“No, you don’t,” she said sternly in my head. “Don’t you dare. Because I loved you from the first time I saw you, and I’ve loved you ever since. Because you are you. Nobody else, Peter. You. Because you’ve got this big, kind, enormous space inside your chest where you love. And anyone who gets to be loved by you is the luckiest person in the world.”
I sighed. Maybe.
“The love you had for me doesn’t negate the love you had for others. Nor does it negate the love you could let blossom. You just need to let it. Before it’s too late.”
Maybe I cried, what did I know? Sat there on the floor talking to the dust bunnies in the corner.
“It’s okay to love,” she continued. “It’s okay to love as widely and largely and freely as we do. It’s fine. And anyone we love knows this. The boys know this. I know this. And deep inside, you know this too. That love is never wrong. Not when it’s out in the open.”
“No secrets,” I whispered.
“None,” she whispered back.
“You’re doing it again,” Ed said, folding those long legs of his underneath himself. “You’re talking to yourself.”
“I know.”
“Ollie’s mad as hell. I don’t blame him. Cal’s taking him home.”
I didn’t know why there was a shard of panic cutting through my chest. Or why I released a breath of relief.
“I told him you get overworked and let things in your head get to you. We’re here anyway, and he needs to have a breather too. It’s intense, all this. I get that.”
“What is?” I spat out.
Defensive. Anger. Fear. Fucking fear.
“You and your pathetic fear of people knowing that you like a bit of dick now and then.”
“Fucking hell,” I breathed out, as he chuckled.
“Do you think we don’t know? You told us when we were what…twelve? We were watching some show and Cal said something, and you were so fucking angry with him and we had this big discussion about bisexuality. Honestly, Dad, it was the most embarrassing night of my life.”
“Sorry,” I said. Then grinned weakly. “Not sorry.”
“You’d better not be. It was a good life lesson. I’ve thought a lot about that night. What you said. What I thought about it. I thought it was absolutely disgusting back then.”
“I know you did.”
“But when you’re twelve? Everything is fucking disgusting.”
“Watch your language.”
“Says the man who can’t even admit it out loud.”
“I did! I told you.”
“You did, and then you hated yourself. For years.”
“I didn’t.”
“Dad,” he said sternly. “I’m not a child. And neither is Cal and neither is Ollie. Most of all? Mum was not kidding when she said you were too bloody stubborn to go out and do it.”
“Do exactly what?”
I backed myself up against the wall.
Walls. They were all up again. Protecting myself from…I didn’t know what.
