Page 47 of At The End Of The Day

But if I was gay, wouldn’t I have figured it out by now? Until Vincent, I had been pretty adamant against homosexuality. I’d never even considered touching another man intimately.

Could my homophobia have been a subconscious way of trying to deny who I was? But I truly had loved Mary, I loved pussy. I loved everything about it, the way it look, felt, smelled, tasted. The sounds it made when my fist or cock pounded, and jesus! The ones that squirted only turned me on further.

More confused than ever, I dared ask, “I mean, was he always aware he was gay?”

“Oh, uh, n-no. I mean, he always knew he was different, but he didn’t figure out his feelings and what they were until he was in college, got drunk, and woke up in bed with his dorm mate.”

I ogled him again, both brows lifted. In college? That took a while to figure it out, then. “No, shit?”

“Yup.”

“So, what happened?”

He shrugged and tapped the ashes to the ashtray, scratching his jawline. “What do you mean?”

My insides racing, I circled my wrist, impatiently encouraging him further. “When he came out. What happened?”

“Nothing. Well, I mean, my dad had a conniption.”

An image of my parents flickering through my thoughts, I willed my voice to not shake when I urged, “What about his folks?”

“They didn’t really care. I think they always knew.” He cast a sideways glance, a brow lifting rather arrogantly. “Most of the time, family and friends know before the person does.”

My blood thinned and my veins collapsed, the air knocking from my lungs. Chaos spinning my brain, I was suddenly coated in sweat, even my palms damp. A knot clogging my throat, I gulped, bit by bit bringing my full focus to his. This time, I wasn’t so successful at maintaining a steady tone. “Yeah?”

He took another drag, squinting an eye against the smoke. “Yup. You know, it takes a really brave man to admit who he really is. It’s hard to be true to yourself these days when everyone has an opinion and thinks they got a right to tell you who you can and can’t be.” His mood sank, his lips pulling into a frown. “My dad was like that.”

Relieved by the distraction, I managed to swallow properly. “What do you mean?”

“Well, you saw what Letta looked like when we were kids.”

The memory of the first night I met Violetta surfaced and I snickered. Despite her miniature, demure stature, she had put me in my place within two minutes, proving, even at sixteen, she’d been a force to be reckoned with. “Yeah, I couldn’t believe she was related to Vin. Man, who knew under that frizzy braid, baggy clothes, and coke bottle glasses was one of the smartest, bravest chicks I ever knew?”

“Exactly. She was brave to stop being what everyone thought she was.”

“What does that have to do with your dad?”

A shoulder lifted as he rolled the tip of the cigarette on the bottom of the ashtray to form a point on the cherry. “He thought, since I was the most popular boy in school and the MVP with a future in pro basketball, I should be with the most beautiful girl in town. The school nerd did not fit his picture of what he expected of me.”

“But you dated her anyway.”

He gazed up at me somberly. “No regrets. Still the best goddamn decision of my life. Still, it put a wedge between me and my dad that we never got past.”

A long breath pulled through my nose as I twisted my waist to search the monitors. Now that we knew for sure Jackyl was here, everyone was on alert and there was no room for any mistakes. Yet again falling victim to the cloud of confusion that was my brain these days, I muttered, “I don’t really got a relationship with my folks. We ain’t got no beef between us, but once I was of legal age, they kinda just forgot I was their son,” I lied, stretching the truth a bit. He didn’t need to know I, too, was a discarded, has been, washed up athlete. It would only make what I did to him even worse.

“You okay with that?”

I shrugged, my mouth twisting to chew the inside of my cheek. “Dunno. Never really gave it much thought. They send money every once in a while for my kid, but ain’t never met her.”

“And what would you do one day if she came to you, thinking she was gay?”

A second time, my insides dropped with a flush of iciness. Coughing, I sat forward a bit, swallowing repeatedly with the possible images painting in my head. “I dunno.”

“Would you stop loving her? Stop being her dad?”

“No,” I snapped with a heated glare before he could finish the question.

His head bobbing, he was checking the cameras at the far end, the ones near the cave. There weren’t any pointing directly at it, unfortunately. The closest one was about fifty yards away and around a bend, so if he really was hiding out in it, we wouldn’t know for sure from the cameras.