by Hayden Hunt
“You never fucking lied!” I snapped. “Who talks about their romantic life at work? Who just tells customers whether or not they’re gay or straight? That’s not something that happens! It was never any of their fucking business.”
“Apparently, many couples feel that it was their business, though. They’re saying they never would have let me bake their cakes for them had they known. That their ceremonies were intensely religious and one woman even said she was worried God was judging her for it.”
“No fucking way! What the fuck, man?! I knew this town was conservative, but how could they print this? In 2016, how does an article like this slip by? It’s so incredibly bigoted. They must know that. They must know how fucked it is to print this.”
And then it hit me. I knew exactly how this got printed.
Aidan recognized the realization on my face. “What?”
“This was James. This was Chelsea’s family… His father is really good friends with the editor of the paper. Even more than that, they’re pretty loaded. They make big contributions all the time.”
“So… this is what they’ve been planning. I’ve been waiting to get mugged in the alley on the way to my car but this entire time, they weren’t planning to hurt us physically. He meant what he said, he was trying to ruin us.” Aidan sighed. “And maybe he has.”
“Baby, no, you don’t know that… People might surprise you.” I reached for his hand, feeling intensely guilty.
“Miles, look at this article. This is the kind of town where this trash actually gets printed. You can bet your ass people are absolutely not going to be understanding.”
“Babe, I’m so sorry…” I whispered.
He shook his head. “It’s not your fault. This was bound to come out at some point.”
But it was my fault. It was entirely my fault. This was exactly what I never wanted to happen. I never fucking wanted the shit from my life to trickle into Aidan’s. It broke my heart that he was hurting now because of my broken engagement.
“This is on me, though. If you had never met me, this never would have happened. You wouldn’t have been outed if it wasn’t for me,” I said before looking down at the table.
“Hey.” He reached out and lifted my chin up. “Don’t you think like that. What good does that do? Do you think I would ever have chosen not to meet you, even knowing it would lead to this?”
I shrugged.
“I wouldn’t. Meeting you was the best thing to ever happen to me. I have no regrets. Regardless of what happens. The bakery is just the way I make money. It’s not my entire life. Love is my life. The love I have for you…”
“That’s so sweet.” I took his hand and squeezed it. “But what if you can’t make money with the bakery anymore? What will we do?”
“I don’t know,” he said honestly. “But who knows, maybe you’re right. Maybe my business won’t be affected very much.”
He was only trying to be optimistic at this point, but I played along.
“Maybe.”
But I wasn’t right. I wasn’t right at all.
10
Aidan
I tried to stay optimistic about the bakery for Miles’ sake. I knew he felt guilty about everything that happened. I didn’t want to exacerbate that for him.
Over the next couple months, I even stooped as low as lying to him. I told him everything was going great, that my customer base hadn’t disappeared.
But it had. Okay, maybe not disappeared, but it shrunk a lot. Right after the article, I got tons of calls from people requesting cancellations on their future wedding cakes. And it wasn’t hard to figure out why. Some of them even told me as much.
I still had some orders come in here and there but it wasn’t enough to stay afloat. Honestly, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do anymore. At the rate things were going, I was not going to be able to float this business very long.
I couldn’t pretend it wasn’t hard. It was, this was all I’d ever done. I didn’t know how to be anything other than a baker.
Not to mention, it was difficult to lose my grandparents’ business. Even worse, I keow if they were alive they’d be very disappointed in specifically the way they lost it. They were very Christian themselves and I couldn’t imagine they’d be proud of me ruining the bakery’s reputation with my homosexuality.
But fuck that. This town was so god damn backward. It really made no sense. Like Miles had told me often, my personal life did not affect my business life. It should have been of no interest to my customers.
I mean, how many times do you go to the grocery store and then start asking the cashier about their personal life? When does the cashier volunteer their sexual orientation? And would you really not allow them to ring up your groceries just because they weren’t straight? What effect would that have on your food?
I guessed in my situation, it felt more personal. Since I was doing cakes that had a strong religious meaning.
But it was still bullshit. And fuck these people that judged me for this. I didn’t think God himself was. I didn’t think God himself would be too proud of the way they were acting toward me.
I always knew this town was conservative but it was fucked up how persecuted I felt. Even people just walking by on the sidewalk, they’d give me dirty looks as they passed the bakery window.
I felt so lonely. Like I was completely isolated from my own community. And the thing was, I wasn’t even alone. I still had my friends who I saw every other week or so. Even more importantly, I had Miles, who made my life feel complete.
And even with all of them, the isolation was grating on me. I felt like an outcast.
I knew that Miles was technically in this with me but it didn’t usually feel like that. He didn’t have to deal with the direct discrimination that I did. All anyone in the town knew was that I was gay; they didn’t know who my boyfriend was. Nobody knew Miles was gay. He was able to still go to work and live his life normally.
Of course, if I told him how I felt he’d be a great emotional support to me. He’d probably do anything I wanted which, right now, was to leave this town entirely.
