Green Tea and Pink Apples

R. Cooper

Smashwords Edition

©2018 R. Cooper

Thank you for downloading this ebook. This book remains the copyrighted property of

the author, and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial

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Content warnings:

References to alcohol, alcohol abuse

Mild homophobia

Unhealthy familial relationships

Author’s Note

Every year around my birthday, if I have time, I try to write a fun little something for fun and post it online so people can read it for free. This year the story got… a little out of hand. But I decided to post it anyway. Because it’s free, and for fun, it’s not professionally edited and the cover is a simple one. Please keep that in mind. This is a gift. Thank you!

Green Tea and Pink Apples

With a sigh, Matt finally changed out of the comfortable, brushed cotton t-shirt he wore when lazing around the house and pulled on a respectable pale green Oxford. He combed his hair into a neat side part and stifled another sigh with the ease of practice. Then, at the very last moment, with his phone buzzing in his back pocket with impatient inquiries from either his mother or his siblings, he stepped into some well-shined shoes to make his look the epitome of dressy casual and walked out the door.

He didn’t lock it. The family house was on a vast property, surrounded by fields and fields of grape vines—the middle of nowhere, as far as thieves were probably concerned. And the small guest house where he lived was tucked away behind a short row of citrus trees and the back end of the pool house. Most people forgot the guest house was even there, which was fine with Matt.

He stopped to appreciate the scent from the trees—and procrastinate a little—and then carried on down the lit path to the pool and then the main house.

With the party this evening, every single light on this side of the main house seemed to be on, making the tiny lamps along the path more decorative than necessary. The pool was drained and covered, ready for winter although it was still fall. The sun had set, but if the house hadn’t been in the way, Matt would have just been able to make out the mountain in the distance, a jagged, dark shape eclipsing the stars.

The air was verging on crisp and he hoped it put some color in his cheeks as he went up to a door at the back of the house and slipped inside the kitchen.

To his eyes, the kitchen was chaos, but it was probably orderly to everyone there, which was Miss Cathy, their housekeeper, Willi, his mother’s assistant, and several uniformed catering people buzzing in and out of the doors.

Willi spotted Matt first and gave him a quick once over that might have been to make sure he was presentable but lingered despite that. Light green did wonders for the specks of green in Matt’s hazel eyes, and his pants had been tailored. Matt smiled merrily at her and then winked at Miss Cathy, who winked back but shooed him out of the kitchen. Because Matt respected Miss Cathy so much, he didn’t even snatch an artfully arranged crudités from one of the serving platters.

He skipped the dining room and headed out toward the noise, with a moment’s pause for the small bar in his dad’s office that would be unused and quiet on a night like this. He’d left Netflix and his e-reader for this. The temptation of a few more minutes of peace was almost too much.

“Matty.” His mother’s voice stopped him cold though he had a smile on his face as he turned around. His mom was close behind him, silent somehow, even in heels.

“Mom.” He bent to kiss her cheek as though he hadn’t seen her in forever and not a day or two.

“You had to be late?” She tilted her head to accept the kiss. She had pearls in her dark brown hair and around the apricot skin of her throat, but her dress was black and simple. “Did you come straight from work?” she asked, looking him up and down. She patted his hair, the same shining brown as hers, with hopefully the same resistance to going gray at an early age. “Why do you smell like espresso?”

“I had espresso before I left work,” Matt answered honestly, though he had brushed his teeth and his breath should be fine. “I ground the beans myself. Maybe the coffee scent is just on my skin.”

His mom sighed the sigh of Atlas. “It’s not that you are not talented in the shop,” she began, referring to the family’s tasting room in town where Matt sold wine and bourbon and cheese and olive oil and gourmet meats—anything with the Del Prete label on it or the label of any other local family deemed good enough. “But of all the things you could be doing.” She cut herself off, for once, possibly because of the party going on just out of sight. She firmed her lips and drew her shoulders back.

Matt tensed preemptively. “So I should go say hello to—”

His mom ignored this. “Your sisters are greeting everyone. Paul and his wife are kindly entertaining your father’s sisters. Your father is with your cousin Richie and his fiancée.” She paused. “Nice girl, Ella, but could use some travel. Your nieces and nephews should be in the game room. Obviously, everyone took the time from their busy schedules for family.”

Matt’s smile got a little more fixed.

“I ask this of you because it won’t even be a chore. Perhaps it will even give you time to observe the happy couple and think of your own future. Thirty-two and not a serious girlfriend in sight, much less grandchildren? I’m worried, Matty. You’re my youngest, my sensitive boy who has always needed time to himself. Your father asks me to be understanding, but even he is beginning to wonder if we were right to leave you alone.”

Matt had not been left alone in over three decades.

He did his best impression of leer. “Is there a beautiful thing out there waiting for me? And it’s not even my birthday.”

“Matty,” his mom said in a scolding tone, but for one moment, her face cracked with a relieved smile.

Matt rubbed away the pain in his chest and kept up his grin. “Is this about the Foundation? I just went to one of the high school’s games.” The Del Prete Foundation gave back to the local community mostly through gifts to the schools. Matt had been to three science fairs and countless basketball games. He didn’t mind those. But he hadn’t missed anything and didn’t deserve to get in trouble for it. “If this is about the 4-H thing….” Matt had no interest in farming, but the kids had asked nicely and been adorable. “I know it’s supposed to come out of the Foundation and not through me, for tax purposes, but it was simpler just to write a check, and—”

“What?” His mom drew her eyebrows together. “What are you talking about? No. I was waiting to see if you brought anyone in spite of all past experience saying you wouldn’t, and for once, I am not disappointed to see you alone. You’ll be perfect.”

“Just tell me what fate you’ve decided for me.” He didn’t snap. He would never snap. But when he looked back after glancing away, his mother’s eyebrows were high.

“You’d think I was forcing you into something.” She reached up again to smooth his hair. “So handsome. The most handsome of my boys—don’t tell your brothers. You should have a girl on each arm. Instead, you’re here by yourself. That’s why this has to be you. Don’t worry. It won’t be difficult. All you have to do is be charming and agreeable, and you already do that all day.”

Matt wasn’t fooled. “Are you setting me up?”

She swatted his arm. “So suspicious. All I need you to do is to spend the evening with Santi. Keep an eye on him—but don’t make it seem like you’re keeping an eye on him. Have fun. You two do that all the time.”

Matt nearly asked her if he and Santi were supposed to go play with the other children—which was really the last time he and Santi had hung out and ‘had fun’ in the way she seemed to imagine. Matt and Santi got along. They were friendly. They talked and usually sat together at these things, which Santi was always invited to even though he wasn’t related, because his mom and Matt’s mom had been best friends since childhood. Also because they lived in a small town, in its way, booming wine industry or not. Matt and Santi ran into each other semi-frequently. But they were both a few years past camping out in the yard or sharing comics in the Santi’s treehouse.

Santi—who was a Domenic and would have stayed a Domenic if his father hadn’t also been a Domenic, sometimes known as Dom, or at least been a Nick if one of Matt’s brothers wasn’t also a Nick—had gone by his last name for as long as anyone could remember. He signed his work that way. His true work, anyway. The sketches and paintings he was most proud of. The depictions of vineyards he did between projects were popular with the wine tourist crowd and helped pay his bills, but he didn’t put his name on them.

Matt was a trust fund brat from an old local family, who worked in his family’s shop. Santi was a respected artist, who might have grown up here and also come from an old local family, but had lived in the city and traveled a lot. He was out, had possibly never been in, and wore patterned shirts and bright suits when he went to things like this. He’d been interviewed in magazines and online, and he was witty and could be barbed but wasn’t often mean, and basically, though he had never said, was no longer even in Matt’s sphere.

Yeah, they sat together, traded comments and drinks while their cousins and siblings graduated or got married or started having kids, but they were pretty much the only single people left in their age range between their two families. Of course they sat together.

It was the best part of these events, sometimes. Most of the times. Being grumpy and snarky in a corner while Santi sipped whiskey and smiled and intimidated strangers into walking away through the sheer power of being talented and gay.

“You want me to be with Santi for the entire evening?” Matt asked suspiciously when his silence had probably gone on too long. His mom never wanted that. She always wanted him to mingle more. This had to be a trap. “What did I do deserve to have pins stuck in me all night?”

“What?” His mom stopped in the midst of critically grooming him. “Santi’s a bit sharp, but only with fools. You are many things but you are not that.” She gave his collar one last pat.

Matt felt a tiny frown forming. “Thanks, I think?”

His mom seemed to be processing what he’d said. “Are you implying Santi will pick on you?”

“No,” Matt insisted immediately. If anything, it would be the opposite. Santi would go too easy on him. But Matt was not going to get into that with his mother tonight—or ever. “He gets moody sometimes. Not mean. But lately especially, I got the impression he doesn’t want me around—”

“He’s an artist!” His mom rolled her eyes and made a shooing motion with one hand, urging Matt down the hall ahead of her. “Of course he’s moody. I’d expect nothing less. But I’m sure he’d never get moody with you, no matter what’s going on with him.”

“Wait. What?” Matt barely made it a step. “What’s going on with him? Wait. You didn’t say why he needs babysitting.”

He was shushed and ignored. “He doesn’t bring dates to these things either. His friends sometimes. Or were they his friends?” Matt’s mother was too civilized to make air quotes but her tone implied them. She glanced at Matt as though Matt knew if Santi had been dating, seeing, or sleeping with anyone he’d brought to town for visits. Matt stared back at her with as much blankness as he was capable of. Which was a considerable amount. “But he hasn’t brought anyone tonight. And the rest of the family is busy, which leaves you. I hardly thought this would be difficult for you. Are you two fighting and no one told me?”

Matt shook his head without hesitation. Santi wouldn’t fight with him. Santi barely bickered with him, and held back anything worse, even the mild teasing Matt was used to from his family. Matt thought that was the insult, in a way that shouldn’t bother him but consistently did. He could never tell if Santi thought Matt was too dumb to understand those remarks, so he didn’t bother, or if Santi was being kind.

“Santi’s not going to want to waste his entire evening with me.” Matt wondered if his smile was gone. His mother was giving him a strange look.

“Matty, you can charm anyone. Not that you need to. You’re already his favorite.”

Favorite. Matt had left his e-reader in the middle of a chapter for this. “Jesus Christ.”

“Matty!” His arm was swatted, less lightly than before.

Matt exhaled through his nose. “I’ll try.” He didn’t think he sounded as calm as he should have. “I’ll try, but he’s going to see through this in ten minutes or less, and he’s not going to bother with me for the entire night.” He turned away from his mother’s suddenly intense and critical stare. “You never did say why I’m on Santi duty. Does he not want to be here?” Either, he finished mentally.

“Well.” His mom tugged Matt back by his sleeve though he hadn’t made a move toward the party. “Ella, your cousin’s fiancée—you met her? Over the summer?—she’s a little… sheltered. And you know how Santi can get.”

Matt wasn’t even going to respond to that one. “And?”

“And Bea mentioned he’s been stressed and wants to try some new things.” There wasn’t much his mom wouldn’t do for her best friend, including babysitting her grown-up son. “And I think it would be nice if we could be there for him. As family.”

“Santi is not family.” The words were clipped and abrupt and as far from nice and charming as Matt could get.

“Matt!” His mom was absolutely scandalized and judged him as harshly as he deserved. He felt like shit just saying that. But he didn’t take it back.

“Okay,” he agreed, and waited until he turned around to frown.

By Del Prete standards, this engagement party was a simple family gathering, on par with Thanksgiving but with more champagne. The foyer and the living room were buzzing with cousins and second cousins and aunts and uncles and various spouses and significant others. Wine was plentiful, their own label, nothing too flashy, and Matt spotted one of the caterers behind the bar with a cocktail shaker.

