From D8:
On the couch, first pizza downed, moving onto just a slice or two of the second, Danny was happy. Glad to have donated the nine dollar tip to Mike's middle-aged life. It felt like a down payment on something, he mused, opening the Phish Food and nestling under a blanket with only the ice cream and spoon exposed. A down payment, he thought, on the skinnier, happier Danny he couldn't yet find it in himself to see.
****
During the elegy, Becca had talked a lot about how happy she was that Roddy had found "someone" and was finally living his life for himself. She was wearing a black Anne Taylor suit that fit well at the waist but pinched her shoulders in. An inverted triangle of Roddy's favorite red poked out where her cleavage should be.
Danny sat more than halfway back, his ass sore on the hard pews, his suit pinching, his chest tight. A sheen of sweat rose and receded like nausea on his forehead. The idea that Roddy - nearly closeted, afraid of his family, only tentatively peeking his neck around the corner of life in D.C. - had it all together terrified Danny. A panicky, shaky realization rose in his throat. He wouldn't go back to the office, or any other day. Sassy Marina. Sexy Mitch.
He closed his eyes and focused inward, breathing carefully, gripping hand to hand. Every part of his body wanted to flail and shout and run for the back of the church, but he had to hold it together. Becca was up there, the family knew who he was. So he stayed in his seat through the service, clutching his own hand like a lost child's, and waiting for every person around him to disappear.
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