Holiday Cheer from Andrew Grey and Amy Lane

Slippery Slopes

Slippery Slopes

“I’M DYING!” Pierce complained under the R & B stylings of Jay-Z. For one thing, Jay-Z hadn’t been his thing in high school, but for another? He was sure if he did one more underwater leap, his stomach muscles would explode.

“You are not dying!” Hal laughed. “You just can’t think of anything better to do!”

“Ugh… if you were older than a minute—”

“I’d still be kicking your ass, old man. Now come on. Your injuries suck, I get it, but we want you to have mobility in a month!”

Pierce stopped dead and almost drowned, then resumed the exercise at a slightly saner pace. “What’s a month have to do with it?” he panted, underwater leaping for all he was worth.

“Well, you said you were here until Christmas Eve. I figure you came here to be alone and grumpy and pissed at the world, and you have a month to get over yourself. Mobility will help.”

Pierce scowled because that was incredibly astute—but he kept exercising so he might continue to breathe. “Where in the hell did you get that?” he demanded, surly as fuck. He’d shown up that morning all willing to accept Hal’s revoltingly happy goodwill and had, instead, been told to suck it up, buttercup, he was going to get his ass beat into the pool.

He’d had no idea such a darling child could be such a sadistic drill sergeant.

“Nine upper division units in psychology. Duh!”

Pierce managed a look at Hal’s face and saw the snarky smile that had charmed Pierce in the first place.

“To be a massage therapist?”

“Well, that’s just this year,” Hal informed him loftily. “I am a man of many ambitions.”

“You are a young flake with no direction,” Pierce deduced and then felt bad.

Hal shook it off like the proverbial duck. “Well, the massage-therapist thing seems to be sticking,” he admitted. “I got the certificate online over the summer, and I’ve been getting my practice hours on the guys on the sports teams at school. And I’m a personal trainer and aqua instructor. I like knowing stuff that’ll help me help people.”

“Ah, so I’m a project.” Well, it made sense. Pierce had never been a looker—long bony jaw, narrow green eyes, sand-brown hair. The accident injuries just made his tall, awkward body look gnarled and misshapen. “It all becomes clear.”

He didn’t expect Hal to glare at him. “Yeah, well, like anybody over thirty, you can’t see for shit. Now tuck and boogie—no, don’t bend your knees, keep them straight and kick from the hip!”

Oh ouch. “What in the hell—were you a Roman general in a past life?”

Hal’s glare lightened up. “Those guys got play. You realize that, don’t you?”

It took Pierce a couple of moves to realize he was talking about sex. “Yeah,” he said, remembering something about that in college. “But only the gay or bi ones. No women for them.”

Hal crouched down at the pool’s edge and took off his sunglasses. “What about you?”

“I may have mentioned an ex-wife?” Pierce was embarrassed about that, actually. The whole divorce was embarrassing. In fact, so was the entire marriage.

“Yeah, but you never said anything about ex-boyfriends,” Hal wheedled. “Enquiring minds want to know!”

Oh God. Pierce could just put him off. He should just put him off. Or lie. Or not give in to his flirting. But all of Pierce’s energy right now was going into keeping up with this goddamned song!

“He was a sweet kid,” Pierce muttered. “An optimist. I was too cranky for him. Take a lesson.”

But of course that’s not what Hal heard. “I knew it!” he crowed, standing up and hopping on the edge of the pool. “I knew you were bent!”

As in “not straight.” Of course. “Only a little,” Pierce panted. “To the left.” He should have hated himself for adding to the play, but Hal chortled, and he couldn’t. So easy to make this kid smile. How long since Pierce thought he was capable of doing that?

A sudden shift in music caught Pierce’s attention. “Oh thank God,” he muttered to take the conversation away from sex. “Beastie Boys.”

“I thought you said you were only thirty-two!” Hal protested, and Pierce would have rolled his eyes, but he might have gotten them wet.

“Beastie Boys are forever!” he proclaimed, and continued to work his ass off to the soul-sweetening strains of “Sabotage.”

And then, to make life extra special, Hal gave him Coldplay for the cooldown.

It was like the kid cared.

Of course, Pierce should have known the grilling wouldn’t just stop there. He’d hoped, but Hal had proved nothing if not relentless.

“So,” he said slyly while working Pierce’s leg over in the hot tub. “Bent?”

