🍾🎉Happy New Year 2024🎉🍾

Fated Kisses for the Omega by Lacey Daize

Summary:

Mountain Springs Omegas #2

Andrew has one resolution for the New Year: Take care of himself first.

Andrew thought he'd found his freedom when he bailed on the family that wanted to force him into an arranged mating, but as the New Year starts he finds himself in a relationship that's becoming more satisfying by the day. So he decides to bail on the big city and start again somewhere new, somewhere smaller.

A few taps on a map app later he's on his way to what will hopefully be his new home: Mountain Springs.

Carlos feels as though he's never really connected with an omega...

Carlos left Mountain Springs for college, then to work. But when his Papa falls ill, he finds himself back to take care of him. However, the omegas are still the same men he'd never been interested in before. So he resigns himself to waiting.

Then a chance encounter has the perfect omega falling, literally, into Carlos's arms. But can he really be falling so hard, so fast, for an omega he barely knows?

Recipe for Romance:

One Alpha

One Omega

Instant Attraction

Some Fun and Friends

One Heat

Fated Kisses for the Omega is a 15K word , non-shifter, M/M, Mpreg romance, featuring fated mates, plenty of desire, and some knotty fun.

Original Review December 2023:

I've only read a few entries of Lacey Daize's Mountain Springs Omegas but each one as has been an amazing blend of friendship, romance, humor, healing, and heart.  It's this very blending of emotions that make the characters not only likeable but wrap-in-bubblewrap loveable and sends the reader into Mama Bear mode.  Fated Kisses is no different, Carlos and Andrew both have strengths that are not only heightened by each other but also within themselves and you can't help but want to see them find their HEA.  Sometimes we just have to close our eyes and take that leap of faith and that's what this holiday short is all about. Such a delightful addition to my holiday library.

RATING:

Sing in the New by Nico Flynn

Summary:

Slow Burn Holidays #3

They both want it. They just need some help getting there.

The older I get, the less I care about all the BS in life... especially the things that have held me back from telling Nick how I feel about him. The fact that he’s my best friend. The fact that we live together. My parents’ outdated attitudes. Stupid insecurities. With forty looming just a few years down the road, it’s all starting to seem trivial.

But even the slightest chance of losing the friendship that saved my life? That’s one thing I still can’t quite move past. If I could just be certain Nick felt the same, I’d take the leap, no hesitation.

Luckily, Nick's mom is as tired of the limbo as I am, and she has absolutely no qualms about getting involved. She invites us to spend New Year’s Eve weekend at Nick’s childhood home, and she promises me: Before the weekend is up, I’ll get the confirmation I need. In exchange, she makes me promise: by the end of the weekend, I have to ‘put her poor son out of his misery’ and tell him how I feel.

We strike the deal. We make plans. Nick and I have never been closer. But we’ve been denying ourselves this for so long… can we finally ring in this new year as something more than friends?

Sing In the New is a 12,000-word low-angst M/M romantic novella featuring roommates-to-lovers, friends-to-lovers, meddling parents, only one bed, and a steamy first time when it all finally boils over. All books in the Slow Burn Holidays series can be read as stand-alones and in any order. Please note that this novella contains mentions of an unaccepting, homophobic family, all off-screen and in the past, as well as internalized homophobia that has been joyfully overcome.

Original Review December 2023:

Sometimes Moms know whats best for their kids and extended found family. Nick's mom is just that mom but what I really love about her is she is not only that mom to her son but also to Ezra.  With some extra pushing she just might get to see her boys happy.  I understand Ezra's fears of possibly losing his best friend if the feelings aren't returned but sometimes you just have to take that leap.  What I really love about this Slow Burn Holiday entry is the blend of friendship, family, and fun that brings us readers a better-than-Hallmark holiday romance that may be short on quantity but long on quality.  Sing in the New is a delicious delight to help bring in the new year.

RATING:

Red, White and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston

Summary:

* Instant NEW YORK TIMES and USA TODAY bestseller *

* GOODREADS CHOICE AWARD WINNER for BEST DEBUT and BEST ROMANCE of 2019 *

* BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR* for VOGUE, NPR, VANITY FAIR, and more! *

What happens when America's First Son falls in love with the Prince of Wales?

When his mother became President, Alex Claremont-Diaz was promptly cast as the American equivalent of a young royal. Handsome, charismatic, genius—his image is pure millennial-marketing gold for the White House. There's only one problem: Alex has a beef with the actual prince, Henry, across the pond. And when the tabloids get hold of a photo involving an Alex-Henry altercation, U.S./British relations take a turn for the worse.

Heads of family, state, and other handlers devise a plan for damage control: staging a truce between the two rivals. What at first begins as a fake, Instragramable friendship grows deeper, and more dangerous, than either Alex or Henry could have imagined. Soon Alex finds himself hurtling into a secret romance with a surprisingly unstuffy Henry that could derail the campaign and upend two nations and begs the question: Can love save the world after all? Where do we find the courage, and the power, to be the people we are meant to be? And how can we learn to let our true colors shine through? Casey McQuiston's Red, White & Royal Blue proves: true love isn't always diplomatic.

"I took this with me wherever I went and stole every second I had to read! Absorbing, hilarious, tender, sexy—this book had everything I crave. I’m jealous of all the readers out there who still get to experience Red, White & Royal Blue for the first time!" - Christina Lauren, New York Times bestselling author of The Unhoneymooners

"Red, White & Royal Blue is outrageously fun. It is romantic, sexy, witty, and thrilling. I loved every second." - Taylor Jenkins Reid, New York Times bestselling author of Daisy Jones & The Six

Original Audiobook Review September 2023:

I have been listening to audiobooks for way too many years to count, I go all the way back to when they were on audio cassettes and were never unabridged.  In all these years I can honestly say I have NEVER listened to a book within a month of the original reading so that right there goes a long way as a testament to how much love I have for this story and the characters.  It's been about a week since I finished listening and I am already seriously contemplating listening again . . . that is great storytelling in my opinion.

I really can only think of one thing to talk about that I didn't touch on in my original review: Zahra Bankston!  How in the world did I fail to mention this brilliantly created character?  I gave voice to how much I enjoyed June, Nora, and Bea but not Zahra?!?!?!  We all know Nora is Alex's best friend but seriously Zahra is the second best friend he probably didn't even realize he needed or she would even contemplate the possibility of being.  She keeps him, well I can't say she keeps him in check because there is no keeping Alex in check but she definitely calls him on his BS and holds nothing back doing it.  Just love her! I want a Zahra in my life.

As for the narrator, Ramon de Ocampo does the story justice.  Familiar and fresh all at the same time.  Because I watched the film prior to reading the story I was able to picture the film actors while reading and though it can be hard to do with an audio narration becoming the characters, De Ocampo's voice "fits the features" of the actors making it quite easy to continue picturing Taylor Zakhar Perez and Nicholas Galitzine as Alex and Henry.  I'm not ashamed to admit I've watched the film multiple times in the past month but while listening to Ramon de Ocampo bring Casey McQuiston's words to life I swear I could see the written version playing out in front of me like my own little personal Saturday-in-the-park production and that speaks volumes to how incredibly blended voice and word is making Red, White and Royal Blue not only one of my absolute favorite reads of 2023 but also top audios.

 

Original Review August Book of the Month 2023:

I've had many friends whose opinions I highly respect say how much they loved Casey McQuiston's Red, White and Royal Blue and it definitely sounded good so I knew I would read it one day but that day had yet to cross my reading journey.  A couple of years pass and I discover it's being made into a movie and that the film would be on Prime in August of this year so it seemed that the time may be getting nearer.  Since I hadn't read it yet I decided to wait until after I saw the film so there wouldn't be any preconceived expectations of what should or shouldn't be in the film.

Glad I did. I loved both the book and the film, equally brilliant, equally entertaining and any changes that were made most likely for time constraint helped the film flow better but at the same time those scenes that got cut/changed helped to create a fuller visual reading experience in my mind's eye.  So again both brilliant in their own way.

I'm not going to talk too much about the plot as I know I'm not the only one who is late to the reading party and I don't want to spoil the book or film.  I will say I don't think there was a single character I didn't like.  Well, sure there were a few I didn't like but you weren't suppose to like them for reasons I won't spoil.  Red, White and Royal Blue is a wonderful rom-com dramedy that makes you smile, swoon, and sweat.  Alex and Henry are the epitome of swoony-ism.  Going from lust to love while navigating life in the public eye had me falling even more deeply for the pair, I can't even begin to imagine what it would be like to be in their shoes.  In this day and age you'd think society would be more tolerant and accepting but we all know there is still too many who hate to accept differences in people.  Humanity may have come a long way but there is still a long road ahead.  I think the author has hit that part of Alex and Henry on point.

I've heard some say there is too much politics or at least too one-sided, that it makes all Republicans into the big bad and Democrats can do no wrong.  I don't see it that way.  Yes, there is more negativity from the GOP-referenced parts of the story but let's face it, like it or not that is how the American political scope trends: GOP = anti LGBTQ and DFL = ally.  There are exceptions on both sides of the aisle of course but not many and I think the author has incorporated those viewpoints perfectly as to how it pertains to the guys' journey.  I also feel that some people tend to forget this is a work of fiction not Political Science 101.

As for the friends and family of our star couple, I loved every bit of their interactions with the men and each other. I think June, Nora, and Bea have more scene time and they definitely steal the spotlight when they appear.  Madame President Ellen Claremont is in a tough spot balancing her role as leader of the country and mother and though there were a couple of times I wanted the mother side to shine more I understood why the leader had to step up.  As an American woman who is only a couple of months away from her 50th birthday, I firmly believe I will see the day we finally break through that final glass ceiling and have Madame President, but until that day arrives, fictional characters such as Ellen Claremont give us hope.

I can't believe I waited so long to read Red, White and Royal Blue and now that I have, I look forward to listening to the audio in the near future and though time may not allow this to be added to my annual re-read/re-listen list, it will definitely be explored again and again for years to come.  What I wouldn't give to see a follow-up novel to see where Alex and Henry are once his mother's term is up or the pair dating now that Alex has been marked as the official royal suitor😉(and these are not spoilers because the meat and potatoes of the story is the journey getting here not whether or not they arrive).

So much goodness from yet another new-to-me author.  I know not everyone enjoys rom-com, feel good, HEA yumminess and that's okay because it would be a pretty boring world if we all liked the same books just don't yuck in somebody else's yum.

RATING:

The Rest of Our Lives by Helena Stone

Summary:

Mitch & Cian #5

A year after their first kiss, Mitch and Cian have settled into their relationship and life in Dublin. There’ve been ups and downs and one or two unexpected turns in the road, but through it all they’ve gone from strength to strength.

Going home to Castleforest for Christmas means having to stay with their own families. Neither Mitch nor Cian enjoys being apart, but the sting of separation fades in the wake of a surprise from Mitch’s mother, and reconnecting with old and very dear friends lifts their spirits further.

Back in the city for New Year’s Eve, they throw a party for their friends and at last acknowledge the depth of their feelings for each other and the ties that will bind them for the rest of their lives.

This last instalment in the Mitch & Cian series comes with delightful surprises, fabulous parties, and declarations that will make your heart sing.

Original Review December 2019:

What better day than New Year's Eve to read the concluding entry in the Mitch and Cian series?  It's sad to see the story end but riding along on the journey of their first year together has been romantic, humorous, realistic, and simply put: entertaining and a pure delight.

I don't really think there is much I can say about The Rest of our Lives that I haven't said in the previous entries other than don't miss out and don't let the novella size fool you because Mitch and Cian's love story is perfect just as it is and jam packed to the rafters with high quality storytelling.

There's just something magical about this one(the whole series really) not just because it's the holidays or because it's their one year anniversary but because of . . . well you'll have to read to decide for yourself, trust me you wont' regret it😉.  Another holiday romance gem to enjoy for years to come.

BTW: Mitch's mom being a Star Wars fan is such a lovely treat.  As a lifelong devoted SW nerd it always adds a special flare when a character(be it main, secondary, or cameo doesn't really matter) is too and when that character is a woman, that's an even bigger dessert special because too often it's the male character that is the fan so for that element, Thank You, Helena Stone💙

RATING:

The Bells of Times Square by Amy Lane

Summary:
Every New Year’s Eve since 1946, Nate Meyer has ventured alone to Times Square to listen for the ghostly church bells he and his long-lost wartime lover vowed to hear together. This year, however, his grandson Blaine is pushing Nate through the Manhattan streets, revealing his secrets to his silent, stroke-stricken grandfather.

When Blaine introduces his boyfriend to his beloved grandfather, he has no idea that Nate holds a similar secret. As they endure the chilly death of the old year, Nate is drawn back in memory to a much earlier time . . . and to Walter.

Long before, in a peace carefully crafted in the heart of wartime tumult, Nate and Walter forged a loving home in the midst of violence and chaos. But nothing in war is permanent, and now all Nate has is memories of a man his family never knew existed. And a hope that he’ll finally hear the church bells that will unite everybody—including the lovers who hid the best and most sacred parts of their hearts.

Original Review March 2015:
I want to start off by simply saying "This is an amazing read!"  Those of you who have been following my personal reviews here or on Goodreads, have probably noticed that I've been in a historical mood for the past six months or so and this is a perfect addition to my historical shelf.  I could see where the story was going to end from nearly the first page but it in no way took away from my enjoyment of this Amy Lane creation.  It's not always about the ending but the journey and that's what we have here, Walter's journey.  The connection and love between Nate and Walter might not seem to have much future but it is definitely heartwarming and everlasting.  I can honestly say that, although I've cried with many a book before, I have never teared up so much as I did with this story.

RATING:

Fated Kisses for the Omega by Lacey Daize

Andrew

“Three… Two... One… Happy New Year!” 

I squeezed my eyes shut as the sound filtered in from the other room, but it didn’t stop a tear from escaping the corner of my eye. 

Behind me, my… no, the alphahole snored, his knot lodged firmly in my ass. 

“My resolution…” I whispered. “Take care of myself first.” 

I’d spent the past year lowering my expectations to meet whatever effort the alpha behind me felt like giving, and he hadn’t even managed the simplest request in the last hour. After he’d complained, and made me back off my desire to go to Times Square to see the ball drop in person, I’d asked to at least watch it on television with some champagne.

Then, about a quarter past eleven he’d started bugging me for sex. 

I won’t knot you baby, I promise. We’ll still have plenty of time to come back and see the ball drop. 

I sighed, thankful he’d been drunk enough to not notice the condom I’d rolled on while I jerked his semi to full hardness. It was close enough to my heat that I couldn’t be careful enough, especially since the bastard was likely responsible for my suppressants being gone. 

