Page 28 of Hush

Doug wanted to meet, for coffee or drinks or a walk on the National Mall. He hesitated, saying he wasn’t ready yet, and Doug’s messages started dwindling.

He wished he was sorry about that.

Benjamin was a few years older than him, grayer than him, a lobbyist for an NGO focused on climate change. Afterhelloandhow are you, Benjamin flat out told him he was looking to marry and start a family by the end of the year. He wanted children, and his biological clock was ticking. He wanted to find a good man to be his husband and the father of their kids.

God, he wasn’t ready for that. From closeted to gay dad? That was a warp-speed leap he couldn’t quite make.

Mike slipped into his courtroom in the middle of the patent case, during the testimony of one of the software engineers describing what their specific line of code in the program did, and how they had created the code, and for what purpose.

Tom’s ears were bleeding and his eyeballs were crossing, and he was struggling not to prop his forehead in his palm and just give in to the tedium.

But then Mike was there, sitting in the back, listening to the double doctorate engineer and attorney string together indecipherable sentence after indecipherable sentence. He started to smile, and even from the bench, Tom could see the laughter in his deep blue gaze. He was supposed to be listening to the testimony, but his eyes kept flicking back to Mike.

Mike smiled, and he almost hurt himself holding back his own answering grin.

“Your Honor?” The plaintiff’s attorney politely tried to get his wandering attention back to the case.

“Yes, my apologies. Please continue, counselor.”

Mike ducked out silently.

He wished he could follow him, go wherever he went, stay by his side for the rest of the day, the rest of the week, the rest of the year. The rest of his life.

He had it bad. A bad crush that was going to crush him one day. Mike was going to find a new boyfriend sooner or later. A man like him… he didn’t stay single for long.

On that day, Tom was just going to have to listen to his own foolish mocking, his mind lambasting his heart with a thousandI told you so’s, and then scrape together the shattered remnants of his dignity, pluck out the slivers of his broken heart, and get on with his life.

Chapter 8

June 12th

Until then, though, he still fantasized. Mike was a mosquito light, and he was the helpless bug pulled towards Mike’s brilliance. It was going to burn, in the end, but it would be worth it for the ride.

He padded down the hallway toward Mike’s office after Peggy said goodnight and her heels click-clacked down the corridor. Judge Juarez and Judge King always left before four-thirty PM, and Chief Judge Fink usually called it a day around three. Danny had skateboarded out of there a few minutes before Peggy.

Tom slouched against Mike’s doorframe and shoved his hands in his pockets. He’d left his suit jacket over the back of his desk chair and had loosened his tie sometime after five. Some of his hair was probably sticking up from when he’d run his hands through it after finally escaping the last testimony of the patent case. He most likely looked like a dork.

But, Mike grinned when he saw him, looking up from his computer monitor. “Hey, Your Honor. You lived through another day of the patent case?”

“Barely. Just barely.” He whistled, gazing at the confines of Mike’s minuscule office. “This really is tiny. Are you sure it’s even an office?” If Mike spread his elbows, he could touch both walls.

“We marshals don’t get grand chambers like you fancy judges. They designed this office for us, unless they wired a custodial closet for internet and phone access.”

“That’s not right.”

“I think it’s to encourage us to get into the courtrooms. But…” Mike sighed. “That means I end up falling behind on paperwork more often than not. Winters is barking at me about my missing trial reports.”

“Trial reports?”

“Gotta file reports on all of the high-risk trials. Judge Juarez’s, yours. An after-action brief. Just describing what happened—or what didn’t happen, in this case.” Mike leaned forward, crossing his arms over messy piles of papers and lopsided stacks of folders. Sticky notes clung to the walls and the edges of his computer monitor, and waved like flags off the edges of his desk. “What’s up, Judge Brewer?”

He could stand here and talk to Mike all night long and be as happy as a pig in mud. But, he shrugged and rested his head on the doorjamb. “I was going to grab a drink. Celebrate the final day of patent purgatory. Want to join me?” He held his breath.

Mike laughed, tilting his head back. His Adam’s apple jutted from his tanned neck, sharp-angled and dusted with a five o’clock shadow. Tom wanted to bury his face in Mike’s neck, breathe him in, lick his way down his throat to the hollow of his collarbones, the fur of his chest. He must be furred, must have beautiful chest hair to go with that great body, those broad shoulders and slim hips.

“Only if you twist my arm, Judge B.” Winking, Mike stood, powering down his monitors and flipping a file folder closed.

They ambled out, stopping for Tom to grab his jacket and briefcase, and then headed down the center staircase to the ground floor. Mike was relaxed again, laughing and teasing Tom about the patent case, about his valiant ability to survive the dregs of technical testimony.