by Kilby Blades
But if Levi wanted to go deeper, there was another dimension yet: because Adam was Adam and it could go the other way. Did it make Levi a jerk that it tied his stomach in knots to think of Adam meeting his friends, not because they might not like him, but because they might like him a bit too much? How many friends had Levi “lost” to Adam over the years from introducing rich, brilliant, charismatic Adam to Levi’s own new friends only to have new-friends shift to liking Adam more?
Levi broke from his overthinking when Adam barked out a laugh—not just smiling, grinning as he typed feverishly on his phone.
“You’re never gonna guess who’s in town….” Adam said the words to the screen while he finished tapping out his message, then looked up at Levi.
“Who?” Adam knew everyone, which meant it could be anyone.
“The Duke!” Adam exclaimed, excitement lighting his golden eyes.
Levi hadn’t seen Andrew since that yacht party in Barcelona a few years before. Levi and Adam had so much fun, they hadn’t made it back above deck before the vessel had set sail. By the time they’d slept it off in one of the cabins below, they’d woken up in Saint-Tropez.
“What’s that guy up to?”
His Grace Duke William of Somethingham was Adam’s closest friend apart from Levi. He was also number thirteen in line for the British throne.
Adam didn’t answer. He was looking at his phone as another incoming message chimed. He stopped only as the waiter passed, raising his hand to flag him for the check, to pay for food that had been ordered but not delivered.
“Sorry, man,” Adam apologized. His Centurion card was already out. “We gotta go.”
It was an Adam thing to do, to agree to plans that involved both of them without asking whether Levi was in. But the Duke was the Duke and Adam was Adam, and Levi had resolved in his mind to make the most of his time with his best friend.
Chapter Seven: The Hike
“GET him, Bax,” Levi called to his beloved canine, who was trained well enough not to lick anybody’s face. Adam hadn’t responded to Levi’s earlier attempts to rouse him, so he figured he’d give his dog a shot. Up until that point, Levi’s shakes and shouts for Adam to wake up had been met with plaintive grumblings for Levi to go away and let Adam sleep for another five minutes. Levi had been trying for half an hour.
That was when Levi had the brilliant idea to sprinkle bacon treats on Adam’s pillow and to balance a few strategically placed treats right in front of Adam’s face. It might have been easy to ignore Levi. It was not easy to ignore an excited Gerberian Shepsky eating treats right next to your ear.
“What the….”
Levi had timed it right. Adam’s eyes were wide open and he sat up in bed exactly seventeen seconds after Baxter made her descent. Her paws sat on the mattress, and once she ran out of treats, she’d turned her attention to Adam, lapping up the next best thing: his face.
To his credit, Adam brought his hand up to rub her, scratching her coat in greeting.
“Hey, girl,” he said in a gravelly voice, eyes still half-shut, yawning as he tried to wake up.
Levi closed the distance between himself and his bed, coaxed Baxter to the floor, and set a steaming mug of coffee on the bedside table.
“It’s our last day before we go back to work,” Adam whined. And he was right. The photo shoots would start tomorrow. “Why are we getting up?”
“Apart from the fact that it’s after noon?” Levi placed his hands on his hips. “We’re going for a hike.”
“Why the hell would we do that?” Adam looked more than a little put out. “It’s Sunday morning. If you wanna get out of the house, can’t we just go get some brunch?”
“We’re going hiking because it’s Sunday morning and that’s what you do. We’re also going hiking because we owe Baxter something nice.”
Levi still felt terrible for forgetting about Baxter. If not for the impromptu journey to the Duke’s party in Tiburon and related helicopter logistics, they’d have been home hours before. When they’d arrived back at Levi’s place at 3:00 a.m.—not even that late for them, considering some of their past adventures had lasted for days—Levi had never felt guiltier. With no one there to take her out, she’d gone to the bathroom on the floor, which would have only left her feeling ashamed. And even though Levi was the asshole who had put her in that position, she’d never seemed so relieved to see him as she had when he’d come walking through his door.
