Somehow, some enterprising paparazzi website has managed to get hold of a video of Luke making out with another guy in an alley. There’s no denying it’s him, either, because there are several close-up photos, too. The sad thing is he barely even remembers that particular hook-up. It was some guy he met at a bar in some tiny town in England, and after the two of them made out Luke had promptly left him behind, going back to the U.S. without a second thought.
“Are you okay, man?” Chris asks. “Should I call Terry?”
Terry’s his manager, the one who’s pretty much responsible for all of his PR and for making sure his public image never gets away from what they want it to be. He’s going to be so pissed when he sees this, and the thought of having a conversation about the situation makes him want to crawl into the nearest hole until everything blows over.
But he knows he can’t. Terry’s not going to let him, and he’d be ashamed of himself if he took the coward’s way out.
You gotta face the music,a voice says in the back of his mind, sounding a lot like Aunt Patty.
Thinking of Aunt Patty reminds him: he’s also going to have to talk to his family about this, which might be the worst part of the entire debacle.
This can’t be happening,he thinks.
But then Terry calls, and the news goes from bad to worse. Every news station has it, including the ones back home in the Ohio Valley. They’re all falling over themselves trying to figure out the identity of the young man Luke Carter has been caught kissing, and they’re all even more desperate to get a comment from Luke.
His phone starts buzzing, and he can see right away it’s various members of his family, and then there are the texts, all of which are basically some version of the same thing, the same damning question: is it true?
Luke notices none of them actually seem to care about how he’s feeling. They just want to know if the man they thought they knew is really the thing they can’t forgive.
Then comes the text he’s been dreading. It’s from Aunt Patty.
It’s just two words, but they’re the most ominous words he can imagine.
Call me.
He doesn’t, not at first. He doesn’t think he has the stomach for it, at least not until he has a few drinks.
In the end, he has more than a few. He’s more than a little drunk by the time he finally gets around to calling her back, and on some level he knows this is literally the worst way he could handle the conversation. He ignores his better judgment; he’s gotten very good at doing so, lately. When there’s something he doesn’t want to deal with he just…doesn’t. It’s not a perfect method for coping with things, but it’s the one he’s going to keep using until he can’t anymore.
“Hi,” he slurs into the phone as soon as his aunt picks up. He hates the sigh from the other end of the line. She’s dealt with enough drunks in her life to know the sound of a young man who’s had one–or three–too many.
“Honey,” she says, “I’m gonna cut right to the point. Is it true?”
Luke swallows hard, because he knows he can’t lie to Aunt Patty. She deserves to know the truth, even if it destroys their relationship..
Which he’s aware it probably will.
“Yes, it’s true,” he says. “I’m gay.”
The silence on the other end of the line tells him all he needs to know. He’s known this was going to be the result of his coming out, which is why he hasn’t done it before now. He wishes he could get ahold of the photographer who caught him kissing another dude–no, he wishes he could get ahold of whoever told him where he was going to be–because if he did, he knows exactly what he’d do…
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Aunt Patty says. The worst part is he actually believes her. He doesn’t think she’s mad at him. He thinks she’s disappointed.
Luke isn’t sure what he wants right now. He isn’t sure if he wants to yell at her and demand she love him for what he is, or if he wants her to hang up on him, or, or, or…his thoughts just sort of blank out, and all he can do is sit on the other end of the phone and wait for her to say something else.
“I can’t approve, but I hope you’re safe,” she says.
“Is that all you have to say?” he finally manages to choke out. “You hope I’m safe?”
He’s so close to falling apart. The tears are almost choking him. The words are jumbled all around in his head. No matter how hard he tries to get them into some kind of shape, to put the many things he’s feeling into a coherent sentence, he just can’t.
“What do you want me to say?” she asks. “You’re a homosexual, and you know what the Bible says.” She sighs again, and in his mind’s eye he can see the look on her face, can see the way she’s looking off into the distance, trying to find some way of making sense of what’s happening.
“Luke, I can’t give you what you want,” she says. “I…I can’t see you. I’m not even sure I want to talk to you, not as long as you’re living in sin. I…I just want you to be right with God.”
The words cut him deeper than if she’d cussed him out. He wants to tell her he knows what his relationship with God is like–it’s pretty good, thank you very much–but he knows it would be a waste of time. Aunt Patty has always had a very stubborn and inflexible way of looking at things, and she’s not likely to change, not even for her favorite nephew.
“I have to go,” she says. “Just take care of yourself, okay?”