Pierce grunted. “College-try bi,” he said flippantly, and Hal rewarded him with a thumb right in the middle of his arch. “Augh! Okay! Okay!” Hal fixed the cramp with his palm, and after a few moments, Pierce took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “Loren. Loren Simpson. We met in our senior year, and we were both between girlfriends, and….” And… he could picture Loren’s face—blue eyes, earnestness, the fever flush that came over him when he came. “He was sweet,” Pierce said simply. “For a little while, it was true love.”

“Why’d it end?” Hal asked, his hands almost too gentle on Pierce’s calf to do any good.

“He was premed. I was engineering.” Pierce still remembered that day—the day they’d realized it wouldn’t work out. The ache in his chest that hadn’t quit for a month, the way Loren had kept wiping his eyes with the back of his hand.

The transported, almost ethereal expression on Loren’s face as he came inside Pierce for the last time.

“So you broke up?” Hal sounded indignant, and Pierce opened his eyes and regarded his young friend with a sadness he couldn’t shake.

“It was the grown-up decision,” he said, and it sounded like a cop-out now, when it hadn’t back in school. “I had a job offer already from Hewlett-Packard, Loren had been accepted to Stanford. His parents would have cut off his support if he’d come out—”

“What about yours?” Hal asked perceptively.

Pierce wanted to shrug, but he couldn’t. “Oh, mine would have—most definitely. But I didn’t really care about mine. They were assholes. I cut off contact with them about a year later anyway. But Loren… it meant a lot to him. All of it. Med school, Stanford, Mom and Dad. I couldn’t… you know.”

Hal shook his head, looking angry. “You didn’t fight for him?” he asked, sounding forlorn.

“Oh, kid. Is that what happened to you?”

Hal turned away, his hands completely still.

“We made a decision together. He didn’t want me to fight for him. He told me himself.” Pierce remembered how hard he’d fought that. The part of him that died when he resigned himself to the breakup. “But I wasn’t happy about it,” he admitted.

Hal had perched his sunglasses on the top of his head when they’d gotten into the hot tub, and now he lowered them again before turning back to look at Pierce. No doubt his eyes were red-rimmed.

“So, you would have fought for him,” Hal said, like this mattered to him a great deal.

It was on the tip of his tongue to say “No, eventually we all give up.” He hated to disillusion the kid. But he couldn’t forget Sasha, showing up at his apartment a year after school, saying she was pregnant. Pierce had fought for her, hadn’t he? Yeah, he’d apparently become a real festering cold sore since, but once, just once in his life, he’d fought for someone, and he’d made a difference.

“Yeah,” he said, because here, under the gray haze of late November in Florida, he could remember wanting to fight. The need to be with someone he truly cared about had boiled in his blood then, no matter how thin that blood was now.

“Good,” Hal said, nodding. Then he went back to Pierce’s feet, but by now the nerves were too raw. Pierce pulled away.

“Sorry—my feet are about done.”

“The tile floors, right?” Hal nodded like it was a foregone conclusion. “They’re great because you can sweep all the sand out when you walk on the beach, but they’re hell on your body.”

Pierce grunted. Just getting out of bed hurt.

“Tell you what.” Hal grinned perkily. “Tomorrow we’ll do a light workout, mostly stretching, then we can go buy mats.”

Duh. “Like rubber mats?” Hey, that had been his idea too!

“Oh yeah—the kind they have at the gym should do. You can cut them to size—they’ll make walking on those floors so much easier, trust me.” His melancholia over Pierce’s apparent failure to believe in true love had melted, and damn. The kid was offering to do him a solid.

“Sure,” Pierce said, because otherwise tomorrow was doing a whole lot of what he’d done over the last two days. “Maybe I can get a chair too.” Derrick had a small work desk in the living room, but he apparently used a kitchen chair to work there. Pierce had taken one look at that setup and known it would break his fragile, healing body. “I can start… I don’t know. Looking up jobs or something.”

“Here in Florida?” Hal asked, sounding eager.

“Naw.” Pierce shrugged. “I’ve got a house in Sacramento. It’s small, but I got to keep it and most of the furniture after the divorce.” He smiled a little, remembering the den that he got to outfit all on his own. “The bedroom is fucking pink, but the den is nice. All hardwood and paneling. A work desk and a big gaming TV.” His smile faded. It was the first time he’d thought happily of home since he’d awakened in the hospital. Sasha had come out when he’d called her, after Cynthia had stormed out of his room, and she’d met him at discharge with enough pain pills to get him on the plane, along with all the luggage she could pack.

