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All Trey says is: “Oh, we’ve got a guest joining us tonight.”

That’s it. No clue or hint.

I have no idea otherwise.

Maybe his dad is joining us all on his own. Maybe Cody’s mom. Maybe Duncan will show up in a Santa suit because why not? All I know is that one minute, I’m setting the table while overhearing Pete telling a story about a dickhead sergeant we both had to deal with after Cody’s time, and the next, the doorbell rings, and I’m asked by Trey to go answer it.

I open the door.

There stands Anthony dressed up in a short-sleeved blue plaid shirt buttoned to the chest and tucked into a pair of blue jeans with a brown belt.

And my jacket draped over his arms.

I’ve been thinking about him all day. Anthony. And that kiss. I still haven’t made up my mind about it, and now I’m staring at the guy on the front doorstep of Trey and Cody’s house.

I should be surprised he’s the guest, but somehow I’m not. I’m actually more surprised that the guy knows how to properly tuck in a damned shirt.

“Alright, let’s get this over with,” he says.

I can already smell the alcohol. “Huh?”

He extends my jacket at me like it’s diseased. “You left this.”

I don’t take it. “I meant to leave it for you.”

“Why?”

“What else would you have rested your head on?”

His eyes scrunch up. “Are you tellin’ me you carried me over to that pew like a princess and put me to bed?”

I shrug. “More like dragging a sack of potatoes, but sure.”

“And then you finished my work for me?”

“Just a few lights, old one out, new one in, took ten minutes.”

I’ve got him completely baffled now. “Why’d you do that?”

“No reason.”

“You expecting a thanks? I didn’t ask you to do any of that. Take your stupid jacket back.” He extends it again.

I can play this game with Anthony all day. We can avoid any mention of the kiss, if that’s how he wants to go about it. But that doesn’t mean I can’t talk civilly to him. “Like the patches on it?” I ask. “This jacket is actually my younger brother’s.”

He glances at it, likely not having taken the time to actually notice them.

His grip turns gentle.

It’s subtle, but I notice.

“So?”

“Means a lot to me,” I explain. “That jacket. We’ve passed it back and forth between us for years. My younger brother and I are survivors of our prick father. That jacket, it’s like magic armor to us. Whenever one of us wears it, nothing bad happens.” I smirk, thinking of the restaurant. “Well, usually. Did you drink already?”

“A little, so what?”

“More like three whole bottles. And before dinner?”

“Shove that judgment up your butt and take your jacket.”

I step back and nod inside. “Coatrack’s here next to the—”

“I know where the coatrack is.” He brushes past me. When he hangs the jacket, he does so with startling delicacy, like it’s gone from being total trash he fished out of a dumpster to a national treasure. “Why’d you go n’ tell me all a’ that about your brother? So annoying,” he mutters under his breath, then heads on further into the house, stumbling slightly.

The truth is, I didn’t get up from the church floor right away.

I just lay there with Anthony sleeping like a rock, his face half on my chest, half on my arm, lips hanging open, as I reeled from that intense, body-groping kiss I was not expecting. After realizing he had fallen into the deep kind of sleep, I tried slipping my arm out from under him, but the moment I started moving, he grunted and curled his fingers into my shirt.

Clinging to me.

Tightly.

That made me grow still, then lie back again, surrendering my body to him as he resumed his deep slumber. I stared up at the ceiling and the bright fluorescent bulb that decided to magically work again.

And my thoughts, strangely, became pretty damned singular.

Just me. Anthony’s breath. Our bodies. Nothing else existed.

Nothing else touched me.

As if the calmness I’d come here to this town seeking found me right then, in that dim church annex, in the most unlikely of places, with the most unlikely of company.

Maybe it makes perfect sense, that the source of my agitation would also contain the solution.

I guess his fingers relaxed once his unconscious body decided I wasn’t trying to abandon his side anymore. I gave up trying to get out from under him for a while. I even closed my own eyes at one point, wondering if what I needed was some sleep, too.

