Chance to Make it Real

by S.N. Kastle

Josh and Sam work together and fall in love, lose touch and find themselves. A first-time story. Also, the next time, the time after that, and the time they got it right. Not necessarily in that order.

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Sam
2001.

You can hide 'neath your covers
And study your pain
Make crosses from your lovers
Throw roses in the rain
Waste your summer praying in vain
For a savior to rise from these streets

BACK BEFORE HE and Josh had taken all of about a minute to make the
worst decision of their lives, Sam had known how to spot a compromise.
Sometimes he'd been wrong about how much the deal was worth, but he'd
always recognized the transaction for what it was. That was before he'd
learned to be vague about the things that mattered most, before he'd
fucked everything up.

Sam had once thought he would go to Harvard, had been sure of it
since he was 12 and his father had grudgingly admitted that USC, his own
alma mater, was not exactly the Harvard of the West. The thin envelope
had been a quiet disaster made loud by the downturn of his father's
mouth, and Sam had never quite regained the ground lost to that
disappointment. Which was nothing compared to his mother's sickened
shock that summer after graduation, when she'd walked into Sam's room
and found him with their Spanish exchange student, Marco. Her
expression had been so still, so devastating, that he'd begun to think
that she had turned to stone. Then she'd turned around and closed the
door behind her. When Sam tried to explain -- they had been comparing
scars, he'd said in his head, preparing the speech -- she had blithely
insisted that she didn't know what he was talking about.

And Sam had been sure several times that he was going to get
married, that he would find the stability that his parents so fervently
desired for him. But then Miranda decided she was a lesbian after all,
and he and Krissy never would have made it past planning the rehearsal
dinner, and Lisa... Lisa had decided that running off to New Hampshire
in the company of his old friend Josh meant he really was an incurable
faggot after all, a conclusion that -- having found the two of them
tossing a week's worth of clothes into a duffel bag, laughing and
counting shots like it was a game of one-on-one -- she chose to share
with their co-op neighbors and half of Manhattan by yelling down the
hall as they left.

"I'm sorry," Sam had said to Josh. If he could just get it right,
he could finally stop apologizing for all the things he could have done
better, for having thrown so much of their time away. "I'm sorry," he
had said again as they'd pulled out of the parking garage. "She runs
out of adjectives pretty quick."

It was weakly offered explanation, to which Josh had nodded slowly
and said, "Yeah," like he'd remembered something else, like it had been
the start of a sentence or something more significant, but then their
momentum had been halted by a homeless woman shrieking at the
intersection of 96th and Lex.

Sam's apartment had grown dark around him, and there was this
repetitive banging noise coming from the street. He flipped on a lamp,
crossed to the door and heard Josh's muffled voice. "Are you in there
or what?" Josh yelled, and Sam wrestled with the knob. When the door
popped open, he almost hit himself, and Josh came within an eighth of an
inch of knocking once more, right on Sam's forehead. They each took a
step away, and Josh backed off the stoop but didn't fall down.

"D.C. cellular sucks, man," Josh said, rearranging his limbs like
nothing had happened. "Where have you been? I've been calling and
calling, and it's just been busy. I thought you'd gotten DSL."

"Yeah," Sam said, moving out of the way.

"Yeah?" Josh had dropped his overcoat on the couch and was digging
around in the small kitchen's refrigerator, finally emerging with a beer
in each hand, which he held up victoriously in a mock-Nixon wave. Sam
had been living in the townhouse since a week before the inauguration,
and Josh always acted like he lived there, too, taking what he wanted
from the fridge, from the cabinets, turning on the TV without asking
what Sam wanted to watch. And then Josh went home at the end of the
night, and Sam usually slept alone. "So why was your phone busy?"

Sam looked down at his hand, saw he was holding the black cordless
phone from the bedroom. "I guess I forgot to hang it up," he said,
shrugging. He wondered if he had that stone-statue look that his mom
had perfected over the years. He wondered what she'd looked like when
the delivery guys realized they'd sent the bedroom set to the billing
address instead of the apartment she hadn't known existed, and if his
dad had had a reason. His dad had always had a reason -- not an excuse,
he would say, they're not the same thing. No room in that house for
excuses. At least now they knew why.

Josh set the beers on the counter and gave him a hard, serious
look. "What's going on?"

"What?" Sam's ears were buzzing, the operator's voice rattled in
his skull, and his foot was asleep. He flexed his toes and looked at
the Sam Adams bottle, trying to decide if he was thirsty or if he even
liked the taste of beer anymore.

"What's wrong?" Josh ducked his neck a little, trying to catch
Sam's eye. Sam looked away.

"Nothing." Sam wanted to put his head down and go to sleep. But
the question of whether or not he liked beer wouldn't let him alone,
worried at the edge of his cognitive skills and prevented his escape.
It was in his fridge, so he'd probably purchased it himself. So he must
like it. But he couldn't be sure. It could have been there for Josh.

"*Sam*." Sam's head snapped up and he stared at the middle of
Josh's chest, the place that had had a big hole a few months before,
when everything really had changed in an instant. Josh sounded the way
he did when somebody made a horrible mistake. He never used that tone
of voice with Sam, even when Sam was ruining everything, even when Sam
was standing in a hospital and couldn't figure out the right things to
say, the only sounds from beeping and wheezing machines. "What the hell
is happening?"

Sam put the phone down on the counter and took a sip of the beer.
It was reassuringly bitter, like the day had been. He finally met
Josh's eye and located a few of the words he could remember well enough
to speak aloud. "Nothing new," he said, and Josh flinched, and it was
possible Josh thought he meant about them, but he didn't, not really.

"What are you talking about?" Josh sounded scared, or maybe
angry. Sam wondered if he should be scared, too. Sam took another sip,
because the bottle was in his hand. He recalled as if from far away
that icy beer on a hot day could be the most refreshing drink. But it
was February. And his hands felt cold.

"I just..." Sam started to explain about the beer, about the cold,
about the black phone that he wished he'd never answered. "I'm sorry,"
he said instead, because excuses only satisfied the ones who made them.
"I don't think I can talk about this."

"Are -- are you okay?" Josh asked, and Sam remembered when they
hadn't had to ask that kind of question.

"I'm sorry."

Josh shook his head. "No, just... What's going on?"

Sam took a long swallow, wished he had a long-necked bottle so that
he could tilt it up and flash a smile at Josh like they were in some
bar, like he just had to figure out the best way to start a conversation
with an intriguing guy. That was the real purpose of beer. He tried to
smile. Josh reached out and touched Sam's hand and the transference of
warmth from Josh's skin to his own was like a jump-start. "I just -- I
found out -- my mother called..."

"Oh, God. Is it your dad?"

Sam nodded. He wished Josh would guess it all, so he could just
keep nodding and not open his mouth again. But now Josh had a glassy
look in his eyes and Sam could taste the fried chicken he'd eaten in
Illinois before they were dancing, before Donna grabbed Josh's arm and
told them why Josh's dad hadn't been answering the phone. "No, I mean,
not that," Sam said, feeling like an asshole. "He's okay. Well, not
okay, but he's fine."

Josh cleared his throat and closed his eyes for a second, as if,
because he couldn't see, the pain wasn't so evident on his face. Sam
pulled his fingers out from under Josh's hand, which he turned over like
a fallen leaf to let their palms rest against each other. "Sam?" Josh
was quieter now. "Sit down."

"Why?"

"Because you're, uh, you should tell me what's going on."

On the long list of ideals and people Sam had failed in his life by
compromising at all the wrong moments, Josh was first, and most of it
had been because they'd never talked about what was going on, not
really. He wasn't sure they could start now, even if the possibility
that Josh could help him forget for a while was tempting. Sam moved his
hand away. "Why should I sit down?"

"Because I'm, uh, starting to worry that you might, like, fall
over."

"Would you catch me?" Sam asked, hating how much he sounded like
his father, asking some stupid, redundant question. Once, when his mom
had been visiting and he and Lisa were fighting, she'd said, "You're
just like your dad." And he'd been confused, but vaguely proud.
Because there were a lot of ways that he was nothing like his dad,
especially after all those years. He hadn't been back to California
since Super Tuesday, except for work, because there were too many long
silences around the dinner table, too many moments when Sam thought
maybe his dad knew exactly what Sam had made of his life.

Josh nodded slowly, seriously. "I'd try," he said, before smiling
a little and stepping out from behind the counter. "But you might
injure something vital first. Come on, sit down."

Sam let Josh lead him by the elbow to his couch, and he let Josh
put an arm around him, because without the counter it seemed more likely
that he might actually fall. Sam sat there stiffly until he could
breathe in and out without thinking he might actually cry, and then let
himself lean into Josh's chest. He told the story in short, staccato
sentences: "Apartment." "Girlfriend." "Twenty-eight years." Josh
tightened his grip on Sam's shoulders and rubbed the back of his neck.

Sam exhaled, a deep Josh-sigh full of regret and lost years and the
taste of flat beer and cold fruit. Somehow, during a minute when he
hadn't been paying quite so much attention to his surroundings, he and
Josh had managed to convince themselves that there were more important
things, like running for president. And nothing had been the same
since, and it all defied reason.

"It's just, there are certain things you're sure of," Sam said,
feeling the steady rumble of Josh's patched heart through the wool suit
jacket.

"Yeah," Josh said, his voice distorted and sonorous. "Like
longitude and latitude."

"Yeah," Sam said, repeating that back to himself, knowing it was
something he could remember.

Josh
1997.

Well now I'm no hero
That's understood
All the redemption I can offer
Is beneath this dirty hood
With a chance to make it good somehow
Hey what else can we do now?
Except roll down the window
And let the wind blow
Back your hair

THE DRIVE TO New Hampshire had been the longest 250 miles of Josh's
life. First they'd had to get out of the city, two hours of riding
bumpers and grinding gears inch-by-inch just to hit Westchester, which
put them in the heart of hellish I-95 Friday traffic under cover of a
spitting and sputtering storm. The rain clouds faded into a deepening
dusk and eventually a clear, starry sky glowed through the moonroof as
they circumvented Boston and caught I-3 where it split off to Nashua and
points beyond.

Later, Sam told Josh that he'd spent the night before toggling
between environmental disaster research and road maps that traced a
squiggling path up the Northeast coast, just in case he needed to make a
quick get-away. When he was a kid, Sam said, he had drawn a
10-year-old's sketch to navigate the suburban Scyllas between the
silences of his split-level three-bedroom and the Greyhound station --
neighborhood bullies and the house with a police cruiser parked out
front -- Just In Case. That was what he'd called the map, he'd
whispered sheepishly to Josh.

Just in case, Sam had figured out how to get to New Hampshire on
his own. Which was fortunate, because since their first abortive
attempt at apologetic conversation, they hadn't spoken a word. Not
one. At first, it had been kind of funny, like a game, like who would
blink first. And then Josh kept looking over at Sam, thinking that the
motion would be obvious in Sam's peripheral vision and he would turn and
say, "Hey," and all of it would be okay.

But Sam's hands were rigidly adhered at 10-and-2 and he kept
staring straight ahead as if the road might split open and swallow them
whole. As if the sleek Jeep Cherokee wouldn't protect them from the
nutcase weekenders. As if they had nothing to talk about.

When they passed the turnoff for his hometown, Josh almost asked
Sam to be let out. His parents would think he was nuts but they'd feed
him and let him spend the night and borrow a car. Because this -- this
part was all new to him, too, and *fuck* Sam for acting like Josh knew
what was supposed to happen next. Josh had thought that it would be
different this time, that the two guys voted most likely to bore their
girlfriends to death with incessant chatter might find just a few words
they could borrow for their own to talk about how everything had
changed. They'd give them back when they were done, he swore, if for
just two minutes they could admit they were both scared to death.

Yesterday, it had been easier. It had been three years and there
had been a lot that *wasn't* said, but they'd been able to conquer the
power of speech. Now they were in motion but silent like an old TV with
the sound turned off, like the end of The Graduate when Dustin Hoffman
and Katharine Ross were on the bus and seemed to realize that after all
that running around, they still had to find a way to make their lives
work together. He'd had an argument with his date at the film festival
in Cambridge, about how there was no way the panicked expressions the
characters had worn could be translated into a happy ending. He'd been
sure that if he had just the right look on his face when he tracked Sam
down again, they would somehow find themselves in New Hampshire and
happy together, all the rags of their other lives lying at their feet.

For a political strategist, he admitted to himself, closing his
eyes and letting the rumble of tread on asphalt rock him into a bleary
stupor, he could be unbelievably stupid about the way things actually
worked. He'd always considered it a strength -- that it was what
facilitated his undaunted leaps of faith, and that being so sporadically
fearless might be what made him brilliant in politics and not merely
good. But he wasn't feeling very smart just then. He was exhausted and
his skin itched and his suit felt like it had shrunk.

"You awake?" It was Sam, who hadn't lost his voice after all, and
everything would be okay if they were talking again. Josh sat up in his
seat, nodding. "We're in New Hampshire," Sam said, sounding somewhat
happy and a little tired.

Josh sounded a barbaric yawp and Sam actually laughed out loud.
This was where it was all going to start for real this time. Things
would make sense. "It's not far to Nashua," Josh said, squeezing the
arm rest and looking out the window over the fields lit by a half-moon.
He glanced at the clock. Eighteen minutes after midnight. Leo would
still be up when they got there. Josh had promised he was going to go
get them the world's best speechwriter, and he had.

And he had. He grinned widely at Sam, who cocked his head away
from the road for a moment to acknowledge his presence. Sam smiled
back, shifted his eyes to the rear view mirror. "Where are we going?"
Sam asked, as if maybe he was talking about more than just the road.

Josh couldn't remember the name of the hotel where the campaign
staff was staying. He wasn't sure he'd ever even asked, he'd blown out
of there so fast once he'd told Leo how right it all was, how he'd be
back with a secret weapon. "Uh..." Josh trailed off, afraid that the
wrong words might plunge them back into silence. "I should probably
call Leo." Sam nodded, pulled the cell off the charger between the
seats without looking and held the phone out in Josh's direction. When
he took it, their fingers touched briefly around the curved edges of the
plastic and nobody pulled back right away. Josh's hands shook a little
as he dialed. "Busy," he said aloud, hanging up.

"Well, there can't be that many hotels in a town the size of
Nashua," Sam said. "The population is only about 80,000." Josh wasn't
sure why he'd doubted that Sam could find the way. Sam always knew the
details, and his instinct about hotels was a nice little theory. They
went to the Best Western. The Econo-Lodge. And Marty's Seven-Dollar
Heaven, on the off-chance that Leo had lost both his mind and his
wallet. By then it was almost 2, and there were more places than they'd
thought, and Sam started calculating under his breath how many hotels
cities should have per capita. Leo's phone was still busy. Josh was
still waiting for his empty stomach to settle from the half-day spent
churning on the road.

He shook his head as he walked out of the third place, and he saw
Sam shrug through the front glass as the passenger-side window slid down
with an automatic hum. "Should we get a place to crash anyway?" Sam
asked, leaning across the seat. "We can find them tomorrow."

"Not here. The chick who helped me had dirt under her nails."

"So?"

"So I think she was also the cleaning woman. Let's go back to the
Best Western." Josh opened the door, climbed in. Sam hadn't really
moved back to his side and their shoulders collided as he settled into
the seat. "This isn't a sign," Josh said suddenly, needing to convince
them both.

"A sign?"

"You know," Josh said. "That this was, uh, a bad idea."

"It's not a sign."

"I know." Josh ducked his head and shook out his neck, not sure at
all.

"And it's not a bad idea, Josh. Seriously."

He sighed. "I know." He did. Hearing Sam say it made the
difference, though.

"We'll find them tomorrow."

"I know."

Sam leaned back, shifted the car into first and pulled out of the
circular driveway. Josh's window was still open and his hair blew in
the breeze manufactured by their movement down the road. He breathed
in, inhaling the smell of cut field-grass and maybe wheat, if he
actually knew what wheat smelled like and if they even grew it here. He
told himself that his eyes were wet because of his allergies and not
from some overwhelming sense that all was finally right in the world.

They cruised past an open diner and before he could raise the
suggestion, Sam was slowing down and making the turn. "We haven't
eaten," Sam said, and it was nice to let someone else decide. Josh
sniffed and blinked and nodded, still looking away. The restaurant was
empty except one night-shift cook and a young waitress with her blonde
hair in a ponytail. She waved her hands in the vicinity of the empty
dining room, looking for all the world like a spokesmodel at an auto
show. Josh wondered if she was registered to vote.

