“No, I don’t think so. I don’t think this had anything to do with your son at all. I bet you were afraid of what your friends and neighbors would say about you having a gay son.”
I remembered my father’s words:“What should we tell everyone when they ask who you’re dating, or if they want to fix you up with their daughters?”
With the cockiness only a smartass seventeen-year-old could possess, I’d looked my father straight in the eye.“Tell them I’d rather date their sons.”
The man hung his head in his hands. “You’re right. It was never about Joshua. It was about what the neighbors would think. And we thought we’d have time. We never thought…” Too broken up to continue, he choked out several sobs, and I felt so damn guilty.
“I-I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you feel bad. I overreacted.”
“No.” The man sniffled and wiped his nose and eyes with the tissues his neighbor handed him. “It’s okay. My wife and I decided we wanted to open the lines of communication with Joshua, and a few months before his death we started talking again. The night he died…he was coming to see us. A truck slammed into his car. They said the driver fell asleep at the wheel and crossed over the median. We never had a chance to tell him we only wanted him to be happy.”
The rest of the group offered their condolences, while I sat quiet. My father hadn’t taken my revelation well, until my mother told him that if he wanted to lose me, his behavior was ensuring I’d leave for college and never come back. It was the first time a crack appeared in his armor. My idol had feet of clay, but the weight was on me.
“How is your wife handling it?”
His face flushed. “We broke up after the funeral. She blamed me for not reaching out to Joshua sooner, and after we flung terrible words at each other, there was no way to reconcile.”
Monroe’s encouraging smile reached across the circle, and despite my annoyance with his flirtation with Presley, I was beginning to see what made him a good group leader. “We’re glad you’re here.…I’m sorry, we don’t know your name.”
“Shane McKenzie.”
“Well, Shane, first I want to congratulate you on your bravery for opening up. And Nate, I want to commend you for helping Shane work through it. It sounded like your story was a pretty personal journey as well.”
The circle of eyes gazed at me expectantly, and I swallowed, nerves racing as if I were standing before a judge.
“I, uh, yeah. I was thinking of my father and when I came out to him.”
“It didn’t go well? You don’t have to go into detail if you don’t want to.”
At the time, I was leaving for college in a few weeks and wanted to tell my father. Ethan and my mother already knew, but I’d considered my father the biggest hurdle.
“It went. Eventually we worked it out.”
Worked it out meant he never mentioned it again and neither did I. So what if we danced around the most important, intrinsic part of me? I kept that to myself. I wasn’t ready to share something that painful.
Leo, the widower, spoke next. He told us how he’d had a setback and hadn’t been able to sleep. “I went to my doctor, and she prescribed sleeping pills. I took them once, but they made me feel so groggy, I stopped.”
I’d tried that as well with no success.
“Don’t think of it as a setback. You’re still processing your loss, and every person handles the death of a loved one differently,” Monroe said in his gentle, nonjudgmental voice.
Was I unable to move forward because my father died, or because he cheated on my mother and was found in his lover’s bed? Did I hate him for his hypocrisy, or because I never had a chance to prove I was worthy of his respect and love?
A woman spoke next about losing her sister, but by that time I was wrung-out and couldn’t concentrate. Several times during the evening, I found Presley’s gaze on me, but he refused to meet my eyes when I smiled at him.
Something else I’d fucked up, but in this case, I had a chance to make it right.
The meeting broke up, and we milled about for a while, drinking coffee and nibbling on the cookies one of the people had brought to the session. I stood silent, rocking on my heels, eyes fixed on Presley as he spoke to Monroe. He shrugged, cheeks tinting pink, and I knew, even without seeing anything further, that the group leader was making a move. A thin, bright pain sliced through me like the edge of a knife under the outer layer of my skin.
I couldn’t stand by, so I strode over to them. “Hello.”
“Nate, hello.” Monroe turned his charming smile on me, but I wasn’t there to talk to him. If I hadn’t already had a taste of Press, I might’ve made my own moves on him. He was big and brawny with a headful of dark hair I could hold on to. The man oozed sex appeal, but I wasn’t interested. Not when I remembered Presley moaning underneath me, and I wanted to take control of him again.
“Hi. Would you mind if I talked to Presley for a moment?”
“Press?”
Monroe’s use of Press’s nickname grated like squeaking chalk and made me want to yank Press to me, slam my mouth over his, and show everyone he was mine.