I’d picked up a new pack a week before, knowing my heat was coming. They helped with the symptoms, and let my birth control work. But two days after I’d put them in the cabinet, they were gone. 

The piece of shit still knotted in my ass claimed to know nothing, but he was lying. He’d refused to look at me, and he was an insurance broker. He knew my policy wouldn’t cover another pack so soon. 

My guess was that he planned to breed and claim me during my heat, and I’d be so far gone without suppressants I’d agree to almost anything. 

His knot finally shrank enough for me to wriggle off. 

I didn’t even wake him. 

I slipped from the bed and grabbed my clothes as I made my way to the living room. I wanted a shower more than anything—to start the year free of his filth now that I had decided he wasn’t worth my time. But the shower would likely wake him, and that would make it harder to make a clean break. 

He was a garbage alpha, though a year with him had my omega side still wanting to please him. It was an instinct that needed to go, or I’d find myself bound to him with a bun in the oven. 

I had nothing against mating, or being pregnant. I honestly wanted it, and I was pretty sure he was counting on that. Find an omega who’d been raised a certain way, and they wouldn’t even notice how bad he was, because he was far better than what they’d left behind. 

I’d almost let it happen to me. 

I reached out and grabbed one of the glasses of champagne sitting on the coffee table, took a sip, and grimaced. It had gone flat. 

I carried both glasses, and the bottle, to the sink and poured them all out. He’d be mad, he’d have probably drank it flat anyway. But it didn’t matter. 

I grabbed my wallet, keys, and ordered a car to take me back to my apartment. I was about to walk out when I decided to do one last thing. 

I walked over to the table, grabbed a pen and piece of paper. I wrote a single word on the paper: goodbye.

I shivered as I waited for the car, knowing the festive atmosphere likely had drivers working overtime. But it was better than being inside, where he could wake up. 

Finally a car pulled up to the curb. I checked the information against the app, and was soon on my way to my apartment. 

My lease was month to month. It came furnished, and I didn’t have much. Not to mention the landlord had made it clear there was a waiting list, and ‘why don’t I just move in with that nice alpha who came around so much?’ 

Hell, they’d probably love to see me just up and leave. I wouldn’t fight over letting them keep the last month, though they’d likely have it rented in a matter of days. And I had the photos from move-in to prove that I was leaving it in better shape than I found it, which was usually enough to prevent a fight over cleaning and security. 

I decided. I’d pack my things into my beater car, and be on my way by morning. 

I didn’t know where though. I couldn’t go home, or my parents would try to force me into an arranged mating. I wanted a small town, somewhere similar to where I’d grown up, but nicer to omegas. The shine of the city had worn off, and it was time for me to go. I pulled up a map app on my phone, scrolled out to see the entire US, closed my eyes and jammed my finger on the screen. A couple zooms later, and I’d highlighted a single town: Mountain Springs. 

I grinned as location data came up. It was a town of about twenty-thousand people, nestled in the mountains in the west. It was about as far from New York as I could get in terms of population, and a fair bit across the country as well. 

I knew nothing else, but taking care of myself meant getting away from the alpha that was slowly trying to control my life, and finding a new place I could call home. Mountain Springs seemed as good a place as any to start.

Sing in the New by Nico Flynn

Chapter One

The drive out to Nick’s childhood home is undeniably beautiful. It's like some kind of rustic postcard scene; evening sun spilling across the horizon, painting gold over white farmhouses and herds of cattle, then fading as the early December dark approaches. It’s been a cold but sunny winter day, something Nick says is a rare treat in the gray winters of Western Pennsylvania.

One that I’m completely ignoring in favor of my phone.

“Who are you texting?” Nick demands, looking away from the road to peer over at my phone. “You’re missing the pristine beauty of my homeland and shit.”

I tilt my phone away. “Eyes on the road, madman.”

Nick huffs but complies anyway, giving his curls a toss to emphasize his irritation. “There. Eyes on the road. Who are you texting? Is it Jack? Have he and Ezra finally crawled out of bed? It’s December 30th, surely they’ve stopped having sex by now.”

I ignore him and send one last text.

Tyler: This is my last chance to back out. You’re absolutely sure?

Mrs. Warren: Tyler, dear, you’re being obnoxious.

Mrs. Warren: I am completely sure.

Mrs. Warren: Now don’t text me again, love. Keep it together.

I have to fight to keep my face neutral, the corner of my mouth twitching with suppressed laughter. Nick is so clearly his mother’s child in a way that makes me fiercely fond of them both and incredibly bitter about my own family at the same time. My parents fed me homophobic garbage when I was growing up, pushed me to propose to every girl I ever dated in college, then made more homophobic comments with every year that went by without me settling down. I finally quit talking to them a year ago.

Then, there are Nick's parents, who called me on Christmas Day to make sure I knew they were thinking of me. And to let me know that they were tired of my shit.

“I know you’re in love with my son,” Nick's mom said during that Christmas call. “When are you going to do something about it?”

I didn't bother wasting my breath with denials. Partly because Nick's mom is a certifiable genius, but also because I was just... tired. They’ve seen us together so much over the last six years that it’s a miracle they didn’t catch on sooner. I'd shot a glance at Nick’s closed bedroom door, then replied, “It’s not quite that easy.”

“It is exactly that easy,” she’d said. “Put my boy out of his misery, Tyler. You’ve had his heart for years, and I'm completely exhausted by watching him wait for you.”

My heart had ached at that, had thumped rabbit-fast with panic as I'd looked to the bedroom door again, waiting to be caught.

“I’m pretty sure it’s the other way around,” I’d finally admitted in a murmur. “I don’t think he’s interested in… relationships.”

I hadn't wanted to elaborate because, you know, it was Nick's mom. But Nick isn't really the... settling type. He sees guys for a bit. He goes out and hooks up on occasion. But for as long as we've known each other (six years) and lived together (four years), he's never had a long-term boyfriend. And that's part of what's scared me off, honestly.

Mama Warren wasn't having it, though.

“Tyler Oberlin,” she'd snapped, and my spine had automatically straightened to attention. “I know my son. I watched him build that wall he uses to hide his heart as a young man. I know it for what it is. Armor. Protection, Tyler. People were not kind to him growing up. Trust me. All he’s waiting for is a sign from you.”

I’d done my best to tamp down the painful swell of hope her words had stoked, but it was impossible. I’d become obsessed.

I texted her the next day.

Tyler: What if I need a sign from him, too?

Mrs. Warren: Then you’ll have it. Get him here for New Year’s Eve. I’ll take care of the rest.

Tyler: You’re sure?

Mrs. Warren: Completely. But I’ll need you to be brave, too, and give as much as you’re asking for.

Mrs. Warren: Make my boy happy, Tyler.

In the moment, I'd doubted I had any actual say in the matter. Mama Warren had a mission in her head, and she was gonna push the issue anyway, no matter what.

But once the idea was in my head, I couldn’t let it go.

Tyler: Okay.

Tyler: Okay, let’s do it. We’ll be there.

Mrs. Warren: Good man. You’ll be thanking me in the new year.

And with a furtive glance at Nick, half unconscious in a bowl of cereal at our kitchen table, I’d deleted the text thread. I remember the feeling so vividly; my cheeks burning red and my heart racing with fear, elation, embarrassment... and hope.

So much hope.

And now here we are. The day before New Year’s Eve. Nick driving us in his little Mazda 3 that I barely fit into, taking the corners way too fast with that sort of driving muscle memory that kicks in on the roads of your hometown. On our way to what feels like my doom, even though in theory it’s going to be my ultimate happiness?

I turn my phone off and stash it in my back pocket, as far from Nick as it can possibly get while remaining on my person. Can’t have him catching his mom’s name on the screen and getting suspicious.

“There. No more phone,” I say. “Pristine beauty of your homeland and shit. Got it.”

Nick isn’t so easily distracted, though, so I deploy one of my recently discovered distraction techniques: physical contact. I lay a hand on Nick’s leg and give a light squeeze, relishing the soft slide of expensive fabric under my fingers. Nick freezes for half a second… then relaxes, his legs falling ever so slightly farther apart. His face stays perfectly blank, but his breathing hitches the tiniest bit—a tell I’ve learned to look for, a tiny seed of hope that’s grown into a tangled wanting that suffocates me on the best of days and aches without relenting on the worst.

It could still be something else. Friendship. Touch starvation, maybe. (Nick hasn’t had a steady hookup in over a year. Not that I’m counting. Too busy at the hospital, he says.) He could even be uncomfortable with the touch but not willing to say so. But sometimes, rarely, Nick will give the smallest sign: the corner of his mouth turned slightly up, a brush of fingers against mine, a faint hum.

It takes all of my considerable self-control to keep my hand from sliding higher in search of a gasp, a blush, a—something. I want, so much that sometimes I worry the wanting will eat me alive. Now that I know what it is. Now that I’ve accepted it.

Distraction. Music, conversation, something, or else I really will let my hands wander and my mouth start running, probably crash the car and our friendship and my life all in one dramatic move. I pull back and desperately latch onto the first topic of conversation that comes to mind.

“So, what do you think your parents have planned for the weekend? Anything special? New Year’s Eve traditions?”

“My grandmother used to visit and cook the traditional pork and sauerkraut for New Year’s Eve and Day when I was a kid,” Nick says. “I hear my mom still does pork, but she always hated sauerkraut. Don’t tell anyone, it’s a sin around here.”

I laugh. “Yeah, I would have to pass on that.”

A small smile curls at the corner of Nick’s mouth. “I haven’t been back for New Year’s Eve since I was seventeen, but I imagine we’ll eat way too much around one in the afternoon, graze on leftovers and desserts for the rest of the day, and drink too much champagne in front of the fire while my mom murders us all at cards. She’s a shark, don’t let her fool you.”

He glances over at me. “They’re probably going to be embarrassingly clingy with you this weekend. I hope you’re prepared.”

I look out the window to hide my grin.

“I don’t mind.”

Honestly, it’ll be nice to have a family that cares, that’s accepting and affectionate instead of expectant and cold. My father’s disapproving sneer forces its way into my mind, whispering poison about soft men and their feelings, but I shove it all away. He has no power over me. Not anymore.

“Hey, where’d you go?” Nick asks, startling me out of my unpleasant memories.

“I’m here, sorry,” I say. “Just thinking about how different our families are. I’m looking forward to this.”

“Yeah, we don’t exactly grow herds of big burly boys in my family,” he says with a self-deprecating laugh. “Just little old me.”

“I don’t think I could handle a whole herd of you.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Nick says with a sly grin. “I bet you could hold your own.”

Man, it’s a good thing Nick never comes around my job sites, because if my crews of foul-mouthed construction workers and subcontractors could see the way I flush at a little light flirting, I’d never hear the end of it. No one expects the general contractor to be a blushing flower. Then again, no one expects the general contractor to be bisexual, either.

Still trying to get used to the sound of that.

You’d think it would be easy, considering our friend group. Probably half the people we hang out with are queer. But it took years of conversations with Nick and my best friend, Nia, to wade through a lifetime of brainwashing. To finally realize that yes, I’ve had sex with women and liked it, liked them, but I’ve never fallen in love with any of them. And it’s not because I’m broken, and not because I’m aromantic. Sexual attraction and romantic attraction don’t always map one to one. And me? I can only fall in love with a man, it seems.

Once you figure this shit out, it’s so obvious, looking back. But looking back is too painful. So, all I want to do is look forward. Nick, my closest friend, the man who saved me from the lowest point of my life… and the man I’m in love with.

Hopefully, after this weekend, the man I’ll be with.

Nick takes a left turn down a narrow-paved road and flashes me a grin. “We’re here. Prepare yourself for Hurricane Warren.”

“I can take it,” I say, keeping my voice light even as panic tries to force it higher.

Nick laughs. “Damn right you can. You’re built like an oak tree.”

I roll my eyes. I’m not that big, I’m just… sturdy. All the Oberlin boys are. We grew up hauling lumber and bags of concrete on dad’s job sites, and that’ll leave its mark.

Even so, as the house comes into view, I find myself wiping sweaty palms on my jeans. The house is adorable, a remodeled farmhouse that was clearly added onto a time or two. Our friend Chris would probably have a fit—he’s a building inspector and this thing has “handyman special” written all over it. I’ll eat my hard hat if all the proper permits were filed for those add-ons. It looks well-maintained and cozy, though, bursting with personality and care even from the outside. Those flower beds have Mr. Warren’s green thumbprints all over them, even in the dead of winter. There are a few evergreen plants evenly spaced to make sure there’s always a bit of color and telltale mounds where perennials have been covered to overwinter.

Nick barely has time to shut the engine off before the front door flies open. His mom comes out first, wrapped in a shawl and heading straight for the driver’s side. Nick’s dad follows close behind in a well-worn brown jacket, and he greets me with a firm handshake-turned-hug.

“So good to see you, Tyler, truly,” he says, thumping me hard on the back. “I hear my wife has been meddling.”

Nick’s head shoots up from where it had been resting against his mother’s in a rare show of affection, and he steps back from her hug like she’d attacked him.

“Meddling how?” he demands, hands on his hips, but his mother waves him off.

“You never would have shown up if I hadn’t gotten Tyler to bring you and you know it.” With that, she turns her back on her son to wrap me in a long motherly hug.

“Don’t you dare ask it again, Tyler, I mean it!” she says in a low voice. “I see that look on your face. You look half sick and ready to bolt. You remember the deal and do your part. Are we clear?”

“Crystal,” I reply as I pull back from the hug, catching a glimpse of Nick over his mother’s shoulder in the moment before he masters his expression. It was just a brief thing, a stolen snatch of time, but Nick’s face had gone unbearably soft at the sight of his parents embracing me. I get it—I already feel at home in a way I never have with my own family, and Nick’s expression seems to say all the things I want to hear: I want this, be my family, this is right, please stay forever.

If all goes well this weekend, then that’s exactly where we’ll end up.

I pull our overnight bags from the trunk and hand Nick’s over, not letting go until our fingers touch. “Let’s go get settled in.”

Nick’s gaze is oddly charged when our eyes meet, and he nods.

Nick’s mother is a devious one, I have to hand it to her. The house is romantically lit with candles and fairy lights, a fire crackling in the fireplace, the last of the fading sunlight leaving everything dim and warm and cozy.

Including the bedroom.

Singular.

I expected a lot of things, but the dusty wreck of a construction zone in the spare bedroom was not one of them.

“What happened?” I ask, eyes wide.

Mrs. Warren closes the door to the room with a gentle click, a cloud of plaster dust puffing out. “We’ve had a slow roof leak for years, and you know how it goes once you start opening up ceilings and walls.”