The dining room was set up, although no one had wandered that far yet. On a warmer night, some people might have strayed outside to sit by the pool. Matt nodded to a few people and got swept up in more than one hug. He snatched an hors d'oeuvre while avoiding the groom and bride-to-be only to get caught by his dad, who reeled him in to a discussion about football that it took him several moments of smilingly agreeing about drafts to get out of.

Aunt Gill whispered all the gossip about one of the new money couples from the valley and the party they had thrown to try to make their name in the area. They’d served cheap wine. Gill was horrified. Matt was suitably shocked, not that anyone had tried to get away with that, but that anyone thought they could jump into these social circles by skimping on something like that with people who made wine for a living. It was not a faux pas that would be forgotten soon. But he also had no doubt that everyone at that party had finished every last drop, no matter how cheap it was.

He smiled and nodded for that too, then spun around to avoid his brother Paul’s eye, which was when he finally saw his mark for the evening.

He took the glass a waiter offered him without glancing to see whether the wine was white or red. It didn’t matter; he just wanted something in his hands for this.

Santi had opted for black and white instead of color this evening, and no jacket. Matt was too far away at first to see what the print on his shirt was, but he could see the glint of silver at Santi’s buttoned collar from pins and a thin chain. Pinstriped pants. Shiny shoes. Nothing that exactly matched, but somehow did.

Santi’s head was down, thick ebony curls on full display, though he looked up with no warning when Matt was several feet away. His hair stayed dramatically over half his face. It was the same color as his eyes and his obscene eyelashes. Santi was shorter than his father and his brother though he shared the same strong Italian characteristics as them in every other way. The Del Pretes were Italian in origin too, but the Santis had olive skin and big Roman noses. Santi’s nose was at least somewhat smaller than his dad’s. He had complained about it all through their teen years. Matt was the one who looked like a Roman centurion, he had whined, he should have the nose.

Matt, who had never even held a plastic sword and never would, had told him to grow a mustache. Santi had frostily informed him that when he grew a mustache, he looked like Luigi, and Matt had cracked up laughing. Santi had ignored him for weeks.

The black print on his white shirt was stenciled frogs wearing crowns.

Santi stared silently up at him, and it was only then that Matt realized that this usually went the other way around. Santi would find Matt at the bar or hiding outside on a lawn chair or approach after a church service to talk about whatever.

Whatever Matt might normally have said got lost in his head so he stared back. Santi blinked several times, quirked his lips in a smile, then directed his gaze elsewhere. Matt followed where he was looking and was surprised to see the bride and groom to be.

He usually tried not to look at happy couples too much. Marriage and all that, forever sort of loves, were not something he felt comfortable dwelling on. He’d assumed Santi felt the same, since, as Matt’s mom had just pointed out, Santi never brought anyone serious to these things. But maybe Matt was wrong. Or maybe Santi was getting older and changing his mind, or had been too busy before to think about it.

“You look almost wistful,” Matt remarked with a pointed shudder, and pushed the untouched glass of wine toward Santi.

Santi shook his curls from his face before glancing up. He curled his fingers around the glass, exhaled, then handed it back. “How thoughtful of you. But not tonight, I think.”

Matt accepted the wine automatically. “You’re not drinking tonight? Are you sick?” Not that Santi drank to excess or embarrassed himself. But if anyone was with Matt on the idea of getting through family parties with a bit of liquid courage, it was Santi. “Santi, are you dying? No one told me.”

Santi rolled his eyes. “I can’t tell if you’re serious, but I guess I deserve that either way. No. Not sick. Not dying that I know of. Or more than anyone else, I suppose. I’m simply abstaining for the evening. No need to worry, Matty.”

His tone was hard to read, possibly on purpose. Matt awkwardly held onto the wine. “But are you okay?” If something was really wrong, his mom should have told him.

“Matty,” Santi said firmly, “I’m fine. I’m just… trying not to get stuck in my ways. Consequence of getting old, probably.”

“You’re younger than me,” Matt argued.

There was a hint of a smile on Santi’s face now. “Still.”

Matt deflated with a huff. “Asshole.”

The hint became a full grin. “So charming, Matty. Do you call all your guests assholes?”

“No. Just the assholes.” Matt smiled back and took a sip of wine without thinking. He forced himself to swallow it.

“For someone who sells that for a living, you make the most disgusted faces when forced to drink it.” Santi was looking at Richie and Ella again, or pretending to.

“Not for a living,” Matt corrected breezily before anyone else could. “Other people work for a living. I work as a hobby.” Santi said nothing of course, though he should have. Matt took another sip, careful not to grimace this time. “So how’ve you been?”

“The same. Are we going to make small talk?” Santi turned to look at him. “I’d ask how you’ve been, but you’ll say fine no matter what.” Matt stiffened. Santi widened his eyes. “By which I mean to say, small talk has never been our style. You know I don’t care for it. You usually don’t bother. Should I be asking if you are okay?”

“Suddenly regretting some decisions I’ve made,” Matt said to the wine. “But I’m fine.” Saying those words back to Santi had a certain funny, bitter quality. Saying them in a polite, customer service, appeasing-his-mother voice made it even better. “Are you sure I can’t get you something?”

The look he got was almost fiery. “We have waiters here, Matty, if I wanted something. Also, I have been in this house for what probably amounts to years of my life. I know where everything is and can get it myself.” Santi took a deep breath. “But thank you for offering,” he added softly, as though Matt hadn’t been prodding him for a reaction.

Matt had nothing to say in response, nothing acceptable, anyway. Santi didn’t care about acceptable, but he also probably didn’t need Matt’s shit. He was dealing with whatever was bothering him. Matt couldn’t even excuse himself and leave him alone.

He belatedly realized he was drinking red wine, a cabernet, probably 2015. He should hold his nose and chug it. Down it one go like a messy, day-drunk wine tourist in the town square. The town kicked out the transients and the poorer migrant workers out of fear they were intoxicated in public, but if it was wealthy tourists plastered on expensive wine, somehow it was all fine and good.

Matt was not okay. Naturally, Santi had been the one to see it. That was almost enough for Matt to suspect that their mothers had tricked Matt into thinking he was babysitting Santi when actually it was the other way around. Except that Santi kept glancing at Matt the longer Matt stayed quiet.

“Nice night,” Matt offered at last, although they were indoors and that was definitely small talk. His charm seemed to have disappeared.

“Nice night?” Santi snatched the glass from him and sniffed it as though checking for drugs. “What the actual hell, Matty? Have we really reached the point where that’s all we have to say to—” He narrowed his eyes. “Wait. What’s going on?”

Matt let his mouth fall open. “What?”

“Don’t play coy, Matthew. Your mother nodded at me a moment ago, and you’re standing there, miserable and talking about the weather. With me. As though I can’t tell—” He stopped there too. “Is the family up to something?”

At another time, it would have been amusing that he referred to their families as ‘the family’ as if they were the mafia.

“So….” Matt looked down and accidentally met Santi’s concerned gaze. “My mother asked me to be sure to talk with you tonight,” he admitted.

Santi stayed silent for a very long moment. “Your mother never asks.”

Matt shrugged. “She almost did.”

“Huh.” Santi scoffed before turning his head away, hiding behind his falling curls, as usual. “Well, tell her you’ve done your duty,” he said lightly. “And with a clear head. Good night, Matt.”

The more unbothered Santi acted, the more bothered he was. Matt’s mother hadn’t been totally wrong about him and his moods. Santi felt everything, and deeply, and had learned early to protect himself. That was the key to Santi. It was also probably why Santi saw through Matt’s bullshit so quickly.

And why his mother had chosen Matt to do this. His siblings wouldn’t have understood this very basic fact about Santi.

“She’s worried.” Matt was careful. “Or, everyone else is? I didn’t get the details. But, look, you stand with me and pretend to talk and I’ll leave you alone. Or you can have them circling you all night. Think of me as a reprieve. The slap on the wrist versus jail time.”

“A reprieve,” Santi repeated, brushing his hair from his eyes. He laughed, short and soft, to himself more than at Matt. “And what about you? What are you expected to do, exactly? Ensure I eat? Talk to me about politics and the economy, but in a way that suits the company we are in? Peel me off the floor and take me home?”

“You planning on getting wasted?” Matt asked in real surprise. “You can get a bit loose at these things sometimes but I’m not one to throw stones about that. Getting sloppy drunk for no reason is something else.” He looked Santi over, until Santi’s hand twitched around the glass and Santi inhaled sharply. Matt turned away. A moment later, he turned right back. “Adulthood sucks and, ugh, having fame and talent must be so terrible for you” –the amused outrage in Santi’s expression was warming—“but you are okay, right? You’d tell me if you weren’t?”

“You’re alarmingly good at that,” Santi said, clearly trying to keep his lips in a firm line, but failing. Matt smiled innocently. Santi cut him a sideways look. “I’m very thirsty,” Santi declared after a pause. “You may get me—” he sighed “—a ginger ale.”

“You know where everything is,” Matt answered smartly. “Get it yourself.”

Santi dropped his head and laughed, a real one this time. “Sometimes, Matty….” He left that unfinished. “I think I will. Do you want something? Not wine, obviously. You hate wine.”

He said it matter-of-factly, in a house of winemakers and wine drinkers.

Matt couldn’t be shocked, although he did lower his voice. “Cabernet might the worst,” he admitted with a shudder. “Tastes like licking an oak barrel.”

“An image.” Santi blinked. “The fact that you sell that to people daily and make good money doing it continues to amaze me.”

Matt gestured dismissively even as he lowered his voice even more. “Selling wine is not about the wine. It’s about getting people drunk and telling them that if they get drunk this way, off our super special grape juice, it makes them higher class than other people.” He didn’t usually say things like this out loud but Santi’s slow grin made him want to keep going. “I can also sell the bourbon Nicky invested in that way. Olive oil too, but that is about the promise of a pleasant future in a large kitchen.” Something rough slipped into those last words and he sucked in a breath and shook his head as if that would make Santi ignore whatever he might have heard. “Bring me something strong.”

Santi gave him a sharp nod of bouncing curls and headed toward the bar.

Matt watched him go, how easily Santi moved through the crowd, acknowledging people without getting trapped in conversation. He wasn’t the only one watching him. Santi’s mom had an eye on him. So did Matt’s mother, although she darted a glance to Matt that Matt responded to with a shrug and a hapless smile.

Santi reappeared with a ginger ale and something that smelled like rum and lime. He handed this to Matt and once again took his place at Matt’s side. He shipped his ginger ale without any apparent longing for anything harder.

“Really,” Matt couldn’t help it, “what’s up with you?”

“Nothing worth panicking over. I’m as busy as ever. As always. Making things I love or hate, and other things to sell to pay for food and rent and the money to do more of the things I love or hate.”

“Those sell well too,” Matt pointed out, with a sip of what turned out to be Planter’s Punch.

“But not as reliably.” Santi tucked a single curl behind his ear. Two more fell to take its place. “Though the paychecks are larger. This is nothing. I just decided to try a change or two.”

Matt frowned. He knew their families. There was nothing like a small change to make everyone unsettled. Still, he tried. “All you’re doing is behaving yourself for one party.”

“If you announced you were thinking of moving out of the guest house right now, what would your family do, no matter what they say about supporting you?” Santi lifted one eyebrow when Matt had no answer except the truth—his family would collectively lose their minds. Matt was expected to be a certain way and he had never challenged that.

He had another drink. It was strong enough to make his next words come out in a rasp. “Luckily for you, I’m not the sort to pry.”

Santi inclined his head. “The perfect choice for a babysitter. Our mothers should have gone into politics.”