But how could I sleep after what just happened?

All I could think about was his lips on mine. His hands on my body, groping my dick. And how he was hard as steel, humping my leg like a damned dog, for however many seconds that feverish, aggressive kissing lasted.

Was he trying to tell me something?

Did he even realize he was doing it?

It was about an hour later that Anthony sniffed loudly, then rolled off my arm and cuddled himself. I took the chance and got to my feet. But watching Anthony on the floor, neck bent, mouth agape, I knew he was gonna wake up with a bad crick in his neck and probably a sore back, too.

Some kind of compassionate demon must have possessed me right then, because I bent down, scooped him into my arms (it was surprisingly easy) and carried the guy to a pew at the back of the main chapel. With nothing cushy in sight, I took off my denim jacket, rolled it up, and tucked it under his head for a pillow. He didn’t even so much as flinch the whole time, asleep like the dead.

I decided right then that he likely wouldn’t even remember what he did. The kiss might as well have not happened. He’ll deny it even if I was bold enough to ask him about it.

Maybe I should just forget about the kiss, too.

On my way out of the church, I realized I couldn’t leave the annex the way it was. Anthony would wake up later to find his big fluorescent nightmare still there, it’d stress him out, and then where would he be? Right back in the hell he was falling asleep in. So I took to the lights, did the work myself, put away the ladder, and sorted his tools.

I doubt he noticed any of that.

Or maybe he did, resents that I helped out, and that’s why he’s all full of attitude right now, marching into the house hotheaded.

Or he does remember the kiss.

And he’s kicking himself for doing it at all.

Or outright denying it just like I thought he might, pretending it never happened.

Pete is the first to notice our new guest, cutting himself off midsentence to shout, “Hey, our waiter from the restaurant! Tony, right? What’re you doing here? Joining us for dinner?”

Anthony comes up and shakes his hand. “It’s Anthony.”

“Nope, sorry, once I throw a nickname out, it’s stuck for life. Just ask Bridge over there.”

Anthony appears not to want to ask me a thing. “Then Tony it is, fine with me. I’ve had worse nicknames.”

Pete laughs at that. “Nah, I’m just teasing you. Anthony … An- tony . Ignore me, I’m already four beers in and haven’t eaten.”

Anthony glances back at me over his shoulder. “Imagine that. Drinking before dinner. Like it’s a sin.”

Pete is confused by that, unsure what to say, until Cody comes up and claps Anthony hard on the back, surprising him. “Hope you came with an appetite, because for some reason only God knows, Trey went overboard with the entrées tonight.”

“I’m always hungry,” says Anthony, making a scrunched face that looks like he’s either scowling or fending off a sneeze.

His words always sound so cryptic. Like everything he says or does has a second meaning, and somehow that meaning is meant as a jab at me. Except I can’t think about what else he might be hungry for. The whole house smells like Italian herbs.

I wonder why Trey invited him for dinner.

Does Trey know about Anthony? Is this some kind of big town secret? Are we being coaxed toward each other for a reason?

I’m still wondering when the five of us are seated around the table by the back window, and everyone’s chatting away like we’re at the restaurant again.

Well, everyone except for me and Anthony, looks like.

Sitting here at one end of the table, across from each other.

I will say one thing, Anthony’s at least got a reason to not be talking. The boy is putting down his food so damned fast—and so aggressively—you’d think he starved himself all day. I don’t know whether to be impressed or disgusted as he slurps down bite after bite of alfredo pasta with one hand, bites off knob after knob of garlic bread with the other, and somehow chugs his glass of water with a third hand that comes out of nowhere every few seconds.

I guess I’m making a face, because Anthony shoots me those scrunched, watery eyes and grumbles, “The heck you lookin’ at?” I don’t answer. I just continue to eat. Calmly. As if my food won’t run away from me if I don’t scarf it down in five seconds.

