“Friday, March 22nd,” Matt said. He had memorized the date. He had only twelve weeks to iron out the details. He would need every minute.
Vince fished a planner from a bag on the floor. Thumbed through it. “I’m free on that date. I’ll pencil you in as a ‘maybe.’ I’m not ready to fully commit. For starters, I can think of three conditions.”
Matt tried to hide his excitement. He had prepared himself for a hard “No.” “What’s the first one?”
Vince eyed the vodka but didn’t reach for it. “For this story to help my career, there must be a killer photo, the whole ‘picture is worth a thousand words’ thing. This will be a highly dynamic situation, with all of us in motion. There won’t be posing. No one’s going to say ‘Cheese.’ There’s going to be 20…, 30 seconds tops where this Colton guy and I are in the same frame. In poor lighting. I need to know that you’ve got a quality photographer, not some amateur with his Polaroid.”
“First condition: good photographer,” Matt repeated. “Already got one. She’s great.” He was thinking of Molly, obviously. He hadn’t talked to her about this yet, but surely, she would jump at the opportunity.
“I’m serious,” Vince said. “I want to see the camera and lenses. I want to see examples of this person’s work before I commit.”
“Got it. Second condition?”
“Hold on.” Vince poured himself a splash of vodka, tossed it back. “The second condition is related to the photographer as well. If the photo is as good as I’m hoping, it will be valuable. Any decent photographer will copyright that thing. That’s fine. But I also need to be able to use the photo for publicity. See where this is heading?”
Matt shook his head.
“I’m going to need a license allowing me to use the photo for at least 3-5 years,” Vince said. “You’ll need a lawyer for that.”
“Lawyer. Got a good one already,” Matt said. “I’ll get back with you on the license, copyright thing. What’s the third condition?”
Chapter 33: Ringing In the New Year
Sunday, December 31, 1995
Adam was as beautiful as Matt had remembered him, which was, in all honesty, a relief. They had met one time 17 weeks earlier. Yeah, they had exchanged letters back and forth. And yeah, Matt’s heart was pretty far down the tracks in terms of being smitten, enough that he had planned this date and reserved a room. It would have been catastrophic if his memory had tricked him, and he had needed to reverse course and return to the station.
Adam found his way to the Habana without incident.
Matt gave him a tour of the room, where Adam dropped his bag and called his parents to let them know he had arrived safely.
“I promise,” were his last words to his parents before hanging up.
Matt wondered what the promise entailed but put it out of his mind. They had dinner reservations at Gushers.
They were dancing at the Copa now. (Adam was dancing. Matt was “Weebling.”)
The place was crowded—not only the dance floor, but the surrounding tables as well. It was 11:19. The big screens mounted to the walls flashed the countdown to New Year’s: 40:32, 40:31, 40:30…
Adam was short, 5’7”, 5’8” tops, which Matt would once have said wasn’t his type. The guy weighed maybe a buck thirty-five. He had a slim, swimmer’s build, which was—Matt’s type, that is.
Compact, skinny queens were no novelty, Matt knew. He had seen at least five already that evening. None were in Adam’s league. It was Adam’s face thatset him apart. It was his aura that made him catnip to Matt, the kryptonite that made Matt weak in the knees.
During dinner, Matt had repeatedly lost the trail of their conversation, being so absorbed in Adam’s features. As with the first time they met, Matt had felt like he was sitting across from a grown-up Christopher Robin—the cleft chin and piercing hazel eyes separating the man from the boy.
Adam had fair skin, with a dusted stripe of freckles that started at his lower cheeks and rose diagonally to join at the bridge of his nose. It was a chevron of tan sprinkles, an echo of war paint on a Lost Boy.
His thick hair would best be described as dark brown, but included strands from every hue between tawny and chocolate. It was at least half an inch too long.
This was hair that would never know male-pattern baldness, a mass that could be roughly shaped but never tamed. It was rock star or starving artist hair. Add glasses in twenty years, and it would be absent-minded professor hair.
Adam danced like he was in Neverland (James Barrie’s version, not the Michael Jackson one), forever young and carefree, whooping around a bonfire, celebrating something, anything—howling at the moon.
This was a different Adam than the guy who had shyly picked at his dinner, who had seemed overwhelmed, who self-consciously tried to hide the scar on his left wrist, whose eyes were tinged with sadness.
The song ended, and the dancing paused.
Bella took the stage. She was emceeing the night’s countdown. Earlier she had performed her unique blend of stand-up comedy, gameshow, and singing. It was a quality act. She deserved to be a star as much as Colton deserved to crash and burn. And if Bella could climb to success atop the ruin of Colton’s dreams, so much the better. It would be the only positive contribution Colton had ever made.
