Platonic by Kate Paddington

stares hard at the wall, calls his father “sir” and doesn’t back down. By the end of the conversation, his father has resigned himself to a reality in which his son will not follow precisely in his footsteps; he mumbles about it being less than optimal but does not say no. Even if he had refused to let him become a public prosecutor, Mark was ready to do it without his father’s blessing.
    One day he is going to be a District Attorney. He has decided. And he feels strong enough, smart enough, to do what he wants to do.
    His summer internship had gone well, he knows; he’d worked hard, and the job offer had come quickly after discussions that had indicated he was on the top of their list. He has the tenacity and the intelligence, he’s sure, to do a good enough job to keep him there and eventually excel.
    He graduates from Stanford, doing better than even he expects to, and then he works even harder prepping for both bar exams. Ben brings him coffee and forces him to stop for lunch, and very occasionally drags him into the shower to wash his hair and distract him for an hour or two. Mark walks out of the New York bar exam breathing easily and grinning, knowing the New Jersey exam will be just as straightforward. The job waiting for him in New York is guaranteed. He needs only to pack his things and find a place to live when he gets there.
    He brings up New York with Ben again in June. They haven’t made it official yet, but they’re pretty much living together. Mark’s dorm is noisy and he only has a single bed in a tiny room, while Ben has a two-bedroom house with a converted office and a corner bath.
    “So—New York?” Mark asks, grinning into his bowl of Cocoa Puffs because Ben is going to say yes, he is sure of it.
    Ben laughs and clicks his laptop shut, leaning forward on the table and beaming back at his boyfriend. “When do we leave?”
    ***
    Mark loves Ben, he thinks, as he has never loved anyone. They’ve had six solid months together while Mark finished his degree and Ben wrote short stories and editorials, sold them all freelance and made hardly any money. Now Ben’s thinking about a PhD to keep his mind moving, but is in no rush. He is happy trailing Mark to New York and throwing money around to make everything easy. He can enroll whenever he wants to at a New York college, he argues, and keep himself busy decorating their new apartment.
    Mark occasionally feels guilty about the money thing. His parents won’t support him in any way, shape or form now, but at least they still speak to him. The beginning salary for a research attorney wouldn’t keep a pigeon alive, and he doesn’t like to think about how he’d be faring without Ben. When they visit New York to hunt for somewhere to live, they eat at expensive restaurants. Ben buys him nice clothes, and the apartments they look at, while not lavish, are on the island and have some space. But whenever Mark gets that little crease between his eyes that clues Ben in to his over-thinking, Ben just kisses him on the nose and clicks his tongue at him. “It’s just money,” he says. “I love you.”
    ***
    Their first trip to New York occurs just as summer is starting to cool into September. Mark has his start date for work, and Ben has done research online to work out where to live and how much to pay. Ben has lined up dozens of apartments to look at over the weekend before they head back to Stanford and start packing. They’re in the city, walking fast with the flow of pedestrians and still arguing about money, when Mark stops suddenly in the street.
    He’s frozen, and his hand in Ben’s drags Ben back laughing and looking around to see what has caught his boyfriend’s attention.
    On the opposite corner of the intersection stands, unmistakably, Daniel O’Shea.
    With a start, Mark realizes it’s been almost a decade since he saw him in the flesh, at least six years since he deliberately unfriended him on Facebook and lost access to his