I wince. “Yeah, house projects have a way of unexpectedly growing.”

She pats Nick on the cheek with an indulgent smile. “Nick’s old bed is plenty big enough for two. Now, put those things down and get out of here, you’ll need to get to the brewery soon if you want food before the kitchen closes at eight.”

And with that, she whirls away and disappears down the stairs, leaving me with bright red cheeks and a very awkward Nick.

Here’s a chance, I tell myself. This is why you’re here.

“Come on,” I say, nudging Nick’s shoulder with a smile. “Let’s ditch these bags. What’s this about a brewery?”

Nick opens his mouth to speak, then closes it again, his gaze flicking over my face.

“I can sleep on the couch…” he finally offers, hesitant, but I cut him off.

“Don’t worry about it. Unless you’re against cuddling, of course, because I’m a notorious sleep cuddler.”

A beat of silence.

Then Nick snorts, and we break down into ridiculous giggles. And here we are—an opportunity to be just a bit daring, to push the boundaries just a hair.

I reach out and grab Nick by the wrist, tugging him along as I walk backward toward the bedroom door.

“Come on, madman. You can handle me for one night.”

I do a great job of pretending not to notice the way Nick stumbles at that, if I do say so myself.

Red, White and Royal Blue by Casey Mcquiston

CHAPTER 1

On the White House roof, tucked into a corner of the Promenade, there's a bit of loose paneling right on the edge of the Solarium. If you tap it just right, you can peel it back enough to find a message etched underneath, with the tip of a key or maybe a stolen West Wing letter opener.

In the secret history of First Families — an insular gossip mill sworn to absolute discretion about most things on pain of death — there's no definite answer for who wrote it. The one thing people seem certain of is that only a presidential son or daughter would have been daring enough to deface the White House. Some swear it was Jack Ford, with his Hendrix records and split-level room attached to the roof for late-night smoke breaks. Others say it was a young Luci Johnson, thick ribbon in her hair. But it doesn't matter. The writing stays, a private mantra for those resourceful enough to find it.

Alex discovered it within his first week of living there. He's never told anyone how.

It says:

RULE #1: DON'T GET CAUGHT

The East and West Bedrooms on theb second floor are generally reserved for the First Family. They were first designated as one giant state bedroom for visits from the Marquis de Lafayette in the Monroe administration, but eventually they were split. Alex has the East, across from the Treaty Room, and June uses the West, next to the elevator.

Growing up in Texas, their rooms were arranged in the same configuration, on either side of the hallway. Back then, you could tell June's ambition of the month by what covered the walls. At twelve, it was watercolor paintings. At fifteen, lunar calendars and charts of crystals. At sixteen, clippings from The Atlantic, a UT Austin pennant, Gloria Steinem, Zora Neale Hurston, and excerpts from the papers of Dolores Huerta.

His own room was forever the same, just steadily more stuffed with lacrosse trophies and piles of AP coursework. It's all gathering dust in the house they still keep back home. On a chain around his neck, always hidden from view, he's worn the key to that house since the day he left for DC.

Now, straight across the hall, June's room is all bright white and soft pink and minty green, photographed by Vogue and famously inspired by old '60s interior design periodicals she found in one of the White House sitting rooms. His own room was once Caroline Kennedy's nursery and, later, warranting some sage burning from June, Nancy Reagan's office. He's left up the nature field illustrations in a neat symmetrical grid above the sofa, but painted over Sasha Obama's pink walls with a deep blue.

Typically, the children of the president, at least for the past few decades, haven't lived in the Residence beyond eighteen, but Alex started at Georgetown the January his mom was sworn in, and logistically, it made sense not to split their security or costs to whatever one-bedroom apartment he'd be living in. June came that fall, fresh out of UT. She's never said it, but Alex knows she moved in to keep an eye on him. She knows better than anyone else how much he gets off on being this close to the action, and she's bodily yanked him out of the West Wing on more than one occasion.

Behind his bedroom door, he can sit and put Hall & Oates on the record player in the corner, and nobody hears him humming along like his dad to "Rich Girl." He can wear the reading glasses he always insists he doesn't need. He can make as many meticulous study guides with color-coded sticky notes as he wants. He's not going to be the youngest elected congressman in modern history without earning it, but nobody needs to know how hard he's kicking underwater. His sex-symbol stock would plummet.

"Hey," says a voice at the door, and he looks up from his laptop to see June edging into his room, two iPhones and a stack of magazines tucked under one arm, and a plate in her hand. She closes the door behind her with her foot.

"What'd you steal today?" Alex asks, pushing the pile of papers on his bed out of her way.

"Assorted donuts," June says as she climbs up. She's wearing a pencil skirt with pointy pink flats, and he can already see next week's fashion columns: a picture of her outfit today, a lead-in for some sponcon about flats for the professional gal on the go.

He wonders what she's been up to all day. She mentioned a column for WaPo, or was it a photoshoot for her blog? Or both? He can never keep up.

She's dumped her stack of magazines out on the bedspread and is already busying herself with them.

"Doing your part to keep the great American gossip industry alive?"

"That's what my journalism degree's for," June says.

"Anything good this week?" Alex asks, reaching for a donut.

"Let's see," June says. "In Touch says I'm ... dating a French model?"

"Are you?"

"I wish." She flips a few pages. "Ooh, and they're saying you got your asshole bleached."

"That one is true," Alex says through a mouthful of chocolate with sprinkles.

"Thought so," June says without looking up. After riffling through most of the magazine, she shuffles it to the bottom of the stack and moves on to People. She flips through absently — People only ever writes what their publicists tell it to write. Boring. "Not much on us this week ... oh, I'm a crossword puzzle clue."

Following their tabloid coverage is something of an idle hobby of hers, one that in turns amuses and annoys their mother, and Alex is narcissistic enough to let June read him the highlights. They're usually either complete fabrications or lines fed from their press team, but sometimes it's just funny. Given the choice, he'd rather read one of the hundreds of glowing pieces of fan fiction about him on the internet, the up-to-eleven version of himself with devastating charm and unbelievable physical stamina, but June flat-out refuses to read those aloud to him, no matter how much he tries to bribe her.

"Do Us Weekly," Alex says.

"Hmm ..." June digs it out of the stack. "Oh, look, we made the cover this week."

She flashes the glossy cover at him, which has a photo of the two of them inlaid in one corner, June's hair pinned on top of her head and Alex looking slightly over-served but still handsome, all jawline and dark curls. Below it in bold yellow letters, the headline reads: FIRST SIBLINGS' WILD NYC NIGHT.

"Oh yeah, that was a wild night," Alex says, reclining back against the tall leather headboard and pushing his glasses up his nose. "Two whole keynote speakers. Nothing sexier than shrimp cocktails and an hour and a half of speeches on carbon emissions."

"It says here you had some kind of tryst with a 'mystery brunette,'" June reads. "'Though the First Daughter was whisked off by limousine to a star-studded party shortly after the gala, twenty-one-year-old heartthrob Alex was snapped sneaking into the W Hotel to meet a mystery brunette in the presidential suite and leaving around four a.m. Sources inside the hotel reported hearing amorous noises from the room all night, and rumors are swirling the brunette was none other than ... Nora Holleran, the twenty-two-year-old granddaughter of Vice President Mike Holleran and third member of the White House Trio. Could it be the two are rekindling their romance?'"

"Yes!" Alex crows, and June groans. "That's less than a month! You owe me fifty dollars, baby."

"Hold on. Was it Nora?"

Alex thinks back to the week before, showing up at Nora's room with a bottle of champagne. Their thing on the campaign trail a million years ago was brief, mostly to get the inevitable over with. They were seventeen and eighteen and doomed from the start, both convinced they were the smartest person in any room. Alex has since conceded Nora is 100 percent smarter than him and definitely too smart to have ever dated him.

It's not his fault the press won't let it go, though; that they love the idea of them together as if they're modern-day Kennedys. So, if he and Nora occasionally get drunk in hotel rooms together watching The West Wing and making loud moaning noises at the wall for the benefit of nosy tabloids, he can't be blamed, really. They're simply turning an undesirable situation into their own personal entertainment.

Scamming his sister is also a perk.

"Maybe," he says, dragging out the vowels.

June swats him with the magazine like he's an especially obnoxious cockroach. "That's cheating, you dick!"

"Bet's a bet," Alex tells her. "We said if there was a new rumor in a month, you'd owe me fifty bucks. I take Venmo."

"I'm not paying," June huffs. "I'm gonna kill her when we see her tomorrow. What are you wearing, by the way?"

"For what?"

"The wedding."

"Whose wedding?"

"Uh, the royal wedding," June says. "Of England. It's literally on every cover I just showed you."

She holds Us Weekly up again, and this time Alex notices the main story in giant letters: PRINCE PHILIP SAYS I DO! Along with a photograph of an extremely nondescript British heir and his equally nondescript blond fiancée smiling blandly.

He drops his donut in a show of devastation. "That's this weekend?"

"Alex, we leave in the morning," June tells him. "We've got two appearances before we even go to the ceremony. I can't believe Zahra hasn't climbed up your ass about this already."

"Shit," he groans. "I know I had that written down. I got sidetracked."

"What, by conspiring with my best friend against me in the tabloids for fifty dollars?"

"No, with my research paper, smart-ass," Alex says, gesturing dramatically at his piles of notes. "I've been working on it for Roman Political Thought all week. And I thought we agreed Nora is our best friend."

"That can't possibly be a real class you're taking," June says. "Is it possible you willfully forgot about the biggest international event of the year because you don't want to see your archnemesis?"

"June, I'm the son of the President of the United States. Prince Henry is a figurehead of the British Empire. You can't just call him my 'archnemesis,'" Alex says. He returns to his donut, chewing thoughtfully, and adds, "'Archnemesis' implies he's actually a rival to me on any level and not, you know, a stuck-up product of inbreeding who probably jerks off to photos of himself."

"Woof."

"I'm just saying."

"Well, you don't have to like him, you just have to put on a happy face and not cause an international incident at his brother's wedding."

"Bug, when do I ever not put on a happy face?" Alex says. He pulls a painfully fake grin, and June looks satisfyingly repulsed.

"Ugh. Anyway, you know what you're wearing, right?"

"Yeah, I picked it out and had Zahra approve it last month. I'm not an animal."

"I'm still not sure about my dress," June says. She leans over and steals his laptop away from him, ignoring his noise of protest. "Do you think the maroon or the one with the lace?"

"Lace, obviously. It's England. And why are you trying to make me fail this class?" he says, reaching for his laptop only to have his hand swatted away. "Go curate your Instagram or something. You're the worst."

"Shut up, I'm trying to pick something to watch. Ew, you have Garden State on your watch list? Wow, how's film school in 2005 going?"

"I hate you."

"Hmm, I know."

Outside his window, the wind stirs up over the lawn, rustling the linden trees down in the garden. The record on the turntable in the corner has spun out into fuzzy silence. He rolls off the bed and flips it, resetting the needle, and the second side picks up on "London Luck, & Love."

* * *

If he's honest, private aviation doesn't really get old, not even three years into his mother's term.

He doesn't get to travel this way a lot, but when he does, it's hard not to let it go to his head. He was born in the hill country of Texas to the daughter of a single mother and the son of Mexican immigrants, all of them dirt poor — luxury travel is still a luxury.

Fifteen years ago, when his mother first ran for the House, the Austin newspaper gave her a nickname: the Lometa Longshot. She'd escaped her tiny hometown in the shadow of Fort Hood, pulled night shifts at diners to put herself through law school, and was arguing discrimination cases before the Supreme Court by thirty. She was the last thing anybody expected to rise up out of Texas in the midst of the Iraq War: a strawberry-blond, whip-smart Democrat with high heels, an unapologetic drawl, and a little biracial family.

So, it's still surreal that Alex is cruising somewhere over the Atlantic, snacking on pistachios in a high-backed leather chair with his feet up. Nora is bent over the New York Times crossword opposite him, brown curls falling across her forehead. Beside her, the hulking Secret Service agent Cassius — Cash for short — holds his own copy in one giant hand, racing to finish it first. The cursor on Alex's Roman Political Thought paper blinks expectantly at him from his laptop, but something in him can't quite focus on school while they're flying transatlantic.

Amy, his mother's favorite Secret Service agent, a former Navy SEAL who is rumored around DC to have killed several men, sits across the aisle. She's got a bulletproof titanium case of crafting supplies open on the couch next to her and is serenely embroidering flowers onto a napkin. Alex has seen her stab someone in the kneecap with a very similar embroidery needle.

Which leaves June, next to him, leaning on one elbow with her nose buried in the issue of People she's inexplicably brought with them. She always chooses the most bizarre reading material for flights. Last time, it was a battered old Cantonese phrase book. Before that, Death Comes for the Archbishop.

"What are you reading in there now?" Alex asks her.

She flips the magazine around so he can see the double-page spread titled: ROYAL WEDDING MADNESS! Alex groans. This is definitely worse than Willa Cather.

"What?" she says. "I want to be prepared for my first-ever royal wedding."

"You went to prom, didn't you?" Alex says. "Just picture that, only in hell, and you have to be really nice about it."

"Can you believe they spent $75,000 just on the cake?"

"That's depressing."

"And apparently Prince Henry is going sans date to the wedding and everyone is freaking out about it. It says he was," she affects a comical English accent, "'rumored to be dating a Belgian heiress last month, but now followers of the prince's dating life aren't sure what to think.'"

Alex snorts. It's insane to him that there are legions of people who follow the intensely dull dating lives of the royal siblings. He understands why people care where he puts his own tongue — at least he has personality.

"Maybe the female population of Europe finally realized he's as compelling as a wet ball of yarn," Alex suggests.

Nora puts down her crossword puzzle, having finished it first. Cassius glances over and swears. "You gonna ask him to dance, then?"

Alex rolls his eyes, suddenly imagining twirling around a ballroom while Henry drones sweet nothings about croquet and fox hunting in his ear. The thought makes him want to gag.

"In his dreams."

"Aw," Nora says, "you're blushing."

"Listen," Alex tells her, "royal weddings are trash, the princes who have royal weddings are trash, the imperialism that allows princes to exist at all is trash. It's trash turtles all the way down."

"Is this your TED Talk?" June asks. "You do realize America is a genocidal empire too, right?"

"Yes, June, but at least we have the decency not to keep a monarchy around," Alex says, throwing a pistachio at her.

There are a few things about Alex and June that new White House hires are briefed on before they start. June's peanut allergy. Alex's frequent middle-of-the-night requests for coffee. June's college boyfriend, who broke up with her when he moved to California but is still the only person whose letters come to her directly. Alex's long-standing grudge against the youngest prince.

