Page 71 of Ripped

“Who was your first kiss?” he asks.

I groan. “Isaac Paulson in freshman year. At the back of the auditorium during rehearsals.”

“Ooo… in a dark theater. How dramatic.”

“Yeah, yeah. How about you?” I nudge him back with my shoulder.

“Susan McDonald at the neighborhood football pitch,” Donnie answers wistfully.

I gasp. “A girl!”

Donnie laughs and tries to shush me at the same time. “Don’t go ruining my gay cred now.”

He’s joking, I know, but I still glance around and spot a few people staring at us. They all avert their eyes when they realize I’ve caught them. One teenager flashes me a tiny smile before he turns back to his friends.

“When did you come out?” Donnie asks as we take the right fork and venture into a less populated area of the park.

“Summer before high school. My parents had already guessed, so…” I shrug. “I told my mom and she was like, ‘Cool, no boys allowed in your room.’ That was it.”

“Anticlimactic. It’s better that way.”

I suppose he’s right. Fourteen-year-old Connor had wanted more of a reaction. Not anything like what happened to Donnie of course. But a few stray tears wouldn’t have hurt either.

Looking back, homophobia had never really been a real fear for me. My parents didn’t make a big deal out of it. My school had a no-bullying policy that they were good about enforcing. I wasn’t the only queer kid in my class either. I’d never had to think about pretending to be someone I wasn’t, or worry about how other people were going to react when they found out.

I know Donnie’s story is exactly the opposite and a fit of righteous anger burns in me toward his parents. “Can you tell me how you came out? Only if you want to.”

Donnie’s hand tightens on mine and I drift a little bit closer to him as we walk. “I’d just finished uni. There’d been a big public health campaign for gay men to get tested for HIV. The ads were all over the city—you couldn’t miss them. I’d gotten tested with some friends but then my dad found the results in my room.”

My chest is tight, bracing for what’s coming next.

“I guess I could have said that straight men get HIV too, but there wasn’t any point. They wouldn’t have believed me. I never talked about girls, never brought a girl home to meet them. It was pretty obvious.”

I press a kiss to his shoulder and hug his arm to me.

“They told me to get out. I stayed with a mate for about six months. Got a job at a bank, got transferred to America, then I met Roger.” He smiles, nostalgic and a little melancholy. There isn’t the same weight or dreariness that he used to have when he spoke about Roger or his family. There hasn’t been since he visited Roger at the cemetery.

“And well, you know the rest.”

“You haven’t spoken to your family since then?

Donnie shrugs. “I have a few times. I sent them Christmas cards and birthday cards at first. But I never got any back. I called them when Roger and I were getting married. They were civil but they weren’t happy about it. They didn’t come to the wedding and I kind of gave up after that.”

Donnie’s conversation with Mom this morning echoes through my mind. We might have a dysfunctional relationship, but at least we still have a relationship. I can’t imagine never speaking with her again. No more annoying texts from Brad? No more rambling lectures about things I don’t care about from Dad? I feel a little panicked at the mere possibility.

“Roger and I made our own family. Phyllis and Leonard were wonderful to me and we had a lot of friends. We were always hosting parties at the house for birthdays, when someone got promoted or started dating someone new. Basically, any excuse we could find to throw a party.” Donnie’s smile fades. “I haven’t been very good at keeping in touch with them.”

There are a lot of people in all those photos Donnie has around the house. But other than the guys from Mars, I’ve never heard him talk about other friends. “Why not?”

He gives a half-hearted shrug. “It was hard at first. Everyone was tiptoeing around me all the time, asking if I was okay, if there was anything they could do. I know they meant well, but… I wasn’t okay, there wasn’t anything they could do, and I got so tired of them asking. I stopped going out when they invited me and eventually, they stopped inviting me.”

My heart aches for Donnie. I wish I’d known him back then, that I could’ve been there to help him through it. I would’ve just held him, let him cry, let him rage, whatever he needed to do.

“And now? Would you want to reconnect with them?”

Donnie drops his gaze to the asphalt under our feet. “I should.”

“But?”

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