It had been almost three months since we’d returned from the most amazing trip of our lives, where everything had been perfect -- even the parts that didn’t go according to plan -- and Brian and I had, in a way, recommitted ourselves to each other. To taking more time just to be together, to enjoy one another.

Surprisingly, Brian was doing pretty well with what he’d promised me. He came home from the office on time every day without fail -- an impressive feat for Brian Kinney, shameless workaholic -- and we’d even taken a few long weekend trips to various coastal locales. Brian claimed those trips were “just because,” but I’m pretty sure he was scouting out beachfront property, so we could have our very own personal getaway any time we wanted to go.

Then, everything changed.

For the whole world, really.

It was a novel virus, they said. No one had immunity to it. There was no vaccine. People were dying, and hospitals were overwhelmed. And it had arrived in the United States.

At first, no one knew what to do, and it seemed like we changed direction every few hours. Could we still go to work, as long as we kept our distance, or should we stay home? Should we stay three feet apart, or six? Should we wear masks, or were we okay to go without them?

Now, we’ve gone for almost a month hardly ever leaving the apartment, and the last time we went out for more than a quick errand was the day we helped Gus pack his things and move out of his dorm at NYU mid-semester. And I’m still not sure anyone truly knows what to do. But we’re all doing the best we can. For right now, that’s all we can do.

I’m outside on our balcony, wrapped in a blanket to ward off the slight morning chill, even though it’s warmer than it normally would be at this much-too-early hour. I’ve been awake for awhile -- as has become par for the course for me over the last few weeks, thanks to my dear friend anxiety -- but it’s only been an hour since I decided to leave our warm bed and my peacefully sleeping husband before my incessant tossing and turning woke him up. I made a pot of coffee, poured myself a cup, and grabbed my sketchbook and my favorite set of pencils before slipping out the balcony door and taking a seat at our patio table. It’s a spot where I normally find a lot of inspiration -- second only to sitting in front of the picture window at my studio -- but right now, that inspiration just isn’t coming. It’s like my brain is pulling me in a thousand different directions, and the impulse to create something is there, but I can’t seem to harness it enough to actually get something down on paper. That’s where I’ve been for days. Weeks, actually.

And that’s where I am right now. Sitting on the balcony, staring at a blank page in my sketchbook -- a brand new one that I bought just before all the non-essential stores shut down -- wondering whether or not I’m ever going to find my muse again.

It’s so strange to look down at the street from my twenty-story-high perch and see almost nothing going on. Hardly any cars, no traffic, no people. The sounds of the city that have been the soundtrack to Brian’s and my life for almost fifteen years -- car horns and shouts and the hustle and bustle of the city that never sleeps -- are nearly silent now. All that’s left is the sirens. Every time I hear one, I can’t help but wonder if it’s an ambulance, and if it is, who’s in it? What happened? Do they have it? Is it too late? And every single time, I have to stop myself from going down that rabbit hole.

Brian swears that there really aren’t any more than usual. That they just stand out now because everything else is so quiet. But I’m not sure if he’s telling the truth or if he’s just trying to make me feel better. To protect me. Because that’s what Brian does.

The scene is eerie, but at the same time, so very peaceful. The haze that normally makes our view of downtown a little bit foggy isn’t there anymore. The air feels fresher. It feels like the earth is finally getting to take a much-needed breath.

Maybe we are too, in a way.

But it’s hard to keep seeing it that way, when I also can’t forget that people are dying in tents in Central Park, and that every single person I encounter, even on an essential trip to the grocery store, could be harboring the virus and not even know it. There’s so much to be anxious about, because there are so many unknowns, and I’m trying my best to stay centered, but that’s hard too. Despite the fact that I’m keeping up my weekly sessions with John, my therapist -- via video call now instead of an office visit -- I know I’m struggling. I feel it. And I know Brian sees it, when I abruptly turn the news off after I’ve had enough, and when I purposely put my phone down on the kitchen island and go into another room, just to shift my focus and try to catch my breath. He hasn’t said much, but I can see in his eyes that he’s worried about me, and I don’t blame him -- not after the state he found me in last fall. The one I’ve worked so hard to get out of, that I want to stay out of, even though our current situation is making that much more challenging. I don’t want to go back there. I don’t want to sink, weighed down by the enormous pressure of simply not knowing how any of this will play out. When things will get back to normal.