It's not a grudge, really. It's not even a rivalry. It's a prickling, unsettling annoyance. It makes his palms sweat.

The tabloids — the world — decided to cast Alex as the American equivalent of Prince Henry from day one, since the White House Trio is the closest thing America has to royalty. It has never seemed fair. Alex's image is all charisma and genius and smirking wit, thoughtful interviews and the cover of GQ at eighteen; Henry's is placid smiles and gentle chivalry and generic charity appearances, a perfectly blank Prince Charming canvas. Henry's role, Alex thinks, is much easier to play.

Maybe it is technically a rivalry. Whatever.

"All right, MIT," he says, "what are the numbers on this one?"

Nora grins. “Hmm.” She pretends to think hard about it. “Risk assessment: FSOTUS failing to check himself before he wrecks himself will result in greater than five hundred civiliancasualties. Ninety-eight percent probability of Prince Henry looking like a total dreamboat. Seventy-eight percent probability of Alex getting himself banned from the United Kingdom forever.”

“Those are better odds than I expected,” June observes.

Alex laughs, and the plane soars on.

London is an absolute spectacle, crowds cramming the streets outside Buckingham Palace and all through the city, draped in Union Jacks and waving tiny flags over their heads. There are commemorative royal wedding souvenirs everywhere; Prince Philip and his bride’s face plastered on everything from chocolate bars to underwear. Alex almost can’t believe this many people care so passionately about something so comprehensively dull. He’s sure there won’t be this kind of turnout in front of the White House when he or June get married one day, nor would he even want it.

The ceremony itself seems to last forever, but it’s at least sort of nice, in a way. It’s not that Alex isn’t into love or can’t appreciate marriage. It’s just that Martha is a perfectly respectable daughter of nobility, and Philip is a prince. It’s as sexy as a business transaction. There’s no passion, no drama. Alex’s kind of love story is much more Shakespearean.

It feels like years before he’s settled at a table between June and Nora inside a Buckingham Palace ballroom for the reception banquet, and he’s irritated enough to be a little reckless. Nora passes him a flute of champagne, and he takes it gladly.

“Do either of y’all know what a viscount is?” June is saying, halfway through a cucumber sandwich. “I’ve met, like, five of them, and I keep smiling politely as if I know what it meanswhen they say it. Alex, you took comparative international governmental relational things. Whatever. What are they?”

“I think it’s that thing when a vampire creates an army of crazed sex waifs and starts his own ruling body,” he says.

“That sounds right,” Nora says. She’s folding her napkin into a complicated shape on the table, her shiny black manicure glinting in the chandelier light.

“I wish I were a viscount,” June says. “I could have my sex waifs deal with my emails.”

“Are sex waifs good with professional correspondence?” Alex asks.

Nora’s napkin has begun to resemble a bird. “I think it could be an interesting approach. Their emails would be all tragic and wanton.” She tries on a breathless, husky voice. “‘Oh, please, I beg you, take me—take me to lunch to discuss fabric samples, you beast!’”

“Could be weirdly effective,” Alex notes.

“Something is wrong with both of you,” June says gently.

Alex is opening his mouth to retort when a royal attendant materializes at their table like a dense and dour-looking ghost in a bad hairpiece.

“Miss Claremont-Diaz,” says the man, who looks like his name is probably Reginald or Bartholomew or something. He bows, and miraculously his hairpiece doesn’t fall off into June’s plate. Alex shares an incredulous glance with her behind his back. “His Royal Highness Prince Henry wonders if you would do him the honor of accompanying him for a dance.”

June’s mouth freezes halfway open, caught on a soft vowel sound, and Nora breaks out into a shit-eating grin.

“Oh, she’dloveto,” Nora volunteers. “She’s been hoping he’d ask all evening.”

“I—” June starts and stops, her mouth smiling even as her eyes slice at Nora. “Of course. That would be lovely.”

“Excellent,” Reginald-Bartholomew says, and he turns and gestures over his shoulder.

And there Henry is, in the flesh, as classically handsome as ever in his tailored three-piece suit, all tousled sandy hair and high cheekbones and a soft, friendly mouth. He holds himself with innately impeccable posture, as if he emerged fully formed and upright out of some beautiful Buckingham Palace posy garden one day.

His eyes lock on Alex’s, and something like annoyance or adrenaline spikes in Alex’s chest. He hasn’t had a conversation with Henry in probably a year. His face is still infuriatingly symmetrical.

Henry deigns to give him a perfunctory nod, as if he’s any other random guest, not the person he beat to aVogueeditorial debut in their teens. Alex blinks, seethes, and watches Henry angle his stupid chiseled jaw toward June.

“Hello, June,” Henry says, and he extends a gentlemanly hand to June, who is now blushing. Nora pretends to swoon. “Do you know how to waltz?”

“I’m… sure I could pick it up,” she says, and she takes his hand cautiously, like she thinks he might be pranking her, which Alex thinks is way too generous to Henry’s sense of humor. Henry leads her off to the crowd of twirling nobles.

“So is that what’s happening now?” Alex says, glaring down at Nora’s napkin bird. “Has he decided to finally shut me up by wooing my sister?”

“Aw, little buddy,” Nora says. She reaches over and pats his hand. “It’s cute how you think everything is about you.”

“It should be, honestly.”

“That’s the spirit.”

He glances up into the crowd, where June is being rotated around the floor by Henry. She’s got a neutral, polite smile on her face, and he keeps looking over her shoulder, which is even more annoying. June is amazing. The least Henry could do is pay attention to her.

“Do you think he actually likes her, though?”

Nora shrugs. “Who knows? Royals are weird. Might be a courtesy, or—oh, there it is.”

A royal photographer has swooped in and is snapping a shot of them dancing, one Alex knows will be leaked toHellonext week. So, that’s it, then? Using the First Daughter to start some idiotic dating rumor for attention? God forbid Philip gets to dominate the news cycle for one week.

“He’s kind of good at this,” Nora remarks.

Alex flags down a waiter and decides to spend the rest of the reception getting systematically drunk.

Alex has never told—will never tell—anyone, but he saw Henry for the first time when he was twelve years old. He only ever reflects upon it when he’s drunk.

He’s sure he saw his face in the news before then, but that was the first time he really saw him. June had just turned fifteen and used part of her birthday money to buy an issue of a blindingly colorful teen magazine. Her love of trashy tabloids started early. In the center of the magazine were miniature posters you could rip out and stick up in your locker. If you were careful and pried up the staples with your fingernails, you could get them out without tearing them. One of them, right in the middle, was a picture of a boy.

He had thick, tawny hair and big blue eyes, a warm smile, and a cricket bat over one shoulder. It must have been a candid, because there was a happy, sun-bright confidence to him that couldn’t be posed. On the bottom corner of the page in pink and blue letters: prince henry.

Alex still doesn’t really know what kept drawing him back, only that he would sneak into June’s room and find the page and touch his fingertips to the boy’s hair, as if he could somehow feel its texture if he imagined it hard enough. The more his parents climbed the political ranks, the more he started to reckon with the fact that soon the world would know who he was. Then, sometimes, he’d think of the picture, and try to harness Prince Henry’s easy confidence.

(He also thought about prying up the staples with his fingers and taking the picture out and keeping it in his room, but he never did. His fingernails were too stubby; they weren’t made for it like June’s, like a girl’s.)

But then came first time he met Henry—the first cool, detached words Henry said to him—and Alex guessed he had it all wrong, that the pretty, flung-open boy from the picture wasn’t real. The real Henry is beautiful, distant, boring, and closed. This person the tabloids keep comparing him to, that he compares himself to, thinks he’s better than Alex and everyone like him. Alex can’t believe he ever wanted to be anything like him.

Alex keeps drinking, keeps alternating between thinking about it and forcing himself not to think about it, disappears into the crowd and dances with pretty European heiresses about it.

He’s pirouetting away from one when he catches sight of a lone figure, hovering near the cake and the champagne fountain. It’s Prince Henry yet again, glass in hand, watching Prince Philip and his bride spinning on the ballroom floor. He looks politely half-interested in that obnoxious way of his, like he has somewhere else to be. And Alex can’t resist the urge to call his bluff.

He picks his way through the crowd, grabbing a glass of wine off a passing tray and downing half of it.

“When you have one of these,” Alex says, sidling up to him, “you should do two champagne fountains instead of one. Really embarrassing to be at a wedding with only one champagne fountain.”

“Alex,” Henry says in that maddeningly posh accent. Up close, the waistcoat under his suit jacket is a lush gold and has about a million buttons on it. It’s horrible. “I wondered if I’d have the pleasure.”

“Looks like it’s your lucky day,” Alex says, smiling.

“Truly a momentous occasion,” Henry agrees. His own smile is bright white and immaculate, made to be printed on money.

The most annoying thing of all is Alex knows Henry hates him too—he must, they’re naturally mutual antagonists—but he refuses to outright act like it. Alex is intimately aware politics involves a lot of making nice with people you loathe, but he wishes that once, just once, Henry would act like an actual human and not some polished little wind-up toy sold in a palace gift shop.

He’s too perfect. Alex wants to poke it.

“Do you ever get tired,” Alex says, “of pretending you’re above all this?”

Henry turns and stares at him. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

“I mean, you’re out here, getting the photographers to chase you, swanning around like you hate the attention, which you clearly don’t since you’re dancing with my sister, of all people,” Alex says. “You act like you’re too important to be anywhere, ever. Doesn’t that get exhausting?”

“I’m . . . a bit more complicated than that,” Henry attempts.

“Ha.”

“Oh,” Henry says, narrowing his eyes. “You’re drunk.”

“I’m just saying,” Alex says, resting an overly friendly elbow on Henry’s shoulder, which isn’t as easy as he’d like it to be since Henry has about four infuriating inches of height on him. “You could try to act like you’re having fun. Occasionally.”

Henry laughs ruefully. “I believe perhaps you should consider switching to water, Alex.”

“Should I?” Alex says. He pushes aside the thought that maybe the wine is what gave him the nerve to stomp over to Henry in the first place and makes his eyes as coy and angelic as he knows how. “Am I offending you? Sorry I’m not obsessed with you like everyone else. I know that must be confusing for you.”

“Do you know what?” Henry says. “I think you are.”

Alex’s mouth drops open, while the corner of Henry’s turns smug and almost a little mean.

“Only a thought,” Henry says, tone polite. “Have you ever noticed I have never once approached you and have been exhaustively civil every time we’ve spoken? Yet here you are, seeking me out again.” He takes a sip of his champagne. “Simply an observation.”

“What? I’m not—” Alex stammers. “You’re the—”

“Have a lovely evening, Alex,” Henry says tersely, and turns to walk off.

It drives Alex nuts, that Henry thinks he gets to have the last word, and without thinking, he reaches out and pulls Henry’s shoulder back.

And then Henry turns, suddenly, and almost does push Alex off him this time, and for a brief spark of a moment, Alex is impressed at the glint in his eyes, the abrupt burst of an actual personality.

The next thing he knows, he’s tripping over his own foot and stumbling backwards into the table nearest him. He notices too late that the table is, to his horror, the one bearing the massive eight-tier wedding cake, and he grabs for Henry’s arm to catch himself, but all this does is throw both of them off-balance and send them crashing together into the cake stand.

He watches, as if in slow motion, as the cake leans, teeters, shudders, and finally tips. There’s absolutely nothing he can do to stop it. It comes crashing down onto the floor in an avalanche of white buttercream, some kind of sugary $75,000 nightmare.

The room goes heart-stoppingly silent as momentum carries him and Henry through the fall and down, down onto the wreckage of the cake on the ornate carpet, Henry’s sleeve still clutched in Alex’s fist. Henry’s glass of champagne has spilled all over both of them and shattered, and out of the corner of his eye, Alex can see a cut across the top of Henry’s cheekbone beginning to bleed.

For a second, all he can think as he stares up at the ceiling while covered in frosting and champagne is that at least Henry’s dance with June won’t be the biggest story to come out of the royal wedding.

His next thought is that his mother is going to murder him in cold blood.

Beside him, he hears Henry mutter slowly, “Oh my fucking Christ.”

He registers dimly that it’s the first time he’s ever heard the prince swear, before the flash from someone’s camera goes off.

The Rest of Our Lives by Helena Stone

Chapter One
“This is going to be weird.” Mitch looked out of the bus window. It was after five in the afternoon, and night had fallen. The bus’s headlights lit up a road sign, and Mitch knew they were less than half an hour from Castleforest.

“Not being together for a week, you mean?” Cian sounded about as enthusiastic about the idea as Mitch felt.

“Yeah,” Mitch concurred. “Do you think our families will ever get so comfortable with us being a couple that they’ll allow us to share a room while visiting?”

The reflection of Cian’s gaze caught Mitch’s in the dark glass, and for a moment, they kept each other captive there.

“I don’t think it’s us being a couple they’re having an issue with,” Cian eventually said. “The idea of us actually sleeping together, never mind having sex, is probably easier to deal with on a ‘what I can’t see doesn’t exist’ sorta level.”

“Do you reckon it would be the same if one of us was a girl?”

“Probably not.” Cian frowned. “Having said that, we’re together less than a year, and they probably still see us as children rather than adults, so who knows?”

It wasn’t the end of the world of course. It wouldn’t be the first time they’d spend time apart since they’d moved in together, four months earlier. On more than one occasion, Mitch had gone back to Castleforest on his own for a weekend when Cian had had a match, just as Cian sometimes went home without Mitch to make up for the times he couldn’t make it. This felt different, though. Being alone because they were in different parts of the country was unavoidable. A separation due to parental overprotectiveness or prejudice—Mitch wasn’t sure what to call it—stung.

“Oh, well,” Mitch said, deciding to keep things in perspective and not ruin their week home before it even started. “It’s only for a week, and it’s not as if we won’t see each other during the day. It could be worse. Imagine if your family lived in Cork. We’d be half the country away from each other.”

Cian’s fingers brushed across Mitch’s hand, which rested on his thigh. Mitch relished the intimacy of the gesture, no matter how fleeting. At the same time, he resented that they couldn’t just hold hands for the duration of the journey.  Surely one day they would be able to be as affectionate in public as heterosexual couples without the fear of offending people? He had to believe that; anything else would be too frustrating.

“Have you any idea what plans your mother has made?” Cian asked. “Because my parents have been rather vague, apart from telling me that we’ll be celebrating Christmas day as we’ve always done in the past.”

Mitch thought back to his last conversation with his mother. He hadn’t given it much thought at the time, but now that Cian mentioned it, he remembered she’d been rather circumspect when it came to details.

