Thirty-Three and Tired
At thirty-three, Monique Silvestre could run a stadium show with a laptop, a phone, and three hairpins. She could bribe a customs officer with a smile and a laminated permit. She could talk a sleep-deprived drummer out of a panic attack and talk a sponsor into adding two zeroes to a cheque. She could do all of that in heels.
What she could not do, apparently, was date.
"Your spreadsheet of failed romances reads like a tour itinerary," David Lee said, leaning back on her couch, one tattooed arm over the cushion, the other balancing a protein shake he absolutely did not need. He was annoyingly carved—ripped shoulders, boxing scars, a jaw that looked Photoshopped. He also, and this was important, had been her best friend since they met in a gym class where she tried to lift five kilos and nearly flung the dumbbell into orbit.
Monique tossed a throw pillow at him. "Don't you have glutes to sculpt?"
"I did calves today," he said, deadpan. "Focus."
She flopped down beside him, letting her head thunk against his shoulder. "I am focused. I'm focused on the fact that I am thirty-three, my babies—" she meant Sudden Music, who were not babies and also world-famous, "—keep falling in love like it's on their syllabus, and my mother keeps sending me photos of my cousin's twins like they're a Groupon."
David snorted. "You don't even like babies."
"I like babies when they're on mute."
His smile softened. "You like being loved. You just don't like being bored."
Monique sighed. "Is it a crime to want both?"
"Only in jurisdictions that hate joy." He tipped his shake toward the door. "Come on. We're going out."
"It's Tuesday."
"And you're spiraling. Karaoke heals all. Doctor's orders."
"You're not a doctor."
"I am a physician of vibes."
She narrowed her eyes. "That's not a thing."
"Say that after we sing power ballads."
He won the argument the way he always did: with those stupid dimples and a promise to let her pick the first song. She changed into leather boots and a denim jacket, threw her hair up, and told herself she was not going to cry in a karaoke bar. Again.
Soju, Sincerity, and Several Bad Decisions
Two pitchers in, the mic had become a storytelling stick. Whoever held it got to confess something and then ruin a song. Monique confessed that she still slept with the TV on because silence sometimes sounded like a dare. David confessed that the first time he met her he thought she was terrifying and possibly feral. They massacred a love song so thoroughly the waitress brought them free skewers out of pity.
"You know what your problem is?" David said, the edges of his vowels looser, the world warm and forgiving.
"I'm too beautiful and employers fear me."
"You mistake work for love." He pointed the mic at her like a gavel. "You pour everything into the boys, and then you stagger home and there's nothing left for you."
"That is not true," she protested. "I pour into skincare. And I pour into... wine."
He laughed, then quieted. "You deserve someone who shows up for you the way you show up for everyone else."
Her throat did a weird, traitorous thing. "And where, Sir Doctor-of-Vibes, do I find this mythical creature?"
"Here," he said, and then immediately looked horrified at himself. "I mean—here as in—you know, on earth—"
She leaned her cheek on the table, studying him. She knew he was gay. He knew she knew. It had never been a question. He'd dated men with jawlines that could slice cheddar, men who could do handstands and men who could make coq au vin. He was the one she dragged dress shopping. He was the one who told her which lipstick meant "wife me" and which meant "I can't help it if men propose."
But now his eyes had gone soft and serious, and all she could think was that she didn't want to be thirty-three and brave in every room except this one.
"Take me home," she said, quietly.
He swallowed. "Mo—"
"Just—" she reached for his hand, squeezed. "Tonight. Be the person who shows up for me."
He closed his eyes. When he opened them, the room was still ridiculous and sticky and loud. But his face had turned into something she'd never seen him wear. Not club-night David. Not gym-bro David. Something like terrified courage.
"Okay," he said. "I'll get us a cab."
What happened after that looked, from the outside, like a montage—clumsy kisses in a hallway lit by a flickering bulb, laughter when his elbow hit the wall, a pause to negotiate a zipper that had apparently trained with the Navy. There were no violins, no artful sheets, no tasteful cutaways. It was two foolish, lonely adults trying to make a decision feel less like freefall.
It did not feel like freefall.
It felt like finding a door inside the house you thought you knew.
