If At First You Don’t Succeed
Chapter Three

He fits in a haircut after all. By the time Nicky gets home it’s almost six, but Kay’s car is still nowhere to be seen. Judging from the lack of shrieking and splashing, Mai’s not in her kiddie pool out back, either, where she is every day around this time. Nicky blinks and lets himself in the front door.

“Hello?”

“Hey,” a voice shouts back almost instantly. Nicky almost jumps out of his skin. He’s seen way too many horror movies lately; his immediate conclusion had been that Kay had murdered everyone and run away to be a wheat farmer in Kansas.

He drops his backpack on the floor and walks further into the house, trying to determine the origin of the voice. Something thuds upstairs, so Nicky jogs up them. “Josh?” he yells from the landing. Jesse doesn’t seem to be around yet, which is good, because Nicky’s still way too keyed up to see him.

“In here.” Nicky follows his voice through to his parents’ bedroom, then further into their closet. The clothes on the back wall are shaking suspiciously, but he can’t see Josh anywhere. Then he suddenly emerges, crawling out from under a rack of Kay’s business shirts with his face flushed and his hair unprecedentedly tousled.

“Hi,” he says, slightly breathlessly. Nicky’s starting to wonder if he’s interrupted some weird literal ‘in the closet’ sex thing his parents are doing, and edges backwards slightly while staring suspiciously at the business shirts. “How was school?”

“Oh, awesome. We talked about the Constitution in American History.” Nicky rolls his eyes with a grimace. Last time that happened, two of the school’s small group of less-tolerant Christians had gone off on a nausea-inducing spiel about gay unions and marrying dogs. Nicky, obvious offspring of a gay union, had almost gotten suspended for lunging at one of them. Josh apparently remembers. A heavy frown settles over his face.

“Did you—”

“No, nothing happened.”

“I can’t believe that. You don’t know how good you have it living here, Nick. Even last time, with only a couple of kids—jeez, when I was in high school...”

“What, in the Great White North?” Nicky interrupts with a smart-ass grin. “Land of the freely accepted? You gotta be kidding.”

“Ugh, you’re so American.” Josh grimaces and sits back on his heels, wiping the hair out of his eyes with the back of his wrist. Nicky follows his gaze to the mountain of clothing heaped beside the bed. “You’re a Canadian too, kiddo, in case you forgot.”

“Like I could.” Nicky definitely doesn’t feel Canadian—he barely remembers anything from his early years there, except for a few sparse memories of Pixar movies on the theatre-sized TV at his grandpa’s apartment—but Kay and Josh, for all that they’d both relocated here more than a decade ago, have horrified kneejerk reactions to ‘Americanization’ and are always trying to remind him of his ‘cultural heritage.’ “Forget it. What’re you doing, anyway?” He eyes the fabric heap curiously.

“Just clearing out last’s season’s stuff,” Josh says, totally serious. Nicky gives him a weird look and glances at the label on a sweater he definitely remembers Josh debuting within the last six months. God, he’s such a label freak.

“It’s Friday night.”

“No kidding.” Josh is the one who rolls his eyes this time, standing up and beginning to transfer clothes to the bed.

“Well! Why’re you cleaning your closet on a Friday night?” Nicky asks defensively. There’s a faint sound somewhere in the distance and he freezes to listen. Jesse coming up the front steps? But everything’s silent.

“It’s father/daughter night, remember?” Josh is saying. Nicky tunes back in. “Well, other-father/daughter night, anyway. Your dad took Mai to see the Wiggles in concert.”

“Wow. It’s not fair that you guys have such crazy weekend nights,” Nicky says with a smirk, but he’s straining to hear again. He could swear—“Is Jesse home?” He asks abruptly. Josh, on the verge of speaking himself, gives him an odd look.

“Yes. He’s napping, I think. Mai wore him out at the park.” He keeps on calmly folding and sorting his cast-offs while Nicky’s mind blanches into sudden panic. Jesse’s here? Shit, shit, shit, Nicky’s not changed, he hasn’t showered—oh, wait, napping.

“Oh,” he says casually, inching towards the door. “Well. Think I’ll go—uh—throw something else now... We’re gonna see a movie or something.” He turns and prepares to bolt, but Josh’s completely unconcerned voice floats up to his back and he almost falls over instead.

