Eden Revisited: Adam's Story
A Killian Kendall Expanded Universe Short Story
By Josh Aterovis
Copyright 2026
Chapter 4
In the end, moving in with Charlie was surprisingly easy — at least on the surface. But of course, there were practicalities and negotiations to work through, even if he liked to pretend everything was as simple as handing me a key.
The first point of contention was rent. I’d barely begun to ask what a fair monthly contribution might be before Charlie cut me off with a dramatic wave of his hand.
“Absolutely not,” he said, horrified. “You’re not paying me rent. What would I even do with it? Roll it up and stuff it into my mattress with the rest of the money I’m not spending? I have more than I could ever possibly spend already.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but he plowed ahead. “Your help around the house will be worth more than any check. And don’t forget, I want you to have time to focus on your business. I didn’t invite you here to be my butler.”
“I wasn’t planning on butlering,” I said dryly.
He smirked. “Good. Because I’m not the easiest person to serve. Just ask my last lover.”
Still, I couldn’t help but feel a little guilty. “Charlie, it doesn’t sit right with me not to contribute anything.”
“Well, you can help with groceries,” he relented. “And wine. Lord knows I go through enough of it.” He paused. “And maybe you can help me figure out this damn new smart TV I bought. I swear it has a mind of its own.”
“Done,” I said, holding out a hand. He shook it solemnly, as if we’d just finalized a high-stakes business merger.
We made other practical decisions together over the next few days. I would move into the guest bedroom, with a view of the dunes and just enough space for a desk and my computer setup. Charlie had it painted a calming sea glass green and made a big fuss about getting it professionally cleaned before I arrived. I offered to do it myself, but he insisted that was no way to start a new chapter.
As I began packing up my apartment back in Baltimore, I was struck by how little I truly owned. A few pieces of cheap second-hand furniture, some clothes, books, and computer equipment. I sold the furniture on Facebook Marketplace, lightening my load until it all fit into the back of Bryant's SUV. “More trunk space,” he’d said, “and I don’t trust your jalopy to survive the Bay Bridge if it was weighed down with all your crap.”
Ever the loyal friend, he'd taken the weekend off to help with the move. He showed up with coffee, his usual sarcasm, and a surprisingly efficient packing strategy.
“You sure about this?” he asked as we stacked the last of my boxes in his car. “You’re moving in with a semi-retired gay activist with a caftan collection and a penchant for martinis.”
“I know,” I said. “It’s weird. But it feels...right.”
“Good.” He clapped me on the shoulder. “Because I think it’s going to be really good for you.”
Once everything was packed, I stood in the empty living room for a moment. The walls were bare now, stripped of the few pieces of art I’d managed to scavenge from secondhand shops. Without them, the place looked even more temporary, as though I’d never really lived there at all.
“You okay?” Bryant asked from the doorway.
“Yeah,” I said, but I didn’t move. “I guess I just thought this was where I’d start over. Now it feels like I’ve been waiting to start.”
He walked over, slung an arm around my shoulders, and gave me a squeeze.
“Then maybe this next place is where it really begins.”
The drive to Ocean City took longer than usual thanks to traffic, but I didn’t mind. I kept the windows cracked, the music low, and the rear bumper of Bryant's car in view. Somewhere around Easton, I realized I wasn’t anxious. That was new.
When we finally pulled up in front of Charlie’s house, the sun was beginning to dip low over the horizon. The air smelled like salt and sunscreen, and the sky had that soft golden haze that makes everything feel briefly cinematic.
Charlie was waiting for us on the porch, two glasses of wine already poured.
He flitted around like an overexcited host, directing where everything should go, providing snacks and drinks, and insisting we all sit down for a proper lunch on the porch. I half-expected him to toast my “arrival into queer coastal domesticity.”
By the end of the day, I was unpacked and settled in, my things neatly tucked into the second floor bedroom that smelled faintly of lemon. As the sound of the waves filtered in through the open window, I sat on the edge of my new bed and breathed a sigh of relief. I felt grounded in a way I hadn't in a long time.
Maybe Bryant was right, maybe this would be good for me.
We spent the next few weeks slipping into a rhythm. Charlie, ever the grand queen and benevolent tyrant, appointed himself my personal guide to gay culture — an undertaking he dubbed Operation De-Cloister the Closet Case.
He instituted weekly movie nights with religious devotion. We started with Paris Is Burning, and by the time we hit To Wong Foo and Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, he was quoting entire scenes by heart, complete with hand gestures and dramatic accents. When he insisted we watch Mommie Dearest and Valley of the Dolls, I pointed out that he might just be trying to corrupt me with camp.
