“Everything okay?” asked Nolan.
“Yeah, sorry,” said Mike. “The guys here keep asking for my sign-off before they do anything. On one hand, that’s good, because they’re not making major changes without running them by me. But it’s not really necessary. Everyone here knows what they’re doing.” He paused and smiled. “Okay, what’s up?”
They went over the landscape plan before Mike was called away again. Grayson also wandered off because he wanted to see what the construction crew was doing. So Nolan just hung out in the backyard for a few minutes, watching activity buzz around him. The camera crew packed up too, saying they’d gotten enough for the day. Nolan figured he’d wait for Grayson to finish doing whatever he was doing, and then they’d pack it in and head home. In the meantime, he took some photos of the back of the house with his phone so that he could show them to someone at the plant nursery and get some advice about what would look best there. Nolan had opinions about landscaping but would not have called himself an expert.
Mike strolled over again. “Hey, Nolan. I’m glad you’re still here. Can I talk to you about something?”
“Sure.”
Mike looked around. He gestured for Nolan to follow him, so they walked over to a corner of the lawn far from anyone in earshot. Apparently satisfied now, Mike nodded. “I’m not very good at this kind of thing, so this will probably not come out the way I intended, but bear with me.”
“Is this about the house? Did something bad happen?”
“What? Oh, no. The house is fine. This is more of a personal thing.”
That sounded ominous. Nolan braced himself. “Okay.”
“My friend Sandy—you know Sandy, he’s doing one of your houses—well, his husband suggested I talk to you. He’s a big Stacey Lewis fan and saw the show you did a couple of months ago.”
“Oh.” Nolan didn’t like where this was going. He and Sandy had spoken often enough that he was aware Sandy’s husband was a fan. And Nolan had only been on Stacey’s show once in the past six months.
Mike frowned. “Sandy’s husband thought I should talk to you because I know what you’re going through.”
Nolan doubted that. “I really don’t think—”
“I’ve been married twice.” Mike held up his hand to show off his wedding ring. “My first husband was a cop. He was killed in the line of duty. One morning we kissed goodbye and he went off to work and he never came home again.”
“Oh.” That floored Nolan. It was a lot of information to get from Mike all at once. Nolan hadn’t known Mike was gay, for one thing. But he’d also lost a husband. So maybe he did know.
“So I just wanted to say,” Mike said, “that I know how hard it is. So if you ever want to talk, I’m here, okay?”
“Yeah, I….” Nolan frowned. He had a million questions. But the only one he could put into words was, “Just tell me, does it get easier?”
“It does. It takes some time, but it does. You’ll never forget him—it’s impossible to forget those we loved that much—but over time you’ll think about him less often. Still, it can sneak up on you. I still have times when, like, I’ll hear one of our songs playing from a passing car, and then I’m right back there, missing him all over again. Or I’ll find myself wanting to ask him about something happening in the news, because Iknowhe’d have feelings about it. And sometimes I look at our daughter and I remember the day we brought her home, or the look on his face the first time he saw her, and I’ll think about what a great dad he would have been. She was so little when he died that she barely remembers him. But he really would have been a great father.”
Nolan nodded slowly. “I was flipping around channels the other day and I caught part of this cheesy movie Ricky had starred in. I watched it to the end, bawling my eyes out. Worse, it worried me, because it didn’t seem like something a sane person would do.”
“No, but it’s normal.” Mike looked off into the distance. “Well, notnormal. The number of widowers who were married to movie stars is probably pretty small. But you can’t kill a cop in New York without it making the news. Worse, there was security camera footage that played on the news constantly in the weeks after he died. I’d watch it, riveted, even though it felt like a bullet to the chest every time.”
“Ugh, yeah.” At Ricky’s insistence, they’d put a hospital bed in the den of their house so that Ricky could die at home, so Nolan had been with him when it happened. He’d been able to tell by the way Ricky’s face had gone slack that he’d left. Nolan would never get that image out of his head. But Ricky had been sick for nearly a year, and Nolan had had time to prepare himself, as much as one could be prepared for a loss like that. To have someone taken violently and then have it aired on television repeatedly for weeks, that must have been traumatic.
“But it does get easier,” Mike said. “My first husband and I grew up together. He was one of my best friends in the universe. We actually fell in love on a tour in Iraq, if you can believe it. So we went through a lot together, and suddenly he was just… gone. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever been through. But I distracted myself with work and with raising our daughter, and then despite everything, I fell in love again. So even though I’m married to a great man now, I will never forget my first love. I keep a few photos of my first husband hanging in my apartment. My husband now is comfortable with that. The right man for you will be, too.”
“That’s… that’s good. It’s hard not to feel like I had my shot at the One and that’s it.”
“I don’t think we have just one. I think we have people who come to us and who we love when we’re at different stages of our lives. And Gio, my current husband, could not be more different from my first husband. My first husband was beer and pizza, and Gio is champagne and caviar, if that makes sense. But I think he’s the person I’m supposed to be with at this stage of my life, and God willing, we’ll keep each other company well into old age.” Mike shrugged. “Or I’m wrong and some calamity will destroy my family tomorrow. I think the lesson is to take each day as it comes and to love the people in your life as much as you can, because you don’t know what will happen tomorrow.”
Nolan paused to absorb that. He saw Grayson walk across the backyard and take a bottle of water from the cooler at the craft services table.
It often seemed to Nolan that he had no control over who he fell in love with. He’d merely seen Ricky across the room andknown. He’d had a similar experience with Grayson, though it hadn’t been quite as sudden. It had been more of an inkling. Something in him had woken up after lying dormant for a year and whisperedthis man.
“I’m sure you hate talking about this,” Mike said. “I just thought, you know, I’ve been where you are, so if you needed help or just someone to talk to, I’m here. And believe me, I know what it’s like to try to make the people in your life understand your pain. Everyone thinks they know, but they never quite understand.”
“Yeah. Thanks. This was actually helpful.”
“Oh good.” Mike smiled.
“So your daughter, you had her with your first husband?”
