“Hey, did you guys upload our video to YouTube?”
“What?” Maisie feigned innocence.
“The one from dinner. With the cotton candy.”
Maisie refused to look up at her uncle, as sure a sign of guilt as there was.
“What did I say about that? About it not being appropriate? Your aunt Clara saw that and blamed me.”
They both picked uncomfortably at their pizza; Grant stretched his cheese like it was bubble gum as Patrick pieced together their scam. The passwords were on his counter and he’d been giving them a wider berth with his phone.
“It’s okay. I’m not . . . mad. I can handle your aunt Clara. It’s just. If I make rules, they’re to protect you. Okay? You have to respect them.” Patrick opened the salad he’d ordered and picked off bits of blue cheese. The lettuce appeared wilted, like their energy; they were all three in need of a boost. “Well, pull it up so I can see how it looks.”
Excitedly, Maisie opened the YouTube app and tapped in a few key search words.
“I have the YouTube app?”
“I downloaded it.”
Patrick shot her a look, which she absorbed and shot right back. Maisie found the page and handed Patrick his phone to show him. “EIGHTY-THREE THOUSAND VIEWS?”
A family at the next table turned to look. Patrick pulled his ball cap down farther over his eyes.
Maisie took a bite of pizza. “You already had a channel, so we have lots of subscribers!”
“I have. I have lots of subscribers. We don’t have anything.” Patrick let the video unspool on his phone. The kids looked good, happy. Even if it was just a snapshot, a moment.
“Are we famouth?” Grant asked.
“Not even a little bit.”
“That’s a lot of views,” Maisie clarified. “So I’d say a little bit.” She was developing a bit of an attitude he wasn’t fond of, but today he would cut her some slack.
The video ended and Patrick absentmindedly handed Maisie back his phone as if it were hers. “Interesting.”
“Can we watch thomething elthe?”
Patrick tried to pierce his lettuce with a plastic fork, but the lettuce wasn’t having it. He set his fork down and pushed his tray aside. “Sure.”
“Can I choothe?” Grant asked.
“No. I want us to watch something specific. I want to see clips from a show. Tillamook.”
“Till-a-muck?” Maisie struggled to understand.
“Terrible title. Tillamook. Like a cow says.”
“It thounds like what a cow makes.”
Patrick turned to his nephew. “That’s very clever. Let’s get some chocolate moooooook.” He tickled the boy and Grant squirmed and shrieked. “It’s a town in Oregon. And also a cheese, I think. And the name of a teen drama on that network I should, because of my advanced age, be too embarrassed to watch.”
“Here it is.” Maisie handed the phone back to Patrick so she could break off another bite of the pizza crust.
“Is this lupper?” Grant asked, lifting up his pizza as if there might be something more appetizing underneath.
“It’s a lack.”
“What’th a lack?”
“Lunch-slash-snack. Eat up,” Patrick replied.
“Is it really?”
“It’s certainly lacking,” he said without looking up from his screen because there he was—Emory—his face clean-shaven and smooth with makeup. Patrick’s heart, while not skipping the proverbial beat, did (against his will) pound a little harder. His finger hovered nervously over the thumbnail. What was the hesitation? Three days ago he’d barely heard of this person. And he’d had, over the years, plenty of these little affairs without giving a single one so much as a second thought. So he pushed play.
And, voilà—magic. Emory, alive on his phone in a glorious close-up, that familiar sparkle in his eye, until the camera pulled back to a two-shot to reveal he was talking to . . . a girl.
“Can I see?” Maisie asked. She set her pizza crust down on the paper plate on her tray and leaned across the table to watch; Grant likewise snuggled into Patrick’s side. He found them, in this moment, to be an intrusion.
“He wath at the party!” Grant declared.
“Can’t slip anything past you.” Thank god Emory was wearing more than when Patrick saw him last.
“He’s on TV?!” Maisie asked, clearly impressed.
Patrick hit pause and looked at the menu board for strength. It confirmed Patrick’s original appraisal: this pizza was the least awful choice. “You do realize I was on TV?”
The kids shrugged and Patrick threw his head to the side, hitting the café window.
“Ith he your boyfriend?”
“What?” Patrick spun around to face Grant. “No. Don’t be silly.”
“Yeah, Grant,” Maisie piled on. “Don’t be silly.”
Patrick raised his gaze to challenge Maisie. “Why is that silly?”
Maisie said nothing. Instead she spun the pizza crust on her plate, like they were playing Twister. Right hand on Emory.
“Is it because he’s too young? He’s older than he looks. I checked Wikipedia.” He didn’t inherently trust Wikipedia, but it was right about his own age. Unfortunately.
The crust came to a stop. “Is he your age?”
“Maisie.” Patrick exhaled, defeated. “No.”
“Why do you like boys?” Grant asked sourly, but with slightly more boredom than judgment.
“I don’t know, why do you like pizza?”
“Because it tastes good in my mouth.”
Patrick wasn’t about to go anywhere near that.
“Not everyone thinks that. Some people don’t like pizza. To them it does not taste good.”
“Why?” Grant asked.
“Why does it taste good to you?”
“I don’t know.”
“So you just like it, then,” Patrick explained.
“Yeah!”
“Sometimes it’s hard to articulate why we like something. We just do. We’re programmed that way.”
“Do you want me to like boys?” Grant asked.
“I don’t want you to like anything.” Patrick slunk in his chair as a woman walked by dragging two kids of her own. She glanced over at Patrick in solidarity. “Let me rephrase that. I want you to like whatever it is you like.”
“I like boys.”
“Congratulations.”
“As friends,” Grant clarified.
“Bravo. As you should. Boys can make excellent friends. And if anything changes, you’ll know as you get older. Grantelope.”
Grant beamed at his uncle. Patrick had a memory from first grade, around the time he was Grant’s age. It was the last week of school and a heat wave upended a Connecticut June. Classrooms were sweltering and
