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York is where Mark wants to be. It’s where Mark did his internship last summer, working in one of the big firms because his father got him the position, and it is the whole point of law school. It’s where Mark will probably spend the coming summer, in another big firm or possibly the district attorney’s office. The latter would be much to the chagrin of his parents but also within their demands for his academic and career progression.
    Patrick is a big supporter of the D.A. option and, Mark suspects, penned an exemplary letter of reference, then persuaded one of Mark’s more impressive professors to sign it.
    Patrick settles in and doesn’t say anything. Instead he waits until Mark has thrown his head back, swallowed the shot and sucked on the straw in his soda before he asks: “You ready to tell me all about him?”
    Mark sighs and grumbles something incomprehensible. He’s got his jacket off the back of the chair and is halfway to the door before Patrick realizes he’s invited, too. They don’t talk about anything else that night, and in the morning Mark leaves early to go for a long run on his own.
    He runs for over an hour, as fast as he can without running out of air, challenging himself with the hilliest routes he knows. He goes over his story with Daniel again and again, checks to see if he stills remembers all the details, if it still hurts the same, and wonders if telling Patrick will change that. He wonders if Patrick—so clever and so perceptive—will realize the enormity of this story in Mark’s life, justified or not.
    When he gets back to Patrick’s apartment he’s dripping sweat from the tip of his nose and in rivulets down his back, panting as he helps himself to a bottle of water from the fridge.
    “Daniel,” is all he says as he walks through the living area, past where Patrick is typing at his desk. “His name was Daniel O’Shea, and if it’ll make you happy and you promise to stop asking, I’ll tell you about him after I’ve had a shower.”
    “I’m not going to promise that,” Patrick warns, but Mark is already closing the bathroom door and turning on the water.
    ***
    Mark met Daniel when they were both twelve years old. Mark was the lanky, skinny kid with greasy black hair and pimples; Daniel was a year ahead of him, a foot shorter, his floppy hair the same cardboard brown as the most boring cereals and shaped, fittingly, into a bowl cut. His eyes, though, had always been beautiful: light brown flecked with gold and green. Daniel was pudgy at twelve and still pudgy when he left for college five years later. It never bothered Mark because Daniel’s skin was always so warm, and the night Daniel agreed to be his boyfriend was the best night of his life.
    In the beginning they disliked each other. That lasted a few weeks, just as most things do when you’re twelve; then they became best friends and some time after that they fell in love with each other. They didn’t start dating until partway through Daniel’s junior year, when Mark was sixteen and finding his feet as a sophomore.
    The night it fell apart—and it wasn’t really one night, it was months and months—was the worst.
    ***
    “The jazz band can’t have two pianists.” It was the first time Daniel had ever spoken to him, even though they’d been seated together for all the band meetings since school started and they caught the same bus.
    “Well, it can,” Mark said carefully, staring down at his nails quickly when Daniel glared at him. “Why can’t it?”
    “We can’t both play at the same time,” he snapped.
    “Well, we could take turns?” Mark tried.
    Daniel raised an eyebrow and pushed his long bangs away from his eyes. “I’m older and I’ve been here longer.”
    “Are you asking me to quit?”
    Daniel pouted and shrugged. “It would be the right thing to do.”
    Mark giggled so loudly at him that Daniel ended up in detention for punching him—hard—in the arm.
    ***
    Over a year later, at