Page 18 of Up In Flames
“I’ve got a brunch date. It was supposed to be a breakfast date, but the fire had other ideas.”
“It generally does.” My phone buzzed in my pocket, and secretly I hoped it was Oren. I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about him since the fundraiser at the park a couple weeks ago. He was always on my mind and I enjoyed how frequently we were texting back and forth. I wanted to see him in person again, but his bosses had landed a fairly big client and Oren was picking up the slack in other areas. I knew jack shit about being a lawyer, and I had no idea about any of the stuff Oren talked about, but he delivered every bit of knowledge with confidence. He was clearly good at what he did, and he knew it. It shouldn’t be hot, but it was. The firm he worked for didn’t do criminal trials, but I often thought about Oren up in front of a courtroom and how he’d have the judge and jury eating out of the palm of his hand.
Did I have a lawyer kink now?
Pulling my phone out of my pocket, I frowned at the screen when it wasn’t Oren’s number that appeared.
Mom
Are you free for dinner tonight?
I dropped down on the bench outside the lockers and let out a breath. I didn’t want to be free, but I was. Briggs had his date, and I was trying not to smother Oren.
I’m free.
Don’t worry about cooking. Dad is ordering in
.
“Thank fuck for small miracles.”
I’ll be there at six. I just got back from a call, going to nap.
Sleep well
I needed to get a better social life, and I knew it. But I wasn’t about to say that out loud. Out loud, I pretended to be fine. My shit was together. Everything in life was as it should be. On the inside, loneliness was my shadow. It was with me wherever I went, clinging to me even when I was around other people.
As time dragged on, the closet I’d kept myself in had grown increasingly stifling. I did a lot of things out of fear, and for everything I did out of fear, I avoided ten more for the same reasons. The person I was laid awake at night and thought about the person I might be if I were out. What would I lose?
What might I gain?
I could never come up with an answer to that last question, but I had plenty of hypothetical answers for the first. Enough to keep me silent about who I was and what I wanted.
When I got home, I stretched out on the couch and grabbed a few hours of sleep. My phone hadn’t woken me up, but there’d been plenty of missed messages. Some from Briggs. Some from Mom about some church function she was still trying to rope me into attending.
Outwardly, they’d been okay with me leaving the church, but I could tell it was a secret disappointment. They were staunch in their beliefs, and they’d raised me in the church. I’d never believed how they did, though. Not even as a little kid. Theydidn’t hold it against me, but I could tell that sometimes my lack of faith made Mom sad. If Dad was disappointed, he hid it better.
Every so often, Mom tried to lure me back in with silly church social events. I didn’t often go. The people at their church were perfectly nice, but I couldn’t help feeling like they could see me for the liar I was. It was definitely a me problem, but I hated how being there made my skin itch. It wasn’t like I had a sign above my head that said “secretly homosexual” in hot pink neon or that I farted rainbows or anything. It was that Mom would not-so-subtly introduce me to women she met. Women who had been told all about me—handsome, single firefighter, pillar of the community type.
There was no stopping her either. Most of the time, the women got the hint within the first few minutes of strained, overly polite conversation that I wasn’t interested in playing into my mother’s matchmaking schemes.
Usually I could make up an excuse about why I couldn’t attend. Sometimes I resorted to outright lying. Mom didn’t expect me to suddenly rediscover my faith or anything, but I think she hoped I would. All I needed, in her eyes, was a nice church girl to settle down with. Three point seven kids, two dogs, a white picket fence later, and Mom would be deliriously happy.
None of that appealed to me. Maybe the picket fence, but I was also happy with my ground-level apartment and my three cacti that rounded out my plant collection. Hopefully, one day I’d have a boyfriend to wake up next to. But in order for that to happen, I’d have to come out.
Every day that went by, I swore I got closer to it. I spent my life peeking out of the closet, trying to imagine what life would be like if I took the door off the hinges. Fear always stopped me. I could run into burning buildings, scale ladders, and walk through fire, but I couldn’t tell my parents I was gay. Bravery didn’t always appear when I needed it.
I showed up to Mom and Dad’s a little before six. I’d stopped by the bakery on the way over and picked up a raspberry tart, Mom’s favorite dessert. I’d tried to make it a few times, but after the last failed attempt, I decided that it was better left to the experts.
Pulling into the driveway, I took note of the length of the grass, especially around the edges of the lawn. Mom and Dad didn’t live in a huge house, but it was on a corner lot which meant there was extra land for them to take care of. The grass was thick too. It could be a bitch to cut when it got too long.
Not bothering to knock, I went inside with the dessert. I kicked my shoes off by the door and padded through to the kitchen. Their house was an older style that hadn’t been renovated to make everything open. Dad brought it up once or twice, but Mom remained adamant that she liked having separate rooms for everything.
I pushed the kitchen door open and slipped inside. “Hey. Looks like the lawn is a bit long. I’ll—” I stopped in my tracks when I noticed another person in the kitchen.
“Honey, you’ve met Chrissy, right?”
Dread bubbled up in my stomach although I’d halfway expected something like this. It had been a while since Mom’s last attempt. I shot Dad a look, and he glanced away. Clearly he was on Mom’s side or at least not willing to get in the middle. More than for myself, I felt bad for Chrissy. Whatever my Mom had told her about me was obviously enough to get her over here for dinner.
