Chapter 5

Joel had reada recent Gallup poll claiming that public speaking terrified more Americans than anything else but snakes. According to the survey, glossophobia was more common than arachnophobia (fear of spiders), entomophobia (fear of insects), and cynophobia (fear of dogs) combined.

None of Joel's biggest fears—commitment, vomiting, jellyfish—were on the Gallup list. In fact, public speaking was one of his life's greatest joys, and not just because he loved to hear himself talk. To unveil the natural world in an entertaining way, to see eyes light up with wonder…it was almost better than sex.

"The curious life of the Magicicada—aka, the periodical cicada—begins as an egg, deposited by its mother inside the bark of a twig."

A quick scan of the dimmed hotel conference room and its standing-room-only crowd showed all attention riveted on him. Usually when he gave his Life and Good Times of the Magicicada talk at libraries and nature clubs, maybe a dozen people would show up. But this was CicadaCon 2004, a collective celebration of the bumbling bugs.

He advanced to the next PowerPoint slide, a drawing of the cicada's full life cycle. "After the nymph hatches from the egg, it takes a huge leap of faith, falling to the ground and burrowing into the soil. For seventeen uneventful years, it lives in darkness." The next slides showed nymphs as they grew from tiny pale grubs to two-inch bronze digging machines. "They go through five stages of development—or instars, which is a fantastic word."

A few audience members rubbed their bare arms and huddled into their chairs, either skeeved out by the photos or simply chilled by the hyper-air-conditioned room. Joel's linen sport coat kept him warm while also making him look way more professional than he felt.

"Check out the guns on this guy." He aimed his laser pointer at a late-stage nymph's giant forelegs, built for burrowing. "Straight out of a horror movie."

"Wouldn't wanna meet him in a dark tunnel," quipped an elderly man with a raspy voice.

"Seriously." Joel advanced to a photo of a backyard literally crawling with cicadas. Brood X was written at the bottom in a robust font. "At the end of their seventeenth spring, they emerge at dusk by the millions. That's pronounced Brood Ten, by the way, though I prefer Brood X because it sounds cool and mysterious, but as a Gen Xer I may be biased." He was rambling now, so time to ask a question. "Can anyone guess why they all come out at once, even though it makes the trees more crowded than the Bay Bridge on Memorial Day weekend?"

"They like to party?" offered a bearded man wearing a Mars Spirit Rover T-shirt.

Joel smiled. "They do like to party, but that's not the main reason. Put yourself in a cicada's place. Imagine dragging your body out of the ground into a world you don't recognize. What's your biggest challenge? Remember, you've got no stinger, your wings don't work yet, and you taste terrific."

"Oh!" A young girl in the front row waved her hand frantically, her blonde pigtail braids swinging back and forth.

Joel pointed at her. "Go ahead."

"Um, so, okay." She fidgeted with her elastic puka-shell bracelet, snapping it against her wrist. "If it was just you and, like, a few other cicada friends, you'd probably all get eaten. But if you have a billion friends, you might not get eaten?"

"Bingo! Safety in numbers—or predator satiation, as we fancy-pants scientists call it. Even the hungriest bird has a limit to how many cicadas it can fit in its belly.

"Back to the cicada's big debut." Joel showed a photo of nymphs carpeting a tree trunk, provoking ewwwws from the audience. "The nymphs crawl up the closest vertical surface—usually the tree where they hatched—and that's when some serious magic happens. They bust out of their nymphal skin." He brought up the next slide, showing a tear in the top of the thorax. "They pull the front two-thirds of their bodies out of the hole, but then they're hanging upside down with their butts still in the husk. Awkward, right? So then they do one of those power sit ups—which I would demonstrate for you if I had any abs at all—and pull themselves uuuuuuup and out."

Joel bent over, hands on his knees. "Whew! Rough night so far, but it ain't over yet." He laser-pointed at the photo of the newly emerged adult, exquisitely vulnerable with its white body and crinkled, pale-yellow wings. "Before sunrise, fluid will inflate those wings, and the exoskeleton will harden and darken into…tadaaaaa!" The next slide showed the (in)famous black-bodied, amber-winged periodical cicada.

