Always Have, Always Will [Paperback]

Life after college brings a lot more freedom -- and a lot of new problems. Brian must trade his status as BMOC for the bottom rung of the corporate ladder, while Michael, who has long given up on college, now wonders if he's also given up on his dreams. Emmett visits Pittsburgh to celebrate the spectacular launch of his fashion marketing company in Los Angeles (or so everyone thinks), while Deb adds gay rights advocacy to her juggling act of working at the diner and taking care of her ailing brother, Vic. Like Lindsay -- who experiences life as a struggling artist and true love for the first time -- Deb's about to get more than she bargained for. Add in a secret romance, sexually charged office politics, an over-the-top drag ball, and the arrival of new friends and lovers, and our little gang is tested enough to qualify for postgraduate credit. More than ever before, Michael and Brian find their friendship challenged. As their choices tear them apart, Brian sees that it's Michael he's always loved, and that he always will. But will he tell him before it's too late?

6:57.

Three minutes left. The big red numerals still glowed despite the gray-blue frost that leaked into the room around the cheap plastic Levolor-look-alike miniblinds Michael had gotten for next to nothing with his employee discount at the Big Q store. He had three minutes. Then the alarm would go off and it would all start again. He closed his eyes and debated whether to wait for the alarm, or turn it off and get up, or just turn it off and try for a few extra minutes.

"The party," he sighed as he remembered. He'd have to get up; too much to do to start the day behind. If he started out fifteen minutes behind schedule, the whole day would run fifteen minutes behind schedule, and there would be too many people jamming his minuscule apartment at eightish to spare fifteen minutes. He peeked.

6:58.

He still had two minutes. He squeezed his eyes shut and ground his morning erection into the pillow he'd wrapped his legs around. He pulled it to his chest and pretended he wasn't alone in the bed. The thought made him sad.

"It's just another day without you," the DJ's voice cut into the blue darkness of Michael's bedroom from the speaker in the radio alarm. "The latest from Jon Secada here at BZZ 93.7 FM just our way of saying good morning, Pittsburgh, it's seven o'clock."

"Morning alone," Jon sang into the hazy blue room. Michael put the pillow over his head as much to dry the tears suddenly on his face as to block out the way-too-apropos sound track that was beginning his day.

"I breathe a little faster, every time we're together," Mr. Secada managed to interject into Michael's morning before Michael hit the snooze button and shut him off.

He put his feet on the cool wooden floor and his face in his hands. He yawned violently and ruffled his hair ferociously as if to force the sleep from his body.

"Great," Michael sighed, and fell back onto the bed, his feet still on the floor. "I'll be singing that in my head all day now," he said out loud in an effort to dispel the haunting lyric from the room.

"Don't want to hold on to never, I'm not that strong," Jon sang in his head.

7:02. It had all started again.

"Oh God, oh God, oh gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa..." The strangled cry trailed off as Brian put a pillow over the face of the guy who was doing the screaming. It was too early, and the guy's bedroom technique had mainly consisted of reciting the dialogue from Powertool. I gotta find another place to crash tonight, Brian thought, his mind wandering as he continued to plow the porn star wannabe moaning into the pillow beneath him.

Brian's dorm privileges had ended three weeks earlier following graduation, and he had been in no mood to return to the arms of the family he had neither seen nor spoken to since the sophomore-year Christmas-tree incident. He smiled thinking about the looks of horror on the faces of those present when the tree went up like a torch as Brian touched it with the tip of the flame from his Zippo.

His father had been in a drunken rage, and after smashing all the still-wrapped presents, he had shoved his son into the tree, nearly toppling it, so that he could slap his wife, a frequent enough holiday occurrence to be a Kinney Christmas Eve tradition. Brian had felt foolish saving the tree from falling as the blow landed on his mother's left cheek and knocked her backward into her favorite chair.

"I know you don't appreciate it, you little bastard," Brian's father had said, gesturing grandly, raising his half-filled glass of whiskey. "There may be no presents under the tree for you today, you ungrateful son of a bitch," he went on, turning to direct the word bitch directly at Brian's mother. "But I've worked all my life so that someday, someday, all this will be yours."

Setting fire to the Christmas tree had seemed the only possible response to that, it being his house and all. He lit the tree and then a cigarette and headed for the door.

"Brian, please don't smoke in the house," his mother had said, the last words any member of his family had spoken to him, though some colorful phrases did follow the blazing tree thrown out the front window onto the lawn as Brian made his way to his muscley little Nova wedged into the heap of snowplow leavings at the curb.

"What's so funny?" asked Wannabe, making Brian aware that he was not only laughing out loud but that he'd stopped what he'd been doing.

