Homecoming Hearts Series Collection

by HJ Welch

  “How have I embarrassed you?” Reyse demanded, balling up his fists to try and control his anger.

  “By running around like a fucking fairy,” Dave sneered, grimacing in horror. “Whoring yourself out for teenage girls. Bawling your eyes out on fucking TV like a goddamned sissy! Telling the whole world you suck cock!”

  “Dave!”

  Everyone looked at Reyse’s mom, stunned. She’d leaped from the bed to her feet, doing a remarkable impersonation of Foofy. Now Reyse’s mom was staring daggers at his uncle as tears ran down her face.

  “You will not speak to my son like that!”

  Reyse couldn’t believe what he was seeing or hearing.

  Dave didn’t appear as impressed, sadly. He curled his lip and flung his hand toward Reyse. “Tina, the kid’s out of control! This is what happens when you mollycoddle boys!”

  “My name is Clementine,” she snapped back, her voice shaky but loud. “And my son is an international pop sensation and gay icon.”

  “Oh, bravo, yes,” Evangeline cheered, saluting her sister with her glass. “Tell him, darling.”

  “Shut up, you incessant woman,” Dave hissed.

  “Dave, calm down,” Reyse’s dad said firmly.

  “Yes, everyone calm down,” Reyse agreed. “Shouting can’t be good for Dad.”

  “Oh gosh, yes,” his mom cried, sitting back down and taking her husband’s hand. “Sorry. I’m sorry, sweetheart.”

  “If anyone should be apologizing it should be your son,” Dave said, glaring at Reyse. “Nobody asked you to parade your perversions around in public. You’re a disgrace.”

  “Actually, Dave,” Reyse’s dad said, “what was a disgrace was Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” He pursed his lips together and shook his head. “I knew a fella back in Iraq that saved me from a land mine. He lost his damn leg.” He looked at Reyse. “He also married his own fella a couple of years back. We ask people to offer their lives for their country, then tell them their lives ain’t worth shit?” He shook his head again. “That ain’t right.”

  Dave spluttered. Reyse felt tears pricking at his eyes. Was he actually hearing this right? Then he remembered the man with the prosthetic leg in the front room when he and Corey had first come to the house. There had been a man with his hand on his shoulder, if Reyse remembered correctly. Perhaps that was the couple his dad meant.

  “So you support this?” Dave demanded. He didn’t bother to look at Reyse, just jabbed a hand in his direction.

  Reyse watched his dad share a look with his mom. “It don’t really matter if I support it or not. It is the way it is, nothing I can do to change it. But…well, yeah. Reyse is my boy. And I’m sorry I haven’t really known him all these years.”

  It was like something broke inside Reyse. He managed to keep a hold of himself enough that only a single tear escaped. But inside his emotions were in turmoil. Maybe his dad did give a damn about him.

  “Unbelievable,” Dave cried, raising his hands to the sky. “When Jeremy showed me those photos, I told him to leave it alone. At least before we could all pretend he was normal. Now you’re all lost your damn minds.”

  “Jeremy?” Reyse said, swinging from one kind of utter disbelief to another. “He gave Dez Starr those photos?”

  “He said that little dickhead friend of yours was a faggot,” Dave said smugly, “so he wanted to-”

  “Get out.”

  Reyse turned back to his dad. His face was an expression of pure fury.

  “Dave, I mean it. Get out. If you’re going to call my son those kinds of words-”

  “I didn’t!” Dave protested.

  “Do you disapprove of my son being gay?” Reyse’s mom demanded.

  “Well,” Dave said, letting out a breath and rolling his eyes. “Who the hell is going to be pleased at that kind of news?”

  “Me,” said Evangeline, hopping to her feet. “Because it means he can stop living a heartbreaking lie. Besides, if it weeds out hideous little homophobes like you, all the better.” She grinned like she was at a party. “So, off you trot. We’ve had quite enough of you.”

  Dave scoffed and turned to his brother. “Donny,” he said.

  But Reyse’s dad shook his head, looking pained. “Dave, I think it’s best you pack your bags and head home. We can talk about this if you’re willing to listen, but I need time with my son right now. I can’t have you yelling at us all.”

