Everett swallowed, and Tommy watched his throat work beneath his starched collar. “A couple times I got close, I thought. It never worked out, but—” He stopped abruptly and reached for the bottle, dividing the last few inches of wine between their glasses. “I don’t want to talk about this with you.” His voice was taut.
“Right. Of course not.” Tommy wrapped his arms tighter around his knees. “I’m sorry that I made you think you didn’t mean anything to me—”
“No,” Everett said, and his tone was gentle, gentler than Tommy had heard it in fifteen years. “I never said that. I knew we were friends. But I thought the rest of it was just a convenient arrangement for you. Schoolboy silliness that lasted too long. It wasn’t a wild surmise on my part. You got married, Tommy. What was I supposed to think?”
Tommy swallowed. “I wanted it to be one of those arrangements. I told myself it was.” His eyes were wet, and, just, fuck this. He scrubbed his sleeve across his eyes and hoped Everett didn’t notice.
“Use this.” Everett handed him a crisply folded linen handkerchief.
Tommy mopped at his face. “Thanks.” He took a deep breath and let it out. “I really thought I could have you and Pat both—or rather everything Pat meant,” he said glumly, directing his words at the empty fireplace in front of him rather than look at Everett.
“You weren’t used to things not going your way,” Everett said, and it might have been an insult but for how gently he spoke the words.
Tommy groaned, remembering himself at fifteen, even at twenty-five. He had been brash and overconfident, with the casual selfishness of someone who never doubted that his desires aligned with those of everyone else. “I must have been insufferable.”
“You were wonderful,” Everett said immediately, and with a fondness that made Tommy turn his head. Everett looked away and began winding his watch. “Can we agree that we were both idiots—”
“Yes.”
“—And just let bygones be bygones.”
Tommy hated that phrase. He wished he could let one single solitary stupid thing actually be a bygone. Instead he was dredging up every one of his ancient misdeeds and spending days turning it over and looking at it from every angle like a jeweler examining a gemstone. But he nodded anyway.
Everett looked at his empty glass. “It’s late. I ought to be going.”
“Right. Of course.” They rose and stood awkwardly in front of the sofa, neither of them moving. “Can I—oh, fuck it. Can I hug you? You can say no. I’m just drunk and maudlin and in a house with an ancient furnace and—”
“It’s okay.” Everett turned, one arm slightly raised, as if he had read about hugs in books but hadn’t ever thought to try it out himself. Tommy stepped forward and leaned in, closing the gap, his arms around Everett’s neck.
Tommy had wanted this contact, needed it, in order to cancel out the memory of that horrible Visiting Day embrace. This was better. Everett’s hands were on his back, his chin on Tommy’s shoulder. Tommy buried his face in Everett’s neck, his cheek pressed against the soft wool of Everett’s sweater, to see if they still fit together as well as they used to. He waited to see if Everett went cold.
But that didn’t happen. Instead Everett stroked a hand up his back and softly whispered “shhh,” as if he were soothing a baby. And that—Jesus Christ—he needed that. He needed to be soothed. For his whole life there had always been someone there to put an arm around him, to bump shoulders while they walked down a hall. Nieces and nephews to hold, women to dance with—and now it was all gone.
“I’m crying into your collar,” he mumbled.
“That’s okay too.” Knowing Everett—if he really still did know Everett, which he supposed was an open question—it probably wasn’t okay at all that Tommy was soaking his shirt in tears and worse, but it was nice of him to say it was. It was even nicer that he kept murmuring comforting nonsense, kept his arms tight around him. Nicest still was the idea that even after making a royal mess of everything, somebody might still want to hold him and make him feel better.
Chapter 5
“Did you send me a plant?”
Everett’s hands stilled on his coat buttons. The previous night he had left Tommy’s house in a fluster of awkwardness and mutual reassurances, and without the goddamn root beer. At that moment he was preparing to make the trip back to Tommy’s house. But now Tommy stood in the door to his office, Everett’s sack of groceries on his hip.
“I’m here to take Daniel home for the weekend, and I thought I’d bring your things.” Tommy put the paper bag on Everett’s desk. “One of the kids told me where your office was. I shouldn’t have—sorry to intrude.”
“No,” Everett said, realizing he had to say something or Tommy was going to retreat in confusion and embarrassment. That too was new—Everett hadn’t thought any of the Cabots were capable of this strange self-effacement that kept creeping over Tommy. He had always been bold as brass, charming as the devil, and Everett hated everyone who had made this man doubt himself, while also suspecting that he had done some of the damage himself. “I was just startled. Thank you. I wasn’t relishing the prospect of trudging through yet more snow.” They had gotten another two inches during the day.
“So,” Tommy said, still smiling. “Did you send me a plant?”
“I, well, yes. Did the florist not include a card?” He had called the florist first thing in the morning.
“If they did, it must have blown away before the plant made it to my door.”
“Then how did you know it was from me?”
“Because there are three people in the world who know where I am. One is Pat, and ficuses really aren’t her style. Five dozen hot house roses, maybe, but not a ficus. Another is Danny, and I don’t think twelve-year-old boys go in much for potted plants as gifts. And the third is you.”
Everett blinked. The rift between Tommy and his family must have been deeper than Everett had imagined if Tommy’s brothers and mother didn’t even have his address. That was almost unimaginable—the Cabot boys were always in one another’s pockets, from childhood to Greenfield to Senate campaigns. As for Patricia, surely estranged spouses didn’t send plants or flowers or anything at all to one another.
But now that he thought about it, Everett wasn’t sure how things stood between Tommy and his wife. It was hard to imagine any Cabot getting divorced, so likely this would be a temporary separation before they figured out a way to reconcile. Perhaps they, like Everett’s parents, would maintain separate bedrooms in the same house for forty years, only speaking to one another at mealtimes, and always in tones of icy cordiality. Perhaps they would have an arrangement that would allow Tommy to pursue casual encounters. An arrangement that would allow for—for Everett to get his heart broken again.
Last night it had felt good and right and achingly familiar to have Tommy in his arms, to give Tommy whatever comfort he could. Their bodies still slotted against one another effortlessly. Everett knew himself well enough to know that if Tommy had kissed him, he’d have gone along with it, and was simultaneously disappointed and relieved that he hadn’t had a chance.