The cheers and applause made him beam. Outside his professional life, he met few aficionados of his favorite critter. But thanks to the internet, there was a fandom for everything.

"And now…" Joel flourished his hands like a symphony conductor. "What happens next?"

"They sing!" shouted several audience members in near unison.

"You're right, and here's the funny part: Only the males sing. See, they've got two weird little body parts called tymbals. They're roughly here." He placed his hands just beneath his diaphragm, then pointed his laser at a new photograph showing the ribbed structures directly behind the cicada's thorax. "Inside a male's big abdominal cavity is a resonant air chamber. So a cicada's song is actually the muscles of the tymbal flexing really fast, like this." He picked up an old-fashioned transparency sheet by the edge, then shook it up and down. "The sound is amplified in the air chamber like a drum, so what we hear is this."

Joel tapped his laptop's space bar to start the audio file. The baby-buzzsaw noise filled the room. A few attendees winced and covered their ears.

He played audio clips of the calls belonging to the three Magicicada species native to Maryland. Like most audiences, this one seemed to like the septendecim's uncanny WEEEEEE-oooh the best, with its long high note followed by a short downslur.

"The cicadas spend the next few weeks singing and mating and having a jolly old time." The next photo showed a mid-coital pair of cicadas. The bugs faced in opposite directions with wings overlapping, shielding their joined genitalia from view. "I love this picture because it looks like they're being modest."

"Go away, humans," said Mars T-shirt Guy in a high-pitched buggy voice. "Mind your own beeswax." A few people groaned.

"Entomological humor, I like it." Joel took a deep breath. Now came the inevitable conclusion to all happy stories.

"Eventually, one by one, the cicadas drop dead. They cover the ground and decompose—which sucks for us, because of the smell, but their bodies provide nutrients, often for the same tree that gave them life for seventeen years." He switched to a long shot of a grand chestnut oak tree. "Before the end of the summer, the tiny nymphs hatch, starting the whole cycle all over again."

He could end it here on a Yay-Circle-of-Life note. But the crowd was clearly with him, so why not bring them all the way?

Joel stepped forward and softened his voice. "Our world is changing faster and faster, and sometimes…" Was it okay to be a little emo? "Sometimes it feels like it's stuck in a downward spiral. But the Magicicada—this one little bug on one little part of this planet—never changes. It returns again and again, marching to its own beat."

A few sighs from the audience. Nice.

He clasped his hands before him in professor pose. "I know you have tons of great questions. Hit me."

"How many eggs do they lay?" asked the girl who'd given the right answer about predators.

"Each female lays about 500 eggs." Gasps and murmurs ran through the crowd. "Now you know why there are trillions of these suckers."

The girl's mother asked, "How do the cicadas know it's been seventeen years?"

His favorite question. "That's actually the subject of my own research. We think periodical cicadas have a sort of internal molecular clock. Get this: Every time a tree sheds its leaves, it changes the chemistry of its xylem sap, which cicadas drink from the roots. The cicadas' internal clock counts the number of times their dinner tastes different."

"But why seventeen years," the same woman asked, "and not sixteen or eighteen? Is it because seventeen is a prime number?"

Several other audience members laughed, but Joel said, "Very astute. The theory is, periodical cicadas use seventeen years—or thirteen years for the southern species—because it's harder for predators to synch their own population numbers to eat them. Plus this keeps cicada broods from competing with each other. We can only assume that over the last four million years, the cicadas tried other periods with less success."

A man standing against the back wall raised his hand. Joel opened his mouth to say, Go ahead.

Wait, was that…? His tongue tripped over itself. "Gughaheh."

"Speaking of predators," asked the tall man with tousled hair, "I hear some people eat cicadas. Have you ever tried one?"

The audience's laughter and yucks gave Joel valuable seconds to regain his composure.

It couldn't be him. Not here, not now. This room was too dim to prove either way, but it had to be Joel's mind playing tricks. He had Danny on the brain because cicadas still reminded him of that day in the meadow, when his underdeveloped and slightly deranged seventeen-year-old self had decided it had met its soulmate—not that he believed in such things.