They settled into a booth by the window and ordered breakfast from
Steph, who had traded shifts with her boss and was still only 17, and
whose parents had walked precincts for Bartlet the first time he ran for
governor, she said. She didn't know where the campaign people were, but
she brought them hot, fresh coffee anyway.

"Every vote counts," Sam said. Steph carried over eggs and
pancakes and a newspaper. "Headquarters are in Manchester," she said,
pointing to an article. "You guys want real New Hampshire maple syrup?
I won't charge you extra."

"YOU DIDN'T CONSIDER that they could be in Manchester?" Sam was
enjoying this way too much. "You know, what with that being where he's
from and all?"

"Okay, yeah, very funny, we've established that I'm an idiot. Can
we just pay the bill and go get a room now?" Steph smiled at their
bickering. She thought they were cute, Josh realized, and then she
actually said so.

"Cute like a married couple, I mean," she said, like that cleared
things up. Josh let her have all the change even though it made a
ridiculously large tip and headed for the car.

At the Best Western, they left the Jeep in the parking lot, not the
driveway, and Josh sent Sam to check in. "I already woke the guy up
once," he said, plopping on the small couch in what passed for a lobby.
He picked at the taupe-and-blue paisley pattern, rolling nubs of pilled
fabric between his short nails and palm and trying not to fall asleep.

Sam called his name and pointed at the elevator and he somehow
managed to rise to the occasion. The doors opened at four -- probably
because Sam had pushed the button, Josh thought groggily -- and he
followed down the hall to the left. He'd avoided hotels for a while.
They felt too much like liaisons, like overpaid executives meeting
under-appreciated girlfriends between business meetings. Hotels were so
depressing and, if everything went as planned, he'd be living in one or
another for the next year. With Sam, no less.

Sam handed him a key. "Where's your room?" Josh asked, immediately
feeling sleazy for asking, like he was going to get drunk off the
mini-bar and come banging on the door at 5 a.m. Just because they were
finally alone together didn't mean that he hadn't walked away from what
they could have had years before, or that Sam would still want it, or
that either of them could so easily dismiss the reasons that some of the
letters went unanswered. Even if everything he'd done in the past 48
hours had been with Sam's voice in his head.

"Same as yours," Sam said. "I got us a double."

That woke him up. He wasn't so sure anymore where either the
conversation or night was heading, and he kind of wanted to be in charge
again. "Uh, on campaigns like this you usually get your own room."

"Well, I paid for a double --"

"A double bed?" His voice cracked. "Wow, go all out there, Sam."

"A double *room*. Typically furnished with two beds. You want to
go back there and wake the guy up again --"

"This is fine." It could be better than fine. What the hell had
just happened? He realized Sam had stopped walking and was standing in
front of a door, fumbling with the lock. Josh went back down the hall
toward him. "It's only for a few hours anyway," Josh said, "just so we
can shower and change and maybe take a nap." And he hadn't at all meant
it to sound that he assumed they'd be doing those things together, but
there wasn't a good way out of that one.

"Yeah." Sam opened the door to reveal a small room with two double
beds and one truly ugly painting of a grizzly bear hung above the center
nightstand. "Do you even have any other clothes?" Sam asked as Josh
dropped his backpack on the far bed.

"Uh-huh." Sam raised a questioning eyebrow. "On their way," Josh
said. "After I told Hoynes I was jumping ship I somehow convinced my
secretary --"

"Former secretary --"

Josh grinned. "Yeah," he said, and then swallowed his smile.
"Yeah, I, uh, convinced Janet to go to my place and pack some stuff."

"I hope you didn't have her send it to Nashua."

Yeah, that Sam, the one who never let him get away with just being
clever. Josh laughed to himself.

"You didn't, did you?" Sam asked.

"I told her to call Leo first."

"What a brilliant idea. You think he'll tell her to send the stuff
to Manchester?"

"Shut up."

"We sound like a married couple, Josh. Do you think that's a
problem?"

"I'm taking a shower," Josh said, scratching at his neck, not
answering because he figured it was his turn to be silent. "Do you
think they have acid rain in New York?"

"They have everything else."

When he got out of the shower, Sam was propped up on Josh's bed, or
the one he'd thought he claimed with his backpack, wearing dark red
boxers and a white, short-sleeved undershirt. He was watching Headline
News.

"There's nothing on," Sam said pre-emptively. "I checked."

"Is there, uh, something wrong with the other bed?"

"No."

"Oh."

"Oh -- the swivel thing on the TV stand is broken. I couldn't get
it to turn."

"'Kay." He walked around the bed Sam was sitting on and grabbed
his bag, taking it back with him to the other bed. Some red-headed
anchor, not Lynne Russell, a different one, was talking about nuclear
waste.

Josh was wearing the same boxers he'd had on for two days, since
he'd left D.C. at the crack of dawn on Tuesday morning, and even having
rinsed the sludge from his hair he felt a little grimy. But he'd shaved
on auto-pilot, and he suddenly remembered a clean shirt in his backpack,
which was only a little damp from when the bag had been soaked through.
He sat on the edge of the bed as he pulled the soft cotton over his
head, sucked in his gut a little and tried not to feel old and worn.
The red L.E.D. of the alarm clock read 3:30, which meant that for over a
day he'd been running on little more than some kind of crazy renewed
faith in politics and love and the possibilities the world might yet
have to offer him in his late thirties. But he was still tired.

Sam swung his legs over until they were facing each other across
the narrow aisle of blue patterned carpet, which was cut of the same
cloth as the couch downstairs. Josh stood up, not sure where he was
going, and Sam rose, too.

"Josh."

"Uh, yeah."

"I just wanted to say --" Sam walked over and turned off the news,
came back to face Josh again.

"Yeah."

"No, I mean. I want you to know..."

Josh nodded. They had to admit that whatever it was they'd saved
each other from would have been much worse than the frightening blank
slate that lay ahead. "I do," he said.

"If you hadn't come back to get me, I would have come anyway," Sam
said. "If I knew you were here."

With the TV off, it was completely silent. "Really?"

"Yeah."

They were only maybe 18 inches apart, their bare feet practically
touching on the thinly padded floor. Through the V-neck, Josh could see
the tanned, smooth skin of Sam's chest and he avoided Sam's eyes by
staring at the tender ridge of collarbone as it disappeared under the
hem. God, he was still so beautiful. There were times when the most
shocking thing about the two of them was that Sam had ever given him a
second look. Let alone a second chance. He still couldn't believe he
was trying to ask for a third.

"I couldn't stay there. It was... I was just dying, working for
those people. And getting married? I mean, it's not like Lisa and I
were -- we weren't very committed to the whole thing."

So she *had* meant something by that, Josh thought.

"It was just --" Sam shook his head. "That doesn't matter. I'm
not sorry I left. I couldn't have seen you yesterday like that and
*not* left. I just wanted you to know that."

Josh wanted to say thanks. Or, please don't let me fuck this up
again. But there weren't any words in his throat, and his knees were
almost bumping Sam's across the narrow aisle between the beds, and he
sighed like there would be an answer at the end of the breath.

And then he kissed Sam, just barely, just letting the top part of
his lips catch the bottom of Sam's, and it was possible his legs were
shaking. He could feel Sam's hands on his just-shaven cheeks and his
own tongue pressing into Sam's syrupy mouth and the heat of their chests
approaching each other. But then it was too hot. It felt like a fever,
or a summer night in D.C. without air conditioning. He was dizzy, and
he broke away and sat down hard on the bed.

Josh was trying so hard to make the vertigo stop that he'd
sacrificed control over the rest of his body. He could feel the muscles
in his stomach twitching and he was getting hard, and then Sam's hand
was on his thigh and he looked up. Sam was squatting on the floor in
front of him, one arm out to keep from falling over, and he was saying
"I'm sorry," and Josh shook his head emphatically because, damn it, Sam
hadn't done anything wrong.

"No," Josh said. "No. Don't --"

"It's just -- maybe we should wait. I thought you -- I don't
know."

Sometimes, it was like Sam thought Josh had all the answers, and
that was never true. With Sam, he didn't know what the hell he was
doing most of the time, but he knew he wasn't very good at stopping.

"No," Josh said again, surprising himself with how much he did
*not* want to wait anymore. What had he thought was going to happen
once they got to New Hampshire? He'd had some vague mental image of the
two of them poring over position papers and speeches and travel
itineraries, and maybe sometimes being the last guys standing, the ones
still hyped up at 3 a.m. who went to go get a beer together. And,
maybe, sometimes, letting what happened happen. But it was happening
already.

"Because, you know, this time yesterday I was lying awake on the
couch in my office, thinking about you, and now --"

"I know," Josh said, and this time he did. Together they'd been
able to figure out a lot, and this couldn't be so much more difficult.

Sam sat up on his knees and pulled Josh down into a hug, letting
his mouth slide into Josh's neck like how they'd held each other for a
second in Sam's office the day before, but not letting go. And then
Sam's hand was sliding up under Josh's shirt, and they were kissing
again, but even Sam's tongue was moving slowly, like Josh's whole mouth
was unexplored territory, and Sam pushed Josh back up onto the bed but
didn't increase the pace. Josh tucked his fingers inside the elastic
band of Sam's boxers but didn't pull them down. They'd never done it
like that, casual and patient, like they knew they had all night and
maybe the next, too. Sam was running his hand up and down Josh's arm,
not quite tickling him, and when Josh closed his eyes for a second he
thought he might fall asleep, and that might not be the worst thing that
had ever happened when he was with Sam.

Because Josh was exhausted, but he was sober and this wasn't
something that he could fake his way out of in the morning. He knew
he'd still have to see Sam the next day, because they'd run too far
together to take off alone. So that meant breakfast, and then finding
Leo, and then finding a way to make all the rest of it work. It meant
saying yes to all the things he'd spent so long refusing. And he wanted
to say yes -- he did -- but he wasn't sure if he had ever known what was
supposed to come after that.

Sam was lying there on his side, looking at him like they had
forever, running a hand through the fine brown hair on Josh's stomach,
not rushing anything or asking for too much, and Josh's heart surged.
All the questions, the midlife confusion -- that was all about this
man. This was where Josh was supposed to be, with Sam, in New
Hampshire. They were going to get a good man elected president, and
they were going to find a way to do it together.

"It's different now, isn't it?" Sam asked, in that tone of voice
that only exists in bed at 4 a.m.

"Yeah," Josh said. "This time it's the real thing."

Sam
1991.

Show a little faith there's magic in the night
You ain't a beauty but hey you're all right
Oh and that's all right with me

THE BEER WAS flat. Sam hated flat beer more than just about anything in
the world except, possibly, songs by the Pet Shop Boys. But despite the
presence of both, he had to admit that he was having a decent time.
There were worse things than being young and on his own for the summer.

He had six more weeks of working for Matthews, who unlike the
other, much more sensible congressmen, took only a week's vacation in
late August. On the plus side, a summer aide actually had a chance to
do some work. And then Sam was off to New York, where his sojourn into
Beltway business would undoubtedly be eclipsed by 100-hour weeks and
decent suits and overpriced apartments and rampant crime.

But that would all be in the fall. The influence that being a New
York lawyer would have on who he'd be in 10 years was still an unknown
factor, he thought, nodding along to the dance music and watching Josh
drink his beer. They were supposed to be meeting Harry here, because
he'd declared -- somewhat dramatically, Sam thought -- that it was the
only place where they might all be drunk enough to agree to the bill.
So Sam and Josh were drinking at JR's, this gay bar off Dupont Circle,
and trying not to admit that there was no chance in hell benefits for
gay partners of civil servants would make it out of committee, let alone
past the CBO or to the president, certainly not that president.

But, whatever, he was young and a little drunk, and the more flat
beer he drank, the less he cared it was flat, and the more he danced
around a little bit against his slice of wall, the less he cared if Josh
could tell how much he envied the good-looking men their ease of touch,
the casual way a hand would wander from waist to ass to the back of a
neck without anyone looking both ways. There was a monstrous elk's head
hung above the bar and the brick walls were pocked with stained glass
windows, and everyone was too busy to notice either. The Pet Shop Boys
stopped abruptly and there was a momentary battle between the air
conditioner and the circuit breaker, and if they had to choose between
the atmosphere being cool or loud, Sam would have gotten rid of the
music in a second. But then everything whirred into place again, and
Sam smiled almost unabashedly, because he had been babbling about Thomas
Jefferson, for Christ's sake, and even bad music was better than that.

Josh leaned in to be heard over the noise. "You're in a good
mood," he said, and his breath danced around Sam's cheek and Sam
shuffled his feet and tried to concentrate on the reason they were
there. It was good to know someone as brilliant as Josh, someone who
obviously would be only more powerful in the years to come. Someone
that far up the food chain really had no reason to have spent the past
two days trying to convince Sam he might have more to offer to the world
than an affinity for contract law, but he had, and Sam kept trying to
listen, because he sensed that Josh what was trying to tell him was
important.

Sam nodded, held up his empty glass and lobbed a silent question in
Josh's direction before moving off to the bar for refills, where he ran
into Harry. Who was otherwise occupied with a cute, short, Latino guy
wearing a fishnet top that made him look like a Madonna backup dancer.
Sam leaned over, shouted an order to the bartender and finally tapped
Harry on the shoulder.

"There you are!" Everything about Harry was oversized -- he was at
least 6'4", maybe 250 pounds, and he had a voice that could have been
heard in Virginia if the Erasure song hadn't been turned up so high.
"Where have you been?"

"Over there --" Sam shouted, pointing at Josh, who was leaning
against the picture window and coolly appraising the scene as he tugged
at the fraying edges of a Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers T-shirt.

"He doesn't seem like he's having a very good time," Harry said.

Sam shrugged.

"You're having fun," Harry said, not asking. Sam shrugged again.
Josh had spotted them and was weaving his way over, but it was a long,
narrow, crowded bar, and by the time they were all assembled, Harry's
friend had wandered off and the new beers were waiting. Before Josh
could say hello, Harry had followed the guy and it was just the two of
them again.

"Well, that went well," Josh said, leaning in again. "I think our
total inability to express anything about the bill should go a long way
toward them signing on."

"I'm still not completely sure I understand why they wouldn't," Sam
said, and he bent in, too.

"Because they know as well as we do that it will never go
anywhere. It's not the real thing. You've got to have a great idea --
great, not just a compromise -- and you find a way to make it work in
the real world. That's real. Harry knows they'd rather not waste what
little clout they've gathered on something that's not."

Josh always got the big picture, Sam thought. Josh staring at the
bartender, who was leaning over the counter and making out with some guy
in a cowboy hat. "Speaking of clout," Sam said, a little too loudly,
trying to recapture Josh's attention, "what's up with this Pete
Williams thing?" It was the open secret of Washington that summer, that
there was going to be some big expose of the Cheney aide's closeted gay
life. If any of the press corps would take it on, which seemed
unlikely, as all the reports so far kept naming the same anonymous
"Pentagon official."

Josh rolled his eyes. "Whatever," he said. "If the Secretary of
Defense wants to have a gay spokesman while thousands are getting their
asses kicked right out of the Army for doing the same thing in the
privacy of their own homes --"

"It's wrong, Josh." If he couldn't say that much while standing in
the middle of a gay bar, he really shouldn't even think twice about
politics.

"Yeah," Josh said. "It sucks big time, and it's only gonna get
worse." Sam got that Josh liked to play the wizened, cynical old
staffer, but sometimes he couldn't tell if it was because Josh truly
didn't care or if he was trying to say that governing was more difficult
than it looked. Sam smiled, just happy to be there, having the
conversation. "Let's have another beer," Josh said.

After two more, Harry stopped by to say he'd decided they were
"cool enough" to call him on Monday and get down to business. Outside,
the warm, humid air made the alcohol's effect seem more pronounced, and
Sam stumbled over his feet as they walked toward the parking lot. And
that was enough for Josh to convince him he'd be better off not driving,
and for Sam to agree that he could probably crash on Josh's couch in the
name of pedestrian safety.