Matt froze. “Please don’t say that. They’re terrifying enough at a social level. Although, at least we’d still be liabilities, wouldn’t we? That much wouldn’t change.”

“Cheers to that.” Santi raised his ginger ale. They each took a drink.

Matt’s father was giving them the eye, like they were up to no good. “Should we mingle?”

“Mingling is terrible. Let’s not.” Santi shook his head. “Anyway, we know everyone here, and we know what they’re going to say.”

Lots of asking why Matt was still single. Lots of not asking Santi about his love life.

“Valid point,” Matt agreed. “Should we retire to our usual corner then? I guess we’ll be the only ones. Everyone else seems already paired up or busy or too young.” He hadn’t felt old this morning but he was starting to feel it now. Cousin Richie was twenty-eight and engaged already.

None of that was any excuse for allowing himself to say our usual corner and already paired up. As if inviting Santi to sit alone with him was something Matt did. He was hotter than a few sips should have made him. “If you won’t be bored,” he added.

Santi visibly stilled. He flicked a look up to Matt’s face, gazing at him with dark, lush eyes that always saw too much.

But like always, he didn’t press the point, or tease, or agree that an evening with Matt couldn’t compare to an evening with his friends in the city.

He nodded and said, “I think I’ll manage, Matty,” and walked off in the direction of the foyer.

Matt glanced around the room, then down at his drink. He took a slug then followed after him, blaming his rapid heartbeat and overheated skin on the rum.

“At what point does it become sad that we sit here like this?” Santi wondered sort of idly, half-lying on the bench seat of the alcove in the foyer with his back to the wall and one foot on the floor. His sprawl was going to wrinkle his shirt and possibly his pants, which were already stretched over his thighs and other places.

Matt stared at the painting on the opposite wall, which was of a vineyard, unsurprisingly. He had resolved to keep his eyes on that painting, which was more difficult with every sip he took from his glass.

He still didn’t understand why this little alcove even existed. As if someone would come in the door and immediately need to rest on a bench. Well, that was the reason, actually. And to remove coats and hats or to put on rain boots, and probably to use the telephone back in the twenties or thirties, or to have whispered conversations that wouldn’t travel across the empty foyer and up the staircase.

Matt had kissed a bridesmaid once in this alcove. It was surprisingly private and intimate for a space not all that far from dozens of relatives.

He took another sip and wondered what he’d do when his glass was empty.

“In all honesty?” he finally answered. “Probably now. I have a twelve-year-old niece for fuck’s sake. It’s only a matter of time before there will be a flock of awkward teens to do this.”

He risked a glance over. Santi dropped his gaze to his ginger ale. “There is, of course, the alternative. Join them.”

“You mean, talk business?” Matt asked, audible horror in his voice. “Get married?”

He caught a glimpse of a funny, twisty little smile through Santi’s curls. “The life of a confirmed bachelor for you, then?”

Matt forgot all about the painting. “Do you realize how rarely I am alone now?” he demanded. “If I was married, someone would be around me all the time. Someone that my mother would approve of would be around me all the time. No one—no one in this town would look at me seriously as I am. That’s—” His tongue felt thick. “Whoever married me would be after the name or the trust. Not me.”

Santi slowly raised his head. “Out of all the reasons, I didn’t think of that.” He licked his lips. “But without that. If, somehow, you traveled and found someone. Would you object to the institution, monogamous or otherwise? Do you think it’s just not for you, dating someone, settling down in some way?”

Santi had been wistfully considering the fate of the happy couple earlier.

Matt finished his glass and regretted it.

He spoke in a whisper, just in case. “I love them. But they want me to be like them. Like they are. Not how I am or how I want. So it’s better this way.” He was dramatic and either buzzed or not buzzed enough. “Anyway, you’re one to talk.”

Santi sat up straighter, offended. “It hasn’t even been five years since it was legal for me to get married.”

“Excuses, that’s all I’m hearing,” Matt told him mercilessly, his gut churning. “Find some clever art boy and make him yours. Think of the wedding our mothers would plan.”

“Are you trying to make me want a real drink?” Santi pointed to his ginger ale. The ice had melted. He had a sip anyway, then scoffed. “Clever art boy. If I wanted to be around people who feel they have to be clever and on all the time, I’d still live in the city.”

Matt closed his mouth. “I suppose that’s fair,” he said at last. “Some of your friends are a bit—” he paused when Santi lifted his eyebrows expectantly. “Into proving how smart they are,” Matt finished, a bit cheekily. “They were nice enough, though, once you get past that. And the rest of them were lovely. I didn’t even mind when they groped me.”

“You idiot.” Santi was soft and teasing and possibly relieved.

Matt had to clear his throat. “So,” he began, too loudly, “find a not-clever, not-art boy. Settle down someplace nice. Get him to support you—or help support you.”

“The dream,” Santi said, still in his soft voice, and dropped his gaze back to his glass.

“So this is where you are!” Camille broke into Matt’s thoughts before he could gather them and think of what else to say to make Santi happy again. He jerked his head up to stare at his heavily pregnant sister where she stood in the doorway.

Santi had a smile for her, though, so Matt did too. Camille was rosy and glowing. It wasn’t difficult to smile at her.

“We’re getting ready to bring out the food. You coming, or should we add two chairs to the kids table?”

She was joking, but only because most of the kids were probably eating pizza in the game room.

“Santi is a starving artist. Of course we’re coming to dinner.” Matt ignored Santi’s frown and got to his feet. He held his hand out, because he was charming, the sort of guy who helped grandmothers out of cars and kept boxes of tissues on hand. He didn’t think anything of it until Santi took his hand to stand up.

Camille’s attention fell to their hands, and then away, and by then, Santi’s hand was gone.

It was back a moment later, while Matt was curling his fingers into his palm. Santi rested his fingertips at Matt’s elbow, just for a second, and gave him a crooked grin, and Matt could breathe again, and smile at his sister as she led them out.

“We are going to eat soon, aren’t we?” Santi stage-whispered. The table was set and people were sitting down, while others were still milling around. The catering staff looked politely impatient.

Matt and Santi were toward one end of the long table, not quite huddled together, not quite engaging with Nonna Louise who was the closest person to them at the moment. She was half-asleep and would only wake to rant about the younger generation anyway. The rant had stayed the same through several younger generations.

Matt was beginning to get hungry. “Too many hors d’oeuvres and no one wants to eat dinner,” he muttered.

“Such a charming hostess you would make,” Santi whispered, almost sweet. “You would never leave me to starve.”

“Absolutely not.” Matt frowned as he remembered the dishes he’d seen in the kitchen. “Cheesy asparagus. I know she likes to have vegetable sides and she loves to have them be filling. But she’d taste the asparagus more with something simple. A good olive oil. Pepper, salt, lemon. Minced garlic, of course. Parmesan for a little flavor. Maybe people like it drenched in cheese. Maybe it’s a good wedding dish, where no one cares about the food as long as there is a lot of it. But for family? To really appreciate the flavors? Simple is good, even if it is harder.”

“Please go on.” Santi seemed torn between laughing and resting his chin on his hands to listen. “Rail about cooking some more. Do you do this at work?”

“People ask for restaurant recommendations.” Matt had a feeling he was flushed. “And I like food. I’m Italian. I’m allowed to have strong opinions about this!”

“Tell me more about olive oil,” Santi instructed him in a dreamy, silly voice.

Matt glanced at him, wary, but too annoyed at the thought of asparagus clumsily covered in cheese to stop. “Something fresh. Like the lemons. I usually just take a lemon from the tree in my yard.”

“From the yard of the guest house,” Nicky corrected and sat down opposite them.

Matt’s brother had their father’s dark, slightly wavy hair, and about an inch on Matt in height. He was still wearing his tie from work, although he’d loosened it. He handled the business side of things, with Camille and their dad. He did more investments than wine-industry stuff. Camille was learning that, although it was her husband and Matt’s other brother, Paul, who would go down into the fields.

Matt smiled brightly. “It’s cheaper to live here. The price of rent in town is getting astronomical.”

Rent was not really a concern of his, which they all knew. But the prices were rising. Everyone complained about it.

“Are you saving money for some reason?” Nicky stopped briefly to study Matt in absolute amazement, then shook his head and turned to Santi. “A place in town, I hope. You’d think he’d want a nice place to bring women back to.”

Matt stared at his empty plate, then at Nonna Louise.

“The younger generation is making up genders now,” she told him quietly, which was a new rant at least.

Matt pushed his chair back and stood up. “I need another drink. Santi? With cherries this time?”

Santi’s eyes were fixed on him, too serious for Matt to look back. “A Shirley Temple sounds about right. Why not?”

Matt left the dining room for the bar, nearly colliding with one of the caterers, who smiled at him after he apologized and helped straighten her tray. He got straight rum this time and Santi’s Shirley Temple, and ignored how his parents watched him go back and forth.

He put Santi’s very pink drink in front of him before sitting back down. “If that’s too sweet, I could get you some tea.”

“Why, thank you, Matty. How masterful you are.” Santi praised him breathlessly in a way that sent heat down Matt’s spine even as it froze him in place. Then he realized Santi was directing those words and that tone at Nonna Louise. Not that it mattered, since she was listening—or pretending to listen—to what Cousin Jacky was saying behind her. Santi finally shrugged at her lack of reaction and made a thoughtful face after tasting the drink in question. “You know, everyone always offers my sober friends iced tea. I find it sort of hilariously awkward.”

“Oh. Sorry.” Matt swallowed. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“It wasn’t about that. Matty just likes tea,” Nicky rescued him, in his way. “Some of it is even good. What’s that stuff you keep at home and convinced us to carry in the shop of the tasting room?”

Matt sighed. “Dragon Well.”

Santi raised his eyebrows. “I didn’t know you gotten that serious about your tea.” He paused, then shot a sharp glance at Nicky. He coughed. “Do you pour it for customers who ask? That must help charm the ladies.”

“If only one of them was charmed enough to stay. Right, Matty?” Nicky sat back in his chair and pulled at his tie to loosen it even more.

Matt turned to Santi. “I saw one of your sketches in one of the new boutiques downtown.” He focused on how Santi’s eyes widened at the subject change, how they met his, full of questions or surprise. Matt smiled, too brightly. “It’s different for you to do a simple sketch like that, isn’t it? To sell it that way, I mean. It seemed completed, but I couldn’t help but think it looked unfinished too. But maybe I’m comparing it to your earlier work. You used to obsess over your paintings. Maybe the incompleteness was part of it? Like a shape and not a person? You know I don’t know art terms.”

“But with all that, you still knew it was mine?” Santi seemed to be studying him, or just his face.

“Yeah. Even before I saw the signature.” Matt waved his hand. “I know your style.”

“Yes. Well. Of course you do.” Santi faced the table and took a slug of his Shirley Temple. “The sketch was to be different. You have to stay fresh.”

“Try new things?” Matt suggested innocently.

Santi exhaled through his nose. “Yes,” he said shortly. “Some cliché attempt to move forward. Perhaps I was tired of saying the same thing. Of not saying anything.” He pushed his glass away from him, hard enough to make the ice clink against the glass and to nearly splash grenadine and ginger ale over the rim.

Nicky put his hands up to indicate he was backing off, but glanced at Matt as he did, silently telling him to keep his eye on Santi. Then he twisted around and snagged his wife’s elbow to try to get her attention.

Matt watched Santi push at his drink and couldn’t help but think of the other nights like this. Nights where Santi would have a whiskey, then two, or martinis if it was that sort of party, and start to slouch in his seat, and regard everyone with stormy, dark eyes. Evenings of him starting out friendly enough, somewhat patient even with Nonna Louise and those like her, and then a cloud slowly falling over him. Santi turned his cleverness on himself when he was like that. Matt didn’t like it, but it wasn’t as if Santi owed him secrets or even conversation.

