Despite saying he’d be right there, Jay stayed kneeling for a short time, muted sounds filtering through. The quiet tick of a clock in the hall, a timepiece Jay had always hated, counted the seconds. He eventually moved, put the shoebox on the bed. He stood and then pushed things back onto the shelf of the fitted wardrobe and closed the door.
Nothing could get more serious than this, for Dean. None of it was easy for him. Seemed, in some ways, to be harder on Dean than for many gay men. His tangible confusion surely stemmed from emotions he hadn’t dealt with yet. When Dean first told people about their relationship, his doing so was an act of bravado. No one could fault Dean there. Despite his unease, Dean hadn’t blanched from the truth since the two of them made it official. Did Dean eve
