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Chapter 1

Pre-departure

Brady

The first time I met Hayes Carter, we were staring at a naked body together.

A textbook illustration of the human endocrine system sat in front of us. Yellow arrows pointed to the names of things I’d never be able to pronounce, let alone memorize. Every week at our peer tutoring session he’d slide the book in front of me, his hairy forearms way more interesting than anything on the page.

“The neuroendocrine…” He tapped his mechanical pencil on the printed word. I nodded like I was following along, but really I was calculating the distance between our knees. Three inches at most. I shifted in my seat. Anything less than three inches and the only part of anatomy that I cared about would take over.

“Brady?”

“What? Yes. I got it. The new-ro-something. What was it again?” I couldn’t remember the word, but even if I could I’d have pretended, because the next part was my favorite.

“The neu-ro-en-do-crine.” He over-enunciated each syllable, his mouth moving in slow motion. The wet inside of his lip on display. The thick dark scruff on his face rearranged.

“And this is where the pituitary gland connects.” His pencil traced the line and then he looked over at me. I quickly moved my eyes from him, down to the page.

“Are you getting all this?”

“Absolutely. So helpful.” I scribbled down something in my notebook to appear convincing, but when I looked at my notes I realized I had completely confused the anterior and posterior pituitary. I started to furiously scribble out what I had written; Hayes gently put his hand on my wrist. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. This stuff is complicated.”

I thought I’d melt into the chair and someone would have to carry me back to my dorm.

The hours I spent with Hayes stuffed into the small study pod in the basement of the science library are the only reason I earned a solid B- in Bio. His concern for my academic well-being made me feel safe, taken care of, and horny. After fifteen minutes of going over notes, the space would start to smell like him – a soapy, masculine perfume with notes of fresh-cut grass even in December. I could spend the entire session examining the small bump on the bridge of his nose that made it perfectly imperfect, the way his dark hair curled over his ears, the distance between his bushy eyebrows, his blue and grey speckled eyes, and his muscular body that won him a track and field scholarship to Clarkson. If there was a final exam on Hayes, I would have graduated Summa Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa, Einstein of the Year. I wanted to know everything about him. But it wasn’t just the fact that he was the hottest guy on campus that drew me to him. He had this calm and caring energy that made me feel like maybe I could pass Biology.

Hayes always stayed focused on the task at hand. He was more impenetrable than the material we were studying and his mysteriousness only made me want to find out more about him. I’d try to interrupt our routine of reviewing the homework assignments with innocent questions like, “Do you hang out at the lounge by The Ledge?” – a place known for being the center of queer social life during the day at Clarkson. Sometimes more direct questions like, “Are you seeing anybody?” He would politely give me one-word answers. Occasionally I got him to open up about how he had wanted to be a doctor ever since he was a kid, but then he’d direct the conversation back to the material.

Nothing I did seemed to really break the ice with him, until one day I brought in a vintage Operation game where you use tweezers to remove parts of a patient’s body without setting off the light-up red alarm. He had never heard of the game, so I showed him how it worked and how I had changed things around to make it a study aid. I’d replaced “butterflies in stomach” with “jejunum,” swapped “broken heart” for “left ventricle.”

He examined it with slow, scientific curiosity, picking up the tiny tweezers and seeing how they worked before moving them toward the game. Once the alarm went off and the patient’s nose started blinking, he laughed so hard other people studying told us to quiet down. He was impressed with the way I had used real anatomical terms on the game. He said, “Brady, this is so clever. You’re really smart.”

I’ve been called cute, funny, adorable, and I heard sassy a lot. Rarely had anyone called me smart. But Hayes did, and it was wonderful. Until it wasn’t.

“Shit.” I jump back just in time to prevent the freezing, mid-April ocean water from soaking the toes of my vintage Converse high-tops. I’m walking down the beach in front of my parents’ house in the Hamptons, hoping to find the courage to call Hayes almost a year after our breakup. I try to force myself to hit his contact, but I can’t seem to make my fingers do it. A chilly spring wind blows my shirt against my chest. I look out over the ocean and watch a plane flying off across the Atlantic.

I need Hayes. I can’t do this without him.

Aisha King, the director of brand communications for the gay luxury resort chain For Us, pitched me enthusiastically last week. “Everyone here thinks you and Hayes could be the couple of the summer. The perfect influencers for us,” she said with calm confidence.

Of course, she doesn’t know that we broke up before we graduated. Her team has only seen the happy smiling faces on the social media account I created in college, before the horrible road trip from hell when our relationship fell apart. If only I could have remembered the password to that account so I could have stopped the bot from doing the auto-updates, but instead I ignored it. The cloud held enough images to keep going into the next decade, but even after I tracked down the password, I couldn’t bring myself to log in. Those photos captured a bright happy certainty that no longer existed in this timeline. Why not let it continue in a different dimension where nothing had gone wrong?

It’s not like I’m a major influencer by any stretch of the imagination. That account was an assignment for Media Ecology. Nothing more. I wanted to document two queer guys on a road trip across red, blue and purple states. We had been dating almost a year. It seemed like a good idea. I had nodded a lot on the video chat with Aisha and tried to say as little as possible. Why on earth would they want me? They didn’t, in fact. They wantedus. When I pressed the question Aisha said, “We want to disrupt the social media universe with fresh-faced micro-influencers to maximize hospitality verticals and create relatable luxury.” Even with an A- in Media Ecology I’d had no idea what she was talking about. “The team here is thinking you start the summer in London at the new hotel in Mayfair. Then to the Mar Bella location on the beach in Barcelona, over to Berlin, then to Capri. It’s a dream job – unless you have something else lined up?”

I’d fought the urge to let out a giant, “Ha!” As of last week, my summer plans included barricading myself in my parents’ pool house while living in denial about starting law school in the fall. I was supposed to spend this year finding myself. It turns out I am in bed with the covers over my head until about noon each day, so I’m easier to find than anyone ever thought. Everyone says, “follow your passion,” as if it was something implanted in me at birth. How can I follow something when I don’t even know what it is I’m chasing? Law school is the very last thing in the world I want to do, but since I don’t have any other career in the works, I’m expected to join the family firm the way my sister did and continue a legacy of influence and wealth that goes back generations. But if I show my parents that I can actually hold down a job for a few months, maybe the pressure to go to law school will let up.

I bend down and pick up a piece of driftwood. I fling it back into the ocean and watch it disappear under the freezing surf, thinking over my conversation with Aisha. She’s right; it is a dream job. Who wouldn’t want a glamorous summer holiday complete with poolside cabanas and a ready-made itinerary? I can feel my lips sliding into a grin at the thought of it – but to make it all happen, I need Hayes to join me.

I walk toward the bluff along the edge of the tide. Usually strolling along the waves and breathing in the salt air helps quiet my mind, but today my thoughts are racing.

On the call, Aisha asked if I wanted her to send Hayes the contract directly. I almost leapt through the phone. “No!” The last thing I need is for some marketing person to cold call my ex and tell him thathisex signed him up for a summer of European travel without his knowledge, consent or interest. I have to call him and ask him to join me in a plain and direct way. He’ll say no, but I have to ask.

“You can do it, Brady,” I say out loud, tap Hayes’ contact and close my eyes. I let the sound of the crashing waves convince me this isn’t as bad as I think it is. But I’m not paying attention and while the phone is ringing, an enthusiastic wave reaches my shoes and covers me in cold, sandy water up to my ankles.

Chapter 2

Pre-departure