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Then he put them down.

"I'm doing it," he said. "Again."

"Yes. You are."

"I'm doing it right now, in front of you, about the exact thing you just—"

He sat back down on the end of the bed, hard.

"God. Blaine. I don't know how to be still. To just be in a room."

"I know."

"I've never once done it. I worked it out last night at about one in the morning with a phone in my hand, and I've had five hours and I still can't—" He stopped and pointed at the list in my hand. "That's what that is. That's what the paper's for. You take the paper off me and I've got nothing."

"I know," I said. "That's why I took it."

He sat there for a long time.

And I want it on the record that I did not help him.

It is the hardest thing I have ever done and nobody will ever give me any credit for it, because it looks exactly like standing still. I stood in the middle of that guest house and let a man I love sit in silence, and every part of me wanted to hand him a line.

Then he said: "I love you, Blaine."

That's all. Nothing in front of it and nothing after.

"I'm not going to produce anything," he said. "I haven't got a plan. There's one on that paper and you're holding it. But I'm not going to make another one, because you'd know, and because it would be for me." His voice cracked straight down the middle. "So that's it. That's all I've got. I love you, and I'd like to be wherever you are."

Then he stopped. And he did not fill the silence, allowing it to be uncomfortable.

I’ve watched Gregory work a room full of studio executives. I have watched him talk his way out of things that should have ended a career. But I’ve never seen him do anything as difficult as sitting on the end of a bed in silence for fourteen seconds.

I know it was fourteen. I counted. It's what I do.

Then I crossed the room and sat down next to him.

Not touching. Close enough to feel him breathing, which is the thing I had been thinking about since Sunday morning and had not let myself say.

"I've got something too," I said, "and I've been carrying it since yesterday morning, so let me get it out."

"Okay."

"I had it worked out. Before the phone rang." I looked down at my hands. "I was lying in that bed watching you sleep, and I'd got as far as the sentence. And then Steven called, and I never got to say it."

Gregory didn't move.

"So I'm going to say it now," I said, "and it isn't very good, and I've had a great deal of time to think of ways to make it sound better, but I've decided not to."

"Blaine—"

"I'm not asking you to stop being who you are. I'm asking you to be somewhere I can get to you." My eyes were streaming and I let them. "Be near me, Gregory. That's all I want."

He didn't say anything for a second.

Then he made a sound that wasn't a word, and took hold of both my hands and held them against his chest hard enough to hurt. Like a man making a statement he expected to be tested on.

"Yes," he said.