Rough

by Hayden Hunt

  “You can stand there and argue with me, or you can pack your things,” she said in a threatening tone.

  The threat wouldn’t be obvious to my dad, but it was obvious to me. She was saying either go get your things, or I’ll tell him what this is about.

  “Pack his things?” my dad asked, confused.

  I didn’t wait for my mom to answer him. I walked by him in the hall and straight to my room, where I immediately started getting some suitcases together.

  I cried the entire time I packed, hoping that my mom would walk into the room and apologize. I thought, at the very least, she’d change her mind and wouldn’t let me walk out when I was done. How could she have? It was pitch black, I didn’t have a car, I had minimal amounts of money… was she really going to put me out in the cold?

  The answer was apparently yes. Because when I grabbed my suitcases and rolled them to the front door, she was still on the couch. My father had apparently gone back to their room to go back to sleep.

  Of course he had. Even when finding out I was getting kicked out, he couldn’t bring himself to communicate with me. I bet he hadn’t even put up a fight to try to find out why I was leaving in the first place.

  I walked by, suitcases in hand, and glanced over at her before opening the door, just waiting for her to take it all back.

  “All you need to do is repent,” she said to me. “I will help you heal, and you can stay here.”

  “There’s nothing I need to heal from…” I said slowly, “except maybe my family.”

  I opened the door and slammed it behind me because I wanted to appear angry rather than what I really was at the moment… which was desperately sad. I could feel the tears welling up in my eyes. My parents and I had always had a strained relationship, but this? I never would have imagined it’d end up like this.

  I had to pull it together, though. I was afraid my mom might come outside and see me crying. I didn’t want either of my parents to witness that vulnerability in me.

  On the other hand, I was also terrified that she wasn’t going to come outside. That she wouldn’t ask me to come back out of the cold and go sleep in my room.

  I knew what I had to do, but I waited about ten minutes before doing it. I wanted to give my mom a chance to change her mind.

  But she never came outside.

  So, I pulled out my cell phone and dialed Aaron’s number with tears in my eyes.

  “Hello?” he answered immediately, though he sounded a little groggy. He’d probably fallen asleep.

  “Can… can you come pick me up?” I asked, my voice cracking.

  Being that it was now four in the morning, I’d expected some kind of inquiry, for him to ask why I needed to be picked up. But he didn’t ask anything.

  “I’ll be right there.”

  12

  Aaron

  I hadn’t known exactly what to expect when I’d gone to pick up Jesse. All I’d known was that he’d been crying when he’d called me, and it’d been the middle of the night, so it must have been a big deal. I was seriously worried.

  Every day since I had been officially with Jesse, I’d been waiting for the other shoe to drop. It was like, any day things could go wrong, and I’d be on my own again, miserable without him. Things didn’t usually work out so well for me. I didn’t have the best of luck, so I felt particularly scared that I was going to lose all the happiness I had.

  But it honestly had forced me to live in the moment more than ever, and, boy, was I living in the moment. Every damn day was sheer joy for me. Honestly, I didn’t know how I’d gone through my whole life without feeling like this. And I had no idea how I’d do it again.

  When I pulled up to Jess’ house, he was sitting on a suitcase in his driveway, his head buried in his hands. He was bawling.

  I pulled up right next to him, jumping out of the car immediately and rushing to his side.

  “Oh my god, babe, what’s wrong?” I asked, as I wrapped both of my arms around him tightly.

  “I got kicked out,” he murmured. “My mom doesn’t want me here anymore, and I… I don’t know where to go.”

  “What?!” I didn’t know what it was I’d been expecting, but it hadn’t that.

  I’d never imagined his mom would kick him out. His dad, maybe, but his mom? Who was overly concerned with appearing to be a loving, perfect mother?

  “She just… she made me pack my bags and leave,” he said, his eyes red and puffy.

  “But why!?” I asked. “Why would she do that?”