The Morning After and the Word That Scares People
Hangovers are honest. They don't let you pretend you are a better person than you were nine hours ago. They don't let you curate your memory.
Monique woke first, the room tilting, David's arm heavy across her waist. She lay very still. The sunlight was rude. Her mouth tasted like sugar and regret. Except—no. Not regret. Panic, sure. Consequences, definitely. But beneath that was a hum she'd been chasing in all the wrong places.
She rolled carefully. David blinked awake, squinting. His face did a complicated thing—shock, apology, an almost-comical flinch.
"Hey," she whispered.
"Hey," he said. He stared at the ceiling. "We..."
"Yup."
"I am so—" He stopped, sat up too fast, groaned. "I don't know what to say."
"Try the truth."
He scrubbed a hand over his face. "The truth is I'm hungover and I—" He looked at her. His voice lowered. "And it wasn't a mistake."
She let out a breath she didn't realize she'd been holding. "Okay."
"The truth is also that I've identified as gay since I figured out what the word meant," he continued, slower, more precise. "And I don't want to reduce last night to a punchline or a cure. That trope is... garbage. But I'm also not going to pretend I didn't feel what I felt."
Monique's eyes warmed. "I would tackle you if my head didn't feel like a marching band."
He managed a laugh. "I'm confused. That's the truth. I don't feel disgusted. I feel... startled. Like someone moved a wall I thought was load-bearing. Does that make sense?"
"It does," she said. "Labels are useful until they're not."
He nodded, swallowed. "Are you okay?"
She surprised herself by smiling. "I am. Weirdly."
They ate dry toast, took turns with the good coffee, and agreed not to make decisions on a headache. He kissed her forehead at the door like he always did. She watched him go with a heart that was both light and heavy.
It would have been tidy if they had simply fallen into a relationship, if the world had arranged itself around their choice like polite furniture. The world did not.
For a week, they were tender and shy and foolishly giddy. For a week, David bought her flowers and read late-night articles about bisexuality and pansexuality and the spectrum of attraction, texting her screenshots that made them both cry and laugh. For a week, Monique wore his hoodie and teased him about his obsession with oat milk.
Then real life remembered their names.
The Tour That Turned Into a Year
The call came on a Thursday: a European leg had been added to Sudden Music's calendar—additional cities, bigger venues, impossible logistics. Monique hung up and paced as if she could walk the miles herself.
"Go," David said, watching her with that soft smile again. "You were built for this."
"I was built for spreadsheets and aspirin."
"You were built for impossible."
She threw her arms around his neck. "I'll be back in eight weeks."
Eight became ten. Ten became twenty. One city melted into another—Rotterdam into Berlin into Prague—until the map under her laptop looked like a woven bracelet. The boys were incandescent on stage. Offstage, they were needy, messy, glorious. Monique slept in buses and woke in loading docks. Her life turned into a rotation of checklists and radio calls.
She didn't realize she was late until Barcelona.
At first, she blamed travel—timezone, stress, the way her body lost track of where mornings began. Then she blamed her own optimism. Then she bought a test and stared at two pink lines until the world blurred.
She sat on the hotel bathroom floor, phone in her hand, David's name glowing at the top of the screen. She typed. She deleted. She typed again.
I'm pregnant.
Her thumb hovered. A knock on the door. "Mon?" Gelo's voice, concerned. "We have a venue call."
"I'm coming," she said, and slid the phone into her pocket.
She didn't tell him that day. Or the next. By the time the tour ended, she had counted and recalculated and talked herself into seventeen impossible positions. She flew home, looked at David from the doorway of his gym, and burst into tears.
He reached her in three strides. "What's wrong? Did someone—"
"I'm pregnant," she said, ugly-crying now. "And it's yours. And I am the worst person. I should've told you eight airports ago and I—"
He caught her mid-sentence, holding her like a field holds rain. "Hey. Hey. Okay. We can—Mon, look at me. I'm not going anywhere."
She hiccuped. "You might want to."
"Stop." He exhaled, pressed his forehead to hers. "I'm scared. I'm not prepared. But I... want to be here. With you. For him. Or her. For whatever this is."
