“Want to pick some music?” Seb asked. Martin wordlessly flipped the radio on, scrolled through the dial for a moment, and then went back to staring out the window.
“Everything okay?”
“Yeah.” Martin sighed and leaned his head back against the car’s leather headrest. “Except it’s possible I haven’t been the best brother in the world lately.”
“Well, you’ve had some shit to work through. And as far as you’ve told me, he hasn’t exactly been a poster child for big brother of the year either.”
Martin fiddled with the knobs on the car’s dash, turning the fan up and down until he turned it off altogether. “My brother’s having a tough time. Ending a marriage is never easy, but I think it’s harder on him than I realized. He said some things, just now, that I wasn’t expecting to hear. Makes me wonder what else he hasn’t told me since he’s been too busy taking care of me.”
“Hey.” Seb put a hand on Martin’s knee. “At least he’s talking to you. That’s more than most of my entire family will do.”
Martin gave him a glum smile. “But you’re going to see them now.”
“Call me brave or stupid. I’m just glad Oliver tracked me down to say my grandmother was sick.”
“Are you closest to your brother then?” Martin grazed his fingers over the back of Seb’s hand for the briefest second before he quickly folded both his hands in his lap. Seb grinned. He was a tactile person, always had been. Now he had the option to touch Martin freely, and he wanted the connection pretty much all the time. Wearing down Martin’s reserved restraint would be fun.
He ran a finger over Martin’s ear, smoothing down a curl of hair threatening to fly free.
Martin shivered under the touch. “You’re avoiding the question.”
Seb growled and put both hands back on the wheel. “Ollie and I were close when we were growing up. He was my big brother. Whatever he did, I wanted to do it too. He played sports, I tried out for the team. He got elected senior class president, I ran to get on the student council too. I wasn’t always successful—sports were never really my thing—but I wanted him to see me, you know? To know I saw him and how amazing he was, and that I wanted to be the same.”
“And did he?”
Seb made a face. “When Ollie came out right before he went away to college, I think that was the happiest day of my life. Because my mom cried and said it didn’t matter. And my dad hugged him, and he said they would support Ollie, no matter what. And I just about burst, because I knew it was all going to be okay. I’d known forever I was gay. And they said they’d support him, and I thought that meant they’d support me too when I was ready to tell them.”
“Brian outed me to our mom. He didn’t mean to,” Martin said quickly when Seb went to protest. “We were joking around at dinner one night. He had his first serious girlfriend. I was giving him a hard time about it and brothers...you know. He kind of let it slip out. He looked so embarrassed when he said it. My mom smacked him for not letting me tell her when I was ready. And then she smacked me for thinking it was something that needed to be kept a secret.” He smiled at the memory. Seb thought of Martin’s smiles as something hidden, a little private. He was glad to be part of them more and more often and definitely wanted to see more of them. But then the smile shifted as Martin glanced across the car. “I gather that wasn’t quite what happened with your family.”
The happy little thrill over Martin’s smiles faded. Seb sighed. He could make a joke and change the topic, but it didn’t seem right. He’d brought this up, and Martin deserved to know at least some of what had happened since they were driving into the lion’s den together.
“It seemed okay at first,” Seb said. “Maybe my first mistake was telling them while I was still in high school. Oliver waited until right before he went away for college, but I didn’t want to wait. I had a boyfriend, Kevin McCreery. I didn’t want to have to hide when he came to the house, so I told my parents about him. It wasn’t like when Ollie told them—there weren’t tears and hugs—but they seemed to understand. But I guess the difference between me and Ollie was his big gay escapades were happening in a college dorm somewhere, and mine were happening in their house.”
Martin’s eyes widened. “Did they catch you with—”
“Not like that. But Kevin was out and proud and had been forever, so he didn’t think anything of holding my hand at the dinner table or calling me ‘babe’ when my parents could hear. And I wanted him to like me, so I pretended not to see the way my dad looked at us.”
The lane markers on the highway rolled by as they drove. Seb hesitated. He was telling the truth, but not all of it.
“Actually, I think my only real mistake was not being Ollie. He was the good son. He got good grades, went to the right school, got a good job right after graduation. My dad probably even thought Oliver’s boyfriends were the right kind of gay. Good looking guys with good last names and good jobs. My dad could introduce as ‘Oliver’s friend’ and let people assume what they wanted.”
“And yours weren’t the right kind?”
“Not even a little.” His boyfriends were moody twinky types with long hair, piercings, and often a chip on their shoulder bigger than Seb’s. He took a few of them to the house, but even introducing them as “Sebastian’s friend” would never have hidden who they really were.
“I’ve probably never been the right kind of anything.” It hurt to say it. “I barely got through high school. The only reason I got into college at all was because Dad pulled some strings at Watersmith, where he worked. I don’t know what he thought I would do there. He put me in a business program, but I took all the fine arts classes I could get myself into in my first year, and in my second year they let me switch into the BFA program. He was pissed that no one in the registrar’s office consulted him before they made the change.”
“But you got in on the merit of your work then, not because of who you were.” Martin ran a hand down Seb’s arm. He caught it just as Martin went to pull away, lacing their fingers together. He held their hands on his thigh while he drove.
It was hard to say where his relationship with his family all went wrong, buried in so many years of disagreements and small failures.
“He didn’t speak to me the whole summer between my freshman and sophomore years, and then after that second year, when I told him I dropped out, he didn’t talk to me for another six months. The only reason he finally did was to thank me for coming to Parker’s wedding. Like not coming had been an option.” Realizing his attendance hadn’t been considered mandatory was still painful.
“Parker’s your older sister, right?” Martin squeezed his hand, pulling Seb out of his funk.
He was going for his grandmother. He had to focus on that.
“Yeah. I’ve got two older sisters. You’ll meet them both. Gillian is the eldest. She’s twelve years older than me. She got married while I was still in middle school, so we’ve never had much in common. Parker is between Gillian and Ollie. She’s six years older than I am and four years older than Ollie. She’s the only one who still lives in town. She’s married to Jason, who’s a real estate agent and an ass. They’ve got three kids and two golden retrievers. They’re irritatingly perfect.”