  He looked up at me. “Because I told her we were together.”

  “You did what?!” I asked.

  He nodded slowly. “It just… happened. I didn’t plan it. She was mad that I had come home late, and she was saying all these things that reminded me of the way she used to treat you when we were kids, and I just… I defended you, and then one thing led to another, and I admitted we were dating.”

  This was so much to process. I knew Jesse had claimed that he’d be telling his parents about us, but, honestly, I hadn’t expected him to. I’d been half wondering if we’d go to the grave without his family ever having known the truth. And I knew how complicated his relationship with his parents was, so, honestly, that didn’t bother me a ton.

  But I was pretty damn proud to hear he’d actually bitten the bullet and done it. Proud and very worried for his emotional state. Because being kicked out over this had to hurt.

  God, I couldn’t believe they’d be so cruel. I’d known his parents would disapprove, but this?! How did you disown your own child just because they were in a same-sex relationship? I didn’t even have kids, but I knew there was nothing my future child could do to make me stop loving them.

  “Jess, I’m so, so sorry,” I said, as I kissed his head.

  Just then, I heard the door to his house open and shut, and both Jess and I jerked our heads up. It was his mother standing there.

  Jess had hope in his eyes… but I didn’t. I recognized that judgmental expression. Nothing good was going to come from her coming out here.

  “Stop touching him!” his mom snapped at me. “How could you be so blatantly sinful in my driveway?!”

  Jess started crying harder, but I just became livid.

  “How the hell could you throw out your own son? Your only child?! Just because he’s in a relationship with me?”

  “As I told, no amount of love will make me enable my family to sin. Whenever he wants to repent, he’s welcome back. Now both of you, go! Get away from my house.”

  ‘Why?!” I snapped. “Why so urgently?! Are you even scared that people are going to see your gay son at four in the morning?! There’s nobody around! How could you be that insecure!”

  “Just go!” she yelled. “Get out of here! I don’t care where you go, just go!”

  Throughout this, Jess had stayed silent, and my heart was truly breaking for him.

  “Come on, baby, I’m taking you to my place. You’re going to stay with me.”

  I said it both to comfort Jess and to infuriate his mother. And it seemed to work, because the expression on her face went dark.

  “How can you call him baby?! You sinful boy! I knew you were a sinful boy ever since you were a child! I knew you would be a bad influence on my son, and now look! The devil has taken hold on his life.”

  “Not the devil,” I answered with a slight smile, “just me.”

  She got angrier. “There is no difference!”

  Okay, now that set me off.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?!” I snapped. “You’re really going to call me the devil?! I am a good person! With a good heart! I’m a nurse, I save lives for a living for crying out loud. That kind of makes me, like, the devil’s enemy.”

  “You can’t be a good person without God in your heart,” she said seriously. “You can’t choose to live a life of sin and still claim to be good.”

  “Loving your son is not a sin!” I told her. “And maybe if you loved him, too, you’d know that!”


  Her jaw dropped. In this moment, she could not have hated me more.

  “I love my son! I love him so much, I want him to go to heaven with me! And nothing will stop me from pushing him toward heaven and away from you.”

  Jess finally spoke up. “You don’t need to do anything to get me into heaven, Mom. I’m already there. I’m living it. Can’t you see that I’m happy? Have I ever seemed as happy as I am now? In my entire life, have I ever acted like this?”

  “Alcohol makes you happy too!” she argued. “Drugs make people happy, over-eating makes people happy, so many acts of gluttony result in the feeling of happiness, but they do not result in a godly lifestyle. You have to live in God’s image, Jesse, and you are not! So, please, think about your actions. Think of what you’re doing. You are making this huge change in your life out of nowhere—”

  "It's not out of nowhere,” he interrupted. “I have loved him since we were kids, it is not out of nowhere.”