But I didn’t want to tell him. He seemed so happy now that we were together. I was happy too, at least with that aspect of my life. I didn’t want to rain on his parade. He’d never felt happiness like this before. I want to keep it as uncomplicated as possible.
I was going to need to come clean soon, though. It’d been months since the bakery’s reputation had been ruined. I was going to have to make the very tough choice to sell in the near future. Ideally, before I went completely under, because the worse my financial situation was, the worse of a situation I’d be in to sell the place.
It was about 4 pm, which was usually my busiest hour as people started dropping by after work, but the shop was dead right now. I was about to consider closing up for the night when I saw Miles’ smiling face pop up on the other side of the glass door.
“Babe!” I said as soon as he entered. “I thought I told you, you shouldn’t come here.”
“I had to. I missed you too much.” He smiled. I thought for a moment he was going to slip up and try to kiss me, but he just sat down at the table in the corner of the shop.
He looked around, noticing how empty it was. “Slow day, huh?”
“It was busier in the morning,” I lied.
I told him I didn’t want him at the shop because I didn’t want anyone assuming he was my gay lover. Which was true—I didn’t want his life to become as difficult as mine had. But it was only half the truth.
The other reason I didn’t want him here was because I didn’t want him to know how bad business was. If he was coming in every day, seeing how empty the shop always was, I wouldn’t be able to lie and say things were going well.
Although since it was just one afternoon, I was sure I’d be able to brush it off as an unusual occurrence. He’d be none the wiser, unless he continued to come into the shop after this. Which I would insist he not do.
&nb
sp; I sat down at the table across from him.
“You know, it’s so slow, I think I’m just going to close up for the night,” I told him.
“Really? You’re not concerned about losing customers that might come in later tonight?”
I shrugged. “I have no appointments, it’s not a huge deal.” Of course, it really wasn’t, because I knew nobody would be coming.
“Well, okay then!” Miles said eagerly. “Let’s grab a movie and some dinner on the way home? We can have a cozy night in on the couch.”
“That sounds absolutely perfect,” I said, kissing him on the forehead without thinking.
“Babe!” he said quickly. “You shouldn’t.”
“Oh, nobody’s around.” I shrugged. “Let me start closing up shop,” I said as I turned around.
“You might want to wait on that,” he advised. “I think you’ve got a customer coming.”
“Really?” I said, sounding more surprised than I meant to.
Sure enough, when I turned around, an adorable little old lady had her hand on the doorknob.
“Hi,” I said eagerly, “how can I help you?”
Apparently, I couldn’t help her at all, because she completely ignored the question. Instead, she dug right into me.
“You should be ashamed!” she snapped.
“What?” Miles asked, alarmed.
“I saw you kiss him, you know!” she practically yelled. “It’s shameful, to be flaunting your sinful lifestyle.”
“I’m sorry, I—” But she wouldn’t let me talk.
“I knew your grandmother, you know. She was a great woman. She took pride in three things. Her shop, her family, and her religious beliefs. And now that she’s gone, you have managed to ruin all of them!”
Her words were like a dagger in my stomach. Because I’d been thinking those same things too. I told myself how silly that was, to care what my homophobic grandmother might think of me. But I still loved her, and knowing I may have disappointed her still stung.
“Don’t you talk to him that way!” Miles came to my defense. “You don’t know him at all! He is an amazing person with a delicate heart. He is kind and caring and loving. He is everything he was raised to be.”
“No!” she snapped. “He is clearly not of God and neither are you! Don’t speak your blasphemy to me. A caring Christian man would control his impulses.”
“Impulses?” Miles bit. “Do you have a husband?”
“I do,” she said proudly. “Of 45 years.”
“Is that what your love for your husband is? An impulse? Because this man loves me. He truly loves me.”
“No!” she yelled. “That is not what love is. Real love cannot exist between a man and a man. God created love to be only between a man and a woman. Your lust for him is just that! It is lust and it means nothing. You’ll go to hell for this.”
“You really need to go,” Miles said seriously, but she turned to me and continued talking.
“And what will you do for all those good Christian couples whose weddings were tainted by your cakes of sin?”
“Lady, his cakes weren’t tainted, all right? He didn’t have homosexual sex with any cakes. I think you’re in the clear on that one.”
“How dare you speak to me like this!” she snapped. “The community has a right to know what you plan to do to repay people.”
“I’m not going to do anything, okay?” I finally got the willpower to speak to her after shaking off the shock of everything. “I couldn’t afford to pay them anyway with all the business I’ve lost! And I’ve never even made a cake for you, so why don’t you just move along.”
She glared at both of us. “You’ll pay for your sins one day. God will make sure that you pay. There is a special place in hell for men like you.”
“And I’m sure we’ll see you there!” Miles told her sarcastically.
Her jaw dropped in shock again. “You petulant little—”
“Seriously, get out of my shop, before I call the police,” I threatened. Though I wouldn’t call them. I didn’t think the cops in this town would be very sensitive to my plight.