The one-bedroom apartment was small and a little messy, and he
spent 10 minutes on the bare wooden floor gulping water from a gallon
jug Josh had handed him before realizing there was no furniture. He
could see a mattress on a metal frame through the bedroom door, and a
desk lamp plugged in beside it, resting on a stack of books. There were
a lot of books, and some unpacked boxes.

"You don't have a couch," he said as Josh sat down beside him with
a bag of Granny Smiths. Josh gave him an apple in response, and for a
while they didn't speak, just sat in a silence punctuated only by the
electric hum of the window box fan and the crunching of tough
apple-skin. The fruit was cold and tart and seemed to anchor his
spinning thoughts, and Sam felt like the summer was suspended in motion,
like New York was just a shimmery dream in another life and he could
stay there with Josh forever. "You don't have a couch," he said again,
and Josh nodded, standing up to refill the water.

"I'll sleep on the floor and you can have the bed," Josh offered,
not quite sounding as if he meant it. Sam stood up, waited to see if
his legs would be shaky and, when they weren't unduly so, took a few
steps. Josh turned around from the sink, his reddish-brown hair a
little matted with sweat where it wasn't frizzy from the wet air, and
just stared at him. The jug was in his hand, elevated a few inches
above the counter, and Sam could see the line of Josh's bicep curve past
the T-shirt's sleeve. Sam felt a trickle of sweat slide down between
his shoulder-blades and stared back. Josh's face was frozen in a
half-smile that was somewhere between quizzical and aw-shucks, and Sam
wondered if Harry had been right, if Josh had been uncomfortable. It
didn't seem like it to him, especially just then.

Josh finally brought the water to his lips and drank, swallowing
again and again. Sam took another step. He had to say something. He
was good with words, that was what everybody -- even Josh -- said about
him. He just couldn't think of any at that particular moment. "So, did
you have an okay time tonight?" he asked finally, and Josh, after a
moment, nodded as he wiped his mouth.

When he twisted back to the sink, Sam let his feet carry him where
his vocabulary couldn't and, in slow motion, slid his right arm around
Josh's waist. Josh froze at first, then Sam could feel the man's
stomach muscles relax again as he leaned back almost imperceptibly. He
smelled like Mennen deodorant and beer and the fecundity of a southern
summer and, in what felt like fractions of millimeters, Sam moved closer
until he could reach around and capture Josh's mouth with a simple,
momentary kiss that deepened into breathless exhortations.

They stumbled their way into the bedroom and onto the mattress and
through a couple of mumbled rounds of Have You Evers, and they both said
they had, so Josh's shirt came off and the taste of apples in Sam's
mouth was subsumed by the saltiness of Josh's skin. And Josh wasn't
being quiet anymore; he was whispering Sam's name and groaning and
pulling at Sam's hair and Sam realized that he could have gone right to
New York, could have missed all of this, could have forgotten what faces
men made at their most beautiful moments, but he didn't, he hadn't, he
wouldn't, and then Josh was pushing at his forehead and saying, "Wait,
wait, wait," like a chorus, like the incessant beat of some stupid dance
song.

Sam fell back onto the bed with a groan. "What?" he said, not a
little aware of the exasperated whine his voice held. "What?"

"Sam..."

"What? Do you want to stop?"

"Yeah. No." Josh rolled onto his side to face Sam. "This
isn't... It's not that easy."

Sam couldn't help grinning. "Yes it is," he said, letting himself
flirt a little. He was, after all, in Josh's bed. He could probably
admit now that he liked Josh, had been trailing along after him all week
on the off-chance that he hadn't been misreading the occasional,
scrambled signal.

Josh shook his head. "I can't..." He sighed. "I can't have you
think this is, uh, going somewhere."

"I'm going somewhere," Sam said. "In September."

"No, I mean, um, go anywhere. Look, you were the one who brought
up, you know, uh, Cheney."

"Josh, I don't think... I mean, he's DOD. It's not like I think
every Congressional staffer should have their own parade or something."

"It's not that simple," Josh said. "I mean, I'm not... There's a
bigger picture here." Sam put his hand on Josh's naked waist and Josh
didn't shrug it off. Sam tilted his head up and kissed Josh lightly,
then more severely, until he was shifting his weight to lie on top of
Josh. When they broke away, Josh opened and then closed his eyes again,
gathering some kind of strength.

"Look," Sam debated. "Is there anything anyone could say that we
could reasonably disprove? We can't change the fact that we got this
far."

"I don't, I'm not saying... Just, am I -- I'm not a horrible
person for wanting this, am I?"

"No," Sam said firmly, kissing his neck, running his hand down the
outside of Josh's thigh. "Absolutely not."

"No," Josh said, and Sam had never really heard him sound confused
before, but he did. "For wanting *just* this," he said, like Sam would
actually know the right answer, would set them on the right path.

"Just this?" Sam asked. Josh nodded. "You mean --" Josh's eyes
were squeezed closed, and Sam wondered if it was because Josh didn't
want to see what they were doing. "Just now, you mean, just tonight?"
Josh nodded again. Sam stopped kissing him, leaned over to turn off the
light, and then started again, harder and deeper and lower. Setting a
deadline meant there was more to do, more to be done quickly, and he'd
always gotten an A in More. It would be good. It would be fine.

In the morning, in the bright light shining through a thin sheet
hung as a curtain, Sam woke first. Josh looked almost happy, the
caustic shield softened into restful content. Sam pulled on his
underwear, wandered into the other room, where the bag of apples still
sat in the middle of the empty floor. He went to the bathroom and then
over to the sink, where he found the discarded jug of water and rinsed
out his mouth. When he turned back to the bedroom, Josh was leaning
against the door frame, wearing a pair of boxers and the Tom Petty
shirt. Sam extended the water; Josh shook his head.

"I'm going to get dressed," Sam said, and when he saw Josh it all
came back, and he couldn't quite remember when he'd lost his clothes, or
why they'd made a deal. Josh didn't say anything, watched as Sam found
and put on his pants and shirt. They stood facing each other, not
speaking, and Sam tried to convince himself that just because it
wouldn't happen again didn't mean they'd done something wrong. Josh
sighed. Sam leaned in and kissed the corner of Josh's mouth. Josh
nodded, and Sam left. Josh let him.

Josh
1991.

Come take my hand
Riding out to case the promised land

THE MORNING-AFTER feeling had lasted longer than the hangover, just
barely, and not really in any of the ways Josh had expected. He could
still taste Sam's sour-apple mouth and feel Sam's toned arms gripping
his back as he'd come, and even a second cup of coffee wasn't doing much
to clear the haze. He knew that he should call, should find a way to
put the crashing want into words, should say something as simple as
"Come back here."

Sam had tripped off the curb and yelled, "Catch me," and he had.
He knew Sam was the stronger one, and that it had been Josh's idea in
the first place. But the part of him that always chose the underdog had
wanted at least one of them to have the guts to say, fuck it, it can be
more than that. We can be more than just that, and the rest of the
world can just go to hell. He wanted to devour Sam whole, to send their
bodies hurtling into some other time-space continuum where their suns
fed off each other's energy and the orbits crossed every thousand
light-years.

And then it was Harry on the phone, and Josh remembered why they'd
made the promises in the first place, and that Sam was practically still
a kid, and he couldn't keep pretending he hadn't turned 30 and things
weren't different. Josh wanted to slam his head onto the old metal desk
until he had a concussion and could convince himself it had all been a
dream, that there wasn't some bigger picture.

"So, I've got a meeting this afternoon to talk about the bill,"
Harry said in his booming voice, and Josh had to hold the phone away
from his ear and work on separating the personal from the political,
because he was a Democrat but he wasn't that kind of Democrat.

If he closed his eyes, Sam was nibbling on his neck, his naked legs
sprawled on Josh's thin mattress, dark against the off-white sheets. It
was only the tan that made Sam seem like a California boy, Josh had
decided that first day in Matthews' office when they'd met. That and
the half-mouthed grin and the confident but gentle way he'd shaken
Josh's hand. He was a California boy from a Bret Easton Ellis novel,
not a Beach Boys song, less surfer than social sycophant. But in a sexy
way.

"Josh?"

"Don't," he said.

"What?" Harry was a few decibels short of a shriek.

"Don't have the meeting," Josh said, and then scalded the roof of
his mouth with the coffee. "I'm, hmmm, not sure it's such a good idea."

"Josh, I'm being serious. In two hours I have to go convince them
this thing is going to work."

"It's not going to," he said. He kicked his foot against the
bottom drawer of the desk. Should he have said no? Sam had all but
invited himself back to Josh's, like they were swaggering through the
quad after a frat party and might just accidentally wind up in the same
bunk bed, and really, why the hell not. Josh's mom had always told
Joanie that all you had to do to get a boy to kiss you was look him in
the eye long enough. And she had been right.

"Is he pulling out?" Harry asked, and Josh got the feeling that if
he answered wrong half of Queer Nation would be outside the
congressman's house by morning.

"No, he's not pulling out. He just..." The congressman was in
Florida and Josh hadn't even talked to him since Thursday. But that was
his job, to figure out what was worth their time. At some point he
really had to start making decisions like this on his own. "Harry, he
just really doesn't give a shit. And I -- honestly? -- I can't, like,
figure out why you do either."

"Oh, you know, just those little things like *health insurance.*"
That felt like a slap, and Harry's outrage kept building steam. "What's
going on? Friday you were all over this. Friday you would have made
out with me if I had just said we were in."

"Harry, I'm not -- I'm not saying gay partners shouldn't get
benefits."

"Yes, you are. That's what you just said."

"I said I didn't think this bill was a good idea." It had all been
a profoundly bad idea. He tried to focus, sat with his elbows on the
desk and rubbed his face. Being alone, in his office, made it easier to
see the uselessness of what they'd been trying to do. "I think you know
I'm right," he said. "We've got, what, *one* potential co-sponsor?
Who's from Massachusetts and will always get re-elected even if he
supports gays. We're not going to get a third of the Democrats, let
alone more than maybe one Republican if we're *supremely* lucky, and for
the next year you're going to be reading angry letters to the editor
about how the homosexuals want special rights again."

"That's bullshit."

"You know that, and I know that, Harry, but do you really think the
Wall Street Journal editorial board knows that? At best, no one notices
because they're too busy fighting about gays in the military. At worst,
your guys look crazy and radical and it will take you months to make up
the lost ground. It will be Christmas before anyone will even take your
calls."

"Is that a threat?"

"Oh, for crying out loud, like I have that kind of power." His
chair squeaked. "Listen to me. I'm -- I'm on your side here."

There was a long silence, and then Harry said, quietly for once:
"That's what I'd heard."

"What?"

"That you were on our side," Harry said, sounding a little
wounded. Josh wanted to call him a drama queen but wasn't sure if he
was allowed.

"Harry, you know -- you *know* that I support gay rights. You know
my boss does." Harry *still* wasn't talking. Josh leaned back and
played with the phone cord. Belatedly, it dawned on him that they
weren't having the same conversation. "Uh, what are you saying?"

"You've been to JR's before," Harry said.

"Uh, yeah." It was true. He'd gone with Gary and Matt once in the
spring and then met them again after the pride parade. "Was that
supposed to be, like, a secret?"

"You tell me."

"You know, I have, I've got gay friends other than you, Harry."

"We're not friends."

"No kidding," Josh snorted. Harry was just being a drama queen.
And it *wasn't* a secret, damn it. "I went to JR's twice, maybe three
times, with some guys I know from the Hill. And once, I think, to that
other place over on P Street -- uh, Badlands?"

"Good for you," Harry said, sounding sarcastic, bordering on mean.
Josh sighed. It was going to be okay, if Harry could be sarcastic.
"You're so progressive," Harry continued. "You should get a special
medal. It's like your dad going to Selma to register black voters, only
sexier. You're a fucking radical. *Excuse me.*"

"Harry, what the hell?" It hadn't ever been about being a
radical. It was just about Sam. Maybe. Maybe it was just about being
30.

"What's your little friend think about all this?"

"Who?" The question was out of his mouth before he realized.

"The cute one." Josh made a noncommittal noise and tried to play
dumb, which he'd long ago learned was a lot easier to pull off over the
phone. "Sam," Harry said at last.

"What about him?" He was trying so hard to keep his voice even,
which probably meant he sounded like a 15-year-old caught doing
something that still seemed a little wrong.

"You think he only goes to JR's with his gay friends? What's *he*
think about dropping the bill?"

Jesus. He was *not* going through this whole conversation again,
not over Sam. It was time to cut and run. "Harry, you think if
Matthews thought this was so great he'd send some kid? I'm telling you
what you already know -- it's *not* a great idea, and it's going to cost
you way more than you'll get in return. Don't put this out there just
to be able to say in some fundraising letter that you got two
co-sponsors. That's just embarrassing. Let's wait another couple
years, or go after the military thing. Let's do it right."

After a minute, Harry grunted in agreement. It was over, then.
Good. He sat back.

"You want to go to JR's tonight?" Harry asked, in what Josh could
only hope was a peace offering.

"Is this a test or something?"

"No."

"Harry, it's been a long week."

"It's Monday."

"Still?" Josh smiled and put his feet up on the desk, wondering if
he had to be gay to get called a drama queen.

"Yeah."

"Next time, okay? Really."

"All right."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. We better get your backing on the military thing."

"Okay."

"You should really be on our side, you know."

"Harry --"

"Yeah, I know." The call clicked off, and Josh let his neck hang
over the back of the chair in exhaustion. What a nightmarish
conversation. The phone rang again. Josh yelled out his door to Maria
to pick it up and grabbed the day's Post, scanning headlines.

Maria ducked her head around the door. "It's someone from
Matthews' office."

"Who?" Josh asked, but he knew.

"He didn't say. Want me to find out?"

"Take a message." She wasn't at all intrigued. Josh still
couldn't believe they'd managed to get the least curious, least
likely-to-gossip secretary in the city.

She came back in a minute and handed him the top copy from the
carbon pad -- "Sam Seaborn, W/R/T legislation" -- and went out to get
him a sandwich. With regard to the now-dead legislation, Josh thought,
and realized this meant he didn't have to see Sam again. Didn't have to
or didn't get to? He wasn't sure which was better. He wasn't sure it
was anything more than just a drunken, stupid night.

Again, the phone. He let a deliberating hand hang over it. Shit.
He was a congressional staffer. He couldn't just avoid the phone.
"Josh Lyman," he answered.

"It's Matt."

"Hey," Josh said. Matt Skinner had spent 15 weeks in Con Law
defending Bowers v. Hardwick and Josh had almost never forgiven him for
it. But Matt was smart and, well, his dad had always said that if you
didn't know your enemies they weren't enemies, they were just excuses.
He looked down at the pink message slip. "You're not going to believe
the conversation I just had with --"

"Josh, did you see The Advocate?"

"Uh, no, Matt, I don't really --"

"They did it. About Williams."

"You're kidding." Josh had been so surprised to have had Sam
mention Pete Williams. Where had Sam heard about that? Gary and Matt
had told Josh in May that a reporter was calling, and he'd thought it
was one of those open secrets that only people with the same secret got
to know. Josh wasn't sure what that meant about him.

"It names him, and it has all these quotes from guys whose friends
slept with him. I can't believe they ran it."

"Has anyone picked it up?" Josh flipped through the front two
sections of the Post. Nothing. He wondered if Maria would go get a
copy of the magazine for him.

"I don't think so. This guy I know at Defense says no one even
asked a question at today's briefing."

"Well, that's... good."

"Yeah," Matt said. It took Josh a second to realize that Matt
sounded scared. "Anyway," Matt said, "I just thought I'd give you a
heads-up."

"Uh, why?"

"Because, you know." Josh didn't know. For a deranged moment he
wondered if he and Sam had been followed, if someone had seen Sam leave
his place Saturday morning. He was overreacting. He was totally
overreacting. "Because you guys have talked about the military thing,"
Matt said. "And Cheney's been strangely all over the map on that. So
you might get a call or something."

"Oh," Josh said, feeling stupid and paranoid. "Yeah. Thanks."
Pause. "You okay, Matt?"

"I'm fine."

"You sure?"

"Yeah." Josh didn't believe him. "Well, Gary's in it."

"What?"

"Gary. Is one of the guys who says he knows someone who slept with
Pete."

Josh put his feet back on the floor, leaned over the desk. "Pete?"

"What?"

"You just called him Pete. Do you guys know him?"