“That’s the point, dear boy,” he replied. “Every self-respecting homosexual should know who Neely O’Hara is and why Joan Crawford hates wire hangers.”
Outside of movie nights, he dragged me to his favorite shops and gay-friendly cafes, flipping through racks of vintage jackets or sipping overpriced espresso with an air of judgmental delight. “Style isn’t about money,” he told me once, “It’s about taste. And darling, yours could use a smidge of direction.”
For someone who liked to moan about his aching hips and fading stamina, Charlie had a surprising amount of energy. If not for the occasional wince when getting up from low furniture, I’d never have known he was in his eighties. The man could out-walk me in a mall, out-dance me in the living room, and definitely out-talk me at a dinner party. Realizing this, and not wanting to look like a sluggish houseguest, I reluctantly agreed to his suggestion that I join his gym.
He swam laps. I wheezed through the treadmill.
As we made our rounds to local haunts — bars, bookstores, galleries — I noticed something else: everyone knew Uncle Charlie. Everywhere we went, someone was hugging him, waving, calling out, “Charlie, darling!” I began to feel like I was in the presence of minor royalty. A local legend. And to my surprise, I was warmly welcomed simply because I was with him.
Then, one night after dinner, we opened a second bottle of wine. It was late. The windows were open and the air was thick with salt from the ocean and the soft hum of crickets just beyond the screen door. We sat in the living room — him in his usual wingback chair, me curled sideways on the couch — when he set his glass down and gave me a long, unreadable look.
“Would you like to hear my story?” he asked, suddenly serious.
“I thought I already was,” I said, gesturing at the half-empty wine bottle. “You’ve been narrating your entire life one Judy Garland quote at a time.”
He smiled, but didn’t laugh. “No, I mean the real one.”
I straightened slightly. “Yeah. I’d like that.”
He nodded once, folded his hands in his lap, and began.
He told me he’d been living in New York City during the Stonewall Riots — “though I wasn’t at the bar that night,” he said with a smirk. “I was at home, pretending to be straight and drafting a real estate contract. A tragic evening all around.”
At the time, Charlie had been a rising star at a prestigious Manhattan law firm, ambitious and closeted — “I knew I was gay, of course, but I was a proper Catholic boy from Connecticut. I figured I’d just marry a debutante and have nervous breakdowns in secret like the rest of them.”
But something about Stonewall broke that illusion for him.
“It was the first time I ever saw people like me fight back,” he said, swirling his wine slowly. “I watched on the news, saw queens throwing bricks, drag performers cursing at cops. And I thought, ‘Maybe I don’t want to die quietly after all.’ So I quit the firm. Just like that. Walked away from six figures, which in those days was basically a king’s ransom. And I joined the Gay Liberation Front.”
I blinked. “The real GLF?”
He nodded. “Met my first boyfriend there. The artist. The one who did that painting you admired, of the boys under the tree. That was him and I. We protested together. Got arrested at one of our kiss-ins. My parents disowned me after that. Said I was an embarrassment. But I finally felt alive.”
When their relationship ended, he moved to Florida in the late '70s to fight Anita Bryant’s vile “Save Our Children” campaign. “We lost,” he said simply. “That loss gutted me. It made me doubt whether we’d ever win. So I ran away — to San Francisco. Thought maybe the West Coast would be kinder.”
It wasn’t.
He was there when Harvey Milk was shot. He joined the protests after Dan White’s ludicrous sentencing — the infamous “White Night Riots.”
“By that point, I was exhausted. I was angry. I wanted to believe in something again. That’s when I met Pietro.”
His voice softened on Pietro’s name, like touching silk. “He was older. Kind. So gentle. We moved in together after six months. Built a life.”
Then came the virus.
They lost dozens of friends. Pietro got sick. Charlie cared for him until the very end. “It was like watching the sun die. I still dream about him, sometimes. He smelled like tobacco and cedarwood and almond soap. I kept a bottle of his cologne until the glass cracked."
He stared out toward the window for a long beat before continuing.
“That’s where all my money came from, you know,” he said quietly. “Pietro left me everything. His family tried to take it from me, of course. Vultures. They swooped in the moment he passed, suddenly full of righteous indignation, acting like I was some kind of grifter who’d tricked him in his final days. But they weren’t there. Not when it counted. They never had time for him while he was alive — didn’t return his calls, never came to visit. Not once. Not even when he was down to skin and bones and couldn’t get out of bed without help.”
He set the glass down with more force than necessary, though his voice remained steady.
“I wasn’t in it for the money. God, no. I would’ve given it all up in a heartbeat if it meant I could’ve saved him. But I was the one who held his hand in the hospital. I was the one who washed him and fed him and made sure he died with dignity. They didn’t get to sweep in at the end and rewrite that story.”