Matt would drive him home, though, whenever Santi needed it. No matter what he was doing, or who he was talking to. It was the least he could do, and he meant that, truly. A braver person might have done more, asked why Santi got like that. But sensitive people didn’t share their truths in a house like this. Not without a very good reason.

But Matt had always hoped that Santi talked to someone about it. He might have finally done it if he’d made the decision to get through tonight without any alcohol.

The scent of the rum in front of Matt was overpowering.

“I’m sorry.” It burst out of Matt quietly, like a summer rain shower. He saw Santi move to look at him but Matt kept his focus on his glass. “I’m sorry I let the house rules about not talking about anything real keep me from talking to you about what was bothering you. That’s something my mother would do to me, and I shouldn’t have done it to you. It’s—”

“I think we finally get to eat something!” Nicky rejoined them to announce dinner might actually be served, then returned to talking with his wife.

Matt startled and looked up, and saw that though not everyone had sat down, his mother had had enough and ordered dinner out anyway. The caterers had a schedule, after all, and this was only family.

He would have preferred the food be on the table and everyone could serve themselves, or even a buffet despite how his mother detested them. But he thanked the person who came around to place a salad in front of him, then looked up again when he recognized the waitress he had almost knocked over.

“Sorry again,” he told her, meaning it but also halfway to tearing into his salad out of sheer hunger even though it had been tossed with dressing and he preferred to make and add his own.

The waitress gave him a warm smile. “No problem.” She had a warm voice too.

She placed the other salad in her hands in front of Santi and then swept back to the kitchen for more.

Matt speared a piece of romaine right as Nicky whistled. He looked up. Nicky winked.

Santi fussed with his napkin.

Matt spoke quickly, for no obvious reason. “That was—”

“You can stop babysitting me, if you want to.” Santi took a breath and looked at him. He was all dark hair and deep eyes. “If you have somewhere else you’d rather be.”

Something hot bubbled up in Matt’s chest, something jarring and uncomfortable, like fury. Fury never did him any good. But it shot through his veins anyway, made his stomach taut and his heart beat faster.

“Santi,” he murmured, almost shaking with how angry he was, “shut up.”

He stabbed his overdressed salad with his fork and shoveled it into his face without looking up again, leaving Santi and Nicky in silence. Their surprise only made him angrier.

When the waitress came around again to take the plates, he stopped her, as nicely as he knew how. “I know this isn’t your job, and I hate to ask, but next time you go to the kitchen, could you please ask Miss Cathy or one of the regular staff to heat water for my tea? I’ll go get it myself.”

“Tea?” She paused to glance at his glass but gave him the same warm smile. “What kind do you like?”

Matt smiled back. “Green. I try not to have too much caffeine too late. I’m really a boring homebody but nobody ever believes me.”

The waitress leaned in, just shy of whispering into his ear. “I can see why,” she answered, a kick of amusement and pleasure in her voice. She gave him a last look before she continued on.

When she was out of sight, Matt kept his gaze on Nonna Louise, although she appeared determined to ignore them now.

“Matthew,” Santi said, voice low.

“You think I’d ditch you to harass the staff?” Matt asked tightly. He thought Nicky might be able to hear him, but it was more likely Nicky had gotten bored once the waitress had gone and was talking to someone else.

“She seems… more than amenable to you harassing her.” Santi’s words were cool and even. “I could see that, and I am a stranger to the ways of straight flirting. Matt,” Santi went on when Matt did not respond. “Are you angry?”

“Is there something I should be angry about?” Matt swung around to look at him and smiled widely.

Santi blinked as if the force of Matt’s smile had taken him aback. Then he scowled. “So you are mad.”

“Passion is essential to everything,” Matt blithely quoted his father. His father had been talking about possible careers for Matt. He used to do that. He hadn’t realized yet that Matt had no ambitions.

“Matthew.” Santi said Matt’s full name for the second time in only a few minutes. That might be a record. “You can’t be angry with me for assuming you’d have a better evening with someone else. You’ve done it before.”

Matt stared at him, a startling, almost scary rush of words rising in his throat. He swallowed them, then pushed his chair back and stood up, and went to the kitchen to make his tea.

Matt didn’t stay in the kitchen for long. The catering staff popped in and out and it felt awkward to be where they were working. He also didn’t want to linger around the waitress “amenable to him harassing her” because he didn’t want her to get the wrong idea.

Miss Cathy took one look at him and sent him out to the patio and brought him his tea a couple of minutes later, along with some butter cookies.

“I love you,” Matt told her, quite seriously, as he sat down on one of the cold metal chairs.

Miss Cathy bent down to kiss the top of his head, instructed him in her faded German accent to sit outside until he felt better, then went back inside.

Miss Cathy was the best person in the house, and Matt included himself in that list. He included Santi too. Santi was a good person, if not a nice person all the time. Matt had known that, had whined about Santi going easy on him instead of saying the things Matt’s family liked to say about Matt. But this was something else.

Matt was angry and he wasn’t used to being angry. There was no use in getting angry with his family—they would do what they wanted whether he was mad about it or not.

Santi could say Matt was stupid or imply he was lazy. He could insult him for living off his parents’ generosity and a trust fund. But Matt had never expected Santi to believe he was that shallow. He’d never left Santi anywhere. Santi was the one who got bitter and less and less sober and insisted Matt go. But Matt always came back at the end of the night to see to him. It was nice, in a way, ending his evenings with Santi, even if Santi was half-asleep or watching him with an unreadable expression.

It might be nicer to finish a night with Santi in a happy mood, but Matt doubted that would happen tonight.

He huffed out an annoyed breath and drank his tea fast before the night air could make it cold. It normally calmed him to hold the hot cup and slowly enjoy the flavor. Not this time. He was probably under discussion at that very moment, so he stayed stubbornly on the patio, in the metal chair, even though it was freezing his ass. He sat there until people were most likely finishing up whatever the entrée was. Then he crept into the kitchen to leave his cup by the sink.

Going back outside after that was childish, but Matt was a spoiled child with no ambition, so he walked slowly all the way around the house to the front door and let himself in.

Inside was warm enough to make him shiver for a few minutes as his body adjusted. The living room was mostly empty. The person tending bar was cleaning up and looked over at him questioningly, but Matt was not in the mood for alcohol. He sat on the bench seat in front of the piano that Camille never played anymore and wondered vaguely if his parents still had his clarinet from high school somewhere.

“It must be bad, to have sent you out here.” A mellow voice broke his reverie, and Matt raised his head to see Bea approach.

Santi’s mother’s hair was in dark, flowing waves to her shoulders, and she wore pale gray slacks and a small, thin jacket with a sparklingly white blouse. She gave the appearance of being softer than Matt’s mother, but that was appearance only.

Matt liked her despite that. He’d never once heard her say anything disparaging to or about Santi. She was nothing but supportive, even though the art in her house could have hung on the walls of any hospital waiting room which meant she probably didn’t understand Santi’s work at all.

“What do you mean?” Matt asked, although he knew.

“He won’t tell me why he’s not drinking tonight.” Bea dropped elegantly down beside him. “I don’t mean to insist that he must drink. But if he had a problem, he won’t say. He just tells me it’s only for nights like these.” She made a noise that was the vocal equivalent of throwing her hands up in the air. “What’s wrong with nights like these? I like to see everyone together.”

Matt had nothing to say to that. Luckily, she didn’t seem to expect him to. She patted his knee. “I like seeing the two of you close again,” she continued, leaving Matt to wonder if he and Santi had looked especially close to all of the adults around them when they were children. They were close, had been close, but everyone seemed to feel they had been best friends.

Though, sad as it was, Matt had never had a best friend. Maybe that was what Santi was to him, even if he didn’t know what he was to Santi.

“Thank you for talking to him, and taking care of him,” Bea added, with a small exhale.

Matt turned to her, frowning a little. “Of course, I’ll take care of him. He’s—” Matt faltered, closing his mouth and swallowing what he’d been going to say. Nothing better came to mind except—“Family.”

“No. Not family. Not blood.” Bea’s quiet assertion shocked him into total silence. If she noticed, she gave no sign. “Domenic loves you all, but you, Matt, are not a brother to him. That—family—is something you can’t choose. He’s always chosen you—to like you best. That’s why I thought he might talk to you.”

Santi liked him best? Matt didn’t know if that was true, and if it was, it was probably because Matt was the best of the available options.

“Well,” Matt answered, kind of helplessly, “I wouldn’t be able to offer advice anyway.”

“He wouldn’t listen, so there’s no point offering any.” Bea glanced heavenward, praying over her son’s stubbornness. Then she sighed. “This is long enough to pretend I’m using the ladies’ room. I’ll get back before your mother kills me.”

“Is it the dessert course?” he wondered, idly, but also to gauge how much more time he had to be alone.

“It’s coffee and cookies. No dessert. We’re having cake with the champagne later,” Bea reminded him. She gave his knee a final pat before standing up. “You know how he is. Thank you, Matty.”

Matt did know how Santi was. Smooth and sarcastic and unruffled when he most wanted to run and hide. It didn’t make Matt feel much better, although it did let him breathe. The thing was, Matt was used to a certain amount of disdain from people, a certain, constant amount of being underestimated that he was normally fine with if it kept him from his family’s scrutiny. He should have been fine with this. And instead it hurt, visceral, bloody, and mean.

It made him feel like being mean in return, which he wasn’t used to either. He was restless and irritable and didn’t think one drink would do anything but he didn’t want to drink more than that.

He stayed on the piano bench, first facing the empty bar, then turning around to poke at random keys to make a song vaguely like Heart and Soul, but without either of those things. In a minute or so, his parents were going to send one of his siblings to ask him to stop.

He tapped out the start of Chopsticks and someone sat on the bench beside him.

Matt pulled his hands off the keys, ready to be contrite, and Santi sighed heavily.

“Nice night,” he said quietly, leaving Matt to stare in utter disbelief.

Santi didn’t lean into him. His posture was slouched but stiff. Matt would have had to slouch too, to bring their shoulders together. He gaped for another few seconds, not to be mean, though he supposed he should have.

“You idiot,” Matt answered at last, just for the two of them.

Santi caught his breath.

Then, as if that was too much of his real emotions showing, Santi slouched just that much more. “Your Nonna Louise is the same as ever. Fortunately, she had me there to entertain her.”

That was something Matt would hear about tomorrow. Through his mother after Nonna Louise told her about it.

But that was tomorrow’s problem.

Tonight’s problem was gazing at Matt’s hands while Matt hesitated over picking out the only other song he knew on piano or folding down the keyboard cover and sitting in silence.

“Where did you run off to?” Santi gently and slowly went through his scales before slipping into The Entertainer then stopping abruptly. “The waitress seemed a smidge put out.”

Matt closed the cover.

“I don’t see how me trying to help you find—let’s say romance, for the sake of our mothers’ burning ears—is such a problem for you.” Santi didn’t look at him.

Matt didn’t even know where to start with that. “You know, not at every one of these things, but at enough of them, I’m usually the one to drive you home, or get you into a car, or a guest room. I didn’t think you got blackout drunk, just too drunk to drive. But maybe you forgot that. Or maybe you assumed my mother told me to.”

“She didn’t?” Santi asked, in a very small voice for Santi.

Matt exhaled, rough and almost a growl. “No. I don’t have to be ordered to hang out with you or to help you, Santi. Jesus. You know what? Whatever. Fine. That’s me—general dogsbody and lackey. Your mother is confused.”

