Adam Bannerjee was coming out of the washroom when he almost bumped into Dan.

“I’m sorry man.”

“It’s all right,” Dan brushed it aside. “Plus, I wanted to thank you. For the job and everything.”

“Well,” Adam smiled, embarrassed, “it’s not like I gave it to you.”

“You gave Savannah the application and you gave me the interview and… I really needed it. Not just for the money, but also to get outside of myself.”

“Well, ah… I need to get out of myself too sometimes. You were married, right?”

“Recently divorced,” Dan supplied.

“You’re like… how old?”

“Twenty-seven.”

“See. You look—”

“I know. I look twelve.”

“Yeah,” Adam laughed. “I’m divorced too.”

Dan screwed up his face.

“Yeah, kids like us. We’re not supposed to have histories. Right? But I know what it’s like. It hurts.”

“And—” Tommy was coming out of his room as the doorbell rang, Dan scooted over for him and whispered to Adam, “And no one thinks it’s serious. Everyone’s like… since you were so young, then it wasn’t a real marriage. It didn’t last that long, there were no kids. It’s just like breaking up with a girlfriend or something. They act like you have to be ancient to have a real divorce. You’ve got to have a broken home and everything but…  The shit hurts.”

Adam nodded and scratched his five o’clock shadowed chin.

“The shit hurts,” he echoed. “But you know what?”

Dan raised an eyebrow.

He grinned and said, “I bet the divorce didn’t hurt as bad as the marriage.”

Addison was standing in the living room looking distressed, or rather looking like he didn’t want to look distressed.

“I need to talk to you,” he said to Mason, and then his eyes took in Balliol and Tommy. Swain was in the kitchen, which was just as well.

“All of you.”

Balliol was thinking how long Addison’s face was now that he had short hair and how strange he looked in tan khakis and a white dress shirt.

Mason ushered him back, excusing himself  and his friends as he passed Adam and Dan. He shut the door on the world and Addison sat down on the bed, looking up at his friends.

“We can’t help you if you don’t tell us?” Balliol said after a while.

There was a knock on the door.

“Jared.” Mason stood up and went to the door.

“I’m going to take  you around town to see the sites,” Swain stood up and told Jared before he could enter the room. He opened his mouth to look at Mason, but Swain had grabbed the sleeve of his tee shirt and was pulling him out. “We’ll be back in about a half hour.”

Jared looked at her, looked at Mason and said, “Sounds like a good idea.”

In that moment Mason knew he’d found a new friend to keep.

Then he looked at the old one.

“Is it Bonnie?” he prompted.

“She’s pregnant.”

“Shit.” It was Tommy who said it. And they all looked at him. But Balliol murmured, “Haven’t we been through this before?”

“Whaddo you?” Addison began. And then he looked at Mason, his eyes wide. He looked back at Balliol.

“You knew?”

“I forgot I knew,” Balliol said, feeling accused, feeling stupid for letting his tongue slip. He looked up at Mason. “That’s why I forgot I wasn’t supposed to know.”

Mason looked to Addison who said, “It’s all right.”

“What?” Tommy’s eyes had been going from one to the other, waiting to be filled in. “What?”

“A couple of years ago,” Addison said tiredly. “Junior year… Remember Becky?”

“Of course I remember Becky.”

“She got an abortion.”

Tommy’s brow knit. He said, “Oh.” Then he looked at Addison. “It was yours?”

“Yeah,” Addison said.

“That was the same time those two kids killed themselves,” Tommy remembered. “And the school got shot up and Andy died. That was like… the worst winter ever.”

“It was the worst winter ever,” Addison corrected.

“Wow,” Tommy said. His face was hard.

Addison said, “Are you disappointed in me, Tommy?”

“I’m disappointed you didn’t think you could tell me,” Tommy said. He said it so matter of fact that if made Addison feel worse than any drama Tommy could have put into those lines.

“Poor Becky,” he added. Then, “Poor you. I mean… weren’t you all broken up by then? Did you all decide together?”

“I didn’t decide at all. Becky sort of planned it on her own and I was too numbed to even put my two cents in. I just sort of… blocked it out. Moved on.”

“Yeah,” Balliol said. His back was against the wall, his arms folded together. He pushed himself up looking like the incarnation of good sense. He just looked like good sense. “What are you going to do this time?”

“Addison,” Tommy said timidly. “I really think this time you should keep it. I mean, it’s like a second chance.” He looked around the room for everyone else’s consensus. “At least I think.”

“I think,” Mason said, “that all of us agree with Tommy. But I know,” Mason continued, “that we don’t get to make the decision and we certainly won’t be doing the raising, so I want to make a proposition, Addison?”

Addison looked up at his oldest friend, feeling a little miserable.

“I think,” Mason told him, “This time around you should actually sit down with your girlfriend and plan something together.”

