Page 45 of Drag Me Up

“Penny for your thoughts, good sir?” Eric asks with a horrid cockney accent as he pokes me in the ribs. “What’s wrong?”

“She didn’t care,” I mutter as I get up to wash her dishes from breakfast. “I just came out to my mother, and she didn’t react at all.”

“I think she took it quite well, personally.”

“Yeah, but I expected more of a reaction. I’ve spent the last few days trying to figure out how I could explain how I could make it thirty two years without even an inkling that I might not be straight. And she constantly mentions wanting grandkids, and now she won’t getthem. I mean it’s not like I expected her to disown me or anything like your parents did, but I expectedsomething.”

Eric wraps his arms around my waist from behind me. Placing his chin on my shoulder he gives me a kiss to my neck for comfort while I finish up the breakfast dishes.

“I got a few things to say about that,” he says as he lets me go to lean against the counter next to me. “Number one, don't assume because your closet was in a different house than mine, it wasn't just as hard for you to come out of it. Sharing your authentic self is one of the hardest things a person can do. I’m proud of you for choosing to tell the most important person in your life your truth.

“Number two. If that woman wants grandkids, we’ll get her grandkids someday. I’m not sure how I feel about adopting a baby, but I’ve met my share of former foster kids at this point who could have used a bit more love in their lives. Let’s give it a couple years before we take that leap.”

Eric reaches over to turn off the water and pull me in front of him. “Number three. I don’t care what surprises you discover about yourself or when they come to you. I’ve always loved you and will continue to do so even if you find out you were switched at birth with an alien. You are mine, Lewis Matthias Barnes, the Second, and God himself could never keep me away from you now that I’ve found you again.”

All the pain and stress of the last few days rushes to the surface and I grab onto my boy like he’s the lastlifejacket on the Titanic. It all pours out of me and I weep on the shoulder of my precious unicorn boy. The guilt, the shame, the anger that I’ve directed at myself for taking that deal…

“I’m so sorry, Eric.”

Pulling my face up so that he can see me, he whispers, “You have nothing to apologize for. You were a kid being blackmailed by a determined, crooked as fuck, asshole who wanted you out of the way.”

Reaching up to wipe my tears, he says in a way too casual tone, “I have no doubt if you hadn’t left on your own, he would have arranged an accident. I mean, hell, he managed to arrange an entire fucking relationship that almost ended up with you married to a fucking bigot.”

I step back from him feeling a lot better. Yeah, his dad really fucked with my life for the last fifteen years, maybe even longer if I try to think on it.

“At least tell me the sex was good,” Eric says and surprises a laugh out of me. “I mean, based on her personality and fashion sense, she has to have a golden pussy or something to keep a man like you tied down for five years.”

“Seven,” I choke out between breaths. “And no, it wasn’t that good.”

“Then why the fuck would you stay with her?!”

I finally get my breathing under control and step back into his space to wrap my arms around my cutie, my Sparkles, my unicorn boy.

“If I couldn’t be with you, it didn’t matter who I wasaround. I think my head accepted her because it knew no one would ever have my heart. I think I stayed with her because I was afraid of finding someone else who would take up your place in my heart, and I knew deep down she was no competition.”

“Super Mattie still got game,” he chuckles before he leans in to kiss me.

It looks like I’m going to be late again today.

37

ERIC

Two Weeks Later:

“Are you sure you want to be in the same room as him?” the victim’s advocate asks me for the fifteenth time since we entered this stupid sterile waiting room at the jail. “You have the right to testify from here and it will weigh just as heavily with the board.”

I wish I could have Mattie here with me, but he’s waiting outside with Spencer and Donnie. They have already given their testimony. The board seems to be trying to alternate between those of us who want to see Rafe Dennison rot in prison for the rest of his life and those who want him released. Unfortunately, there seems to be more witnesses for their side because this is taking forever.

“Alright, you’re up,” the squirmy little man tells me when the light above the far door starts to blink. “Last chance to do it remotely?”

I shake my head and approach the door. He pushes abutton and the door is pulled open by a guard on the other side. Taking a deep breath, I cross the threshold and come face to face with the monster who stars in every fucking nightmare I’ve had over the last five years.

Rafe Fucking Dennison is sitting handcuffed to a metal table. I’m kind of disappointed to see that he’s wearing like grayish scrub looking clothes. I’ve been imagining him in orange which is so not his color, but I guess this works too. He looks sickly, even with the muscle he’s packed on in the last five years. Then again, that might have something to do with the absolutely gigantic bald spot he’s sporting on the top of his head. He looks like one of the three stooges, except more ridiculous because of how much his face looks like a neanderthal sculpture that was run over a few times.

“Please have a seat Mr. Mendleton,” the guy in the middle of the long table in the front of the room says while pointing at a seat just inside the door I came through.Great. I get to face him the entire time.

“My surname is no longer Mendleton,” I tell the board. I’m not going to have them let him out on a technicality because they can’t keep accurate records.

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