“I am confused,” Santi said faintly, and pushed his hair from his face to look up at him. “Matt—”

“She says we’re not family, and on that I guess we agree. Although she thinks you have a higher opinion of me than you do.” This would have been a great moment to play something stormy and exquisite on the piano to end this conversation. The clarinet was never so dignified, and never found on display in living rooms. “Not a brother. I’m maybe a weird cousin.” Matt’s chest hurt. “Or a friend of a friend.”

“Matthew,” Santi softly cut him off, “please.”

“Just realizing how differently our families see things,” Matt remarked almost sweetly. “See us.”

Santi’s attention hadn’t wavered, and after another few moments, Matt finally had to turn to look back at him.

Santi’s eyes met his, startled and open. “I’ve never thought of you as a brother,” he admitted, and then sat straight up as though someone had yanked on his spine.

Matt smiled bitterly.

“Or a weird cousin,” Santi added, with a nervous lick to his bottom lip.

“Loser distant relation?” Matt suggested.

“Friend, Matt.” Santi didn’t quite snap, but it was close. “I thought you knew that. I think of you as many things, but mostly a friend—as much as you allow anyone to be. Ah—” Matt’s expression must have been frozen, or broken, to make Santi blanch like that. “Holy Mother. I am stone cold sober right now. And yet it seems I’m feeling sincere this evening. Must be the grenadine going to my head.” He leaned in, a concerned frown disappearing behind his curls. “I didn’t mean to upset you. Now, or earlier. I’m sorry.”

He twisted around at the noise of a few people trickling into the room and Matt looked up, avoiding his eye.

“Fuck this,” Matt whispered. “I want to go outside.”

Santi stood up immediately. “Then let’s go.”

The peace Matt wanted wasn’t to be found on the patio, but it was something like peace, sitting side by side in the near dark with this one person for company.

A funny thought, since Matt was still angry with Santi. But maybe that was what it was like to have a best friend. Before tonight, Matt would never have described Santi in those terms and wasn’t sure even now that he wanted to.

He’d noticed it before, this feeling. It would have been impossible not to. But dealing with it and noticing it were different.

“It’s much easier,” Matt said after a while, hoping Santi wasn’t cold. “Not being around other people.” People kept pressuring him to put a name to this when there was no point in doing so. It was what it was. He tipped his head back. “You can see why they compared the sky to the heavens when you look up at that. Although it’s got nothing on the views up in the mountains.”

“It is beautiful here.” He wondered if Santi was looking up at the sky. Santi did have an eye for beauty.

“Vineyards as far as the eye can see,” Matt went on. The stink of fertilizer and grape vines, or fermenting grapes at the right time of year. “A growing town, full of investors. What a future this place has.”

“You hate it here, Matty,” Santi countered simply, as if this was an argument. Possibly it was—Matt wasn’t used to having them.

Matt took a deep breath. “Most people would say there isn’t much of me to know. You keep… you keep insisting I have layers.”

Santi snorted. “I don’t mind if you want to keep yourself secret, but don’t pretend that isn’t what you do. Not with me, anyway. I know better than to believe it.”

“Sincerity all around tonight,” Matt commented when he could breathe again. He curled a hand around the cold metal of his chair and wished Miss Cathy would come out with more cookies and tea and kisses for the top of his head. “Is that the reason for your resolution to not drink on nights like these? What makes these nights so special?” He glanced over. Santi glanced away. “Oh God.” Matt must have hit a nerve. “Are you feeling old? You’re younger than me! You’ve still got time to do things. Anything you want. You’ve already made a name in the art world. Now you can settle down if you want.” Be part of a couple standing in front of their families, raising glasses of champagne. “Meet someone, laugh over coffee, have dinner—” Matt needed to stop talking, or at least make the mood lighter “—kiss kiss fall in love.”

There was no sign Santi appreciated his humor. “I don’t run from love. That’s half the problem. Shit.” Santi sounded like he was wishing for cookies and tea too. “I might actually be worse when I’m sober. First, I’m maudlin. Then it’s self-pity and sadness.”

Matt had noticed, but he held his tongue. “Want me to get you something?” He offered it easily. He must have forgiven Santi already.

“No. Thank you.” Santi was very sure. “Not just because I’m not drinking tonight. I hate red wine and they will push red wine. Can I tell you something, in the spirit of self-destructive honesty? I just want a middle-aged-mom-in-the-early-evening glass of chardonnay. That’s what I sit with at the end of a long day. Sometimes I don’t even finish a glass. And I like to put sparkling water in it, even in the pricey bottles they hand out around here like tips. It’s basic and whatever insult you want. But I am so very tired of pretention, especially over wine.”

Matt absorbed that without any real sense of shock. “I always suspected you hated it here too. Those vineyard paintings of yours are close to mockery, even if a lot of people don’t see that.”

He could feel Santi’s stare. “It somehow doesn’t surprise me that you do.” Santi gestured vaguely around them. “You see what all this is. Corporate nonsense passed off as family farms with their romantic old vines. Actual family farms and small vineyards bought out and made part of one giant label—not that they tell the consumers that. And for what? Something to get people drunk. And yet I have to listen every rich prick in this town go on and on about notes and legs and volcanic soils as if they aren’t all quoting whatever the last salesperson said to them. As if their wine choices are superior. As if they are.”

A speech like that made Matt wonder why Santi had ever left the city. “You stay here for family too?”

Santi burst out laughing, then cut himself off and shut his mouth hard. His eyes were shadows. “I am worse when I’m sober,” Santi murmured, probably not for Matt to hear. “I might get bitter when I drink, but I still manage to be sensible.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Matt said, as someone who had once poured Santi into a cab while assuring him that his nose was perfect. “But, yeah. Alcohol dulls things. That’s the real point of it, even with wine tourists looking for an acceptable reason to get smashed at noon. So, of course, you can avoid dealing with whatever is bothering you while you are under the influence. It might loosen your inhibitions, but it dials back your feelings. Sober” –which they both were, and fuck, what had Matt been thinking? ”—there it all is. Right with you. Unavoidable.”

“And here you are, right with me for every moment of it all,” Santi finished, in a tone that almost managed to be carefree. Which was a warning sign.

But Matt’s phone vibrated in his pocket.

He didn’t check it. Didn’t need to. “It’s probably time for champagne and speeches. I’m sure they’re wondering where we are.”

“We’re avoiding them. Like men,” Santi joked wearily. “All right. I’ll go back. But only for cake and to keep you company.”

The response Matt had been going to say, a joke about Santi’s sweet tooth possibly, or an offer to get him some of the sparkling cider the kids might be drinking, never left him.

“I rank up there with cake?” he asked instead, after getting up and heading toward the kitchen. He held open the door.

In the light of the kitchen, Santi’s face looked darker, flushed as he came in from the cold. “I can get cake anywhere. But there’s only one Matty.”

“I know you’ve heard all the words on love tonight, and you’re all eyeing that cake waiting for me to shut up.”

Matt had listened attentively to his cousin describe how grateful he was for a girl like Ella and tuned out somewhere around Ella thanking them all for welcoming her and hoping she’d see them all at the “official” engagement party. But his father’s voice brought Matt’s gaze up from watching the side of Santi’s face as he reacted to whatever was said.

“But I just wanted to say, it was an honor to host this tonight for these two.” Matt’s father was tall and dark, with silver at his temples and a slight middle-aged spread around his middle. He was good at the business side of things, and had more social grace than Matt’s mom in a lot of ways, but Matt always thought his dad would have been most comfortable if they’d let him stay out in the fields. He didn’t care about wine as much as he cared about the land and the label and the grapes themselves.

“I’ve had several of these dinners now, raised more than a few glasses to success and young love, and let me tell you, it never gets old.” His dad paused to look over the crowd, then he grinned. “So if more of our next generation would get their act together… start to take things seriously… settle down… just know you’d make me very happy.”

“Subtle,” Santi whispered, while three or four of the people in Matt’s immediate area turned to look at him. Aunt Raquel’s second husband nudged him in the side and said, “Wink wink,” out loud.

“We just want them to be happy,” Matt’s mother broke in loudly and lifted her glass. “To their happiness.”

There had already been a few toasts, but people were happy to toast again. Santi wasn’t, so Matt wasn’t, and it wasn’t a hardship, although in the right mood he liked champagne.

Warm fingers curled around his wrist, squeezed, and then let go before Matt could glance down to see Santi’s hand on him.

Santi was facing away. “I don’t get speeches like that. I am both relieved and offended. Do you realize what this means?” he went on when Matt didn’t speak. “All we have to do now is congratulate the couple. That is our last social obligation to fulfill tonight and then we can do as we please before we finally escape.”

Matt nodded in understanding and then in determination. The only thing making it worth it to have left his bed and his book was this unexpected time with Santi, and he wasn’t going to waste more of it if all he had to do was be polite. He was polite every day. Smiling and affable and just helpful and incompetent enough to get out of having to be more helpful. He could do it even when the very thought of it made his bones heavy.

Something like surprise flickered across Santi’s face, but Matt was already sweeping forward, intent on Richie and Ella where they stood near the cake. He moved through relatives and catering staff and reached back once to brush his hand over Santi’s sleeve to make sure Santi was with him.

Matt got his smile up just in time for Richie to see him and pull him into a one-armed hug. Ella offered her cheek, so Matt kissed it. Santi did the same, eying Matt incredulously the whole time.

“Congratulations,” Matt told him sincerely. “I couldn’t be happier,” he added, a little less sincerely, although he doubted Richie would notice. Richie was blissfully in love as well as enjoying some quality champagne.

Richie took a sip and then gestured to Santi with the hand holding the glass. “You keeping Matty out of trouble?”

Tectonic plates shifted below Matt’s feet. The world tilted.

“Since when do I get in trouble?” he wondered out loud, not moderating his tone or his volume.

Santi pressed a hand lightly between his shoulder blades.

Matt adjusted, brightening his smile and widening his eyes innocently. “You’re the one we have the video of at Nicky’s bachelor party. You remember? Don’t you, Richie? Or did the coke you got from that guy behind the bar make it all a blur?” Matt’s younger cousin might be getting married, Matt might be the family disappointment, might have a reputation for uselessness that he’d cultivated, but he wasn’t in the mood to be the receptacle of other people’s issues.

Ella glanced to Richie with a worried frown.

“He’s joking,” Richie assured her quickly before frowning at Santi, as if Santi had said it. Right. He thought that was Santi’s influence. Even Nicky would have known better than that.

Santi came up to stand at Matt’s elbow. “Matthew here leads a charmed life. He’s never been in trouble. Not that I can remember.” He stopped to give Ella a friendly look. “He’s disgustingly respectable. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise—even Matt.”

Richie shot Santi a disgruntled look, but then had another sip and was pleasant again. “Santi. My man. I haven’t seen you in a while. You been back in the city?” He turned to his fiancée without waiting for Santi to respond. “So, last year, Santi had this birthday party. There was some online talk about an event, so we all showed up.”

“Crashed it,” Santi corrected, but nicely. Matt thought it was even genuine. “I wasn’t expecting the entire flock of younger Del Pretes to appear. They were quite a hit.”

Richie snickered. “Yeah. Especially Matty.”

Everyone turned to Matt. Matt shrugged.

“We were at a drag club in the city,” Richie explained to Ella. “You sent them all over to him, right?” he asked Santi, grinning, before going back to setting the scene for Ella. “Matt was covered in gay guys.”

Ella focused on Matt with her brown eyes wide and serious. She put a hand on his arm. “They shouldn’t have made you uncomfortable.”

Matt stared at her without understanding that level of concern, then got it. He quickly shook his head. “I wasn’t uncomfortable. Not about that.”

“You looked uncomfortable,” Richie pointed out, too gleeful about it. Probably because he’d successfully moved the conversation away from that bachelor party.

