Page 45 of Counterpoint
There was an industrial and secondhand feel to the place. Exposed beams and pipes. Wood and brick. Mismatched tables and chairs. The customers were a mix. Ages and ethnicities. Sexualities and genders, too. Adrian made a mental note to come back. This was a place he could frequent. Support.
Dominic ordered a large raspberry latte, then bumped Adrian’s hip when he snorted. “I can’t make this at home, so shut up.”
“I didn’t say a word.” Adrian caressed the back of his neck, then ordered a regular coffee with a mound of whipped cream.
Dominic hip-checked him again, and Adrian laughed. Someone wanted to be even more sore before the day was out.
“So,” Dominic said as they sat down together on an old love seat. “High school.”
Adrian took a sip and considered both the coffee and how to tell his story. The coffee was damn good—another reason to return. He set the mug down. “I knew I was interested in more than just women by the time I was a freshman. And I realized very quickly that I was a little more interested in masculine than anything else, regardless of gender. But I didn’t come out to my parents until I was a junior—when my senior boyfriend asked me to the prom, and I said yes.”
“Did they—Were they—” Dominic stopped. “Mine were fine with me. But I know not everyone—” Such concern. Such honest worry. Adrian patted his thigh.
“It took them by complete surprise, and that played into their first reactions. But they did love me, so they came around, especially Mom. She was more worried about how I might struggle through life. They’d been very aware of the AIDS crisis, even though by the mid-to late-’90s, things were much better.”
There’d been tears and worries and long conversations about safety and love and not jumping intoanythingtoo fast. Some of the conversations he knew they’d had with his other siblings when they’d started dating.
“Thankfully, they did get the whole thing about teens having sex, so I didn’t get a sanctimonious lecture about fucking—or not fucking. At least not from them.”
“Oh shit. Your brother.”
His brother, the priest. “Father Patrick Doran. Sanctimonious out the ass.” He sighed and the spike of pain made him reach for his mug of coffee. “He was livid. Absolutely livid. I didn’t know why, really. Still don’t. We stopped talking. But I know it wasn’t just about Church doctrine.”
Dominic took Adrian’s free hand. “Oh hell, I’m sorry.”
The warmth in Dominic’s voice and in his hand tightened Adrian’s chest and tumbled his heart. “Sean was fine with it, but not what came later.” He took another swallow of coffee. “Moira still talks to me. She and her husband figured out what I’d done, so while they were horrible shits after Mom died, they both apologized later.”
Dominic held on to his hand more tightly. “Yeah, you’re right, this is complex. I’ll be quiet. You talk.”
Adrian’s bark of laughter had no mirth. He leaned back on the love seat, fortified by coffee and Dominic’s hand, and launched into the tangled and woven tale.
He’d come out, gone to his boyfriend’s prom, and dealt with the fallout fromthat—including Patrick’s spiritual “counseling” that had done more to drive him out of Catholicism than anything else. For his own prom, he’d gone with a very cute trans guy his own age—one who’d allowed Adrian to tie him up with scarves and shit. The latter, of course, he’d never confessed to his parents.
Some things he never shared.
For college, he’d ended up at SUNY in Buffalo and gotten his BA in computer science in three years. Then, like every other tech person at the time, he’d headed out to California and hopped from start-up to start-up.
“I made a decent pile of cash despite the dot-com burst. Focused on equipment companies and financial ones. Stuff that was still making money. Which was good, because my father died and I learned my mom was about to lose the house.”
The funeral had been hellish. Patrick had presided over the Mass, of course, which meant Adrian had been locked out of just about every part of that. His mother, in her grief, hadn’t noticed that he’d been the only one of her children not to have a part. Not a reading. Not a psalm. Not even bringing up the gifts before Communion. Shut out completely.
So he’d stood next to his mother and been her support, her pillar. The arms that had held her up even as he wanted to dive deep into his own complex grief for his father—a man he loved and didn’t understand and wished he could have.
In the days that followed, he remained close to his mother, helping her with everything his father had taken care of—or hadn’t, as it turned out. Their finances were a mess. Yes, his father had his pension, and yes, there was some life insurance, but the cost of raising four kids and sending them to college—even with Sean’s ROTC scholarship—thensending Patrick to seminary had led his dad to mortgage the brownstone twice. And there wasn’t enough to cover everything and provide for his mother to live on.
So Adrian had quietly cashed out as much of his stock options as he could, and taken over paying the mortgage. He would not see his mother lose the family home. Not the house his grandfather—her father—had worked so hard to obtain. Both he and his mother had decided it would be best if his siblings didn’t know. Sean was on active duty. Moira was struggling to start a family of her own, and both she and her husband had their own burdens. And Patrick—well. He couldn’t help. Not on a priest’s salary. All the finery that surrounded him was none of his own.
Adrian had headed back to California to work, found a smaller place, and worked as many hours as he could to keep earning what he’d needed to for both himself and his mom. Did freelance work on the side to earn a little extra.
And because he’d managed to pull a decent amount out of the market, he’d done okay in the end. Yes, he’d lost his job a couple times, and scrambled and scraped to grab a new one, but he’d come out on top. In the end, he’d paid off one of his parents’ mortgages and the other had a sizable dent in it. His mom was safe and learning to live again, surrounding herself with friends and knitting and books and volunteer work.
In California, Adrian had dated all over the spectrum and learned quite a lot about himself, his love of bondage and domination, but also his apathy toward much of pain play. “Icanflog someone,” he murmured, dropping his voice. “It just doesn’tdoanything for me.”
“I like what we’ve done so far,” Dominic replied.
Both their cups were empty, so Adrian took the opportunity to sling an arm around Dominic and pull him close. “Good. If there’s any aspect you don’t like—”
“Believe me, I’ll tell you. I’ve got a mouth.”