If they ever will.

That’s a scary thought to entertain, but it’s one we have to think about, because it feels like it’s going to be a long, long time before our “new normal” even begins to approach the old one.

I’m still staring out at the city when I hear the click of the door behind me and the soft thunk of the front casters on Brian’s wheelchair hitting the tile as he crosses the threshold. I’ve just turned to look over my shoulder toward him when he comes up behind me, wrapping his arms around my shoulders and kissing my cheek.

“Hey,” he says. His voice is a little gravelly, the way it always is in the morning when he first wakes up -- that smoky, sexy undertone that never fails to somehow make me want him even more than I already do.

“Hey.” I flip my sketchbook closed and sit back in my chair, leaning into Brian’s touch as he moves his hands to my shoulders, kneading my tense muscles.

“You don’t have to keep doing that, you know.”

“What?”

“Trying to work.”

“I’m not trying to work. I’m just trying to get some things out of my brain. To create something, because I think it’ll help me feel better. The only problem is I can’t seem to make heads or tails out of any of it, and what comes out is just… nothing.”

“Give it a break, maybe.” Brian kisses me again before he moves to take his place at the table. “It’ll probably come to you when you’re not thinking so hard about it. At least that’s what works for me.”

“Believe me, I’m well aware of your 3 a.m. musings, jotting down ad ideas on your phone when you think I’m still asleep.”

“You should open your eyes next time, then.” Brian gives me a salacious grin, his eyes twinkling mischievously in the morning light. “Maybe we could have a little different 3 a.m. fun.”

“Hell of a lot more fun than lying there awake with my heart racing.” I huff out a laugh and fidget with the corner of my sketchbook, wondering how Brian will respond to the little slice of truth I just revealed. The truth of what it’s been like to live inside my head the last few weeks.

His initial response isn’t verbal at all; he merely reaches out a hand and curls his fingers around mine, effectively stopping me from continuing to toy with my sketchbook. Then, when I look up at him, he’s giving me a reassuring smile, though I can still see the note of concern in his eyes, which have always been a dead giveaway for how he’s really feeling, no matter what the rest of his well-practiced poker face has to say.

“We’ll be okay.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I don’t, but you also don’t know that we won’t be.”

I chuckle, a genuine laugh this time. “That sentence didn’t even make any sense.”

“You get my drift.”

“I do. I really do. But telling my brain that is a whole different matter. I’m trying. I promise.”

“I know you are.” Brian brushes his thumb across the back of my hand. “But sometimes, I think the real solution comes when we let go.”

*****

“What if I shade this a little bit more? Does that help?”

Esme’s voice brings me back out of the trance I hadn’t realized I was in and yanks me back to reality. We’re FaceTiming so I can help her with a drawing she’s working on for one of her classes, though I’m not sure how much help I actually am, since I can’t seem to stop my racing thoughts.

It’s been a particularly tough day; I didn’t sleep well at all, thanks to a series of unsettling dreams that I don’t even remember now, and I can’t focus on anything for very long. I feel like my brain keeps swinging from one thought to another, many of them thoughts that I’ve been consciously trying not to dwell on, like what will happen if Brian or Rob gets sick, because I’ve heard and read some scary things about how they choose who gets a ventilator and who doesn’t when there aren’t enough. Those thoughts piss me off too, because who the fuck gets to decide that someone’s life isn’t worth saving? Everyone at least deserves a chance, right? What kind of sick world do we live in where anyone has to come up with a measuring stick to decide who deserves to live?

I’d hoped that helping Esme would help me, too. That I might be able to find some of my own inspiration to work on something, anything, no matter how small or how simple. But the longer our call goes on, the more I’m losing hope for that, since I can’t even focus on the conversation... not really. I’m frustrated, but I’m trying not to let that show -- not to let it bleed over to her, somehow.

I take a deep breath and let it out slowly, hoping it won’t be audible on the other end of the line, as I bring my focus back to Esme. Or at least, the image of her on my screen.

