"Hey mum!" His voice was tiny and thin, but she wasn't sure if that was the recording or the way he was talking. He sounded, wrong. "I'm really excited to tell you all about Greece." Ethan didn't sound excited. Jo thought about what the date was and realized he must have landed this morning, she expected a call, but maybe not until tomorrow, when he was home and settled. She was so confused by his tone and the timing, Jo nearly missed the last part of the message. "I should be there in a couple hours. Can't wait to see you and Zoe."

The message clicked off and Jo was at a complete loss. He was coming here? Today? She checked the time he had left the message, scratch that, he would be here really soon.

She had just walked in the door herself. Her house was a shambles, but that was not so big a deal. He'd lived here, helped her clean on Saturday mornings when she would get a bee in her bonnet and decide that they were a family that turned up the music and cleaned every weekend. Those moods never lasted, but for a while, they'd sing to each other and scrub floors and hang clothes. Ethan had developed a serious love for 90's R&B at the time.

Come to think of it, that might be where Harry found Lilith rock. He had cleaned with them a few times, roped in after a sleepover. The nature of those sleepovers and why he lingered had had uncomfortable implications today, like so many memories. It was easier when she just thought they were silly boys.

But everyone had a secret life she supposed. Jo was currently leading a double one.

She rolled her forehead in her palm and decided to take off her workout clothes, put on some shorts, Zoe had already disappeared upstairs, so there was no point in cleaning that up, it would be an exercise in folly. Zoe May follow her and undo anything she had done. Some things up there did need attention, Ethan's bed needed fresh linen.

It felt weird to be in this room now. She could picture Ethan and Harry, sprouting and pubescent, then lanky and locking doors. Their ghosts haunted this room. She missed that Ethan, often wished to rewind time.

That Harry though, so different from her man, was off-putting. She hadn't thought of the complication of knowing him when he was so young for a long time. He'd grown up so much, she often forgot it was before her eyes.

Ethan's bed disquieted her. As she stripped it, some thoughts of Harry and Ethan kissing were instructive and loud in here. In other instances, before, when she fantasized about Harry with men, it was hot. Harry with Ethan, brought up her gag reflex like it had that night she found out about them.

She couldn't think about it. Ethan's sheets smelled like a cupboard, the old ones, that nobody had slept on, and the ones from the actual shelf too. Jo hustled down the stairs and was cursing that she had to hold her boobs since she'd neglected a bra. She made a detour to throw one on, and made it back upstairs and was smoothing fresh sheets onto the bed when she heard Ethan come in.

"My lord, you are so tan! Like a bronze of yourself." She said coming off the stairs and wrapping her arms around him, needed to get her hands on him. Embrace some sense into herself.

Ethan locked his hands around her lower back and held on. He wasn't sobbing, but the emotion was grander than she would expect. They had gone a month without seeing each other many times since he left for uni. So much so that Zoe had heard his voice, come for cuddles and headed back up to her very serious pony game. Zoe found nothing amiss about her brother being away and then back. Jo thought all of the timing was off. She doubted he was checking on her, or still felt most comfortable here. She assumed it wasn't about her.

"Did you miss your old mum? Something go wrong on the way back?" Jo pulled out of his embrace and ran her hands over his shaggy vacation length hair and a brown shoulder uncovered in his vest top. "Did you drive straight home from the airport?"

"Yeah, much fun as it was, I'd just," he blew a breath out over his lips, it would be a raspberry if there was an ounce of playful intent in it. "I just wanted to come home, like really home, ya know."

Jo had an inkling. She cupped his face and figured the lock on his jaw would be loosed by time. "You want some tea, baby?"

"Yes actually, that sounds ace." The mindless task was comforting. She had been on edge the last several times that Ethan was in her house. She was slightly nervous even now, but it could be that there were cups in her sink. When she wasn't under it, that made her anxious. She could have laundry on the end of the couch for days, but not mugs in the sink. Jo'd deal with it later, her boy was home and needed her to wait him out, whatever had sent him straight home rather than to his apartment hours away needed talking out.

"Here's something hot to drink! No proper cuppas on the beach, huh?" She sat next to him and grinned at the look of him. He just looked exquisitely young and healthy.

"They served an approximation on the flight, but it was a plane. So, comforting as it was, I expect this will be better!" He hoisted the cup into the air and cheersed her. She crinkled her nose at him. He exhaled, "Perfect!" Thank you Mum. Now I know I'm in England."

"Well, you are definitely in England, but I want to hear about Greece! Where exactly'd ya go?" She leaned close in so their knees touched. "Get your phone out, I wanna see pictures."