Charlie leaned back and let out a long, measured breath. “We went to court. It got ugly. Accusations, character assassinations — you know the drill. They tried to paint me as some opportunistic leech, just the ‘roommate’ who overstayed his welcome. But Pietro had been smart. Everything was in writing. The will was airtight. And I had years of witnesses who knew exactly who I was to him. I won.”
He looked at me, then, not with pride, but something closer to weariness.
“I didn’t ask for any of it, but I protected it like it was the last piece of him I had left. And in a way, it was. So yeah...that’s where the money came from. It wasn’t a windfall. It was a war. And a promise kept.”
When Pietro died, Charlie fled again — back to New York, then eventually to D.C., and later Maryland. He’d joined ACT UP in the mid-’80s, galvanized by the government’s callous neglect.
He was there for the FDA protest in 1988 — the infamous “die-in.”
“I wasn’t arrested,” he said. “But I helped plan it. We made cardboard tombstones and laid them across the road. I carried one that said, ‘He died because you didn’t care.’”
In 1993, at the March on Washington, he met Tim McFeeley from the Human Rights Campaign Fund. “He said he needed fighters. I told him I was tired. He said tired people make the best warriors. We see the long road.”
Charlie worked with HRC for almost two decades. Lobbied Congress. Met presidents. Buried more friends than he could count.
“I’ve been angry a long time, Adam,” he said, looking up from his wine. “But lately I just want to make space for something softer. Something warmer. Maybe even hopeful.”
The room was quiet except for the whisper of the waves in the distance.
“I had no idea,” I finally said.
He gave me a small, tired smile. “No reason you should have. That’s the point of surviving, dear. So the next generation doesn’t have to carry all of it. But sometimes...I think it’s good to share it. So someone remembers.”
“I will,” I said, my voice barely audible.
He raised his glass. “To remembering, then.”
I clinked mine softly against his. “To remembering.”
Our routine seldom varied. I worked during the day, breaking only to make us lunch — Charlie insisted on a proper lunch — and in the evenings, we’d sit on the back deck, watching the gulls circle overhead and listening to the waves until the air turned too cool for Charlie’s liking.
Weekends were for outings. We often headed to Rehoboth Beach, Charlie’s spiritual home, to visit his favorite bars. Bryant usually joined us, and Ilana and Lysander came along when they were free. We caught the occasional drag show, sometimes took in a movie, and ate out far more than my bank account would have liked — though Charlie more often than not insisted on paying, waving away my protests with a dismissive flutter of his hand. “What good is money if you don’t use it to feed your friends and fatten them up?” he’d say.
To my surprise, I was content. For the first time in a long time, I felt settled — not quite healed, but healing.
The only disruption in the calm was Charlie’s ongoing campaign to nudge me back into the dating pool. He paraded a steady stream of eligible bachelors past me: a charming accountant, a sweet-natured musician, a too-handsome-for-his-own-good bartender. I went on a few polite dates, mostly to appease Charlie, but nothing sparked. No chemistry, no second dates, and certainly no one-night stands — much to his chagrin.
“You’re wasting your youth!” he’d cry with dramatic flair.
“I’m in my forties, Charlie,” I’d reply, rolling my eyes. “That ship has sailed.”
“If I were a younger man, I’d snap you up in a heartbeat,” he’d declare with mock indignation.
I’d laugh, and he’d fix me with a look both fond and wistful. “Let me rephrase that. You are quite the catch. I just happen to be too old to do anything about it. You deserve someone, Adam. A partner. A future.”
“I’m not ready for that yet,” I’d say. The line had become almost automatic.
Usually, that was the end of it. But one evening, as the last of the light drained from the horizon and we sat on the deck wrapped in sweaters, Charlie pushed further.
“Why not?”
I blinked at him. “What do you mean, why not?”
“I mean exactly that. Why aren’t you ready? What’s standing in your way?”
I hesitated. “My divorce isn’t final...”
“A loveless marriage. You’re not pining after Eve.”
“The boys...”
“They don’t have anything to do with this. Don’t use them as a shield.”
“I don’t know anyone...”
“I’ve introduced you to a dozen perfectly eligible men. You didn’t like any of them?”
I sighed, cornered. “I’m scared, Charlie. It’s been a long time. I’m out of practice.”
He nodded slowly, no judgment in his eyes — just understanding. “You’re smart, kind, honest, and easy on the eyes. And no, don’t argue with me. I’ve seen you come back to life in the past year, Adam. You don’t have to be ready. You just have to be open.”
