“Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“When did you know? That you were gay?”
I leaned back against the couch, thinking. “I was fifteen when I knew for sure. There was this guy on my junior team. I couldn’t stop looking at him. Couldn’t stop thinking about him. And I realized I’d never felt that way about girls. Not really.”
“What did you do?”
“Panicked.” I smiled without humor. “Prayed about it. Tried to make it go away. Dated a girl to prove to myself I wasn’t gay. That didn’t work, obviously.”
“When did you accept it?”
“Accept it? Maybe never. I acknowledged it. Learned to live with it. But accepting it—being okay with it—that’s still a work in progress.”
He was quiet for a moment. “Do you think you’ll ever be okay with it? Really okay?”
“I don’t know.” It was the most honest answer I could give. “A lifetime of being told it’s wrong is hard to undo. Even when I know intellectually that it’s not wrong, that I didn’t choose this, that I deserve to be happy—there’s still this voice in my head. My mother’s voice. The Church’s. Everyone who taught me that being gay meant being broken.”
“You’re not broken.”
“Most of the time, I know that. But sometimes…” I gestured vaguely. “It’s complicated.”
“Yeah.” He closed his laptop. “My father’s never going to accept this. Accept me.”
“Probably not.”
“Does that bother you? That my father won’t accept us?” he asked.
“Does it bother you that mine won’t either?” I replied.
We looked at each other, the weight of our families’ disapproval sitting between us.
I needed to lighten the mood. “Come on,” I said, grabbing my crutches and standing. “I’m going to teach you how to make proper Italian food.”
The subject change was abrupt, but he went with it. Followed me into the kitchen, where I’d already laid out ingredients earlier.
“What are we making?” he asked.
“Osso buco. My mother’s recipe.” I pulled up the recipe on my phone. “It takes a while, but it’s worth it.”
I walked him through it step by step. Browning the veal shanks, sautéing the vegetables, adding the wine and stock. He followed my instructions carefully, asking questions, getting flour on his shirt, laughing when the wine splashed.
And watching him there in my kitchen, concentrating on the recipe, trying so hard to get it right—I felt it again.
I wanted this forever.
Not just the sex or the intimacy. This. The normalcy. Teaching him to cook. Sharing meals. Building a life together.
But I couldn’t have both. Couldn’t have this and hide who I was. Couldn’t have forever and keep my family.
The realization made my gut churn.
We ate dinner at the kitchen bar, the osso buco rich and perfectly cooked. Étienne was proud of himself, and rightly so.
“I can’t believe I made this,” he said between bites.
“You did a good job.”