Y’know, like a dignified adult at a dinner table.

“The way you saved your pal Bridger’s life in the restaurant!” shouts Cody at Pete after a bite. They were already talking and I’m just now paying attention at the drop of my name. “You damned near retraumatized me, the way you shouted ‘MOVE!’ before gettin’ up. Shit, I was ready for the table to explode. You realize that word’s a huge trigger for me, don’t you? It was the last thing I heard you shout before the big boom that shipped my shrapnel-filled ass home. Or off to Prairieland Medical, more accurately.”

“I mean, I was tellin’ you to move,” reasons Pete. “I saw that IED same second you did and didn’t want you caught in it.”

“Yeah, but if I hadn’t covered you, you’d be dead.”

“We don’t really know that.”

Cody snorts. “Of course we do. Shrapnel embedded in my left leg and arm said that bomb was no fuckin’ joke. You’d be dead.”

“Or maybe we would’ve shared the injury, both of us taken to that hospital. My ass would be lying in a bed right next to yours.”

Cody’s eyes narrow. “So what’re you saying, Pete? I shouldn’t have jumped in front of you?”

“I’m just explaining why I shouted ‘move’. This isn’t news.” Pete tries to laugh it off as he twirls pasta around his fork. He stops when he notices the tension on Cody’s face. “What?”

Cody’s stare persists a moment too long to be comfortable. “Nothing.” He averts his eyes, grabs himself a slice of garlic toast, and grows still, like he’s suddenly forgotten how to eat it. Pete just stares back at him, looking frustrated.

“Does it really matter who saved who?” grunts Anthony.

Everyone turns to him.

I didn’t realize he was listening.

“What?” Cody grunts back, almost as surprised as I am.

“Or if one of you recalls it differently, whatever actually went down back then.” Anthony takes another bite while Cody and Pete wait, stewing in their own tension, as he chews and swallows. He’s still buzzed. How much did he drink before coming here? “Think of it this way. Everyone’s got their own version of every stupid thing that happens around this town, right? And everyone is kinda right, everyone is kinda wrong. Pete, I don’t know you at all, but Cody here’s been talkin’ his head off about you since I was literally in high school . He loves you as much as a man can without bein’ in bed with him. Listen …” He slumps forward, blinking drunkenness out of his eyes as he tears his garlic bread in half, then uses one half in the air like a professor’s pointer as he speaks. “People used to be afraid of this guy. Even my mom fed me crazy stories about Cody when he came back to town from the Army and Trey was forced to be his nurse. Hey, Cody, you damn near lost function in your arm and leg, right? Then had some surgery where they, like, Frankensteined you back together usin’ your own nerves and shit? Shrapnel’s no joke. Now look at you, all fixed up. But that ain’t the point. Trey’s dad hated you, thought you were evil with a foul-ass mouth tryin’ to drag his son straight into Satan’s godless arms …”

“Wouldn’t go that far,” Trey puts in quietly.

“Kinda half right,” mumbles Cody, earning a look from Trey.

“But Cody’s got his own way of dealing with what happened,” Anthony goes on, turning back to Pete, “and I’m sure you’ve got yours. Point is, don’t matter what happened, just that it brought y’all together, forever united. And ain’t that beautiful? I envy that kinda connection with someone. Shit .” He makes a snorting sound, almost laughing at himself. “Lord knows I don’t got anything like that. You’re each other’s hero, no matter how you see it. And now look at you two, brought here under the same roof again, enjoyin’ a tasty - ass Italian meal made by the reverend himself. Hey, as far as I’m concerned, Trey’s a hero, too, knowin’ how to toast garlic bread without burnin’ it halfway to Hell.” He shoves the half he’s been pointing into his mouth and moans, eyes closing as he chews. He pops open an eye suddenly. “No offense, for the ‘Hell’ thing.”

Trey smiles. “None taken, of course.”