Ethan smiled at her excitement and it crept until nearly his eyes, he was warming up. Hopefully he would spill. He pulled up his phone and held it at an angle so she couldn't see it while he scanned through and Jo nearly laughed. But was thankful, she wanted to see beaches, but things must have been ok if he was hiding his phone from her. She knew this was about Sean.

When he was in high school, he'd come home straight from footie practice sometimes and ask for tea and sit by her on the couch and she'd let him ramble, and eventually he'd tell her about the play he kept messing up, or he'd tell her about Lyla and how she stopped giving him the time of day. And Jo would listen. If he asked, she'd offer advice. Not so much about football, she knew nothing about football. He didn't need as much guidance there.

Jo hoped he would talk to her about Sean, and whatever was bothering him. It would mean a lot, after all the subterfuge around his sexuality and the consequences thereof, if he'd open up with her. It wasn't about her, she constantly reminded herself when she got miffed about him not feeling safe telling her. Not about her.

But the hurt and consequences remained.

Ethan seemed to have organized around the pictures she did not need or want to see and started scrolling through his phone and telling her stories.

"Athens was just hot. And I couldn't be fuuc—care, sorry Mum," she smirked at his try for a clean conversation, "About the ruins. But Sean wanted to see them, like all of them." He rolled his eyes so affectionately, and gripped her hand. Her shoulders felt unweighted and quirked up like their strings got pulled.

"So you went to all of them?" She confirmed as they scrolled through the pictures, lots of Sean, looking tall, tan, and unbearably young too.

"Well we went to a lot of them. The first week we went to Mykonos, but it was so crowded. And then we had to go back to the city for Sean's internship."

"Did you go places without him while he worked?" She almost scrolled, and then remembered privacy rules in the digital age and let him do it.

"I went to a few. I spent a week alone at the end." His shoulders came down, a death drop.

Did she ask?  "Alone?"

Ethan looked at her, and that look he got when he was trying not to let tears go came over him. His eyes got extra bloodshot and he looked up for a minute. "Yeah, me and Sean... we are in a, it's just weird right now." He sighed. "At first it was perfect, and then I got bored, and traveling is hard. Even traveling for fun, with someone you love. And sometimes things went wrong. I lost my passport one weekend and he was almost late coming back from Istanbul. He was so mad at me, and we fought." He leaned into her and she wanted to pull him into her lap, wished he would let himself timber into her, but she took his hand instead.

"Did you guys break up?" She willed his eyes up.

"No! No? No, I don't know. We were fighting a lot and I threatened to go, which I realized that I did in almost every fight. I do in every fight." He lifted his eyes then, and Jo tilted her head in sympathy. That was a bad habit. "And the last time, he said I should. Just like that. Called my bluff. I didn't want him to let me go. It broke my heart." He ran his free hand through his hair. "But then he took my hands and told me that I should go to the islands and enjoy my vacation, or try, and to figure my shit out and that he'd be waiting?"

"What were you fighting about?" Jo tried, maybe she could help?

Ethan just shook his head.

"Have you talked to him? She gentled her voice, "Tried to call him?"

"Yeah," he was nodding " Yeah, he took my call."

"Well, that's something."

"It is." He exhaled and seemed relieved to have talked about it at least. Nothing was resolved, but it always felt better to let the words be exposed to air instead of fester. "Can we watch a movie Mum?"

"Yeah, course." She needed to text Harry not to come over. "What do you wanna watch?" She'd need to wrangle Zoe downstairs for dinner and bath too, but the hours were open, there was time.

"Can we watch The Bodyguard?" He looked small, like those first weeks when they moved into the house and he was having trouble making friends. He'd loved that movie when he caught her watching it on itv one night. At first he had told her that it was a girl movie, but she caught him watching it alone a few times. And so one weekend, when they had no games to go play in or watch, she popped popcorn and cooked a pizza. It became a ritual. His comfort ritual. Pizza, popcorn, the couch, and The Bodyguard. They both loved it, him secretly. She wasn't sure that he had ever asked for it though. Jo would just do it when she felt he needed it.

She nodded and smiled at him big, knew her eyes were misty.

"Mum!" He harrumphed and she chuckled.

"Be right back" she got herself up. "I need to find the movie." And she went upstairs to check the upstairs area where Zoe watched her animation. Jo felt like it was somewhere else. But she couldn't remember where. Sometimes when she was "straightening up" there was no rhyme or reason to it. She did the grown up version of pushing everything under the bed. Where did she put it?

