Page 8 of Leave

I stiffened, guard going up. “What other side?”

He chewed his lip. “The wedding is in April, right?”

“Yeah, April nineteenth.”

“Okay, well, my family usually has a big shindig for Easter. They’re not super religious, but they make a big deal out of Easter for whatever reason and—anyway, I…” He hesitated, some color rising in his cheeks, which was cuter than it should’ve been, and he absently continued petting ShiShi. “I’d like to bring a boyfriend home, too.”

“But I’m not really your boyfriend.”

“No. And that’s fine.” He shifted a little, fidgeting on the couch. “It’s…” He rubbed his neck and sighed. “The thing is, I’m out to my family. Have been since I was sixteen. But they…” He exhaled hard, letting his shoulders drop. “They don’t get it.”

“What… What don’t they get?”

“Like, I think it’s still kind of abstract for them? It’s hard to explain. They still talk to me like I’m going to bring a woman home at some point, and about my future wife and kids, all of that.” Riley rolled his eyes. “They’re not hostile toward me. They’re not mean about it. They’re just kind of…” He quirked his lips. “I guess what it boils down to is that I think if I bring a guy home and say, ‘this is my boyfriend,’ it might get it through their heads that I’m really gay.” He paused. “And having you there as a fake boyfriend—I mean, maybe that’s better than bringing home the real deal.”

“How do you figure?”

“Because neither of us is invested. If my parents reject us as a couple, then we can just sort of throw up our hands and move on.” He grimaced. “I… Honestly, I really don’t want to find out how they’ll react to me bringing home a boyfriend when I’m bringing home the real thing, you know? Like it’ll still sting if they shit on you and me, but since we’re not actually together, it won’t hurt as much as—I don’t even know if that makes sense.”

“No, I get it.” I got his concerns, anyway. I’d never understand people who couldn’t accept us or didn’t understand us. What was there to understand? Man attracted to man, man fall in love with man, man in a relationship with man. Seemed pretty straightforward to me. But maybe I’d been spoiled by a family who had way more issues with their son giving up a full ride scholarship to join the Marine Corps than with him liking dudes. The only thing they ever gave me grief about really had been a choice, not some innate part of who I was.

I shifted a little. “How do you think they’ll react? To you bringing home a boyfriend?”

Riley shook his head. “I don’t know. I honestly don’t. And if they react badly to it, I mean…” He sighed and rubbed his eyes before draping his arm across the back of the couch. “Either they’ll finally get it through their heads, or… Or I might have a really, really hard decision to make.”

I straightened. “Like… cutting them off?”

Chewing his lip, he gave a slow, reluctant nod. “I don’t want to. I really don’t. Especially because they aren’t, like, nasty, Pride-protesting assholes. They never threw me out or anything. But it’s been sixteen years of stupid comments and questions, and… I’ve just had enough, you know?”

“I get that. It sounds exhausting.”

“It is,” he admitted. “I’ve avoided going home a lot. I tell them it’s because of airfare and leave, but mostly, I just know what I’ll be walking into.”

I blinked. “Whoa. That’s… That’s kind of been my situation, too. Avoiding going home.”

Riley winced, dropping his gaze to ShiShi. “I think most people would say you’re pretty damn justified.”

You’d be surprised,I didn’t say out loud.

“Like I said,” he went on, “my parents have never been cruel or nasty. It’s just that constant questioning and acting like I should be growing out of it—it wears me down, you know?”

“I think it would wear anybody down.”

He met my gaze. “It really, really does. And I’ve hit my limit.”

“Which is why you want to bring someone home and make them acknowledge the truth once and for all.”

“Exactly.”

I chewed the inside of my lip. “So, I go as your boyfriend to make your parents face the fact that you’re gay. You come to family stuff with me so I’m not alone.” I petted Velcro as I met Riley’s gaze again. “Okay. That sounds like a fair trade.”

He exhaled as if he’d been hanging a lot of hope on me agreeing to this. “Awesome. Where do your folks live, anyway?”

“Seattle.”

“Ooh, doesn’t the Patriot Express land there? That’s hella convenient.”

I chuckled. “Yeah, it is.” Everyone stationed here got one round trip flight back to CONUS each year, and the flight—called the Patriot Express—landed at SeaTac Airport. Convenient indeed.

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