“Fine. We met at the gelateria and went our separate ways, and then we metagainwhen he happened to be walking by the place I was getting dinner at, and he ended up joining me.”
“You’re killing me! No, not you,” Arya called over his shoulder. Heturned back and brought his phone closer to his face. “Are you telling me that you, Ramin Yazdani, had a romantic dinner in Italy with your old high school crush?”
“It wasn’t—”
“Who’s having a romantic dinner?” David poked his head in next to Farzan. A still-damp shower cap hid his sponge twists. “Did you have any wine?”
“Ornellaia, and—”
“You’re shitting me. Ornellaia? Really?” David closed his eyes and sighed. “That’s a special wine. What year?”
“2020. But—”
“Nice. He must’ve been pretty special.”
“It wasn’t like that!” Ramin sputtered.
“It was his old crush from high school,” Farzan said, giving David a kiss on the cheek. “You smell good, babe.”
Ramin wanted to vomit.
“His big-dicked crush from high school,” Arya added. His camera went wonky for a moment as he went through a door, and then Ramin saw the inside of Arya’s favorite coffee spot on Wyandotte.
Ramin closed his eyes and wished he’d never opened his mouth. Never made this call in the first place.
He also wished, solemnly, that his friends would never meet Paola and Francesca. He wouldn’t have worried about the odds of that happening, except he’d literally run into Noah Bartlett in Italy, so clearly the laws of probability were fracturing around him.
“We were just two old friends. Catching up. There was nothing romantic about it, and there was no discussion of dicks of any kind. Okay?”
His friends all stared at him.
“Listen. I came here to get away from everything. To reinvent myself. Not to rekindle my old crush on a straight boy. Well, man.”
Farzan narrowed his eyes. “How exactly do you know he’s straight? Did he tell you?”
“Well, no,” Ramin said. “But he only dated girls in high school.”
“Okay, but it’s not like any of us were out then. He could be bi or pan or anything.”
Ramin ran a hand through his hair. His friends weren’t listening.
“It doesn’t matter even if he is. We caught up, and then we said our goodbyes. It’s not like we’ll run into each other again. Now can we talk about something else?”
“Okay, fine,” Arya said. “Just a sec, let me put my order in.”
But Farzan muttered, loud enough for Ramin to hear, “Stranger things have happened.”
ten
Noah
Light streamed in through the window. Noah blinked and grumbled. His body felt like it was full of sand. Was this jet lag? Or just being thirty-eight?
He rolled over and scratched his chest. Maybe it was both.
Or maybe it was a hangover. Not from wine but from Ramin.
He couldn’t remember feeling so happy, so at peace, in a long time. So like the version of himself he liked best. He missed being that Noah. The Noah who smiled easily, who laughed loudly, who was excited for the future. Who had friends and community and more going on than just keeping track of work contracts and Jake’s appointments. He liked his job, and he loved his son, but last night was the first time in a while that he’d done something just for him.