"No. Uh, Gary used to go to these dinner parties at this guy's
house and he was there sometimes." So it was a lot of dinner parties.
Josh hated dinner parties.

Maria walked in, balancing a turkey club on a can of Tab and
somehow managing to set them both on his desk without knocking anything
over. Josh waited until she left. "Shit. Have you talked to him?"

"Not yet."

"Wait, he's named?"

"No. But I know it's him."

"Maybe it's just someone who sounds like him."

"Josh..." God, could it really still be Monday? He unwrapped the
sandwich and popped open the can. "Josh," Matt started again. Matt
sounded like such a bitchy fag, Josh thought, not at all fondly. He was
such a hypocritical asshole.

"What?" he asked, crossly.

"It was me."

Josh swallowed the bite of turkey, heard the phone on Maria's desk
ring. "What was?"

"I'm the guy Gary knew."

Josh sat up. "Wait," he said. Jesus. "You're saying -- you're
one of the guys who --"

"Yeah."

"Wait, you --" Maria bent around the door, making some kind of
hand movement that looked like half a round of Charades. "Hold on," he
said to Matt, hoping he didn't sound rude. "What?"

"Sam Seaborn again."

"Fuck." He crunched the aluminum can between his fingers, thought
about throwing it.

"Josh? Does that mean take a message?"

"It means tell him to fucking grow up and just wait for a minute
while I deal with an actual problem."

"You want me to say that exactly, or can I paraphrase?"

"Shit."

"I'll take a message." She gave him a questioning look.

"Like, now," he said sharply, the picture-perfect asshole boss he'd
always sworn he'd never become, the old white guy in a tie who had no
appreciation for his administrative assistant's dry wit and eternal good
nature. She left, and he sighed. "Matt?"

"Yeah."

"Sorry."

"What was that about?"

"Nothing. Nothing." He pushed the food away, feeling sick to his
stomach. "When did this happen?" he asked wearily.

"It was a while ago. Before Gary and before, you know, he was
always on TV."

"I didn't mean..." Josh rubbed his temples, looked at the closed
office door. "Matt, can I tell you something?"

"Yeah," Matt said, sounding distracted.

"I -- ah, nothing," Josh said. "Never mind. It's going to be
fine."

"Probably."

"Yeah. Go call Gary."

"Yeah," Matt said. "Thanks. See, this is why I have straight
friends. Guys make a lot more sense when they're not hung up on other
guys."

Josh grunted. He didn't know many men who weren't hung up on their
boss, their dad, whoever had played quarterback to their second-string.
He said goodbye, hung up and yelled Maria's name. He wondered why she
never mentioned going out with guys. She came to his office door,
looking like she was considering something violent. "I'm sorry," he
said, meaning it for a lot of different reasons, most of which he knew
she'd never get.

"I took a message," she said.

Sam
1994.

The radio plays
Roy Orbison singing for the lonely
Hey that's me and I want you only
Don't turn me home again
I just can't face myself alone again

MIKE AND MELISSA had gotten a new apartment in the Watergate building.
It was 2,000 square feet, with a book-lined office for Melissa and a
studio with an adjoining darkroom for Mike. There was a guest bedroom,
in which Sam and Krissy's matching Armani luggage rested. There were
two full bathrooms and a covered balcony. Sam was leaning over a
wrought iron railing, and to his right there was a stainless steel
mini-fridge, the kind that came with a wet bar, plugged into the
external outlet. There was a flower arrangement, something with
eucalyptus, on top of the fridge. There was an insulated chrome ice
bucket and four cut-glass tumblers on a small table beside it. There
were two sleek black chairs. There was a view of the Lincoln Memorial.

The housing market was a good reason to live in D.C., Sam allowed,
not that he ever thought of giving up New York anymore. Passing the
three-year mark had felt like a coming of age. It was like a sign that
he'd been right to stay through that first rough year, when everything
seemed to revolve around being overworked and feeling lonely and having
sex that rarely took place in a bed or lasted longer than a few
minutes. Then he'd met the right people, and now he had a better job at
a better firm, a better apartment, an enviable social circle with old
names and new SoHo lofts, and a fiancée who was both smart and
beautiful. And, better, she understood him.

The party was far more lively than the weeknight wine tastings to
which he'd grown accustomed. Through the closed glass sliding door, Sam
could hear Tony Bennett's Unplugged album and people getting drunk. He
was more than a little wasted himself. Krissy hated it when he got
plastered. Sam didn't care enough to argue about it, especially given
how rarely they fought about anything. That's how he knew it was right
that they were getting married.

But tonight, he'd felt a little worn out from a day in the car and
three before spent on the beach in the sun, and he'd let himself have
Jack and Coke instead of Chardonnay. That had been his drink in law
school, Jack and Coke, or sometimes, if he was feeling reckless, lots
and lots of beer. But he didn't drink beer anymore, unless he was
traveling or in some Village dive when Kris was out of town, because
beer always wound up tasting like men's spit, and usually it was easier
not to have that flavor in his mouth when he was kissing his
girlfriend. Fiancée. Yeah. He was getting married. That part was
still new. He was glad about it. They were going to have a tastefully
huge wedding where his mother and Kris' mother could cry together.

The night was cool, for mid-August, and there was a little breeze
off the Potomac. Sam stretched his torso out over the railing and let
the wind play across his face, thought about the guy from Oil and Gas on
the eighth floor who'd jumped out of his Fifth Avenue penthouse co-op.

He tried to remember where he'd met Mike. Probably at Tracks,
because Sam knew it was in those weeks when he had stayed out all night
fucking anything that moved, trying to convince himself that one night
spent with some self-deluding, second-tier political hack who'd never
even called him again was not going to be worth remembering in the years
to come. It wouldn't even be worth remembering his name, so Sam tried
to convince himself he didn't, and still every time he was in D.C. it
was all he thought about.

Someone pulled the door open behind him, and Sheryl Crow was
wondering again if she should leave Las Vegas, and when the glass slid
shut, he could hear Krissy's voice over the dimmed chatter.

"Sam, you know how you always say this is such a small town?" He
turned toward her, smiling, because it was just like her to gently bring
the party to him if he was going to be so reclusive and self-absorbed.

"Hey," Josh said, looking a little embarrassed. He was wearing
dark dress slacks and a light blue button-down, undone at the neck, like
he'd come right from work. His smile was loose and maybe a little
drunk, and the dimples were as deep as they'd been that first day they
met. Sam had been in Matthews' office when this unfurled mess of legs
and arms and crazy hair had flown into the room and immediately taken
over the conversation. Josh was like a Woody Allen movie, his speech
dyspeptic and his brilliance translated through a filter of neuroses,
but when he'd shaken Sam's hand and smiled, his cheeks had dented into
parentheses and Sam had needed to sit on the edge of the congressman's
desk because he'd felt dizzy.

Sam sputtered a little, tried to remember how men said hello.

"I was just talking to this nice woman" -- Josh leaned his head
toward Krissy, who had her hand tucked in the bend of Josh's arm -- "and
she tells me that her, uh, boyfriend --"

"Fiancé," Krissy said, laughing, as if they'd already run through
the scene once and Josh kept getting the same line wrong.

"Fiancé," Josh said elaborately, doing a passable imitation of
Krissy. "Excuse me, that her *fiancé* is this lawyer named Sam Seaborn
who I just *have* to meet right away." Whom, Sam thought, making
himself smile. He took two steps and reached out to shake Josh's hand.

"And then he said you two had already met!" Krissy came over and
wrapped her arm around Sam's waist, pecking him on the cheek. He'd
forgotten, in an hour, how small she was, how skinny, how suddenly
insubstantial in form.

"It really is a small town," Sam managed, wondering how if that was
true six weeks had passed in which they had not once seen each other.

"Josh works for Congress. For..."

"The minority whip," Josh finished, nodding at Sam like of course
*he* would understand what that meant, and for a second Sam was annoyed
on Krissy's behalf, because she wasn't stupid.

"Yes, sorry, right," Krissy said. "I -- I hope this isn't rude,
but do you think the DUI is going to make it difficult for him to get
enough votes on the Mayh amendment for the bill to pass?"

"Uh, you know, uh --" Josh looked at Sam. Later, Sam would want
to say that he hadn't looked back. "I can't really, I'm, you know, it
was a long time ago. I mean, he was 19. He didn't lie about it. And,
I mean, nobody knew who he was back then."

"That's great, Josh," Sam said, reaching back to steady himself
against the railing. "That's great for you. You've done well." He
tried to remember what floor the apartment was on, how high up they
were. If it was really true that people suffocated before they hit the
ground.

"Well..."

"Look at him, Mr. Modest." Krissy squeezed his waist and detached
herself. "I'll let you two catch up, then. I'm supposed to go talk
dresses with Melissa."

"Dresses?" Sam asked, only half-listening as he took in that Josh
looked aged but not old, tired but not worn. He'd lost a little hair,
maybe, but appeared wiser for it. There were brackets around his eyes
to match the lines left by dimples. He looked fit. He looked good.

"Wedding dresses," she said, heading for the door. Krissy was as
happy in that minute as she had been in the little seafood restaurant in
Hilton Head, eggshell blue box laying open on the table. He felt
light-headed and a little nauseous.

Sam turned to look back out over the city, trying to breathe
evenly, as she disappeared back inside. After a minute, Josh came and
rested his elbows beside him.

"I have to warn you," Josh said. "I'm a little drunk. There was
this thing after work and then Melissa has been force-feeding me
martinis." It was the kind of thing people said only when they felt
like somehow they needed to prove it.

"No reason to stop now, then," Sam said. This was what men did:
They drank together, and it was not a disaster. It was the way the
world had worked for eons. It had been three years, and they were both,
in a manner of speaking, professional conversationalists. He walked
over to the mini-fridge, and bent down to see what it held. "Uh, gin
and tonic? Or there are these little bottles of Glen Ellen Chardonnay."

"White wine is for yuppies."

"Gin and tonic it is." He wondered if knowing it wasn't even good
white wine made him a yuppie. His fingers stumbled over the ice tongs
and he rose with a drink in each hand. The gin was still only lukewarm.

"So..." Josh trailed off as he accepted the glass and took a long
sip.

"So," Sam said. He couldn't look at Josh.

"So, how do you know Mike and Melissa?"

"Uh, I know Mike," Sam said. "From, um, I don't know. A while
ago. You?"

"I know Melissa."

"Oh really?" Sam asked, as if it were so interesting. "From
where?"

"Probably the racquet club," Josh said, and Sam was opening his
mouth to ask which racquet club, but Josh hadn't been serious. Sam
laughed a little, to show he got it. Josh turned toward him a notch and
reached out to finger the edge of Sam's cuff; when he brushed the
button, he pulled away like he'd touched something hot. "Uh, nice
shirt," Josh said hoarsely.

Sam's chest felt magnetized, adhered to the railing through an
electrical field that stilled any movement in return. He whispered,
"Thanks." And, before he could stop: "Calvin Klein."

"Oh," Josh said, standing up straight. "So, uh, what does Krissy
do? She couldn't, uh -- she couldn't stop talking about you long enough
to tell me."

"She's an editor. With Simon & Schuster. She's great."

"Ah, yeah, she seems great."

"Yeah, she's great." Sam had made a double and he was still almost
done. He bit into an ice cube, felt the frozen shard disintegrate in
his mouth and swallowed hard. The cold left a sharp path down his
throat.

"And she said you have a good apartment."

"Yeah, it's great." He searched for synonyms. "It's huge,
actually. Great location." Great. "Uh, wonderful building, nice
doorman. You know, the holy grail."

"The holy grail?"

"Uh, yeah," Sam said. "You know. Location, staff, size. The
troika of Tribeca real estate."

"How could I forget?" Josh was looking at the river, his
enunciation flat. "Who knew all you'd be giving up by going corporate?"

Sam struggled for a word of protest. Josh sounded like Selden,
from Edith Wharton, that queen of aristocratic suffocation. Brilliant
Selden and poor Lily and "Why do you make the things I have chosen seem
hateful to me if you have nothing to give me instead?" It was always
the men in her novels who were the real fuck-ups, full of lust and
insight and never an ounce of courage. It was the women who wanted to
transgress their painted fortunes for the sake of grand love.

"Yeah," Sam said. It was the men who were too scared to ask for
what they wanted, even when it was standing right in front of them.

"And you're getting married." Josh swirled the liquid around in
the glass.

"Yeah," Sam said, wondering if anyone read House of Mirth anymore.
"Uh, probably in April, maybe May if we can't get the church she wants."

"Well, good for you."

Josh was a really bad liar. "Yeah," Sam said. It *was* good. It
was what he wanted. There was nothing to be given him instead, and it
was what he had chosen, and it wasn't a damn American tragedy. It was
his life, and he could do much, much worse.

Josh reached out again and touched his wrist, briefly. "I'd just
never quite pictured you married, Sam." Josh was swallowing his words
as he spoke, and Sam wondered if that was out of some kind of anxiety or
just the way he'd always talked.

"Really?" Sam asked, and then groped for anything that would cover
the sound of such an obvious question. "I never told you about Miranda?"

"Uh, no," Josh said, looking away. "Who's Miranda?"

Sam, belatedly, was grateful to Josh for not pointing out that they
didn't really know each other all that well. The way he'd remembered
it, they had communicated those kinds of histories to each other, even
when they hadn't spoken. "She was my college girlfriend," he said. "We
almost got married my first year at Duke."

"So what happened?"

"Well..." Shit. "Well, she was a lesbian, actually."

Josh laughed. "Well, that -- that'll do it," he said.

"Yeah, well, it wasn't like that, you know."

"Wasn't like what?"

"At first, I mean. I mean, it wasn't like she fell in love with
some woman while we were together or anything. We just didn't think it
mattered."

"You didn't think it mattered?" Josh laughed a little. "Sam.
Come on."

"We just thought... We didn't know that there was a difference
between caring about each other and sometimes wanting to mess around and
building a relationship together, that's all."

Josh sighed. Sam loved how Josh was always sighing, these deep
weight-of-the-world exhalations inflected with subdued desire. "That's
a lot," Josh said, and Sam put a hand on Josh's back. Josh was turning
around, and Sam's hand came to rest on Josh's stomach, and he still
didn't want to take it away. Sam thought maybe he was drunk enough to
have lost that valve between wanting something and doing it, or at least
that was what he'd be able to tell himself later. He tackled Josh
against the railing, kissing him like it was the only thing keeping them
both from hurtling over and Josh was biting his lip and Sam didn't care
if someone was watching or he was sloshing his drink against his shirt.
He had enough left in him to be stifled and care about those things or
to keep touching Josh, and it wasn't much of a contest.

His hand descended from Josh's abdomen down against the front of
Josh's pants, where he could feel enough of an erection to think he
should keep going, so he did, cupping his hand around it as best he
could through the fabric. He could taste vermouth as their lips moved
across each other's mouths and somewhere in the distance he could hear
Stephen Tyler singing "Crazy" and that was how he felt just then,
completely crazy for this man.

And then Josh was pushing him away, hard, and grabbing him under
the armpits and shaking him a few times -- "He's, uh, having a little
trouble standing up," Josh was saying in his ear, too loudly. "I think
he's had too much to drink."

He could smell Krissy's hair as she grabbed him around the waist
and slipped her slender shoulder under his. "Thanks," she said, he
guessed to Josh, before stage-whispering to him, "Someone needs to go to
sleep, I think." Krissy wasn't strong enough to move him against his
will, and finally Josh took her place and walked him back into the
apartment.

"Don't make a fool out of yourself," Josh hissed at him as they
opened the door, and Sam tried very, very hard to walk in a straight
line back to where he'd left the guest bedroom. He stopped at the door,
and when he turned he could see Krissy still standing at the end of the
hall, shaking her head to herself before turning around and leaving them
alone.

"She's gone," he said, turning the knob and staggering into the
room, where he tripped over a suitcase and fell face-first onto the big
bed. He could hear Josh sigh. The hall light was cut by the angle of
the closing door, and when Sam managed to roll over it was dark and he
could barely make out Josh's silhouette.

"You're drunk," Josh said, sitting on the edge of the bed.

"So're you. And I'm not that drunk, I'm, I'm just happy."

"You're happy?"

"Yeah."

"This -- this is what you look like happy?"

"It's been a while," Sam said, and he didn't want to remember how
long that meant, because he *was* happy, damn it, and why shouldn't he
be for a change? He was tugging at Josh's belt to pull him closer.
"C'mon. Come over here."