I stare at Anthony across the table, finding myself taken aback by the sincerity in his words, despite the slurred speech.

I wonder suddenly if I know Anthony at all.

Trey quite suddenly redirects the attention. “Saving Bridger in the restaurant the way you did, Pete … That was something! Did you ever train in the Heimlich Maneuver? You reacted so fast!”

It takes Pete a hot second to shake off whatever’s on his mind before he answers Trey, and the conversation is steered back into something more pleasant. Even Cody seems to snap right out of it, laughing at something his husband says, then jumping into some other tangent that has Pete back to cackling.

Anthony is back to stuffing his face, oblivious to wherever the conversation’s gone.

Or maybe he really is still listening to it all and just has a great poker face. Or feels guilty, knowing he’s the reason for Pete having to perform the Heimlich on me at all.

I keep catching myself looking at Anthony across the table, now and then forgetting my own plate. And the lingering thought still circling my brain after dinner’s over has nothing to do with who’s a hero or how pristinely Trey’s garlic toast came out.

It’s that I still can’t figure out why Anthony kissed me.

“Really? He kissed you?” Pete asks me later.

We’re on the back patio. Anthony and Trey are in the kitchen cleaning up—Anthony volunteered to help out, surprisingly. Cody is “likely busy exploding the bathroom”, according to Trey, which is a bit more information than anyone needed to hear. Crickets are going nuts out in the dark, and a battalion of moths and June bugs are having a party trying to fuck the light bulb on the porch.

And I just told Pete about my church rendezvous last night. “Likely sleep deprived and out of his mind, that was it,” I go on, my arms crossed, leaning against a post.

“Doubt that. Maybe the guy’s closeted and saw you as a way to finally express himself?”

“Guy looked like he’d been wrung ragged for days.” I shake my head. “Couldn’t even change a single light. I don’t know why Trey hired him.”

Pete shrugs. “Maybe it wasn’t for his abilities.”

“Then what? Trey pities him?”

“Is that such a bad thing?”

“You tell me. First time we met, he hated my guts. Then he’s either feeling me up or trying to kill me. And now he shows up tonight acting like nothing happened?”

“He wouldn’t be the first closeted small-town guy.”

“I don’t understand the first, second, or third thing going on in that boy’s head.” I peer back at the window, seeing Trey and Anthony together at the kitchen sink. “He’s … confusing.”

Pete’s hand appears on my shoulder, giving it a squeeze. “I did say you couldn’t tell, even if a guy literally threw himself at you.”

“What?”

“Thick as mud, man.”

I shrug his hand off of me. “If you’re still trying to imply that that guy scrubbing alfredo sauce off plates in there is into me, that these past several days, he hasn’t been torturing me, but has been hitting on me …”

“Dude. He literally just made out with you.”

“He’s got a girlfriend.”

“Did you confirm it’s his actual girlfriend and not just a friend ?”

“He’d sooner literally hit me than hit on me.”

“Maybe a smack on your ass, sure, but wouldn’t you like it?”

I snort. “Had my ass smacked enough by my dad as a kid. Don’t need any more of that. Good riddance to that miserable old man.”

“Heard Tony’s got a hard-ass dad, too. Or used to, before Trey worked his counseling magic on them.” He swats away a June bug from his face. “Maybe you two have some trauma in common or something. Y’know, daddy issues.”

“It’s Anthony, not Tony.”

“See? You’re already defending your boyfriend.”

I roll my eyes and glance back at the house. Cody has returned from the bathroom to join Trey and Anthony in the kitchen. The three of them are laughing. Anthony. Laughing. I haven’t seen it before. I didn’t know he’s capable of any positive emotion at all. Maybe it’s just made more possible with him still being buzzed.

Seeing Cody in there pulls my mind somewhere else. “So what was that between you guys earlier?” I ask Pete. “You and Cody?”

Now it’s he who’s put on the spot. “Huh?”

