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“Of course he does.” Shelby looked at him sideways. “So. I have to ask. And stop me if this is too personal.”

“I have a feeling nothing stops you.”

“Smart boy.” She grinned. “Has he loosened up at all? In the bedroom? Because I love that man, but Lord, he was vanilla.”

Oh no.

“Because I told him,” Shelby continued, as if she were discussing a recipe adjustment. “I said, Hank, when you figure out who you are and what you want, please, for the love of God—doggy-style.”

Chad choked on his wine.

Shelby watched him with bright, knowing eyes. “That face,” she said. “That face tells me quite a story.”

“I can’t—” Chad wiped his mouth. “I cannot believe⁠—”

“That his ex-wife gave him sex tips? Honey, who else was going to do it?” She was laughing now, delighted. “Oh, it worked. Look at you. It absolutely worked.”

“I’m going to need more wine.”

“I’ll get the bottle.” But she didn’t move. She just sat there, grinning, and Chad sat there with his face on fire and the surreal awareness that the most mortifying moment of his life was also, somehow, one of the funniest.

The screen door opened, and Hank stepped out, phone in hand. The grin dropped off his face when he saw them.

“What happened?”

“Nothing,” they said simultaneously.

Hank looked from one to the other. “That’s the least convincing ‘nothing’ I’ve ever heard.”

“Shelby was telling me about your honeymoon,” Chad said.

“Oh, God.”

Shelby patted the swing. “Sit down. New polling?”

Hank sat on Chad’s other side. The swing protested under the weight of three adults, but held. “Forty-seven forty-five. Margin of error.”

“That’s better than last week.” A beat. “Tight, though.”

“Too tight.” Hank stared out at the dark yard. “It’s going to come down to Tuesday. Who shows up.”

“Then we make sure they show up,” Shelby said. Firm. Simple. The voice of someone who had been through this before and intended to get through it again.

Hank nodded. He didn’t look convinced. Chad took his hand and said nothing, because there was nothing to say that would make forty-seven forty-five into something comfortable. It was what it was. They’d know in three days.

Shelby stood, collecting glasses. “Guest room’s made up. Towels on the bed. And Hank?” She leaned down and kissed the top of his head. “He’s a keeper.”

She said it to Hank, but she looked at Chad when she said it. Then she was gone, the screen door closing behind her, her footsteps fading into the house.

The swing creaked. Somewhere down the road, a dog barked, and another one answered.

“She likes you,” Hank said quietly.

“I love her.” Chad leaned his head against Hank’s shoulder. The stars were still up there, doing their thing, indifferent to polling numbers and elections and the specific terror of being introduced to people who’d known your boyfriend since diapers.

Hank’s arm came around him.

Three days. In three days, the voters of Georgia would decide whether the man next to him still had a job. And Chad would be here for it—the bartender from Dupont Circle, the art student with the thrift-store jacket, the boyfriend from the photograph. Whatever that meant to these people. Whatever it cost.