"I'm drunk, Sam."

"Yeah, so am I. It doesn't matter."

Sigh. "I guess it doesn't."

The fact was, it didn't matter because they didn't want it to, Sam
understood later, when he could remember most of what had happened but
seemed to keep confusing the things they'd said aloud with what their
bodies had been talking about. But there were things he knew for sure:
Josh had laid flighty little kisses across his chest before going down
on him. Josh hadn't let Sam take their pants off all the way, even
though he'd kept trying. Josh had buried his face in one of the
goose-down pillows when he was coming, trying to stay quiet even though
the music had still pounded through the bedroom walls.

When he'd awakened, Krissy was sleeping next to him, and they were
both on top of the covers, probably because he'd been too heavy to
move. The sheer curtains didn't block the brightness at all, and it
felt like he'd stretched a muscle in his thigh.

NEW YORK WAS reassuring in its frenetic pace and matter-of-fact
declarations, and being back in a city where happiness mattered less
than success helped him keep his mind on what had made him excel in the
first place. He was checking messages on the hall phone while Krissy
immediately started unpacking, like always, and when he fumbled for a
pen, he cut his finger on a business card in the pocket of his suit
jacket. He made himself wait two days.

"This is Josh." The voice interrupted six minutes' worth of
Schubert through the speakerphone, and Sam sat straight up at his desk
and pawed for the receiver.

"Uh, hi."

"Oh," Josh said.

"It's Sam."

"Yeah, I know. Sorry, I think my secretary's on strike or
something. She stopped announcing my calls yesterday, just out of the
blue. You, uh, back in New York?"

"Yeah, since Sunday."

"Ah..."

Shit. Sam gripped the edge of the ebony table and made himself
take a deep breath. "I found your card," he said, because in the 10
seconds since Josh had picked up he'd started thinking that maybe Josh
had given it to Krissy and she had put it in the coat, and it didn't
mean anything, and now he had to know at least that much or he might go
crazy again.

"Yeah," Josh said.

"I wasn't sure..."

"No, I'm glad. I mean, I thought..." He trailed off. "So, how's
your job?"

"My what?"

"Your job. Uh, Krissy said you're really happy at this new firm,
uh..."

Jesus. "Gage Whitney," he said, not wanting to think about Krissy.

"Yeah, right. How's that going?"

"It's... It's fine, Josh."

"I just, we, uh..." Was Josh nervous? "We didn't really talk.
About what we've been up to."

"No, no we didn't." Josh didn't speak, so Sam went on. "Uh, it's
a big firm. But it's good. The people are... They're fine."

"That's good. That's -- shit. Can you hold on?" He could hear
Josh wrap a hand around the mouthpiece and, through his fingers,
fragments of yelling -- "What do you mean he's changed his goddamned
vote?" -- and Sam felt a sudden nostalgia for people who argued about
things that mattered. Then, "I'm back."

"Hey..." Sam said.

He could hear Josh smile. "Hey..." It was one drawn-out,
three-letter word, and Josh was letting it last forever, like a gift.

"You have to go," Sam finally said, saving him the apology.

Josh sighed. "Well, yeah, I do."

"They don't call him a whip for nothing, right?"

"Yeah," Josh laughed. "Yeah." And then, in a rush: "Listen, can I
call you? I mean, when I'm not in the middle of things and we can, you
know, talk."

Or get to know each other, Sam thought, for the one moment when the
reality of the situation and his wooly memories collided. He read off
the number for his direct line.

"Ah, okay," Josh said, before yelling to someone that he was on his
way. "I've really got to go."

"Okay. I'll talk to you later."

"Yeah."

Josh
1994.

Don't run back inside
Darling you know just what I'm here for
So you're scared and you're thinking
That maybe we ain't that young anymore

SAM ALWAYS DID this. Maybe that was too strong, Josh thought, because
it had only happened twice. But it felt like always, and it always felt
the same. And if there was some restless, reckless thing in him, it
would have to go its own way, because he wasn't shifting everything
around this late in life.

With women, it was simpler. It never lasted long enough to require
much beyond the basics: No, I don't want to meet your parents. No, you
can't have a key. No, it's not going to last forever. He'd met one guy
in three years whose presence sparked a tenth of the interest Sam had
lit, and Josh had fucked him almost out of spite for what he might have
admitted to himself, had his gift for spin been less efficient. And
then there were more women, increasingly nasty conversations as he found
less and less patience for the stupid games that men and women got stuck
in as soon as they tried to do something other than have sex.

But he and Sam could just talk. They had two conversations in one
week at the office, and then Sam called Josh at home from his cell on a
Friday night. Sam was sitting on a bench at Lincoln Center, and Josh
was thinking about maybe going out to a bar, but they talked for two
hours. And at the end Sam said he'd walked out during intermission of a
play and never gone back, and Josh wasn't sure what that meant, or what
was expected in return.

It was easier on the phone. He could concentrate on what Sam was
saying without getting lost in the angle of his jaw. They were just
talking politics, and baseball and the absurdity of modern rock music,
and Josh always tried to hang up before he'd given too much of himself
away. But then he called Sam from work for arcane figures to beef up an
argument, even though he had staffers to do that kind of thing. He
bypassed LaGuardia and flew direct to Hartford for the holidays because
New York airports were too damned crowded in December. His mom kept
asking if he'd met any nice girls, and he kept checking his voicemail.

The Wednesday after New Year's, they were talking about California
passing Prop 187, and Josh had been trying to explain how Washington was
making him feel old and how he thought Brennan was maybe going to offer
him a job, and Sam had been quiet, and he was never really quiet on the
phone. Finally, Josh asked why.

"I just..." Sam sounded so young when he tripped over words. Josh
had stopped thinking of him as such a kid, which helped make Josh feel
less old. Sam coughed, shuffled around in the big office with a view of
the Empire State Building. He knew that was unfair, in the sense that
he was ostensibly charged with some share of the nation's upkeep and Sam
was, like, shuffling papers to make sure they had the right signatures.
Except Sam was the kind of guy who seemed to deserve gilt entryways and
floor-to-ceiling windows just by virtue of being Sam. "I'm going to be
in D.C. on Friday," Sam said.

"Oh," Josh said, knowing he sounded excited but he felt more than a
little confused. He had a meeting Friday and a date Saturday. But it
was a stupid meeting. And the girl was probably a stupid girl. She
worked for USAID, but still.

"For work," Sam said.

Oh. "Right." The girl couldn't be *that* stupid. She'd gotten
the job at USAID, after all. He could take her to Nora's and they could
drink scotch.

"It just felt weird not telling you that," Sam said.

Weird was an understatement. It was like saying the defense budget
was big. It was trillions of weird. Josh mumbled something that might
have sounded like okay.

"Because I -- we could... Shit." Sam laughed a little. Josh
tried to smile but it was possible that his jaw was broken. "I don't
know what I'm trying to say."

Josh cleared his throat. "You've got work stuff?"

"Yeah. I'm going to Philadelphia tonight and then down to D.C.
Friday morning. For a meeting. I have a meeting."

Josh let his mouth loose for a second because his bitten tongue was
throbbing. "Wow," he said.

"Wow?"

Josh licked his teeth and played with the paper clips on his desk.
He closed his eyes and thought about how hydrogen atoms in the sun
melted into helium. It was a force of nature. "I'm just suddenly
struck by the fact that I have no idea what to say," he said. "That
doesn't happen very often." Sam was heart-stopping, speech-stopping
beautiful, and seeing him could be a disaster.

"I just, I didn't want to be there and --" The next part came all
in a single breath: "To be there and be thinking about you and not
having told you, and I wasn't sure if you'd want..." Sam exhaled, the
sound waves slapping through the line. "You know."

"Yeah," Josh said, hoping he did. It sounded like he was supposed
to be the one who knew those things.

"Yeah?"

"I mean..." But, the thing was, he didn't. "I don't know," he
said. "If that's such a --"

"Yeah," Sam interrupted, and Josh was glad for it. "That's what I
thought."

"No, I mean I really don't know," Josh said. "I'm not sure. Are
you sure?"

"Sure?"

"That it's, you know, a, um, good idea."

"No," Sam said. "I'm not sure, I mean."

They were a fucking matched set, Josh thought. "It's a good thing
neither of us really, like, requires precise use of the English language
to do our job," he said instead.

"Yeah," Sam said. He had this low, even laugh, like it wasn't for
public consumption. "Look," Sam said, stopping again. "Okay, look.
I'll be at the Mayflower."

"Ah, okay."

"Friday night and Saturday night, and then I'm leaving from Union
Station at, I think, eight on Sunday morning."

Josh sighed. "So," he said.

"So now you know. Which is why I called. To tell you. That I
would be there."

"Okay." He thought about taking Sam to The Palm. The thing about
D.C. was there were always men eating together at flashy, powerful
restaurants, and it was always about business. Josh wondered if it was
really always about business.

"So, see me, don't see me, it's okay. Really. Just, if you want
to call, that's where I am. You don't even have to see me. You can
just call. Locally. No long-distance involved."

"That's what I'm worried about," Josh said.

"Yeah, I know," Sam said. They were quiet and in the background
Josh could hear a woman calling Sam's name. "Look, I've got to go."

"Okay." It was possibly the most unhelpful thing he could have
said.

"I'll see you," Sam said. "Or not. Okay, I'm hanging up now
before I say something even more idiotic than what I've managed in the
past five minutes."

"You're not an idiot, Sam." Sam was what his grandmother would
have called whip-smart. His dad said it, too, like, why haven't you
called that whip-smart girl, Josh? She really likes you.

"Okay, well, at this moment you have no proof to the contrary, but
thank you for that all the same."

"You're welcome."

"I'm just going to hang up now," Sam said, "just so you know, you
know, that I'm not hanging up on you."

"Just with me."

"Uh, yeah. Really, I'm saying goodbye."

"Bye."

"Bye." Sigh.

"Goodbye, Josh." Sam hung up.

THE MAYFLOWER HOTEL had a promenade down the middle where people used to
see and be seen in their gowns and white tails, and where Coolidge had
held his inauguration ball. There was a lot of coming and going, even
at 11 p.m., men in slick suits and women in little cocktail dresses
walking hand-in-hand down the vaulted halls. Josh sat at the bar across
from the main desk, nursing a scotch and soda and playing with the
antenna of his cell phone. He wished that he could bum a cigarette from
someone without looking like an idiot, because maybe then he'd feel less
like he was loitering. He tried not to think about people who only saw
each other in hotel rooms.

The napkin under his drink had the hotel's number printed in gold
ink. He watched the clerk pick up the phone and put his call through,
and having to say Sam's full name almost made him hang up. Sam answered
on the first ring.

"Hi," Josh said. It had been five days since they'd spoken. He'd
been sitting at the reflecting pool at the Lincoln Memorial, surrounded
by tourists who had no idea what havoc the city could wreak on a life,
that there were real people living there among the monuments. He was
looking up toward Melissa's apartment, and who cared what had happened
in the parking garage there if Sam was back in his life.

"Uh, hi." Sam's voice sounded tired. There was rustling, and then
Sam was clearer. "Hey," he said. "Hello."

"Hello."

"I think we got that out of the way without making too much of a
mess," Sam said, and some things never changed, and one of them was that
with Sam, Josh didn't always have to be the person who made a joke.

"You weren't asleep?" Josh asked.

"No," Sam said.

"Busy?"

"No. Just watching TV."

"What?"

"Some TV. I don't know, a movie or something. I wasn't really
paying attention."

"What were you doing instead?" Josh asked, delaying the inevitable.

"Just... Thinking."

There it was. Josh let the confusion blur into a simpler, more
selfish emotion: "About me?"

Sam's voice was light. "Well, now that you mention it... Where are
you?" He sounded puzzled.

"Uh, I'm downstairs." Josh glared at the woman who'd sat down at
the next table over until she got up and left.

"What?"

"I'm in the lobby," he said.

"You're in the lobby?"

"At the bar," Josh said. "I couldn't figure out if I should come
up."

"They told you my room number?"

"Well, no," Josh said. It was so Sam to think of something like
that, right then, and not any of the other things. "I hadn't quite
gotten that far, actually."

"Do you want to come up?"

"I don't know."

"Ahh." Sam sounded like he had that first night, when Josh had
tried to stop them. Like Josh was making it more complicated than it
had to be, and Sam was trying to be nice by not pointing that out.

"Do you want me to?"

"Josh. What do you think?"

"Don't be like that, Sam, I'm being serious."

"So am I." But Sam's voice was bright again, like he thought he'd
already won.

"I can't quite summon the levity to joke about this right now,
Sam."

"Josh, if it isn't fun..."

"Then what is it?"

"Exactly," Sam said. "Does it have a beat you can dance to?"

"I'm not really having fun with this moment," Josh said, only
half-lying. Because Sam, on the phone, was always fun. And, also, much
more safe. In person, Sam brought his own laws of physics.

"Then come up," Sam said.

"Yeah?" He wasn't sure, and he knew it was obvious. What if one
day what went up didn't come down? What if Sam was the
greater-than-equal force that pulled Josh out of orbit?

"Okay, I'm just going to say it."

"Say what?"

"Room 1492," Sam said.

"Oh." Ohh.

"So now you know."

Josh knew. He thought that Sam was right to have guessed he'd
already won. He stood up and walked toward the elevator. "Like
Columbus," he said, pressing the up button twice. The porter snickered.

"Congratulations, Josh, you can go on to the second grade."

"I just mean, I can't forget it now."

"Then you should just come up," Sam said, as if it were always that
easy. "Because otherwise it's just going to rattle around in your head
like a damn nursery rhyme until you get all cranky and hurt someone,
like the bellman, or your nice new secretary, or someone you don't even
know, just because you can't forget."

"I don't know the bellman." Josh looked at the guy with luggage,
and the guy hit the Up button. "I don't think."

"I mean, it's going to drive you crazy, Josh."

"What does it take to get you to stop talking?"

"Come upstairs." The elevator dinged.

JOSH WAS GOOD at faking it. Or he thought he was, usually. With Sam it
was more difficult. Sam actually knew what he was doing. Josh knew, in
the sense of fitting tab A in slot B, and in the sense that even when
kissing men felt completely different from kissing women -- bonier,
firmer, scratchier -- it was still, essentially, kissing, and because
Sam was a little shorter, he still had to bend down. Although women
always tasted like lipstick first and Sam just tasted like a wet mouth.

So Josh kept kissing Sam, and then in fits and starts he would
realize that he didn't really know what he should do next. And Sam
would step back, and make sure Josh was merely waiting and not wanting
to stop, and then Sam would take off another piece of Josh's clothing
and move them a step closer to the dark blue bedspread.

It had all been easier when they didn't really know each other,
Josh thought. This time, he kept hearing Sam's words in his head, even
when Sam's mouth was clearly occupied, and the words kept distracting
him from using his own hands very much. He kept hearing Sam say
"weird," the word reverberating with each touch.

Sam had left Josh spread out on the bed on his back, wearing only
his boxers and feeling very exposed, as Sam switched off the light and
shed his own clothes at a moderate, not-quite-striptease pace that was
driving Josh crazy. When Sam climbed across the covers on his knees,
Josh propped himself up on his elbows. Sam's skin was so warm, and so
smooth, and Josh realized that he'd never done this sober but he still
*felt* drunk. Sam took Josh in his mouth, and Josh sank back against
the pillows, sighing. He could see Sam's neck bobbing, and the muscles
tied to it in his back rippled as if underwater. And there were some
things that, no matter how smart they were, girls just did not do as
well.

Then they were kissing again, Sam on top of him, and when Sam sat
back a little, Josh knew what he wanted to ask.

"I want to --"

"Yeah," Josh said, letting his eyes wander and his hands play
around the edge of Sam's hipbone. Sam was hard. For him. With women,
you never really knew. Even if he still couldn't quite believe it, he
knew about Sam. He just didn't know what to do next.

"Yeah?"

Josh nodded like he was sure.

"You've --"

"Yeah," he said, and he wasn't exactly lying, and Sam knew what to
do after that.

When "weird" had been replaced in the echoing chambers of his brain
with this noise Sam made that might have counted the letters of Josh's
name among its consonants, Josh was hard again. Sam was lying on his
stomach on the white sheets, the covers pushed down around their feet.
Sam looked like he was sleeping, his hair disheveled. It was January,
and Sam had a newish tan, except around his ass, which looked like a
different continent, a sandy island in a sea of browned flesh.