“Yes, Mother,” I said dryly, smiling despite myself.
He arched a perfectly groomed brow. “You should listen to your mother. Now get inside before you catch your death of cold —a nd wash behind your ears!”
That was the weekend I noticed it for the first time.
We took our usual walk on the beach, a slow amble along the surf’s edge, but Charlie was winded by the halfway point. He leaned on my arm more heavily than usual, pausing to catch his breath. He tried to play it off with a chipper “Let’s go!” when he recovered, but we both knew something was off.
After that, I started to notice more.
Afternoon naps, where he used to be indefatigable. Dozing off in front of the TV, or even, once, mid-dinner. His pill organizer — once barely used — was now full of prescriptions. He never mentioned doctor visits, and I began to wonder if he was trying to hide something.
Was this just age catching up to him all at once?
No. Charlie was too self-aware, too proud, to let things slide unnoticed. He’d been hiding it. From me.
And I needed to know why.
One morning, I made his tea and waited on the back deck. It was one of those crisp fall mornings that hinted at the winds of winter just around the corner. He didn’t see me at first. He walked out slowly, his posture bent, his face drawn and pale. For a fleeting second, I saw the truth — unvarnished, unguarded. He looked...old.
Then he spotted me, and just like that, the mask snapped back into place. His shoulders straightened, his face brightened with a grin, and he practically sang, “Adam, I didn’t see you there.”
He eased into his chair with practiced grace, but I wasn’t fooled anymore.
“Charlie,” I said gently, “we need to talk.”
His eyes locked on mine, pleading silently for me to let it go.
I didn’t.
“Are you sick?” I asked.
He closed his eyes. A long silence stretched between us. Finally, he nodded. “Yes.”
I felt something hollow open in my chest.
“How long have you known?”
“A few months.”
“And you didn’t tell me?”
“I didn’t want you staying out of pity for a dying old man. I wanted you to feel free to leave when you were ready.”
I barely heard the rest. Dying. The word echoed in my skull, erasing all other thoughts.
“What is it?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper.
“Cancer.”
“Is it...treatable?”
Charlie grimaced. "The treatment is worse than the disease. I've seen friends go through it and suffer horribly. And for what? A few measly months? I've lived a full life, Adam. I'm not afraid to die. I just want to go out with dignity. I want to leave here knowing I did what I could to make the world a better place, right up to the end."
I shook my head, still not understanding. "But how can you just give up? You could fight this..."
"I'm tired of fighting, Adam. I've been fighting my entire life. I don't want whatever time I have left to be consumed with torturous treatments that make me sick and weak. And for God's sake, my hair might fall out! I'm a vain man, Adam. Let me die with my hair intact."
"How long?" I rasped, ignoring his weak attempt at humor.
“Six months, if I'm lucky. Likely less.”
My vision blurred. “You should’ve told me.”
"Perhaps."
"Perhaps? You're the only person in my life right now."
"I'm hardly the only person in your life. You have Bryant and Ilana. You'd have more if you'd only let them in."
"Didn't you think that I might need some time to deal with this? It never occurred to you that I might want to be there for you through this?"
"Of course it occurred to me," he replied calmly. "I didn't want you to feel obligated to stay when you need to move on with your life."
"Move on with my life? Is that what you wanted to do when you found out Pietro had AIDS?"
"That was different," he said stonily, although I could tell my point had been made. "Pietro was my lover."
"And you've been like a father to me the last few months. How could you think I'd just walk away from that?"
"I'm not your responsibility."
"And I wasn't yours but you were there for me anyway, a complete stranger. Who's going to take care of you?"
"I'll hire a nurse."
"I'm fully capable..."
"It's not about being capable. It's about ensuring you're free to live your life."
I exploded. “And what? Just leave you to die alone? You were there for me, Charlie. You saved me. You think I was going to walk away from you now? This isn't just your decision. I'm not a child and I'm not a puppet that you can control by pulling my strings."
He blinked for a second, then nodded. "You're right, of course. I have been treating you like a child. Perhaps it's because I've come to think of you as the son I never had."
His quiet confession took my breath from me. I slumped into the chair beside him.
“So I can stay?” I asked when the silence stretched too long.
“I was never going to ask you to leave. I just wanted you to feel like you could.”
“You’ll let me help?”
He gave a faint smile. “Could I stop you?”
“No.”
“Then why fight it?”
“No more secrets,” I said.
He raised a hand solemnly. “Scout’s honor.”
“And you’ll ask when you need help.”
“Unless you’re busy with work...”
“Charlie.”
He sighed. “Fine. Agreed.”
“Shake on it.”