She’s chewing the inside of her lip just a little as she draws, and her expression is one of concentration, but at the same time, one that’s just… peaceful. She’s got a sense of ease about her that, quite frankly, I’m jealous of, as ridiculous as that sounds. She looks up at me and smiles, and the warmth it projects somehow ends up making me feel a tiny bit more at ease too.

“I’m glad we can do this,” she says. “I really miss going to your studio after school.”

“I miss it too.” I try to smile back, but it still feels like the discontent that’s swirling inside my head is coming through loud and clear. Esme is perceptive. She picks up on subtleties, and she knows when something isn’t right. So I have to try harder to remain upbeat, so I don’t end up making her worry about me too, because she doesn’t need that.

“I miss a lot of things.” Her voice is quiet. Wistful. She looks down at her drawing and bites her lip again, then raises her gaze to meet mine, her own moment of unease now gone and her eyes clear, bright, and confident, as she says the one thing that I probably need to hear the most. “It sort of sucks… all of this… but we’re all okay, and my family is together. I guess that’s all that really matters, huh?”

*****

Three days after my call with Esme, I wake up alone in bed after having slept much later -- and much better -- than I have in a while. I don’t like taking things to help me sleep, and I never have, but my last telehealth appointment with John had him practically pleading with me -- in his own unique way, where he somehow flipped it back around on me to make me feel like it was my idea, as always -- to take the pills I’d been prescribed months before when I was recovering from my breakdown. So you don’t end up having another one, was the unsaid portion of his “strong recommendation,” though I still heard it loud and clear. I knew where I was headed and that it wasn’t anywhere good. I needed sleep. So I took the pills, and I fell asleep with Brian’s arms around me, his slow, steady breath brushing across my cheek with each exhale, unwittingly providing me with a rhythm to match as I tried to let go and settle in for bed, until the medication took effect and my overactive mind was wiped blank as my eyes closed and darkness overtook my consciousness.

I roll over and blink a few times to clear the blur of heavy sleep from my vision so I can focus on the clock, which tells me it’s a little after nine. I haven’t slept that late in a while, but I do feel at least a little bit better; more rested and less like I’ve run a marathon in my sleep, even though I still wouldn’t exactly call it “refreshed.”

Anxiety makes you tired. I think that’s something a lot of people don’t realize -- just how exhausting it is to have a constant stream of worries and insecurities running in the background (and sometimes the foreground) of every single thought you have. And right now, I’m very, very tired.

The fuzzy gray blanket at the foot of our bed where Millie sleeps is still there, but Millie isn’t. That’s not surprising, though; she’ll follow anyone who’s capable of opening a can of cat food into the kitchen at any hour of the day or night, so I figure she’s probably in there now, begging for food from either Brian or Gus, assuming one of them hasn’t already fed her.

When I make my way into the kitchen, I find Millie, as predicted, happily eating her breakfast. Meanwhile, Brian is sitting in the middle of the kitchen, cup of coffee in one hand and phone in the other, steam rising from the waffle maker on the counter in front of him as he scrolls idly through what looks like an email.

“What, are we all out of eggs?” I raise an eyebrow and look between my husband -- the recovering carbophobe -- and the almost-full bowl of batter sitting alongside the waffle maker.

He looks up at me, startled for a brief moment before his expression settles into the relaxed smile he greets me with most mornings. He shakes his head and shrugs, looking down as the smile turns into the bashful one he wears when he’s doing something nice for someone, just because.

“I was up, so… Thought I’d make breakfast. Gus likes waffles, and I’ve never known you to turn them down either, so it seemed like a sure bet. And no, we aren’t out of eggs, because someone ordered two dozen in our last grocery order.”

“Hey, you eat eggs in some form almost every morning, and Gus is nineteen, and he eats like a linebacker. So I thought we might need lots of eggs.” I shrug as I pass behind Brian to pour myself a cup of coffee with a generous helping of my favorite caramel creamer. “Speaking of Gus, doesn’t he have class in fifteen minutes?”

“He was awake until 3 a.m. on the phone with his boyfriend, so I’ll be surprised if he’s up more than a minute or two before class starts.”

“Jesus, I don’t even remember hearing anything. That’s why I don’t like taking those pills. Because once I’m out, I’m out. I mean, what if there’s a fire, or--”

“I’ll wake you up.” Brian interrupts me, and when I turn my gaze to meet his, the low level of concern that’s been there for weeks whenever he looks at me is right there, clear as day. “You need sleep.”

