Is that what he was doing here? Auditioning?
“No, they have a father. I told you. He’s coming home next week.”
“I was talking about your mustache.”
Patrick felt his cheeks redden.
“It looks good. I’ll bet it tickles.” Emory stretched out his leg to give Patrick a gentle kick, then left his foot resting against his shin. He was wearing pants that were part sweat, part yoga with a drop crotch that hid everything and highlighted nothing, and yet were deeply provocative. Perhaps it was the ease with which they could be removed. “Don’t you go stir-crazy out here?” he asked. “What do you miss about LA?”
“Nothing.”
“C’mon.”
Patrick searched for an answer that was both benign and honest. “Everyone seems genuinely happy here. I’m baseline distrustful of it.”
“So, unease is what you miss.”
“Anxiety. Unease. You live in LA long enough, it becomes part of who you are.”
Emory leaned forward to set his drink on a wooden cutout of Cher’s face that people mistook for a coaster. “You’re a mess.”
It wasn’t even that accusatory, the charge. There was even some tacit acknowledgment in the delivery that everyone was a mess to varying degrees, and that much was hard to argue. But in this moment Patrick felt more together than he had in a long time and so he was unnerved by Emory’s words.
“Don’t worry,” Emory said, picking up on the look on Patrick’s face. “I like a good mess. They can be fun to clean up.”
Patrick studied the way Emory sat in front of him, face plastered with a goofy smile. It wasn’t like the diagnosis came from Clara, or someone else whose words would be charged. Still, something about it flustered him. “How are things on The Cracker Barrel?”
“Tillamook?”
“Sure.”
They stared at each other for a long time, until Emory looked down to pick something off his shirt. “Dumb. They’re doing this supernatural story line, which means it’s probably the last season. We start shooting next week. This time next year I’ll be old and washed-up. Just like you.”
Patrick narrowed his eyes. “You’re really good at this.”
“At what?”
“Being a dick, but like in a really attractive way.”
“Does that mean I can stay?”
He raised his hands like paws to beg. Patrick found it impossible to put his finger on Emory’s appeal. He was a chimera constructed of so many gay archetypes—twink, jock, otter, nerd—inhabiting none of them with anything resembling exclusivity. He even gave off some faint dad vibes himself in the way that twenty-seven-year-olds seem to relish growing a whisper of facial hair and anointing themselves with that crown as if three chin hairs transformed them into a Tom of Finland drawing. Emory embraced conformity while eschewing it, all while seemingly floating above it. Patrick didn’t know whether to love him, hate him, admire him, embrace him, fuck him, or kick him to the nearest curb.
“Listen,” Patrick began before glancing back over his shoulder to the kids’ bedrooms. “I would like that. But now’s not the right time.”
“You’re so sad.”
“Pathetic?”
“No. Downcast. It’s different. That’s all.”
Patrick was taken aback. “What does that mean?”
“I don’t know. You tell me.” But Emory didn’t wait for Patrick to do so. “It’s just. Gay people have a sad history, but most of us, we overcome it. We’re kicked out of our small-town families, then embrace cities and make new families and build brilliant lives. We were beaten, and so we became strong, and now our bodies are envied. A generation wiped out by a virus, but our lives are still a celebration—we made frosé a thing, for god’s sake. We’re discriminated against, we become a political power. That sort of thing. We thrive, all of us. But you have this sadness. I see it.”
It was a lot for Patrick to absorb. “You see it.”
“I see you,” Emory said.
“You’re confusing me.” Or was it the vodka? He felt warm in the face and dizzy.
“No I’m not.”
“Yes you are, I’m confused.”
“You’re not confused, you’re lazy.” Emory leaned in until his forehead was touching Patrick’s, and he rested it there until sweat started to form between them, cementing them together. Patrick grazed Emory’s lips with his own, not kissing him quite, but the difference was negligible and would not stand up to scrutiny.