“I’ll leave,” she finally agreed. “Only because I cannot stand to be within feet of you two. I can’t even stand to share this sweet little town with you! A town that used to be pure, unshaken by the sins of men like you. But the world is going to hell!” She finally slammed the door and left.
Miles looked at me sadly. “It’s been so much worse than you’ve told me, hasn’t it?”
I sank into a chair and burst out into tears. I wasn’t even able to answer. The cat was out of the bag and it was all too much.
“Oh, baby.” He pulled up a chair next to me and put his arm around my shoulder. “Sweetheart, it’s going to be okay. I promise.”
“It’s not okay, though,” I argued. “I’ve lost my business, I’ve lost my reputation, and now my grandparents’ old friends are running in here to tell me how much of a failure I am. I can’t do this.”
“Can’t do what?” he asked, rubbing my back softly.
“Any of it. I just need to escape this place.”
“Okay,” he answered defiantly. “Then we’ll escape.”
I looked up at him. “What?”
“We’ll escape. We’ll leave, we’ll move. You can try to sell the bake shop and we’ll move somewhere else.”
“Where are we going to move?” I asked.
“Wherever you want. The coast, where people are actually accepting of gay people.”
“You don’t want to do that though, do you?” I asked. “You don’t want to leave everything behind. You grew up in this town.”
“Are you kidding? I’d love to leave!”
“Seriously?”
“Absolutely,” he assured me. “Honestly, I’ve been wanting to move for a long time. The feeling only intensified when I met you.”
“Really? Why?”
“Because I hate hiding my life with you. I want to live in a town where I can walk down the street holding your hand and nobody will stare. I want to be able to kiss you goodbye without worrying that some ultra-macho straight guy is going to pick a fight with us. I want the freedom to love you how I’ve always wanted to love you… Openly and honestly. It’s been killing me to not be able to show my love for you wherever we go. I hate feeling like you’re my secret.”
“Why didn’t you tell me any of this before?” I asked.
“I don’t know… Probably for the same reason you didn’t tell me the bakery was doing so bad.”
I thought on this. “I didn’t want to upset you, you know? You were so happy.”
“Well, I didn’t want to upset you either. I knew that if I said how uncomfortable this town made me, you’d want to move. And I didn’t think you wanted to leave the bakery behind. I didn’t want to make you choose.”
I laughed. “I guess we were both a little too worried about the other’s comfort.”
“Apparently.” He smiled. “Let’s agree on something, then.”
“Okay, what?”
“We’ll have a policy of complete honesty from now on. We won’t try to save each other’s feelings, won’t try to protect each other, we’ll just be completely honest about what we want.”
“Agreed.” I smiled softly at him.
“So, with that in mind, what is it that you really want to do? Do you want to sell the bakery? Go live somewhere else?”
“Honestly… Yeah, I do. You’re right that a few months ago I would have wanted to keep the bakery and would have felt torn between the bakery and leaving. But now that the bakery is slowly going under, there’s nothing to choose between. I’ve wanted to leave for a while too. This community… It’s really not conducive to our growth.”
“Okay then.” He nodded. “It’s decided then. We’ll move. I don’t want you living like this. I can’t stand the thought that people are coming into your shop and harassing you like this when I’m not around. How often has his happened?”
“
Actually, this was the first time. But I get a lot of dirty looks from people walking by. Honestly, I was starting to feel really… alone.”
“Babe.” He pulled me in and hugged me tight. “Why didn’t you tell me? You know you can tell me anything.”
“I didn’t want you to feel guilty. I didn’t want this weight to be thrust on you. I thought I could carry it myself.”
“That’s the thing about being in a relationship with someone, though. You don’t have to carry the weight by yourself. I’m here for you. I’m your partner in this life. I’m supposed to help you, but you’ve got to tell me things.”
“Okay,” I agreed. “From now on, I swear I’ll come to you.”
“Good.” He pushed the hair out of my eyes. “I don’t know how long it will take, but let’s meet with a realtor tomorrow. Someone who can talk to us about selling both the bakery and your house. And I’ll start looking at cities we could possibly move to, job positions we could take. And as soon as we can, we’ll get out of this town and never look back.”
I looked around at the bakery, taking in the shop that would soon no longer be mine.
“No,” I told him seriously. “I don’t want to never look back.”
This confused him. “Uh… What do you mean?”
“Things may be painful right now, but I don’t want to forget this place. It was where I grew up. It’s been a huge part of my life and I’ll never regret being here. Ultimately, this bakery led me to you. I have no regrets about this town. It might be time to move on, but I want to look back. I want to remember this place.”
He kissed me gently. “You’re right. We’ll never forget. This is the place we met… It’ll always be special. Regardless of how our lives here ended.”
I groaned and buried my head in my hands again. “I really don’t know how I’m going to leave it. I’m so scared. I’ve never lived anywhere else. Starting my whole life over somewhere else… Well, it’s daunting. What comes next?”
