The Drip is technically close enough to walk to, but Ari spends too much time in front of the mirror and ends up having to drive to make it on time. He’s jittery enough when he opens the door of the coffee shop that he knows caffeine is the last thing he needs. He orders anyway. 

Black coffee, which he made himself learn to enjoy years ago; low-fat.

Marcel is seated, waiting and watching. In a dove gray suit that was obviously made just for him, based on how it sits against his lean frame. 

Marcel, with brown skin nearly the same shade as Ari’s—two of the seven male examples Gold Coast Management can point to for proof of diversity. Six now, since Marcel has effectively aged out and become an agent. 

The same pale green eyes that won him so many headshot gigs track over Ari as he sits. Ari can only imagine the ways he’s falling short physically today. Sure enough: “You look tired,” Marcel says. 

Instead of replying, Ari takes a scalding sip of his drink, in a to-go cup so he can get out of here as quickly as possible. 

“Contract negotiations coming up.” Marcel’s wrist bones mound beneath his skin as he touches the tips of his fingers together. He enunciates the next part: “And you look tired.”

“I’m usually sleeping right about now.”

“I’m not only talking about now.”

Ari drops eye contact as he takes another gulp. Tired means old means saggy means fat. 

Marcel speaks again. “If you pull your shit together, I can probably get you six months before they boot you to commercial.” There isn’t any camaraderie in his posture or tone, no revealing he knows everything of the grueling demands, the sleazy photographers, the starvation of body and mind. Marcel practically killed himself alongside Ari to stay worthy of runways, but you wouldn’t guess it now. 

Another sip, knocking the coffee back timed with a new spike of worry. He’s almost twenty-seven and found his first gray hair this morning. The end of his current contract is just months away. He’s getting married in a week. Starting a real life. If he steps away now, will the drop be too far?

This time, it’s Adam’s reminder in his head, soft and sweet: You are so much more than what your career has made you think.

Ari nods privately, made more sturdy by even the barest hint of Adam. He makes himself put the coffee down and slide it away a few inches, then clasps his hands in his lap so their trembling doesn’t give away his nerves. He meets Marcel’s gaze. The same shape and color as Isaiah’s.

“I’m going to let my contract run out,” Ari says, “then I’m going to try out a new line of work.”

Marcel’s lips part, and there’s a flash of something in his eyes Ari can’t define. “Agenting?” Marcel asks. 

Ari shakes his head. “Something else.” 

The idea is still too new to share specifics, though Ramona helped him brainstorm a ton. “You’d need more than just you,” she’d said. “Would others be willing to talk?” And Ari could name at least three he was sure about.

Marcel frowns. “Okay.” It seems like he’s lost steam. “I’ll let Maude know.” 

“Thanks.” Ari reaches for his drink again, and it’s easier to do so. Already, the ice is beginning to crack. 

Marcel’s eyes drop to Ari’s hand, and he raises a brow. “Congrats are in order?”

Ari automatically fiddles with the gold band around his left ring finger, still unused to it. The anxiety that started off his morning returns as he remembers the first text. “Yeah,” he says distantly. “Next Saturday, actually.” He needs to call Cal and put a stop to things before ruining them forever. 

It takes him a moment to understand what Marcel has just said. “Isaiah said you’ve been seeing someone for a while now.” 

There doesn’t sound like any hostility in Marcel’s tone, as Ari figured. Marcel was one of many who bagged on his younger brother and Ari hooking up; neither was good for the other. 

Ari opens his mouth to reply, but only ends up nodding. He likes to keep Adam separate from the pain of his job whenever possible. “Gotta head out.”

Marcel sits back with a wave of his hand, shooing Ari off. 

***

Cal answers quickly, and with a chuckle. “Having second thoughts, my boy?”

Ari tugs open the driver’s side door of his Audi, catching a glimpse of his reflection as he goes; he does look tired. Old, too. “It’s just— With Lois’s text the other day, it seems like they’re finally getting ready to patch things up, and I’m gonna fuck it all up with this letter.”

“There is nothing cruel in your intention,” Cal says, and Ari is grateful for his patience considering how many times he’s had to talk Ari through this. “You are simply sharing with the Hughes family that their son is getting married.”

