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Mrs. Whatshername from next door came out to get the mail, shielded her eyes from the sun, and peered over. But she just gave an awkward little salute, as if the sight of two grown men with armfuls of lights, wires, and glowing bioluminescent material was perfectly normal. Wes supposed that after the time Adam and Gus had spent lighting their house up, it kind of was.
As they worked, Wes composed a speech. The speech he would give to Adam when he got home. It was full of heartfelt confessions, fears, and promises. It was full of explanations and plans.
But when Adam’s car turned the corner of Knockbridge Lane, Wes forgot every single word he’d rehearsed. The only word he could remember was home. Because that’s what Adam felt like to him.
* * *
Adam’s lips formed his name and Gus ran to the middle of the yard to get the full effect of the lights. Wes tried to wave but his body seemed to have stiffened up as he sat on the stoop. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been there, but he’d watched the dark set in.
Adam approached him slowly, eyes darting warily from him to Gus to the house that screamed the five words Wes wanted to say.
Usually, Adam was so full of emotion that it practically leaked from him. But now, he was oddly calm. He regarded Wes for a minute, then said, “Come in. You must be freezing.”
Wes staggered to his feet. Still the words wouldn’t come.
He lurched inside and fumbled his jacket and boots off. Adam guided him into the living room and into the easy chair, and before he knew it, he was swaddled in a blanket and Adam and Gus were staring at him from the couch—twin blond, blue-eyed angels waiting for him to speak.
Once, his fourth year of graduate school, Wes had stayed in the lab for the whole weekend working on an experiment. When someone entered on Monday morning and asked him a question, Wes had opened his mouth to answer and found words utterly inaccessible.
That was how he felt now. He cleared his throat to buy time and Adam’s uncanny calm cracked.
“Are you okay?” he asked, leaning forward. “Do you mean what you wrote on the house? What happened?”
Under the warmth of Adam’s care, Wes thawed and felt things begin to work again.
“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I panicked and I couldn’t explain, but I’m ready to talk now. And...yes.” His heart flickered back to life. “I meant it. Completely.”
Adam’s blue eyes were usually the blue of the sky in a painting of a rural idyll. Now they glowed with a hot longing that warmed Wes deep inside. He wanted to grab Adam to him, pull him into the bed, wrap him in his body and explain everything under the cover of proximate flesh.
Adam, he saw now, would always listen to what he had to say.
But Adam wasn’t the one who spoke next.
Gus stood, squared her narrow shoulders, and looked at Wes with the seriousness of someone who knows what it is to lose people.
“I’m so mad at you,” she said. “You can’t be our friend one day and then be mean to us the next. That’s not being a good friend. Right?” she asked Adam.
“That’s true, sweetie,” Adam said, and Wes could tell that was something Adam had told her, likely about a friend of hers.
“You made me and Daddy really sad,” Gus went on. “We were very nice to you and you were usually nice but then you ran away and I didn’t like it.”
Her lip was quivering but she held his gaze and spoke clearly and honestly. At eight years old she was able to do what he had never been able to until the day before: say to someone that they had hurt her and that she deserved better.
Wes was so ashamed. He was so damned proud of her.
“You’re right,” he said. “You’re right, Gus. I was a bad friend. I got scared, and instead of being honest about it, I ran away. I’m not as brave as you and your dad. I guess I still have a lot to learn about how to be a good friend. About how to be...part of a family.”
He ventured this last tentatively, hoping Adam would hear it for the offer it was.
Adam blinked back tears.
Gus was unyielding.
“Family shouldn’t run away,” she said. “That’s what Papa did and Daddy said that he didn’t want to be our family.”
Adam’s eyes widened.
“I didn’t say that,” he said.
“Yes you did,” Gus insisted. “To River.”
“Thought you were asleep,” Adam muttered.
“Well I don’t want Papa to be my family anyway.” She wrinkled her brow in thought. “And I don’t wanna call him Papa anymore, either.”
She had Adam’s full attention now.
“Well...what do you want to call him, baby?” Adam asked.
