Callum could easily imagine that.
“You said you needed someone to talk to?” Dylan said gently.
Callum sucked in a breath and then stared around the coffee shop. “What you said at the Vibe, about me not being as straight as I think I am…”
“I was being a jackass,” Dylan said.
“What if you were right?” It felt weird saying it out loud. Did that make him a terrible person?
Dylan’s eyebrows pinched together. “Would it be a bad thing?”
Callum let the question sink in. “My family isn’t very tolerant.” He rolled his eyes at his own understatement. “They aren’t tolerant at all.”
“Your uncle’s into guys,” Dylan said flatly. “I’ve seen Ezra at Heaven and Hell plenty of times.”
“My family doesn’t know that.”
Dylan looked panicked.
“It’s okay,” Callum said quickly. “I know—now—but I didn’t until a week ago.”
“That’s rough.”
Callum shrugged. “I’m disappointed he didn’t feel he could tell me, but I get it.”
“You do?”
“Now I have to keep it secret from my mum—Ezra’s sister. I’m pretty sure he didn’t want to put me in that position.”
“And now that you are…?”
“I’m not going to tell her. It’s not up to me to out my uncle.”
Dylan sipped his coffee. “Your family must be pretty homophobic for Ezra to keep it a secret.”
“You havenoidea.”
“Try me?”
Callum shook his head. “I don’t want to talk about them.”
Dylan smiled sadly. “Maybe not, but I think part of your confusion might be coming from a place of fear.”
“Fear?” Callum wasn’t surprised by what Dylan had said—he was almost certainly right—but that he’d been astute enough to hit the jackpot.
“About how your family might react.”
“It’s pretty stupid, isn’t it?”
“No.” Dylan sounded sad. “We all want our families to love us. The thought we could do something that would change that is pretty mortifying.” He reached his hand out towards Callum’s, then snatched it back and curled it around his coffee mug instead.
Callum had been nothing but a disappointment for years but admitting hemightlike guys as well as girls would be the final nail in the coffin. There would be no going back. There would be no more angry phone calls from Molly. He would be cut off for good, and as much as he hated that his mum and Molly both stood by his dad, it still bothered him.
“How can I not have known?” he asked in a quiet voice, not wanting to get into the messy drama that was his family.
“That you like guys?”
Callum nodded.