Ari slouches in the driver’s seat, watching his Monterey Heights corner of the city wake up. “But that’s, like, a major bomb to drop. I don’t want to be the reason Adam’s relationship with his family is ruined forever.”

“Oh, Ari.” Cal’s voice is kind. “Adam is an adult who has chosen to continue his life with you by his side. It is truly admirable that you are reaching out to invite his family; it speaks to how much you care for Adam. And whether nothing comes of it or there’s offense taken or it serves as an olive branch, know that you offered from a place of kindness, and they are choosing how to react.”  

Ari sits with the response, adjusting his hat as he does. What Cal is saying makes sense, but Ari is the one with direct access to Adam in some of his quietest moments, when the grief over his family’s absence is clear. He was also there when Adam received a text from his mom the day after they decided to make the leap to marriage. A simple I think about you every day, the first contact in more than a year, and one that had Adam breaking down, Ari helpless but to watch.

His self-consciousness whispered that he’s the problem. 

“Rebecca will take the letter over this afternoon,” Cal is saying. “With some persimmon pudding we’re making. She and Lois are friendly. It’ll be completely fine. Don’t let it affect your wedding planning, let alone the day itself.”

Ari nods, making himself believe. He starts his car. “Thanks, Cal. You’re the best. Hope you’re having fun in Utah.”

“Plenty of fun. I’ll be in touch.”

***

Ari’s nani is eighty-six years old, and an accomplished texter. That, plus the fact that she positively adores Adam, means Ari opens his phone after spin class to find eighteen messages and counting from the woman.

Her focus today is wardrobe. She’s sent him numerous photos of jewel-toned sherwani options, plus comments like, The cut here would show off your shoulders nicely, and This blue would bring out the gold in Adam’s skin tone when he’s standing next to you, and It brings tears to my eyes, knowing you two are committing yourselves to each other. I only wish I could be there! and If your mother had eloped I don’t know how I would have survived. 

Ari replies with a grimace. His family has spent the past week showering him with pleas to do something, anything to celebrate his marriage, to dull the elopement pain. 

Still no news from Cal by four o’clock, and Ari feels every second. He’s showered and standing in front of an open fridge, staring at its contents blankly and considering how a second spin class, or maybe a five-mile run, would get him moving and out of his head when his phone chimes from the couch. 

He lunges, heart in his throat. 

Letter delivered, Cal’s texted. Lois took it well, and Rebecca left quickly. 

Ari gets no further in his reply than a thumbs up before Adam is calling. 

***

He opens the door to a stack of boxes. Adam turns slightly, arms straining and right cheek smashed against the cardboard. Ari can’t help it; he laughs. The same half-giddy sound he always makes when he sees Adam, even a year into this.

“I think I might have too many books,” Adam says, the words as squashed as his face.

Ari holds up his phone to take a picture—new screensaver, for sure—then frees his fiancé of two of the boxes. “C’mon, I started a new stack in my room.”

By the time they make it back to the kitchen, where the Mexican food Ari DoorDashed waits in styrofoam containers, Ari has his arms around Adam’s waist, chest against his back, closer than a shadow with every step.

“Conference wrapped up okay, then?” he asks. “You know how to handle writing news stories in a hospitable landscape?”

“Hostile landscape,” Adam replies, “and yes, in theory.” He turns in Ari’s arms for a quick kiss. “I missed you.”

“Ditto. Another day and I would’ve lost my mind.”

They eat, and Ari fills Adam in on his meeting with Marcel, and his latest plans for speaking out about the dark side of the modeling industry. “Ramona had the same idea you did about doing a podcast. She also said a YouTube series could be super effective. She’d help me push it out. Maybe even do a season two on the dark side of influencing.”

“YouTube would be more powerful, considering the visual appeal,” Adam agrees, spoon twirling refried beans. “Everyone loves hearing about the inner workings and drama of attractive people’s lives.”

Ari nudges Adam’s foot with his. “‘People’?”

Adam covers his mouth as he chews, cheeks pulled back in a smile. “Person.”

It isn’t until they’re on their after-dinner stroll, bundled in jackets, that Ari brings up his elephant in the room. “Any more texts from your mom?”

