Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 82829 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 414(@200wpm)___ 331(@250wpm)___ 276(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82829 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 414(@200wpm)___ 331(@250wpm)___ 276(@300wpm)
“Let’s go into the living room,” Mom says before Marshall can reply. She knows, I realize. That quickly, she knows. It must be a mom thing, and even if she doesn’t know the details, she understands that something big is about to happen, and she’s trying to manage how and where it all goes down.
Dad doesn’t seem to have a clue, and he wraps his arm around Marshall, giving him a hug. My Sir winces, and I want to fix this for him. I want to find a way that makes it all okay. I don’t want him to lose more in his life than he already has, and certainly not because of me.
Marshall clears his throat and pulls back. I can read him so well now. He feels that hugging Dad, letting the two of them be close in this moment, is a betrayal because in just a few minutes, Dad isn’t going to want to be close to him.
“What are you doing here?” Dad asks me. “Not that I’m not happy to see you, but you don’t show up out of the blue very often.”
We enter the living room. “He came with me, John,” Marshall says, and I swallow down the bile burning at the back of my throat.
Dad’s gaze immediately shoots to me. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, Dad. I’m good. Actually, I’m better than I’ve ever been.”
Mom sits on the couch, watching us. Dad looks back and forth between Marshall and me, trying to piece together what’s happening, but he can’t—it’s not something he would ever consider.
“John, Callie…I don’t know exactly how to tell you this. Whatever I say is going to come out wrong. You are…” Marshall shakes his head, pain bleeding out of him. It takes everything in me not to wrap my arms around him, not to hold him or kneel for him, not to throw myself in front of this train wreck and protect him from any debris, but I can’t. “You’re a brother to me, John, and there’s no easy way to say this, but…JT and I, we’re together.”
Mom gasps, but my attention is fully on Dad. “What do you mean you’re together?” He watches Marshall, the truth in front of his eyes, but he’s unwilling to see it.
“You know what I mean, John.”
“We didn’t know, at first,” I add, somehow knowing that Marshall won’t. He’s going to try and protect me, not give too much information about me being online and meeting guys. “We started talking online, and we didn’t know who the other person was. We didn’t share names or photos. We just clicked. I’ve never felt such an instant connection to someone. By the time we met up and realized, I was already in deep.”
Mom stands and walks over to Dad, who’s working through it all in his head. His jaw tightens, face red, as Mom puts an arm around him, clearly trying to calm him down.
“You met up with my son to have sex with him.” Dad’s voice is hard, a tremor in it that says he’s trying to keep it steady.
“We didn’t know!” I say in unison with Marshall’s, “Yes.”
“We didn’t do anything that day. Both of us were freaked out,” I add.
“But you are now!” Dad shouts. He’s been angry before—he’s human, so how could he not have been—but I have never, in all my twenty-two years, heard my dad yell this way. It’s just not in his nature. It makes my insides begin to shatter, any hope I’d felt starting to disappear.
“I shouldn’t have kept it from you. I know that. I…” Marshall runs a hand through his hair. It’s shaking. Marshall is the definition of poised, and in this moment, he’s anything but. “I know I betrayed you, and I’m sorry, but he’s important to me. Jay…he means a lot to me.”
I step closer to Marshall, looking my parents square in the face. “He means a lot to me too.”
“Who the fuck is Jay? You don’t even call him by his name now?” Dad shakes his head, still angry, but like he’s trying to put everything together. “You told me you can’t be in a relationship without…those things. Doing them to people.” The disapproval in Dad’s voice is too strong to be missed. Just like I knew he would, he thinks it’s wrong. He thinks there’s something wrong with people who do it.
Marshall clears his throat. “No…I can’t.” The sadness in his voice breaks me down further.
“You got my son into that shit!” Dad bellows.
“Marshall…” Mom says. “I don’t understand. This is JT. How could you do this with our son? How long has this been happening?”
“A couple of months,” I reply. “And he didn’t get me into it. I was into it before him. That’s how we met. It’s a site for that kind of thing.” I don’t typically fold in on myself when it comes to my differences with my parents. I am who I am, and inside, I know there’s nothing wrong with that, but this situation is different. I feel shame trying to creep in—shame in disappointing them, in not being who they need me to me, in wanting these things that feel like such an ingrained part of who I am.