He meant every word. She believed him. Then the next call came with the calm cruelty of a calendar reminder: Asia. Six months. Full publicity cycle. The biggest tour of their careers.
Monique looked at the itinerary. Looked at the ultrasound. Looked at the way David's hands shook when he held the tiny black-and-white proof of their recklessness and luck.
"I have to go," she whispered.
"I know."
"I don't know how to make this fair."
"We'll figure it out," he said, because he was the kind of man who would try to lift anything if it hurt someone he loved.
She left two weeks later, fear braided with duty. She texted daily—photos of stages, of soups she could stomach, of baby name lists that were 90% jokes. He FaceTimed to watch a belly that, at first, seemed to be pretending it wasn't a belly and then, stubbornly, decided to arrive like a drum beat.
Then, somewhere between Tokyo and Seoul, the calls got shorter. Somewhere between Manila and Taipei, they turned into voice notes. Somewhere between Jakarta and Singapore, they became a string of hearts, then a stubborn dot after "typing..."
She stayed gone longer than a tour. She stayed because newborns don't care about calendars and because her boys turned into anxious uncles and because the machine didn't know how to stop.
David waited with gym discipline and soft terror. He prepared a crib. He read three thick books and threw two across the room. He tried to watch the shows he used to watch and found himself fast-forwarding by instinct to people who looked like Monique. The jokes about "can't get it up to gay porn anymore" were funnier when he told them than when he heard them alone at 2 a.m.
One night, he passed the mirror on his way to make more useless tea and startled at his reflection. Not because he looked different. Because he felt different. Nothing inside him had turned straight, flipped a switch, resolved a puzzle. What had happened, he realized, was simpler and scarier: love had changed the geometry of his desire. Not in a direction. Toward a person.
"Bi," he said to the empty room, testing the syllable. "Pan." He smiled at himself like a man finally stopped running. "David, finally honest, Lee."
He called. She didn't answer. He texted. Blue ticks stayed blue.
When he finally saw the headline—a blurry fan photo of Monique at a market, baby bundled against her chest, a caption that read "Sudden Music's Monique Spotted With Mystery Infant Abroad"—something in him snapped.
Not anger. Not shame.
Resolve.
The Hunt (A Romantic Comedy in Several Airports)
If you've never seen a ripped gym bro sprint across an airport with a diaper bag he bought at 2 a.m., you haven't lived.
David mapped the tour dates the way Monique mapped load-ins. He asked two favors from three different people (and promised three more). He charmed a flight attendant with a story that was ninety percent true and ten percent ridiculous. He landed in Kuala Lumpur and missed them by four hours. He landed in Bangkok and missed them by a day. He landed in Hanoi and finally caught the tail end of a sound check and the beginning of a rumor.
"They went to Ha Long Bay on the off day," a stagehand offered, eyes gleaming with the currency of gossip.
David paid the currency: a smile, a promise, two tickets to the next show he had no authority to grant.
He took a bus that smelled like sweet bread and diesel, a ferry that smelled like brine and tourists, and then stood on a limestone outcrop and realized he had not thought beyond find her.
He didn't have to.
She saw him first.
He turned at the soft shock of his name—"David?"—and there she was: Monique in a sundress, hair pulled back, child slung against her chest in a carrier. The baby lifted a fist like a tiny boxer.
For a second, the world was a postcard. Then it was a storm. Monique's eyes went from surprised to furious in one inhale.
"What are you doing here?" she demanded, cheeks flushed. "Why are you—how did you even—"
"Hi," he said, because his brain was lagging. "I brought... diapers?"
"Diapers," she repeated, scandalized. "You flew three countries with Pampers?"
"And an apology," he added, stepping closer. "And a promise. And—can I see him? Up close."
She hesitated, then tilted the baby toward him. "This is Jax," she said, and it almost broke him that she'd named their child like a password to a house they both owned.
"Hi, Jax," he murmured, touching one tiny foot with one giant finger. The baby flexed, unimpressed, and then fell asleep like a man who'd made powerful choices.
"I called," he said, looking up. "I texted. I emailed your trash folder."
"I know," she said, jaw tight. "I knew if I heard your voice I wouldn't be able to keep a schedule I didn't choose."