Josh thought about Columbus and explorers, and then he bent in to
kiss the ridge of Sam's vertebrae, one of the ones in the middle. And
Sam rolled his neck out and made a pleased kind of noise, so Josh did it
again. He thought about conquistadors and pillaging. He was
plundering, and he wanted that to be enough.

THE MURMUR OF room service woke Josh, and he grabbed the covers up
around his waist and turned away from the door. Sam carried a carafe of
coffee to the dresser, and it was too late for Josh to pretend he was
still sleeping, so he asked what time it was, voice scratchy and
breaking.

"I missed my train," Sam said, and Josh noticed that he was already
dressed, chinos and a sweater, shoes on. "There's room on the 10
o'clock, but nothing else until tonight," Sam said, still standing by
the edge of the bed, peering down at Josh. "So."

Josh was stiff and his mouth was full of pond-scum and it was way
too early to be leaving a sentence like that unfinished. He'd gotten so
used to saying no, you can't stay. Except, he was in Sam's bed, and
he'd stayed. Shit, he was in Sam's bed. He was sore, and he wasn't
ready to remember why. And he wondered what would have happened if
Amerigo Vespucci had just said, fuck it, I like Italy better. He sat up
more and rubbed his face with his hands. He was not going to say yes.
He couldn't. He shook his head.

Sam turned and walked to the bathroom, saying "I'm almost packed"
back across his shoulder.

Josh felt creaky and very, very naked. "Uh, okay," he said,
looking for his pants. They were folded on the chair beside the bed,
along with his shirt, also folded, and his socks, folded into a pair.
It was like his mother had stopped by to tidy up. "I'm just, uh, going
to get dressed, then," he said, because the last person he wanted to
think about then was his mother. He pulled on his slacks.

"Do you want coffee?" Sam asked, coming back toward him and his
voice was very small, and Josh felt like a schmuck again. Fuck. This
part, at the least, he thought he knew how to fake.

Josh took one step, closer, stopped, finished buttoning his shirt.
"No, I'm just gonna --"

"Yeah," Sam said, clipped. Josh could see exactly how much it was
costing Sam to be so calm.

Josh took another step and bent forward to kissed Sam a little.
"I'm just gonna call you," he said, like that was what he had meant all
along, and Sam looked like maybe he believed him.

Sam
1997.

My car's out back
If you're ready to take that long walk
From your front porch to my front seat
The door's open but the ride it ain't free

"SAM, YOU HAVE got to stop working." Josh was hanging around the
Manchester offices watching hockey and yelling over his shoulder every
time there was a penalty. "It's after 10."

"I have to finish this speech." The governor was going to a First
Amendment conference in New York City, and it was going to be on
C-SPAN. And, maybe, CNN.

In New Hampshire, at first, it had all seemed easy. Too easy, Sam
knew later, but when it was happening, when he was reading reams of
research -- actual acres' worth of trees, some of which were about
saving trees -- and trying to write two consecutive sentences that might
see a speech's final draft, it didn't seem like work.

The things that he'd expected to be hard, like getting all these
people to think he could make them stand up and applaud, turned out to
be easy. Yes, there were egos, and there were differences of opinion,
and everyone was an expert on something and usually it was the same
thing. But the campaign was for all intents and purposes a collective
meritocracy, where if they did it right, did it the best, things were
okay. It was complicated, and it was new, but half the other staffers
were making it up as they went along, too.

CJ wandered into the room from somewhere else, spinning a ballpoint
pen between her fingers like a debate camp drum majorette. "You're not
billing 100-hour weeks anymore, Sam," she said, still twirling and
walking in this hyper-coordinated way. Sam had never gotten that pen
thing down, even when sitting down.

"Hey," Josh yelled again. "You know what Madonna said about free
speech? She said it was better than sex. Madonna. Better than sex.
Put that in." CJ threw the pen at Josh and he ducked.

In New York, it had never been about being the smartest. Being
smart helped, but mostly it was about taking all the credit and paying
other people to do the shit work. He'd paid the packers, the movers and
his old secretary, who had made sure that none of the packers or movers
stole anything from the apartment while Lisa was off in Barbados with
Carl, whoever that was. He'd paid to put the boxes in storage, left the
furniture and let his lawyer take care of the rest. He'd lost money on
the sale of the co-op, and even that seemed appropriate.

Everything he and Lisa had had was a negotiation, a bargain they'd
struck that required no loyalty except in public. One night at a party,
he'd been trying to pick up this guy who was just angular enough to
maybe be a model and there was Lisa, who had thought Sam was funny, had
thought he was a challenge. She'd never had enough guts to realize that
rebelling against her society-page mother by fucking half the
avant-garde photographers in Manhattan didn't really count if she still
had to bring a lawyer home for show. He'd lost almost three years
thinking he was getting the better deal, but at least they'd never
pretended it was supposed to be much else.

And, before that, with Krissy, he could have lost more -- he could
have been 65 and living in the suburbs and still settling for the
correspondence Josh had decided was safer, whatever that meant. A week
after coming back from D.C. that time, Sam had found a package on his
desk with a book inside, The Adams-Jefferson Letters. It was inscribed,
"Maybe we should write more," no signature.

"Chilean sea bass or the mussels mariniere?" Krissy had asked,
looking at him like he was supposed to care. She had been asking that
all month, like she had nothing more intellectually stimulating to
consider than different kinds of seafood for the rehearsal dinner, and
Sam was sick of the whole wedding thing and what it was doing to her.
Stacks of bridal magazines on the nightstand, rough drafts and second
drafts and third drafts of seating charts, and when they argued over
where his parents were supposed to sit at the head table, she'd said
something like, "You don't know a thing about normal families," and it
had been too much, or maybe not enough, and he'd said so. He'd gone to
The Grill and written four pages in longhand on a legal pad about Adams
and the Barbary pirates, and then added two sentences to the end that
really mattered: "Krissy and I broke up. When can I see you?" What
he'd gotten in return was eight pages in a tightly-knit scrawl about
Jefferson and Edward Livingston, nothing more or less, and, after
another week, a phone call at the office, like nothing had ever
happened.

"Come have a drink with us," CJ said, putting a hand on Sam's
shoulder and trying to steal a look at the text. He slapped the laptop
shut.

"I'm not doing this for the money, you know," Sam said, and when
she'd stepped back he opened the computer again and cut out five of the
eight words from his last sentence.

"No kidding," CJ said. She kept saying she missed her swimming
pool, and Josh kept offering to get her one of those kids' plastic tubs
to drag behind the campaign bus. "Come on." She started turning off
lights, kept going into the other room to get the other lamps. Josh
switched off the TV, stood up, walked over behind Sam and put a hand on
the back of his chair.

Toby stuck his head in the front door of the office, and the closed
blinds crashed into each other like a bell. "What's going on in here?"
he yelled, and Josh moved his hand away.

"Uh, Sam won't come have a drink with us," Josh said.

"People, are we going?" Sometimes, Toby just ignored Josh and Sam,
which made Sam think he noticed.

"I have to work," Sam said again, giving up.

"Did you explain about the karaoke?" Toby asked, turning on the TV
just long enough for the score to flash across the screen.

"I was just getting to that," Josh said.

"CJ," Toby said, with deep admiration, "can do this thing --"

JOSH COULD BARELY walk. Sam and CJ were both trying to help him down
the hotel hallway, and either Josh really was just that side of alcohol
poisoning or he was merely being a pain in the ass, but either way they
must have looked pathetic. When they turned the corner and bumped into
Leo, Leo scowled, and Sam felt like he should apologize.

"You're gonna put him to bed, right?" Leo asked, rolling his eyes,
and Sam thought that maybe the rumors about him and the drinking were
all true, that maybe he was one of those drunks who thought everyone
else was, too.

"Yeah," Sam said. "I don't really think he can be trusted to find
it himself." He tried to sound responsible.

"Like you can talk, Sam," Josh slurred into his shoulder.

"Shut up, Josh," CJ said. They leaned Josh against the wall and
Sam dug around in Josh's coat pocket for the keys. Josh tried to grab
his hand and Sam pushed him toward CJ. CJ had her knees locked like a
point guard and caught him perfectly.

"Don't forget tomorrow, Sam," Leo said, as Sam opened the door.

"Yeah," Sam said. "Seven?"

"Seven-thirty," CJ said, because she had to be there, too.

"Okay." Leo walked off, shaking his head like an assistant
principal, and CJ started shuffling forward, kicking Josh's feet ahead
for each step, and by that point Sam was pretty sure Josh was just
trying to be a pain in the ass. The two of them looked like some kind
of fucked-up marionette, and Sam couldn't help laughing a little.
Whatever, he was at least as drunk as Josh.

CJ sort of threw Josh back at him, and Sam caught him, and for a
long second they were just embracing, and then Sam pushed Josh down on
to the bed and stepped back. Josh never told Sam not to touch him, but
Josh never touched him back. Not sober, at least.

"Claudia --"

"Don't call me that. Joshua."

"Promise me you'll do that thing again, that song, when I'm maybe
sober enough to sing backup."

"Okay, Josh."

"G'night, Claudia Jean," Josh said dismissively.

"Oh," she said, and Sam winced, because CJ wasn't stupid. Nobody
questioned how he and Josh were always the last to make excuses at the
end of late-night conversations, but that didn't mean nobody knew.

"Good night," Sam said, and CJ nodded, shutting the door behind
her.

Josh was laying on his back, swinging his legs off the edge of the
bed.

"Josh, how many margaritas did you have?"

"Four," Josh said, holding up two fingers.

"Two."

Sigh. "Yeah."

"You're such a lightweight."

Josh was humming the Beatles song that some girl wearing a Denver
Broncos T-shirt with a voice like Billie Holiday had belted out in the
bar. Josh's version was less soulful but more heartfelt. He was
fucking up the lyrics and slamming his fist into the bedspread to
punctuate the percussion. "I want you!" Bump-bump-bump. "I want you
so bad." Bump-bump-bump. "I want you so ba-aa-aa-ad, it's driving me
mad, it's drive-ing-me-mad. Nah-nah-nah, nah-nah-nah!"

Sam kept laughing, because even though it turned out that political
types were pretty good at letting loose, he and never Josh got to go out
and get wild. "Okay," he said, squatting down to pull off Josh's
shoes. "If you're trying to channel John Lennon, I think the evening is
officially over."

"Not yet it isn't." On the third try, Josh managed to prop himself
up on his elbows.

"Josh."

"Come on. Do you know how long it's been? It's been forever.
It's been, like --"

"Two days." After everyone had left the old friends to talk of
earlier times, they'd make their way back to Sam's room, or sometimes
Josh's, and sometimes they'd get a little sleep.

"Two days! That's longer than forever."

"No, it just feels like it."

"We're not trying to set a record or anything, are we?"

"No," Sam said. "I don't think so. Not that kind, anyway."

"Then get over here."

Sam really wanted to stay, to just doze off next to Josh, who was
passed out on the bed, still half-dressed, because Josh had fallen
asleep twice while they were trying to get each other's clothes off.
But that was just a bad, bad idea, so he pulled his pants back on over
his erection and turned off the lights.

His room was around the corner on the same floor, and he was
halfway between the two when he heard Leo call his name. He stopped
walking but couldn't bring himself to turn yet. He paused for a second,
spun around.

"What, did he put up a fight?" Leo asked.

"What?" Sam looked at his watch, because he couldn't look at Leo.
It was 3 a.m. "Oh," he said, and he felt 17 years old all over again.
"You know Josh." Leo nodded in this incredibly paternal way. "He has
one drink and he gets all chatty. He has two and suddenly he's a Jimmy
Stewart filibuster." Sam forced a laugh, and Leo chuckled a little,
too. "So, it's seven tomorrow, with CJ?"

"Seven-thirty," Leo said.

"Okay. I'm going to sleep," Sam said, turning left. Leo started
to walk down the hall in the opposite direction, back towards Josh's
room and his own beyond it, and then turned around and came back.

"Is everything okay?" Leo asked, and Sam's hands shook a little as
he played with his own room key and realized he'd been walking the wrong
way.

"What?"

"You look kind of... Your shirt is buttoned wrong."

"Oh," Sam said, looking down. Shit. "Uh, yeah," he said, and
wondered if this was why they called it spinning. "Josh cranked the
heat up. I kept turning it off, but... Well, he was drunk."

Leo looked like he wanted to say something, but didn't. "Okay," he
said, nodding, walking off again.

"Seven?" Sam called after him, not quite able to leave the
conversation like that.

"Seven-thirty," Leo said sharply. "Don't be late, Sam."

"Leo, if I keep getting it wrong, I'll be early."

SAM GOT IT wrong, and he was early. He hadn't slept much. Josh had
slept late and CJ got sent to go rouse him for the 10 o'clock staff
meeting. Josh was hung over and cranky and the office was crowded. The
governor was even more cranky than Josh and the meeting had been a
disaster. Bartlet kept asking, "Which one's Josh?" and every time he
did Josh looked a little more queasy and a little less sure of what he
was doing there.

Everything was 10 times more difficult than it should have been.
He'd been working on the final paragraph of the speech for four hours,
and it still sucked. He'd been trying to find Josh for the last 45
minutes but it was possible he was in a meeting with Leo, Margaret
wasn't sure, but Leo's door was shut. A volunteer sitting at Josh's
desk just stared at him strangely when he popped his head in the door,
so he walked back to the hotel, alone. He was sitting in the lobby
waiting for someone to have dinner with and staring at the last page
when Josh sat down across from him.

"Hey," Josh said, sighing as he leaned back into the cushions of
the couch.

"How's this?" Sam asked, leaning forward. "Jose Cabezas, an
Argentine photographer with a particular skill for capturing the faces
of long-sequestered cocaine lords from our War on Drugs, was found
handcuffed to the steering wheel of his burned-out car, shot twice in
the head." He looked up for a reaction, and Josh was staring at Sam's
chest, looking tired. There were a dozen people milling around, talking
about a wedding the next day.

Sam cleared his throat, went on: "'The alternatives are clear,' one
of Cabezas' compatriots said. 'Remembering or forgetting, peace or
violence, freedom or silence. Or, quite simply, life or death.' Life
or death. In Latin America, in Argentina, freedom of speech is a matter
of life or death. How could it be less important here at home?"

Josh grunted and sighed, but didn't say anything. "Our First
Amendment," Sam continued, trying to spin his pen around his fingers,
"is the guarantee we give citizens that such atrocities will never
happen inside these borders, and it is only by full protection of that
guarantee that we indeed can call ourselves a democracy." The pen fell
to the floor.

"I don't think you can say that," Josh said. Sam put the printout
on the carpet and felt under the couch for the pen, couldn't find it.

"Why not?"

"Because," Josh said, "it's just going to piss people off." Josh
was still mad because Sam hadn't told him about Leo until mid-day, he
thought.

"It's the First Amendment." Sam had spent eight hours on the last
page of that speech, and all Josh had to say was no, like that was where
he thought the real power was, in reining people in.

"I know, it's just --"

"We're not in favor of the First Amendment anymore?"

"No, of course we are. But --"

"Can we just give the whole dueling banjoes thing a rest?" Sam
asked wearily. Maybe Sam was the one who was wrong, because he thought
that the real power was in bringing people to their feet. He was sick
of Josh telling him no.

"Just, do we have to be *so* in favor of it?"

"Josh, it's the First Amendment!"

"I know, but it's also the biggest thing we've done yet, and it
would really suck -- I mean, it would *really* suck -- to piss off
everyone who's not an absolutist right off the bat, just like that."

"You can't mess around with the First Amendment," Sam said.

"I know --"

"No, you know, do you? Because it's really -- I mean, there's a
reason it was the First Amendment."

"Because, uh, we decided not to include it in the Constitution?
And anyway, weren't there actually, like, 11 things on the Bill of
Rights originally?"

There had been 12, actually, which he hadn't expected Josh to
know. "Because without it, none of the rest of it means shit," he said
instead. "Without an absolute interpretation of the First, democracy
doesn't mean a thing, because there's no one to say when the
government's fucking it up."

"It's 'life or death,' right?" Josh rolled his eyes. "Sam, come
on, it's not like that."