“So do you.”

“All the more reason for you to not be tossing and turning all night, keeping me awake.” His lips turn up into a smirk as he turns his attention back to the waffle maker, using a fork to move the finished product from the iron to a plate, which he nudges across the counter in my direction.

“Yeah, yeah,” I sigh as I give Brian’s shoulder a gentle shove and take the plate, moving it to the table before coming back to retrieve my coffee mug.

“Seriously, though, it seemed like you slept better. You moved around a lot less.”

I heard the part he didn’t say, too -- no nightmares, no strange dreams that had me mumbling in my sleep, keeping Brian awake or prompting him to try to comfort me in the middle of the night.

I nod as I take a generous pat of butter from the dish Brian had already put on the table and spread it over my waffle, before reaching for the bottle of maple syrup he brought back from a business trip to Vermont in February.

“There’s no shame in doing what you need to do to take care of yourself, Sunshine.”

When I look up, Brian is facing me on the other side of the island that divides our kitchen from the main living and dining area, the tenderness in his gaze making it clear that he knows more of what’s been going through my head than I’ve said out loud.

“I know,” I say softly. “It’s not shame, really. It’s just… wishing I didn’t have to, I guess.”

“I get that, but sometimes you have to do what you have to do.”

“You’ve been hanging out with Rob too much.” I laugh, not knowing whether or not Brian intended to shift the tone of our conversation by invoking one of our dear friend’s favorite pieces of advice. Just the same, I’m grateful for the lightness. I need that right now, when everything feels so heavy.

“We work together now, so I think I’ve got an excuse.” Brian brings over another plate of waffles, setting this one in front of Gus’ still-empty chair as he lets out a breath. “I’ve got a meeting with Rob and his managers this morning, actually. We’re trying not to have to furlough people, but right now, with everything shut down and the entire healthcare industry focused solely on this virus -- which they should be -- it’s hard. And people aren’t spending much on ads either, save for the fucking CDC, which I can’t say I ever thought I’d see a billboard from in my lifetime. But, here we are. I can’t worry too much about it. I can only control what I can control. Beyond that, whatever happens…” Brian lets his voice trail off, shrugging his shoulders before letting them drop with an audible sigh. “I just have to continue to do whatever I can to make sure everything works out for the best. Whatever that turns out to be.”

“Who are you, and what did you do with my husband?” A smile spreads across my face at Brian’s words. Words that his past control-freak self would have had some serious issues with. I know he’s been working on letting go of control for a while -- and even more so since our Christmas trip -- but it’s still strange to hear him talk about it.

Brian chuckles as he pours more batter into the waffle iron. “I’m growing up, I guess. Only took me 48 years.”

I open my mouth to tease Brian about having willfully admitted his age -- and so easily, too -- but I don’t even get one word out before Brian is saying good morning to Gus, who’s shuffling into the kitchen in his pajamas with his eyes still half-closed. He pours himself a cup of coffee and walks slowly over to the table, where he plops down in his chair and starts buttering his waffle, all without saying a word to either me or Brian.

“Bad night?” Brian raises an eyebrow at Gus’ non-response, but Gus is still looking down, and still not saying a word. Brian moves the now-empty batter bowl to the sink and fills it with water before trying again. “How’s Alex?”

“How’d you know I talked to Alex?” Gus speaks through a mouthful of waffle as he finally looks up at Brian, his eyebrows knitted together in obvious confusion, mixed with possible offense at the idea that Brian might have been eavesdropping.

“Our bedrooms share a wall; I could hear you. And I was awake.”

“Sorry if I kept you up. I just… I needed to talk to him.”

“I wasn’t complaining. Believe me, I know what it’s like to not be able to be with somebody you love. It sucks, to say the least.”

Brian and I share a look as my own memories of all the times when Brian and I were apart come bubbling back to the surface -- many, many nights when I’d wished to have him right beside me, running his fingers through my hair or massaging my cramped right hand or fucking me into oblivion, and I know he’s probably remembering much of the same. Meanwhile, Gus turns his own gaze back to his plate, focusing an inordinate amount of attention on his waffle, likely just to avoid having to make eye contact with his father.