He winced. "I deserved that."
She crossed her arms. "Do you even know what you want, David? Or is this a phase, a panic, a heroic sprint because you saw a photo and your pride got loud?"
"I want you," he said, simply. "And him. I want the way you roll your eyes when I say 'macros' and the way you call the boys 'my idiots' like you didn't choose them. I want to tag in at 3 a.m. I want to be the reason you're not alone in every hotel room."
Her anger wobbled; grief poked through. "You can't just make a speech and fix it."
"I know." He lifted both hands like a man surrendering. "So I'll do the unglamorous thing. I'll stay. I'll carry cases. I'll stand outside dressing rooms with a spare pacifier. I'll be where you can see me until being seen makes us less hurt."
"Big talk," she said, but it was softer.
"Small deeds," he countered. "One after the other."
And because the world is occasionally kind, the universe immediately gave him a chance to make good on that vow. Jax woke with newborn ferocity and then performed a full-body meltdown that would have shamed a diva. Monique juggled diapers and bounce and shush and apology; David took the bag without asking, made a bottle with one hand, swayed him with the other, hummed a nonsense melody.
Jax blinked. Blinked again.
Surrendered.
Monique's throat made that same traitorous sound as months ago in a karaoke bar. "How did you—"
"Babies like bass," he said, relieved and smug. "Also I watched twelve swaddle tutorials."
You can't stay angry at someone who learns a skill just in case you'll need it.
She didn't say forgive. She didn't say stay. She said, "We have lobby call at six," and then somehow he was on the bus.
The Year of Unlearning
It did not become easy overnight. It did not become cinematic. It became work in the holy sense of the word.
David became a backstage shadow and a front-of-house saint. He lifted road cases with a baby strapped to his chest. He took Jax for dawn walks through cities whose names he mangled. He learned to sleep on planes with a tiny foot in his neck. He learned to speak to Monique's exhaustion without telling her to stop being excellent.
Monique learned to let him. That was the harder lesson. She learned to share the schedule, to admit when her brain was honey, to ask for a shoulder to cry into and mean it. She learned to look at him with a new vocabulary: not best friend who made a beautiful mistake, not gay disaster I accidentally fell into, but man I love who is learning himself while learning me.
One night in Seoul, after a show that left the boys wild-eyed and drenched, after a hotel corridor lullaby and a room-service burger eaten in companionable silence, she said it.
"I'm still scared."
"I know," he said.
"I'm scared I trapped you."
"You didn't. I arrived."
"I'm scared you'll wake up one day and this will feel like a detour from your real life."
He thought about all the maps he'd memorized and how none of them had led to a life like this. "I've never been this on track."
"And what are you," she asked, careful, "now?"
He grinned, rueful and proud. "I am David. I am a father. I am a man who is wildly into Monique Silvestre. I am... bi, I think. Or pan. I'm still trying to name the galaxy. But I know which star I navigate by."
She blew out a breath and laughed at herself for crying. "You're such a dork."
"You love me," he said.
She didn't deny it.
The Return (and the Ring)
They came home when Jax was almost walking and the boys were half convinced he was their reincarnated tour manager. The families met them at the airport with flowers and shrieks; Monique's mother cried scandalized tears, then immediately took the baby like a queen claiming tribute.
There were conversations you have to have when you come home with a son you didn't have when you left. Some were loud. Some were tight-lipped. Some were surprising in their generosity.
David did not propose right away. He moved in boxes instead. He set up a crib and a coffee station that looked like a science experiment. He joined a dads' group that horrified him and then humbled him. He built a life that did not depend on a yes.
The yes still arrived.
It arrived in the least glamorous way possible: at 4:11 a.m., in their dark kitchen, after a small human decided sleep was for cowards. David was walking, shushing, bouncing. Monique was leaning against the counter, hair a mess, wearing his shirt and yesterday's eyeliner, watching him like a man was a miracle.
"Marry me," he said, because sometimes you don't need speeches, you need true.
She blinked. "Are you—did you just—"
"I bought a ring," he said, because of course he had. "I was going to wait until, I don't know, a sunset did something dramatic. But this is the truest thing I know: I want this. The zombie hours and the breakfast coffee and the way you swear at strollers. I want a life where being yours isn't an accident we keep laughing at, it's the plan."
