When Tony Met Adam (Short Story) (7 page)

The lights were on in Adam’s apartment.

That window that Tony had wondered about the first—and only—time he’d been here was blazing.

He took a deep breath as he stood on the porch, exhaling hard before reaching out to ring the bell.

He should have called or even emailed, but he knew if he
had
done that before coming over, there was a strong chance Adam would have shut him down. This way, the shutting would have to be done in person. Face-to-face. Man-to-man. Which was only one letter away from man
on
man.

Tony had the utmost faith in his persuasive abilities to change that
to
to an
on
. All he had to do was talk himself inside and close that door behind him.

This time he had three weeks. This time …

The door opened and …

Shit, he should have called.

A stranger was standing in the open door. Mid-thirties and attractive in a blond-with-fashionably-nerdy-glasses-and-a-button-down-sweater way. He was sizing Tony up with surprised scrutiny and barely concealed hostility. “Who the hell are
you?”

Tony’s stomach lurched in a way that wasn’t all that different from his reaction to the powerful antibiotic he’d been on, even after being released from the hospital. It had turned his intestines into sludge and kept him on the verge of being dehydrated. Combined with the toll the actual infection had taken on his body, along with the exhaustion from traveling halfway around the world, it had made him spend his first week home curled up in bed, asleep.

This trip to L.A. was his first real venture out, and his knees still felt a little wobbly. Particularly now. “Oh,” Tony said. “I’m sorry, um …”

“He’s with
me
now,” the man said, with a raftload of attitude. “So cross him off your hit list.”

“I honestly didn’t know,” Tony said. “I’ve been out of the country for months and … He didn’t know I was coming over here tonight. Really.”

The man crossed his arms but didn’t say anything, so Tony kept going. Because God, if Adam had made a serious connection and was genuinely happy with this man, who seemed extremely upset by Tony’s appearance, he didn’t want to mess it up for him.

“We only hooked up once, and it was a while ago. I just, um … I’ve been gone since then, and it was crazy to think he’d, you know … Wait for me.” He cut to the bottom line, resisting the urge to sit down on the steps and put his head between his knees. God, this sucked, in so many ways. “I really like him. He’s a good guy. A little nuts, but, you know, who isn’t? I’m just … Please, if you don’t mind, will you tell him that I stopped by and that I’m … happy for him.” He forced a smile, forced his hand not to shake as he dug in his pocket for his car keys. “He deserves someone who’s around all the time. I can’t give him that, I’m in the Navy and … Well. I’m Tony, by the way, and you don’t have to worry. I won’t be back. You can tell him that, too. If you want. Or don’t tell him anything, if you don’t want to. You can just pretend this never happened. I mean, it wasn’t like he was expecting me to come back …” He shook his head. “He wasn’t. So …”

Okay. He’d probably said enough. It was time to go. It was definitely time to sit down, and it would be better to do that in his car instead of on the sidewalk.

But before he turned away, the other man spoke.

“I’m Adam,” he said, then rolled his eyes before Tony could even raise an eyebrow. “And yeah, yeah, I know. We get that
all
the time.”

“It’s bound to happen,” Tony said. “Adam and Adam. I knew a Jason and Jason in college.”

Now the blond—Adam-2—was back to being hostile. Or maybe he was quizzical, but it involved frowning. “It’s Adam and
Steve,”
he said. “Wait a minute. We moved in just last month. Are you—”

“Steve,” Tony repeated, with a laugh. “Your partner’s name is
Steve.”
Holy shit.

“… looking for—”

“Adam,” Tony finished for him as his knees mutinied and the world swirled around him, and he sat down, right there on the porch steps. He looked back at Adam-2 over his shoulder, trying to force the spinning to stop. “I’m looking for Adam, who lived here back in January.”

The blond man laughed now, too. “Wow,” he said. “I owe Steve an apology. I actually thought … And, wow,
you
thought …”

“Nice to meet you,” Tony said, and as Adam-2 reached forward to shake his hand, the very last remnants of his hostility fell away. But it was replaced by concern.

“Are you all right?” Tony heard the other man ask as if from a distance—right before the spinning stopped and the world went black.

Adam almost didn’t take the call.