It wasn't on the shelves with the other movies. She bounced down the stairs to enlist Ethan's help looking.

The couch was empty, "Ethan, where you at?" She turned the tail corner and went to the kitchen. He wasn't there but their mugs were in the sink, along with the rose gold sunset mug Harry had used that morning. It looked like his first award winner, glo. Harry loved the mug, used it whenever he drank something at her house. Their house. Hers and Ethan's.

"Ethan?" She walked out into the den and realized her studio light was on.

"No." She whispered. The silhouette, which anybody who knew his real shape would recognize, but especially Ethan, wasn't covered. Her son had surprised her, in lots of ways lately.

Jo had snuck away to text Harry and get the movie and left Ethan unattended. Like she'd forgotten there was evidence of Harry beyond the love bites on her thighs. His presence left a mark. One that Ethan would recognize.

Jo was still holding onto hope when she walked into the studio, but Ethan was staring at the wall. Hope jumped out the window.

He was gritting his teeth, like he was carrying something heavy, a big burden. There was part of Jo that hoped he would carry it, that as horrible as her projected Christmas was, they could all find a way to be around each other and she could keep Harry. Remain his. She'd been the happiest she'd ever been to be his, before.

From the look on Ethan's face, she doubted he would carry on with them, carry his heavy feelings well. If he had to grit his teeth to see Harry' very image, how would seeing the actual person work for him?

"Ethan?" She saw him shake into the moment.

"Yeah, Mum?" He choked on her appellation and her own throat closed for a second.

"Did I put movies in here?" She asked. Gloss over it she decided on the fly, like when you put on makeup when you are feeling a mess.

"That one day we did the crazy clean because you had that colleague coming over." His eyes kept drifting back to the silhouette and Jo was screaming inside.

Did she talk about it, could they talk about it?

"Oh, I barely remember that."

"It was right before I left for school, that last weekend. I think we haven't watched the movie since then." He looked at her the whole time he said it and shrugged. Three years had passed. They both realized it, then his eyes were magnetized back to the red letter on her wall. "Is this.." he swallowed, looked back at the painting and must have decided he didn't need confirmation, didn't want it.

"Let's watch Mum." And he came behind her and his hand on her back made her crawl with shame.

She remembered the day she realized he was taller than her, well he realized and made them go back to back and Harry declared Ethan tallest. Things were less complicated when he was small. Today she would use the word better.

They set up the movie and she made popcorn. Ethan got up just before she pressed start and Jo was waiting on him. She had been for long minutes before she finally got herself up to see what he was doing.

He was staring, into the sink. Where she had seen the cup Harry preferred.

"Ethan? Do you want to come watch the movie?"

He looked up at her, and she knew his answer. There would be no comfort ritual today, no comfort.

They both stared into the sink.

"I bought him that mug." He left the air dead for a minute. "It reminded me of that first painting he made. For him to use when he was over. It was a gesture, I was trying...." he shook his head and quickly made for to the door.

"Ethan, please don't go." But she was caught, maybe not as shamefully as when he'd found them in bed, but now she felt naked and ashamed like Eve, because she knew now, and had done it anyway.

Bile rose in her throat.

"I..." he breathed heavy and wet. "I kept telling Sean, I kept telling him, I don't want Harry."

Oh god, was Ethan still in love with him too? No, she didn't think so.

"But, I couldn't stop bringing it up, him, you two, up. And Sean got so sick of it. 'If he has to be in bed with us, I don't want to be in bed with you.'" He hung his head. "I, just, I just can't Mum. And now I've lost more because of him. I can't even come ho— I ha— I just can't Mum." And he was gone and she was on the floor.

She didn't send Harry a text to tell him that Ethan had gone. Jo also didn't sleep that night, her visions were hard enough. She autopiloted through bath and feeding Zoe, slay down with her on her twin bed.

She didn't call Ethan to talk, was too ashamed to. Jo just texted him. 'I'm sorry. Please text me when you get home.' Jo hated that he was driving home upset. And that he would be alone.

This house was supposed to be his soft place. He'd tried to run to her for comfort and she wasn't able to give it to him.

He'd had to leave his home, because she had invited somebody else in.

Jo had no intention of choosing Harry over Ethan. She just couldn't seem to stay away from him. Maybe the consequences hadn't been real enough.

They felt very real now. And her intentions were for shit.

And even the ticking down clock was too long.

"Jo?" Harry asked two days later when he slipped into bed behind her and encountered pajamas and a top.

She pretended to be asleep and he let her.