God bless his sister. He’d paid her back so poorly.

“Oh.” Hal’s shoulders sagged. Then he perked up. “I’ve never been to California. Maybe I could visit.”

That suddenly, Pierce needed to know about Hal for a change. “Where do your parents live?” he asked, thinking the kid seemed to need to get away a lot.

“North Carolina,” Hal muttered, like the state name was a dirty word. Well, when you were young and gay, maybe it was right now. “My father’s a judge.”

Yikes.

“A conservative judge?” Pierce asked, just to make sure.

“Is there any other kind?”

“I had a liberal judge let me off a traffic ticket once,” Pierce told him, just to ease some of the bitterness.

Hal grinned at him. “In California?”

“Yeah. In California.” Pierce winked and then sighed. “Well, the heat has effectively sucked all the energy from my bones, and it’s time for me to go take my nap.”

“Oh God—I’m sorry. Here—let me help you out.”

Pierce didn’t refuse his help per se, just tried to do most of the work himself. He leaned heavily on the rail and took solid, shuffling steps on his own, trying to get to the table. Finally Hal huffed in exasperation.

“I’m stronger than I look, okay? Just lean on me a little. Jesus, what could happen?”

“I could put too much weight on you, you could overbalance, I could land wrong and call you a horrible name that I’ll regret for the rest of my life,” Pierce snarled. “You seem to like me a little—at the moment, it’s the only win I’ve got.”

Oh dammit dammit dammit—way to go and injure the frickin’ unicorn, Pierce!

But his unicorn wasn’t looking cowed or wounded or any of the things Sasha had.

“Well, it’s not much of a win if you don’t trust me to hold some of your weight. Now come on—here!” Hal tucked his hand under Pierce’s elbow, and Pierce had no choice. He leaned. Together they made it to the table, where his cane sat accusingly, as did the sandals that would protect his feet from the deck.

Hal helped him balance as he slid his feet into the flip-flops. “I really did put you through your paces,” he said grudgingly. “You did it all like a champ, but you should carb up a little when you get back to your condo. What’re you going to have for lunch?”

Pierce thought about the groceries Sasha and Marshall had brought over. “Can of soup and some crackers,” he announced, because hey—he had enough of that stuff to last him for four more days if he ate it day and night, like he had been.

“Not good enough,” Hal said grimly, handing him his cane and then wrapping his towel over his shoulders. “Lead me to your condo, oh emaciated one—let me see your stores.”

Oh… hell no. No. “I know you have something better to do,” Pierce told him, hating feeling this vulnerable.

Hal appeared to think about it. “Hm… meeting world leaders for lunch, solving hunger for dinner, penning my novel before I go to bed… but right the hell now, I really only have to go see if my neighbor has anything to eat before he starves himself to death because he’s a stubborn asshole!”

“I have food,” Pierce muttered. “You don’t need to worry about me.”

“Oh, but I do.” Hal took off his sunglasses with his free hand and batted his eyelashes. They stood close enough that Pierce could see the true, remarkable gold-brown of his eyes.

His throat went dry. “I’d rather not be an object of pity,” he said, knowing he couldn’t be more pathetic if he tried.

“Then let me feed you so I don’t feel sorry for you,” Hal said sweetly, but he was standing very still and staring at Pierce soberly.

Pierce nodded just to break the moment—them, frozen, staring at each other. But nothing could erase the heat of Hal’s skin as he continued to escort Pierce down the sidewalk.

“Nobody uses the pool,” Pierce mumbled, realizing this was their second day alone.

“Later,” Hal told him, surprisingly. “A few people come out to sun themselves later. But it’s not prime condo season right now.”

Pierce grunted and continued his trek. “The holidays.”

“Yeah.”

The word had the ring of loneliness in it, and Pierce looked at him in question. But this time it was Hal’s turn to be looking away.

“You, uh… spending the holidays here—that wasn’t your idea, was it?”

He shrugged. “Told you—too gay to be an asset.”

“Is that, uh, just for the holidays, or is that for the rest of the year?”

Hal grimaced. “Let’s just say that next semester, I am enrolled in fifteen credits of poli sci at UNC and leave it at that.”

