too nice a guy, too clever to ever have an affair with the boss.
And because Jordana is not the type to have an affair, to weave a tissue of lies to prevent her husband suspecting anything, because she is not the type to do all of the things she suddenly finds herself doing, she starts to think that perhaps this is different.
Perhaps this is not just an affair. Perhaps Michael—as unlikely as she ever would have found this up until a few days ago—but perhaps Michael is The One, perhaps she made a terrible twenty-year mistake with Jackson, and God has made this happen because Michael is the one who listens to her, who understands her.
Michael is the one she is supposed to be with.
Dr. Posner leans back in his chair and steeples his fingers together, peering over the top at Daniel, who is shifting uncomfortably in the corner of the sofa, and he waits.
The seconds become minutes, and still Daniel doesn’t say anything.
“Daniel?” Dr. Posner starts, gently. “You wanted to see me alone?”
Daniel nods, looking miserable.
“Is there something you want to talk to me about?”
He nods again, his eyes flickering up to meet Dr. Posner’s before he looks away.
“I think . . .” Daniel starts, his voice almost a whisper before he stops and sighs. “There’s something I haven’t ever been able to talk about . . .”
Dr. Posner waits.
“Oh God.” Daniel’s voice is a moan, his pain and confusion evident, and Dr. Posner knows what Daniel is about to say, has suspected it from the first.
Daniel closes his eyes, unable to look at Dr. Posner, his guilt and shame too much to say the words while looking someone in the eye.
And his voice, when it emerges, is broken and hoarse.
“I think I might be gay.”
It is something Daniel has always known. His big secret. The one he has spent his life running from. He has spent his life trying to pretend that it is not the case, that he can be what he thinks of as “normal,” that he can be the son, the husband, the father that everyone expects him to be.
He has known since he was a boy, even before his teenage years, those years when he pretended to be interested in girls even though alone, at night, the fantasies that aroused him most always featured boys and, more specifically, his best friend at school.
He would lie there, trying to push the fantasies aside, terrified of being different, terrified of anyone finding out, trying to convince himself that he was interested in girls, that as long as he had a girlfriend, stayed around women, he would be like all the other boys, he would be normal.
And he loved women. Surely that must mean something, he would tell himself. He had always been so much more comfortable with women so surely he must be straight, like everyone else, even if he never developed a fascination with breasts the way the other boys did, even if the girls he dated were, well, boyish.
Then, at college, he remembers trying to date a girl who didn’t seem to know they were dating. The night he first attempted to kiss her she had pulled back in surprise.
“But I thought you were gay,” she said, and he had recoiled in horror.
“Why?” he demanded. “Why would you think that?”
“I just assumed,” she said, and she never gave him the reasons.
He built himself up. If he looked masculine, macho, there would be no doubt, for he assumed she had thought he was gay because he was skinny.
He made sure he always had girlfriends. Lovers. Women around him all the time. Long-term relationships. Being with a woman meant he didn’t have to think about it, didn’t have to think about the hard bodies that he felt so drawn to in the gym, the men who occasionally gave him searching looks, the men he tried to ignore.
Until Steve.
Friends for years, they had gone to Amagansett the summer he met Bee, and the night before they met Bee, he and Steve had got drunk together, and, despite thinking about every detail, every second of that night for years, despite thinking of it still, he is not sure how it happened, but he and Steve ended up sleeping together.
What he remembers most about that night is how every bone and every fiber of his body felt as if it was on fire. This is what I’ve been missing, he remembers thinking. This is what it feels like to