“I don’t want to talk about it.” Gus’ voice is low, and he’s still looking down as he stuffs another huge chunk of buttery, syrupy waffle into his mouth.

“Sometimes it helps to talk about it,” I say, keeping my own voice even and nonjudgmental. I know we’re all dealing with something new here with this pandemic, entering territory we’ve never even thought about before, and the way we process it manifests in many different forms. Depression is one, and it seems to be the one Gus is sinking into at the moment. He’s been quiet for several days now, spending a lot of time in his bedroom, and not saying much when he does come out. Brian and I haven’t wanted to pry, but we both know something isn’t right. This isn’t Gus.

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Brian adds. “But we’re here whenever you do.”

Gus is dutifully slicing up his waffle, chewing, and swallowing, still paying far too much attention to his breakfast, as Brian plates up his own and unplugs the waffle iron before joining us at the table. We all eat in silence for a bit, the only sounds among us the scraping of knives and forks on plates, combined with the damned sirens that I can hear through the open door to the balcony.

“This isn’t what I thought my first year of college would be, that’s all,” Gus blurts out, letting his fork and knife drop to his plate as he looks up to finally make eye contact with Brian and me. “Everything was great in the fall… the soccer season went well, I made friends, I met Alex, I got straight A’s… and now, this. I get kicked out of my dorm in March, and the rest of the semester is fucking distance learning, and my boyfriend is on the other side of the fucking country, and nobody has any fucking idea when we’re going back to class, or when we’ll be able to fucking see each other again in person, or hug, or kiss, or anything else. It’s bullshit. I want a fucking do-over, and I know I’m not going to get it. So I’ve gotta buck up and get the fuck over it, but I’m having a hard time doing that.”

Leave it to Brian’s son to see his (very valid) feelings as something he needs to “buck up and get the fuck over.”

“Gus, it’s okay to--”

“It’s not okay.” Gus cuts me off as he pushes his plate away, his breakfast only half eaten. “It’s not going to be okay for a long time.”

“Gus, Justin is trying to help you.” I can hear the forced evenness in Brian’s tone -- that he’s trying to temper the normal reaction he would have to Gus being outright rude to anyone, much less to me. “You can at least hear him out.”

“No offense, but unless Justin has some way to make all of this shit just go away, or at the very least to make it so Alex and I can be together instead of 3,000 fucking miles apart, I’m not sure what he can really do to help. Tomorrow’s Alex’s birthday, and I just want to take him to dinner and a movie, and I can’t even do that.”

“Who says you can’t do that? You could--”

Gus snorts, interrupting me again. “I suppose you have a fucking time machine, or a magic wand, then?”

I ignore Gus’ snide tone, although I catch Brian out of the corner of my eye giving him a warning glare, pressing his lips together to keep from jumping in.

“I don’t have either of those things,” I say, still focused on keeping my tone even and calm, despite Gus’ obvious agitation. “But I do have a creative mind. Sometimes you have to think outside the box. You might not be able to be together in person, but you could cook a meal together, and then watch a movie. You’ve got FaceTime, or your dad can set you up with Zoom if you want to get fancy. It won’t be the same, but it’ll be something."

I’m not sure where this sudden burst of wisdom came from, especially when I’m still struggling to find any shred of positivity in my own situation. But Gus doesn’t come back with a smart-assed remark this time. Instead, he looks down at the table, nodding slowly before closing his eyes and taking a breath.

“Sorry,” he says, much softer this time. “I’m just really frustrated, and I miss my friends, and I really miss Alex. I miss my life. And I think last night it just… yeah. It’s all kind of sinking in for me now, and I don’t know how to deal with it.”

“It sucks, I agree. This is a lot. It’s all a lot. And we don’t know how to deal with it, because we’ve never been here before. We all have things and people we miss right now. But we do have technology to keep us connected, and that’s a good thing. For right now, that’s the best we can do. And maybe for right now, that’ll be enough.”

“Yeah.” Gus’ voice is still quiet as he idly traces a finger over the handle of his coffee mug -- a trait he inherited from Brian, who always has to be doing something with his hands when he’s deep in thought. “Maybe it will.”