We shook, sealing the deal.
He kept his word. But no promise could stop the decline. In the weeks that followed, he began to fade faster than I could accept. By winter, he was barely the man I had met just a little over a year before — just a pale, shrinking shadow of his former self. I moved my office into his bedroom, working while he dozed under the weight of his pain meds.
It was hard to wrap my mind around the concept that someone could fade away so quickly. It took all his strength now just to cross the room, even with my assistance. I knew it was just a matter of weeks, maybe even days, before he'd be completely bedridden.
He never said it out loud, but we both knew: the end was near.
One morning towards the end, he refused his pain medication even though he was obviously in a lot of pain, so I knew he had something important in the works. He still made appointments without my assistance, which often meant I didn't know what his plans were until he was ready to reveal them to me. It was a small thing I could do to give him some feeling of independence, even though it often caught me off guard.
"Who's coming today?" I asked him as I handed him a cup of tea. It was only lukewarm in case he spilled it on himself as he'd done a few weeks before.
“Randall Dupont,” he said.
“Your lawyer?”
He nodded. “I want to make some changes to my will.”
Alarm bells rang. “Charlie...don’t you dare pull a Pietro.”
He played dumb. “Hmm?”
I sat beside him, meeting his eyes. “Don’t even think about leaving your estate to me.”
He grinned. “And if I do? What are you going to do, kill me?”
“Be serious. I don't need it. I wouldn't know what to do with it. Do what you planned on doing with it. It'll do more good in the hands of those organizations than in my bank account. I'm doing fine with my business. You've given me more than enough."
“For your information, Mr. Know-It-All,” he said, clearly delighted, “I wasn’t planning on leaving you my estate.”
“Oh. I...”
“And if I were, I wouldn’t need your permission.”
“Charlie...”
“Ah, get your foot out of your mouth and get to work. And be a doll and give Randall and me some privacy when he gets here, will you?”
Curious as hell, I wouldn’t learn what changes he’d made until months later.
It was a rare good day.
Charlie was lucid, the pain dulled just enough by his medication to let him sit upright in bed, propped by a fortress of pillows. Sunlight filtered through the gauzy curtains, casting long golden stripes across his blanket. I’d made tea, and we sipped in comfortable silence until he broke it with a soft, almost fragile voice.
“You’ve started, you know,” he said, eyes distant.
“Started what?”
He turned to look at me, and for a moment, I saw not the fading man before me but the force of nature he had always been. “Your family. You’ve already begun to build it.”
I blinked, confused. “I don’t—”
“Bryant. Ilana. Lysander. Me.” He gave a small, sad smile. “You've become like a son to me. And I like to think I’ve been something like a father to you. You didn’t ask for that, and I didn’t mean to impose it, but it happened just the same.”
My throat tightened. I reached for my mug, but my hands weren’t quite steady.
Charlie went on. “We don’t always get the family we’re born into. Sometimes, if we’re lucky, we get to make our own. And that kind of family — chosen family — it’s a patchwork of people who see you, who love you for who you are, not who you’re supposed to be. That’s real. That lasts.”
“But you won’t,” I said before I could stop myself. My voice cracked. “You won’t last.”
He reached for my hand, his own shaking. “No, I won’t. And that’s why I need you to keep going. I need you to make space for more people to love you. You’re strong, Adam, but you’re not meant to do life alone. Let people in. Let them matter.”
I shook my head, blinking fast. “It’s hard.”
“Of course it is. Loving people always is. But it’s also the only thing worth doing in this world. The marching, the protesting, the organizing... You think all of that mattered because of politics? No. It mattered because of people. The people I fought for. The people I lost. The people I loved. Pietro. My friends. And you.”
A silence fell between us, heavier than before. He looked at me with a steadiness that rooted me to the floor.
“When I’m gone,” he said gently, “I don’t want you to close yourself off again. I want you to keep choosing. Keep building. Keep loving. Make your family, Adam. You’ve already started. Don’t stop.”
I squeezed his hand. “I don’t know how.”
He smiled, weary but proud. “You’ll figure it out. That’s what families do. We show up, we stumble, we hold each other steady. You’ve held me steady. Now let others do the same for you.”
I didn’t know it then, but that would be one of our last real conversations.
And I would carry those words with me like a lantern, lighting the road ahead.
He passed quietly, in his sleep one morning, just before dawn.
I knew the moment I stepped into the room. The spark that made Charlie Charlie was gone.
The funeral was packed. Hundreds of activists, lawyers, former colleagues, and old friends came to pay their respects. Bryant, Ilana, Lysander, and I sat in the front seats usually reserved for family. He was right. That's what we'd become. Charlie's family. Each other's family.