"I've never eaten one, but being vegetarian gives me an excuse." He tore his gaze from the Danny doppelg?nger to address the room at large. "FYI, I've looked it up, and cicadas are definitely not kosher."

The questions continued for the rest of the session, until a convention volunteer waved a 5 MINUTES sign at him from the door.

Joel gave her a thumbs up. "Afraid that's all the time we have," he told the audience. "Please help yourselves to the handouts and cool cicada photos on the table up here. And I'll see you again in 2021!"

The crowd broke into hearty applause with a dash of hooting and hollering, all of which warmed Joel's face. He smiled and took a little bow, nothing too pretentious.

As he was closing down his PowerPoint, a short Black woman with a long, swishy red dress approached him at the lectern. "Hi, I'm Lorraine Kidjo. I'm doing the next session."

"Oh wow, you're a legend." He shook her hand. "I've got your book on insects in mythology. I reread it every semester to inspire me."

Lorraine put a hand to her heart. "That's so kind. I know how it is, teaching the same material over and over. A little inspiration comes in handy."

Joel disconnected his laptop from the projector and helped Lorraine connect hers, since the setup here was a little wonky.

Her opening slide showed on the screen: Souls of Poets: Cicadas in Literature above a familiar-looking painting. "What's that from?" he asked her.

"The Jean de la Fontaine fable, La Cigale et la Fourmi. The Cicada and the Ant."

"Is that like the Aesop story about the ant and the grasshopper?"

"Yes, but with a more ambiguous ending. In every version, the ant works all summer gathering food, while the grasshopper—or cicada—sings and dances and ends up with nothing to eat come wintertime. In Aesop's fable, the ant is supposed to be our role model, showing the virtue of hard work, but in Fontaine's version, the ant comes across as, frankly, a bit bitchy." Lorraine smiled. "The French understand the intrinsic value of art."

"As they should." He had shifted the projector when plugging in Lorraine's laptop, so he carefully adjusted it until the image was centered onscreen.

Then he finally scanned the room for He Who Might Be Danny. But the tall man from the back wall was gone.

Joel turned to pick up his laptop case. A note lay atop it, written on a small sheet of hotel stationery. He picked it up, heart thumping in his throat.

Meet me at the fountain.

—Your favorite horseboy

Joel covered his mouth to muffle a squeal.

"You okay?" Lorraine asked.

"Uh. Yeah. Fine." He scooped up the leftover handouts, nearly dropping them. "I'd love to stay for your talk, but I've got a—there's an old friend—sorry, I'll get out of your way."

"No rush, hon." She sounded like she was worried for his mental state.

Joel grabbed his laptop case and made his way to the door. He had to shuffle sideways to squeeze past the people entering the room, but once he was free, he dashed down the hall, clutching the stack of handouts to his chest.

He had to stay cool. In no possible universe could this be the romantic reunion he'd always dreamed of, that slo-mo run into each other's arms, shedding their shirts on the way so they could pick up exactly where they'd left off. Danny was probably here with his wife and kids.

Joel stopped at the edge of the crowded indoor courtyard.

Danny (Danny!) was sitting alone (alone!) on the fountain's marble rim, flipping through a convention program. The fountain lights danced over his hair, which was still a mass of thick brown tuggable waves, but longer now, with a blow-dried-Brad-Pitt shagginess. His short-sleeved maroon henley showed off that same cowboy-quarterback physique Joel's memory had kept alive.

Be cool. Be cool. Be cool.

Danny looked up and spied Joel. A smile broke like a sunrise across his tanned face.

Fuck being cool. Joel bolted forward and ran smack into a six-foot wall.

He sprawled onto the floor, his handouts spilling across the carpet like a deck of cards.

A giant cicada loomed over him. "Oh my God, are you okay?" Her squeaky voice emanated from a screen in the bottom of a bulging black head, which was bookended by a pair of red eyes the size of cappuccino mugs. "I'm so sorry."

"My fault, not watching where I was going." Joel blinked away the shock of impact. "Did I break your costume?"

