I was just about to draw back and say something about driving with a painful hard-on when there was a sharp rap of knuckles against my window. “Mason?”
Startled, I turned toward the familiar voice and was met with a look of stunned confusion on my stepdad’s face. My stomach bottomed out as my trembling fingers stabbed repeatedly at the button in an attempt to unroll the window.
“Dad, what are you doing here?” I asked around the boulder stuck in my throat.
Girard cursed under his breath.
“I could ask you the same question.” He looked between us, his face screwed into something akin to repulsion. No doubt my lips were shiny and my hair a wreck. “Is this where you come to meet your…boyfriend?”
“No, I… He’s not my boyfriend.”
“Looked that way to me. Unless this is…something else.” He looked away like he couldn’t bear to consider me having a hookup with a guy.
Dad waved toward a gentleman dressed in a suit, who seemed oblivious as he paced near the restaurant door, motioning with his hand and talking to someone on his cell. Most likely Dad was meeting him here for business. Fuck my life. No way I thought Dad would come to this restaurant for anything other than a midway point to meet me every few months.
Though I knew he enjoyed the food. Still, my head was swimming with confusing thoughts and feelings—fear, denial, anger, and shame.
“I… It’s not what you think. We…we’re…” What in the fuck did I think I could possibly say to make anything better in this scenario? It wasn’t lost on me that had I been with a girl, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. Hell, he’d probably invite us to join them.
“We weren’t doing anything wrong,” Girard said through a tight jaw, but his support didn’t stop the burning feeling in my gut that this would likely be the last straw for my stepdad and he’d finally cut ties. I was dead weight anyway. I swallowed the warm bile crawling up my throat.
Fuck. My. Life.
When Girard tried to place his hand on my shoulder in support, I shrugged him off. “Don’t, Girard.”
Was he insane? My stepdad just caught us making out like horny teenagers.
“Your teammate, huh?” Dad folded his arms. “What would your coach say?”
I stared straight forward, the anger eating away at me. “Probably nothing since he has a gay son, so…”
“Besides the fact that we’re consenting adults,” Girard muttered as he clenched his fingers, his knuckles turning white.
“You know how I feel about…” Dad waved his hand, his lip curled.
“Pretty sure we weren’t flaunting anything inside a parked car alone.”
Dad stared at me a long minute, and I saw the instant he decided he’d had enough. Of me and this tenuous connection we still shared. Besides, he was moving on with his life. He’d have a new family and everything this time next year.
I felt gutted, like someone had carved my insides out and left me a shell of my former self. I could barely find the strength to grip the steering wheel properly, but I kept trying, if only to ground myself.
“Like I said in our phone call, you’ll need to pack up your things.” He arched a brow, pointedly. “The sooner, the better.” Then he walked inside the restaurant without even a glance back.
After another full minute, I finally mustered the courage to back out of the lot—instead of running in there to try and convince him of…what? This was my truth. It was part of me, and I needed to get used to it. Denying it would be like denying the very core of myself. And Dad had already done that enough for both of us.
We were quiet the whole way home as I tried to sort through my thoughts.
What happened with my stepfather was my worst fear realized. It came earlier than expected, but despite knowing it was bound to happen, it still stung like hell that he could toss me aside so easily. If this was what coming out was like, then screw that. I would wait a million more years if I needed to.
“Mase,” Girard said when I pulled into the lot of the bowling alley. “You wanna come up so we can—”
“No.” I shook my head almost violently. “I…I can’t. I need time to figure shit out in my head.”
“You don’t have to be alone.” His voice was soft and sad, and I had trouble meeting his eyes because I didn’t know what I’d find there. Disappointment, pity?
“It’s the only way I know.”
His shoulders slumped. Then he pushed open the door. “I’m so fucking sorry.”
I cleared my scratchy throat. “No, I am. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“What I mean is, I’m sorry he stole your joy from you tonight. Your bravery too. Though you stood your ground pretty well. He’s the one losing out.”
I watched him walk inside to his family—his warm and loving family—and I felt the cold punch of loneliness all the way back to campus.
24
Girard
I was fixing the pinspotter on lane eight again. Same old, same old. Some things never changed, but despite my frustration, I actually liked it that way.
So I got why Maclain was struggling, why he was trying so hard to hold on to his past when he felt it was about to crumble away.
It’d been a week since our date. I laughed bitterly to myself. Some date. As soon as Maclain was comfortable enough to chance holding my hand across a table and kiss me inside his car, his safety net had been ruthlessly taken away. By his so-called dad.
Maybe that wasn’t being fair. The man had provided for him into adulthood, after all. Maclain could’ve ended up in foster care or worse. But damn, witnessing that interaction between them had been uncomfortable. His dad had always made too many promises he didn’t keep, but still, the way he’d brushed Maclain aside had killed me. I knew without a doubt that my family would never treat me that way, and I supposed that was the difference, and why Maclain always trod delicately where his stepdad was concerned.
Since that night, Maclain seemed a bit worse for wear at games and practice. Not a worse grouch. No, it was more devastating than that. He was plain sad, almost like he was grieving, and, in a way, he was. I was giving him space, but he’d created a bubble around him that seemed impenetrable.
Thing was, he didn’t even see it—how others enjoyed having him around when he was just being himself, his real self. He was funny and sensitive, even if he didn’t like it to be acknowledged publicly, and he was dedicated to people as well as the game. Most of us had played baseball our whole lives. But it meant something more to Maclain, something that had to do with his past, stuff he was trying so hard to hold on to, and it was difficult to watch it slipping through his fingers.
“What’s going on with him?” Donovan had asked me during our last practice.
“Not my business to tell.” Though I was feeling completely unsettled myself about the whole thing. “Just be there for him? If he needs you.”
“I think I have an inkling,” Kellan said, and afterward in the locker room, I’d spotted the pack of Bit-O-Honey he’d placed for him near his locker.
When Maclain saw it, his gaze immediately found mine. I’d lifted my hands in surrender. “Not me this time.”