Oliver leaned back in his chair and loosened his tie. “It’s a big deal. I was a bit older than you are when I told my dad. I was so fucking scared, I nearly threw up in our backyard.”
Hayden sneered. “Are you trying to bond with me here?”
“I’m saying it’s a scary thing. And before? Before I came out? I was a mess. I’d always known I was gay, but I was so scared that my parents were going to be angry. I was so scared about what my friends would say. I told a few of them in my sophomore year of high school. Everyone said it was cool, but after that, not all of them would come over to my house anymore.”
Hayden rolled his eyes. “They sound like a bunch of dicks.”
“It’s really hard. Coming out gets talked about like you make a big announcement and then the world knows. And some people are cool about it, and others are dicks, but at least everyone knows and you can move on with your life.”
Hayden laughed bitterly. “Yeah, maybe if you live in a Hallmark movie.”
Oliver smiled sadly at him. He wished he could tell him it would be okay, but the old anxieties never quite went away. There would always be that moment when you read a new acquaintance and decided how much to tell them. The moments when you used “partner” instead of “boyfriend” and let the people in the room assume what they want. It got easier, but it was never fully easy.
“You have to decide who you’re going to trust. Family. Friends. You have to decide which of them will have your back.”
“People are jackasses.”
“A lot of them are. And sometimes you’ll choose to trust the wrong people. And sometimes people change.” Like Cooper. For so long, he had been who Oliver needed. He’d be a mess of ulcers and heart conditions if Cooper hadn’t looked after him for as long as he had.
“I bet no one ever screwed you over,” Hayden said.
Oliver gave him a half-hearted grin. “I was in love with someone for a long time. And when we were ready to be together, make a change that would mean it would just be us, living our life the way we wanted, he left me.” Oliver had spent the last months telling himself he was the one who chose to leave because it meant he’d still been in control. But the truth was it had all been Cooper, and Oliver was too afraid to admit he hadn’t seen it coming.
Hayden swallowed, and the room fell into silence. Oliver waited. Hayden had to trust him, but he couldn’t let this get too far off course into his own personal life, or the whiplash would be brutal for both of them when he tried to steer it around to Hayden’s story.
“That sucks for you.”
“It really did. And for him. It was a big step for both of us, and in the end, he wasn’t ready to make it.”
“Do you hate him now?”
Hate was a strong word. This year had been complicated, buried in waves of anger, sadness, disappointment. But Oliver had never hated Cooper. “I feel sorry for him. He missed out on something that could have been really great, and I think he’s only figuring that out now.”
A single tear rolled down Hayden’s cheek. Oliver pressed his lips together to keep from reacting. If he pounced on whatever Hayden was feeling, the kid was as likely to bottle it back up as he was to let it out.
“Just because I was mad at him doesn’t mean I don’t understand why he did what he did, or that I don’t still care about what happens to him.” And that was the truth. Oliver would never be in love with Cooper again, but maybe, after everything, he could forgive him.
Hayden swiped at his tear with the back of his hand. “He wasn’t my friend.” His voice was wobbly. “Mom and Dad always call him my friend, but he wasn’t.”
“Who?”
“Chris. Christian. The guy I—the guy I got arrested for—” He coughed, and his cheeks started to redden.
“The kid you were bullying?” Oliver kept his tone steady. This was progress, but he couldn’t rush it.
Hayden nodded, teary eyes spilling over. “He wasn’t my friend.”
“Okay.” Classmate. Acquaintance. The semantics were irrelevant. Unless—
“He was my boyfriend.”
Unless he was more than a friend.
Oliver should have brought a glass of water. That was his usual ploy to give himself time to steady his heartbeat and shaking hands in situations like this. But he’d been rushed, and the setting was unfamiliar, and so he only had the pen and pad on the table. He went back to writing out the recipe for Mango Tornado. The letters were jagged and uneven, but it gave Hayden space to pull himself together a bit.
“Did you hear what I said?” The kid’s voice was high, desperate.
“He was your boyfriend.”
