God!”

  It was an electronic drawing table, artist quality, that was compatible with the tablet Seth’s dad had bought him two years earlier. Expensive—so expensive—but something they had clearly saved for.

  Something they’d wanted to share with him in joy.

  “I know it got lost,” Seth told him. “But we’re proud of you. Graduating. Going to junior college. Being an artist. Don’t forget to draw. Send me pictures. I’ll keep printing them out, okay?”

  And Kelly found he could cry.

  “Thank you,” he murmured. “Thank you. I won’t forget. Every day. Every week. Every break we get. You’re my hope, Seth. Someday.”

  The car pulled up then, and people started milling out of the church. Kelly had to step back and let Seth’s dad hug him before they both started throwing bags in the Lyft. One last kiss—full-mouthed, adult, promising all of the things they’d been together on that quiet afternoon—and Seth was gone, leaving Kelly alone to greet the crowds and take care of his sisters and Chloe and comfort his mother and—

  “Here,” Craig said. “Come bring it to the car with me. Your mom has help in there. You look like—”

  “Like going in there and dealing with those people would get on my last fucking nerve?” Kelly sniffled. “Yeah. Something like that.”

  Seth’s dad threw an arm around Kelly’s shoulder and steered him down the parking lot. Kelly could take comfort after all.

  SUMMER WAS interminable. The only thing that kept Kelly sane was that his dad had gotten the family a gym membership for Christmas the year before, so he took the girls swimming three times a week. Between that and free science day camp, he and his mother managed not to lose their minds with a baby in the house—and no Javi to help.

  Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights, without fail, Seth’s dad knocked on the door when he got home. Thursdays, he warmed up leftovers. Fridays, he brought pizza. Saturday, he spent the morning shopping and cooked—mostly Italian and pot roast and meatloaf, but he made a lot, for the entire family, including some for himself.

  They started calling Seth on Saturday nights on Kelly’s tablet and propping it in the corner so they could Skype. It was almost like he was in the room.

  Almost.

  Seth spent grave amounts of time listening to Lily and Lulu talk about how they were both completely different and totally individuals, because Lily’s hair was straight, like an arrow, and glossy, like her father’s had been, and Lulu’s was in tight ringlets, like Seth’s and her mother’s before she went to the beauty parlor every six weeks.

  They frequently put Chloe up in her car seat and let Seth talk to her. He would sing Disney songs in a voice that was its own instrument, while she squealed and laughed, as happy as any of them saw her over the rest of the week.

  At the end of the conversation, when everybody was gathered around the table about to dig in, he’d say goodbye.

  “Love you all! Bye! Call me next week!”

  And then he’d be gone.

  He texted Kelly every morning, and Kelly—as time went on—started to appreciate how a boy who never spoke started to talk about more and more things on the little shining box in Kelly’s hand.

  Vince has a girlfriend named Stacy. She thinks Vince walks on water, and she tries hard not to be like her parents, who I think are not particularly nice about brown people. I think Vince might change their minds, though. He’s nice to everybody, right?

  Or,

  There is a first-year violin here who is really good, but nobody seems to notice. I feel bad because I had all this help and this kid is drowning. I tried to do what you’d do—I asked him if he needed anything. He told me he could do it himself, and I had a big lightbulb. Aha! This is why he’s drowning. I’ll ask him next week if it looks like he can’t breathe.

  Seth had also taken to sending Kelly “The Daily Amara.” She was frequently playing the flute, concentrating with a solid line of “fuck off and let me do this” between her eyes, but sometimes she was eating or laughing at the computer or throwing stuff at Seth. She did that a lot, and since she was laughing, it made Kelly laugh too.

  Then there were emails, several times a week. Phone calls, late at night when the girls were asleep and it was just Kelly in the living room, drawing whatever he wanted while the TV played in the background.

  Kelly had to admit that if Seth hadn’t worked so hard at keeping in touch those first six months, he would have given up.

  Waking up every morning without his father was a pain he wasn’t sure he’d ever get over. Waking up and knowing Seth wasn’t anywhere nearby felt like a fresh wound every day.

  He kept his phone under his pillow, so when it buzzed, he’d have Seth right there.

  But he wasn’t stupid, and he knew that he lived in a human, fallible body.

  Taking the girls to the gym was an exercise in “Look, asshole, but don’t touch. Don’t smile. Don’t think about flirting.”

  There were days when he wanted a hug so damned bad.

  But still, Seth would be there, on his phone that evening. Could he tell Seth about the hug he wanted? About the guy at the drive-thru with the really nice eyes? About the body on that blond guy who kept checking Kelly out in the mirror as he trooped the girls across the gym floor to the pool entrance?

  He wasn’t sure.

  Where were they?

  Whenever he thought of sex, he thought of Seth, on his bedroom floor, staring at Kelly trustingly, needing him so badly, but never admitting to it, not once, because he knew Kelly had more than he could bear.