*****

Thirty-some hours later, Brian and I are sitting out on the balcony, having a drink and trying to enjoy another Friday night of our “new normal.” It’s been a little warmer today, so the setting sun feels good on my face, and the bourbon-and-ginger-ale cocktail Brian made is warming me from the inside. We’ve got the door to the kitchen propped open so we can keep an eye on Gus, mostly to make sure he doesn’t end up starting a fire with my gas cooktop. His culinary skills are rudimentary at best -- much like Brian’s back when we first met, no matter how much Brian insists that he did know how to cook back then and just chose not to -- so I’m not sure why he decided making a homemade alfredo sauce was the best idea, but he insisted that it was Alex’s favorite and he wanted to do it “right,” instead of relying on the jarred stuff. (“Besides,” he’d said, “this recipe has, like, five ingredients… how hard could it be?”)

Gus has his laptop open on the counter, sitting sideways so both he and the pot he’s working with are in range of the camera for a FaceTime call with Alex, who is in his mother’s kitchen out in California, stirring something into his own pot while he calmly tries to instruct Gus on how to whisk the parmesan into the butter and cream. Gus’ voice, however, is quickly taking on a more frantic pitch as he squints at the screen for a several seconds, then looks back toward his pot.

“Are you sure this is right? I don’t think it’s right. It doesn’t look right.”

“I don’t know, I can’t look at the screen and whisk this in at the same time, so you’ll have to wait.”

“But it’s all lumpy! Shit, now my pasta’s gonna boil over… goddamnit.”

“You have to keep whisking! And turn down the heat a little on the pasta.”

“I don’t have enough hands!”

Brian, who’s been trying not to laugh for at least a good minute now, loses the battle then and snorts, nearly spraying his drink across the balcony. “If I had a dollar…”

“Brian! That’s your son.” I’m still attempting to hold back my own laughter as I kick Brian’s chair with the toe of my shoe, pushing him backward a few inches.

“Hey, he walked right into that one.”

I shake my head and look out over the railing, finishing off the last of my drink as I hear Alex’s voice coming from the computer, sounding frustrated: “You’re stirring it too hard now!”

“You said to keep whisking!”

“I sure hope this isn’t an allusion to their pillowtalk.” Brian smirks and tips up his own glass to swallow the last of his whiskey.

“Should we rescue him?” I turn to peer into the kitchen, where Gus is now sweating and cursing, apparently trying to “whisk vigorously, but not too hard,” as instructed by Alex.

“Probably.” Brian smiles as he puts both of our empty glasses in his lap and gestures for me to go inside first. Gus is still struggling to keep his alfredo sauce from burning, and I’m just about to reach for the whisk to help him out when I hear Brian deadpan behind me, “You just fold it in!”

Gus freezes, looking up at Brian with a confused, somewhat indignant look that’s the spitting image of his father -- so much so that I’m laughing at that as much as I’m laughing at Brian’s perfectly-timed-and-delivered reference to Schitt’s Creek, a show I made Brian watch that he ended up loving in spite of himself.

“What the fuck?” Gus says, looking back and forth between Brian and me. “What does that mean?”

“I don’t know how we could be any clearer,” I jump in, unable to suppress my smile as I reach past Gus to stir the pasta.

“Are you two high or something?” Gus looks at us incredulously, one eyebrow quirked upward in another expression that’s oh-so-familiar.

“You seriously don’t know what we’re talking about?” I ask, turning down the burner under Gus’ alfredo sauce, since it definitely shouldn’t be boiling. “I thought everybody had seen it by now.”

“Seen what?”

“Schitt’s Creek!” Alex joins our exchange, smiling and laughing on the computer screen as he drains his pasta.

“What?” Gus is looking between all three of us now like we’ve lost our minds, though the distraction does seem to have slowed his frantic stirring down to a more sensible pace, and the sauce actually looks pretty good.

“Clearly, we’ve failed as parents, Sunshine.” Brian makes eye contact with me and smirks as he slides the pot of pasta across the countertop to the sink so he can drain it.

“Seriously, Gus, you’ve gotta watch it,” Alex chimes in. “My sister got me addicted to it last month and we watched, like, the whole series in a couple of weeks. You’ll love it. And it’s Canadian, so… yeah. Just trust me.”