“She asked me what I wanted to eat for Christmas and made some vague references to surprises.” He chuckled. “Maybe I should remind her I’m legally an adult. She hasn’t teased me with secrecy since I stopped believing in Santa.” He turned to Cian, fully expecting him to laugh along or at least smile. Instead, he encountered a thoughtful expression.

“I wonder what they’re up to?” Cian mused.

“Up to?”

“It’s too much of a coincidence otherwise.” Cian focused on Mitch, his eyes gleaming. “My mother used almost the exact same words with me, last time we spoke.”

For a moment Mitch turned into the boy he’d been when he was seven and still firmly believed in the magic of Christmas, reindeer, and Santa Claus. Excitement rushed through him as he tried to figure out what their parents might be planning.

Something bright illuminated the darkness as they drove into town.

“Are those new?” Cian nodded in the direction of the lights that stretched in rows running across the main street at regular intervals, creating an illusion of ice and snow.

“I think so.” Mitch hadn’t paid much attention to Castleforest’s Christmas decorations in the past. They were there for a few weeks before disappearing again for a year, in the same way leaves came and went on trees.

Two minutes later, as the bus drove on without them, Mitch stared down the street and reconsidered. “It does look better. More festive, I guess.” He focused on Cian, reluctant to take the next step on his journey home.

“What are we like?” Cian grinned ruefully. “Our families aren’t so bad that we have to worry about going to different homes.”

Mitch smiled, unable to deny that they were being silly. “Where do you want to meet tomorrow?”

“At the library?” Cian suggested. “For old times’ sake?”

“Works for me,” Mitch said calmly while pushing down a burst of excitement because Cian had picked the place where they’d first met, almost exactly a year earlier.

He looked up and down the street, finding it mostly deserted. Given that it was dinner time on a Sunday in December, that was hardly surprising, but it served his purpose perfectly. He leaned forward, angled his head, and pressed his lips against Cian’s. If anybody did see the kiss, tough. In a town as small as Castleforest, their relationship had to be common knowledge. He wasn’t inclined to force public displays of intimacy on unsuspecting passers-by, but he refused to hide who he was or, more importantly, who he was with any longer.

Cian returned the far too short kiss, smirking when he pulled back. “What a difference a year makes.” He fixed the strap of his backpack on his shoulder and took a step. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Ten-ish?"

“See you then.”

Watching Cian walk away toward the estate where he lived, Mitch wondered if he’d ever get tired of looking at his boyfriend. He’d been attracted to Cian long before they’d exchanged their first words, and far from lessening, the feeling had only strengthened over time. Cian’s training regime since he’d taken up rugby again helped to make an always tantalizing physique even more irresistible too.

Only after Cian turned a corner and disappeared from sight did Mitch set off in the opposite direction. He resisted the temptation to walk by the old community center on his way home. He’d meet Cian there tomorrow, and it would be the long way around. He had no doubt his mother was eagerly awaiting his arrival, and if he were honest, he looked forward to seeing her too. 

 The front door to the house he’d grown up in opened before Mitch had a chance to put his key in the lock. His mother’s beaming face welcomed him home, and his answering smile was almost certainly just as delighted. Yes, Mitch would miss Cian, especially at night, when he’d have to settle for sleeping on his own, without a warm body to wrap himself around. However, he couldn’t deny that his mother’s joy whenever he visited made him feel warm and loved.

“There you are.” His mother pulled him into a tight hug before scrutinizing his face. “You look well.” She released him and walked into the house. “Do you want to eat now or later?”

“I have a choice?” Mitch snickered. This was new. His whole life his mother had told him what time dinner would be ready, and it had been up to him to make sure he was present at the appointed hour.

“Sure.” She grinned at him as if she knew exactly what he was thinking. She probably does.

“I’m having takeaway delivered. I was thinking fish and chips?”

Mitch’s mouth watered, but he was surprised. “Delivered? I’m impressed. Castleforest is moving up in the world.”

“Oh, stop it. We’re not that much of a backwater.” But his mother smiled at him, taking the sting out of her words.

“I’ll just put my stuff away,” Mitch said. “Then I’m good with whatever you want to do.”   

An hour later Mitch settled on the couch in the living room with a full belly. “That was great.”

“Good. Does it make up for having to share a living space with your old ma for a few days?”

Mitch didn’t need mind-reading powers to recognize the question wasn’t only meant as a joke. He sighed.

“Living with you has never been hard,” he said honestly. “It isn’t difficult now either. It’s just…” Mitch didn’t want to upset his mother so soon after arriving, but he didn’t want to lie to her either.

“What?”

He shrugged. “It’s a bit frustrating that nobody minds that Cian and I live together in Dublin, but at the same time won’t allow us to sleep in the same house when we’re here.”

His mother gave him a look he knew all too well. This stare indicated that, in her opinion, he hadn’t thought hard enough before opening his mouth. Unfortunately, recognizing her expression didn’t mean he knew the reason behind it.

“Has it ever occurred to you that maybe Cian’s parents would like to have him to themselves for a few days to catch up? Or that I might like spending some time with my son without having to share his attention?” Mitch gaped at his mother, disinclined to tell her that the thought hadn’t even crossed his mind.

She sighed. “We’re not stupid. We know you two are all grown up and living your own life together. But it feels like only yesterday you came running to me because you’d fallen off your bike and hurt yourself. Give an old woman a chance to adjust to the fact that you’re no longer a child.”

Mitch got up and crossed the room. When he reached his ma in her comfortable chair, he leaned forward and hugged her. “You’re not an old woman,” he whispered while relaxing into her embrace. He allowed himself to revisit the younger version of himself she’d described, surprised to find he welcomed the security her arms offered as much now as he always had.

“I’m sorry.” Mitch murmured the words against her shoulder. He hadn’t meant to upset his mother. “It’s just that I’m so used to being together with Cian it feels a bit weird when we’re not. Especially since for once we’re home at the same time.” He straightened and sat on the armrest of his mother’s chair.

“It’s okay.” She patted his leg. “I do understand, you know. I used to be young once, a long, long time ago.” She looked up at him with a cheeky glint in her eye. “Did I mention I have a surprise for you?”

“You did.” The sudden change in subject caught Mitch off guard. “I thought you’d keep me in suspense until Christmas.”

“That would defeat the purpose.”

The plot thickened, and Mitch was still none the wiser. “Well then, don’t keep me hanging.”

“We had a raffle in work,” his mother said, at first glance apropos of nothing. “I won the first prize.”

“Congratulations?” Mitch had no idea why his mother made such a big deal about having won a box of chocolates or something similar, but he was willing to wait her out.

“I’ve now got two tickets to see the Symphony Orchestra perform the music from Star Wars. Tomorrow night, actually.”

“Nice one.” Mitch was delighted for her. His mother was a huge Star Wars fan. In fact, she’d watched the movies so often over the years Mitch knew large chunks of them off by heart. “But what has that got to do with me?” Surely, she hadn’t made him come all the way home today, only to travel back to Dublin tomorrow?

“I was wondering if you’d let us use your apartment for the night.” Her gaze bored into him as if she was expecting a certain reaction. “Marian is coming with me, and neither of us fancies driving all the way home at midnight. Since your place will be empty...”

Mitch chuckled. “We have two bedrooms, remember? There’s no reason you can’t stay with us, even when we’re there.” He sobered as he tried to remember what state they’d left the place in before leaving, suppressing a sigh of relief when he recalled they’d done a rather thorough cleanup because they didn’t want to return to chaos. “Of course, you can stay there.” But how is that a surprise for me? He kept that thought to himself.

“And now you’re wondering how me winning concert tickets constitutes a surprise for you.”

Mitch blinked at his mother, shocked to discover that four months after he’d moved out, she could still read his mind with ease.

“I’m disappointed.” The sparkle in his mother’s eyes belied her words. “I thought you would have recognized your opportunity by now.”

The beginnings of an idea formed in Mitch’s mind. Surely, she doesn’t mean...?

“How did I manage to raise such an eejit?” The sigh she expelled was obviously exaggerated. “Why don’t you get on your phone and see if Cian wants to spend tomorrow evening and night here?”

“Really?”

His mother gave him a blank stare. “Really.” She reached for the remote. “Now, either settle or go and do your own thing. I’m watching The Empire Strikes Back tonight.

Mitch reached for his mother, hugging her again and placing a kiss on her cheek. “Thanks. That’s the best surprise ever.” He got up. “Enjoy your movie. I’m going up to my room.”

He was texting Cian before he was halfway up the stairs.

The Bells of Times Square by Amy Lane

Dawn of a New Age
“Mom, is he ready?”

If Nate Meyer could have smiled, he would have, but his face didn’t do that anymore.

“Blaine, honey, it’s freezing outside. Really? Are we really doing this?”

Nate closed his rheumy eyes. His wrinkled, liver-spotted hand shimmied as he plucked at the polyester blanket across his lap. Please, Stephanie. Please. The bells. I might hear the bells.

“Mom, he lives for this, you know that.”

Good boy. Blaine, such a good boy. Dark black hair, big brown eyes—couldn’t look more like me as a young man if we’d tried.

But then, Stephanie had married a nice boy, a dentist, with black hair and brown eyes as well, and she’d laughed about that. A good Jewish girl marrying a Jewish dentist—it was like she’d read a manual, yes? Her children would look almost frum. Nate and Carmen had laughed quietly about that as well, because Stephanie herself looked German. Her brother Alan had blond hair and brown eyes, although Nate suspected that after he hit twenty-five, the blond streaks had come from a bottle. Well, yes, a man could do that now, in these days. A man could dye his hair and not be accused of being a . . . What had Walter called them?

Poof. Yes, that was the word.

A man could streak his hair and dress himself fancy, and not be afraid of being a poof.

In his head, Nate laughed, and he could see himself as Walter had seen him: just like Blaine with his dark curly hair, dark-brown eyes, dark lashes, full lips, a slight space between his teeth, and a nose with a decided bow outwards. He’d always looked like a Jew, had never been ashamed of it, not even when he’d moved from his predominantly Jewish neighborhood in the Lower East Side to the barracks with the other USAAF privates, some of them from places in the country that had never seen a Jew before. That posting hadn’t lasted long, though.

Somewhere, somebody had seen his recruitment papers. The degree in art history meant nothing, but his father was a clockmaker, and Nate worked in his shop. His specialty? Cameras, the new and the old. And Nathan Meyer suddenly became a valuable commodity, didn’t he? Six-pointed star and all, Nate could work cameras, and in 1941, when Brits had just started figuring out how to outfit their Spitfires so the pilots didn’t die and the cameras didn’t freeze, that man who could take a picture was like gold, wasn’t he?

Nate hadn’t hidden his gloating, either, when he’d been recruited by the OSS while in the USAAF. He’d been inducted into the 25th Tactical and Reconnaissance Wing—more specifically, the 654th bombardment. Him, Nate Meyer. Even he had something special, something the OSS needed.

It had started with the clocks. Everyone had something to contribute, because that was the war, right? Even Nate’s mother had planted a victory garden in the flower bed she kept in the little concrete apron behind the family brownstone. Before the crash, when Nate was a little boy, she’d worn gloves when dusting to keep her hands soft. And now, with the crash and the war? She was gardening!

And Nate, who had needed to beg his father to buy an old Brownie and then had taken it apart, put it together, learned all the words—f-stop, shutter speed, lens width, scope—while his father complained bitterly about the newfangled thing and the expense of the invention, that Nate now had a special skill to offer. So he got the promotion and the raise in pay and the better bunk, and all for taking pictures.

His father hadn’t been so proud. Pictures? What good were pictures? Officers needed pictures; the war needed men! But of course, pictures of officers were what Nate had told his parents he took so his letters home didn’t look like a picture puzzle. In reality, his pictures were very different . . .

“Grandpa? Are you ready yet?”

Not so ready. Because my body is meat, boy, and no amount of wiping it off or swaddling it in these acrylic afghans your mother makes will render it more than meat.

Blaine didn’t hear him, of course. He was a strong boy, and Nate had enough of himself to wrap his arms around Blaine’s neck so the boy could lift him up from his bed and set him in his wheelchair. Stephanie’s husband—another good boy. Oh, Nate was surrounded by good boys. He was grateful—had a ramp installed. So thank heavens, there would be no bump-kerthump, bump-kerthump, as there had been so often in the first days after the stroke.

“Mom! Where’s his coat? The thick wool one, with the leather gloves in the pocket?”

“Blaine, do you really want to—”

There was a knock at the front, and Stephanie left off her nagging, probably to open the door.

“That’s Tony,” Blaine said. He had always liked talking to Nate and had kept up the habit of it even after Nate couldn’t talk anymore. Nate might find it irritating as hell, but at least Blaine talked about real things. He certainly could do without Stephanie’s yammering about buying something new for the house. He hated the new things—the new tile, the new tables—because her mother had worked so hard for the old things. It felt disloyal, this opening of the house, the sunshiny colors, the skylight over the living room. Hearing Stephanie justify these things to Nate—that only hurt him more.

But Blaine talked about politics, he talked about books.

And because Nate couldn’t talk, couldn’t tell, couldn’t condemn, Blaine also talked about Tony.

Nate lived for Blaine’s monologues about Tony.

At first it had been Tony’s mind—the funny things that Tony had said. Tony was in Blaine’s sociology course at NYU, and he had the best things, the best shows, the best songs.

Then it had been Tony’s laughter, the jokes that he told and how he liked action-adventure movies and didn’t like the Oscar ones because they were too sad. Blaine had been disappointed by this at first, because Blaine himself was always so serious, always so worried about tomorrow. But Nate had listened, and Blaine had started to laugh at himself more, appreciate that you needed to laugh in order to work toward a better tomorrow.

Sometimes Blaine would talk about how he’d been giving Tony lessons about being a Jew, which made Nate laugh inside. When Nate had been Blaine’s age, he hadn’t even spoken Yiddish in an attempt to not align himself with his father or any of the traditions that Nate had been forced to follow, simply because they were traditions. He had changed when he’d come home from the war, embraced those stories, loved those traditions, for Carmen’s sake, for his own, for his family’s.

And Blaine had learned to love them as well. Blaine would study the Passover Seder stories and the Purim stories, and tell them to Tony, and then come home and tell his zayde all about Tony’s reactions. So yes, Nate had heard all about Tony’s love of a good story.

More recently, he’d heard all about Tony’s smile.

But Nate had yet to meet Tony, and now, hearing the suppressed excitement in Blaine’s voice, he was suddenly excited, as well. He was going out, out into the cold to listen for the bells, and he would get to meet Blaine’s Tony. He made an effort then, worked hard, and a sound came out. A happy sound, he hoped.