“I don’t like being the center of attention,” Matt reminded him, with all of them looking at him, Santi watching him closely the way he had then.

“In my defense,” Santi broke in, “I didn’t send them over. That was their standard behavior around a gorgeous straight man.”

He was looking directly at Matt but Matt couldn’t help the way his smiled locked in place at that word. He darted his gaze away.

Richie was flushed and beaming at his fiancée. Matt stared hard at the cake as it was sliced up and put on plates, then looked back. Santi wet his lips but didn’t say anything.

He was always gentle with Matt. Withholding and careful. If Matt were the sort of person to feel reckless and do wild things, he would wonder what Santi would do if Matt told him everything he’d ever thought.

“This has been great,” Richie said suddenly, glancing to something or someone beyond them. “But my dad is waving to us. We’ll catch up later. All right?”

Matt nodded automatically as the happy couple walked away. It was him and Santi again. He looked over and Santi immediately turned his head.

“Got something to say?” Matt asked, low and unsure. Not how he’d meant to ask.

Santi turned back. “About what? Your cousin’s choice in a bride?”

“No.” Matt paused, because his mother had hinted about Ella but Ella herself had just confirmed it. “Well, yes, but later. No. Not her.”

“My birthday party?” Santi was either missing the point or missing it on purpose. “You didn’t say anything then either, if you were uncomfortable. They really shouldn’t have groped you.”

“I didn’t care about that,” Matt informed him tightly. “I still don’t. Wine tourists have done worse.”

“That’s—” Santi’s scowl was magnificent. “What? They touch you?”

“It doesn’t matter.” Matt gestured shortly like Nonna Rose when she was pissed. He spoke in a furious whisper. “Stop ignoring it like everyone else does. I know my family likes to show they care by either ignoring all the places I won’t fit or trying to sandpaper them into something polished and acceptable, but I don’t need you to go easy on me. I know I’m a liar and a pretender. You can say that. I’m not clever but I can handle some Santi witticisms.”

He was breathing as hard as he did after a run. He didn’t know why this was important to say now, but it was. And he needed an answer.

Santi studied him, all sorts of emotions flickering across his face. It looked like a trick of the light, like an old film projected across his olive cheeks and proud nose and made his eyes bright. Then he lowered his gaze to the floor.

“Maybe I’m tired of witticisms.” He looked back up through his lashes and his curls but Matt couldn’t read his expression. “Maybe it’s nice to have a break from them and I enjoy being kind to you.”

A current went through Matt’s heart and shot up his spine. His hands and feet tingled, like coming in from the mountain snow to a warm house. “You aren’t pitying me?”

Santi raised his head, and his eyes were intensely pretty, his hair shiny and his mouth lush. “You thought I was pitying you?” he demanded, obviously barely remembering to keep his voice down. He reached up, nearly touching Matt’s chest before he dropped his hand. “Because I wasn’t mean to you?” The words were shaky, and Matt didn’t realize why until Santi stepped closer. This time he did touch Matt, a light grip on his arm. “Because I don’t jump on everything you say like they do? Oh, Matty. What have they done to you?”

“I—” Matt’s throat tightened. He was a pretender, but he was as honest with his own thoughts as he could be and survive. But this wasn’t something anyone said. Not even Matt, not out loud.

There it was all the same. Matt was allowed to be weird and not fit in as long he acted useless and happy and slightly unaware. That meant jokes at his expense that had gotten worse over the years. Richie thought he could make them now, and Matt supposed he could. No one was going to stop him. Matt was getting older, still living in the guest house, still avoiding being pulled into the family business as much as he could. He worked in the shop, where tourists felt free to be condescending and rude, and he came home to more of the same.

This was abuse. Matt thought that word, one of the many he avoided.

“I—I need to go.” His polite voice cracked. “Excuse me, won’t you? I need a minute.”

“Matt.” Santi tightened his hold on him, but Matt pulled away and turned to make his way through the guests. He passed his mother, saw her staring at him in concern and then reach for him, but he pushed past her too. He kept going until he was outside again and he could breathe.

He didn’t know what time it was. He had his phone on him and it had buzzed a few times, but Matt hadn’t checked it in a while. He’d sat under the stars and a maple tree, thinking that his family would think he was sulking and Santi would think he was having a break down.

A breakdown might be nice. Although he imagined his parents would send him off someplace and weave some lies about it.

He had no chance for one in any case, since the kids had seen him storm across the lawn and several of them had come out to see him. They must have been bored.

The sliding door to the game room was closed, but the curtains were open, spilling light over much of the yard. Madison and Maria were next to him on the stone bench, Maria the closest, with her head tipped back while Matt braided her hair for the dozenth time tonight. She liked to have it braided, but not to wear it in braids. Ash was in the grass by Matt’s feet, playing a game on a tablet. The other kids were still inside, watching television or playing with their phones.

The girls were on the verge of being tweens. Ash, a bit younger. Matt didn’t think it was good for Ash to be looking at the tablet screen in the bad light, but he wasn’t the parent here.

“It’s really about finding the right place. And hopefully soon I’ll have enough to get a home I really want.” He combed his fingers through Maria’s hair and started again. She was probably half asleep, but Madison was listening. She had an alarming interest in real estate, or at least in castles in the mountains.

“You can buy a castle?” she wondered skeptically.

Matt shook his head. “Some people can. But not me. I don’t have enough on my own. I just like to call it my castle.”

“We get to go to your cabin, right?” Ash asked, not looking up.

Matt had no idea what Ash would want to do there. Ash didn’t even go out when his parents took him on vacation. He had to be forced out of hotel rooms. But Matt nodded. “Of course. Once I find it. Or build it.”

Matt had quite a bit saved now. It helped, not needing to pay rent and getting money from the family trust. He had added to the savings account he kept far away from the rest of the family’s money for years now, ever since he had first realized his dream was actually possible. A home somewhere near the mountains.

The family had a ski lodge in Idaho. Matt didn’t want something close to that, although he loved mountains skies, especially in the winter when everything was crisp and clear and smelled only of the cold. He wasn’t interested in skiing or winter tourism. He wanted a place that was lovely and private in all seasons. Somewhere not everyone knew about, where he could go when he needed a break. Possibly even stay there, someday, when he had a skill that wasn’t selling wine, so he could get some sort of job to pass the time and help pay for upkeep and renovations. He didn’t want to rely on the trust alone. It didn’t feel like the right use for that money.

And in the meantime, he’d take care of the cabin. Add on to it if he could. He liked that idea, using his hands the way his family had done once upon a time. Of course, he had no practical experience doing that, which was why he was saving as much as he could and taking classes.

Home repair, basic plumbing, some carpentry. Everything but learning about the electrical systems, which was definitely a job for a professional. The community college had great classes, and no one there cared who he was, and his family absolutely did not know he went there. He was thinking of taking some of the decorating and gardening classes too, so he could have the background knowledge. Then he could either fix up or build the perfect place.

He was pretty sure the kids thought he was making it all up. He didn’t blame them. It had been a ridiculous plan from the beginning. The act of a man who didn’t want to face his family and just wanted to escape them. Watching home improvement shows and dreaming about countertops and quiet instead of moving into an apartment in town or doing whatever a practical person would do.

“And it will have a yard?” Madison prompted. She really was focused on equity, but also probably on the chance to grow flowers.

“Yes.” Matt had told them the dream a thousand times but he didn’t mind telling it again. “But not a blank sheet of green grass. A yard that suits the mountains or the foothills, with plants from there. I’m going to learn about those the way I’m learning about carpentry and solar panels and design. To get to the house, you will have to go up a small road that you have to know how to find. There will be a shed for my tools, and a garage, and then the house itself. Two bedrooms, at least at first. One for me and one so you guys have a place to sleep that isn’t the couch. A living room with a view, and a big kitchen. Maybe a loft where I can fit another bed. One bathroom to start, with the largest hot water heater known to man.” The kids didn’t care about that part, or small saunas like they had in other countries, or generators or satellite dishes or rifles near the back door in case of hungry bears or mountain lions. They were not concerned with roofs or frames or thick-paned, high windows and insulation. They just wanted snow and sleepovers. Matt really wanted to give them that, if he could. “I’m going to fill it with art and books and when the time is right, I’ll add rooms.” A mudroom, if it didn’t have one, an extra bathroom, an attached greenhouse to grow vegetables. But they didn’t care about that either. They were too young to fight over bathrooms yet or to even realize that small houses existed.

It sounded simple but he knew it would be expensive and time-consuming, and that he was lucky to have money he could count on. He liked telling the kids about it because it made it seem more real, even if it was only a story to them.

“Two bedrooms means the whole family won’t fit,” Madison declared wisely.

“The whole family’s not invited,” Maria pointed out, voice thick with sleep.

“But we’re invited, right?” Madison pushed. “We get to go?”

“Of course. You’ll always be welcome.” They would have to ask their parents, but that was a problem that would exist only when Matt finally did it. He didn’t know what the family would do once they found out. Demand to visit, probably. Tell him he could have done better. Show him other ways to diversify and refuse to listen when he told them it wasn’t an investment.

“Is Santi welcome?” Ash asked, and Matt jerked his hands from Maria’s hair and looked up.

Santi was at the edge of the spill of light, his hands at his sides, his expression impossible to make out.

“Uh, yeah,” Matt said without eloquence, but no one expected that from him. “I’ve never not imagined Santi there,” he admitted, then swallowed.

“You said no other people, except us.” Maria had been paying attention.

“Santi isn’t other people.” Matt let her sit up and then didn’t know what else to do so he crossed his arms. “Though I don’t think he would stay long. He’s very busy. But if he showed up… he’s not someone you turn away. Anyway.” It was growing colder and the bench was hardly comfortable anymore. Matt stood up. “All right. Santi and I have to go be grownups again, and I don’t need your parents scolding me for keeping you out here without any coats on. Go back inside and I guarantee it will be time to go home soon.”

“Ugh,” Ash declared with the eloquence Matt didn’t have, but got up. He led the girls inside with all of his father’s responsible nature, and Matt spent a moment wondering how Paul had raised a child to be that serious.

The sliding glass door to the game room clicked shut.

Matt cleared his throat. “Don’t tell anyone. About the cabin. I haven’t told them because it’s enough for me but not for them, and they will lecture me in all the ways it’s not enough until I won’t want to do it anymore. Anytime I tell them anything about me, they insist on showing me how I’m doing it wrong and how I could be better. And I’m not driven like them, or brilliant and talented like you. It’s better to be nice and go along with things until I can get away and do what I want. I know that’s messed up. Okay? I’m aware of that even if I don’t say it. And I know this dream is pathetic and small compared to what you probably want. But it’s mine. Maybe someday, I will think about the rest of it, about other things I want, like being with someone I love and making them happy, but I can’t do that with them because I won’t want big weddings or honeymoons in Europe or grad school to a doctorate or running the shop or getting a house in town. I just don’t. I want… my bedroom and house makeover shows and a cup of tea. I want a kitchen table with a bowl of Meyer lemons in the summer and a bowl of apples in the fall. It’s small and stupid but it would be just for me. Please, Santi.”

His heart thundered in his ears in the moments after he was done.

Santi didn’t turn away. Matt heard him swallow.

“Are you going to up and leave one day?” Santi wondered, or a stranger who looked like Santi wondered. It didn’t sound like Santi at all.

“What?” Matt asked blankly. He hadn’t expected that. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected. “I’m not—it’s just a dream right now. It might not even be real. And even if it was, I’m not… I’m not planning to live there.”

“Maybe not immediately.” Santi swallowed again. “Will you tell me before you go?”

Matt shook his head, but only to reject the idea that he’d leave with no warning. “You’re invited. Pretty sure I said that.”

