Page 31 of Liberating Love

I smirk on the outside, but on the inside I’m a shaky mess. What I’m about to tell them is important if I hope to have a chance at any kind of future with Aiden. As much as I’d love to leave the past as ancient history with my kids, I’ll have to tell my person the truth, and it doesn’t seem fair to do that to him or my boys when they’re all the same age and friends. “Should I find a way to soften it or—”

Jameson grunts. “For fuck’s sake, just say what you’ve got to say now.”

Jovany turns toward his brother, rolling his eyes. “I mean, right? What the actual fuck?”

“Hmm, well, this is going better than I expected. F-bombing left and right—I’m such a proud father that you’ve grown up knowing how to express yourselves so eloquently.” When I’m met with blank stares, I say, “I’m bisexual and your uncle saw me kissing a boy. I knew your mom had a crush on me, but I wasn’t interested and, I guess her big brother had made it his mission to help her get her man. He’d been following me, and I didn’t know it until he threatened to tell my parents and everyone in the neighborhood what he’d seen if I didn’t date her until she got tired of me.”

“You’re bisexual?” Jameson asks in confusion at the same time Jovany jumps to his feet yelling, “Are you fucking kidding me?”

It feels like my heart is going to slam out of my chest and onto the floor, but I say calmly, “Which question should I answer first? And, son,”—I gaze up at Jovany—“you’re going to have to clarify yours.”

“Answer mine,” Jameson demands, hurt in his tone.

“Yes, I’m bisexual.”

“But why didn’t you tell me?” he asks, sinking into the couch as he rubs the back of his neck.

“I didn’t tell you when you were younger because it didn’t matter. I was married to your mother, and since she claimed divorce was embarrassing to the family and not allowed, I figured I always would be.”

Jovany’s gaze swings from me to his brother, then he turns on me. He widens his stance as he places his hands on his hips and bites out, “Then why didn’t you say anything when he came out? He was all alone.”

I retort, “If you knew he was alone, why the hell didn’t you step up? I was on my way to prison, remember?”

Jovany’s eyes drop to the floor. “I couldn’t at the time,” he says defensively.

“Why?” I ask, making no attempt to hide the challenge in my tone.

He shakes his head. “That’s not what’s important right now.”

“Then what is?”

“You didn’t tell Jameson you were bisexual.”

Jameson sighs and my chest aches at the weariness in that one noise. The hurt is still there, floating around in his green eyes that are a carbon copy of my own, but he says, “Okay, really, Dad choosing to wait to share that with us isn’t the most concerning part of what he said.”

“It’s true, it’s not.” Jovany squints down at me. “You’re saying that our uncle, the current Chief of Police, blackmailed you before you were even out of high school?”

“Yes.” I stand up and begin pacing behind my chair. “You guys have to understand. It was different back then, especially in our area. You didn’t talk about being gay, and you sure as hell didn’t say you were attracted to both men and women. But he knew that I wouldn’t have caved into his demands. I’d have taken whatever came at me. The other guy—the one he saw me kissing—was smaller and scared to death of anyone finding out. I wasn’t sure I could protect him and we still had to finish senior year and then we’d have the whole summer to go, and I didn’t want your uncle outing him, so…”

Jovany drops back down onto the couch, but this time right beside Jameson and I’m pleased to see his brother lean into him. If nothing else, this bombshell seems to be giving them common ground again. “It was that Chet guy Aiden and I met at Jack’s that day, isn’t it?”

“Who’s Chet?” Jameson asks.

I cough the golf ball out of my throat and say, “Chet was one of my best friends growing up. And yes, it was him. If he wasn’t an out-and-proud, happily married gay man now, I still wouldn’t tell you. But Chet, he got out of here. He went away to college and while he was there, he really found himself.”

“But back then?”

I shake my head. “He wasn’t wrong to be scared. His dad did end up disowning him. It caused a complete breakdown in his whole family.” Sighing I say, “Chet and I were never going to date and be this great romance. He was truly one of my best friends, but people suspected he was gay, and he’d admitted it to us, our inner circle. I ended up telling him I was bisexual and we…” I avert my eyes, a little embarrassed to be talking about this to my sons, even all these years after it happened. “Well, since we didn’t actually know any other gay guys, we uh, we were sitting out at this abandoned lot one day talking about the future, and”—I rub the back of my head—“I’d at least been able to kiss the girlfriends I’d had before that, but he’d still never had his first kiss and was leaving for college as soon we graduated, and so, I offered. Your uncle was tailing me, saw, and the rest is history.”

“But why do you think Mom tried to trap you on purpose?” Jameson asks.

“First, let me make it clear that it was years before your uncle told your mom he bribed me into dating her.”

“Hetoldher?” Jovany asks, wide-eyed.

“Yeah, well, you know your uncle.”

“Unfortunately,” Jameson mutters. Jovany chuckles and throws an arm around his brother’s shoulders.

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