“Explain.”
Gage rolled his lips between his teeth. He didn’t know how much he should say. He didn’t know how much hecouldsay. He’d made Fallon a promise, and he wasn’t going to break it. But he also didn’t like keeping secrets from his dad.
The last and only time he’d done that, it had nearly killed him.
“I met someone a few months ago.”
Adele stiffened. He was on edge every time Gage brought up dating after everything that had happened. “Okay.”
“Good friend. Nice guy.” Gage closed his eyes and tried not to think about what he and Fallon had done because his sweats would not hide anything, and he was done getting embarrassing boners in front of his parents. But what they’d done together was important. It had meant something to Gage.
He swung his legs off the couch and rested his forearms over his thighs, bowing his head.
“We…you know.”
“No details,” Adele said.
Gage scoffed. “Like I would. Don’t be disgusting.” He took a breath. “It was the first time I…you know. Since.”
Adele grunted. He got irrationally angry every time he thought about what happened to Gage, but he was trying to keep it in check. “Mhm.”
“I thought it was going to feel bad, or scary, or…you know, bring up bad memories?” He chanced a look at his dad, whose face was open and soft.
“I get it.”
“It didn’t, ah,” Gage tried, searching for the right thoughts. “The guy disappeared on me, but it didn’t feel bad after. It felt…” He searched for the words. He’d talked about it with his therapist a bit, and they’d come up with empowered, but that never felt fully right to him. The feelings were so complicated he almost didn’t want to give them a name. “I guess it felt like proof that I wasn’t ruined.”
“Gage,” his dad said softly.
He held up a hand. “I know I’m not broken or ruined or whatever. I just…that sort of shit changes things, and I was scared how I was going to react after the first time I tried to get intimate with someone. But it was nice.”
“Okay. What does this have to do with your black eye?” Adele asked.
Gage blinked at him. “Nothing.” That was a lie, but indirectly. The black eye had been the consequence of his bad choice. But he had a bad habit of barreling forward like a rabid rhino and only thinking about it afterward. “That was literally an accident. But last night, I ran into the guy again.”
“Oh.” Adele went quiet for a second. “And…?”
“And he had some serious shit happen over the last few months. But we had a nice talk. We spent time together.” All night. Holding each other. “But he’s going through it, and I feel, like, so beyond underqualified to help him with his shit.”
“Did he ask for help?”
Gage flushed. “Well, no, but…”
“You saw me have to learn my lesson with Kash the hardest way possible, kid. I’m always happy to have you follow in my footsteps, but you know, you can also pick better footsteps than those ones. I’ve left a lot of them behind.”
Gage rolled his eyes, which hurt like hell, and he sat back with a small huff. “I hate you.”
“You really don’t.” Adele stood up and walked over, dropping beside him. After a moment, he reached for Gage’s hand and took it. Gage’s fingers were longer than his dad’s now, though Adele’s hand would always be larger.
He dwarfed Gage in so many ways, which used to piss him off when he was a teenager, but now it felt good to know that he could still feel small and vulnerable with someone who loved him. He looked up at his dad’s face. He’d never seen himself in Adele’s features.
Gage’s heritage got a little more ambiguous as he got older, the European genes a little more obvious as he aged. But there were moments he was profoundly aware he’d come from somewhere else. That if people had made a few different decisions, he might not be here at all.
He didn’t think about that often, but every now and again, it weighed on him. It felt like a betrayal to want to know where he came from because this family loved him so fucking much, and he loved them right back.
But he wondered if his biological family was like him too. Did they have ADHD? Did they act before they took ten seconds to think? Did they trust too easily and too quickly? Did it hurt them the way it hurt him?
Or was he just…unique?