“Maybe we can watch it together,” I say, stealing a spoonful of the alfredo sauce, which tastes pretty good too, somewhat surprisingly. “It’s a great distraction.”

“Mandatory quarantine viewing,” Brian adds.

I can’t help but smile at the fact that Brian’s now the one championing the show, when I practically had to force him to watch the first two seasons before he got hooked.

“How’d I do?” Gus looks anxiously at my now-empty spoon. “I didn’t fuck it up, did I?”

“Not at all. It’s good; you did a great job.”

“Good.” Gus lets out a breath he’s probably been holding for a while as his facial expression relaxes and his shoulders drop down from his ears.

“We’ll have to talk about your cooking vernacular later, but…” Brian teases, a wry grin tugging at the corner of his lip.

“What?” Gus is back to looking confused, and Alex is snickering on the computer screen as he plates up his own pasta.

“Nothing,” I say, pulling three plates down out of the cabinet as I shoot Brian a warning look. He leers at me and winks, while Gus groans.

“You two are gross, you know that?”

“But you love us anyway.” I smile and give Gus a wink of my own, and he relents with a sigh and a shake of his head.

“And with that, we’ll leave you two lovebirds to your date,” Brian says, as he balances our plates on a tray his lap and turns to head back out to the balcony.

I’m in the process of pouring Brian and myself both a glass of wine when I hear Gus say, “Wait.”

Brian stops and turns around, looking at Gus expectantly, though his expression bears a note of confusion as well.

“Can you guys… stay?” Gus sounds unsure, pulling his lips into his mouth for a moment. “If Alex doesn’t mind,” he adds quickly, as if he’s just suddenly remembered that it’s his birthday after all.

“I don’t mind,” Alex says. “My sister is dying to see this movie, so I’m pretty sure I won’t be able to kick her out anyway.”

“Okay.” Gus smiles, looking the most relaxed he has all evening. He takes a breath and lets it out slowly before he speaks again. “I think I just want to be together.”

Brian and I share a smile, and there’s a brightness in his eyes that I swear might be the start of tears before he quickly blinks them away.

We transition the video call to Zoom and start the movie, using Brian’s fancy teleconferencing setup, now temporarily hooked up to the TV instead of to the computer in his home office. We eat, and we talk, and we laugh, and it just feels so… normal… even as nontraditional and different as it is. Millie curls up in the chair alongside me, and Brian and Gus sit together on the sofa, mirror images of each other thirty years apart, with their similar-but-different laughs and smiles as they banter back and forth with Alex and his sister while I look on, just taking it all in. Enjoying the moment. Relishing the distraction from all of the upheaval in the world right now.

I’m reaching for my glass of wine when my sketchbook catches my eye on the side table, almost as if it’s beckoning to me. Inviting me in, in a way that it hasn’t in a while. I slowly pick it up, flipping it open to a blank page as I wrap my fingers around my pencil and look up at my husband and his son -- our son -- laughing together.

And, once again, it just comes. My hand easily traces the shape of Brian’s face… his nose, his mouth, his eyes. The lightning-in-a-bottle combination of sheer beauty and endless sex appeal that drew me to him on Liberty Avenue a lifetime ago, that continues to only get better with age. And Gus… his features so much the same as his father’s, but still with shades of Lindsay mixed in, if you look closely enough. I don’t even have to think about it. I don’t have to force it, or work to find the inspiration. It just… flows.

Maybe my muse hasn’t gone anywhere, after all. Maybe it’s been right here, all along. With my family.

As the sun sets outside our living room windows and the room starts to dim, Brian looks up, catching my eye as he smiles at me -- the easy, warm smile that has always wordlessly communicated those three little words that it took him so long to say all those years ago.

I love you.

Isn’t that really all we need?

Even when everything feels wrong, and it seems like the entire world is turned upside down and sideways and nothing is certain anymore, we still have each other. We’ve got a roof over our heads, and food to eat, and we’re able to connect with the ones we love, even if we can’t do it in person.

We’re lucky. I know we’re lucky.

And I’m so grateful for what we have.

We’ll get through this, together. We’ll adjust. And even though we don’t know what things will look like on the other side of all of this, I know we’ll still have each other, just like we always have.

We just have to let go. Lean in. Do whatever we can to make sure everything works out for the best.

No matter what that turns out to be.