I woke up at my usual time of 6:30 AM on the first morning of my school suspension, immediately remembering that I did not have to go to school that day. While some kids would be happy having a week off from school, it only took a couple of hours for cabin fever to begin to creep up on me.

My mother had a meeting that morning with a friend of hers who was a realtor. At first I thought that she was going to tell me that she would have to put our house on the market, but she instead announced that she was interested in becoming a realtor herself. After her meeting, Mom would be volunteering at a local homeless shelter with getting them ready for Thanksgiving, which meant that I would have the house to myself until five when Mom brought Molly home from her dance class.

I had checked my email after getting up to see if Brian had ever replied to me, but I was left disappointed. I couldn't help but worry about him and feel guilty for the predicament he had found himself in. If I hadn't shoved Hobbs, then Brian wouldn't have had a reason to intervene in our fight. I could only imagine what he may have done after sending me his email. He could have been passed out in an alley somewhere after an all-night bender, for all I knew.

Brian's name was not listed in the phone book, so I had no way of calling to see if he was alright. I sat around for another couple of hours, refreshing my email page every few minutes while trying to occupy myself with homework. I gave up waiting around 10:30, getting dressed and walking down to the bus stop at the end of the block.

I rode the bus to Fuller Street, which took over an hour after having to transfer busses twice. I then had to walk four blocks over to the corner of Fuller and Tremont, where Brian's building was located.

The front door to the building was locked, so I pushed the buzzer for Brian's loft. There was no answer after several seconds, so I pushed it again... and then again... and again.

I finally gave up before looking up and down the street, trying to find Brian's Jeep parked at the curb. I did not see it and I did not know if there may have been a parking garage somewhere for tenants to park.

"Fuck me," I mumbled to myself.

"I'd love to, sweet thing" a passing old queen said, waggling his eyebrows at me before going on his merry way.

Not knowing where else to go, I walked in the direction of Liberty Avenue and eventually ended up at the diner. I walked in and looked around for Brian but did not see him.

It only took a few seconds before Debbie walked over to me. "Sunshine!" she squealed, stopping short when she noticed my black eye. "What the fuck happened to your face?"

"Oh... nothing," I claimed as I looked down at my feet.

"Nothing, my ass!" Debbie yelled as she grabbed my chin and jerked my head up to get a good look at me. "Who did this to you?"

"A jerk from school... it was stupid."

Debbie let go and gave me a stern glare. "Well, I hope you got a lick or two in while you were at it."

I held up my unscathed right hand. "This is for writing, not fighting."

She snorted and shook her head. "I guess that's why you're here and not at school in the middle of the day, huh? Suspended?"

"Yeah... um, have you seen Brian lately? Like, in the last day or so?"

"Hmm..." She paused for a moment to think, scratching her head with her pencil eraser. "He was in here Sunday afternoon. Why?"

As far as Debbie knew, Brian was just my English teacher, having no idea what had been going on between the two of us over the past few weeks.

"Oh, uh..."

"You and him aren't engaging in any ‘afterschool activities', are you?" she asked, as if the truth was written on my forehead. "Because he could get fired if he got caught fucking one of his students, you know."

I looked around frantically, making sure that no one was listening. Luckily, it seemed that the people sitting nearby were busy with their own conversations.

"We're... we're just-" I sputtered.

"Well, whatever the two of you are up to, be careful, alright? I don't want to see the two of you on the evening news like that Mary Kay Letourneau and her little baby daddy."

I gave her a small smile. "Neither do I. Uh... would you happen to have Brian's number? I really need to talk to him about something, but he's not answering the email I sent him."

Debbie sighed before pulling out her order pad. "Don't tell him I was the one who gave this to you, okay?" she said as she scribbled out a seven-digit number. "The last time I gave one of his fans his number, he gave me all kinds of hell and changed it."

"I promise. Thanks," I said as I took the paper from her.

I went outside to hunt for a payphone and ran into Emmett on the sidewalk.

We didn't even get the chance to say hello before he was grabbing my chin and demanding to know what had happened to my eye, which I quickly explained away like I had with Debbie.

"Does this have anything to do with how Brian was acting last night?" Emmett asked.

I pepped up at the mention of the man I was searching for. "How was he acting?"

"Oh, honey," Emmett began, putting his arm around my shoulders. "I got to Babylon around eleven and normally Brian's not there that late on a school night. But there he was, drunk as a fucking skunk as if he was in Cancun on Spring Break."

"He was?" I asked sadly.

"I caught up to him at one point and tried to ask him why he was there that late, but all he said was, ‘Fuck off, Honeycutt,' before disappearing into the backroom."

I realized that Emmett was leading me back to the diner.

"Oh, are you on your lunch break or something?" I asked him.

"No, I go into work at one on Tuesdays and I always stop by the diner beforehand. Tuesday's lunch special is codfish balls. Mmm!"

I chuckled. "Is there a payphone nearby I can use?"

"You can use my cell, sweetie," he said as he pulled his phone out of his pocket.

"Thanks... you can go ahead inside and I'll bring this back to you after I'm done," I said, wanting some privacy.

Emmett gave me a peck on my forehead before going into the diner. I dialed the number Debbie had given me and sat down on a rainbow-painted bench.

The line rang four times before going to voicemail.

Hey, this is Brian Kinney. Leave me a message and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. Thanks."

I ended the call before leaving a message as his sexy voice had suggested, not knowing what the hell to even say to him. I sat there for several seconds with Emmett's phone in my hand, shivering slightly from the chilly fall breeze.

Before I could get up to take the phone back to Emmett, it suddenly started vibrating while Paula Abdul's "Cold Hearted Snake" played out of the tiny speaker. The display indicated that Brian was the caller.

