“Our last item issomething surprising,” he said, reading from the list. “Kinda open to interpretation.”
“Little bit, yeah,” I said, looking around to see if anything caught my eye.
As mad as Carter’s mom was about me, his dad was basically the opposite. He’d been nothing but warm and charming, asked me about my job, about the awards Carter had mentioned last night, and about my hopes and dreams.
I hadn’t talked this freely and openly with another person in a while. These were the kind of talks I associated with late nights in the hostel nearest the convention center I was going to for a tattoo expo, when half the people attending all crowded into the one dorm room passing around beers and… other things, depending on the location.
Mr. K was all right.
“You remind me of an ex-boyfriend, you know,” he said just as I was thinking that.
I paused, turning to look at him. Had I heard that right?
The look on his face told me I had. He wasnervous.
“I do?” I asked, casual as possible.
No big deal. I knew my generation hadn’t invented being bisexual.
“Yeah. From college, when dinosaurs still roamed the Earth,” he said.
I chuckled, initial shock over now. Mr. K was… bi? Probably bi. And that was fine, he was allowed.
His son was probably bi, too.
“So you had a charming, handsome boyfriend with an incredible eye for color in college?” I teased.
“And a rebel streak, yeah,” Mr. K agreed, smiling at me. “It was the late seventies, the eyeliner didn’t really surprise anyone.”
“He sounds cool,” I said.
Wow. Carter’s dad wasn’t straight.
How had I never known that? Did Kieran know that? Maybe it was a secret and I was just now being let in on it because I was apparently dating his son.
“He was,” Mr. K said. “Still miss him sometimes. He was… he was what I needed, even if I would never have picked him out for myself.”
Right. Family of bankers and lawyers, and Mr. K was the odd one out as a builder. Carter had followed in his mother’s mortgage-broker footsteps, a corporate job in a big company where his only function was to give advice about where they should push money around to next. Glorified accounting, he’d said when he’d been explaining it to me.
The only virtue his job seemed to have was that it paid well, and he didn’t even have enough off time to enjoy it.
“You’re what Carter needs,” Mr. K continued. “Even though he’s not sure about it yet.”
Crap. Were wethattransparent?
I didn’t think I was, but Carter… Carter was still uncomfortable. Which made sense, considering he’d never allowed himself to do any of this before and the sum total of his experience before this week was kissing mybrother.
I still hadn’t texted Kieran about that. Maybe it was better not to. Carter had told me in confidence, trying to make sense of his own experiences whether he understood that was what he was doing or not.
I’d had a crush on him all through high school and I still hadn’t actually figured out I was bi until later. I hadn’t thought of it that way.
“He likes you,” Mr. K said. “Haven’t seen him with someone he actuallylikessince he had a girlfriend for a month in eighth grade.”
My stomach clenched at the thought. I had no reason to doubt Mr. K. I’d come to basically the same conclusion.
“He’s been dating girls his mother likes since he was nineteen, and I’ve been telling her that if she likes them so much,sheoughta date them,” Mr. K said with a grin. “Think that might’ve been the final straw before she demanded a divorce.”
“Not to speak ill of your ex-wife,” I said, fully intending to do exactly that. “But I think you probably got the good end of the deal, there.”