Santi didn’t seem relieved. “God damn it, Matty.” His voice was a rasp, almost pained. “That’s your dream? A kitchen full of tea, I suppose, and quality olive oil. Maybe a garden outside. It would be too cold for a lemon tree. You’ll have to buy them, or steal a bagful from here when you visit. It sounds—it sounds perfect.”

Matt took a few steps closer, trying to get a better look at Santi’s face. “You don’t think it’s naïve? Or stupid?”

“No.” Santi raised his head. “God no.”

“Or that it’s just me being lazy?” Matt pressed.

Santi seemed frozen. “It sounds to me as if you have a solid plan and every intention of doing this, even if you’re telling yourself it might not happen.”

“Escapism?” Matt couldn’t let it go. “The daydreams of a spoiled rich kid?”

“Making a home seems like a wonderful ambition to me.” Santi was almost whispering. “And you’re aware that you’re lucky. That’s more than most people in your position.”

“Ambition?” Matt stopped abruptly a few feet from him. “I don’t have ambition.”

“Ambition doesn’t have to mean conquering the world.” Santi pushed out a breath. “A home for yourself might be a small goal to your family maybe, but your cabin sounds… good. Very good, Matty. Build a studio for me and I might show up on your door with all my things. I’m kidding,” he hastened to assure Matt when Matt didn’t say anything in response. Matt couldn’t, but Santi must have thought he was annoyed. “Small visits only, if you’ll have me. I would never intrude on your peace.”

Skipping out on half of these gatherings by sitting in a corner with Santi was the closest thing to peace Matt had when within one hundred feet of his family.

It occurred to him that Santi didn’t know that. Matt had said it to the kids just now, where Santi could hear, and Santi still didn’t understand. It was somehow vital that he did. Santi was a clear sky full of stars and he didn’t know it.

“You’re not people,” Matt told him again, or tried to say and failed, judging from how Santi cocked his head in confusion. Matt scraped his hands through his hair and remembered the fight they’d not been having before, because Santi hadn’t allowed it to happen. “I don’t say things but I say them to you—I try to. Not all the time, but I do. You’re allowed into my dream because if I wanted to, I think I could tell you anything—everything.” Santi made a small, shocked noise. Matt gestured sharply to keep him from speaking. “But you keep not letting me.”

Santi reached up to pull on one of his curls, then tuck it nervously behind his ear. “Whatever I imagine doesn’t mean it’s real.”

“I go home with men sometimes,” Matt confessed in a rush. Then he was light, floating weightless before his feet touched the ground again. “Not just women,” he added since it was out there now. Santi knew. Matt thought over the few encounters in college, mostly drunk, fun, stupid shit. Then tourists, although that had become less fun over the years. “But not either in a while,” he went on. “Not with how they treat me. And I’m so tired.”

Santi wasn’t saying anything. Santi might not have been breathing.

“Santi?” Matt asked in a whisper. “Domenic?” Santi flinched at the name, posture going rigid. He stared at Matt and still didn’t comment. Matt had a sudden, terrifying thought. “You did know that? Even if I never said it? I always thought you knew.”

“I did not.” Santi pronounced each word carefully. Then he exhaled. “I—no. You go home with men sometimes,” he repeated, almost sing-song. “And you didn’t tell anyone, but you thought I knew. That I could possibly—Fuck.”

“Do you think I’m a coward for not telling them?”

“I’m not the Coming Out Judge,” Santi snapped, voice harsh. Then he took several breaths and he was tense but soft and careful again. “Why wouldn’t you tell me? You don’t owe me anything. But you could have. I wouldn’t have made it weird. We could have talked.”

A shrug wasn’t explanation enough. Santi deserved more than that. He deserved the truth, said out loud. “You were in the city. You were a well-known artist, and gay. You had friends who were good at being queer. I thought it was pathetic. Somehow. Next to you. To be this… shadow.”

“You owe yourself to no one but you.” Santi was firm. “Not even me, Matty. But we could have talked. About anything you wanted.”

Matt closed his eyes as warmth washed over him. That was exactly what Santi would have said in Matt’s imagination if Matt had ever let himself picture this in detail.

“I think I knew that,” Matt admitted, opening his eyes. “But you know me. Silence is habit. And you haven’t been in a talkative mood the last few times at these things. Maybe not in years.”

“That is because I am an idiot,” Santi said smartly. “You’re really not straight?”

Matt laughed and ran his hands through his hair again. He could see why Santi did it so much. It was soothing to leave his hair as in disarray as the rest of him. “I can’t believe you’re surprised.”

He could hear the self-deprecation in Santi’s sigh. “It’s very easy to blame things on booze and wishful thinking.”

“Tell me about it,” Matt answered without thinking, then felt a lurch in his chest. Wishful thinking.

“You trust me now,” Santi continued. “That means something—a lot. It means a lot. I won’t tell anyone if you don’t want me to, about this or your house. Will you tell me more about that? If not now, then later? I’d like to hear more, and, who knows? Maybe I can help somehow.”

Matt took another step closer but Santi was still on the edge of the light, impossible to read.

“I have to get away from them.” Matt gave Santi another secret thought. “Even only a few times a year.”

“At first,” Santi murmured, convinced Matt would leave for good and not even blaming him.

“So do you,” Matt pointed out. “Why do you stay here? It can’t be for the money from the vineyard paintings.”

Santi glanced away and for a moment, the light spilled across half his face. “I think I’m already looking forward to visiting you in your castle,” he said in a calm, ready to shatter sort of voice. “But for right now, I should probably get home. The party is winding down, and I wasn’t in the mood for it from the start.”

“Me either.” Matt should have been cold but he was warm in his skin and his lungs, in his fingers and toes. He was lighter. “But I like this, how we’ve been tonight. I don’t want that to end.” He rolled a shoulder. “I don’t think I could sleep now anyway. I might… would you like some tea? The good stuff from my stash at home?”

“I’ve never been in the small guest house.” Santi said it in a significant way, then shook his head like someone had dropped ice down his back. Which was how Matt should have been feeling—he was the one baring his soul tonight, one secret at a time.

“You can’t blame the décor on me.” Even with everything else going on, Matt wanted that to be clear. “Except for the bedroom. That’s mine. Not that I would be serving you tea in the bedroom. I just don’t want you thinking that French provincial was my choice.”

“Your mother did the guest house in French provincial?” Santi paused. “I am simultaneously shocked and unsurprised. Hmm.”

“It was a phase, I guess.” Matt wondered if this was a normal post-coming out discussion, or if that existed. But it was calming and it let him breathe and try to forget the heat in his face. “She can’t or won’t redo it until I leave. The kitchen’s all right. If you don’t feel like driving home yet. If I upset you.”

“I’m not upset,” Santi declared immediately, huffily. “I’m feeling a lot, but I am not upset. I told you before I don’t blame you for your secrets. I meant it. If I can ask, though, are you ever going to tell them?”

“About me?” Matt had no intention of telling his family about the dream until it was real and permanent. “When it matters.” He looked away from Santi for the first time in probably too long and stared up at the branches above them. “I try not to think about things I can’t have. So this is like the house, with even less planning.” He was an embarrassment to the LGBTQ community. He wasn’t even in the community, he didn’t think. “When I decide it’s their business and not a moment before,” he announced at last, and brought his eyes back down to Santi. “If I ever dated someone who wanted me even though I’m not like them, and was willing to put up with them for me.”

“Because.”

Matt waited, frowning, but Santi didn’t explain that. “What?” he asked at last.

Santi reached into a pocket, pulled out a hairband, and twisted his hair into a sloppy ponytail with short, angry motions. “This person,” he bit out. “This possible future person should want you because you are not like the rest of your family. Not in spite of it.”

In better light, Matt would have been able to see all of Santi’s face. It didn’t seem fair. He pretended he wasn’t staring and hoped the dark protected him too.

He scoffed. “That sort of person might exist, but not in this town. Everyone here knows who I am. Matthew, who lives in the guest house and sleeps around, who has no pride or ambition, who isn’t brilliant.” Matt smiled with nearly his usual level of artificial brightness. “But it’s fine. I’ve never expected anyone to love me.”

Santi made a soft, hurt sound. “Oh. Oh, goddamn. I should have known tonight would bring me to this point.”

Matt blinked away a bemused frown.

“Making changes leads to new paths, new decisions.” Santi was on a slightly anxious roll. “Fuck. Fuck.” He reached up to mess with his hair, but he’d already taken care of it. “I’m going to have to trust in you, Matty. Trust that you’re the same gentle boy you’ve always been, that you won’t—fuck.” He put his hands in front of his face instead of curls. He steadied himself, then spoke almost calmly. “I need you, Matthew. Shit. That is, I need you to believe there are people who would love you—who do love you. Who admire you and covet you and all those things you don’t think anyone could feel for you. So—so your future happiness is out there somewhere. Get your cabin and take your love there someday, all right?”

The words were ludicrous, but Santi clearly believed them. Or was too embarrassed at his sincerity to say them without hiding his face.

Matt put a hand to his throat. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to speak until he heard his voice. “Easy for you to say,” he said faintly.

“Is it?” Santi pulled his hands from his face. “Do you see me bringing a date to these events?”

No. Santi came alone and sat with the other single outcasts in the back somewhere, and drank a bit, and started to get self-deprecating and sad. Terribly cliché of me, he would say later. But he did it every time, with increasing intensity.

Until tonight.

Matt remembered Santi watching the engaged couple, and how he had briefly thought Santi was wistful. It was deeper than that. Santi wanted so much it ached, probably because he didn’t hide from his feelings like anyone with sense did. He hid them from other people—Matt’s family mostly—but not from himself. Santi thought he couldn’t have love, Matt realized.

That was the most bizarre and moving revelation of the night. If Matt was ever going to love anyone, if he was not already in love with someone, then it would be Santi.

Of course it would be Santi. Santi should know that, at least, although it was obviously hopeless.

Matt rested his hand on Santi’s shoulder until some of Santi’s tension slipped away. “My offer of tea still stands.”

“I’m sober right now,” Santi informed him flatly.

Matt knew that. “Yes?”

He got a small sigh. “And apparently a masochist. So yes, why not have tea in the guest house with you?”

Matt nodded jerkily. “Why not?” he agreed, then fell back on politeness when a smile split his face. “Do you need to say good night to anyone?”

Santi made a disdainful noise that Matt took for a ‘No.’ The weight of his stare made it difficult to think clearly, or breathe, or make his way to the patio and then the path to the guest house.

The night was growing even colder, dew starting to sparkle on the metal furniture. If Santi had a jacket, he didn’t appear to care about it. Matt glanced toward the house as they passed the patio. It was still lit up. He briefly wondered if everyone had gone home but he wasn’t going to go look. He’d wind up being assigned an errand, or a favor, or a task. Then all this would be over.

He reached back, making sure Santi was with him, and had a night-before-Christmas thrill to realize Santi was still there, trailing behind him for some strange reason.

Matt stopped and turned around.

Santi stared up at him, curious or impatient and freezing. His ponytail looked secure, yet some curls had already slipped down over one eye.

Matt reached out to tuck them behind Santi’s ear. Santi’s skin was cool, but warmer where Matt’s fingers brushed it. The lights along the path allowed Matt to see the dark pools of his eyes and the way the amused quirk at his lips melted into softness when Matt touched him.

“You’re staring,” Santi whispered, and it was also strange that Santi would whisper. No one was around to hear them. Or see them. They were around the corner of the pool house now, out of sight of anyone in the main house.

“I spend a lot of time not staring.” Every truth was easier and easier to say. Tomorrow would be dangerous. Better that Matt avoid his family for as long as he could, then. Which was no hardship.