It was like watching the pictures on a slot machine whir and click… wanted to be a masseur or a fitness trainer—cherry. Too gay for the holidays—cherry. Twenty-three and not done with school—cherry and jackpot!

“If you don’t do what they want you to do, they’ll cut you off,” Pierce muttered. “Charming.”

“Whatever. I told them I’d come here and think about it.”

Pierce remembered Hal’s outfit on the first day and felt a chill in his stomach. “Don’t you mean drink about it?” he asked kindly.

“Yeah, well, that. Except….” Hal kicked at a piece of gravel as they neared the gate of the condo.

“What?” Because now Pierce was curious.

“I hate getting drunk. Seriously. I like training and helping people and shit. You can’t do that if you’re going to destroy your body. So I bought, like, all this fucking vodka, and after the first three greyhounds, I trashed the place. I fell asleep. I woke up and decided to take a swim and… well, you were already here.”

“Trashed the place? Do you need to clean up?”

“When I’m not so mad, I’ll do it again, sure. But I’m not drinking any more vodka after that.”

Pierce stepped forward to undo the lock on the gate and laughed. “Well, lucky for us both. You don’t like to get drunk, and I’m not happy about drowning. It was kismet.”

Hal pushed through the gate and held it while Pierce limped by. “You don’t agree with my dad? That I should get my ass in gear and pick something?”

Pierce thought about it as he led the way through the back hallway, past the laundry room, the bedroom, and into the kitchen that opened up to the living room. He paused there—he always did—because the back door looked over a brace of rushes and off to the sea. While the sea in Florida was a little tamer than the sea in California, that didn’t mean he couldn’t appreciate having it right there at his window. Of course, he hadn’t this trip—because pain and bitterness and general assholery, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t start now .

“No,” he said, almost absently, pondering that view. He snapped to and answered with more conviction. “I think that whole ‘your kid has to do what you tell them, even as an adult’ idea is sort of… bullshit,” he said. “I mean, you support them, sure. Hold them accountable. But you’re obviously not partying the fuck out of UNC. How many units do you have?”

Hal grunted. “Well, if I had them in the right classes, I’d have a master’s by now.”

Pierce laughed and settled down onto one of the stools that sat at the counter. “I… I always wanted more time to think about it,” he said, remembering. “I mean, I took a film theory class and some history classes and thought ‘Hey! I’d like to do something with this!’ But I was tired of eating soup and crackers five nights a week and driving a car that was writing its last will and testament. I mean, if I could have gone to school for another three years, I totally would have.”

Hal’s smile still had an edge of unhappiness to it, but Pierce didn’t know what to tell him. “Here—let me see what’s for lunch,” he said. He began poking around the pantry and the cupboards, clucking when he came up with english muffins and lunch meat. “You were going to have tinned soup? Here, let me make you a sandwich. You even have a tomato and pickles. And butter! Geez.”

Pierce stood up and tried not to groan theatrically. “Hal…. Hal… bubby… the reason I was going for canned soup was that I didn’t feel like making anything. I can’t ask you to—”

“I’ll make myself one too,” Hal said mildly. “Now sit there and talk to me about something stupid.”

“Something stupid?”

“Yeah.” Hal looked up from his food preparation, and Pierce realized he wasn’t kidding, even a little. “Something that doesn’t hurt.”

Oh. Well, at least Pierce wasn’t the only one not comfortable with all the soul baring they’d done in the last two days.

Pierce bit his lip, trying to remember something, anything, whimsical that he could talk about. All he had in his arsenal was stuff from when he was a kid.

“So,” he said, feeling foolish, “have I talked to you about my deep and abiding love for the old Looney Tunes cartoons?”

Hal shot him a look of such naked hope, he felt like an absolute hero for even thinking about it. “Bugs Bunny or Daffy Duck?” he asked.

“Wabbit season, naturally.”

Hal’s smile turned wicked. “Duck season,” he returned.

“Wabbit season.”

“Duck season.”

“Duck season!” Pierce remembered this game.

“Bang,” Hal told him with a smile. Derrick had a widescreen TV on the far wall, and Hal gestured with his chin. “I bet you could find some of that on a premium channel. Go, sit—I’ll bring you food, you eat and fall asleep.”

“I’m not—” Pierce yawned. “Dammit!”

“Yeah, well, I really did work you hard.” Hal bit his lip in an expression that was starting to look more and more vulnerable. “Thanks for letting me. Like I said, tomorrow we’ll do something lighter, and we can go shopping.”