  Until Kelly promised him he’d never let him down.

  That’s where they were.

  Oh.

  School started—Kelly enrolled in American River, because it was a little bit farther away than Sac City and he’d see fewer of the assholes he’d gone to high school with. Kelly’s mom made him take a full schedule, but Kelly got creative and took four classes, back to back, on Tuesday and Thursday, plus a night class on Monday when nobody had anything special after school, so he could find a part-time job.

  He applied in retail—Arden Fair, K-Street, even Sunrise—but didn’t hit pay dirt until he found a vintage clothing store in Old Sac, right across from his sisters’ favorite store, Candy Heaven.

  It wasn’t glamorous, but it wasn’t food service either, and Kelly counted his blessings.

  Besides, they let him do his homework when the store was slow and everything had been picked up. Score!

  The only setback was, well, the other gay guys, who had apparently decided Kelly was chum and they were sharks.

  As. If.

  But it did make shit uncomfortable sometimes.

  “Marco, you grab my ass one more time, I am walking out that door,” Kelly snarled one morning in late October. The place had been hopping all day. Vintage clothing stores were great places for Halloween shoppers looking for the weird and wonderful. Besides being cleaned out of most of their 80’s fashions and their faux 20’s fashions and hospital scrubs, lab coats, and their cheap ball gowns and such, they’d also been raided for all the ugly Christmas sweaters under the sun. Kelly’s boss, Vashti, had shown Kelly where the secret stash was. They’d go up the day after Halloween.

  Kelly loved some of his coworkers—Julia, who was prickly and shy and biromantic but demisexual, Raven, who was every bit as much of a woman before the surgery as she would be afterward, Callum, who was square and plain and gruff, but who could tell when a customer was having a bad day and point them to the complimentary M&M’s in a heartbeat.

  Good people here; Kelly approved.

  But Marco and Clifton he could fucking do without.

  “What’s the matter, Kelly? You afraid a little ass grabbing’s gonna break your hymen?” Marco teased, a lewd smile under his dark brown Tom of Finland mustache. It really wasn’t his fault. He was just being a crude asshole, but lots of guys were. But Matty had gotten out of rehab and spent the entire last week knocking on the door in the evenings, trying to see Chloe and screaming Kelly’s sexual history across the apartment complex, and Kelly was a wee bit sensitive.

  Kelly whirled around and pinned Marco’s skinny body against the shoe shelves, a hand at his throat.

  “You. Do. Not. Have. My. Consent.” He bit out each word, specifically, like chewing leather bullets.

  Marco’s eyes widened, and he struggled against Kelly’s hand. “Okay… okay. Sorry. Just playing. Jesus, Kelly. I was just flirting with you!”

  Kelly let go of him, and he sagged against the shelves, knocking the women’s boot section into pink vinyl disarray. It was telling how shaken he was that he didn’t raise a hand to his styled hair, and pale blond Clifton came running back to make sure he was okay.

  “You two pick that shit up,” Kelly snarled and stalked down to the register, where Vashti was looking at him in surprise. “What?”

  Vashti shook his head and gestured with his chin to the back of the store. “Sorting dock,” he said quietly. “We’ll talk.” Then, louder, he said, “And Marco, not another word. Consider this your first and second warning. Hands to yourself.”

  Kelly got out to the sorting dock and moved automatically to a pile of donations. Ugh. The garbage bags they’d been packed in reeked of cat pee. He shredded the bag and started carting the clothes to the industrial-sized washer to sort. He managed to put together a load of jeans from that bag alone and dropped it in the washer, silently forgiving the people who’d bagged them. Indigo attracted animals—ammonia was part of the fixative in the dye, and it got pissed on a lot.

  He added an extra helping of fabric freshener to the tray and started the load, and then leaned back, catching his breath. His pocket buzzed, and seeing that Vashti wasn’t there yet, he checked it.

  Seth had sent him a video—something he’d had to do for a project—and Kelly’s heart swelled a little. He lived for these.

  He hit Play and saw Seth standing in a blackened room with only his instrument and his music. He was wearing a bright neon blue T-shirt over his jeans, and Kelly blinked. That wasn’t usually his style. For one thing, the shirt looked new.

  Then he started to play, something simple and bouncy, and just as Kelly got into the melody, the screen split, and there was Seth again, but this time wearing neon yellow. He was in the middle of playing the same song, but a different part, the harmony, and Kelly gasped. Oh, this was fun! Then Seth appeared again, this time wearing neon green and playing a… a sort of bigger violin—a viola? Was that the word?—and it was playing the alto line of the song. Kelly laughed delightedly and clapped his hand over his mouth. Oh! Seth had not told them he was learning other instruments. Was that part of his coursework? And just as Kelly was amazed at what his boy could do, the screen split a final time, and there Seth was, playing the bass line on a cello.