Page 93 of The Evening Wolves

“Ok,” Emery said. “I think we’ve reached the end of this particular session of batshittery. Colt, ignore everything they told you. Do you understand me?”

Collar still between his teeth, Colt grinned and nodded.

“Are you packed?”

Another nod.

“Grab your bag. John and I are going to drop you off. What are the rest of you chowderheads doing in my house?”

“Giving that poor kid a male role model who won’t make him want to jump off a roof when he’s an adult,” North said.

Shaw nodded. “And eating all that cheese you tried to hide at the back of the fridge.”

North turned a wounded look on him.

“It was such a fun game,” Shaw said. “It was like hide-and-seek. Only for a mouse. Oh! Mouse hide-and-seek! That’s a new game we can play the next time we—”

“Go on,” North said in a deadly voice. “Finish that sentence.”

“Theo,” Auggie wheezed from the couch. “Theo, I’m legit going to pee myself.”

Theo rolled his eyes and then moved into the kitchen to help Tean free himself from the towel.

A few moments later, Colt was back with a duffel bag.

“What about Ashley?” John-Henry asked.

“He’s already there,” Colt said.

Emery took his bag and carried it out to the Mustang, and as they got into the car, he asked, “Are you two ok?”

Colt nodded.

“What’s going on?” John-Henry asked.

Colt didn’t answer as the garage door rolled up. He spoke as they backed out onto the driveway, and his voice was quiet. “It’s his parents.”

It shouldn’t have been a surprise, but the flash of pain was still real. “What’d they say?”

“They’re just worried, J-H. It’s dumb. It’s not a big deal.”

“What did they say?”

“Pops.”

But John-Henry heard the plea there, and he shook his head and said, “It’s ok. You don’t have to talk about it.”

He knew, anyway, what it must have been. That Ashley wasn’t allowed to come over to their house. That would be the bare minimum. The Boones were kind people, decent, and they’d handled it surprisingly well when their son had come out and started dating Colt. But everyone had their limit, and maybe they’d finally reached theirs.

They drove in silence to GLAM. The pride center was located in the corner unit of a strip mall in the northeast corner of town. It was one of the oldest parts of town, and the original buildings that hadn’t been knocked down were tall and skinny and built on narrow lots. It had been dragged forward through time until approximately when Eisenhower had been president, and then it had settled there: squat brick buildings, asphalt lots patched with tar, a payday loan store with an inflatable Porky Pig tied outside. Every time the wind picked up, Porky would spin in place, scraping along the brick wall, which explained why half his face had been scratched away. It wouldn’t be long, John-Henry figured, before the vinyl ripped, and Porky Pig would go to the great payday loan store in the sky.

A twenty-foot U-Haul was pulled up in front of GLAM, with a passenger van parked in front of it like a tugboat. A couple of kids were goofing off on the sidewalk—a long-haired boy chasing a boy with glitter threaded through his hair, while a girl tried to peg both of them with snowballs; another kid, who might have been nonbinary or agender, kicking the ornamental bushes free of snow; a girl in a lumpy sweater who was swinging her arms and legs rhythmically through the air, apparently performing a routine to music nobody else could hear. A boy who must have been the infamous Ty was trying to capture the routine on his phone and, in the process, was occasionally getting smacked with a snowball.

Ashley must have been watching for them because he exploded out of the van, a huge smile on his face, and jogged toward them.

“Oh my God,” Colt said, but he was grinning. “He is such a dork.”

“Have a good time,” John-Henry said. “Be safe.”

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