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Henry

Prologue

Four Years Ago, July

I never expected to be spending my forty-fifth birthday moving my wife out of the house we’d bought together the year we got married. Carrie was moving into the apartment of the man she’d been sleeping with for the past who-knows-how-long. At least a year. That was all she admitted to.

It had to be longer, though. I’d noticed the change in her. Hell, I’d noticed the change in me. Because after living in blissful obliviousness as a straight man for the first four decades of my life, right around the time I turned forty-three, a switch flipped.

I’d realized I was gay.

Okay, so some people assumed I was bi, and I could see how they’d get there, but if I was being honest with myself, I’d struggled to have sex with my wife since our wedding night, the first night we’d actually slept together. It had been . . . less than ideal. For both of us. And truthfully, it hadn’t gotten much better over the years.

And after everything had shifted for me? I’d hardly touched her since then. Because the shift had been massive. Abrupt. World-turning-on-its-axis kind of shit.

“Hen, dear, can you check the hall closet? I think I left a few blankets in there.”

I fought against rolling my eyes at the lifelong nickname. Wasn’t Henry short enough already? “Sure.”

After offloading the heavy box of books I’d been carrying in the bed of her boyfriend’s massive pickup truck, I ambled back inside to dutifully check the closet. Finding the blankets she’d requested was easy. Walking past our wedding portrait still hanging on the wall next to the closet was harder. Why the hell was that still up?

Because I was a glutton for punishment, after piling the blankets in my arms and sliding the closet door shut, I took a moment to bask in the AC we’d installed a few years back and stared at the picture. Carrie and I at twenty-three—way too fucking young and naïve to make such a life-altering commitment—in front of the church I’d grown up in wearing the obligatory black suit and white dress.

She’d been so excited when she’d picked out that dress. It was lacy and frilly and sparkly, and at the time, I’d thought she was the most gorgeous thing I’d ever laid my eyes on. She’d always been beautiful. That wasn’t the problem.

The “problem” was my “little issue,” as she’d taken to calling it every time we talked about it. Which was only very recently, since historically, we’d never talked about anything.

Maybe that should’ve been the first clue that my marriage of twenty-one years was falling apart.

I shoved my musings away, swallowing hard before making a deliberate turn toward the kitchen for a drink of cold water. The four of us—the husband of one of her friends had also come to help—had been at this for hours in the unusual yet unrelenting Seattle heat.

Setting the blankets on the kitchen counter, I pulled a glass down from the cabinet like I’d done countless times over the years, wishing like hell I could just ignore the swirling in my head. But my thoughts weren’t letting go.

My “little issue” wasn’t a goddamn issue at all. Being gay was a part of me, who I truly was after shoving it down so deep inside that I hadn’t even known I’d been in denial. I’d convinced myself I was straight for so many years, but a straight man didn’t struggle with sex the way I had. A straight man didn’t fight to keep his dick hard when his wife wore see-through lingerie like I did. A straight man didn’t stumble on gay porn and find out that two dudes going at it got his dick harder than he’d ever been.

That had been the night everything had clicked into place.

Yeah, I was completely and utterly gay.

But instead of coming out to my wife after I’d come out to myself, instead of being an adult and dealing with the trouble I’d always had communicating about things that mattered, I shoved it down, convinced I could stay the faithful husband she’d married. Oh, I was still “faithful” in the literal sense of the word—I’d never even kissed a man. I’d left the infidelity up to her.

I’d taken vows, and I’d foolishly hidden behind them as an excuse to not deal with my shit. She’d felt it, she’d strayed, and now I was literally carrying boxes of crap we’d bought together over the decades to her boyfriend’s obscenely huge dickmobile. He had to be compensating for something.

Never said I was mature.

After downing the water, I set the empty glass in the half-full dishwasher, picked the blankets back up, and headed outside. Carrie and Alan were sucking face by the open driver’s side door of her hatchback when I stepped into the brutal July heat. I coughed to make my presence known, not even sure why I was maintaining a façade of politeness—weren’t we past that?—before opening the door behind them and tossing the blankets inside.

To her credit, Carrie blushed as she pulled away, dabbing her lips discreetly as if she could erase the mental image I’d be living with for a while, dammit.

“Thanks, Hen.” Squaring her shoulders, she turned to me full-on, and apparently Alan took that as his cue to hurry back to his now fully loaded truck. I almost snorted at the double meaning—he even had a light bar on top and LED lights along the running boards. Dick.

Carrie’s hand was on my upper arm before I realized how close she’d gotten. “Seriously, I appreciate all your help today, and on your birthday! This was really great of you.”

I nodded like a fucking bobblehead, hating myself as the polite words I didn’t want to say came out instead of the scathing reproach I’d been dying to let loose. “Of course, Care”—I despised that nickname, too, but there was no point in changing it now—“I’m glad you’ve found happiness.”

Was that a tear in her eye? She’d cheated, but she was acting like she was the one having a hard time. Sure, I was ashamed that I hadn’t been self-aware enough to realize I was gay until recently. I’d had so little exposure to LGBTQ+ people until the past few years—a calculated move on my parents’ part that had shamefully come with me well into adulthood—that I hadn’t even had a chance.

But I got it. Happy people didn’t look for dick outside their marriage; hurting people did. I wanted to hate her for the choices she’d made, but honestly, finding her slinky pink satin dress—the one I’d zipped up for her hours earlier—hiked up around her waist and Alan’s pants undone with his dick buried inside her last spring had filled me almost entirely with relief.