  She put her hands over her ears. “Stop! That’s not even true! You dated girls in high school! Good, decent girls who could have grown to be your wife one day. You did not love him! He was just a friend, just a friend who had a horrible influence on you.”

  “No, mother! It was you who was the horrible influence! It was you who kept me from loving him. Because of your bigoted views, I was afraid, and I rejected him. I really hurt him, and that comes from views that you instilled in me. Views that are wrong, bigoted, and hurtful, and I don’t have them anymore. The only thing that kept me from dating Aaron and holding me back from real love was you and dad.”

  My heart soared hearing that. He’d loved me for so long. And it made so much sense that his family would have impacted how he felt about me so much. Family impacted everything.

  “And I have no guilt about that!” his mom responded. “If I kept you with women, good! Then I was doing my job as a mother!”

  I put my hand on Jesse’s shoulder. “Come on, babe, let’s just go. She’s never going to get it. We can’t convince her of this, and you’re just going to keep hurting yourself if you try.”

  Jess stared daggers at his mom as he got up and started walking toward the car. “I hope you get this sorted out before I marry him. I really hope you work out your feelings before we have children. Because if you miss out on all the major milestones in my life, you’re going to regret it. I promise you, you will.”

  “If all those milestones are with him,” his mother nodded to me in disgust, “then I promise, I won’t.”

  Jesse looked furious, but he didn’t say another word. He just stuffed the suitcases in the back seat of my car and walked over to the passenger-side door.

  His mom stayed in the driveway as we pulled away. Even down the street, I could still see her standing there, like she wanted to make sure we were really gone, and we wouldn’t return.

  As we turned off the street, Jesse began to cry softly.

  “Baby, I’m so sorry.” I reached out to rub his back as I drove. “I know this must be so hard for you. I really can’t imagine. Your mother, she’s just… God, she’s so shitty. But you don’t deserve this. You don’t deserve for your family to treat you like this. You know that, right? You really deserve better.”

  He nodded. “I know. And I think I’m finally finding out what that is.” He looked over at me with a soft smile.

  I smiled back. “So, I guess we’re officially moving in together, huh?” I teased, trying to lighten the mood.

  “Oh, shit, are you okay with that?” he said, suddenly sounding worried. “I’m kind of forcing myself into your living space after only a month. Should I maybe not be doing that?”

  “Of course you should be doing that!” I told him. “I want you to live with me, I really do. It’s not a problem at all. In fact, it’s the opposite of a problem. It feels like a blessing.”

  “Really?” he asked hopefully. “After only a month? Are you sure?”

  “You know what they say about gay relationships… they move fast.”

  He laughed. I was so grateful to be able to make him laugh at a time like this.

  “You think this is going to work out in the long-term?” he asked. “You and me?”

  I glanced over at him nervously. “Yes… why? Don’t you?”

  He sighed. “I mean, that’s what I want. And I have no intention of changing my mind, but… at the same time, I worry. I worry that the things I’ve done to you can’t be taken back. And that you’re one day going to have resentment toward me that I can’t solve. I’m scared I screwed this thing up before it even began.”

  I reached out and grabbed his hand. “Baby, that’s just all wrong. I don’t resent you at all. Every day I wake up just grateful to have you. And after I heard you talk to your mom… no, I absolutely couldn’t resent you for that. You were a kid. A kid who was heavily influenced by his family. And now you’re a beautiful, wonderful adult man. A man who sticks up for himself to his parents and chooses me over his family. And I love that.”

  He leaned his head on my shoulder. “I’m still… so sorry. For all the pain I caused and all the years I wasted not being with you.”

  I rubbed his head softly with one hand. “None of it was a waste. It led us back to each other. It made each of us the people who we are today. If we have happiness now, then nothing that came before this was a waste.”

  And I meant every word. I couldn’t believe I’d once lived in a world where I’d thought that happiness wasn’t in the cards for me. Because here I was, as happy as I could ever be, and it felt like everything had fallen into place.