"I don't think so." The cicada bent over halfway, then quickly straightened. "I would help you up, but my arms—" Her forelegs waved stiffly on either side of her barrel-shaped thorax. "Kinda encumbered here."

"I've got him," said a deep voice behind her.

She pivoted, thwapping Danny with a wire-and-cellophane wing. "Sorry! Still getting used to the costume. I need to learn where it ends and the world begins."

"It's very impressive." Danny stooped to collect Joel's handouts. "Did you make it yourself?"

"I did, thank you." She waggled a claw at Joel. "Take care!" she called out as she lumbered away, nearly crashing into an even bigger cicada, fluttering their four collective wings.

"Wild scene, huh?" Danny reached down to Joel.

Joel grasped his forearm and let himself be effortlessly pulled to his feet. He lunged to wrap Danny in a bear hug. "I can't believe it's you! What are you doing here?" He held him at arm's length to examine him. Wow, those biceps. And no wedding ring—though that could mean nothing, since not every married person wore one. "You look so different. But somehow the same. Oh my God, Danny!"

"I go by Dan now."

Dan. Dan Evans. Here in Maryland. Again. "Noted. I'm still Joel."

"Yeah." Grinning, Dan straightened the mess of fallen handouts into a neat stack. "I can tell."

Joel held up the one thing he hadn't dropped in the collision—Dan's note—and flapped it in the direction of the fountain. "You made a Smiths reference in your message. You kept that tape I gave you?"

"I listened to that thing until it wore out. I literally cried when it broke."

"Good! I mean, good that you listened to it, not good that you cried." Joel took back his cicada photo handouts. "How are you—how were you—with your dad and all that?"

"I'm okay." Dan adjusted the shoulder strap of what looked like a camera case. "It was literally half a lifetime ago."

"Still, dude. I'm so sorry I never called to give you condolences. I didn't know how to find you." Joel shoved the handouts into the overstuffed outer pocket of his laptop case. "I called your dad's company, but they didn't have your number. So I tried Information, but I didn't know what town you lived in, and of course the phone wouldn't be under your name, and there are a fuck of a lot of Evanses in Colorado, did you know that?"

"I should've given your sister my home number to pass on to you, but that day was—whoa!" Dan trod on Joel's toes as he dodged another shambling cicada. "Sorry." He pointed toward the hotel restaurant, where a line was already forming outside. "I'm starving. You wanna get dinner?"

No wife and kids, then, at least not here.

"Definitely, but not that bland, overpriced hotel food." Joel checked his watch. "I'm judging the costume contest in less than an hour, so let's scrounge some sustenance in the green room, then after the contest I'll take you out for a real dinner."

"Costume contest. That explains…" Dan gestured to a pair of green cicadas walking by, one of them carrying a toddler dressed as a bumblebee.

"There's a whole panel of judges. My job is to rate the outfits on anatomical accuracy, and why are you smirking at me again?"

"Because." Dan gave him a one-armed hug around the shoulders. "I'm happy you're still weird."

Dan's cheeksached from smiling as he followed Joel through the bustling lobby. All those hours racing eastward with his foot jammed against the gas pedal had paid off. In some gloomier timeline, where he'd blown a tire or gotten pulled over for speeding, he arrived too late to see Joel. Poor, sad Alternate-Universe Dan.

Ahead of him, Joel edged around a family of four, who were blocking the hallway even without costumes. "Excuse us, sorry."

The mother turned around. "Look, it's the bug boy!"

The rest of the family became a clamor of voices.

"Loved your talk!" the father said.

"He looks smaller offstage," the preteen boy told his sister, the one who'd asked a bunch of questions during the presentation.

The girl bounced over to Joel, waving one of the cicada photo handouts. "Can I have your autograph?"

Joel's eyes widened. "Wow, yeah, of course."

She handed him a silver Sharpie. "Can you sign it ‘Bug Boy'?"

Joel laughed, then pointed the Sharpie at Dan. "Thanks, now my friend here has a new nickname for me. I'll never live it down."

"I promise I'll only call you Bug Boy once," Dan said. "You'll never know when it's coming."