Everyone there agreed on one thing: Charlie had done what he set out to do.
He made the world better.
And I would never be the same for having known him.
Not long after the funeral, I moved out of the beach house that I'd shared with Charlie. Randall Dupont, Charlie's lawyer, had told me I was free to stay as long as I needed, but it felt empty without him. The business was doing well enough that I was able to afford a much nicer rental back in Baltimore this time around — an entire row house on a tree-lined street.
A couple of months after the funeral, I received a call out of the blue from Mr. Dupont. He asked me to come to his office. I had a feeling I was about to find out what changes Charlie had made to his will.
And I was right.
"Mr. Connelly," the middle-aged lawyer began after I'd been seated in the soft leather chair facing his ornate desk. I'd always found Mr. Dupont to be a pleasant, if somewhat stuffy fellow. He was slightly pudgy, with a receding hairline and dark eyes that I found inscrutible. "As I'm sure you recall, I visited with Charlie shortly before his death."
"Please, call me Adam," I said. "And yes, I remember. Charlie told me he was changing his will."
"Ah, yes. Indeed." He seemed somewhat flustered that I'd jumped ahead in the script he was following. He paused for a moment and found his place. "The reason that I've asked you here today is because when he changed his will, it was changed to include you."
I sighed. Mr. Dupont blinked. It wasn't the reaction he'd expected.
"I specifically asked him not to do that," I explained.
"Indeed," Mr. Dupont said, still blinking rapidly. "Perhaps this will explain things better," he said after a moment, sliding a cream-colored envelope across the desk in my direction.
I picked up the envelope and stared down at it for a minute before gently ripping it open. The outside gave no hints as to its contents. It was completely blank save for my name written in the uneven scrawl that had become Charlie's handwriting in the last weeks of his life. Inside, I found a single sheet of matching cream stationary.
It was a letter from Charlie.
Dearest Adam,
Before I say anything else, I want to thank you, though mere words cannot hope to express the depth of my gratitude. You came into my life when I had no reason to expect anything but emptiness and made my final months fuller than I had any right to
hope. You are truly the son I never had.
I know you will make some lucky man a wonderful and fulfilling partner someday, and I firmly believe that you will be reunited with your children. I know you try to keep that part of yourself buried deep within, but I see the pain it causes you not to see your boys. I wish my money could do something to alleviate that pain, but it cannot. In the end, money can rarely, if ever, mend matters of the heart.
You've made it quite clear, much to my amusement, how you feel about being included in my inheritance, but I hope you'll forgive me for what I am about to do. If you are reading this, then I am already gone and there is nothing you can do about it anyway."
I could almost hear his dry chuckle as I read his words.
I am leaving you the beach house. I believe it meant as much to you as it did to me, and I know you will take good care of it. I am also leaving you a small amount that you can do with as you wish. If nothing else, do what my friend told me to do after Pietro's gift to me and place it in a bank account until you are ready. Perhaps you can save it for the boys. Whatever you decide, I hope that you will accept it with the intention with which it is given to you -- out of love and appreciation.
Finally, with the end of my life you have run out of excuses to avoid your own. Start living, Adam, and live fully. Life is a gift; do not waste it.
With great affection, Uncle Charlie
Tears ran down my cheeks as I read the last words.
"Ahem," Mr. Dupont cleared his throat. "In addition to the bequest of the home in Ocean City, you are also to receive what I believe Charlie referred to as a small amount of cash."
"So I read," I said with a sniff. "What exactly did Charlie consider a small amount?"
Mr. Dupont named a figure that nearly caused me to fall out of my chair.
"You must be joking," I gasped.
"I assure you I'm not," was his dry response.
Charlie had outwitted me.
I didn’t want anything to do with the money — or the house, for that matter. I opened a savings account, deposited the inheritance, and tried to forget about both. What mattered more was the promise I’d made to Charlie. I took his advice seriously and made a genuine effort to start living again.
I was still scared — terrified, really — but I pushed myself to go out. I called up a few of the men Charlie had introduced me to. I even went on second dates with a couple of them. None of it sparked anything more than polite conversation and awkward goodbyes.
It was months before I could bring myself to return to the beach house. In my absence, the house had fallen into neglect. Weeds choked the garden beds, dust blanketed every surface inside. I spent a weekend cleaning, pruning, and trying not to notice the way Charlie’s presence hung in every room like a shadow that refused to lift.
He would have wanted it kept up, I reminded myself. During the day, I managed fine. But after the sun went down, the silence in the house became unbearable. That first night, I survived by going to bed early. The second night, sleep didn’t come so easily. Restless and unsettled, I finally decided to drive up to Rehoboth.