He made her breakfast in the morning before he raced the sun, his waffles, made enough to keep in the fridge for the week, so she wouldn't have to cook fresh every morning for Zoe.

"It takes me little extra time now, and saves you loads this week!" He smiled proud and let his eyes linger over her face.

She bit her lip and nodded, excused herself to the bathroom. Cried.

She knew he noticed. He noticed everything. He was wonderful. Wonderful and she was drowning in it. Drowned her whole life in his beauty.

The waffles didn't taste sweet to her, when she ate them with Zoe after he left, they tasted like bitter almonds. And she swallowed the poison down.

Zoe went back to Colin's for dinner tonight, and he'd surprised her by asking for her to stay over. He'd made her a room for her long summer visit and she'd liked it. He'd sent Jo pics of her playing. He wanted her to get more use out of it. And Jo was happy that he was swelling into his role as a dad, so she'd said yes. She'd learned with Colin that it was best to try to establish good habits while he was in a chipper mood. And he had been. She suspected he was dating somebody, and she liked it.

Though, they may have an issue if he brought her around Zoe without a conversation.

There was her hypocrisy again. And her shame.

While Zoe was away, she was going to talk to Harry, because he was so excited to have more than just the hours between 8pm and 8am with her, so he'd promised to be back to hers at five. He wanted to take her out.

She wasn't fit for public consumption.

She did feel consumed. That was the only time she felt released, like she could breathe, when Harry had her, but orgasm brought reality back, and her denouement was tearful and sad. It was worse because she could tell that it cut Harry up. He was working so hard to please her, cooking for her before he left, and making her tea, sending her memes to make her laugh.

She could not be cheered. And she couldn't let him go. But she had to try tonight.  She was drowning, sinking, and Ethan too, and she felt like she was slowly fitting Harry for concrete shoes with them, a strange form of torture he was seemingly happy about.

He would stand soundly and let her take measurements and try on the heavy shoes and say, "Perfect fit!" She was sure. This had to stop.

"Are you sure you don't want to go out? I'd love to get dressed up with you! We could drive to Liverpool and get a hotel, go to the Tate?" His smile went almost to his eyes, but that hue of life they took on when he was truly happy was gone. They looked a little dull.

She shook her head, "No, I'm not up for it. Think a quiet night in is the best idea." Going to Liverpool together now sounded a little bit like eating your favorite childhood sweet as an adult and discovering you don't like it anymore.

"Ok. Do you want takeout, or I can cook for you? That marsala you liked? Or chili?" God he was trying so hard.

"Let's just get takeout. Make it easy." Something should be.

But when she was laying on his chest on the couch and their feet were tangled up and his breath was fluttering her hair, she felt like it was almost still worth it.

She buried her nose in the side of his neck and drew his smell deep into her lungs, to embed it there. It was so easy to open her mouth and press the kiss there, to move her lips over his perfection, bite his chin, find his dimples, deep enough at the moment to press her tongue into. His eyes had that citrus tang now.

She was doing something right. She pushed his hair back, away from the hollows at his temples, smoothed her chin over them.

He let her take the lead, smooth his shirt up over his torso, trace over his tattoos, and his bones, the ridges of his ribs, like the Scottish Munro she had bagged when she was 18, high and exhausting, but such a powerful view she would scale it again.

His belly button had this lip she wanted to chew on, and the salt of his thigh crease was better than the Chinese they'd shared from the same container. All of the dank dark places tasted like forever to her. And he let her taste them all, beneath his testicles, behind them. His penis was steel in her hand while she lingered over his asshole. Her name was desperate and hurried. So she slowed down, and tortured him with it, slipped her fingers in while he whined.

"Jo, baby, I want you. Please." She thought he was begging for relief, but he was asking for yesterday and tomorrow as well, she thought. She climbed on top of him, and sank down. Gripped his knees and let him watch, made him focus on the place they came apart and rejoined. Leaned forward enough to take his mouth until he strained to chase her against her pushing hand on his shoulder when she leaned back again. Jo didn't cry this time, she was too busy slipping a finger back inside him when she was about to come. She was both the priest and the godhead in the ecstasy.

But she did cry when he stood up with her still on him and walked her back to the bedroom. With the worship turned on her, she couldn't bear it. Not the taste of them on his mouth when he shared it with her, or the golden grip of his completion. She cried at the finish and the startline that time, and Harry wiped the tears away, with his hair and thumbs, she tried to stem the water by pressing her eyes to the broken heart on his chest. It shone in the bathroom light, her tears a prism. She slept then, and he stayed close all night, she heard him whispering once when she woke a little, she didn't catch much in her half state, but it sounded like bargaining.

