Nicholas was the only gay man I’d ever fallen in love with. The beginning of our friendship was simple and random. I’d left my apartment one morning after running out of coffee the previous day and gone down to the cafe on the corner for my morning fix. The wait was long and every table was full, but there was one empty chair opposite an attractive young man in the corner. I shuffled through, careful not to spill the boiling hot beverage on myself, before I stood bleary-eyed at the edge of his table.

“Would you mind?” I asked while pulling back the chair, inadvertently releasing a high pitched squeal as it scraped across the tile floor.

He looked up briefly, a small, quick smile on his full lips. “No, not at all,” he said pleasantly before he went back to his book, leaving me to sit in peace.

We were twenty-three then; and now, seven years later, I was waiting at home for him and his boyfriend, James, to arrive. It was my thirtieth birthday and they had promised a night of dinner and dancing at our favorite club. “A night of debauchery and hedonism” had been Nicholas’s exact words, and I was particularly look... Read more