“You like that?” Blaine smiled while he helped Nate into his coat. “You want to meet Tony? He’ll like you. I told him you were a hero in the war, you know? He thought that was pretty awesome.”

Awesome—everything these days was awesome or excellent or wonderful. What about Blaine’s generation made them talk in superlatives? Nate missed the days when you could understate things, when it would be nice or nifty or interesting instead.

Of course, if Nate had lived in a time when your whole life could be accomplished on a little glowing box on the kitchen table, well then, everything might indeed have been awesome, wouldn’t it?

But Blaine didn’t hear Nate’s thoughts on awesome.

“I wanted him to meet you. I mean, I know you can’t exactly tell him stories, Zayde, but you know . . .”

You wanted to know if I would welcome him, love him as you do already. You wanted to know if Zayde would bless you and make it all good, even if your mother would say to stop this mishegas already, there is no gay in her family.

The moment stretched on achingly as Blaine helped him with his gloves. Nate remembered this boy when he was a child. He would cling to Nate’s hand, bury his face in Nate’s thick wool coat whenever they went outdoors during the holidays. New York, even the Upper East Side, was loud and frightening for a small boy. And now, the boy had found another hand to help him through, and he wanted to know if his Zayde would bind their hands together, like a rabbi at a wedding.

Nate longed to give his blessing.

Blaine buttoned up Nate’s coat. He was sweltering inside it, but, well, it was better than freezing as soon as they made it outside. Blaine was in the middle of tucking another blanket around Nate’s lap when he turned.

“Tony!” The warmth of his voice, the pitch of the enthusiasm, told Nate far too much about how hard it was to be here, wrapping his grandfather up like a swaddled child, to help him honor this old tradition.

“Is he all ready?” Tony asked cheerfully, and Nate’s good eye focused on him.

Oh my. The left side of his face could still move, and he knew he was smiling in pleased surprise.

Tony was a handsome boy, with skin nearly the color of Nate’s black wool coat and teeth that gleamed against that dark skin. Oh, look at them! Boys who could look at each other and smile like that, dark skin and six-pointed star and all.

If Nate could have spoken, he would have said Awesome! or Excellent!

Blaine . . . such a good boy.

Of course, Nate’s father would have said no such thing about Blaine’s choice. But then Selig Meyer had not been a fan of Carmen when she had first followed Nate home from the library in the fall of ’47—although he’d never said so to her face. Too fair, too blue eyed, too delicate, even though her parents went to the same temple as Nate’s family, when his father went at all. But he’d come to love her—probably more than he loved his only son—by the end.

A boy—any boy, no less a boy like this one—would have sent Nate running from the city, his father’s outraged disappointment chasing him like a black wave.

But then, no boy had ever really appealed to Nate after Provence Claire La Lune. No girl, either, but Carmen had been kind, and determined. A marriage—a kosher marriage—had been no less than her ultimate goal, and Nate, so lost after the war, what was he to do?

“Hereyago, Mr. Meyer!” Tony was right behind him, pushing the chair down the ramp, holding the back of it so very low to keep it from pitching. “Blaine’s been looking forward to this for a week, you know. Kept trying to tell me about the bells.”

Nate glanced around, his right eye rolling frantically in the useless, drooping side of his face. He made a noise then, a panicked and inarticulate noise, because—

“Blaine’s back in the house, Mr. Meyer,” Tony said quickly. “No worries. You got no worries at all. He was just checking with his mom. Didn’t want her to panic none, ’cause he said he was going to edge in close to 37th Street tonight, and it’s a bit of a walk, and sort of a riot, but you know that.”

Nate let out a long exhale, and the slap of the wind tried to steal that breath from him as it went. Of course, of course. Blaine would not leave him in the hands of someone who would not care for him. That was not his way.

“You ready?” Blaine called from the top of the stairs. “Ready, Grandpa? We’re going to stop down at the corner for some hot chocolate, and then make our way toward Times Square.”

“Man, that place is gonna be crowded. Do you really wanna go all that way?”

Nate couldn’t be sure, but he thought there might have been a touch of . . . something. There was a pause that bespoke intimacy, of that he was certain.

“We’re not going all the way into the square,” Blaine said quietly. “We’re going near the square. Close enough to hear church bells, if there are any.”

“Church bells,” Tony said blankly. “I know you told me this, but why are we listening for church bells again? Do church bells even ring on New Year’s at Times Square?”

I don’t know, Nate thought. I never heard them.

“And besides, aren’t you Jewish?”

Blaine laughed shyly. “You really have to ask?”

Tony’s return laugh was fond. “No, I guess not. So why church bells? Why not temple bells or something?”

Blaine sighed. “I’m not really sure. It’s just . . . It’s weird, really. Grandpa, for as long as I can remember, he’s gone on a walk on New Year’s Eve—Mom said he did it when she was little too. Grandma never went. He always said he was listening for bells.”

Once. My Carmen went once. Then she gave the walk to me, my once a year, to listen for church bells.

“That’s sort of cool,” Tony said, and Nate could feel his regard. For a moment, Nate was the handsome, strapping man who had gone off to war, and he was confused. Wasn’t he wounded, slight, limping on the damaged body that kept him from returning to active duty, the lone stranger in any crowd? Older, seasoned, a child on his hip and one by the hand? Middle-aged, successful, a hard-working photographer with his own exclusive Manhattan boutique?

Old, bereft, a widower, remembering how to make his own toast and the reasons a man should get out of bed in the morning?

Helpless, afloat in his own head, his body a lingering wreck of lung sounds and heartbeats, his only power in his thrice-weekly visits to the pool with an aqua teacher?

Young and in love, holding his male lover to his chest after the fury of the mishkav zakhar, the one act between men that was considered unforgivable, that reshaped the hearts of them both.

Oh God, the merciful and wise, who was Nathan Selig Meyer, and where was he in time?

The distant sound of shouts called him to the present, the faraway merriment reminding him that those shouts of joy were just out of his reach.

Walter, are you there? Are they ringing the bells? I can’t hear the bells!

“Here we go, Grandpa,” Blaine said, pulling the wheelchair back next to a bench. They were in a lovely neighborhood, not too far from the statue of the tailor and the needle. He used to see stage actors here, sometimes. Nate didn’t know if they owned or rented, but he loved the excitement of walking down the street and, Hey! There was someone you’d seen perpetrate magic on the stage or the screen.

He enjoyed this place, this bench under the tree. Blaine had chosen well.

He could hear Blaine and Tony sitting down on the bench beside him, talking animatedly, in a way that bespoke great familiarity.

“So, we’re out here to hear bells that don’t get rung?” Tony sounded skeptical, but playful too.

“Yeah,” Blaine replied shyly. “I mean, I looked it up once. The most I could get was a reference, mind you, that a nearby church rang bells on New Year’s Eve during the war.”

“Did you keep it?”

“Are you kidding? You’ve seen me study!”

Tony made an exasperated sound. “Augh, kid, you are killing me. You know I live for this stuff.”

“I’m a year younger than you, smart-ass, but look here. I brought you something.”

Nate saw Blaine pull something out of his coat, and inside, he smiled.

“Oh wow! A scrapbook!”

“Yeah, apparently my great-grandmother kept a scrapbook of Zayde—”

“Thereyago, talking Jewish to me again!”

Blaine laughed, but it wasn’t embarrassed. “Yiddish, Tony. We call it Yiddish, and I only know a few words. It’s like ‘Grandpa,’ but, you know, affectionate, like ‘Papa’ or ‘Grampy’—Zayde.”

A speculative silence then. “Zayde . . . That’s nice. What about, you know . . .” And now Tony was the shy one. “What I want to call you, but nothing sounds right.”

“Mmm.” Blaine’s voice fell, then rose intimately. “Tateleh, I think.”

Tony laughed a little. “That don’t hardly sound real. But, you know, better than ‘baby.’”

“Oy gevalt!” Blaine exaggerated, and they both laughed again, the sound low and personal. “Anything’s better than ‘baby’!”

More laughter, and instead of feeling excluded, Nate felt the opposite. Like he was in on the joke, in on the secret. He knew something about these two young men that nobody else did.

“Seriously,” Tony said, the laughter in his voice faded and sad. “You got all these traditions—”

“Not so many, now,” Blaine said quickly. “My grandparents, they were Reformed Jews—sort of like, modern but, you know, you gotta say it different. I’m not sure if Zayde believed, exactly, but he thought it was important. Traditions were important to him—us belonging somewhere. He said that a lot to my mom, that we needed a chance to belong. He wanted that. But”—and Nate could imagine Blaine’s shrug—“my parents, they barely made it to temple.”

“You got a bar mitzvah, though,” Tony chided.

Blaine grunted. Direct hit. “It was a party, you know? I said some verses, recited some Torah, got the party. Mom didn’t want her neighbors to think we couldn’t afford it; it was a status thing.”

“But you liked the words. You told me that. The words mean something to you.”

“Yeah, but only the good ones. Why is this important, anyway?”

It was Tony’s turn to grunt, and Nate couldn’t see, couldn’t turn his head, but he heard what sounded like a kiss. On the cheek, on the hand, on the lips, Nate couldn’t be sure, but men, they didn’t sit and kiss parts of each other when they were talking about sports or the weather.

“Because it is,” Tony said lowly. “I want to look at your family scrapbook and say, ‘Hey! That’s my boyfriend’s history!’ Is that so bad?”

“No.” There were more kissing sounds, and Nate burned inside to talk to them, to tell them, to explain. The Orthodox rabbis said one thing and the Reformed rabbis said another. It was supposed to be okay if you were that way, as long as you didn’t act on it, but Nate had been young, he’d felt the pull, the strength like steel springs, binding a human heart to another. What was talk of an unseen God when the world had fallen to chaos? All was hell and violence—how bad could the mishkav zakhar be?

“Does your mom know?” Blaine asked when the kissing sounds stopped. “Did you tell her?”

“About you? No.”

Blaine grunted shortly, but it sounded hurt, not angry.

“You need to be ready to come out to your family first, you know that right?” Tony said sternly, and it must have been an argument they’d had before, because Blaine’s sound changed.

He sighed instead. In Nate’s line of vision, a parade of cars trolled slowly down the street, headlamps slicing through the darkness like the wind was currently slicing through Nate’s coat. Light, steel, it all found a way in.

“But my mom knows about me,” Tony said, sighing. “I told you that. When I was a little kid, I said I liked boys. She cried, she tried to talk me out of it, she threatened to have my uncle beat the gay out of me. But Uncle Jason wouldn’t do it, and in the end, she just accepted it. I just had to be . . . you know . . .”

“Stubborn,” Blaine said. “You.”

Nate wanted to see them. More cars wandered the night, but in his mind, he saw that beautiful young man with the skin like night touching Blaine’s hair, his forehead, his cheek. Tenderness, Nate imagined. There would be tenderness.

Abruptly, his skin—which had deadened, had become blind to the realm of touch—ached for tenderness like amputees were said to ache for missing limbs. Once, Nate had known such tenderness, and he would never feel it again, not in this body.

“Would they cut you off?” Tony asked. “If you came out? If we moved in, like we’ve been talking about?”

“Eh . . .” Blaine said uncertainly. “I don’t know.” Nate heard rustling, and from his finite line of vision, he saw Blaine’s knees shift so the boy was facing Nate. “I don’t think Grandpa would, even with all the tradition, because . . . I don’t know. Because he was just too good a guy. But my mom, well . . .” He grunted. “I heard my grandpa call her kalta neshomeh once, when she was redecorating the house after Grandma died. He was hurt, you know? I mean, she said he was just being cheap because, well, I guess it was a thing. The Depression had everybody saving money and stuff, but it was more than that— All of Grandma’s stuff was getting put in storage and sold, and Grandpa was shoved into a room and . . . and it wasn’t right.”

“So what does it mean?”

“I had to ask our rabbi. I think he yelled at Grandpa for it too. It means ‘cold soul.’”

Tony’s low whistle made Nate smile inside. Oh yes, yes I did call her that. She deserved it, selling her mother’s things like that. No, we did not go to temple as often as we could have, but we had a happy home. Those things should not have been sold as if they had no meaning. Carmen’s old jewelry boxes, her costume jewelry, the desk where she’d done the store and family accounts for more than forty years. Couldn’t Stephanie have waited until Nate died? It wasn’t like he had more time than anyone else! Of course, Nate chuckled inwardly, that had been six years ago, and he was still hanging around. Perhaps he did have more time!

“Wow,” Tony said in the resulting quiet. Then, low voiced, urgent: “I have my own apartment. You have a job working at the hospital. I mean, we’ve talked about it before, but even if they cut you off, you could move in anyway. You know I want you with me, right?”

“I want to be there too,” Blaine said plaintively. “But my mother—”

“I mean, you could still be a doctor, even if your mother doesn’t want to pay for school. You’d have to take out loans and stuff, but, it’s like, people are always so afraid of not having any money, but whether you have it or not, you’re living your life, and that’s the fun part, right? If you’ve got food, a roof over your head—”

He was so urgent, so upset. Nate wanted to reassure him. He loves you, Tony. Don’t worry. Our boy will do the right thing.

“Sha shtil, tateleh,” Blaine said, and his knees shifted in Nate’s vision again. Nate could picture them, Blaine holding Tony so that his face buried into Blaine’s deceptively wide shoulder, their faces close together, a dropped kiss on Tony’s forehead. “I hear you.”

“Yeah, well, you don’t have anything to say to me!” There was a rustle, and Tony must have stood up because so did Blaine. Nate gave up chasing cars in the darkness. He closed his eyes and saw the boys—his boys—like a movie.

Oh, Walter. It looks like a good one. A romance—I wonder how it ends.

“I want to say yes,” Blaine murmured. “But I need to ask Zayde.”

“You need to ask—”

Yes, bubeleh, I am confused, as well.

“Don’t say it,” Blaine told him softly. “I just . . . I want so badly to talk to someone in my family, do you understand? He’s the one person who told me about tradition and about banding together with people who care about you, and he’s the one person who can’t say he doesn’t love me anymore.”

“I hear you.” An ironic pause. “Bells, huh?”

“Yes. I am not so sure we will hear any tonight, but if we do, maybe we should take it as a sign, you think?”

“I think I’m freezing my ass off, that’s what I think. You said coffee?”

“Thank you. See it? Three blocks up.”

“Yeah, I know. Is your gramps gonna want some?”

“Get him hot chocolate—me too, for that matter. I’m not such a fan of coffee.”

Tony’s briskness faded, and Nate saw a hand, covered in a bright-red wool mitten, reach out and pluck off Blaine’s hat so the other hand could ruffle his curly hair. Tony stepped into Nate’s vision and placed the hat carefully on Blaine’s head before kissing him on the forehead.