  Dave opened his mouth like he was going to protest further. But Foofy shot forward and began barking nonstop at him. Every time she yapped, her whole small body jerked and her sparkly blue bow wobbled, her cloud of fluff rising and falling. Bark! Bark! Bark!

  With every jump she made forward, Dave took a step back.

  “Call her off!” he shouted at Evangeline.

  Evangeline grinned and took another sip of Champagne.

  Once they got to the door’s threshold, Foofy stopped moving, but continued to bark. Dave looked between the dog and the four people left in the bedroom. When it was clear none of them was going to help him, he stormed off down the corridor, presumably to pack his bag.

  The second he was gone, Foofy calmed down as if nothing had happened. She scampered back to Evangeline and dropped on her butt, scratching behind her ear and making her fur even more staticky.

  “Urgh, that’s much better,” Evangeline said cheerfully. She strolled over and pushed the door shut with a little more force than was probably necessary. Then she went back to where she’d left the Champagne bottle to top herself up and fill up the remaining glasses.

  Reyse pressed his fingers to his closed eyes, then blinked a couple of times. He couldn’t really believe any of what had just happened. But he didn’t care about his uncle or his childish tantrum.

  He cared about his parents.

  Evangeline pressed a glass of bubbly into his hands and also handed one to Reyse’s mom. “Now, come on,” she said in exasperation, looking around the room. “You all need to cheer up, lickety-split! Reyse is home, with wonderful news!”

  “Well, I did get dropped from my record label and half my fans hate me,” Reyse said heavily.

  “They do not,” Evangeline shot back with an eye roll. “A few hundred hysterical mommies screaming about sinners does not equate half your fans.” It was a bit more than that, but Reyse didn’t get a chance to protest.

  “You got dropped?” Reyse’s dad asked. Reyse had to say the outrage in his voice warmed his heart. Of all the ways he’d imagined this conversation going, it wasn’t this.

  Yes, maybe his dad was processing his being gay by using it to explain his effeminate behavior. If that helped him accept Reyse easier, it wasn’t ideal, but it gave them a place to start from.

  Reyse was under no delusion that they would ever be the closest father and son. But when his dad grumbled, “That ain’t right,” and crossed his arms, it made Reyse’s heart ten times lighter than it had been in days. Weeks. Maybe even years.

  “Okay,” Evangeline said thoughtfully, perching on her chest of drawers again. “So, we’ve solved one problem of three, haven’t we, Reyse?” She held up her index finger. “Spoken to Mom and Dad. And I have to say it went rather well. Utter morons, notwithstanding,” she muttered at the end.

  “Did it?” Reyse asked, looking at his dad. “Are you really okay with this?”

  Again, his dad looked uncomfortable, shifting on the bed. “Well, I can’t say I get it all, son,” he said shaking his head. “It seems…unnatural to me, two guys kissing and, well…” He got even redder. “Other things. But I don’t reckon I need to, do I? Like when a fella’s Jewish or a what-do-you-call-em? Vegan? It’s not for me, but…well, that’s okay, I guess?” He looked up hopefully at Reyse. “If I can be buddies with guys like that, I can get along with my own son, dontcha think?”

  Reyse swallowed, but he wasn’t quite able to get rid of the lump in his throat. He stepped closer to the bed, on the opposite side from where his mom was perched. He didn’t feel able to reach out h
is hand, so he rested it on the comforter instead, his glass dangling awkwardly from his other hand.

  “I can’t say I understand how anyone could fire a gun at another human being,” he said, afraid to voice his feelings after all these years of hiding them away. But if his dad could be honest, so could he. “But I have enormous respect for the kind of bravery that takes. The amount of training and skill, too.”

  He wasn’t able to look his dad in the eye, so he kept his gaze on his fingers. Therefore, it was easy to spot his dad reaching out and clasping his hand tightly. Reyse bit his lip and looked up.

  “I’m sorry, son,” Reyse’s dad said. It sounded a million times better than when Dave called him ‘son.’ “I think maybe we’ve both been a bit thickskulled over the years. But…you were a kid. Your old man should have known better.”