“At dinner. Before Anthony chimed in with his … wisdom, I guess we’ll call it. Cody brought up the IED incident. You got weird about him saving your life.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Like you were implying he shouldn’t have covered you. That he did the wrong thing.”

“Dunno what you’re talking about.” He moves to the opposite side of the porch, swatting at the air. “Fucking bugs, too na?ve to figure out the light bulb isn’t the sun or moon, it’s a damned lie.”

“Is that what this is?” I ask him, grasping at straws. “A lie? Are you a bug flying toward the light? Help me get what’s going on.”

“Nothing happened at dinner. Everything was fine.”

I come over to him. “What about that talk we had in the car ride here from the hotel? I thought you saw Cody as your savior … your hero. Now you’re acting like he’s not.”

“I’m not acting like anything.”

“You guys have been so chummy since we got here, like long-lost brothers. What’s changed? Do you resent him or something?”

“The fuck you going on about? I’m getting a beer.”

“Pete …” But he’s back inside. I watch through the window as he joins the others in the kitchen. Soon, all of them are laughing again. Even Anthony. A June bug buzzes past my face, smacks into the window, then drops dead on the ground by my feet.

The last and final time I stood up to my father, it was just before I enlisted, and I got right up in his face and told him he was never gonna raise his voice or a hand to my mom again. He held a glass of whiskey. I can still hear the ice clinking around in it as he staggered to the left, to the right, like it was the hardest thing for him to keep his eyes on me, as if I was a target that wouldn’t sit still, like a June bug, like a moth. I stared him down, and despite the brave front I put on, I was scared shitless, shaking inside, my mom and younger brother tucked behind me by the mantle of the fireplace, protected.

And then at once, my father broke down and cried. Sobbing. Inconsolable. Blubbering on and on unintelligibly, not making any damned sense. I just stood there and watched as he fell to pieces in front of me, unable to move, unable to even trust his tears. Even my mom, wrung out emotionally as she was, stayed right behind me, watching him as if he was nothing but a show on TV, detached and unreal, a scripted thing that was about to end.

I wonder if the words he was trying to form were an apology.

I’ll never know, because the next day, he left, and I never saw his sorry ass again.

I told my mom I didn’t feel right leaving then. She would be all alone. My brother was still in high school. Everything felt broken and uncertain. I feared Dad might come back.

But she told me: “I’m stronger than I look. And so are you.”

Those words have stuck inside me all these years. And every time I see my mom, how far she’s come, how confident she is now, I hear the words again, and I wonder if I’ve come as far as she has.

Or if I’m just another bug navigating its way around a patio light, confused every time my skull bumps into the bulb.

It’s by complete coincidence that I find myself in the kitchen just when Anthony is bent over fishing out another Dos Equis from the fridge. He slaps shut the door just as I appear, startling him.

I lift my eyebrows. “Another drink?”

His expression sours. “What? You keepin’ tally?”

“No. Just an innocent question.”

“There ain’t nothin’ innocent about you.” He cracks open the can and kicks it back.

I watch his Adam’s apple dance.

Then: “I respected what you said. At dinner.”

My words seem to bowl right over the guy, knocking every last one of his pins down as he pulls the can from his face.

“Don’t know what’s going on with them,” I go on, now that I got his full attention. “Pete and Cody. What kind of buried truths from six years ago the two of them might be avoiding digging up, but … your interjection, what you said … I thought that was nice.”

He squints back at me, looking either disgusted or confused.

I wonder for a second if he even remembers what he said. Or if all of this is going right over his head, and all he cares about in this moment is downing the rest of that Dos Equis.

Maybe everything he says and does is forgotten the second he says or does it. He’s a goldfish, bobbing through his life, unaware.

“I didn’t say it for you,” he finally grunts back at me.

“Doesn’t matter who you said it for. I still respected it.”

“Didn’t do it for your damned respect, either.”

