An awkward beat passed, and Mitch smirked from his place on the sofa, tipping a beer to his lips.
My younger brother and I had always had a strained relationship, and it hadn’t gotten any easier as we’d aged. Where I was ambitious and career-driven, he was lazy and apathetic, always holed up in his room doing god knows what and only emerging with a scowl on his face. Our personalities couldn’t have clashed more, but it was my sense of family obligation that kept me biting my tongue and plastering on a fake smile.
“You good, Mitch?” I said. “Found a job yet?”
“No. Have you?” he retorted.
“I have actually. Working with Ben right now.”
“I’ll be you are,” he muttered, the smirk still in place.
“What’s that, Mitch?”
“Oh nothing,” he chimed, sounding like a child. He was a child, in all but his actual age. Ben and I had been there all of ten minutes and between my mother’s passive-aggressive tendencies and the animosity shuddering like an aura around my brother, I was already regretting agreeing to come. Just as I was searching for some plausible excuse why we had to leave, Victoria poked her head around the corner. “Dinner’s ready.”
Dad and Mitch rose from their seats and traipsed past us into the dining room, Mitch slowing with a nasty little smirk as he squeezed around me. Ben grabbed my elbow as I made to follow.
“Hey. Ignore him. He’s just trying to get your back up.”
“Yeah, I know,” I said, shaking my head. “I shouldn’t engage him, but god, he pisses me off.”
We joined the family at the table, where the fancy dinner set had been laid out.
“Uncle Jimmy!”
“Uncle Jimmy, sit by me.” Tianna bounced excitedly in her chair.
I took a place in between her and Ben. “Hi, sweetheart,” I said, bending to drop a kiss on the top of her head. “You’ve gotten big.”
“Yep. I’m taller than all the boys at school.”
“You’re not,” I teased.
“Am too. Soon I’m gonna be taller than you.”
“That’s right,” Victoria said. “But only if you eat your veggies. If you don’t, you’ll shrink and you won’t be able to reach the shelf with the cookies.”
Mom waited, looking pointedly around the table until everyone got the hint and settled down, then clasped hands and bowed our heads.
I snuck a look at Ben, who squeezed my hand, a small smile on his lips. I caught Mitch’s stare as he watched what passed between me and Ben, a feeling of unease settling into the pit of my stomach.
Something was up with him. He’d had that shit-eating grin plastered to his face since the moment we’d arrived. It was the same one he’d worn when he’d hidden worms in our mom’s teapot when he was six. Something was definitely off, and from the way he stared at me while everyone else had their heads bowed saying grace, I had a feeling it had something to do with me.
Likely, he was feeling smug that my life had tanked, though I wasn’t sure how the life of a twenty-five-year-old still living at home with his parents and zero job prospects was much better than mine.
I shrugged it off as my mom ended her blessing and started passing around dishes of food.
We’d only made it two bites into the pot roast before Mom spoke up. “I was really sorry to hear about you and Jenna,” she said.
And there it was.
“Thanks,” I said, shoveling a forkful of lumpy mashed potatoes into my mouth.
“I don’t understand why you couldn’t make it work, though,” she sniffed.
Without hesitation, my father added his two cents. “Because marriages these days aren’t built like they used to be. People just rush into things, thinking everything is disposable. Car not running right? Just get a new one. TV doesn’t work? Toss it out and buy another. Rocky patch in the marriage? Throw those vows away and end it. Easier than putting the work in.”
“It’s a shame. She’s such a lovely girl. I was hoping to have more grandbabies soon.”
I sighed. “Mom, you know kids weren’t on the radar for Jenna and me.”
My brother’s smirk was back, bolder than ever. “Can’t make a baby if you can only get it up for other dudes.”
The words had been barely more than a mumble, but the entire table fell silent. My mother’s eyes went dark, filled with immediate anger. “Mitchell Carver, we’ve discussed this. That trash—those obscene lies—are not to be repeated in this house. Do you understand me?”
Mitch nodded, but he was looking at me, his eyes searching my face for a reaction. I did all I could to maintain a mask of neutrality, and he stood. “Got it, Mom. Excuse me for a minute.”
“What?” Victoria asked as he left the table. “What’s he talking about?”
“Nothing you need to worry about,” my mother said dismissively, waving her hand as though nothing had been said at all.
“Mitch?” Victoria asked, obviously thinking there was in fact something to worry about.
My father opened his mouth to say something else, but my mother beat him to it. “That hack of a reporter at that contemptible paper. They published lies about Jimmy… horrible lies… I’ve demanded a retraction.”
My dinner sat heavy in my stomach as my mind raced ahead of me, scrambling to put the words together. A newspaper? What newspaper—and what did Mitch mean about other dudes? I fucking hoped he was joking, or I’d kill the little asshole.
Fuck, I’d kill him anyway.
It wasn’t until Mitch was back at the table, slamming a stack of papers down and tipping over the bowl of peas in the process, that everything came into focus.
“I bought out all the copies I could find. Figured Mom could include the article with her Christmas letter this year.”
He’d taken care of flipping to the pertinent section, and there, staring back at me, was a picture of Ben and me at Remington’s.