The next day, they painted, well Harry did, and Jo sat dumbly at her easel. The only thing she could think about doing was filling in his silhouette, but he was still here. And it would break both of their hearts if she got up and started doing him while he sat in front of her. She couldn't shake that he, this, was already a memory.

At two she said, "Lover," swallowed, "Zoe will be home soon. I think you gotta go." Jo still hadn't said what she really meant, told him not to come back, asked for the key.

Maybe she didn't need to. Could she just wait it out, let it fade into the clouds while he flew away? She knew they'd been in purgatory for a while, but something had changed since Ethan walked out her door.

He looked at her long. And nodded. He leaned into her mouth, wrapped his lithe piano fingers around her jaw and kissed her with a tender brutality she hadn't felt from him when he wasn't raging over jealousy or secrets.

He cupped her face, looked at her hard, ran his thumbs beneath her eyes, over her ever growing cheekbones. She was all cheekbones in the mirror these days. "I love you, so much." And he waited.

She still said it, of course. Just not often. He'd always been more direct, honest about his feelings. If only he'd been honest.

No, she was glad he'd lied.

"I love you, more than, more than." She choked over it. "More than anything."

He took his painting with him.

Zoe came home, and she was doing a gymnastics routine in the living room when Jo heard a knock on her back door. Harry's knock. But Harry didn't knock anymore, he had a key, and he used to knock and then walk in. It was more to keep from startling her than to ask permission to answer, he had Carte Blanc.

He stood on her doorstep, the light a solar halo behind him.

"Hi lover, um, Zoe is up." She looked over her shoulder.

"I know, it's early yet." It was 7 o'clock, a solstice sun setting in mid-summer. He looked at it over his shoulder. "Jo, I..." his face collapsed. "I started to fill you in today, I don't know why. It's not time yet, right? But it was what I needed to do, had to, when I got home, your silhouette, and, and, I didn't use any gold."

He stopped talking then, waited for her to catch up. The only word she found was "So?" but she knew what. She had been staring at his earlier to, feeling compelled to fill him in. And no gold....

"Baby, I think, I think the gold is gone. I may have stolen it. I don't see your shine, not since, not since..." He bit his lip until she saw a red bead. "I couldn't even remember it enough to put it on my canvas." He extended his hand, and she saw the golden valley. He was trying to give her it back.

"No, Harry." Her eyes brimmed over.

"Baby, I'm making you dull. I can't, I can't..." He shook his head and their faces mirrored each other, broken dolls. "Take the painting, and...please, please, baby.....just take the painting, and remember us that way." His voice plodded through the wet mud of his feelings. But he got them out.

She nodded, but her face was melting and she wasn't ready to remember them any way. They were both still here, weren't they. There was still sand in the hourglass.

When she felt the key taped to the back of the small canvas she closed her eyes and gnashed her teeth. "Lo-lover?" Her head was shaking.

"I'm gonna," he choked up, coughed. "I'm gonna go, to Montreal, early, or I'll never stop coming here. I'll never stop coming to you, and you'll answer the door, until the mine is dry. I need to," he shook his head sadly. "I can't steal what's precious about you because I love it, more than anything, and..."

He stopped and she wanted to touch him, but couldn't, just couldn't. Or she'd pull him in, and he was being a hero, he had the halo now, the sunset behind him. "And you were wrong earlier, you don't love me more than anything," he nodded towards her living room. "You love them most, like you should and loving us both.......It's hurting you too much, you wear the pain like a cloak." Tears fell to his chest, wet his shirt. "I can't do it. I can't do it to you. No matter how much I dreamed it would work out. Tried to convince you it would. But I think I've woken up, seeing you like this. I gotta go. While there is still gold to remember and for you to mine."

He stepped forward without any preamble, grabbed her waist and kissed her like the sun was coming up once more and turned around, walked off and didn't look back. It was all one motion, a car crash in slow mo.

He was to the end of the drive when she got "Har-Harry!" out. But those were the only words she could get out over her sobs. He looked over his shoulder then.

"I know, Miss Jo, I know. I'll see you in the morning sometime again, yeah?" He cocked his head to the side, and his eyes were bright with tears and somehow the smile was genuine through and because of the wet.

She sat on her stoop and watched the sun go down, until Zoe came out and told her she needed a snack. It was black outside by then.

The gold was gone.

[There should be a GIF or video here. Update the app now to see it.]