The number on his cell phone was that of his former landlord, Connor. But he’d paid up all of his rent and had even had his security deposit returned, so there was no reason to hide from the guy. Besides, they’d been relatively friendly during Adam’s years living there. Maybe Connor was calling because there was some mail or a package that had gone astray.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Adam, how are you? It’s Con. I’m sorry to bother you, but I just got the weirdest call from … Well, his name’s Adam, too. He’s my brother Steve’s latest boyfriend. They’re living over in 108, you know, your old place?”

“Yeah, Con,” Adam interrupted him, because the man could go on and on. “Sorry to have to make it short, but I’m just about to go into makeup.” Not quite a lie, considering he
was
due in makeup before the sun set, which counted as a
just about
in the earth-is-a-billion-years-old cosmic scheme of things. Until then, he was doing some shopping and getting some lunch. “If there’s something that you need …”

“Oh, sorry, of course,” Connor said. “It’s just that Adam—Steve’s Adam—told me that one of your, um, friends came to see you, but you weren’t there, of course, because you moved out. But apparently, this guy—Tony Something—had some kind of, I don’t know. Medical event, I guess. Adam called an ambulance and then he called me because he thought you should know.”

“Medical event,” Adam repeated, his heart in his throat. Tony had come to see him and had had a
medical event
.

“Yeah, the way Adam described it, he just kind of checked out. I don’t know if it’s drugs or alcohol—”

“It’s not,” Adam said.

“I’m not judging. It’s not my business to—”

“It’s
not.”
Adam spoke over him. “Tony was recently wounded in the war—the one in Afghanistan.”

“Oh, wow,” Connor said. “I had no idea.”

“Most people don’t,” Adam said. Tony had probably pushed himself too far, too fast. Driving all the way up from San Diego, to see Adam … God, he’d actually come to see Adam. “Which hospital did the ambulance take him to?”

“Cedars-Sinai,” Connor told him. “You might want to get over there, to talk to the doctors, you know, make sure they know he’s not just some drunk who needs to sleep it off.”

“Yeah, I will. Thanks for calling me. I really appreciate it.” Adam cut the connection and turned on his phone’s GPS, searching for Cedars-Sinai, which was on … Beverly Boulevard. Which wasn’t that far from his current location. He got his bearings and ran toward the street, scanning for a cab. There was nothing in sight, so he opened his phone again, and slowed to a jog as he scrolled through his recent history and found the number for Troubleshooters Incorporated. He hit
TALK
, and sure enough, after only one ring, good old Tracy picked up.

“Troubleshooters. This is—”

“Tracy,” Adam said. “Hi. You don’t know me. My name’s Adam, and I’m a friend of Sam’s. Well. Not exactly a friend. More like a nemesis, but okay. Whatever. Anyway, a mutual friend, a SEAL with Team Sixteen, was recently injured over in Afghanistan and I just got a call from another friend telling me that he’s—the SEAL friend—is in the hospital here in L.A., and it’s something of an emergency. I need Sam to get in touch with
another
SEAL named Jay Lopez, to ask him to call either me—” he rattled off his cell phone number “—or Cedars-Sinai Hospital because my injured friend might be unconscious and … Are you writing this down?”

“I am,” she said. “I’m also aware that you’re the one who called pretending to be Jules Cassidy, and I’m about to pull Sam out of another important meeting. So if this
isn’t
a real emergency? I will never put you through to him again, so help me God, as long as we both shall live, and I don’t think I got the name of the SEAL who’s in the hospital in L.A.…?”

“You didn’t get it because I didn’t give it to you,” Adam told her. “Sam will know who I’m talking about.”

She laughed her disdain. “He’s just going to read your mind …?”

“Wyndham,” Adam said, enunciating clearly. “Is
my
last name. You may have seen one of my movies? I’m an actor. People take my picture when I go to the grocery store and if they could, they’d take my picture when I take a fucking dump. They like to speculate about who I’m shagging and since I also happen to be very,
very
gay, I’m not going to say this SEAL’s name out loud, because that will bring a rain of shit down on his head and quite possibly ruin his life, and I will not do that to him, even though I’m so worried and scared for him that I would step in front of a fucking bus if I thought that would mean he’s okay. So instead, yes, I’m just going to let Sam, who is a very smart man, read my mind. Is that okay with you?”

