Page 71 of Saving Wyatt

“I don’t know the specifics, so I can’t answer that for you.”

Wyatt sighed and lay on his back looking at the ceiling.

“I bet you think I’m pathetic. Such an old man and worrying about what people will say.”

I shook my head and ran my hand down to his chest, resting it in the middle, over his beating heart.

“You’re not pathetic. Everyone has their own journey. You think it was easy for me to come out?”

Wyatt pierced me with his glare, and I laughed.

“Yeah, maybe my journey has been shorter, but dude, I grew up in a deeply conservative country. Being gay was never discussed. I thought there was something wrong with me. I might have accepted it when I was younger, but up until I graduated high school and went off abroad to study, I thought this was going to be my dirty little secret for life.”

“I’m sorry,” he said and rubbed my cheek again.

I leaned into his touch and looked right at him. “See? I understand you, Wyatt. I get you. We’re not so different.”

He smiled another sad smile again before he said, “And yet we are. You’re a brave, beautiful man, and I’m⁠—”

“A wonderful beautiful man too. That’s what you are.”

He chuckled as if I’d said a joke, and I squeezed his cheek as punishment.

“When did you realize you were gay?” I asked, then took pause and double-checked. “You are gay, right? Not bi or anything else?”

“Yeah.” He nodded. “I don’t know. I guess I always knew. I was always more interested in the male figure than the female. But I buried it deep for a long time.”

“I get that. Were your parents religious?”

He shook his head. “They weren’t fanatics, I know that much. But like you, it wasn’t spoken about. No one announced they were attracted to the same sex. Everyone did things discreetly or risked being, at best, ridiculed, at worst, imprisoned. If anyone talked about gay people, it was to say how depraved or sinful they were for their ‘choices.’”

“See? And then you think there’s something wrong with you for not coming out. That shit is traumatic. It’s fucking hard to hear, let alone deal with.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I still remember my first week at Camp Hell. There was this SCO, Clarke, who, out of nowhere, decided to tell us queers aren’t men and most definitely not SEAL men, and I stopped breathing, clenched my hole so hard until he was done for fear of giving myself away.”

“I’m so sorry. That’s fucking horrible. And to think we still haven’t made much progress.”

“I don’t know. My squadron seems to be full of gay men. I just didn’t know it until they came here.”

“Maybe there’s a queer aura on the island that turns everyone gay.” I chuckled.

He laughed too. “Maybe.”

I breathed in and ran my finger in circles around his hairy chest. This was what I’d wanted since I met him. To be with him, to know him and his story, to bond with him. To forget myself with him.

Beep. Beep.

I stared at my phone, and I didn’t even need to check it to know what that was.

Evan. His text message.

The ghost of my past that I’d allowed to haunt me for far too long.

Why was I doing that to myself? Why was I letting my past haunt me morning after morning when I knew better? It wasn’t healthy. None of this was a healthy way to grieve. I didn’t need to be a therapist to know. I was an intelligent, educated scientist and yet I’d allowed these messages to keep me anchored in a past without a future.

“That’s him,” Wyatt said.

I nodded even though it wasn’t a question.