"Christmas," Brian snarled, slamming himself back into Wannabe and eliciting yet another porn star quote. "Better -- watch -- out -- Santa's -- coming," Brian grunted, punctuating each word with another thrust as he tried in vain to fuck the guy hard enough to get him to shut up or ask Brian to stop, neither of which happened.

"Oh, fuck me, yeah, that's it. I love that big cock," Wannabe aspirated, trying to catch his own reflection in a nearby mirror.

Brian began to run through the names or, in some cases, just the faces of possible new temporary hosts to distract himself from the constant inane stream of obscenity. His mind drifted. Thoughts of staying at Michael's reminded him of Michael's face at graduation.

Brian had refused to participate in the commencement ceremony at Carnegie Mellon in part because he was afraid that his family would find out and attend. Michael and his mom had been disappointed but understanding when Brian had informed them of his decision. "I've gotten what I wanted and so have they. I played soccer on that field for them for four years, and now I can put their name and the words cum laude on my résumé. I can't see putting on a silk gown that doesn't fit well enough to show off my body and standing in line for two hours to pick up an empty leather folder, 'cause they mail you the diploma, you know? Why is it that people always need a ceremony to prove what they already know?"

That's what he'd said was his reason anyway.

And he'd completely fallen for it when Michael had asked to meet him at Gesling Stadium where the commencement had taken place several days before. Michael, his mom, and his uncle Vic were waiting for Brian on the empty field with a boom box blaring "Pomp and Circumstance" and a diploma cut in the shape of a sheepskin that they'd made themselves proclaiming that they the undersigned, Deb, Vic, and Michael, were "hereby officially way fucking impressed."

That had been all that really mattered; they were the family that counted. He remembered the pride on Michael's face and the celebratory kiss they'd shared unabashedly in the middle of the soccer pitch where Brian had been the star for four solid years.

He found himself kissing Wannabe with an intensity that surprised them both and which, Brian was thankful, had finally gotten the guy to shut up. He was hot, but he was really only a means to an end -- more so than usual. Brian had spent the two weeks following his dorm departure with Michael, Deb, and Vic at their summer rental on Lake Harmony in the Poconos. After that he'd not really had any place to go. He could have stayed at either Novotny's -- Michael's apartment or Deb's house -- and both had offered, but their old friend Emmett was on the way to stay with Michael, and Vic had been living with Deb since his HIV had turned south two and a half years earlier. Both still had room for him, but Brian had grown accustomed to coming and going when and with whom he chose and was not ready to live with anyone. For that reason, he'd avoided the roommate question with Michael as well as several others from school. So, he'd dropped his stuff at Michael's and proceeded to do what he'd have been doing anyway.

"Yes, yes, yes," Wannabe said, sounding for all the world like Meg Ryan's fake orgasm in the deli in When Harry Met Sally. Did he have any original material? Brian wondered as he rolled off.

"What about you?" Wannabe asked. "You didn't finish."

"Oh, yes, I did," Brian said, reaching for the cigarette he'd wanted since he'd first been awakened by Wannabe's persistent but uninspired blow job.

"Oh, come on," Wannabe began, grabbing for the prize and licking a nearby nipple.

The phone rang. They exchanged a look and Brian took the opportunity to light his cigarette. Wannabe sighed wistfully, then turned to get the phone. Brian exhaled a cloud of smoke and a sigh of relief and mentally began to narrow his list of possible new residences.

"It's for you," Wannabe said, thrusting the phone irritably at Brian.

"Hello?" Brian asked.

"Brian, it's Michael."

"Michael," Brian said, visibly relaxing. The smile that spread across his face accomplished what Brian had been trying to achieve all morning. Wannabe shut up and fucked off, flouncing into the bathroom, closing the door a little harder than necessary. Brian heard the shower come on.

"Listen, Brian," Michael said, his voice pinched in a way that Brian knew meant he had the phone tucked between his ear and his shoulder while doing three other things. "I need a favor."

"Name it," Brian said.

"Could you pick up Uncle Vic for Emmett's welcome-home party tonight?"

"Isn't he coming with Deb?" Brian asked, idly drying himself with a corner of the sheet.

"She's got a PFLAG committee thing and he's in vocational therapy at the center. I'd do it but I've only got three hours from the minute I get off at the Q to hit the bakery, get the hot stuff in the oven, lay out the food, and get a cab out to meet Em at the airport. I'll probably still be wearing my work smock and name tag as it is."

"Well, I love a man in uniform, but how about if I pick up Vic and Emmett?" Brian said, blowing smoke at the ceiling as he lay back on the strange bed.

"That'd be great but the airport -- "

"I don't have anything after the interview at Inverness/Muir and I have a car," Brian interrupted.

"Right." Michael's voice lit up. "The apprenticeship. That's today? Good luck. Anything I can do to help?"

"Paid internship," Brian corrected. "Thanks, I've got it covered. Leave the door open, would you? I've got to stop by your place -- I ...