“I know you’re not,” he said fondly. “I’m just as happy you prefer ‘hot chocolate.’”

Blaine choked on a guffaw. “That was awful. Oh my God, I should break it off with you just for that!”

“You wouldn’t really—” beat “—would you?”

“No. Oh God, no. I just need a minute, Tony. Just, let me swallow it all. Coming out, moving out, is . . . irrevocable. I want to be sure.”

“The fact that you take it so seriously? That’s why I love you. That’s why it’s worth the wait. Just know that all I want for both of us is— Is there a Yiddish word for ‘everything’?”

“I don’t know,” Blaine said softly, and they were standing so close!

“That’s what I want for you,” Tony said, and this time the kiss was personal, intimate, on the lips.

Nate couldn’t look away.

Alz. Alz is the word. That’s what you want for each other. Alz. Isn’t that what we wanted, Walter? Isn’t that what you wanted for us? Wasn’t that what we were looking for, listening for, with the bells?

But Walter didn’t answer, and Nate watched in frustration as Blaine’s Tony disappeared into the night, looking for the coffee shop. The lights around them, from the streets, from the cars, were swallowed up, and the darkness washed over his vision like a closed shutter, and when the shutter opened again, he was back, back in 1943, before Walter, before Carmen, when his world was narrowed to the tiny bunk with Hector and Joey and the missions he flew and the danger and the horror of a war that had swallowed the world . . .

Recon
“That’s a dame!” Joey Shanahan muttered after a low whistle. “Hey, Meyer. Did you get that shot?”

Nate glanced up from the viewfinder of his 35mm Leica Rangefinder and whistled, pretending he’d noticed the pretty WAAF officer walking across the field of Harrington.

He hadn’t. He’d been framing the big, powerful B-4 bombers instead.

“Yeah, you should get a picture!” Joey nodded, decidedly enthusiastic. Joey had apparently been striking out with women on a regular basis. He wasn’t a bad-looking kid, really, Nate thought objectively. He stood average height, with dark-blond hair and blue eyes—the picture of the Irish people in the same way Nate was the picture of Jewish descent—and his mouth was wide and smiled easily. He even had sort of a crooked-grinned charm, but oy! Could that boy talk!

“You know, you should take a lot more pictures of dames in your spare time, you know that? I mean, you get the air base, the crowds, the seashore—why don’t you got any dames?”

“For one thing, I don’t call them that,” Nate said, pulling a corner of his mouth up in faint derision. He liked Joey, liked him fine. If he was taking pictures of people right now, he’d take a picture of Joey, eyes as guileless as the sea. But Joey seemed to be incredibly single-minded about the thing—the one thing—Nate had never had a particular interest in. Oh yes, Nate did admire a pretty girl sometimes; pretty girls made pretty pictures. But he wasn’t interested in spending his leave in some strange woman’s bed. It wasn’t kosher—there was supposedly no joy in that sort of sex, and while Nate’s parents hadn’t been Orthodox, they had raised him in the traditions out of a sense of obligation if nothing else.

And, well . . . girls just didn’t appeal. Not even a little, not to touch, not to linger over. But the new mission—that’s what appealed to him.

The missions were risky, which held an allure all its own. Risk meant you were doing your part, right? And flying in low in the middle of the night, dropping the M46 photoflash bombs to take pictures—it didn’t get much riskier than that. So much for his father saying Nate wasn’t a real man with the camera, that he couldn’t do his part with a degree in art history and no military skills whatsoever. Nate had been in the cockpit for six Joker missions thus far, and every damned one of them scared the hell out of him.

Of course, Joey and Hector were flying Red Stockings, and those weren’t a joke, either. They had to fly at high altitude, find a specific spot, and circle until Hector picked up the signal from the OSS officer who’d been dropped behind enemy lines earlier. Tough gig for Joey, circling around and around like that while Hector fiddled with the recording equipment to find the signal. Tougher still for the guy on the ground transmitting information and requesting information back—and hoping not to get killed!

Nate’s pilot, Captain Albert Thompson, RAF, was a stolid sort—late thirties, lived for his weekly letter from his wife and two children. Nate depended on him to get them home safely, and Albert depended on Nate to competently assure him that their foray into darkness hadn’t been in vain. Together, they were nothing like the fiery Hector and Joey, and Nate appreciated that. Three nights before, they’d been over Belgium when they’d been spotted by the Jerries. Albert had flown, closed mouthed, until they’d reached the air territory over St. Croix, and the stationed Allied planes had moved in and intercepted while Nate had taken pictures with a quiet resolve. Of course, it was dark, and even with his training and the special lens, Nate had only a general notion as to what he was looking for. But that didn’t matter, now did it? What mattered was that his pictures would be developed and analyzed, and the installations he was photographing would either be announced useful for the war effort or too crowded with civilians to destroy. Either way, it was necessary information to have, and Nate was proud.

“What’s wrong with calling a girl a dame? Hector, did you hear that? He thinks I’m not a gentleman enough to get a girl!” Joey sat at a folding card table in the sun outside their barracks, doing nav calculations for their next run. Most guys did their calculations once, twice, and then they were through, but Joey didn’t make it through high school before he started working at his father’s bar. He was smart, whip smart, and he wasn’t going to let anybody say that some uneducated Mick blew a mission because he couldn’t do the goddamned math.

“You’re not,” Hector said, grinning. He leaned up against the door with his face to the thin English sun. Having spent his whole life in Southern California, he was only truly happy when his bronze skin was glutted with sunshine, like an exotic houseplant or a napping cat. So far, England had proved a vast disappointment to him, but Hector wasn’t the complaining sort. Nobody at this base even knew what Chanukah was, which was why Nate had given Hector a postcard of St. Croix for Christmas so he’d always have a little sunshine. Hector hadn’t said much at the time, but he slept on one of the bottom bunks, and the postcard was right above him every time he woke.

“I am too a gentleman,” Joey muttered, mapping out his nav coordinates for the third time. “If I wasn’t a gentleman, I wouldn’t do such a good job of escorting you home!”

Hector laughed loudly, with his mouth open, as though he expected everyone to share the joy. Nate loved that about him: he was unapologetic about who he was. He spoke Spanish with a big, booming voice and proudly displayed a picture of himself, dancing with his girl, in a zoot suit that he claimed to be sky blue and gold, and spoke of fondly. “Me and the other pachucos, we’d dance the sailor boys to shame, you know?” Even after the riots, Hector showed that photo, because he wasn’t going to run scared just because the sailor boys had no sense of humor.

“Yeah, you take real good care of me, sweetheart. But maybe try those skills on someone who hasn’t seen you scratch your balls and your ass and brag about it while in the shower.”

Nate laughed, and after a year in the service, he didn’t even blush. He’d gone to a private school, and while boys could get crude in the locker rooms anywhere, it was when they said things like that out under the sun, where even women could hear you, that had made Nate uncomfortable at first. But only at first.

But then, he’d been watching Joey Shanahan scratch his balls and his ass simultaneously for nearly three months—ever since he’d been assigned here, specialized camera equipment and all. There weren’t so many OSS officers here at Menwith Hill that Nate could afford to alienate his roommate because he didn’t like the way the guy talked about scratching his balls.

Besides, watching Joey check and recheck the calculations reminded Nate of what Hector had said repeatedly: Joey wasn’t letting anyone die on his watch, particularly not the guy who had his back whenever they went looking for girls.

“You like it,” Joey retorted. “If you didn’t see me scratch my ass in the morning, you’d forget you needed that extra blanket to keep your pansy ass warm.”

Hector squinted at the gray sky and shuddered. “Nobody’s warm today, that’s for certain.”

No, not on this chilly day in March.

“It would be this cold in New York,” Nate said, thinking. He found he didn’t miss his family’s brownstone or his father’s small watch shop at all. He hadn’t waited for Pearl Harbor, no. Nate had watched, along with the rest of his family, as the Nazis had become more than just a frightening rumor, threatening their kin overseas, and metamorphosed into a terrifying, mind-twisting reality. Friends’ cousins had disappeared, letters had ceased, pleas to the State Department for news had gone unheeded. Nate’s Uncle Lev, whom he had never met, became a ghost on the tongues of his father and mother, overnight, one more mortal caution to haunt the brownstone, next to Nate’s dead brother and the children his mother’s body had not been able to sustain.

“Yeah?” Hector asked. He pulled a cigarette from the ever-present pack in his pocket and offered one to Joey. Joey demurred, because he was still working and he didn’t smoke when he was working, and Nate simply didn’t smoke. At first the guys had assumed it was because he was a Jew; that he was too fastidious to like the taste was beyond them.

“Yes,” Nate said, staring at the grayness ruminatively. “In fact, it would be even more bitter.” He cracked a smile. “Of course, in New York, they don’t have to put on flight gear and go miles into the air.”

A sudden silence descended then. There was a big push tonight in the 654th. More than two hundred of the men stationed at Menwith Hill were with tactical surveillance, and Nate figured that between him and Hector, they’d counted over twenty planes that were going up this night. Not a weather advance, which meant more dogfights and more casualties, but a surveillance push. Several planes going off to all quarters of Europe, some Joker, some Red Stocking, all of them with urgent orders that they didn’t share with anyone else. American, RAF—everybody was going up in the sky to see what was what.

Nate, who only played chess a little, thought about the way the old men in the park would sit back, surveying the entire board over their noses before letting go of a long, considering breath.

This moment right here was the Allied equivalent of sitting back, sliding their hands under their suspenders, and saying, Hmm, what is it we have to work with here, before beginning the game in earnest.

Sometimes, an awful lot of pawns would be left, rolling alongside the board, before those moments behind the chessboard ended. Nate worried about those pawns like he worried about the entire board. In fact, he worried more.

“Hey,” Hector said lowly, in the kind of voice that made Nate sidle a little closer, even aware that he and Joey were the only ones within earshot anyway.

“Yeah?”

“Where’re you going tonight?” Hector asked. “I mean, not specific-like, just, you know. Country at least, okay?”

“Germany,” Nate said without compunction for spilling secrets. There were no secrets between the three of them. “But I don’t know specifically where. You?”

“France. Some place called Provence Claire La Lune. Our operators down there say we might talk to some resistance fighters—our guys are supposed to encourage that, you know what I mean?”

“Yeah? Well, that’s a good thing.”

“I know it. What about you?”

Nate grunted. “The usual—take a picture at these coordinates—again? Got no clue. A month later, those coordinates are pulverized to powder. Or not.”

Hector grunted back. “It’s not personal enough,” he growled. “The Jerries, they don’t like the color of our skin, who our parents are—feels like a knee to the balls. We go five miles up and listen to voices—”

“Or two miles up and take pictures of clouds,” Nate finished for him. “Yes. Impersonal means for a very personal war. I understand. But what’s to do? Our skills weren’t marching and shooting, they were pictures and listening. It’s what we can—”

“You ready?” Albert stalked around the corner in midconversation. Well, he often did that—he didn’t like small talk for one thing. For another, he was in charge of settling new recruits. He met with his staff sergeants in the morning—the mother hen of the Menwith Hill barracks. He was busy, and he had no time to worry about OSS recruits with one lousy skill.

“We’re not going until . . .” Nate left the end meaningfully. He hadn’t been given a time; that was Albert’s purview.

“Twenty-one hundred,” Albert told him shortly. “Be outfitted and ready to belt in, yeah?” As though Nate had ever not been ready to belt in. “Meet me on the field, no fucking off to spank your monkey or bugger the rabbi or whatever the hell else you blokes do.”

“Yes, sir!” Nate saluted, because Albert was a superior officer and for no other reason. “Sir?” he asked, when it looked like Albert was going to stomp off.

“Yes, Lieutenant?”

“Where we going tonight?”

Albert grimaced. Yes, all destinations were classified, but it did help a photographer to know what he was dealing with. Albert called Nate over with a jerk of the head, and Nate left off his insouciant pose against the barracks.

“Stuttgart, like that means anything to you,” he said, voice low enough for Joey and Hector to be left out. “Looks like there’ll be good cloud cover, but there’s nothing friendly for pretty much everywhere. Be prepared to keep a sharp lookout and not just through the viewfinder. Can you do that or is it some sort of holy day?”

“I’m up for the job, sir!” Nate saluted again, and Albert glared, then stalked off. A good pilot, but not a kind man, at least not to Nate. And it was clear his heart was so very with the family he saw once a month on leave. Well, good for him. He could see family on leave. Nate couldn’t—and apparently Hector and Joey could only get hints of getting laid, and not all of that was Joey’s fault.

“Really, Meyer,” Joey asked, looking up from his calculations and leaning on his elbows, “what did you do to that guy?”

“Besides make him fly reconnaissance?” Nate asked with a shrug. “I have no idea. You think it’s because I’m a Jew?” That was rhetorical, of course.

“They don’t got Jews in England? Get out!” Hector laughed, turning his head to spit. “I thought that was Hitler’s problem. They got Jews everywhere!”

Nate raised an eyebrow. “We’re not cockroaches, but yes. Jews populate Europe much like Catholics—wherever there is a warm place to breed.”

Hector and Joey didn’t take offense; they laughed instead. No, you could not spend months smelling your roommates’ farts and not learn to be tolerant of one another’s differences. Of course, Hector had started to thaw with the postcard of St. Croix. With Joey, it had taken a tiny gold pin of the cross, which Joey wore on his hat, underneath the brim. Not Nate’s faith, no, but then, giving it some honor had made Joey feel like it wasn’t under attack by Nate’s very “otherness.” He had friends from college who would have been angry at this—why should Nate pacify the ignorant?

But Hector had his zoot suits, and Joey had his crosses, and Nate had the six-pointed star he wore under his shirt with his dog tags on every mission. His father may have thought Nate was weak for becoming friends with the gentiles, but Nate had to believe that faith and goodness were things to respect. Wasn’t that what his own faith taught?

He had only needed to spend a week playing cards, listening to Joey’s record player, and exchanging family stories with Hector, to know that if these men didn’t come back from their mission, or the next, or the next, he should be very sorry.

“Have we all put our letters under our pillows?” Nate asked carefully in the silence following Albert’s departure.

“Same letter as last time.” Joey grunted. “I’m starting to think it’s a good luck charm.”

“Yeah, well, as much as the captain hates me, I’m thinking I can take all the luck I can get.”

Hector grunted in return. “I’d let Joey here fly you, but he’s the only one who doesn’t scare the hell out of me at thirty thousand.” Hector shuddered. “Dios. What a man like me is doing in that much cold, I don’t even want to think about.”

Nate smiled at him, liking him very much. “Penance,” he said, eyes twinkling. “For all the bad deeds you’ve left to do.”