As they moved on down the hall, Joel asked him, "Why ‘Bug Boy'? Why not ‘Bug Man' or at least ‘Bug Guy'? Is it the alliteration, or is it because I'm short?"

"Are these rhetorical questions, or do you want me to answer?"

"Yes, but also yes." Joel looked up at him. "How old would you say I was if you didn't know?" He passed a hand over his silky black hair, which was combed forward in a trendy style with side-swept bangs flowing over his right eyebrow. "Be honest."

"You do kinda look like you walked off the set of a WB show."

"Hah! I'll take it."

They entered a small, empty lounge. The handwritten sign on the door read Green Room: For CicadaCon panelists, staff, and volunteers ONLY.

Dan made a beeline for the snack table. "It's like having a backstage pass. I feel so special."

"You are special." Joel handed him a lime-green paper plate covered in cartoon ladybugs. "As evidenced by the offering of not one but two varieties of cheese cubes."

"Now we're talking." Dan took some frilly toothpicks and speared himself some cheese, along with what might have been salami but if not, who cared. His top-speed journey had left little time to eat, and now his head was swimming with hunger—and with being around Joel again.

They settled into a loveseat near a window that looked out onto the hotel parking lot, which of course was ringed with trees, because 2004 Maryland seemed as green as 1987.

Dan managed to stop shoving deli cubes into his face for a moment. "I take it the rock star thing is on the back burner?"

Joel laughed again, tilting his head back and revealing the silver fillings in his molars. The sight flooded Dan with déjà vu. Most of his memories of the day they'd spent together had been shrouded by Dad's death, but Joel's laughter was uncovering more mental souvenirs, like a developer bath revealing a photo image.

"Definitely back burner'd," Joel said. "I figure when I'm fifty I'll join one of those dad-rock groups that play nineties covers in dive bars. We'll close every set with ‘Flagpole Sitta,' then hold a seminar on irony for Generation Y and Z and Double-Alpha or whatever we're up to by then." He uncrossed and recrossed his legs to angle himself toward Dan. "Plus, the nineties will be retro, so I'll make major bank."

"Sounds like a solid retirement plan."

"A lot more solid than being an adjunct professor at three different colleges."

"You don't have tenure yet?"

"Tenure? I don't even have health insurance." Joel slumped against the back of the couch. "See, I was determined to do my dissertation on periodical cicadas, and particularly Brood X. It's one of the biggest broods."

"It's definitely the most famous one." Dan patted the camera case beside him. "That's why my magazine sent me to do an article on it." Yep, that sounded downright plausible.

"Cicadas do make good media stars. They've got it all: sex, death, loud music. Hopefully my research will wrap up this summer, and next year you'll be calling me Dr. Mendel."

"I like the sound of that." Calling him, period, sounded awesome. "So a Ph.D. will get you a better job?"

"No guarantee. The most stable option, salary- and benefits-wise, would be teaching high-school biology. But I have zero desire to go back into the closet."

So he'd been right about Joel's sexuality. Whew.

"The way things are going in this country," Joel continued, "with the backlash against gay marriage, people feel more comfortable being bigots now. Some of those people are parents of high-school students."

"The backlash is nuts. People should mind their own business."

"Yes, but it wins votes." Joel picked up a celery stick and held it between his first two fingers like a cigarette. "Your turn. How'd you end up working for a magazine? You never mentioned photography back in 1987." He looked away and picked at the seam of his khakis. "Not that I remember every moment we spent together, even if I did write it in my journal like the lovesick nerd I was."

What Dan wouldn't give to read that. Hell, what he wouldn't give to have kept a journal of his own, or to have had a photo of Joel—or anything else of him—especially during those long, confusing nights when the biggest questions stole half his sleep and all his certainty.

"Photography was my dad's hobby. After he died, no one else wanted his equipment, so I had it shipped home and taught myself how to use it."

"I'm glad you took up his hobby instead of his job in the bug-murdering business." Joel brushed his fingertips over Dan's forearm. "Seriously, though. I'm glad you found a job that makes you happy. And to do it for a living—that's a dream come true."

"Barely a living, but yeah. Our magazine is a shoestring operation, and subscriptions are falling, what with everyone moving to digital."