“That’s sounds….” Oh wait. Shopping. And it was getting close to Christmas! “Hey—can we get more than rubber mats and a chair?”

Hal crossed his expressive brown eyes. “No, then I’ll have to dump your ass at the store. Why, what did you have in mind?”

“Well, you know. Christmas is coming. I’d like to sort of spoil my sister’s family a little. She’s got kids. They’re not bad. Maybe get her an espresso machine or something. She and her husband power up with Mr. Coffee—it’s horrible.”

“So, rubber mats, Legos, Barbies, and a Keurig? It’s a good thing I’ve got a CR-V—if I’d gone for the Tesla I’d wanted, you’d be fucked.”

Pierce blushed, feeling exploitive. “I’m sorry—you know, we don’t have to do that. I can order their stuff from here—it’ll even show up gift-wrapped—”

“No,” Hal said, like he was surprised the idea pleased him too. “Don’t do that. I mean, even if we don’t get to everything tomorrow, it will… it will give us a quest.” His full and beaming smile emerged, the one that made Pierce think he was an invincible unicorn. “Even if we are thwarted in our first sally, Sir Knight, we shall continue to assail the indomitable fortress of consumerism until we have achieved… uh, gift-tasticness?”

Pierce shrugged. “Or redemption. You know, either-or?”

“Redemption?” Pierce could practically see Hal’s antennae rise up. “For what?”

Pierce stood and managed the trek across the tile to the coffee table. He didn’t want to talk about it—not today, when they’d discovered some neutral ground.

“I thought we were watching cartoons,” he said gently.

“Yeah.” Hal swallowed, and his smile dimmed. “You’re right. Cartoons—we need to figure out which season it is.”

Pierce made himself comfortable and welcomed the sandwich and glass of milk when Hal walked it over. They watched cartoons for the next hour, laughing like children at the basic slapstick humor. As Pierce dozed off, slumping sideways onto the pillows of the couch, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt that young.

He woke up to late-afternoon shadows, cuddled under a throw in a chilly, empty apartment. The sound of the sea washed hypnotically through his bones like it did every minute of every day here. A note sat on the marble coffee table in front of him.

Thanks for the company—I’ll give you a Hal break tonight, but see you bright and early tomorrow.

—H

Pierce sat up, feeling unexpectedly refreshed, and pondered the note.

A Hal break? Who said he needed a break from Hal? He was starting to sort of like Hal. Why would he want a break?

He shivered and stood up, dislodging the chenille throw as he went to turn on the lights in the living room. He stared at the thing, trying to place where it had come from, and then he realized—

Derrick kept his spare blankets in the linen closet between the bathroom and the bedroom. Hal had needed to go looking for that. He’d done it on purpose, to make sure Pierce was comfortable, after he’d made Pierce a meal and entertained him.

Pierce couldn’t stop looking at the throw as it lay crumpled on the floor.

What season was it?

It was denial season.

HE GOT up eventually and made himself a can of soup and then settled back down in front of the television, remote in hand. His phone buzzed, the sound so alien of late that he barely recognized it before he remembered to pick up.

“Derrick?”

“Are you dead?”

“Oh God. No.” Pierce sat up from his sprawl and stretched carefully. “I’m sorry—I got here two days ago. I should have called.”

“Yeah, well, I was in a turkey coma until yesterday, so you’re doing okay. How are you?”

Pierce grunted. “Better,” he confessed. Derrick knew why he’d come here—had been the one to calm him down after Pierce had blown up at Sasha. Derrick had told him then that it wasn’t unforgivable, but Pierce—he still felt the shame down in his gut.

“As in no longer suicidal?” Derrick asked sharply.

Pierce flushed. “I wasn’t that bad,” he mumbled. “It was just… I was an asshole. I didn’t want to expose her to me being an asshole to her in her own house. Wasn’t her fault. How’s Miranda?”

Derrick’s wife, bless her, should have divorced Pierce’s best friend a long time ago, because she was way too damned good for him. “She’s fine. Or she will be when she recovers from the humiliation. Apparently she forgot to put enough sugar in one of the damned pies. Her family won’t let her live it down. If one more jackass calls me with an offer to bring over a cup of sugar, I’m gonna go fuckin’ ballistic.”

Pierce grimaced. “Ouch. Family.”