Jax chose that moment to belch like a sailor. They both laughed until they cried.
"Okay," she said, breathless. "Yes. Okay."
He slid the ring onto her finger while balancing eight kilos of chaos. It was the most athletic proposal on record.
The Wedding (Attendance: One Toddler, Four Rock Stars, Two Very Smug Parents)
They didn't want a cathedral. They wanted a courtyard with string lights and the kind of food that stains ties. Monique wore cream silk and a fierce red lip. David wore a suit that made his mother clap like a fan. Jax wore suspenders and a moral objection to shoes.
The boys gave themselves jobs: Gelo emceed like a CEO who accidentally cared too much; Steve filed a motion to extend the dance hour and then danced like a man who had married a teleprompter and was still surprised by it; Mark attempted a toast that turned into a ten-slide deck titled "Compound Interest: Why My Best Friend's Love Is the Best Investment," and Clara unplugged the projector with zero remorse; Adra played a fingerpicked melody that made half the room cry and June—quiet, luminous June—stood at the back and beamed like candles do.
Monique said her vows like the boss she was. "I promise to let you carry the heavy things and to admit when I am the heavy thing," she said, and the moms nodded like a chorus. "I promise to be your manager when you forget your keys and your hype woman when you forget your worth. I promise to love you when you're protein-fueled and when you eat fries in the car and pretend you didn't."
David said his like a man who had been rehearsing in every quiet minute. "I promise to show up even when I'm wrong, especially when I'm wrong. I promise to name myself honestly and to make space when you need it. I promise to be obnoxiously proud of our son, to teach him to apologize with his whole chest, and to never schedule leg day on your birthday."
"Finally," she said, laughing through tears. "A practical vow."
"Finally," he echoed. "A home."
When the officiant told him to kiss his bride, David dipped Monique just enough to make the aunts shriek and the photographers weep.
After the Punchline, the Paragraph
Later, when Jax had been passed between eleven laps and one drum kit and had succumbed to the kind of sleep that only follows cake, Monique and David slipped outside. The city hummed. The courtyard lights swung slightly in a breeze that smelled like weddings always smell: sugar and grass and relief.
"Remember karaoke?" she asked.
"I remember thinking 'if I say the truth, I will lose everything I think I am,'" he said. "And then I said it anyway and got more."
"You didn't get cured," she said, teasing, tender.
"I got clear," he returned. "And I got you."
She bumped his shoulder. "You got Jax."
"I did," he said, wonder still new. "I got to be a dad. Which is wild because I still feel twenty when I look in a mirror."
"You look twenty when you take your shirt off," she said, deadpan.
He smirked. "Say that again for the record."
She took his face in both hands. "David Lee," she said, solemn as a verdict. "You are ridiculous. You are mine. You are allowed to be both."
He kissed her like gratitude is a language and he was fluent. Somewhere inside the courtyard, someone whooped. It was Mark. Someone shushed him. It was Steve. Someone laughed soft and low. It was Adra. Someone muttered "kids" and dabbed at her eyes. It was Monique's mother.
"Ready for everything?" he asked.
"I'm ready for everything we don't plan," she said. "I've done schedules. This—" she gestured at the echo of their son's sleeping breath, at the ring glinting against his chest, at the life stubbornly unfolding— "this is better."
They went back inside because dessert had arrived and because their son would wake soon and because people they loved were trying to make them dance. They went back inside because love, for them, had stopped being a twist and started being a practice.
The punchline, in the end, wasn't that a gay best friend slept with a woman and turned straight. The joke they told, the one they laughed at gently for the rest of their lives, was that two stubborn people thought labels would keep them safe. The paragraph that followed—the one they kept writing—was about showing up, and carrying cases, and bouncing at 4:11 a.m., and saying yes too loudly, and saying sorry quickly, and naming what you are without erasing who you were.
And if, every so often, David caught himself in a mirror and thought, You lucky idiot, and Monique caught herself in a venue and thought, You wild miracle, well—who were they to argue with a story that had decided to bloom exactly where it wasn't supposed to?
They didn't argue.
They danced.