“And now you get to?” Santi shivered a little. “At me?” he asked doubtfully. “You realize you are very handsome, and you live in a town filled with the beautiful rich? Or is that it? I’m interesting in comparison?”

“I like looking at you,” Matt revealed, and felt shamefully self-indulgent. “You do a lot of things with your face and your hands. Sometimes, I’m not sure what they mean, but I think that’s because I don’t allow myself to wonder.”

“Jesus,” Santi breathed. He let out a broken laugh. “Matthew, you can’t just—”

“You think you can’t be loved or something.” Matt nearly scowled. “But I think, if I were capable of loving anyone, it would be you. You’re my best friend,” Matt told him while Santi’s mouth went soft again and Santi watched him without a sound. Santi was Matt’s only close friend, although Matt got along with most of his coworkers, had even been invited to a baby shower or two, a simple wedding, birthday drinks. Those were friends too, as much as anyone could be friends with someone who was related to their boss. “I don’t think it would take much,” Matt added thoughtfully. “I could be in love with you now. I could have been for years. I really wouldn’t know unless I delve into my feelings, and there doesn’t seem any point to that. But I thought you should hear it. You still want tea?”

“Tea?” Santi asked, lost. “I—yes. Sure. Tea. In your home.”

“The guest house,” Matt corrected, although Santi didn’t care about that.

“With you,” Santi finished as though Matt hadn’t spoken. “Unlike you, I delve quite a bit, constantly, but somehow I am still surprised.” He slid his hand over part of Matt’s arm as if wanting to reassure himself it was truly there.

“You’re getting cold.” Matt took hold of his hand and tugged it gently, leading Santi farther down the path when Santi seemed frozen.

They passed under the lemon tree and through the hedged garden around the front of the small guest house before Santi spoke again, and that was only to say, “Matt,” in an almost exasperated voice before he pulled his hand free.

Matt opened the door and went in first to turn on the lights, leaving it open for Santi to follow. He thought Santi did; he heard the door close, heard Santi lean against it and sigh quietly.

Matt went into the kitchen, decided it was neat enough, and started to fill the kettle with water. Electric kettles were a godsend.

He knew when Santi came to stand in the doorway and watch him. He couldn’t say how he did, except that he was used to Santi watching him. He didn’t do it like other people. His gaze wasn’t critical. It was warm.

“Bathroom’s down the hall by the bedroom. Washer/dryer and pantry are behind that door in the corner. Living room leads out to more of the garden, on the other side of the house. It’s practically a cottage, according to Camille.” Matt tossed Santi a smile as he explained the layout, although his stomach trembled and his pulse wouldn’t slow down. Santi stared at him, the same way he always did, steady and still warm, hungry.

Matt fumbled the tin of tea leaves, nearly dropping the lid.

“You’re really making me tea,” Santi observed with another quiet sigh.

“I’m not assuming anything just because I said—what I said.” Matt focused on putting tea leaves into his simple clay teapot. “You don’t have to drink this if you don’t like it. Except for the quality of the tea itself, there’s nothing complicated or artisanal or whatever about this. People drank it without all that for thousands of years and it’s arrogant for others to insist on fancy equipment to drink it now.” He pulled out two small, round bowls. “I like a nice tea set. But nothing is better than a thick, sturdy mug, or a plain bowl of tea when you need something comforting.”

“This has been an emotional night. Some comfort wouldn’t be out of place.” Santi came into the kitchen and stood at the island in the middle, leaning against a stool without sitting in it. When Matt twisted around to look at him, he was contemplating the bowl of Honeycrisps at the center of the island. “Matt,” he said again, less exasperated and more fond.

The water started to boil. Matt turned off the kettle to let it cool, then turned back around. Santi was watching him again. It was amazing the difference it made with his hair pulled out of his face. Matt could see everything.

“Not a bad end to my night as your babysitter,” Matt joked, although his polite voice was nowhere to be found.

“Do you want to know why I decided not to drink tonight?” Santi offered in response.

“If you want to tell me,” Matt answered, but then occupied himself with pouring water into the teapot. It was steaming. That was close enough to the right temperature for his current mood. The tea had to steep, but he didn’t turn around.

“You’ve told me everything. It only seems fair.”

Matt splashed hot water into each bowl to warm them, then poured the water out. “I didn’t do it to get something.”

“Of course you didn’t.” The stool skidded against the floor as if Santi had moved, maybe finally sitting down. “I decided not to drink tonight, or on any of these nights where I am among the Del Pretes, because I am the most boring, trite gay you can imagine, and I have been in love with you for a stupidly long time.”

Matt went still, and Santi laughed again, soft and a bit mocking, but with Santi that was always aimed at himself.

“I come to these parties and here you are, and here they are, and everything is lovely and fucked. You’re in front of me, but you’re polite and you’re charming and you’re miserable. We’re all miserable. I think even they are miserable. But they hurt you in their misery and I’m not permitted to do anything about it, because you aren’t mine. Not family, not a lover, only my friend—but a distant one, these days. It’s a terrible existence, Matty, not even being allowed to be close to you for long, knowing you’re suffering, hoping that I’m not imagining how you look at me, knowing that I must be. It’s… pathetic, really.”

“I—” Matt stuttered. “No.”

“It really is,” Santi quietly disagreed. “I would have a glass or two or three, and become someone no one would want to sit with, not even you. And that worked until it didn’t anymore. So I decided enough of that. I’d do it differently this time. I’d move forward.” Santi probably had that quirk to his lips again. “Of course, I didn’t tell anybody why. I mentioned it to my mother and she must have mentioned it to your mother and everyone else. And in their loving, controlling way, they decided to help—by sending you to me. I never had a chance.”

Matt poured the tea because he didn’t know what else to do. His hands weren’t steady.

“And then—and then, in the midst of my truly obvious and predictable pining, you, Matty—yes, you—go and decide for the first time in years to be honest with me.” Santi raised his voice but he didn’t sound angry. “You know exactly what your family are, and you want to make a home and fill it with skylights and views and good food. You go home with men sometimes—Christ, Matthew, do you have any idea what that did to me? I’ve been trying to push hope away and you pushed it right back at me.”

Matt stared down at the steaming bowls. He lifted one, enjoying the subtle heat against his palms, then turned around to place it in front of Santi without looking up. “I’m nothing but a trust fund.”

Santi curled his hands around the bowl. “You are dreams, and practicality, and secrets. I want to see your castle. I want to visit it and paint the loft like it’s the Sistine Chapel. You see how predictable I am? I don’t need big fucking gestures and brilliance. I am all of that and I am a mess. There is enough drive and ambition in the world. You can be quiet, gentle Matty and be loved by this disaster. You have been for years already. There’s no changing it now.”

Matt was vaguely aware he’d forgotten to bring his tea over. He watched Santi lift the bowl to his mouth.

Santi blew through the stream, unnaturally focused on it, and took a sip. He hummed before he put the bowl back down. “This is nice. Do you sometimes cup the warm bowl in your hands simply because it feels good? I would. It’s very comforting to hold onto.”

His cheeks were darker and his gaze skittered around the kitchen even though he was pretending he was calm. His hair was ridiculous although a better word would have been adorable.

“I think I adore you,” Matt blurted, and decided no one should ever call him charming again.

Santi looked at him, startled, wide-eyed, fragile at the edges. Then, with an ungraceful slump, Santi slid off the stool to come toward him. He put a hand on Matt’s chest, clutching a fistful of his shirt, and backed Matt into the counter. He didn’t let go. He got right in Matt’s face and studied his expression, searching for something.

“I don’t really have anything to offer you,” Santi said carefully, “except that I adore you too.”

Matt felt himself smiling for those impossible words, and that made Santi smile with him. He still had his hand on Matt’s chest, so Matt raised his arms so he could gently pull the hairband from Santi’s hair and brush the curls back from his forehead.

Santi shut his eyes and made a pleased, dreamy sound.

Matt’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He tensed.

Santi fell forward with a groan, his face hidden against Matt’s throat. “No.”

“Someone probably needs a ride.” Matt could ignore it. Unless it was his mother. She’d keep calling if the situation was dire enough.

“Then be very pleasant and polite and unavailable.” Santi put his other hand at Matt’s waist and puffed out a laugh when Matt shivered. Evidently curious now, he skated a touch over Matt’s shirt and then started to tug it from Matt’s pants.

Matt’s phone did not stop.

“You think you could love me?” Santi asked, burrowing in closer to Matt’s chest. “How are you this unbelievable? Are you still jogging?”

“Yoga,” Matt explained softly, “but my family thinks it’s jogging or CrossFit or something appropriately masculine.”

Santi groaned, long and pained. “Matthew.”

“I’m pretty flexible,” Matt informed him, and shivered again to feel Santi’s lips and Santi’s breath on his neck.

“Please don’t tease me,” Santi begged, but with a nip of his teeth that sent a jolt down Matt’s spine.

Matt was serious. “You talk about me like I’m something special. But I literally only just realized that I’m in love with you.”

Santi nipped him a little harder.

Matt’s knees turned to water. He put a hand on the counter to stay up. His phone was relentless. “I think it’s my mother.” A shudder went through him at the words, a shot of fear.

Santi slowly pulled back to look at him. “If she insults you again, I might lose it. I mean that. I have been silent for years, and I have so much to say now, if you’ll let me.”

Of all the things to make Matt want to smile again. “She says I’m your favorite.”

“She can be right, on occasion,” Santi replied loftily before dropping his voice. “Talk to her if you want to. But it’s out there now—I love you. That stays true, no matter what.”

Matt twirled an ebony curl around his finger and Santi pulled him down by his collar. Santi’s lips were as soft as they looked. He parted them, barely kissing Matt but leaving him breathless.

“Oh,” Santi said when it was over, as if surprised.

Matt blindly reached for his phone. “Yeah?” he asked, his mouth not even an inch from Santi’s mouth, his heart thundering. Santi ran his hands over his chest. It felt possessive. Matt was suddenly more aroused than he’d ever been in his life and not even his mother’s voice could keep him from shivering.

“Did you leave?” she demanded without a greeting. “You didn’t even say good night to Richie and his fiancée. Although admittedly, I doubt she noticed.”

“Sorry,” Matt said absently, gazing into Santi’s eyes.

“Have you seen Santi?” his mother wondered, apparently already over Matt’s breach of etiquette.

Santi heard, judging from the curve at the corner of his mouth.

Matt kissed it, reckless and hot and fond. In love. What a fucking world. “Yes, as a matter of fact.” Matt grinned. “I took him home.”

Making Santi go soft and quiet was as small and real a happiness as a bowl of pink apples on a kitchen table.

“I thought he wasn’t drinking,” Matt’s mother mused, disgruntled. “Well, I was going to see if you could—it doesn’t matter. Good for you both to be so responsible.”

“That’s us,” Matt agreed. “Responsible.”

His mother hummed, not quite doubtfully, but close. But she probably had other things to worry about. “Tell him good night for me.”

Maybe it was having Santi with him, his hands up Matt’s shirt, his eyes shining. Matt had to lean in to kiss him, warm and lingering. “My mom says good night,” he told Santi in an intimate whisper.

The other end of the call was silence.

Santi opened his eyes when the kiss finished. He looked at Matt in disbelief, or possibly with pride. His answer was slow and thick as syrup. “I’m sure it will be.”

Matt’s mom noisily caught her breath.

Matt felt a bolt of panic, but then nothing but desire and light as Santi ducked his head to kiss down his throat. His hand was still tangled in Santi’s hair. Santi, who loved him.

“Bye, Mom,” Matt managed, and hopefully ended the call before he tossed the phone onto the counter.

Santi laughed, loud and genuine, his breath warm on Matt’s skin.

The End

More Stories by R. Cooper

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