his hair. “This is huge, Dean! I mean, I’m honored, but there should be cake or something.”
“Cake?”
“Yes! I think everyone’s coming out should involve cake.” He stopped pacing and turned to me, wearing this endearingly goofy smile. “Don’t you think people would be less anxious about having to do it if they knew there’d be cake at the end?”
“I don’t need a cake, and it’s not a big deal. I came to terms with being different a while ago, and I figured I’d tell people when necessary.” I spread my hands. “Honestly, I’ve never understood why people feel the need to come out. The only people who really need to know your sexual orientation are your potential sexual or romantic partners.”
If I’d learned one thing about Dre in our short time together, it was that he couldn’t control his facial expressions. He wore his emotions plainly on the outside. It was kind of sweet, though it would have made it almost too easy for me to beat him in a debate. At the moment, he was looking shocked.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing,” Dre said. “It’s just . . . I didn’t expect you to be—”
“Anything more than a clone of my mother?”
“Like me.”
Dre’s answer might have offended me under different circumstances, but there was such an honesty to it that it caught me a bit off guard. Only, before I could come up with a suitable response, the lights flickered and cut out, plunging the room into darkness.
“Dean?!”
“Stay where you are,” I said. “The emergency lights will come on in—”
The emergency lights over the door flared to life, bathing the walls in their halogen glow.
“What the hell is going on, Dean?”
I didn’t know, and I didn’t want to lie to Dre. My heart was pounding faster and my mouth was dry. Keeping him calm was the only thing keeping me calm. “Sit,” I told him. “You don’t want to trip in the dark and break your leg.”
Dre marched mechanically to the couch and sat across from me. He tugged at his tie and tried his phone again, his frustration growing. “I can’t deal with this!”
“Everything will be fine,” I said. “I promise.” It would only be a lie if I couldn’t keep that promise, but I couldn’t bear to see Dre so upset, especially about something over which we had no control.
“Maybe this time, but what about next time? Or the time after that?”
“There’s always a bomb scare or a threatening letter or a suspicious package.” I was supposed to be trying to make Dre feel better, and I realized I was probably having the opposite effect, so I hurried along. “But in all of the years my mother’s been in office, she’s never even come close to being in real danger because the people in charge of her security are good at their jobs. And so is the Secret Service.”
“I hate this! I hate that every time my dad leaves the house, I’m worried someone with a gun and a twenty-page handwritten manifesto is going to find him and shoot him.” He stood and began pacing again despite the dark. “This whole thing is ridiculous. Journalists digging into the most obscure parts of our lives, photographers following us everywhere. What’s the upside? What makes this worth the bullshit?”
I tried to come up with an answer that wouldn’t sound cheesy, but honesty often carries a whiff of cheese. “The opportunity to make the world a better place. That’s the only good reason to do it.”
“Is it enough?”
“I hope so.”
Dre sat back down, looking slightly more relaxed than before. “Thanks,” he said. “I tried talking to Mel about this stuff, but I don’t think she gets it.”
“I know what you mean.”
Dre smiled. “You really do, don’t you?”
Dre
IF SOMEONE HAD told me that Dean Arnault would be the one who kept me from having a panic attack while my parents’ lives were potentially in danger, I would have laughed so hard I might’ve peed my pants. The idea that we could have anything in common was ludicrous. Yet, there we were, sitting in the dark having a conversation like two people who could’ve been friends. And the messed-up thing was that there was a small part of me that didn’t want the lockdown to end so that I could spend more time alone with Dean.
“So your parents don’t know about you, then?” I asked. Dean and I had fallen back into silence, and I needed to keep talking or my brain would spin out