“What a fuckin’ bag of dicks.”

Pierce had to laugh. “Yeah, well, witness.”

“Shut up. You and Sasha give me hope. None of these assholes would have let a thing like that slow them down.”

Well, there was a reason Derrick was his best friend. That and— “How’s work?” Pierce asked before he could stop himself.

Derrick cackled. “Missing the hell out of you, that’s for sure. Speaking of assholes….” Well, layoffs had been coming, and Pierce had the bad luck to crash his truck about a week before they arrived. He’d been pretty sure he hadn’t been on the list before he’d been taken out of commission, but who could prove what?

Pierce gusted out a breath. “Yeah, well, sadly it’s mutual.” He’d liked his job designing graphics chips for video game players—he and his team, Derrick included, had worked really well together.

“Well, I know you’re doing okay for money,” Derrick said frankly, because he’d gotten a year’s worth of severance at the layoff—and both Pierce and the guy who’d hit him had good insurance that had paid out. “But I also know you, and that’s the whole reason I called.”

“Besides making sure I wasn’t dead,” Pierce said dryly.

“Well, that too. Anyway—there’s a smaller company out here putting out feelers. Young, hot, fresh—willing to blow you if you promise to come, that sort of thing. Anyway, I gave them your card. They’re going to be emailing you in a couple of days. Try not to fuck this up.”

Pierce gasped, suddenly almost tearful. “A job? You got me a job?”

“No, I dropped your name. Don’t be dramatic. And I told them you wouldn’t be back until March of next year too, so don’t blow the first vacation you’ve had in years.”

Pierce gave a rusty laugh. “I’m still rehabilitating,” he reminded his friend. “No promises I’ll be 100 percent ever, you know that.”

“Can you walk?” Derrick demanded. “Can you use a computer?”

“Yes and yes,” Pierce told him promptly, thinking about the range of motion he could feel in his legs after two days of decent aqua therapy.

“Then the rest is improvement. Anyway—you’ll have time.”

“I will.” Pierce felt his throat get thick again. “Thank you. Just, seriously, thank you. That’s… that’s awesome.”

“Just tell me you aren’t rotting at my beach condo eating canned soup and trying to die alone.”

“No.” Pierce felt the corners of his mouth turn up without meaning to make that happen. “In fact, I think I made a friend.”

“Hm… promising.” Derrick was sort of a midsize man with a thatch of blond hair and a goatee, and Pierce could picture him stroking his goatee. “Would this be a friend with tits that you can sleep with?”

Pierce grunted. “Doesn’t need breasts—you know that.”

Derrick grunted back. “I forget. I’m a straight white male who tries not to have entitlement issues—pity me.”

Oh God. Derrick and Miranda probably gave 10 percent of their income to liberal causes. “I refuse to pity you now that I’ve been repressed,” Pierce told him grandly. “But seriously, a friend. That’s all I could ask for, and I’m calling it a win.”

“But is it a cute friend? That’s all I’m asking,” Derrick needled, and Pierce gave in.

“He’s really sort of adorable.”

Derrick’s cackle was all he ever wanted in a buddy. “Excellent! I see good things in your future, my man. I shall leave you alone so I can go impregnate my wife!”

Pierce blinked. “Was that, uh, something you’d planned on doing?”

And suddenly the joking fell away. “We’re hoping,” his friend confessed. “Are you happy for us?”

“Only if I’m invited to the birth.” Pierce waited a moment to see if he’d gone too far, but Derrick’s howl of mock outrage reassured him.

“Oh, you dickhead! I love you so! Yes, I’ll tell Miranda right now that’s a priority!”

Pierce’s laugh surprised him—two days ago he would have said it was beyond him.

What a difference a Hal made.

“Don’t tell her that or you’ll never conceive. Now go! Be nice to your wife.” His voice dropped. “And good luck, man. You guys… you’re the best.”

“So are you. Come back to us, ‘kay? If I take Miranda to one more Kings’ game, she’ll divorce me.”

“Understood.”

Derrick hung up, and Pierce was left in the empty condo again. But his laughter still rang on the cold tile, and Pierce could hear Hal’s reaction to the conversation he’d just had.

Hey, Hal—I have friends! We’re actually funny together!

He suddenly wanted his young friend to see him when he wasn’t angry and bitter.

He wanted Hal to know he could be fun too, and not just when Looney Tunes was on.