  Reyse wasn’t sure if it was a laugh or a sob that escaped his throat, but he knew he was smiling. “That doesn’t matter,” he said. “Not if we can move forward now.”

  His dad nodded. “I’d like that.”

  “Good, good!” Evangeline cried. It was like she’d taken it upon herself to be their cheerleader for the evening, constantly bringing the mood back up. She ran around the bed and hugged her sister’s shoulders, making Reyse’s mom laugh. “Like I said, problem one tackled, done, fixed. Now for problems two and three!”

  “What are problems two and three?” Reyse’s mom asked.

  Reyse sighed. “Well, I don’t know where Corey’s gone. It’s like he’d dropped off the face of the Earth.”

  He watched as his parents’ eyebrows raised at the same time. It would have been funny if it wasn’t sad.

  “Is Corey your…boyfriend?” his dad asked with some difficulty, letting Reyse’s hand go. Reyse was still proud of him, though. This was a lot for him to take in.

  “I hoped he would be,” he said, swirling his drink around in the glass, then taking a mouthful. “We were…together. But after those photos…”

  “Damn Jeremy and all these busy-bodies around here,” Evangeline spat. “He was so desperate to get in your knickers, Clementine, I bet he was willing to do anything.”

  “What?” Reyse’s dad snapped.

  “Are you serious?” Reyse’s mom asked. “No, no, surely not.”

  “Oh, yes,” Evangeline said to her with a huff. “I’m sure he thought you’d be upset and come crying to him while Donny was out of the picture. I spotted the slime on him right away.”

  Reyse fumed. It wasn’t even someone trying to make some money. This guy had ruined his life trying to make a play for his mom?

  Maybe not ruined, he hoped now. But certainly drastically altered the course of it.

  Reyse’s mom scowled and held his dad’s hand between her two smaller ones, her drink placed on the nightstand. “Well,” she said, puffing out her chest. “That’s the last brunch I ever invite him around for.”

  Reyse got the feeling that in this neck of the woods, that was the deepest insult she could offer him.

  Evangeline waved her hands. “Honestly, darling,” she said to Reyse. “I really believe that one will sort itself out. Besides, what did I say about moping?”

  “It’s unbecoming,” Reyse recited with a sigh.

  “Exactly,” she said. “Corey’s not going to come back to you if you’re just sitting around feeling sorry for yourself. Which brings us back to problem number three.”

  “What do I do now?” Reyse agreed, taking another drink. “It’s going to be a while before this court case gets up and running. I have lawyers on it, but if I can’t sing…”

  “All this because the label doesn’t like you being gay?” Reyse’s mom said, shaking her head. “It seems cruel. I’m sure there are plenty of gay people in the music industry. There always is in the creative arts, right?” Reyse nodded in agreement. “Well, it seems unfair that there are people out there holding them back, knocking them down. Where are the people helping them up?”

  “What did you say?” Reyse asked, a thrill shooting up his spine. “What was that?”

  His mom looked uncertainly at his dad. But his dad nodded in encouragement. “Well,” she said carefully. “You’d think with so many gay people these days – I mean look at your old band for a start – there would be more producers or – what did you call it? A label? – out there waving the rainbow flag.”

  Reyse placed his glass down and gripped his hair with both hands. “Mom, you’re a genius,” he rasped.

  “I am?” she said, not sounding convinced.

  “Of course you are, darling,” Evangeline said. Then she turned to Reyse. “How so?”

  “An LGBT label,” Reyse said. “A place for queer artists and producers and writers and DJs and booking agents – whatever! They can all come together and network and support each other!”

  “That sounds terrific,” Reyse’s dad said. “Who are they, then?”

  “They don’t exist yet!” Reyse said. “I’m going to start it! I already have the Below Zero guys, I bet they would jump at the chance to support something like this. And I could ask…yes…and…oh…”

  His brain was running at a million miles an hour. This could work. He didn’t need to find a new label. He could start his own.

  He hadn’t even noticed Evangeline come over to him, but he looked when she wrapped her arm around his shoulders. “Yes, Ricky. Yes.”