I parked downtown and walked to the Blue Moon — one of our old haunts. I hadn’t been there since Charlie began to fail. The place was mostly unchanged. A few familiar faces, but mostly new ones. I got a lot of sympathetic glances, but thankfully no one said anything. Not at first.
"You here on vacation?" asked the bartender, a darkly handsome guy who looked to be in his mid-twenties. I hadn’t seen him before.
“Huh?” I replied eloquently, surprised to be addressed.
"I don’t think I’ve seen you around," he said, sliding a Manhattan across the bar. "I know most of the locals. Figured you were visiting."
“I have a beach house in Ocean City,” I said, taking a sip. “Inherited it, actually. First time I’ve been back since my friend passed away. I couldn’t stay there another night by myself. This used to be one of our favorite spots.”
He paused mid-wipe, studying me more closely. “You’re not talking about Uncle Charlie, are you?”
The sound of his name spoken aloud — especially here — hit me like a punch to the chest. I swallowed the rest of my drink. “Yeah. It was Charlie.”
“Damn,” the bartender said softly. “That guy was a legend. I wasn’t even working here when he passed and I’ve still heard stories.”
I nodded, blinking rapidly. “He was the best. I wish you could have met him.”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” he said, then grimaced. “And I’m being an insensitive schmuck. You just lost your partner and here I am—”
“We weren’t lovers,” I cut in quickly. “He was like a father to me. Helped me through a lot.”
“Sounds like Charlie,” said an older man from the far end of the bar. “Sorry, didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but that was him. Always looking out for a fellow queer.”
“Uncle Charlie loaned me money after I broke my leg and couldn’t work,” said a guy from a nearby table, rough around the edges but sincere.
“He paid for my wedding,” added a woman with a buzzcut and tear-bright eyes.
"He covered my mom's funeral when she died," a young man chipped in.
The bartender smiled. “Sounds like one hell of a guy.”
“That doesn’t even begin to cover it.”
He handed me another drink and raised his own. “To Uncle Charlie.”
The toast echoed through the bar: “To Uncle Charlie!”
I raised my glass and took a deep drink.
Someone slid onto the barstool beside me, but I didn’t look up.
Then he spoke. “You knew Charlie?”
I sighed, not ready for another round of remembrance. “Yes,” I said, still not turning.
“You knew him well?”
His voice was soft, a little hesitant. I glanced over — and stopped cold. He was striking: tall, with waves of dark brown hair, and eyes that held a grief I recognized instantly. It was the same pain I saw every morning in the mirror.
“Yeah,” I said quietly. “You?”
He nodded. “Yes. We were good friends. Or I thought we were. I didn't even know he was sick. Didn’t hear about his death until after the funeral, or I would’ve been there.”
"He didn't want people to know?"
"But you knew?"
“I...I took care of him at the end.”
“Are you a nurse?"
"No, just...a friend. Chosen family."
A small, sad smile crossed his face. "Charlie was big on chosen family. You must’ve meant a lot to him.”
"He meant a lot to me, too. He meant a lot to many people." I gestured around the bar. “How did you know him?”
He smiled again, but a bit embarrassed this time. “Sorry, I should’ve introduced myself. I’m Steve Redden.”
“Adam Connelly,” I replied, shaking his hand.
His eyes lit with recognition. “He mentioned you! In one of his emails. Said you’d moved in and were ‘a great blessing to an old man.’ HIs words. Said you’d been a huge help.”
I felt a pang in my chest. “That sounds like him.”
“He helped me, too. Years ago. Paid for me to go to architecture school after my parents cut me off. To this day, I don’t know how he found out about me.”
“He had contacts,” I said, smiling faintly.
“He was a good man.”
“That he was.”
I bought him a drink. We talked until last call.
We exchanged numbers, but in my inebriated state, I gave him the wrong one — my work line — and didn’t hear from him for days. I figured I'd read things wrong and he wasn’t interested...until I checked my business voicemail and found his message. I called back immediately, mortified. He laughed it off and said he’d love to see me again next time I came down.
We started FaceTiming almost every night. I found myself looking forward to those calls more than I wanted to admit. By the time we made plans for a second date, my nerves were a wreck. I changed my clothes three times, and I hadn’t even brought that many to the beach house.
We met again at the Blue Moon bar, then moved to the attached restaurant for dinner.
We had a wonderful evening. The chemistry was just as evident as our first meeting. I was really enjoying myself until he brought up the subject of families, something that had somehow never come up in all our FaceTime conversations.
"Do you have much family?" he asked.