I immediately felt the urge to vomit.
Victoria’s mouth fell open as she stared at a photo of me wrapped up in my best friend, kissing in a way that could only be described as intensely passionate. My mother flew into a fury, screaming at my brother to remove that filth from her dining room table. I could barely look up, my eyes glued to the image in front of me.
Everything else faded away and the picture of me and Ben was all I could see. It had been taken in the dark, and from a distance. The image was blurry, and the way our mouths were fused together made our faces almost indistinguishable. For a fraction of a moment, I considered telling my mother she was right, that it was a mistake and some inept journalist had a lot to answer for.
But then I cast my attention back up and looked at Ben. There’d be no explaining this away, and realization hit me like a punch to the gut. I didn’t want to explain it away. If forced to make a choice between whose feelings I wanted to preserve, Ben won, hands down, every time.
This wasn’t how I ever imagined doing this, but Ben deserved better than to be kept hidden away, feeling like he was my dirty little secret. I was in love with him, and I didn’t want to love him in hiding.
“It’s not a lie,” I said, my mouth moving before I’d really had time to formulate what I was going to say. “It’s true. I’m gay.”
Chapter Sixteen
Ben
Jimmy was the eye of the hurricane, calm and still while everything around him erupted into chaos.
“Mommy, what’s gay?” Caleb demanded.
“I want to be gay too!” Sophie added, waving her little arms in the air to attract some of the attention to her.
And Tianna seemed completely unfazed about the whole ordeal. “Can I have more pot roast?”
I watched as a vicious tic started under Lorene’s eye, her face going from red to purple. Victoria was sat slack-jawed, like she couldn’t quite believe what had just happened.
I couldn’t either, but there’d be time to process it all later.
Mitch looked so fucking smug I wanted to punch him in the throat. H
e’d always had some weird, one-sided sibling rivalry thing going on with Jimmy. Maybe because Jimmy’d found his direction in life early on and Mitch was still wading through. Maybe because Jimmy had always seemed to be his mom’s favorite. But this was low, even for him.
A million emotions warred in my chest, and I couldn’t imagine how Jimmy felt. His dad was nearly catatonic, Victoria was still staring, and his mom had descended into a full-on meltdown, pacing around, wringing her hands, screeching about the lord and “what will the quilting group think.”
“You’re bringing shame down on this family,” she wailed. “After everything we’ve done for you, you have the nerve to throw it back in our faces and conduct yourself in this manner. I should contact the Delaneys, tell them this has all been a misunderstanding, beg for Jenna to take you back…”
I couldn’t handle another second.
I stood and stepped closer to Jimmy, sliding my hand into his because at this point I didn’t think it could get any worse.
“We should go,” I said gently, and Jimmy turned to look at me, his eyes slightly unfocused.
“Yeah.” He didn’t move.
I tugged him gently, and we slipped out of the house. His mom’s screeching could be heard all the way from the street, and I needed to get him the fuck out of there.
As quickly as I could, I unlocked the door and pulled it open so he could climb in, then I did the same. The engine was fired up and running before Jimmy had gotten his door closed, and in less time than that, we were speeding away.
I just needed to get him home, somewhere he could freak out without an audience. He was still quiet, staring straight forward, but I knew it was coming.
I got us there in record time, thanking god along the way no cops happened to be hanging out on our route. Closing the door behind us, I was reminded of the night Jimmy had shown up on my doorstep. It was the second time things had exploded on him, but we were in a different place now.
I pulled him to me, feeling his body shaking against mine. He went willingly, wrapping himself around me as I held him.
“Are you okay?”
“I don’t know,” he answered.
“We always knew your brother was a dickhead.”
He huffed a laugh, but it didn’t sound like Jimmy. The shaking got progressively more pronounced, the longer we stood there. I pulled back to look at him, expecting shock, but Jimmy’s expression bordered on hysterical.
“Are you okay?” I asked again.
He obviously wasn’t.
“That really just happened?” His voice was shaking almost as badly as he was.
“Yeah. Jimmy, I’m so sorry.”
“My whole family… everyone… saw me with my tongue down your throat in the middle of a gay club.”
“I’m so sorry,” I repeated, because I couldn’t think of anything else to say. There were no words that would make this right for him.
“Fuck, Ben. What the hell? I didn’t… I wasn’t…” He plunked down on the couch and scrubbed a hand down his face. “I told them I was gay.”
“Yeah.” I sat down next to him, not touching him, just wanting him to know I was close if he needed me.
His hands were balled into fists as he rose to his feet once more. “I told them I was fucking gay, because what the hell else was I going to do?” I paused, waiting for him to go on because I had a pretty good idea he wasn’t really asking. “I didn’t have a fucking choice, and I wanted a choice. Fucking Mitchell. What a little fucking twat.”
That I understood. Because coming out was hard enough was it was, but to have the choice taken away from you, to be outed when you’d barely got your own head around the idea, was the worst kind of betrayal. It wasn’t out of character for Mitch, but it didn’t make it okay or any easier to bear.
My coming-out story had a happy ending, but it had been a bumpy road for a while. Still, I’d made the decision to tell my family. I’d had all the time in the world to prepare myself, to imagine all the scenarios and equip myself to deal with their reactions. Mitch had taken that away from Jimmy, and his hand had been forced.