Why does he have to be so fucking difficult all the time? “Is it really so hard to just take what I’m saying nicely? You don’t even have to thank me. I’m telling you I respected what you said.”

“And I’m tellin’ you …” He takes a step toward me and points at me using his can. I hear it slosh around inside. “I didn’t say any of that for your sake. I said it for theirs.”

“I’m sorry for spraying you with gasoline. Is that what you’ve been waiting to hear? It was an accident, but it was caused by my carelessness with the pump. I shouldn’t have done that.”

“Don’t care.” He takes another swig, right in my face, then focuses his half-lidded, drunken eyes on me. “Not even a little bit.”

My eyes narrow. His chest is inches from pressing into mine. His face so close, I can see his eyes twitching with agitation.

But I’m not yet convinced about the source of that agitation.

Nor why he added that last part in there— not even a little bit .

He’s staying right in my face for a reason.

And I wonder if that reason has anything to do with why he kissed me on that church floor.

He’s proven since day one that he loves provoking me. Daring me. But what is he daring me to do?

Then the words fly out: “Why’d you call my face pretty?”

I was wrong. He had more pins up. And those words are the ones that send every last one of them to the back, complete with the satisfying clatter of them being swallowed up into the pit.

Something kinda horrifying happens on his face. He looks like he either wants to cry, scream, or take a shit.

He sputters a ton of unintelligible nonsense before finally getting out the words, “There’s … s-s-somethin’ wrong with you. Whatever it is, I … I don’t want no part of it.”

“With me? Hey. It was just a simple question.” I drop my eyes to his beer, sneering. “Or you gonna need a few more of those in you before you can finally admit the answer? Is that it?”

Anthony nods, but it seems unrelated to what I just said, like he’s decided something. “Alright, that’s how it’s gonna be. Okay.” He empties the rest of the can down his throat, crushes it in his grip, then marches away from me, abruptly out of my face. “I’m outta here,” he announces to no one, or everyone.

Trey turns in his armchair. “Already?”

Anthony stops at the front foyer. “Whatever this was tonight, whatever it was you were tryin’ to do,” he grumbles back at him, his politeness gone, “it didn’t work, Trey, sorry, it just ain’t gonna happen. Hey, you and your pal,” he calls out at Cody and Pete on the couch, “you just forget all that shit I said earlier, my advice is worthless, I don’t know nothin’, I’m all talk, no walk, always been. Thanks for dinner.”

“Anthony,” tries Trey once more, but the guy is already out the door. He lets out a sigh, then glances over at me in the kitchen. For a second, I think he’s about to ask me what I said or did, but instead, the compassionate guy he is, he gently asks me, “Are you okay, Bridger?”

Pete and Cody are looking at me, too.

It’s like everyone in this damned house was in on the plan all along. All of them, just waiting for one of us to bury our hatchet.

Maybe I’m with Anthony on this one. It was a lost cause long before it started. What the hell were any of these guys thinking?

“Yeah, I’m …” I start to answer Trey, then can’t seem to find it in me to lie. I’m not okay. I’m not alright. Something in me feels deeply unfinished with Anthony and the way he left, something in me that just won’t let go.

My foot’s bouncing in place again. Barely noticed it start. I’m thinking about how I stood between my dad and my mom and little brother. Tony’s got a hard-ass dad, too , comes Pete’s words from the back patio, nagging me. I wonder if Anthony’s ever stood between his dad and his loved ones, if his home life was anything like mine growing up, if it still is. If there’s some reason he can’t even trust a compliment to his face. A reason he can’t even hold a conversation with me without his blood boiling. Is there something else he’s fighting that no one sees? Something that no one else can understand? And why am I the only one who seems to recognize it? It’s something I’ve recognized in myself. Something fighting to the surface. I’m so fuckin’ tired of your pretty face …

That secret kiss on the church floor, his breaths crashing and urgent and full of agonized longing …

The next second, I’m out of the kitchen—and the front door.