"No, I'm not close to my parents and I was an only child," I told him. I don't know why I didn't mention my marriage and two kids, but something stopped me.
"I'm sorry. I think I mentioned that my parents disowned me when I was still in school. I do have a sister though."
"Are you close?"
"Not as close as we used to be. She's never been very supportive of me after I came out. Her husband is even worse. One of those self-righteous Christian types."
"That's too bad."
"Yeah, and the worst part is, I think he's trying to keep me from seeing her at all. She just had her third child, and he's made it pretty clear he doesn't want me to even come for a visit."
"That's awful," I said, thinking once more about my boys and how I wasn't allowed to see them either. "Do you like kids?"
He shrugged. "As long as they are someone else's."
I looked up, my fork stopping in mid-air. "You don't want kids of your own?"
"Not really. I'm not one of those assimilation gay guys who yearns for two kids and a picket fence. I like my life the way it is. I don't need additional complications."
"Oh," I said, my heart sinking fast.
At least I'd found out now instead of later, I tried to tell myself, but I couldn't stop the intense feeling of disappointment. On some level, I hadn't given up on getting my boys back, and, if Steve was that adamant about not wanting children, that ended things before they'd even started, as far as I was concerned.
I grew quiet after that, answering questions as briefly as possible. I'd gone from wanting the evening to last all night to just wanting it to end as soon as possible. I'm sure Steve noticed my withdrawal, but he didn't give any sign. He insisted on paying the bill, and then we rose and walked outside. The night was clear and warm.
"Let's walk on the boardwalk," Steve suggested.
"No, I should really be going," I said in an attempt to beg off.
"It's a beautiful night," he said persuasively. "It's too early to go home. Come on, walk with me." When I hesitated, he added, "Please?"
How could I say no to those puppy dog eyes? I sighed and fell into step beside him.
We walked in silence down the street and onto the boardwalk. It was the perfect romantic setting. Couples strolled hand in hand down the boardwalk, the beach stretched out waiting for the next day of sun worshippers to descend, the moon sparkled on the ocean like a million diamonds scattered across its surface.
"So what did I say wrong?" he asked after a few minutes.
"Nothing," I answered too quickly.
"Come on, Adam. Give me a little credit. Everything was going great and then you suddenly pulled away like I'd slapped you. What was it?"
I sighed. "I have two kids."
His eyebrows shot up. "Really?"
"Boys. One is thirteen and one is ten, almost eleven."
"Wow. Do they live with you?"
"No, they live with their mother, my ex-wife. She won't even let me see them."
"Wow. I don't know what to say."
"There's nothing to say. I haven't given up on getting them back, so I guess that means we're over. I wouldn't want it to complicate your life or anything." My voice sounded bitter even to my ears.
"Adam, when I said that I didn't know you had kids."
"It doesn't change anything."
"Yes it does! It changes everything."
"How?"
He stopped, obviously at a loss for words.
"See?" I said wearily. "It doesn't change anything."
I walked away to stand at the rail overlooking the beach. I felt Steve walk up behind me. After a moment, I felt his hands on my shoulders. I tensed up immediately.
"We've only known each other for a few weeks," he said softly. "We've still got a lot to learn about each other, but I already know that I like you. A lot. You're different from anyone I've ever met. You're a good man, Adam."
"What about my kids?"
He tenderly began to massage my shoulders. "I hope to get to meet them someday."
"But you said..."
"I know what I said, but hear me out. The thing is, I've never pictured myself with kids. I've known I was gay since I was very young. I came out in high school. Dated a lot. And I've never found anyone I could see myself settling down with...until now. I guess I just grew accustomed to thinking I'd never have a family so it was just easier to say I didn't want them."
I felt the tension easing out of my shoulders under his fingers...and his words.
"But now?" I said, in a voice that was barely audible.
"Now I've met you."
"We just met. We hardly know each other."
"I know enough. All I'm asking is for a chance. I didn't even know you'd been married before a few minutes ago, let alone that you had two sons. It doesn't change how I feel about you. I'll admit it caught me off guard, but it's just another facet of you."
"It's not a dealbreaker?"
He gently turned my shoulders, so I was facing him. "It's not a deal breaker. It's a gift. If they're a part of you, I'm sure I'll love them."
He leaned in and I felt his lips press against mine. For a second, I felt as if I were falling but then I felt his strong arms slide around my body and I felt more grounded than I'd ever felt in my life. We kissed for an eternity or maybe only moments — I couldn't tell you now — before I pulled away.
"Thank you, Charlie," I whispered, and Steve's arms tightened around me.
Even now, I believe Charlie had a hand in bringing Steve and I together.
One last gift.
The beginning of something new.
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