Levi had cleaned everything up, taken her out for a long middle-of-the-night walk, and lay down with her on her bed, petting her and cooing love until she fell asleep. He’d tried not to let his heart break any more when he set out her breakfast for the morning. Her bowls weren’t completely empty, but the levels were too low.
Levi took full responsibility for all of it. Baxter was his dog. If he’d let her down, it had been on him. But Levi would have been an idiot if he didn’t reflect on what had gotten him into this mess. Levi only did shit like hopping on helicopters and disappearing for hours on end with Adam.
Not that they hadn’t had fun. Because the flip side of that kind of crazy was getting to experience the incredible adventures Levi had over the years. Not many people partied with royalty and traveled by helicopter with billionaires. It wasn’t lost on Levi that he was only so good at shooting rock stars and CEOs because he had the confidence to hang with them.
Sometimes Levi wondered what his mother would think if she were still alive. She had been a full-time housekeeper to a family on the Upper East Side. Levi had thought about her when he’d greeted the uniformed Latina housekeeper he’d seen the night before at the Duke’s borrowed mansion with a “Buenas noches.”
His own mother hadn’t talked about the family she worked for much. But Levi remembered she’d had to work parties and that his father had worried about her taking the subway so late. Walking inside, Levi had hoped it wouldn’t be that kind of party. He’d been to a few that had seen such debauchery as no person should ever have to clean up. Levi couldn’t stop himself from wondering about this woman. Would she die too young from working with chemicals that were too harsh, like his own mother had? Did she have health insurance? Was she paid enough?
“Good evening,” the woman had returned in English, smiling a not-quite-smile that made Levi feel less like familia and more like a gringo.
Such heady thoughts were enough to throw Levi into a pensive mood, which worked out, owing to the party’s mellow vibe. The Duke was as dashing as Levi had ever seen him, and he held court from the firepit next to the pool. Levi was relieved this was an actual party and not just the three of them catching up in a more intimate setting. The Duke had long since figured out Levi’s crush on Adam, and when he got drunk enough, he thought quipping about it in that British way of his was cute.
In fact, there were so many people, Levi was forced to listen to rich people small talk: When was the last time you saw so-and-so or such-and-such? Levi thought of Leila again—of how this had been exactly her scene. Levi could roll with it when he was in the right mood, but most nights his perfect evening was having something beautiful to look at and a place to enjoy his buzz.
Adam had a way of finding him in those places. The night before, it had been at the edge of the estate, at the end of a path that led to a cliffside infinity pool. Levi had snaked a bottle of bourbon and, finding that the small pool was actually a large Jacuzzi, had shed his clothes and slipped in. Levi had been content to sit and sip and think and enjoy the night sky over the forest below—this vantage point had a stunning view.
Levi hadn’t heard Adam approach, but when he sensed he wasn’t alone, he didn’t have to look behind himself to know who it was. His heartbeat sped in anticipation at the sound of Adam shedding his clothes. It sped faster when Adam slipped into the water with feline grace. When the heel of Adam’s hand came to rest on the back of Levi’s neck and gentle fingers wove and scratched in Levi’s hair, it took effort for Levi not to purr.
Inevitably
, Adam had slid closer. At times like those, he always did. Silent intimacy was a place they’d dwelled before. Dipping the hand that had stroked Levi’s neck into the water and settling it on Levi’s thigh, Adam tucked himself under Levi’s arm and settled in. It had been draped along the top of the hot tub, but Adam pulled it down to circle his shoulder and laid his temple to Levi’s. In silence, they’d passed the bottle back and forth and watched the cosmos explode.
This was the part that always fucked Levi up. Because it wasn’t just affection—when quiet fell between them, so did sublime belonging, divine communion, and perfect love. The universe was never shy about serving up extraordinary things in moments such as these. The night sky had been magic. They’d stared at the stars for the better part of an hour—so much brighter than you could ever see in the city. There had been so many shooting stars, Levi was sure they’d caught a meteor shower.
Sometimes there was a moment—a tense and lingering moment that held Levi in bated-breath suspense. Sometimes, when they hovered close to one another, they almost kissed. Inevitably, one of them—and not always Adam—backed off.