Tracy didn’t miss a beat. “I loved you in
Snow Day,”
she said. “Please hold, I’m putting you through.”

There was a click and then he was on hold, but he moved to the edge of the sidewalk and stood on his toes to look because there was another rush of traffic coming down the street. But again, there was no cab.

So Adam again took off toward the hospital, his phone still to his ear.

And then, alleluia, Sam Starrett’s Texas twanged over the open line.

“Okay, Wyndham, here’s the deal,” he said. “I’ve already left a message for Lopez, and Tracy’s trying to reach Jenkins, Gillman, and Zanella, too. Tom Paoletti’s in the office today, and he’s calling Team Sixteen’s CO. If he can’t reach him, he’ll call the senior chief, and then he’ll go down his list of both officers and enlisted until he hits someone with his phone on. We’ll take it from here and make sure the hospital gets the medical information they need.”

“Thank you so much,” Adam said, and his relief made his chest tight and brought tears to his eyes. God damn it, he was
not
going to cry.

“What the fuck happened?”

“He came to L.A.,” Adam said, stopping on the corner, waiting for the light to change, trying not to breathe too hard into the phone. “But I moved while he was away and … I got a call from my former landlord and … I guess he came here to see me.” He made himself laugh. “What a fucking idiot, right?”

“I’d go for fool,” Sam said. “Not idiot. Are you at the hospital yet?”

“Not yet.” Although he could see the sign for its ER, red and vivid, in the distance. Still, he slowed as he realized why Sam might be asking. “Should I … Is it better for Tony if I stay away?”

“You
know
what I think. And I believe you agree,” Sam said. “But your definition and my definition of what’s better for Tony might be vastly different from his. He was supposed to stay in bed another week, at least. But here he is, in L.A. Probably because you didn’t take his calls. Definitely because he wanted to see you.”

“He didn’t call,” Adam said. “Although if he had …” He laughed his disgust. “Who am I kidding? I would have answered. I think about him, night and day.”

“Hold on,” Sam said, and as Adam stopped outside of the ER doors, there was muffled talking, as if he’d put his hand over the telephone. But then he moved it and Adam could hear: “Yeah, that’s great. Thank you, sir. That was Tommy.” He was talking to Adam again. “He reached the senior chief, who put in a call to the hospital. He’s going to connect them with Tony’s doctor. Right now the diagnosis is that he’s dehydrated, but they’re running some other tests. They’ve got him hooked up to IV fluids and some anti-nausea meds, because when he first came to, in the ambulance, he did some heavy-duty lunch-launching.”

Lunch-launching
was Sam-speak for vomiting. “When he
first
came to …?”

“Apparently he’s out again.”

“
Shit
. Did he hit his head when he fell?” Adam asked. “Have they given him, like, a CAT scan, or …?”

“I don’t have that information,” Sam said.

Adam moved slightly closer to the doors, and they opened with a whoosh. “I’m going in,” he decided. “I gotta hang up.”

NO CELL PHONES BEYOND THIS POINT
, said a big sign on the wall.

“Keep me posted,” Sam said.

“I will,” Adam said and hung up. He pocketed his phone and took a deep breath and approached the formidable-looking nurse behind the triage counter, who was guarding the entrance into the actual ER. “Excuse me. I’m, um, here to see Tony—Anthony—Vlachic.”

She finally looked up. “The Navy SEAL.”

“Yes. May I …?” He pointed. “Is there a room number …?”

“Are you one of his teammates?”

“Yeah,” Adam said, and it wasn’t a lie because according to some people both he and Tony were
playing for the other team
. Which made them teammates of a sort.

“He’s in fourteen,” she told him, granting him access. But he nearly tripped over his own feet as she added, “Another of your friends is already in there with him.”

“Oh,” Adam said. “Good.” And it
was
good, because it meant the ER doctor had access to more detailed information about Tony’s recent injury. And that goodness outweighed the tragic fact that Adam really couldn’t go in there now—for fear of outing Tony. Because even though the triage nurse didn’t recognize him, surely someone would.

Still, she was watching him now, so he kept going, searching not just for the little ER room labeled
fourteen
, but also for the men’s, where he could duck in, hide in a stall for a minute or ten, and then exit back the way he’d come in, with a breezy
Looks like things are under control, gotta get back to the navy base
to the nurse-guard.