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I’m glad you answered.

Gavin looked down at the screen and considered his response. There were a dozen things he could say. Something light or safe, but he was getting tired of playing it safe.

Gavin

I’m glad you finally texted.

He hit send and waited for a moment, but no typing bubble appeared. Gavin slipped the phone into his pocket. He didn’t need a reply. They could talk tonight. With a small smile, Gavin grabbed another plank of wood and went back to work.

12

DOM

Dom stood at the kitchen island with his phone in his hand, Gavin’s contact open on the screen, and told himself for the fourth time that this was allowed. It had taken him four weeks to send the first text that morning. Four weeks of typing something out and deleting it before his thumb ever hit send because he was too much of a coward to be the one who reached out first. He’d finally sent one that morning, and it had immediately turned into a word vomit when he panicked about whether Gavin would reply. But Gavin had answered in minutes. One text had turned into another, and they’d gone back and forth a few times before Dom worked up the courage to ask Gavin if he could call him.

Call me after your game, Gavin had replied.

Dom had reread their conversation so many times since then that the words had started to look wrong, like they did when you stared at them for too long. He set the phone facedown on the counter, then picked it back up. Lucia’s monitor stayed quiet beside him, the glow from the screen the only other light in the room besides the warm yellow light above the stove.

“Just call him,” Dom muttered.

He tried an opening line in his head, immediately discarded it, then tried another. Everything sounded like something a stranger would say, stiff and rehearsed. Nothing like the easy back-and-forth they used to have. He paced a tight loop between the island and the sink.

“This is ridiculous.” Dom pressed call before he could talk himself out of it a fifth time.

The call connected on the third ring, a heartbeat before Dom would have lost his nerve and hung up.

“Hey,” Gavin answered.

Dom closed his eyes. Hearing Gavin’s voice after a month of silence hit harder than the texts had. The timbre was lower than usual, roughened by the hour maybe, and close enough through the phone that Dom could imagine Gavin standing next to him in his kitchen.

“Hey.”

Silence filled the line, and Dom’s heart started doing something it had no business doing over a phone call. He’d faced pitchers in the bottom of the ninth with the game on the line, the team down by three, and the bases loaded without his pulse climbing like this. He forced himself to breathe out slowly through his nose and pressed his free hand flat against his chest, as if he could slow his heartbeat by force.

He paced from one end of the kitchen to the other, then stopped at the island to check the monitor resting beside a glass of water he hadn’t touched. Lucia had been fussy and restless, but he’d finally gotten her down twenty minutes ago after a bottle, a clean diaper, and almost an hour of walking the upstairs hall with her tucked against his shoulder. He watched the slow rise and fall of her chest as the seconds ticked by, grateful for something to focus on.

“Dom,” Gavin said gently. “You called me.”

“I know.” His voice came out steadier than he felt.

“Okay. Just making sure you remembered that.”

Dom stopped by the sink. Gavin had wanted him to call, right? He hadn’t just been being nice. “You said I could?”

“I did,” Gavin answered. He paused. “I’m glad you did.”

Some of the pressure in Dom’s chest eased, but not enough to suddenly make this easier. He leaned against the island and stared across the dark kitchen. The light above the stove cast a dull yellow strip across the floor, ending just a few feet from the sink where Gavin had kissed him. His stomach somersaulted just looking at it, the way it did every time he relived that moment.

“How was the game?” Gavin asked finally, when the silence had stretched too long between them.

“All right,” Dom answered. “Did you watch it?”

“Some of it.”

“Some of it,” Dom repeated. “Meaning?”

“Meaning I had it on while I ate dinner.” Gavin’s voice was too casual.