"Then I'll be your very next subscriber. It'll be nice to have non-junk mail again."

"And you'll be one of a select few Great Plains Life readers east of the Mississippi."

Joel tilted his head. "So why would a magazine about life on the prairie send you to do a piece on periodical cicadas? The farthest west any brood lives is eastern Nebraska, and that one won't emerge for another nine years."

"About that." Dan ate another cube of maybe-salami to buy a few more seconds. "People have been leaving the Great Plains for the last century, especially since the Dust Bowl. Winters are cold, summers are hot, and family farms are getting gobbled up by bigger ones. So in answer to this trend, our magazine has a feature on why the grass isn't always greener on the coasts."

"Even though the grass is literally greener on the coasts."

"Yes, but not metaphorically." He jutted his thumb toward the window, where the insectoid drone was seeping through. "Cicadas are a great reason not to move east."

Joel gasped in mock shock. "Shut your mouth! Cicadas are delightful." He pointed a carrot stick at Dan. "Still, that feature series is a brilliant idea. Was it yours?"

"It was." In fact, he'd invented it yesterday morning, somewhere between Topeka and Kansas City.

"Your magazine's headquartered in Denver, I assume?"

"No, we could never afford the real estate prices there. We're up in Laramie, Wyoming."

Joel stiffened at the name of the town, as did most people in the last six years, ever since Matthew Shepard had been murdered for being gay. "Were you there when?—"

"Yeah. I was there when he was killed, I was there when the media mobs descended, and I was there when they got bored and left."

Joel glanced at the door, then leaned in. "What's it like?"

"I love Laramie. It's not full of rednecks like everyone thinks. Compared to the place I grew up, it's practically a hippie commune, with a vegetarian restaurant and everything. It's a college town, you know."

"I know all about Laramie. I've seen the play." Joel crunched the remnants of his carrot. "Did you ever meet Matthew Shepard?"

Dan shook his head. "It's not that small a town, especially when UW's in session." He rolled his fancy toothpick between his thumb and forefinger, avoiding Joel's eyes. "But I have been to that bar."

Joel gasped again, louder than before. "To the Fireside Lounge? The gay bar?"

"It's not a gay bar, just…gay friendly." Why was he splitting hairs over Laramie nightlife? He hadn't come here to hide who he was, but some habits were hard to break. "I've got gay friends." He took a sip of Coke and finally looked at Joel's face.

A smile was forming there, crinkling Joel's eyes, then wrinkling his nose, and finally bursting onto his lips. "Dude, are you still in the closet?"

Dan inhaled a drop of pop. "Wh-what do you mean ‘still'?" He coughed hard, the carbonation burning his nostrils and making his eyes water. "I mean, what do you—how can you?—"

"Tell?" Joel tapped his temple. "It's burned into my brain, the way you looked at me while we were waltzing to R.E.M."

"Ah. Yeah." Dan wiped his eyes with his paper napkin. "I've had girlfriends, though."

"Maybe you're bisexual. That's cool. I am too."

Dan snorted, almost coughing again.

"I'm not kidding. I've got it all figured out." Joel raised and lowered his plate and cup like they were two sides of a balance scale. "I'm bisexual but homoromantic. I'm attracted to women and men, but I only want to have a serious relationship with a man." Joel sighed. "Life would be so much easier if I was the other way around."

Dan frowned. Last he'd checked, that life wasn't easy at all. "It's good you know who you are and what you want." He dabbed drops of Coke off the front of his shirt. "I'm still figuring things out."

"Take your time. Everyone has their own path and their own velocity to travel on it."

"Professor Mendel? Sorry to interrupt."

A woman near their age was poking her head into the room, her cat's-eye glasses reflecting the fluorescent ceiling light and her waist-length brown hair forming a curtain in the doorway.

Joel beckoned her in. "No problem, Paula—and please, call me Joel, though ‘Professor Mendel' does make me look important in front of my friend here." He winked at Dan, then introduced them.

Paula handed Joel an open manila folder. "Here's your scoresheets for the costume contest. I figured you might want to familiarize yourself with the rating system before you saw the entrants."