  I loved my job, though I wasn’t as much of a workaholic these days. I had a house I loved that I now shared with my amazing boyfriend, who was the most amazing person I’d ever had the pleasure of knowing. It all just felt… so right. Everything felt right.

  “I love you,” I told him softly.

  “I love you, too,” he responded.

  13

  Jesse

  A couple months later, I still hadn’t heard from my parents. Not a single word.

  Although life was good, and I appreciated every day, I’d be lying if I said that it didn’t hurt. Now I knew for sure that it hadn’t just been the heat of the moment that had made my mom kick me out and not care. It had been so much more than that… this was how she’d really felt. She’d really wanted me gone. And she had no regrets about it.

  I’d lost my family, and that was difficult to come to terms with, but, at the same time, I really felt like I’d gained new family through Aaron.

  As great as the first month of us dating had been, living together was so much better. Every day I woke up to him. Every night, I went to sleep to him. I spent every moment of my free time with him but I never, ever got bored. On the contrary, I found myself constantly enthralled with him. I always thought about him. I was always engrossed in our conversations, I felt like I was relearning him, and I loved every minute.

  For the first time, I found myself in a partnership to which I actually wanted to give. I wanted to go the extra mile. Never had I been an extra mile kind of boyfriend to my past girlfriends. Like they’d always told me, I’d been distant. But I was all in with Aaron.

  I made him lunch every night. Nothing crazy, sometimes I just packed leftovers, or I made sandwiches with snacks or a salad with dressing on the side. Simple stuff, but I always included a note telling him how much I loved him and how happy I was to have him. And he thanked me for those lunches every single day, even though they were now commonplace.

  And in the first few weeks of us living together, I’d also made him dinner every night and cleaned for him. I didn’t have a job, so I acted kind of like a housewife - or househusband. I really felt like I needed to earn my keep, since I wasn’t able to contribute financially at all.

  Then, I found a job! So, now I was not always home to make dinner, so we split the duty or I brought something on my way home. I worked as an office manager at a dentist office and got paid surpris
ingly good money to do it. Furthermore, it was a nice quiet job that I really enjoyed.

  And, despite coming from such a conservative town where most people were heavily religious, I found my coworkers to be very open-minded and understanding. Aaron had visited me at work a couple of times to meet up for lunch or bring me something I’d forgotten at home, and everyone had been so sweet to him. They often told us we were an adorable couple, and I couldn’t be more grateful for that.

  It was crazy how much the little things impacted your life. In high school, it had been peoples’ small opinions of me that had made me betray Aaron. And, even worse, betray myself and my true feelings. But, now, it was peoples’ small, but positive, opinions that filled me with joy and made me feel like just another person in love, another person in a cute relationship. Not someone who was living a life of sin.

  I finally think I’ve overcome those narrow-minded viewpoints. They didn’t have the same effect on my thinking as they’d used to. I no longer felt shame or embarrassment in being with Aaron. On the contrary, I felt pride.

  I was just downright proud to be with such an amazing man. He was smart, driven, funny, brilliant, and absolutely stunning. And I mean seriously stunning. I noticed that, whenever we went out or did anything together, there were always women whose eyes flocked to him.

  It didn’t annoy me. It reminded me of what a catch he was and how incredibly lucky I was to have him.

  I still had my bouts with guilt knowing what I’d once done, but I was moving slowly past them each day. Ultimately, I didn’t want to let mistakes of the past affect my present. Aaron and I were doing really well right now, and I just wanted to hang onto that for as long as I could.

  Which was why tonight was so nerve-racking for me…

  I couldn’t tell if I was overthinking it or if it was really going to be a problem. But I’d had this craving for… well, let’s just say there had been something I’d been wanting to try for a while.

  My sex life with Aaron was fantastic. He was really, really good in bed. Like, my God, on top of being stunningly sexy, the things he knew how to do with his mouth. You never would have known I was his first.