“I know.”

“You what?” Nicky whips back around. Josh gives him a bland smile, though he’s clearly trying not to smirk. Nicky wants to rip the pants he’s placidly folding out of his hands.

“Jesse told me. Or rather, asked me.”

“What? Why?” Oh God, does that mean Kay knows? Nicky’s stomach tightens in involuntary protest. “Why would he ask you?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I am his employer.” Nicky hates when Josh acts all calm and smug. He stares at him tensely, feeling his face flood with heat. Does he mean he’d asked, like, for the night off? Or that he’d asked his boss if he could date his kid? Date. Oh Christ.

“Josh,” he says agitatedly.

“What?”

“Josh.”

“Oh, Nicky. Honestly. You’d think you’d never associated with a polite boy befo—well, then again.”

“Oh my God,” Nicky grunts. He turns and stomps out of the room, but he’s back almost instantly, biting hard on his lip. “Josh...”

“Your father wasn’t here when he asked,” Josh answers before he has to say it. He’s serenely adjusting one of the piles of clothes he’s folded. Nicky exhales, half-irritated and half-relieved.

“Oh. Good. I mean, uh—”

“I can’t not tell him, so don’t ask.”

“Josh,” Nicky whines instantly. “C’mon, please? We’re just hanging out and Dad will make some gay national crisis out of it. It’s not even a date.”

“It’s not?”

“Is it?” Nicky pounces instantly on this small admittance, if that’s what it is. Josh just gets one of his annoying guru smiles and turns to shut the closet door.

“I won’t tell him yet,” he says. Nicky’s relief is so fleeting it barely even registers.

“Did he say it’s a date? How did he ask, like, what did he say? Should I—”

“Nicky,” Josh interrupts. “I’ll tell you this—he said seven. And it’s six-thirty.”

“Aw, shit,” Nicky blurts, and tears out of the room.

--

By some miracle, he manages to be ready by seven. But by quarter after, twenty minutes after Josh had stuck his head into Nicky’s room to say he was going to meet Aunt Tara for dinner, Jesse still hasn’t emerged. Nicky had cultivated the perfect waiting pose—not too eager, but not completely unenthusiastic, either, sprawled out on his bed with a magazine (real estate listings, but so what) and his radio playing semi-quietly for a change. Except only Josh had seen it, and he’d outright laughed at what Nicky was trying to do before telling him to have fun and leaving.

Now Nicky’s hesitating in his open doorway, looking down the hall at Jesse’s closed one and trying to decide if he should go knock. There’re no sounds of life. Maybe Jesse had come to his senses and snuck out while Nicky was rushing around trying to get dressed in something that didn’t scream I-think-we’re-dating. Unexpectedly, his stomach knots at the idea and he takes two or three steps down the hall without any real thought process behind it.

Ugh. No. Jesse wouldn’t do that. Even if he wanted to, he was obligated to make an excuse or something, since Nicky was the boss’s kid. It’s not exactly a flattering thought, but it’s better than nothing. He inches closer and raises his fist, then knocks before he can let himself think twice. No answer.

“Uh—Jesse?” His voice comes out too soft, in a cracking mumble. He winces and tries the doorknob in another small fit of brainlessness, and to his surprise, it turns easily under his hand. The lights are off when the door swings open. Nicky squints inside and spots Jesse in the thin crack of light coming from under his closed window blinds.

He’s on the bed. Nicky gulps.

“Jesse?”

He’s not moving. Is he really that heavy a sleeper? Nicky creeps a little closer again, almost holding his breath in case he suddenly jerks upright and demands to know what Nicky thinks he’s doing, but then he notices that Jesse has headphones on and his breath escapes in a heavy whoosh. He leans down over the bed and gives his shoulder a small shake.

“Jesse. Hey, Jesse,” he says, a little louder this time. Jesse stirs. His dark eyes slit open slightly. Nicky’s suddenly kind of embarrassed. “Hey, sorry, it’s—”

Jesse suddenly sits up while he’s in mid-sentence. Sits up so close, their lips almost brush.

And Nicky’s heart starts hammering.