Mason thought for a moment, wondering if talking about his father while deveining shrimp was safe. He turned back to the counter, pulled up a streaming jazz station he’d been enjoying lately on his phone, then started unpacking the wrapped shrimp and scallops. He went to the sink and washed his hands before he grabbed what he needed from Ms. Sable’s magnetic knife rack.
“Our story begins back in the Spring of 1986. A boy child came screaming into the world—”
“Dude.” He turned and caught the are-you-fucking-serious look on Xeni’s face. “Let’s fast forward just a little.”
“First year of uni, I started a band. Our drummer, Duncan, and I fell in love. My father found out. Threatened him enough that he was too scared to carry on with me. A year or so later, my father sets me up with one of his business associate’s daughters. I go back to law school, so I can become my father’s idea of a proper man.” Mason paused for a moment to look for a pot for the pasta. A memory of Ms. Sable suddenly popped into his mind and he chuckled.
“What’s so funny?” Xeni asked.
“Just thinking about how annoyed your aunt would be seeing me searching through her cabinets.”
“Well, it was her bright idea for us to get married and to leave me this house. Some concessions from the afterlife will have to be made.”
Mason glanced over his shoulder and looked at Xeni’s beautiful face as she became fixated on the label of her beer. He ducked back into the cabinets and found the big pot he was looking for. He let the music fill the air while he filled the pot and set it on the stove. He found a skillet and set that to heat while he got the shrimp ready. Eventually Xeni spoke.
“I talked to my Aunt Alice today. And, ugh…” She tilted her head back and sucked in a deep breath, blinking a dozen or so times. “I can’t cry right now.”
“Why not? Nothing beats a good cry.”
“Well for one, I don’t like crying in front of people. Also, the levels of frustration I’m dealing with right now? If I start, I might not stop crying until New Years. I don’t have time for that.”
“As your husband, I want you to know that it’s okay for you to cry in front of me.”
Xeni let out a mirthless chuckle. “I appreciate that. I prefer to cry alone in my car or late at night in the dark. It’s more dramatic that way. More cathartic.”
Mason thought back to the last time he cried and he guessed she had a point. “Had a real good cry in an alley behind my favorite pub once. Wasn’t cathartic exactly, but it had to be done. I didn’t need anyone to witness that event.”
“Finish your story and then maybe we’ll find someplace quiet to sit back to back and we’ll cry together.”
“That sounds romantic. Anyway, Moira and I actually started to get pretty close. I thought she was a great girl. A few months before the wedding, we were talking and I told her about the band and I mentioned Duncan. I maybe put a little too much emotion behind his name, because she had follow-up questions. I thought I could trust her, since we were about to get married. So, I told her we’d been serious, but he was an ex. We all have exes. He’d moved on. I’d moved on.”
“Right. This sounds like normal ex stuff. Minus your father threatening him.”
“Exactly. She asked me if I was gay. I said no, I’m bisexual. I gave her the basic definition of what that meant to me. She seemed to accept that and I thought that was the end.”
“But it wasn’t.”
“She was a no show on our wedding day.”
“Oh, okay. Also holy shit.”
“Two hundred guests packed into St. Sebastian’s and she’s not there. She told her father she just couldn’t. There’s a conversation between our fathers and somehow it’s reported that I’ve told Moira I am gay and that it’s a secret I asked her to keep to herself. I never asked her to keep anything to herself. I thought I was just letting my wife-to-be get to know me better.”
“Jesus. Right, go on.”
“Everyone’s upset because you know my being gay is akin to me being a serial killer. And the wedding’s been cancelled, so people are even more upset. A couple of days go by, I finally talk to her and she tells me she never said that. She just isn’t secure enough to be with a man who might want to sleep with men again in the future.Ithought I would be spending my future sleeping withher.But I guess I was confused about how monogamy and marriage go hand in hand. I don’t know.”
“Ah. Yeah, a lot of people struggle with bisexuality as a concept and they also struggle with the fact that bisexuality and commitment can work together just fine. It’s annoying. I came out to my parents because I didn’t want them to be shocked if I popped up with a person who wasn’t a cis dude. They handled it well, but I don’t think my mom fully gets it. But this isn’t about me. Please continue.”
“No, you talk about yourself too. Open forum. Free exchange of ideas here.”
“No, I want to hear the rest. So, she makes it clear that she just can’t hang and your wedding day was probably the worst day to share this information. Then what?”
“I didn’t really have time to be upset or hurt or whatever because her father takes back his offer to hire me at his firm and apparently I’ve botched some investment deal he had with my father that would have secured funds to keep a small bit of family land and restore the even smaller castle that sits on it.”
“Wow. Shit.”
“Wow shit would be right. We—” Mason stopped himself from going on. He wasn’t proud of what happened next. “Things were said and then things got physical. I’ll spare you those details, but in the end, my mum thought it would be better if I came to the States for a while. Put a whole ocean between me and my father, and give us both a chance to calm down.”
