Page 74 of Sean's Sunshine

Sean squeezed his hand. “You’d tell me, right?”

Billy felt the tears, which he thought he’d vanquished, burn at the back of his eyes again. “Yeah, but not tonight, okay? Tomorrow, after school.” The thought comforted him. It wasn’t that he thought Sean would forget; he just thought that maybe the whole thing would feel less dire, less impossible choice, if he only had a little bit of sleep under his head and his paper turned in.

“Promise?”

Billy smiled. That promise, at least, would be easy to keep. “Sure. You like being bored.”

“You’re never boring,” Sean mumbled. “Night, Guillermo Morales.”

His own name—it was a balm to his heart. “Night, Sean Kryzynski.”

That’s all he remembered until morning.

THE NEXTday he beat Sean to the shower and had breakfast on the table for him before he left. Sean had looked at the egg frittata and grimaced.

“You know, I can cook for myself, especially when you’re not eating.”

“Yeah, I know. I love your guilt. It feeds me like my mother’s enchilada casserole—mm-mm-mm, so filling.” He rubbed his stomach to emphasize the point.

Sean squinted at him, and if he’d been a dog, his ears would have been pinned back in irritation. “As soon as you run out of here with your coffee-no-cream, I’m putting cheese on this. Gooey, drippy cheese.Mmmmmm….”

Billy’s eyes narrowed. “Now you’re playing mean.”

Sean stood and moved to the cupboard. “Yeah, and I’m so mean I’m going to show you where the good thermos is. That one you’ve been using doesn’t stay hot, and it only holds a cup or so. This one holds three, and it’ll be hot until you get back.” He paused in the act of reaching up, and Billy watched him assess his body, making sure that was the smart thing to do. Carefully, he stood on his tiptoes and reached again, grabbed the thermos easily, and turned around with a look of triumph on his face.

Billy took in that joy and swallowed unhappily, hating himself for what he was thinking.

“What’s wrong?” Sean asked.

“You don’t need me,” Billy said gruffly. “You can even drive again. I’m taking rideshare today. You… you could do everything here yourself.”

At that moment Poppy ran into the room from his blanket, where he’d apparently stayed, and started scratching at Sean’s pantleg. Without thinking, Billy scooped him up, ready to take him outside before he bolted from the house, but Sean took him instead. The action brought them close—as close as they were when Billy helped him stand up with Sean’s arms around his neck.

“I do need you,” Sean whispered. “Just in a totally different way.”

Billy opened his mouth to refute him, to be cynical and snarky and stupid, but Sean pressed their mouths together, the dog in the middle, and pulled away, whispering, “You have to go. But I need you to come back. I need to find out why you’re sad. I need you to kiss me again. Okay?”

And Billy nodded dumbly while Sean took Poppy to the side yard and left him to pack a really big, really nice thermos with an entire pot of coffee with sugar.

At the last minute, Billy threw in a dollop of cream. He’d missed cream since he’d started showing his body off for a living. Suddenly, that dollop of cream was the only thing getting him out the door.

He paused by the sliding glass door to the side yard to see Sean, crouched down as he couldn’t have been six weeks earlier, rubbing the little dog’s stomach. He’d done it strategically. There was a small patio set out there, and he was close enough to the chair to use it for balance as he stood. Billy smiled at him.

“Don’t spend too much time in the shade, papi,” he called through the screen. “You can still catch cold.”

“Good luck on your paper,” Sean called back—not loudly, but he could breathe enough to be heard. “See you in a bit.”

Billy practically jogged to his car, wondering at the uneasy feeling in his stomach.

HIS HUMANITIESclass was his third class of the day, right after lunch, and the students were like the walking dead. The professor was funny and dry, as always, but Billy could see the midterm blues haunting the exhausted eyes of all his students as they tried desperately to take notes. Curtis sat in the desk behind him, and he kept poking Billy with his pen whenever he nodded off.

The clatter at the doorway was enough to wake the dead, though, and he and Curtis met eyes as a cop, fully decked in SWAT gear, barked at their professor.

“We need everybody to clear out. Don’t run, don’t panic, just go to your cars in the front parking lot or cross the street to where the busses are and go. Grab your stuff and leave. Now.”

Billy’s stomach sank to his toes as Curtis said, “Today? You don’t have the super cartoday?”

“He was going to drive to the park!” Billy muttered, but he was pulling out his phone as they went.