“Morning, bud.” A slightly more wakeful Adam grabbed Levi at the junction of his neck and shoulder, gave it a squeeze, and leaned in to press a firm kiss to his jaw. Apparently done with his rant about being awake at a not-even-that-early hour on a Sunday, Adam was ready for a proper greeting.
Adam continued his shuffle to the bathroom, coffee cup in hand, leaving a still Levi in his wake. He paused and turned around, fixing Levi with a sleepy smile and a warm gaze. “How about those stars?”
“I’M freezing my ass off,” Adam groused, wringing his hands and shuddering dramatically next to Levi as they continued up the winding woodland trail. It wasn’t a challenging incline, but Levi hadn’t suggested the hike for the exercise. Apart from Baxter loving this trail, Levi had wanted Adam to see one of the favorite spots he’d discovered since moving west.
Levi rolled his eyes at Adam at the same time as Baxter, a good forty feet ahead of them, looked plaintively back at the pair. Levi’s impatient dog wanted them to speed it up. Baxter knew where they were going. Levi had discovered the spot early on and took Bax up most weekends when it didn’t rain.
“Told you to borrow a jacket, tough guy.” Levi looked over at Adam’s outfit. Gym shorts and sneakers were too light for a redwood forest. Levi, on the other hand, could have stepped right off the pages of the Patagonia catalog.
“This is California. In the summer,” Adam grumbled. “It’s supposed to be warmer than this.”
“Today’s kind of mild,” Levi mused.
“I don’t think I could deal with it….” Adam trailed off. “The only thing that makes winter worth it is a summer that’s actually hot.”
Levi shrugged. “It’s nice. No humidity. No blazing-hot sun baking the grime on the sidewalks. There are sunnier hikes, but we like this one.”
Adam chuckled. “I still can’t believe you got a dog, man.”
“Yeah, well… you know I always wanted one,” Levi continued at the halting pace of someone who was exercising and talking at the same time. “It never made sense with my setup in New York.”
“You should call Elle,” Adam advised. “She’s got one of the best dog-walkers in the city. Impossible to get on her schedule, but Elle could give you an in.”
“I don’t need a dog-walker,” Levi hedged. “Baxter comes to work with me.”
Adam was slightly out of breath. “What about when you travel?”
Levi grabbed the water bottle from Adam’s hand. “I’ve been scaling back… you know—”
“—Lev,” Adam interrupted. “Everyone needs a dog-walker in New York. You’re gonna be in a world of hurt if you don’t figure that kind of stuff out before you come back.”
Should I tell him now? Levi wondered. He shouldn’t let Adam keep assuming things when he had no intention of coming back.
“Actually,” Adam continued seconds later before Levi could take a leap and spit it out, “I’m making some changes myself….”
Finally, Levi thought, forgetting his own news for a minute. He’d sensed that Adam was holding more than one something back. Adam tended to overshare—usually without delay. If there was something bugging him, he had to get it off his chest. That was why it was so strange Adam had been there for four days and Levi still knew precious little about key events. What had ended things between him and Leila? What weirdness had happened with his mother? And what kind of CEO took three weeks off for a press tour?
“I met someone,” Adam said simply, a small smile gracing his face. “His name is Yousef, this guy I spent time with in Tehran.”
“Tell me about him,” Levi probed. He’d been in this territory with Adam before—having to hear about a special someone new. The description of said someone’s redeeming qualities sometimes grated on Levi. He’d always done well to stall with a question to dull the sting.
“I met him out one night,” Adam continued, his footfalls quiet thuds against the forest floor. “Leila and I were already having problems. I was going through a lot of shit learning how to run the Tehran hotel. My Farsi was rusty, I had to learn some Turkish, and I was exhausted. I worked the front of the house all day, then I’d have calls with New York into the night.