Hector laughed again, and Nate felt an unfortunate stir in the pit of his stomach. No. No. Not this. Not this, that had kept him aloof from his fellows through school. Not this, fear of seeing the sun on a cheekbone, filtered through someone’s eyelashes, or the shadow of a jawline, and feeling . . . this thing. The thing that poets spoke about, but not like this. Not for the girls at the dances with their shy smiles and sturdy prettiness but for the boys, milling about on the other side of the room in navy shirts and red ties, looking, by turns, bored and nervous and happy.

“I haven’t done anything truly bad yet,” Hector said, chuckling low and evil. Then he kicked Joey’s chair. “I’ve got an albatross around my neck keeping me from all the wickedness!”

Joey cast him an irritated glance. “Yeah, and it’s called a dame in the States. Now gimme two more seconds, and we can go do some PT before we go up!”

“I’ll go change,” Nate said, because his camera equipment was flawless, as it always was, and because whoever thought of doing PT before a mission had been inspired. Getting the blood flowing and the muscles pleasantly exercised took away some of the feeling of confinement in the small space of the cockpit, and some of the restlessness, as well. Not too much—not enough to tire one out—just enough to make the body easier at rest.

And it was a perfect excuse to get away from Hector and his bronzed skin and square face and the way his brown eyes seemed to invite everyone in on the joke.

Nate was buttoning up his loose khakis and lacing his softest boots when he decided to check under the pillow for his letter. Ah, yes, there it was. A good-bye to his mother, and a passing nod to his father.

His throat tightened.

Was that all he wanted to offer? His father was a reserved man, certainly—open affection had never been his way. But was Nate’s enmity an adult feeling or the leftovers of childhood resentment? Nate frowned at the envelope, made of some of the best paper stock Joey had been able to smuggle out of the officers’ supply cabinet, and wondered if he shouldn’t write another letter. Something more genial, more neutral. Something, perhaps, asking his father to believe he was worthwhile, that he was capable of worthwhile things. Something apologizing for not being Zev.

Nate’s conscience was perfectly clear about the things he’d done in the war thus far. The tally of things that bothered him or made him question his faith at this moment equaled the number of times his father had ever kissed his cheek in affection: zero.

He heard a ruckus behind him as Hector and Joey entered, pushing on each other and laughing. No time to rewrite the letter now. He shoved it back under the pillow and ran after his roommates for a round of pop-up in the field by the airstrip. None of the other pilots or officers joined them—they never had. Many of the residents were RAF, for one, and the rivalry was not always easy to transcend. For many, the mix was too different. The spic, the Mick, and the Jew—it was the beginning of a joke with no good punch line. Nate, who had never had a peer group through school, had finally managed to find one, and they were as isolated unto themselves as three as Nate ever had been as one.

But at least they were three.

Maybe next leave, Nate would go with them and let Hector try to find him a woman. Maybe those moments of thinking Hector Garcia was as beautiful as sunlight would fade.

*****

Nate had a notion that being inside a real mosquito was probably much quieter than being inside of a de Havilland DH.98 Mosquito—wooden sides or not. The airplanes were versatile—light bombers, tactical bombers, day or night missions, and, of course, converted photo-surveillance planes. While the top sported the squadron insignia, as well as Captain Thompson’s personal insignia—a mosquito wearing a flowered dress with a purse—near the cockpit, the bottom of Miss Mossy (as the captain called her) had been painted dark gray to blend in with the nighttime cloud cover. Still, Nate had always been surprised that every plane that went flying over German airspace hadn’t been shot down.

“Stuttgart,” Nate said resignedly into the intercom as the plane took off. “Five shots at the coordinates. We have ten flares.”

“I know the mission,” Captain Thompson stated flatly. “I know the mission, I know the risks. Do you need me to hold your hand?”

“Only if it would help you feel better,” Nate replied just as flatly.

Thompson grunted, the sound translating over the intercom as a crackle of static. “Not bloody likely. Do you have anything else obvious you’d like to tell me? Do I take a right or a left to get to Germany? How’s that? Can you tell me how to fly this boat to Germany, you uppity shit?”

“I assume you point it east and go,” Nate snapped. “Wake me up when we get there.”

But Nate had no intention of sleeping.

The view through the cockpit window wasn’t ideal. Nate had thought more than once that he wished he could fly facedown on a clear platform so that he could see everything—the countryside, the farms, the smokestacks, everything. Because even with the hum of the Mosquito in his ears, when he gazed down on the sleeping mass of Europe, he knew he wasn’t seeing the complete vista, and the artist that he was hungered for the whole picture.

Bombs would be dropped on some of the towns down there; devastation would follow. What would that look like? Who would be killed? He was skilled with the specialized camera and the twenty-four-inch lens that allowed him to take shots from the plane, although the pictures he usually shot needed a room full of intelligence officers with magnifying glasses to pinpoint exactly what the photo targets were. What he was not skilled at was understanding the distance between the plane, at fifteen thousand feet, and the people on the ground. Empty space? The handbreadth of God? What made it so someone such as he could determine whether people he would never see or touch would live or die?

The silence in the plane became oppressive, and Nate scanned through his viewfinder to keep himself from sleeping in earnest. The shiny, roiling mass of the ocean sat underneath them, but the horizon of France and Germany was not that far away. Oh, hey—a town, smaller than Stuttgart, right across the black silver of the channel.

“Hello, what’s that?” Nate murmured to himself. “Do you see that?”

“I don’t see it!” Captain Thompson snapped back, but Nate was too preoccupied with what looked to be large smokestacks coming from the ground, just north of the tiny city below, to respond to his tone. That couldn’t be right, could it? There would have to be an installation underground. He couldn’t see in the dark—or without his camera.

“Captain, give us a candle drop—”

“Those are saved for the—”

“I know, but we’ve got ten. We’ll only need two. I just want one.”

“I don’t like it—we’re hours away from Stuttgart.”

“Do you see anyone, Captain? There’s no one out tonight, and that . . . that thing down there. It looks like a plant. It wasn’t there the last time we flew up this way, and it just feels wrong—it’s something important, can’t you feel it?”

“Could give a shit what you feel, you fuckin’—”

“Captain, do you really want to finish that sentence?” Nate asked, his skin chilling underneath his voluminous flight suit.

“Yes, damn it!” Thompson snapped, but he didn’t. “Candle dropping. Where do you want to go?”

“That town below us—it’s small. You see the outskirts of it to the east a little. Yes. There. Go.”

“Count off,” Thompson snarled, and Nate held his breath. There. They were close. Close. Close.

“Launch candle in ten-nine-eight-seven-six-five-four-three-two— Candle launch!”

Thompson hit something on the dash, and the flare cascaded out of the plane, falling, falling, falling before exploding harsh and white, lighting up the sky around them.

Nate was ready.

He clicked the shutter furiously, all of the settings ready for nighttime pictures. One, two, three, four—the light began to stutter—five, six.

“Shit!” Thompson cried, and Nate finished his last shot and looked around. Oh hell. Sure enough, framed against the clouds by the stuttering flare was a pair of Messerschmitts.

“Can you—”

“Shut up and let me call for backup,” Thompson barked, and Nate heard him radio for a couple of bulldogs to come take care of the Messers on their tail.

And then Captain Thompson did what was best for everyone involved and flew that little plane as fast as it could go.

The Messerschmitts weren’t going anywhere. They stayed on their tail, firing occasionally but lacking the necessary range. Miss Mossy had a lead on them from the very beginning, and if Captain Albert knew one thing, it was how to fly quick like zoom.

“Where’s the bloody bulldogs?” Captain Thompson snarled. “What’s the good of having planes out with guns if they can’t shoot that bloody lot out of the fucking sky?”

Nate wisely didn’t answer. He changed the film in his camera in tense silence, putting the canister in the cargo pocket of his flight suit and readying the camera for Stuttgart on faith.

They didn’t make it.

The Messerschmitt Bf 110 was a superlative night fighter, and Miss Mossy, who was fitted out with cameras all around, had no guns. Her cooling system had been modified to keep the cameras and the pilots from freezing during the high-altitude missions, and when pushed too hard, her engines tended to get hot. Even while Nate despised Captain Albert, he knew the man was flying a fine line between outrunning the enemy and cooking their engines with speed.

Their one hope was that the call for backup would be answered and some dogfighters would appear over the horizon around them.

Nate kept lookout, and when the first bursts of fire spurted from the newly appeared specks behind them, acute relief almost stopped his voice.

“Friendlies!”

“Brilliant. We might not die up here.”

“I am not overwhelmed with optimism,” Nate muttered, but either Thompson’s voice was lost in the engine noise or he didn’t deign to answer.

Below, the various lumps and smokestacks of Stuttgart appeared. Very few lights—all sides had learned the trick of the blackout to confuse bombing raids—but Nate had flown over and taken pictures before. He knew the shape, the basic landmarks—and although he knew their support was behind them and if they couldn’t outrun the Messerschmitts before the bulldogs got there they were in real trouble, for some reason the city gave him comfort. It wasn’t featureless, wasn’t blank. He recognized the landscape, and they weren’t lost.

And just as he figured it out, tracers of antiaircraft fire passed to his right, shattering his peace.

“They’re closing in!”

“Not them! It’s another group! Hang on and spot the bastards!”

Calmly, Nate placed his camera and lens in the case and buckled it shut, using his stomach muscles and thighs to keep his seat as the plane began a series of vicious evasive maneuvers that might have made his stomach rebel when he’d first started to fly. When the camera was safely stowed, he grabbed hold of the grips on either side and did what Captain Thompson had ordered: held on and spotted.

“Three o’clock, Cap. Two planes closing.”

“Dive roll. Don’t puke.”

“They’re following, following—lost them. Not puking.”

“Don’t be a bloody arse! Fire from six o’clock. G roll.”

Oh hell. The negative-G rolls—Captain Thompson’s specialty—were Nate’s least favorite aerobatic. He held on and didn’t puke—his first time up in the cockpit, he had puked, and had to live in it for hours. Never again.

“Nine o’clock, Cap—friendlies.”

“Fucking firing! Blast it and bugger God’s arse!”

The blasphemy didn’t faze Nate, but the fact that they were stuck between friendly fire and enemy fire without guns themselves was starting to wear on his hard-earned calm.

“Evade, Captain. Friendlies engaging!”

“I am evading, you stupid kike. Shut the fuck up and let me work!”

Oy! Now they get to the bottom of Captain Albert’s hostility? “For heaven’s sake,” Nate muttered, but Thompson let out another round of cursing, and the plane jerked, shuddered, and rolled some more. They had flown past Stuttgart now, beyond the borders, and dropped their altitude in an attempt to evade. The featureless landscape loomed below them, a black trough of rural woods.

“Holy God, there’s more!”

“You had to stop and take a fucking picture!” Thompson snarled. “We had one lousy job to do, and you had to stop and take a fucking picture, and we’ve got these buggers following us from fucking everywhere!”

“Well, that means whatever was there was pretty damned important, don’t you think?” Nate shot back, because that was the truly frightening thing. Stuttgart was a big city, pretty close to the border of France and Germany; there should be important things in Stuttgart. But that smaller city, on the tip of land across from England, the Axis shouldn’t be making anything there, should they?

“We’re not bloody likely to find out, are we?”

They executed a barrel roll evasive maneuver then, the horizon spinning dizzily and leaving Nate gasping for breath in the hopes that he wouldn’t throw up and wouldn’t pass out. Captain Thompson swore again, and the plane suddenly lurched in the middle of a barrel roll.

“We’re hit!” Thompson screamed. “We’re hit! And I’m going to die because a bloody kike Jew had to jerk off his camera!”

*****

Later, it would occur to Nate that for all his shortcomings as a companion, Albert Thompson was an amazing pilot. The plane heaved level, which saved his life, and descended at a terrifying, dizzying speed. Too fast to jettison, even if bailing out of a Mosquito was possible at this altitude, but slow enough to keep the plane from disintegrating on impact. Maybe.

The wood under his feet trembled, and the plane skittered and rattled, shaking Nate like a yolk in its shell. Something exploded behind him, the force of air blowing Nate forward, then back, until he cracked his head on the window and the world detonated into the blackness inside his skull.

Lacey Daize

Lacey lives in New Mexico with her four critters. She’s a Jill-of-all-trades by day, but loves writing in her spare time. She dabbles in a variety of pairings, but jumped feet-first into the deep end of omegaverse the first time she read it. She loves the play on social expectations and the different ways to express romance.

Nico Flynn

Nico Flynn is all about stories that are heartwarming and steamy in equal measure, always with a healthy dose of humor. Bring on the snappy banter, mutual pining, and well-earned happy endings!

Nico lives a wild life out in the country with too many dogs, a family, video games, and a whole lot of books. If new releases suddenly stop, you can assume Nico was swallowed up by an out-of-control tomato plant or eaten by a bear.

After years of writing across age groups and genres in the traditional publishing arena, Nico is thrilled (and terrified) to finally be taking this first step on the indie side. It's a wide and wonderful world out here!

Casey McQuiston

Casey McQuiston is the New York Times bestselling author of Red, White & Royal Blue, as well as a pie enthusiast. She writes books about smart people with bad manners falling in love. Born and raised in southern Louisiana, she now lives in New York City with her poodle mix and personal assistant, Pepper.

Helena Stone
Helena Stone can’t remember a life before words and reading. After growing up in a household where no holiday or festivity was complete without at least one new book, it’s hardly surprising she now owns more books than shelf space while her Kindle is about to explode.

The urge to write came as a surprise. The realisation that people might enjoy her words was a shock to say the least. Now that the writing bug has well and truly taken hold, Helena can no longer imagine not sharing the characters in her head and heart with the rest of the world.

Having left the hustle and bustle of Amsterdam for the peace and quiet of the Irish Country side she divides her time between reading, writing, long and often wet walks with the dog, her part-time job in a library, a grown-up daughter and her ever loving and patient husband.

Amy Lane
Amy Lane has two kids who are mostly grown, two kids who aren't, three cats, and two Chi-who-whats at large. She lives in a crumbling crapmansion with half of the children and a bemused spouse. She also has too damned much yarn, a penchant for action adventure movies, and a need to know that somewhere in all the pain is a story of Wuv, Twu Wuv, which she continues to believe in to this day! She writes fantasy, urban fantasy, and gay romance--and if you accidentally make eye contact, she'll bore you to tears with why those three genres go together. She'll also tell you that sacrifices, large and small, are worth the urge to write.

Lacey Daize

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Nico Flynn

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Fated Kisses for the Omega by Lacey Daize

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Sing in the New by Nico Flynn

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The Rest of Our Lives by Helena Stone

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The Bells of Times Square by Amy Lane

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