Mason felt leaden. He and Addison exchanged a long look. Mason was remembering that first day of work, Addison saying that he was going to quit her.

WHEN BALLIOL ENTERED THE house, his mother was in the foyer, and that was unusual. In a house as large as theirs she was generally hard to find.

“You got a phone call form Matthew.” Ruth added,  “I like him.”

“Did he call recently?”

            Ruth shrugged. “A half hour. Give or take.”

            Balliol thanked his mother and went to the phone in the old study near the solarium. Balliol didn’t think about it often, how this was the room his father had died in, when they’d brought him down from his old bedroom and he’d wanted to be near the sun room and walk around as much of the first floor as he could. It was a brief thought in Balliol’s mind as he picked up the phone. Death was like that, he reflected. They said the pain never went away, but the part that was strange for Balliol as he sat down and dialed Matt’s number, was that often it did. Often it seemed hard to imagine that a year ago he’d had a father—older than most fathers, yes, but very much alive. It seemed like he had always been Lincoln Balliol with father deceased, and this was strange to him.

            “Hello?” Matt mother’s voice came over the phone.

            “Hello, is Matthew home? This is—”

            “Balliol! How are you?”

            “I’m good Mrs. Mercurio.” He still couldn’t get over how much this woman liked him. The whole family was fond of him,

            “Hey, Bailey, what’s up?”

            “You called,” Balliol reminded him. Matthew when he intercepted the phone call.

            “That’s right.”

            “For a reason or just to chat.”

            “No reason. Nobody’s around. I talked to Sully awhile. He was down in the mouth and stuff.”

            “Oh,” Balliol said, curling up, and wrapping the phone cord around his fist. “Well, Sully’s always down in the mouth. And he and Chris broke up again. Or maybe for the final time.”

            “I think it’s final.”

            “I hope it’s final,” Balliol said, honestly. “Look, your friend or not, I sort of think Sully deserves someone who’s gonna stick around.”

            Matt chuckled and said, “I know. Chris is my friend and all. But I know what you mean. I want Sully to be happy too. He and that John guy hit it off when we went to Genoa.”

            “Good, cause that John guy has a girlfriend.”

            “I don’t buy it,” Matt said. “I may not be gay, or even that observant or anything. But I just kind of felt he might be… You know?”

            “Gay?”

            “Yeah.”

            “That’s the word, Matt. It’s not bad to say anymore.”

            “I know that! Well, if he is then he should get with Sully and make him happier.”

            “Can I tell you a secret, and you not spread it?”

            “Well, you know you can. And I’m sort of insulted that you’d ask that.”

            “I have to ask. It’s a formality.”

            “Ask me, already, Link.”

            “Link?”

            “Short for Lincoln.”

            Balliol debated this for a moment and then said, “Alright, but only you can call me that.”

            “I think it’s a cool name.”

            “For a football player or a piece of sausage. Anyway… Sully hooked up with Jared Parker.”

            “Jared Parker—Mason’s friend?”

            “The very same.”

            “Do you mean hooked up like kissed and stuff. Or hooked up like…”

            “Sully fucked him.”

            “How do you know?”

            “He told me. He did it that night we were at Genoa. He gets in bad ways sometimes.”

            “Sully hooks up!”

            “Stop that,” Balliol said. “The gossip session is over. I just wanted to get that off my chest, that that happened and Jared comes to town every weekend to visit Mason.”

            “You think he and Sully get…” Matt looked for the right word and settled on, “intimate?”

            “I don’t know if they get intimate. But I’m pretty sure they fuck. And I think that’s what’s going on and.. Well, I don’t know how to talk to Sully. Or even if I should. He so private.”

            “Send in Tommy.”

            “Hum?

            “He loves Tommy,” Matt said. “I mean, obviously he loves you too. But he and Tommy have this…”

            “Freakish bond,” Balliol finished reflectively. “You’re right of course. Tommy can figure it out. And Tommy can be trusted with things. People don’t… trust him enough.”

            “I got a question.”

            “Yes, Matt?”

            “I ran into Suzie.”

            “Your ex?”

            “Yeah. And she wants us to meet up sometime.”

            “Well, good.”

            “Good?”

            “Yeah.”

            “I was hoping you’d say no.”

            “Well, then if you feel that way, you shouldn’t do anything at all,” Balliol told him.

            “But I want to.”

            “Then do it.”

            Matt sighed into the phone. “But I’m not sure if I should.”

            “Then don’t.”

            “But—”

            “But you’re driving me nuts, Matthew,” Balliol said. “And I need to call Tommy. To send him in to speak to Sully about what I cannot.”

            “I love it when you talk that way.”

            “What way?” Balliol sat up.

            “Cannot instead of can’t. Or when you say shan’t… It’s all proper and British and shit.”