  Ideas were flying through his mind too fast. But his train of thought went something along the lines of having ostracized himself from the community, it was now time to give something back. Big time.

  “I’m going to start a new queer label,” Reyse said out loud, affirming it for himself and his family. “And I know just how to kickstart it.”

  Evangeline was right. He couldn’t mope around hoping Corey might find his way back to him. He was going to tell the world just how proud he was of his community. He was going to shout it from the rooftops. Not for Corey, but for himself.

  And if him finally coming out and being proud of who he was led Corey back to him, well. That would be the greatest gift he could imagine. He would just have to hope the universe was kind to him.

  In the meantime, he had work to do.

  28

  Reyse – One Month Later

  “Oh my god!” Kimmy cried, hanging off Reyse’s arm in excitement as they moved through the relatively empty Exposition Park. Soon, this place would start filling up with tens of thousands of people. But for now, in the calm early morning, there was still just the vendors setting up. “We got the rainbow cotton candy machine!” Kimmy squealed.

  “We did,” said Reyse happily.

  He couldn’t say who exactly had organized that. They had pulled hundreds of people together to make such a large event happen in such a short time. The past few weeks had been one giant whirlwind of activity, and although he was exhausted beyond belief, he couldn’t be happier.

  Well, he could. But he did his very best not to dwell on that.

  There was a whole lot of work that went into setting up a new music label and signing artists to it. But in the meantime, Reyse had gone all out and organized a one-day queer music festival right in the heart of LA. Exposition was a perfect location with the cityscape in the background and the streets thrumming around all four sides of the square-shaped park. As far as he was aware, his festival was the first of its kind in California. Having sold sixty thousand tickets in less than twelve hours, it was certainly the biggest.

  It had taken some time to settle on a festival name. But in the end, Reyse had gone with Iridescence. That was the name of the phenomenon when light passed through ice crystals at below zero temperatures to create rainbows within clouds. It also sounded like ‘dance,’ and that was what he hoped everyone did a lot of today.

  There was the main stage as people came through the entrance where the headline acts would perform, then three smaller stages situated around the Coliseum stadium, which dominated the center of the park. But due to the sheer number of acts th
at had come tumbling forward, desperate to support Reyse and his venture, they had also erected a number of tents and marquees for DJs and unknown artists to showcase their work to smaller crowds.

  Apparently, Reece wasn’t the only one fed up with the homophobic nature of the music industry at large. From chart-topping pop stars to drag acts to musical theater from Broadway itself (thanks mostly to Aunt Evangeline), they had scrambled to accommodate artists from Europe and Asia as well as the Americas.

  It wasn’t just queer artists either, although there were a surprising number of those. They’d booked several retro acts, some of whom had been gay icons back in the eighties and nineties and had come out of retirement especially for the day. Others were just steadfast LGBT allies.

  It was pretty overwhelming when Reyse considered just how many people were on his side. On his whole community’s side.

  He had been completely blown away at the rate which the festival had grown. It had gone from an idea of just one stage in a field to taking over an entire park. There were dozens of food trucks and pop-up bars, not to mention all kinds of queer merchandise on sale. From rainbow umbrellas to false eyelashes to leather gear to T-shirts, queer vendors had traveled cross-country for the chance to connect with the LGBT community. It was like he’d added a new date to the Pride calendar.

  What was even better was that it was all for charity. Yes, he was using the event to launch his label, Clementine Creative, but the majority of the fundraising from tickets was going toward half a dozen charities that Reyse and his new team had selected from all over the state. Reyse had been serious about giving back to the community. There were organizations that worked with LGBT people who were elderly, veterans, homeless, or in need of mental health support as well as a small legal firm that specialized in taking on LGBT discrimination cases pro bono. Reyse and his team had tried to go as far across the board as they could.

  A pang tugged at his heart which he did his best to squash down. But, damn. He wished he could share all this with Corey. Despite Reyse’s hopes, there had still been no sign of him. It was hard not to think that he didn’t want to get back in touch with Reyse, despite him finally coming out. But Reyse had promised himself he could focus his energy on that after today. First, he had a lot of work to do.