"Josh --"

"You know, before you go climb in bed with Danny Concanon, you
might think about what that means."

"Danny is a good journalist," Sam said, but Josh knew that.

"He's a reporter, Sam, like the all rest, and if he thought there
was a story here, he'd go for it. I mean -- for crying out -- you --
you can't just let them print anything, Sam."

"What?" Two guys were standing at the front desk, ringing the bell
over and over again and Sam was so fucking sick of hotels and fighting
over things they all agreed on.

"Just stick to being vague," Josh said, more quietly, because
people were probably watching them.

"Because being vague is really going to help people remember who we
are in November," Sam said, standing up. Josh didn't follow him.

"Because we have to win first," Josh said, ducking his head. "And
then we can let the Supreme Court argue about it."

"Jesus Christ, Josh, when did you become that guy?"

"What?" Josh stood up.

"Nothing," Sam said, turning to walk away.

"What guy?" Josh yelled after him. "What fucking guy?"

Sam spun around and came back, their faces close like they could
start kissing. But they weren't going to. "The guy who -- when did you
decide that you got to say no?"

"That's my job, remember? You make up great speeches about the
shit we've all decided is worth being vague about."

Sam stepped back. "Then what do you need me for?"

"I need --"

"Oh, whatever," Sam said, and this time he wasn't going to come
back to argue the point. "I wouldn't want you to say anything, you
know, that might violate your version of the First Amendment. Write the
damn speech yourself. While you're at it, we don't really need the
Fifth or the Ninth, either. I'm sure that will help pick up a few
votes."

"YOU KNOW," JOSH said, closing the hotel room door behind him, "it was
free speech that made Jefferson and Adams stop talking for all those
years."

Sam tried to remember his parents fighting. It was possible they
didn't really talk to each other at all. "With the Sedition Act?" he
asked, still looking out the window.

"Yeah," Josh said. "Because Jefferson pardoned Livingston after he
slammed Adams."

"Yeah," Sam said.

"These amazing men, these statesmen, and they just stopped being
friends."

"They lost 12 years," Sam said, remembering.

"So why are we even talking about this thing?"

"I'm just -- this thing is hard," Sam said. "Harder. Than I'd
thought."

"Which thing?"

"All of it. I can't be vague *and* inspiring, Josh."

"We do need you." Josh put a hand on Sam's shoulder and an arm
around his chest from behind.

"I can't do vague," Sam said, inclining his forehead until it hit
the cool surface of the glass.

"Okay," Josh said, kissing his neck. "So be inspiring and let Toby
vague it up."

"Do you?" Sam turned and Josh caught his mouth.

"Hmm?" Josh mumbled between moments.

"Need me? In, like, the absolute sense?"

"I -- yeah."

SAM WAS GETTING dressed for dinner when Josh said he thought maybe it
wasn't going to work.

"You can't ask me to act like everything is normal while you keep
fooling yourself into thinking this is, you know --"

Sam was flicking a piece of mud from the bottom of his shoe.
"Wait, what?"

Josh was busying himself with the bedspread.

"That's what you think? You think we got caught because we're
doing something wrong? Jesus, Josh. All this time --"

"No, all this time we've been running around like, you know, it was
such a great secret that we just had to keep it to ourselves."

"I don't care!" Sam yelled, and they were back to yelling again.
"I'll call Danny right now and get him to break it the way we want to,
and I'll go on fucking Meet the Press tomorrow."

"Tomorrow is Thursday."

"Whatever! I can convince them that this makes us a better
candidate, seriously."

"Oh, no," Josh said. "No. *We're* not the candidate. This is not
something we spin."

"So we're back to no." Sam sat down on the end of the bed and Josh
tugged at the cover once more, gave up.

"Fuck, Sam." Josh sat beside him.

"No, I mean..." Sam sat straight up so their shoulders didn't
touch.

"It's like the speech, Josh. You can't have it both ways."

Josh sighed. "How did I end up having to choose?"

"Because you're that guy. And Bartlet and Leo and everyone need
you to be that guy. It's not all horrible."

"Yes, it is." Josh leaned his head onto Sam's shoulder. "It
really is."

Sam got up, because he couldn't stand to have Josh touching him
while they did this. "You have to be that guy, and I have to be vague,
or else why did we come to New Hampshire in the first place?"

"Because -- to -- shit." Josh rubbed his face with his hands and
sighed again. "Because this is supposed to be the real thing."

"Maybe that just doesn't mean what we thought it did."

Josh stood decisively, and Sam hated him in that moment, hated his
confidence that it could be so simply undone. "You know -- you know,
today, I hired a new assistant."

"You had an old assistant?" Sam asked, and for a second it was like
nothing had changed, and then he remembered what they'd just done.

"Well, she kind of hired herself. And you know why?"

"Don't change the --"

"Ask me why."

"Josh, you can't just change --"

"Ask me why."

Sam couldn't believe this was what they were left with. "Why?" he
asked, not caring.

"Because she wanted to know why this campaign couldn't be a place
to find herself. To start over. And, you know, I couldn't come up with
a good answer. I mean, isn't that why we --" Josh leaned against the
door.

"Yeah," Sam said, caring, hand on the knob, not opening the door
yet, because they were going down to dinner but they weren't coming back
together. "We found this," he said. "So. Maybe we just need to --"

"Yeah?"

"Maybe we just need to, you know. You *know*."

"Be those guys," Josh said, blinking slowly.

"Yeah," Sam said.

"The ones who put other stuff first."

"Yeah."

Josh
2001.

Well the night's busting open
These two lanes will take us anywhere
We got one last chance to make it real
To trade in these wings on some wheels

IF IT HAD been any season other than winter, fixing the thing with Sam
would have seemed easier, more natural. Winters in D.C. were flat and
mild compared to when Josh was a kid, and when it snowed, everyone in
Washington went crazy anyway. But it hadn't really snowed that year.
There had been months of dull, empty skies, or maybe that was just how
he'd been feeling.

If it had been spring, they'd have been driving with the windows
down and the radio blaring, and he could have turned to Sam and blurted
out what he'd been thinking. In the summer, they'd have been talking
about baseball, and rooting for different teams would have given them
something in common again, something to argue about other than work.
Even fall would have been better, even an October thunderstorm, when it
was like the universe was trying to tell him something and all he had to
do was listen hard enough and he'd get the help he so desperately
needed.

But no one was telling him what he needed to hear. Since
Christmas, and maybe before that, Josh had really been wanting to talk
to his dad about all of it, about being a survivor. He thought maybe
his dad would have something to say about being the one who took the
bullet. About getting to reassure those left untouched that everyone
who mattered had made it through the war.

Josh kept having the stupidest, most useless questions run through
his brain. Like, would Sam have thrown Josh to the ground if they'd
been there by the gate together? Had it been so long since they'd let
their bodies touch that Sam would have hesitated and it all would have
been the same, or, worse, would Sam have been the one hit? And what the
hell had been wrong with Sam that day in the hospital, when he'd stood
there, completely silent, even though it was only the two of them? Just
having Sam there should have been enough -- a year before it would have
seemed like enough -- but it wasn't. None of what they had left was
enough for him anymore.

He kept wanting to tell his dad about Sam, to tell him the whole
thing, even though he knew he'd never have considered the possibility if
his dad were alive. He wanted to say -- this guy, this guy Sam, he
knows the origin of words. He knows the Constitution like it was his
first language. He knows the way to get there. And now that your son
is so damn lost he's punching out windows just to feel alive again, this
guy Sam might be the only thing left that makes sense. He might be the
only thing that ever did.

He wanted his dad to say, fuck the weather, if this is what you
want, go get it.

SAM'S CELL KEPT ringing and ringing, and he wasn't answering Josh's
pages. Sam's home number was busy, which made even less sense, because
it wasn't like they had the kind of job where they could just stop
picking up the phone. But even so, he'd never expected to find Sam like
that, wrecked and stammering, his expression like a marble statue with
smooth, blank spaces where there should have been eyes.

Sam hadn't been quiet much since they'd gotten to the White House.
There was always something to stand up and shout about, and there wasn't
much room for a speechwriter's silence unless it was a pause for
laughter, and those moments of dead air never lasted long, not the way
Sam wrote. He'd been right about that much. The rest of it Josh had
all wrong -- despite the hundred different ways Josh tried to ask what
was going on, Sam wouldn't tell him. "Nothing new," Sam said, and Josh
was blindsided by everything he'd messed up until it became clear that
Sam wasn't talking about the two of them.

Sam looked like he was reeling, and Josh kept wanting to push Sam
down onto the couch and unbutton his jeans, push a hand up underneath
Sam's shirt along the ridges of his stomach muscles and ribs. He wanted
to take Sam to bed and let the storms begin. He wanted to be anyone but
the asshole who was mentally undressing his best friend while everything
fell apart. He stopped himself at playing his fingers on the curve of
Sam's shoulder and finally Sam quit trying so hard to sit up straight
and fell onto Josh's chest. Josh held him tighter, brushed the back of
Sam's head with his thumb.

"It's just, there are certain things you're sure of," Sam mumbled
against his breastbone, but it sounded like Sam couldn't think of an
example.

"Yeah," Josh said, dragging his fingers through the short hairs at
the nape of Sam's neck. "Like longitude and latitude," he offered,
wishing he knew what was supposed to come next.

"Yeah," Sam said, sighing again and sneaking a hand around Josh's
waist, and it was just like how gravity always won, always trumped the
pull of great masses to keep planets in orbit. Josh's other hand came
down off the back of the couch to take Sam's. There had been lots of
back-slapping and arm-hitting and long looks that never went anywhere,
ninth grade all over again, but it had been so long since they'd really
touched. His heart was racing, out of practice and breathless at how
real Sam still felt, how substantial and meaningful lying there against
his Humpty Dumpty chest.

He ducked his head and let Sam's hair tickle his nose, and Sam
squeezed his hand. He leaned forward more and caught the edge of Sam's
ear between his teeth and Sam's back stiffened. Josh hmmphed and sat up
straight like he'd never moved. And then Sam was untangling their
fingers and sitting up, and Josh's arm was pushed up at this weird,
dislocated angle, and to fix it he had to scoot away on the couch.

Sam cleared his throat and shook his head, and then cleared his
throat again. "Why did you come over, anyway?" Sam asked, like they'd
been having a conversation with a beginning, middle and end.

"Uh, I need a reason now?" Josh said, and because he was trying so
hard not to sound flirty, he sounded confused, and he wasn't confused.
Not really. Sam had gotten confused there for a second, maybe, had
thought he needed comfort but maybe not the kind that came with Josh's
hard-on pressing into his side.

It was just that Pete Williams had been on one of the bullpen TVs,
reporting for NBC, and all morning the president had been tossing off
Jefferson quotes like they were box scores, and Matt Skinner's office
had called, and for some unknown reason Ainsley had been carrying around
a five-pound bag of green apples. And it wasn't raining, and it wasn't
New Hampshire, but it was unnerving. Sam had spent all day on the Hill,
some meeting with some congressman, and normally Josh would know who and
why, but he hadn't really been paying attention to work things, he'd
just been sitting in his office trying to calculate the odds. He'd been
staring at the tallies on his chalkboard, trying to arrange the reasons
Why and Why Not into two discrete columns.

"You know, in Switzerland, there are these kids who can read
minds," Donna had said from the doorway.

"What? How long have you been standing there?"

"I just thought that you might be trying something like that."

"What?"

"Josh, you've been sitting there looking at the count for, like, at
least five minutes. And I'm no Swiss telepath, but I'm guessing it was
a lot longer than that."

"I'm, uh, counting."

"It's the Michaelson amendment, right?"

"Uh..." Josh had looked at the bill number scribbled in the top
left corner, nodded.

"I thought it was all sewn up," she'd said, propping herself
against the jamb. "You've got the minority whip in 15. Maybe you could
try your little schtick on him, you know, see if any of the numbers are
soft."

"Want to guess what I'm thinking right now, little miss soft
numbers?"

"That you should really see about giving me a promotion." She had
been dangling her left shoe from her toes, and Josh had wondered how
much would get done in the White House if they made men wear stupid
shoes, too.

"Would it get you out of here?" he had asked, taking a minute to be
thankful for both sensible shoes and Donna, who always knew when he
needed to be picked up and put back down facing the right direction.

"Actually, I was gunning for your job, Josh. Guess you're not a
mind-reader after all."

Walking to the Capitol, the air had only been refrigerator-cold and
the stupid sky had still been gray, just growing darker, and he had
thought that Why had been running three or four votes ahead, but none of
that matched the atmosphere and he'd gotten confused, and now he
couldn't come up with a reason.

"Of course you don't need a reason," Sam said, sounding annoyed.
"Why would you need a reason?"

"I, uh, I tried to call first," Josh said, which was literally true
but not really the point. "I -- wanted to see you. I hadn't seen you
all day."

"I was meeting with Johnson," Sam said, running his hands through
his hair.

"From Idaho?"

"The other one," Sam said. "Nevada."

"Right," Josh said, like he knew. "Is the bill going to --"

"Yeah," Sam said, cutting him off, "I think so." Sam stood up,
took a step away from the couch. "Look, I'm really kind of tired." He
was staring at the framed photos on the wall.

"You want me to go?" One of the photos was of all of them, CJ and
Toby and Leo and Sam and Josh, with the president and Mrs. Bartlet,
before he was president but after they'd won the nomination. They were
in California, where he and Sam had still been figuring out how to keep
their hands off each other. Mandy wasn't in the picture, but she'd
lingered on the edges of his life until Josh had been convinced she made
the best distraction. "I don't have to go, I mean, if you're --"

"I'm okay," Sam said, but he wasn't showing Josh his face.

"Sam --"

"No, Josh, I'm fine. I can deal with this on my own." The other
photo was older, maybe five years before, Sam and his parents with the
setting sun and the ocean behind them.

"I always think I can deal with things on my own, and then Leo
tells me some crazy story to convince me I can't."

"I don't need a story."

"No, you know the one --" Josh squinted and groaned and rolled his
head around on his shoulders a little. "These two -- these two guys are
in the forest, right?" he began.

"Oh, Jesus," Sam said, looking away from the picture and toward
Josh.

"No, I'm saying -- these two guys are, like, in the forest, and
there's a bear -- they, okay, just, I forgot how they know there is a
bear, but there is a bear --"

"Okay," Sam said, sitting down again next to Josh. "There's two
guys and a bear."

"Yeah. And the, so the first guy runs up a tree to hide, and the
second guy gets, uh, eaten maybe? No, probably not. But the bear, the
bear comes --"

"This story sucks, Josh," Sam said, and he looked back toward the
pictures.

"It really sucks," Josh agreed. "But what I'm saying is... I mean,
I can stick around a while."

"Instead of leaving me to, say, get eaten by a bear?"

"That's it!" Josh said, and he didn't care that his voice had
gotten all high, because Sam had half a smile on his face, and that was
more than he'd seen since he'd gotten there. "That's the punchline.
With the, the getting eaten by the bear. Because his friend ran away.
Which, right. So..." He cleared his throat and dropped his chin and
peered at Sam. "You, uh, you want me to stay?"

Sam didn't answer.

"You know, to talk or whatever." Stay just to talk or, you know,
forever. That was what Josh wanted to say, and he tried not to be
pissed that Sam's dad had ruined not only Sam's life but this moment of
opportunity.

"Is that --" Sam started, stopped, and when he picked up it
sounded like a different sentence. "That's one of Leo's, isn't it?"

Josh sighed. "Yeah. He does it better. Obviously."

"He always knows the right thing to say to you."

"Leo?"

"Yeah."

"Well, he's -- I mean, I've known him forever."

Sam hung his head down, rested his forearms on his thighs and, for
a minute, Josh thought he was going to cry. Then Sam sat up again,
looking resolute, and said, "What the hell did Leo say to you that day
that scared you so bad?"

"What?" Josh stood up, not sure where he would be going except
away from the thing he thought he'd come over to talk about. Their
conversations had never been simple -- even the easy ones, the ones that
weren't about them. They talked about 12 things at once, they repeated
half the sentences back to each other as questions, or confirmation, or
something.

"In New Hampshire," Sam said, and there was no room to spin the
question, because he knew exactly what Sam was asking.