"Shit," I hissed before answering. "Uh... hello?"

"What the fuck is wrong with your voice, Honeycutt?" Brian snarled.

"This isn't Honeycutt, this is Justin... you know, Taylor?"

He was silent for a few seconds before asking, "Why are you on Emmett's phone?"

"He let me borrow it," I said, almost sounding as if I were asking him instead of telling him. "I saw him outside of the Liberty Diner."

Brian yawned loudly before asking, "And why the fuck are you at the diner?"

"I... I was looking for you. I came here after stopping by your building."

"Oh, so you were the annoying motherfucker who kept pushing the buzzer earlier," he said.

"Yeah," I said with a chuckle. "That was me."

I could clearly hear Brian taking a piss in the background. "Well, what do you want?"

"You didn't answer my email yesterday and I wanted to see if you were okay. I mean, that was some pretty alarming news you shared with me."

"Nobody was more alarmed than I was," he said before flushing the toilet.

"Can I come over?" I asked.

I was back at Brian's building about ten minutes later, happy that he had let me in that time after I had pushed the buzzer again. It was so cold out I thought my nipples would break off at any moment.

Brian answered his door wearing nothing but a pair of black sweat pants. He immediately grabbed my chin to inspect my face, just as Debbie and Emmett had.

"Holy shit!" he growled, looking at my hideous purple bruise and swollen lower eyelid. "I should have broken that fucking asshole's neck when I had the chance."

"You would be in jail now instead of just suspended from work," I reminded him, loving placing my hand on his arm.

"Jesus, your hand is like an ice cube," he said, jerking away from me. "Get in here and warm up."

I walked inside as he shut the door behind me.

"It's barely forty degrees outside. It's supposed to snow tonight," I said.

Brian groaned. "I hate this time of year. Someday, I'm going to move to Miami so I won't have to freeze to death up here anymore."

"That sounds nice," I said as I walked over to his couch.

"Plus, I wouldn't have to fly down there every Thanksgiving, because I'd already be there," he said as he poured himself a cup of coffee.

"Why do you fly to Miami for Thanksgiving? Do you have family down there?"

"No, you met my fucking family, remember? I go to Miami to get away from them and go to the White Party*. The last thing I'd want to do is eat turkey with those assholes."

"What's the White Party?" I asked. I remembered Brian saying that he had met (and fucked) Michael's boyfriend there the previous year, but I did not know what it was.

Brian joined me on the couch and sat his coffee cup on the table. "It's held in Miami every year on the Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend. There are several other smaller parties around town over the weekend, too. Thousands of queers, all dressed in white, gather together to donate money to HIV/AIDS research... and do tons of drugs, drink, and fuck."

I raised my eyebrows. "Huh... and you go every year?"

"This would have been my fifth year going. I normally fly out on Wednesday evening and get home late on Sunday, and then I drag my ass back to work the following morning and pretend like I haven't been partying for the past four days."

"You said this would have been your fifth year... I'm guessing you're not going this year?"

"After the little incident yesterday, I figured I'd better not go," he said, his voice dripping with irritation. "Hopefully I can get a meeting with the school board on Monday, and I don't want to be all fucked out and hung over. As much as I'd love to blow off steam in gay paradise this weekend, I've decided to be responsible and stick around here. Besides, this is the second Thanksgiving weekend that I've owned Babylon, and the guy that manages it for me said we had a pretty great turnout last year. I'm sure I'll be able to find plenty to occupy myself. There's going to be a Big Dick Contest on Friday night and I may just volunteer to judge."

I couldn't help but feel jealous over the thought of Brian being with other men and measuring their dicks. I was under no illusions that since we had begun fooling around he wasn't still fooling around with others, but it still made my skin crawl just thinking about it.

"Brian... I'm sorry."

"For what?" he asked before taking a sip of his coffee.

"For what happened yesterday. If I hadn't started that fight with Hobbs, none of this would be happening. We would both be at school right now as usual and you would still be going to Miami. Plus, I wouldn't look like Rocky after going a round with Creed right now."

My mother was correct when she had reminded me the day before of my aversion for violent movies, but I did sort of enjoy the Rocky franchise, mostly because Stallone was hot as hell in his prime.

"Are you ever going to tell me what actually caused the fight?" Brian asked. "You were very vague yesterday. I know it had to be something major for you to physically confront him over, because he's been giving you shit for months and you've never retaliated until now."

I wrung my hands. "Well, you know how I said he called me a faggot? Well, he calledyou a faggot, too."

Brian slammed his cup on the table, causing some of the coffee to splash out. "That's it? I may lose my fucking job and get sued because some closet case called me a faggot? I've been called worse by much better than Chris fucking Hobbs, I'll have you know."

My eyes welled up. "I just couldn't let him get away with saying that about you. He doesn't even know you."

"So the fuck what?" Brian yelled. "Let that little cunt run his mouth. What the fuck difference does it make? Again, he wasn't wrong - we're both a couple of cock sucking faggots. He knows first-hand that you are."

"Please, don't remind me," I said, tears streaming down my face by that point. "If I hadn't given him head at that party-"

"Fuck regrets. There's no use regretting your bad decisions. All you can do is either forget them or try your best to remedy them. And fuck apologizing; I didn't have to help you yesterday."

"Are you saying that you would have let him choke me out while his fucking friends and everyone from the drama club just stood there watching?"

"Of course not," he said. "I would never let anyone hurt you, so long as I was there to stop them."

"Then you did have to help me. Again, if I hadn't shoved Hobbs, he wouldn't have-"

I didn't get to finish that sentence, because Brian shut me up with a kiss.