“I reached this… low point,” Adam went on. “I just needed to get out—to cope in the kind of place that seemed familiar. But it’s not like you can just walk into a bar, order a drink, and strike up a conversation. There’s this whole underground scene. So I’m out one night at the end of a shitty day. I meet a guy and I tell him way too much. He gives me a bunch of advice that makes sense at the time, but I’m sure I’m gonna forget. One of the things that I complained about was some of the culture clashing. So he tells me he’s going to show me Tehran.
“Mind you, this was a drunken night, so I’m doubtful I’ll ever see this guy again. But what do you know? The next day, he shows up at the hotel. So, we start hanging out. And we start to get pretty real, pretty quick because we already talked about deep stuff that first night. Turns out he’s also Jewish. Turns out he’s also queer. Turns out he’s from a family like mine in certain ways, except he was raised in Tehran and I was raised in New York.”
“So you start dating….” Levi put it out there, anticipating this as the next logical step. Levi still wondered where Leila fit into all of this.
Adam slowed a little. “That’s the crazy thing. We didn’t. But he showed up at the hotel every single day after I got off work to show me a different part of the city. It was a revelation—to hear about Iran from someone other than my parents or Leila, and to see it all through my own eyes…. All those months I spent, thinking I was finally starting to get it, but only comprehending six weeks before I left, how much I didn’t know.”
“That sounds amazing,” Levi admitted, quelling a small pang of jealousy. To understand their parents’ homelands was a longing they’d always shared. Adam had never counted the week at a time he’d spent visiting Iran as a child to seeing the country. To hear him tell it, there had been little more than cheek-pinching from aunties and meeting dozens of cousins at parties in relatives’ homes. But Adam’s annual visits to Iran were more exposure than Levi had ever gotten to Argentina. They’d sent money home every month like clockwork, but it had always been too risky for his undocumented parents to go back. Levi hadn’t met his own grandparents until he was an adult.
“What was in it for Yousef?” Levi asked.
“Nothing at first,” Adam admitted. “He saw I was lost and he had the compassion to help. But it turned into something more. He started to grill me about my new position. He held my feet to the fire about whether I was doing enough to help the queer community. I wouldn’t be coming out again if it wasn’t for him.”
By then they had reached the clearing that Levi loved—three-hundred-year-old redwood trees that grew in a perfect circle. The forest floor was covered with ferns and fallen leaves and branches that
left it with a carpet the color of brick that burst forth with shocks of green. Inside the circle it was mostly red, as if Mother Nature herself had come through with a broom to clean the space. One warm day, Levi had lain in the middle, set his head on his pack, and taken a nap, his trusty girl guarding him all the while.
Levi’s head was tipped toward the canopied sky and he was midway through a deep breath. He hadn’t consciously meant to stop listening to Adam, but their arrival at the clearing merited a moment of pause.
“You love this shit,” Adam half accused. When Levi opened his eyes to regard his friend, Adam looked at him a little strangely.
Levi blinked. “What’s not to love?”
For a time they were silent. Baxter smiled happily and ran back and forth between the trees that made up the border. Levi thought of Paul, the owner of Sanctum, the one who had inspired him to open an art collective—a place where stories from his community would be in the community, on display.
“It’s important work,” Levi praised, picking up where Adam had left off, thinking this would be it: Levi’s perfect time to tell his friend. “I’ve been doing some work myself in support of queer youth in the Castro. I’ve been thinking about—”
But Adam cut him off. “Hey… do you think we can take some pictures in front of that big Pride flag?”
The question threw Levi off, and he blinked. “The one in Harvey Milk Plaza?”
“Yeah.” Adam nodded. “The one on Castro Street.”
Levi answered swiftly and bluntly. “No. You live in New York. Leaning too hard on San Francisco symbolism will make it seem like you’re trying too hard. All of the art should feel global. The sentiment should be Adam and Elle Kerr, leaders of everybody’s tomorrow.”
From there, a longer conversation ensued. Levi recapped his call with the PR agency that morning. Adam volleyed ideas, telling Levi more about the company vision that he and Elle shared. They talked about the campaign all the way back down the trail, all the way back down to the city in Levi’s little rented Zipcar. They talked about it again back at Levi’s place as Adam packed his things.