Page 31 of Wild Obsession

“So I suppose you’re doing well out there,” Dad says.

Is that a note of bitterness in his tone? No, that would be ridiculous. They’re the ones who took me out of my school in Baltimore and sent me all over the country in the hopes it would “fix” me. Well, maybe it did, but not in the way they imagined.

I push past whatever emotion may have colored his voice in that moment.

“I was thinking we should get a meal while I’m here,” I say. “Touring bands don’t get a ton of down time, but I’ll be free for a night while I’m here. Maybe we could go to that restaurant downtown I liked as a kid, the one with the good spaghetti? Is that still open?”

My mother chuckles. “Yes, it’s still open.”

“Anyone you’d want to bring with you?” Dad asks.

The first thing that hits me is confusion. I answer honestly. “Oh, no, not really. I mean, the only people I’m with during the tour is my bandmates and the crew and theother band.”

“I see,” my father says in a voice that suggests far more than mere understanding.

The second thing that hits me is bone-chilling dread. The cold seeps through me despite the balmy Baltimore night. A piece of me knows that tone far too well, knows it right down to my soul, but I try to push away the assumptions, the fear, the awful thought that I know exactly where this is headed.

Then my mother goes and confirms it.

“Maybe a girlfriend?” she says.

If my teeth didn’t clench the moment she spoke, I might have sighed.

A girlfriend. Right. It’s not enough that I’m a successful musician, that I’m on tour with a band who makes the news. I’m missing one crucial piece from my life, the piece I’ve been missing this whole time, according to them.

In their eyes, I’m still that broken, messed up kid they sent away for kissing a boy under the bleachers.

“No,” I say, jaw tight, “no girlfriend.”

“Oh Timothy,” Mom says.

“What?” I snap.

“Don’t yell at your mother. She was only asking. She’s worried about you.”

“There’s nothing to be worried about.” There’s no keeping my tone calm any longer. “I just told you I’m in town because I’m touring with my band, my damn nearfamous band, but all you can think about is whether or not I have a girlfriend?”

“Well, there’s more to life than your hobbies—”

“This is not a hobby,” I shout.

“There’s no need to take that tone with us,” Dad says. “We’re worried about more than your bank account. We’re worried about your well being. You’re a grown man, not a child.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

I know exactly what it means. It means kissing Keannen was childish in his eyes, the sort of aberration a little boy might indulge but a grown man should put behind him. Forget the way that kiss lit me up, forget the way my whole world burst into color when we touched, and settle down with a girl like I’m supposed to.

“Stop acting like a child,” Dad says, his own voice rising. “We didn’t move you around so you could keep playing childish games.”

“No, you moved me around to ‘fix’ me. You moved me around because you thought I could only be gay in Baltimore, but you were wrong. It’s not a phase, and I didn’t grow out of it. I’m still gay, and I … I met someone. He matters to me. I like him. So you can either accept that or I won’t be able to have you in my life.”

My mother gasps. The quiet that issues from the phone scares a fragile piece of me buried deep in my chest, the piece that’s still the scared teenager who didn’t understand whyhis parents couldn’t seem to love him the way he was.

The day they caught me with Keannen flashes through my mind, the memory stinging like an open wound. I didn’t get to say goodbye. I didn’t get to retrieve my things from my locker even. One day I went to school in Baltimore. Then next, it was Pittsburgh. When that didn’t work, Dayton. Then Seattle. By the time I reached the West Coast, they’d run out of time to straighten me out, and I’d learned that I liked being away from them. So I stayed. I found a job. I found Erin. I built some kind of life for myself. I thought tonight I might let them back in on a piece of that life, a sliver I felt safe exposing to them, but even that tiny glimpse has proven a mistake.

These people never loved me. And they probably never will.

But Keannen…

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