"Sam -- this is -- this is a bad time for you." On the way over,
he'd given himself talking points. Like, he would say, "I think we
should try again," and Sam would say, "That's a great idea." He'd
thought he could get it all out in order, get it moving in the right
direction before they got waylaid again. And if there were any
objections, Josh still would have found a way to convince Sam why it was
right, because that was what he did now, convince people. But he didn't
like having to be this serious. He wanted to make a joke or tell
another stupid story and kiss Sam and have that be enough. That wasn't
going to be enough, not by a long shot.

"That didn't stop you before," Sam said, his voice soft.

"Look, I'm sorry, about the, uh, ear thing," Josh said, even though
he wasn't entirely. That was the kind of thing he'd learned from Sam,
how to curtail conversations with a touch. Of course, it was possible
it hadn't been a good idea those times, either.

"Whatever, it's fine," Sam said.

Josh didn't want it to be fine. He would have settled for 'wrong,'
or 'horrible,' or maybe even 'Seriously, Josh, not now.' But it wasn't
supposed to be an interesting pass, and it wasn't fine. "I have
phenomenally shitty timing, Sam," he said, like that was the whole
problem.

"I just want to know, Josh," Sam said, and Josh groaned a little
and sat on the arm of the couch, because he wasn't really leaving, and
as a rhetorical gesture standing up left a lot to be desired when it was
clearly an empty threat. Plus, it was more comfortable. Sam's couch
was dark brown leather with brass studded trim and weighed about 8,000
pounds, and even with three guys from the moving company they'd almost
killed themselves trying to get it up the stairs. It was an ominously
grown-up piece of furniture that made Josh think that somewhere in the
time since they'd met, Sam had aged twice as quickly and wound up being
the one who was older. "What did Leo say?" Sam asked again. "Because
-- he said *something*."

Leo had shut the door of the little Manchester office and said,
"How long have I known you? And your father before that?" Josh had
been humiliated, thinking about his father and his father's friends
having any idea what he and Sam did when no one was looking. And then
he'd been embarrassed that he'd been so humiliated, because he was a
grown man, his own man, and it shouldn't have mattered, but it did.

Josh sighed. That part was too complicated. "He said -- he, uh,
he asked me if I remembered the thing, with the car and the, uh, pole."

"You ran into a pole?"

"Yeah," Josh said. "When I was 16, like two weeks after I got my
license. It's a stupid story, believe me." Sam smirked. "But he was
at my house when I pulled into the driveway and told my dad it had been
that way when I left."

"So he told you not to lie," Sam said.

"He said he'd seen you the night before, and, if asked, I should
tell the truth or shut the hell up."

"That sounds like Leo."

"It was --" Josh swung a leg over, straddled the armrest. "I
mean, standing there, talking with him about that, or not talking,
whatever... You gotta understand, Sam, he was like, he was like --"

"Your dad," Sam said quietly, and he put a hand on Josh's knee.

"Yeah," Josh said. "Yeah... And he kept saying he didn't care,
that it didn't matter to him what we were doing as long as we did our
jobs, and I couldn't believe him. I could barely even hear him."

"Well, that explains a lot." Sam stood up and walked to the
kitchen. He came back with two beers.

"No, it doesn't," Josh said, taking the one Sam held out, already
opened.

"It's a reason," Sam said, pulling a long drink. He was standing
in front of Josh, and when he brought the beer back down he rested it on
the armrest right between Josh's legs, and Josh sat very, very still.

"It's a stupid fucking reason, Sam."

"No." Sam shook his head. "It's not. Seriously, you think this
is something I sit down and chat about with my dad?"

"You never -- you've never told him?"

"I told him about you," Sam said, and Josh wondered what. "I mean,
they never liked Lisa anyway. So they were happy when I left, and they
never really asked me why. I just didn't say, you know."

He knew. That part he knew, and he said, "Yeah," because it could
have been so easy. It could have been, Dad, this guy Sam is coming to
New Hampshire with me, and it's not too late to make it if we run. And
whatever his dad would have said, well, at least they could have talked
about it.

"If they'd asked, I would have. Maybe. I don't know." Sam shook
his head.

Josh put his hand on Sam's waist. "Twenty-eight years is a long
time to keep a secret."

"Yes, it is." Sam bent forward, like he was going to put his head
on Josh's shoulder, and Josh shifted forward so he'd be able to pull
Sam closer, but then Sam stepped away and Josh was holding only air.
Sam sat down on the coffee table, and Josh swung his other leg around
and slid down onto the cushion. "You think --" Sam looked at him.
"All those years that Adams and Jefferson never spoke, do you think they
missed each other?" Sam was jumping from one painful memory to another
like drops of water on a hot griddle.

"We talk all the time," Josh said, even though a more honest
response would have been, I miss you, too.

"I know," Sam said, but he was shaking his head again. "But I
mean, no, we don't. Not really. We never talk about it."

"Do you want to?"

"Talk about it?"

"Yeah?" Josh said. He'd thought he was more sure before the answer
came out of his mouth like a question. His mental preparation had,
vaguely, included time for them to talk. None of this was going
according to plan, and he kept trying to convince himself that he didn't
have to control the whole conversation for it to work out okay.

"Josh, you want us to talk about this?" Sam leaned forward again,
thrust the beer out in front of him like a shield or a joust or, maybe,
an offer. "I mean, really talk about this?"

"Well, but, your dad --"

"Screw him," Sam said, and he sounded like he meant it. "I mean,
whatever. I don't want to talk about that. I want to talk about this.
About us."

"*I* always wanted to talk about it." Even when his throat had
still been raw from the tube being pulled out.

"What?" Sam stood up, sat down again hard, rattling loose change
on the glass.

"You were the one who got all quiet whenever things got crazy,"
Josh said, not understanding how Sam couldn't know that about himself.

"What?" Sam pushed back and the coffee table screeched across the
floor. Josh looked down and there were grooves in the wood. "Josh! I
--" Sam shook his head again, rolled his eyes like he couldn't believe
what Josh was saying, and his voice had gotten low and more than a
little angry. "I -- I tore my life apart for you. Twice. I waited all
that time for you to get your shit together. Josh! I mean, have you
thought about that? Have you thought about what you want at all?"

Josh was opening and closing his mouth, again and again, because
each word that floated to his lips was wrong, just plain wrong, and how
had he missed that Sam thought he'd done all that so they could be
together? Jesus. Jesus Christ, Sam was right about that. Josh had
been whining and crying about how Sam kept getting him all confused.
Sam had been writing him love letters masquerading as historical
commentary and waiting for him to get his shit together and Josh kept
feeling backed into a corner without ever putting his finger on why.
Neither of them had known that all it would take was getting shot.

"I didn't ask you to leave Krissy," he said, but he couldn't look
at Sam, because that wasn't really true. He just hadn't said it out
loud or known what to do once it happened.

"But I did," Sam said, "and I didn't see you for three years,
Josh. Do you have any idea what that was like for me?"

"Yes."

"No, I mean, do you?"

"Know what it's like to want something I know I'm not supposed to?"

"Oh, we're back to that, to what we're supposed to do, to right and
wrong?" Sam was almost yelling, and he sounded more than a little bit
like Toby. "Jesus Christ, Josh, you come over here, you come into my
house like you live here or something." Sam was waving his hands around
the apartment, his voice still rising. "You leave beer in my fridge and
put your feet up on the table, and you think that's easy for me? I
mean, *what* are you doing here?"

"I'm -- I -- damn it, Sam, I'm not supposed to want to see you? We
made that decision in New Hampshire together. You and me."

"And Leo."

"No, this isn't about him!" All he had now was Leo, Leo and
sometimes Bartlet, but Leo knew which story to tell and Bartlet still
seemed to think Josh would crack if he was given more than two things to
do at a time. "We said, *we* said, we have to put the campaign first,"
Josh said, leaning forward. Sam bent backwards, his bare feet still on
the floor. "And -- *I* came to get *you*, you know."

"You made a pit stop on a road trip," Sam said, and he sounded old.

"Sam!" Josh's voice broke, because they could fuck up the future
all they wanted, but there were two or three things in their past they
were *not* going to rewrite just because they were fighting. "You were
-- you were, you said you were dying there."

"I would have left," Sam said, weakening.

"Sam!"

"I would have realized. I mean, I don't even *like* beer anymore,
Josh. I would have realized." Sam was shaking his head, at himself or
Josh or the situation, it wasn't clear.

"You would have woken up when you were 60 and wondered what
happened to your life," Josh said, but he tried to say it nicely,
because they had to fight a little to get this out.

Sam sighed. "And what were you doing with your life, Josh?"

"I was --"

"Wasting your time on Hoynes because he was a safe bet? Leaving
the gambling until I dropped into town again and you got drunk?"

Josh gripped his beer, wondering why the brown bottle seemed so
much thicker than a tumbler and why it wouldn't break already. "I was
-- Jesus, Sam, it wasn't like that. I'm not like that." He didn't want
to be like that.

"Like what? Come on, Josh, you can say it." Sam was taunting him.

"I don't know what you're asking for," Josh said, and even though
he was mad, he wanted to at least *try* to give Sam whatever it was he
wanted.

"This isn't about you, right?"

"Sam, I came over here --"

"Yeah, big points for *that* grand gesture." Sam actually rolled
his eyes, and Josh stood up again because he couldn't be face-to-face
with a man who wasn't going to try.

"Sam, I, I ran across Manhattan in the rain to get you and it
wasn't enough. I didn't care that people were going to talk about
that. You think I didn't hear that? Oh, that crazy Josh Lyman -- he
walked out on a real chance with Hoynes to go get his, his, his --" Sam
shot him an injured, angry look, and Josh jumped in because whether or
not the water was fine there was no way to get to the other side without
getting wet, and he would give just about anything if they could get the
words right this time. "To get his *boyfriend* a job with Bartlet," he
said.

Sam looked up, and his wide eyes said, See what you can do when you
try? He leaned forward and took Josh's left hand between both of his
own. "I ran 20 blocks," Josh said, more quietly, putting a hand on
Sam's shoulder, "in the rain, Sam, and I barely even noticed. There's
your grand gesture. What else could I have done?"

Sam sighed. "I don't know."

"It wasn't enough for you?" Josh really didn't know what else he
could have done, except be someone else, or someone he hadn't yet
become. He thought, maybe, that he could be that guy now.

"I think, maybe, it wasn't enough for us," Sam said. "Maybe it
didn't mean what we thought it did."

"It meant -- I realized -- I came over because --" He looked down
at Sam, because Sam was the one who knew how to finish sentences.

"I know," Sam said, and after a minute, he reached out to take
Josh's other hand, and Josh sat down again, and he felt the tide turn.
"Me too. Me too."

Josh wound his thumb around Sam's and sighed. "So why wasn't it
enough?"

Sam shrugged a little. "Because we were going to win no matter
what?"

"Maybe," Josh said. "Because we're too good at this, maybe."

"At winning?"

"At... figuring out what we have to give up to win."

"I don't care about winning," Sam said. "I mean, I *know* people
don't change, not really. I know that. And I didn't -- when you got --
I didn't think you were going to become someone you're not. But it was
huge, what happened, and I wanted it to have changed everything."

"It did," Josh said, leaning forward, and this was going to be a
story he could tell Leo. These two guys in Washington came to a fork in
the road, and this time, they got it right.

Sam was kissing him so hard that Josh knew he'd have bruised lips
the next day, and it was possible they'd both wind up with bruised ribs,
too, the way they were holding each other so insistently. Josh was
lying on top of Sam on the couch, one foot still on the floor for
balance, working his hand down the front of Sam's jeans,
button-by-button revealing blue boxers and a trail of dark hair. Sam
ran his hands up and down Josh's back beneath his undershirt and wrapped
one leg around Josh's waist.

Josh scooted back, bent down and kissed Sam's stomach, letting one
hand continue downward as he moved his lips up, pushing the fabric in
front of him until Sam lifted his neck and they slipped the shirt over
his head and the armrest to the floor. He slid inside Sam's boxers and
Sam arched off the cushions and Josh almost fell. He shot out a hand to
the floor, curled back to kiss Sam's neck and they were laughing
together, kissing like they knew where they were going, and Sam was
lifting the cotton tee over Josh's head, letting his hands trail down
Josh's sides to rest around his waist, and it tickled a little, and Josh
laughed again, but Sam had stopped moving, and Josh looked down to see
why and Sam's eyes were watery.

Josh dropped his chin and saw why, purple scar running down the
middle like a state line, and on the wrong side of the tracks was what
his life had once been. Sam was studying Josh's chest like the surgeons
had carved an answer in the flesh. After a second, Sam brought a finger
up to trace the path from top to bottom, shaking his head angrily as he
felt the hardened tissue. Josh shivered at his whispered touch.

"God, Josh..."

"You think that's cool, you should see what Shawn Johanson did to
my kneecap in the fourth grade." He grinned lamely and tried to laugh.

"Josh, I --" Sam shook his ahead again, but not at the world this
time but at the dodge, and Josh realized that Sam was never going to let
him get away with things just because he was smart or knew people or
thought he was funny.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I, just, I --" He'd just wanted to forget
for a little while, and he couldn't, and they probably shouldn't,
anyway, but he'd wanted to pretend that he heard music for what it was
again.

"It's okay," Sam said, and he sat up a little until he could pull
Josh down so they faced each other, Sam pressed up against the couch,
Josh hanging off over the floor. Sam put an arm around Josh's waist and
kissed the corner of his mouth, softly this time.

"I didn't want -- Sam, you didn't have to, uh, to stop."

"I know," Sam said, and he sucked Josh's earlobe between his teeth,
and Josh let his head hang back because Sam wasn't going to let him
fall. Sam let go, kissed his way back around to Josh's mouth and
stopped again. "I don't want to stop."

"I mean, I know it's kind of, uh, weird," Josh said, swallowing
hard, "but, I mean -- I promise, I'm not going to break or anything --"

"No, no, it's not. It's not that."

"You don't --" Josh hid in the corner of Sam's neck, gathering
courage. "You don't think we should do this?"

"Yes," Sam said. "We should."

Sam
2001.

Sit tight, take hold

SAM WAS RUNNING at about 50 percent on his sugar packet free throw game,
which wasn't all that shabby, given that it was his first time playing.

On Tuesday, after he'd hung up the phone but before Josh had shown
up, he'd decided that he and his dad still had something in common,
after all -- not being able to commit to the one thing they'd ever
really wanted, whichever that was, because sometimes it was hard to
tell. His dad had two women, and he had Josh and the White House.

His neck was sore from having slept on Toby's couch, but for weeks
his apartment had been making him claustrophobic, especially when he was
alone, and two nights of him and Josh not sleeping at all had left him
elated and exhausted, and there was only so long he could stall Leo on
the pardon list. The townhouse had been feeling too much like his New
York apartment, like something he'd set up to separate the parts of his
life that didn't make sense together. But they were fitting together
again, he and Josh, and he'd have gone over to Josh's place at 4 a.m.
when he finished, but he wasn't sure they were ready for that yet.

It had never even occurred to Sam that Gault could actually be
guilty. Gault had fallen prey to Cold War politics, and Sam had known
all there was to know about treason, about fidelity and right and
wrong. The fact was, he wouldn't have known a compromise if it had
bitten him in the ass, and Gault had been a traitor and Sam had ignored
it all to prove a thesis he wouldn't understand for 15 years.

Sam had thought he was done dealing with the thing with his dad.
He wasn't ready to talk to him yet, but the worst was over, and if it
had taken all that to realize why he needed Josh, then fine. Except the
thing with Gault had made it worse, and he was yelling at Donna and only
at the last moment before he shattered that poor woman Stephanie's world
did he realize that he was okay, that he could stop. His dad, Gault --
they hadn't found their way back. But he had.

And then Josh was tumbling through the door of his office like that
first day they'd met, and Toby was old-school and bananas were
life-threatening and maybe Sam had just been named Josh's new wing man
and Donna was going to come along. And Josh was holding Sam's bicep,
his touch warm and reassuring through the starchy newness of the shirt
sleeve, and Sam finally knew what they were doing.

"I'm gonna meet you there," Sam said.

"Yeah?" Josh asked, making sure. Sam nodded a little and rooted
around in his pocket for the message. "All right," Josh said, looking
back once more over his shoulder and flashing his dimples.

All this time, Sam had thought that he was the one who had to know
where they were headed. But he didn't need some elaborate escape route.

Just in case, Josh could help find the way.

END.

e-me

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