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The stupendous relief that I felt at this was almost like being catapulted into the stars. I didn’t know how to react. It was simply a sensation that filled me to bursting, this joy and love I felt for him.
“So,” Dad said, hesitating. “It’s boy trouble, eh? Well, that’s not too different from girl trouble, I think.” He released my shoulder and rubbed his hands together. “I’m no expert, but I can listen.”
I wanted to cry more than before, not less, although part of it was pure happiness. This was who I was and Dad didn’t care if it was different from what he’d thought. How much purer can a relationship be? But I didn’t want to tell him. Not about Sebastian, who was deep in the closet, and not about the weird, senseless way it all went down. So I cleared my throat. “It’ll pass,” I said.
Dad was probably a little relieved. It had taken him years to even start coping with being left.
“Show me the train again,” I said.
If not for my sake, then for his, this turned out to be the best thing I could have asked for. He was delighted that I would request it. Without any hesitation, he smiled and pulled me over, getting me familiar with the tracks and the controls on the remote controller he had. Then, when I was up to speed, he handed the remote to me.
For a moment, I could almost feel the appeal of it. A place where you made the rules and where everything was just so simple and easy. The train had its tracks and the villages had its purpose and the people lived under a perpetually blue sky. It was as close to escaping from the pit of despair as I could get and I took every moment I was offered.
NINETEEN
Sebastian
The forks and knives scraped against the porcelain plates in the dining room. The meat was juicy, the gravy was sweet and salty, and the cabbage salad was crunchy. All of these things made sounds that seemed too loud in the deathly silence of the room. A chair moved an inch and sounded like an earthquake now that my ears were adjusting to this coffin we called my childhood home.
Eryn sat next to me, bumping her knee into mine as if to acknowledge how awkward this entire evening was.
Dad had said the graces before eating. He asked the Lord to protect his children from the sinful influences of the modern world, pointedly looking at me afterward. If I hadn’t ripped my heart out to set the one guy I loved free, I would have thought Dad was starting to suspect me.
This way, it hardly mattered. I was going to be alone because nobody in the world deserved to be pulled down into this vat of toxic waste.
As I looked around the table, my heart sank lower. I didn’t know what to do in two days when I had to return to Northwood. Would I even bother returning? What for? To see the consequences of what I’d done to Tyler? To chase the puck until the last game and then search for work washing dishes or bagging groceries? Maybe I was better off here, drawing lines for a battle over Eryn’s future. I might help give her a chance to escape.
I looked at Mom. Her hair was perfectly still, curled overnight, and dyed brown. Her red lipstick framed her lips in a pinched, almost angry way. Since I was a child, she had been teaching me the differences between men and women, who did what around the house, and what was expected from each in life. She was perfectly happy with the division of labor based on sexist ideas. I half-expected her to discourage Eryn from reading.
Michael was here. He’d made a point of attending nearly every dinner while I was home. Becoming a general practitioner was the greatest achievement of humankind, according to him. There was nothing more noble. Even more so, there was nothing as challenging. He was the most important, knowledgeable, and wisest person in any room at any time. To him, there was no question about it.
And Dad, at last, who had been rubbing his hands whenever there was silence, pondering, mulling, contemplating, and finally spitting out some homophobic bullshit as though someone had asked his opinion.
It was safe to say that I hated my life.
It was also fair to say I deserved nothing less.
They were right about one thing. I’d shot my shots and they had all missed the mark. I wasn’t particularly good at anything except sharing the spotlight with someone better and drawing happiness from those who could create it out of thin air. Like Tyler.
I gritted my teeth when I thought about him. Every single time his face floated before my eyes, I wanted to cry and smash stuff.
“Stop playing with your food,” Dad said gruffly, his fuse shorter than ever.
It took me a little while to realize he had spoken to me. Had I been playing with my food? I looked at the plate and saw how I’d separated the peas from the carrots, how the strings of cabbage weren’t touching anything else, and how the bits of meat were sorted by size. “Mm.”
Dad exhaled through his nose. Few people could portray frustration with as little gesture as my father.
“May I be excused?” I asked in a flat tone. “I’m not hungry tonight.”
“The Lord has given us this meal, Sebastian,” he began, but I already knew the story.
“The Lord has also invented refrigerators so we can eat the leftovers later,” I murmured.
Eryn chuckled and choked, then cleared her throat and grabbed the glass of water to hide her grin.
If anything could lift my heart a little, it was her.
“Now, you listen to me, you ungrateful, petulant boy,” Mom snapped while Dad’s face turned crimson.
