“You asshole,” Jason growled.
“It’s okay, Jay.” Seb took a bite of his dinner. “Everyone gets experimental. I’m always happy to help a brother-in-law out.”
“You didn’t!” Parker said. It didn’t matter if she was talking to Seb or Jason.
“That is enough, Sebastian.” Philip’s face was purple. Murderous.
Seb squared his shoulders. Now they were getting somewhere. “Dad. Do you know who calls me Sebastian? Just you. No one else. It’s Seb, Dad. It has been since I was ten. It’s like you don’t want to admit who I am or something. That I don’t get to make my own choices.”
“You’ve made your choices.”
The table around them went silent. Seb stood his ground. “I have, Dad. Repeatedly. Yet you choose not to recognize them.”
“I’m supposed to recognize that you’ve thrown everything I’ve ever offered you back in my face? That you continue to embarrass this family? You want praise for that?”
“Philip,” Nora said. Philip ignored her.
“Everything you’ve offered me?” Seb said. Oliver’s hand on his knee was a claw, and even Martin’s hand around his had gone tight, but Seb pushed on. “You told me how it was going to be and then kicked me out when I didn’t do things your way.”
“We gave you every kind of support you needed. And you rejected it.”
Seb had to laugh at that. Was that how his father saw it? “You didn’t offer support. You offered a straightjacket.”
“He has dyslexia.” Philip turned to Martin. “Did he tell you that?”
“You make it sound like it’s contagious.” Seb’s insides boiled. That wasn’t Philip’s story to tell.
“Do you know hisart,” the word was a sneer, “is an extended metaphor for revenge against me and my life’s work? Your life’s work too. Those poems you work so hard to prove your dead German wrote? He’ll cut them up and sell them.”
“You’ve never understood.” Seb’s voice dropped. His work wasn’t some coping mechanism or a shout into the void about the unfairness of the way his brain was wired. He created new words, new works from unwanted goods. That was hisart.
“We tried to help him.” Philip was still speaking to Martin, probably seeking backup. “Accommodations could have been made.”
“I didn’t need accommodating.” Seb sneered. “I needed you to see I wasn’t like you!”
“Because you never even tried!” Philip banged on the table again.
“Dad!” This was from Oliver.
“You were determined to fail at everything we ever asked you to do.”
“Fail? Because I don’t work a job with a salary? Because I don’t come here to talk about my mortgage and my retirement plans? Because I bring men to the house instead of women?”
“This has nothing to do with that. We have always supported your and Oliver’s choices.”
“Dad.” Oliver said again. Seb would have bruises where Oliver gripped him.
“It’s not a choice, Dad! We’re gay! Your sons are gay.”
“Dad!”
“You think I care about—”
“Dad!”
“What?” Philip’s glare seared its way across the table to Oliver.
“I quit my job to make artisanal kombucha.”