Even though Adam’s conference was in the city, it was a sun-up to well past sun-down affair. They exchanged only a few texts and one rushed call the second night before Adam was dragged out for networking (“My nightmare,” he’d told Ari). So though Ari’s question is specifically meant for the post-letter delivery timeframe, he’s also curious in general.

Adam’s gaze flits to him, then back to the sidewalk, smile wilted. His tousled hair looks brown under the streetlights. “Nothing yet. Not since I replied. But I’m still hopeful.”

A car passes, then a second one, whooshing by across the pavement, which is damp from earlier rainfall. Ari wrestles with what to say, whether or not to tell Adam about the letter. Give him hope? Make him mad? Ruin everything, all in a day’s work?

He comes clean as they’re wiping their shoes off on the front doormat and stepping inside. The tip of Adam’s nose is tinged red from the cold. “Movie?” he asks.

“Uh, yeah,” Ari says, hanging his jacket on a hook by the door. “But can I, like, say something first?”

Adam goes completely still for a split second, and Ari watches as he visibly makes himself relax, shoulders dropping, fingers pulling at the cuff of one of his sleeves. “Of course.”

They sit on the couch as Ari explains—about his worries over Adam being lonely on his wedding day; about how he wanted to ask, just ask, for at least one Hughes to come; about the letter and Cal’s daughter’s delivery.

Adam stays quiet, looking down at his hands, where a ring to match Ari’s sits. There had been too much excitement between them to limit neither or only one to an engagement band. 

Ari shifts, waiting for Adam to respond. While Adam doesn’t exactly run off after arguments or info-dumps anymore, he does stay silent for way longer than is comfortable.

Finally, after what feels like hours, Adam says, “I invited my family, too. In the text back to my mom.” He looks up at Ari, chin wobbling only slightly as his lips twitch into a small smile. “I guess they can’t say they misplaced the invitation if they got two of them. Did…did you say anything else?”

“That I see how much you miss them,” Ari says without hesitating. “That your goodness is so much more than your church’s expectations of sexuality.” He drops his voice. “That you’re the love of my life.”

Adam’s inhale stutters as he reaches for Ari, and Ari reacts like a horse out the gate, on him almost immediately, half crazed by his raw animal wanting of Adam and the fact that he’ll do anything to keep Adam from crying. 

Adam rises up to meet him, finding Ari’s mouth with a sigh. They’ve been good, maddeningly chaste, even with the few hiccups Ari has committed to memory for when he’s desperate to get off. Like that one time in the hot tub up at the Taylors’ Tahoe cabin, Adam’s eyes wide as he explored Ari’s body by touch. Or Adam’s birthday: Ari’s hand down his pants, the hitch of Adam’s breath as his pleasure was stoked higher. 

There’s an internal clock glued to the inside of Ari’s brain when it comes to this stuff, full of various countdowns: go mode; maybe start to cool it; oh, okay, he’s into going further; and if one of you doesn’t stop now, you’re going all the way and Adam will be guilt ridden for weeks maybe months over it.

They get as far as oh, okay, he’s into going further, Ari starting to grind against Adam, when he feels Adam stiffen.

“Sorry, sorry,” Adam says as Ari pulls away. He looks properly wrecked, lying there, hair a mess, mouth used, breathing as hard as Ari. “But we should celebrate. Getting married. I want to. Of course I want to.”

Ari sits back and adjusts himself, simultaneously demanding his body chill out and his brain come back online. “Even if it’s ninety-nine percent Baniks? They get really into dancing once there’s alcohol in their system.”

The smile Adam gives him is one of his brightest. “Don’t I know it.” He pokes Ari’s side with his foot, leading to a part-wrestling, part-tickling session that ends up on the floor. 

Ari lets Adam win—Ari on his back, Adam straddling his hips, their fingers laced on either side of Ari’s head. 

They don’t speak right away, just watch one another, smiles slowly fading. 

“I do miss my family,” Adam finally says. “Some days more than others. But I also love you. Every day more and more. I want to spend forever with you. Those things can exist at the same time.”

“It’s enough?” Ari asks, suddenly raw with the vulnerability of it—of leaving his career, of asking Adam to trust him to figure his life out, to give Ari his future. “Being with me?”

Adam frees one hand to cup Ari’s jaw. His eyes, the color of warm honey, have a way of suspending time in Ari’s world. 

He nods. “It’s everything.”