That almost made me angrier than his mother’s response.
He began to pace the length of the living room, becoming increasingly agitated with each step, muttering under his breath. “What I wouldn’t give to get my hands on him right about now.”
I stood and walked over to him. “Okay. You need to calm down.”
“How, Ben? How the hell am I supposed to calm down?” He stared straight at me, and behind the anger and rage swirling in his eyes, I could see the fear. He was so fucking terrified, and it broke my heart.
“Everything is going to be okay. I promise,” I soothed, stepping slowly closer.
“Again, I’m asking you how. Did you see my mother? Did you hear her wailing? You’d have thought I’d been slaughtered in front of her the way she was crying. That wasn’t the face of a woman who’s going to wake up tomorrow and be okay with her son being gay.” He exhaled hard and speared his fingers through his hair. “I lost my family today, Ben. You get that, right?”
Carefully, I took another step forward, approaching him like I would a scared animal backed into a corner.
“You don’t know that. Your mom was caught off guard. I’m not trying to defend her—I know she’s always been homophobic. Her reaction was horrifying, but she’s known you one way for your whole life. It’s going to take some time to adjust to thinking about you in a completely different light.” I erased the last of the distance between us and pulled him to me. He buried his head against the curve of my shoulder and sagged against me like all the energy had seeped from his body. “You had her convinced you were the straight guy who wanted the wife and the kids and the picket fence, and your asshole brother forced you to tell her otherwise in a way that I’m sure you wouldn’t have chosen if you’d been given the option.”
I held him tighter, rubbing slow circles across his back.
“I don’t think she’s going to come around. She thinks homosexuality is abhorrent. I don’t think having a gay son is going to change her mind.”
“Maybe it won’t,” I conceded. “But that’s her loss, not yours. Family isn’t decided by DNA. You’ve been my family for as long as I’ve known you, and I’m yours. Even though it wasn’t what you wanted it to be, I’m proud of you for being honest with them about who you are.”
He pulled back then, his eyes boring into mine. He didn’t say another word, but the weight of the emotion coming from him was overwhelming. Sliding his hands along the side of my face, he leaned in and pressed his mouth to mine.
I opened for him, letting him take from me what he needed. Hands clutching at my shirt, he drew me closer until every inch of him was touching every inch of me. I could feel how much he wanted this, in the firmness of his grip, the desperation of his kisses, the weight of his heartache.
“Ben,” he begged, my name uttered low on his breath as he pulled back to slowly unbutton my shirt. I moved my hands to his at the same time, needing to have him bared the same way he was bearing me. The cloth fell away, and he stepped close once more. “I love you so much.”
“I love you too, J. Always. I know you’re hurting…”
“Yeah, but I need you. Need to just love on you for a little while, remind myself that I might have lost something tonight, but I’ve gained so, so much more.”
I nodded, understanding exactly what he meant, knowing what he needed. I took his hand and led him through the bedroom into the bathroom. I left the lights off and started the shower, turning the water on as hot as I figured he could stand it.
I wanted to wash away everything that had happened that night. Jimmy was fractured, his heart vulnerable, and watching him go through that had torn me apart. I wanted the heat and the steam and the water to cleanse as much of the memory of it as possible.
After removing the rest of his clothes, I pulled him into the tub with me, angling his body so the water cascaded down over his shoulder
s. No matter how many times I’d seen him naked, it never failed to send me reeling over just how goddamn beautiful he was. I’d never seen anyone like him, and the way he made me feel, like there wasn’t enough time in the world to do all the things I wanted to do with him… it was overwhelming and excruciatingly perfect all at the same time.
I stepped into him, wrapping my arms around him and lining our bodies up beneath the spray. For several long minutes, we stayed like that, silent, just absorbing the comfort from one another. Slowly, I began to work my fingers into the knotted flesh of his back, massaging away the tightness and tension. Jimmy rested his chin against my shoulder and exhaled.
“Thank you for coming with me tonight,” Jimmy said after what felt like a hundred years had passed. “I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t been there.”
I pulled back to look at him, wanting to look him in the eye and make sure he heard every word I was about to say. “You are the strongest person I know. You’ve shouldered carrying that secret around with you your whole life, and I know it might not seem like it right now, but being who you are instead of hiding… it’s so much easier.”
“How can it be, though, if people react like that when they find out?”
“It’s true. It’s not always easy. There will be days that are so difficult you want to break down. There will be people who will do their best to hurt you just because of who you love. Sometimes you might wish things were different, but when that happens, I will be there to remind you of how good life can be.”
I leaned in and kissed him, slow and languid and thoroughly enough that I hoped he understood that I would give him anything. He touched me with a deliberateness that made me breathless, and soon slow and languid became much more purposeful. I felt Jimmy’s cock become hard, twitching at my hip as I arched my back to add a little pressure.
Swallowing his soft moans, I deepened the kiss and let my hands roam over his body, using soap to slick the way as I explored all of him. He rocked against me in an easy rhythm, our bodies moving together, building up the pleasure in a gradual crescendo.
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