The two of them chatted about the contest criteria. As with the family in the hallway, Joel was quick with a smile and banter, but his demeanor was nothing like the where-have-you-been-half-my-life way he'd been with Dan.

As Paula turned to leave, she spotted Dan's camera case. "You're a photographer?"

"He's a professional," Joel said.

She pressed her palms together in prayer formation. "Would you mind shooting the costume contest?" she asked Dan. "I was going to do it, but all I have is my dinky disposable."

"Be happy to." He would've done it anyhow for fun, but better to be officially sanctioned, especially with kids involved.

"Thank you!" Paula hurried out of the room, hair flowing behind her like river rapids.

Joel turned back to him. "Who knew costumes could be so complicated?" He scanned the form inside the folder. "‘Presentation: Does the contestant stay in character?' Then there's ‘entertainment value,' which is self-explanatory but hugely subjective."

"Yeah." Dan cleared his throat. "Speaking of relationships…"

"Were we?" Joel asked, still perusing the form.

"Are you, you know…" he scratched his earlobe "…in one?"

Joel glanced up without lifting his head. "I am." He closed the folder and gave Dan his full attention. "I live with my boyfriend in Rockville."

"Great." Or, the exact opposite of great. "Is it?—"

"Yes, the same Rockville as in the R.E.M. song, but it's nothing like they describe it. No factories, just typical DC suburb stuff: shops, insane traffic, a Metro station. Good restaurants, though."

That wasn't even remotely Dan's question. "So, is it serious? Like, would you marry him if they make it legal here?"

"Whoa, that's plunging very deep, very early in the conversation. I like it." Joel uncrossed his legs and pulled one knee up onto the sofa so that they were face to face. "Sam and I are definitely good right now, and it's tempting to extrapolate that goodness to the end of our lives." He pursed his lips and squinted at the far wall. "No, I don't think we're forever."

"Why not?"

"It's like the difference between renting and buying a house. You spend the same amount of resources, and on a day-to-day basis you get the same amount of utility, but with renting you're not building equity. At the end of your lease, you walk away with nothing but your security deposit and some good memories, if you're lucky. On the other hand, you don't have to pay for a new hot-water heater."

So the hot-water heater in this analogy was what, exactly? Had Joel even answered his question? If he was being purposely vague about Sam, maybe Dan had a chance.

No, that was stupid, not to mention shitty to hope Joel's relationship wasn't solid.

"How about you?" Joel asked. "Anyone serious?"

"Not right now." This was true. "Not for a long time." This was less true. "There's not much to tell." This was extremely less true.

Joel waited a beat, then lifted his hands. "That's it? I pour out my heart, and all I get in return is, ‘There's not much to tell'?"

Joel hadn't come close to pouring out his heart, but whatever.

"I've had a few relationships. Several, actually."

"Were they serious?"

"A few of them. Most of them." Dan cleared his throat. "I guess when someone feels right, I tend to, like, latch on." Now he sounded pathetic. "It's always mutual, though."

Joel glanced down at Dan's left hand. "Have you been married? Engaged?"

"No, but I've been close." He touched his camera case. "I travel a lot, and even if someone says they're cool with that at the beginning…"

"They get insecure about it once they're in love with you, because as a gorgeous guy you would have a ton of opportunities to sleep around, maybe even have three secret families in various states."

"Um." Dan's face warmed as he lifted his protective cup of pop. "I don't know."

"Sorry, did you not notice a mirror at any point in your life? It's the glassy rectangle with a hot man in the middle of it."

"Okay, but I never did sleep around. I never cheated on anyone. I wouldn't."

"Hey, this is a judgment-free zone," Joel said, putting up his hands.

Paula poked her head back into the room. "Not nagging, but probably best to get to the ballroom sooner than later."

"On our way." Joel popped the last carrot stick into his mouth and folded up his paper plate. As they headed into the hallway, he said, "Seriously, Dan, good for you, not abandoning your dream job. So few of us get to do what we really love in this life."

"Thanks." Dan felt himself flush again, just not as strongly as when Joel had called him gorgeous. "Photography has taken me to some wondrous places."

Not least of which was here.