Page 12 of Hush

He’d stumbled, fumbled. “What are you talking about?” he’d finally muttered. “I want to be a prosecutor—”

“Not with that lifestyle choice, you won’t.” His professor had handed back his legal brief, a giantDwritten on the front. His first. “Your law schools have already been notified.”

“What?”

“You’re not going to be a serious attorney, Tom. You might not even live long enough to graduate law school, what with your lifestyle. Why waste the slot on you?”

1991. He’d spent the rest of his final undergraduate year in a daze. Days and nights blended together, a smear of shame and self-flagellation. He blinked, and a month passed. Peter disappeared.

He built a wall around himself, removing every part and piece of him from the public eye. He sent letters to Cornell and Columbia, Harvard and NYU, declining his admission to their law schools. His professor seemed smug, radiated smugness, seemed to live in a swirling maelstrom of it, secure in his knowledge that he was right about Tom. He was oh-so-right.

1992 came and went. He worked as a paralegal in DC, working 80-hour weeks and living in the basement sublease of an older couple with three yippy dogs. They growled at him every time they saw him.

He had no time for a life. No time for fun.

And he built his wall higher.

His plan restarted then. He’d always had a plan, and he’d always followed it. He was going to be top of his class in high school. He was going to get into a prestigious undergraduate school. Graduate top of his class, and earn acceptance to the top law schools in the nation.

He never planned to be outed by his professor, painted with stripes of shame like he was a criminal, like he should walk around with a scarlet letter on his clothes. A pink H, perhaps? Or go all the way back and bring out the old pink triangles.

He was labeled a homosexual and his future was ripped from him.

So he relabeled his life. Refashioned his identity.

If he couldn’t have the life he plannedandbe gay, then he couldn’t be gay.

A year later, he was accepted into Georgetown Law, and a prim, proper, and perfunctory Tom Brewer strode up the steps. He planned to graduate top of his class. Planned to work as a prosecutor after clerking in the DC federal courthouse.

Nineteen years as an AUSA for the DC federal district. He had the life he’d planned.

His nomination to the federal bench caught him by surprise.

That was unexpected.

He’d leapfrogged over Dylan Ballard, the United States Attorney, the lead prosecutor appointed by the previous president for the DC federal district. He’d never seen eye to eye with Ballard, but his appointment—over Ballard, instead of Ballard—had chilled their relationship to near-arctic temperatures. They still hadn’t spoken, a full year later.

After five rounds of vetting, more paperwork than he’d ever seen, and a background investigation by the FBI that kept him awake for a solid six weeks, he got the call that the Senate had confirmed him and twelve others as brand new baby federal judges across the U.S.

And not a word was spoken of his deepest, darkest secret.

Who knew anymore, though? His old professor, a bitter, nasty man, had died. He’d hung onto life for ninety-eight miserable years and refused to die just to keep raining spite on the world. He taught until the month before he died, full of vinegar and malice to the end.

And Peter, his one boyfriend, his one lover ever, had disappeared. None of the men he danced with ever bothered to learn even his first name. And, thank God he was young and dumb before the advent of cell phones and social media immortality.

He was, to the world, exactly what he’d remade himself as: Tom Brewer—now Judge Tom Brewer—dedicated to a life of civil service. A valiant defender of the law, pursuer of justice. He foreswore relationships due to the fiery purity of his convictions, his steadfast dedication to the pursuit of truth, justice, and the American way. Defending justice left no time for love. He was a warrior of the law.

He was a terrified gay man, hiding in plain sight, locked in the closet of his own fears. Velvet rage thundered through his veins, and he watched the generations of gay men who grew up after him live open lives, seize their futures, be proud of themselves and their partners. How many openly gay attorneys had he served beside in the years after 1991?

Things were different, these days.

Mike was, obviously, openly gay. Secure enough to show his judge a picture of him and his boyfriend.Ex-boyfriend.

He’d never heard a rumor. Never heard a hushed whisper or a sideways comment. Not even a squeak.

Sighing, he folded over his counter, bracing his elbows on the cool granite. His house was a shrine to a life half-lived, hours he’d spent perfecting his DC townhome—in the poshest zip code—as an abattoir of empty dreams. He’d never planned to share his home with anyone, but he’d built everything for two. Two barstools. A kitchen nook for two, cozy and loving. A leather chair large enough to cuddle in, beside a quaint fireplace. Everything in twos, two by two by two, like he was mocking himself every day with the thought, the hope, the dream he could never have.

He spent his nights in a bed big enough for him and another. There was practically dust on the unused side of the bed, though. Empty space for a man who would never exist.