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Dad might have assumed he was the first to hear about my sexuality. For all his talk of nobody needing to care, he held his tongue. I was glad. I didn’t want Asher to have to act surprised or, worse, say he’d known for weeks.
“Morning,” Dad greeted him.
“Are those pancakes?” Asher asked. Suddenly, I wasn’t interesting to him at all. Nobody could compete with Dad’s pancakes.
Eileen still hadn’t shown up by the time we finished our mini breakfast. Asher and I retreated to our rooms and then met on the balcony to discuss the day’s plans. Our plans were wildly predictable by now. We would go to the lake and enjoy the peace and privacy it gave us. And so we packed a basket with snacks and drinks and left the house behind.
We were lying on the pier, drying from a long swim, when I turned on my side and looked at him. Drops of water sparkled on his tanning skin. “I have to tell you something,” I began. “But you can’t freak out.”
“Tell me, or I’ll freak out,” Asher replied with urgency, turning on his side to face me, too. He lifted his dark sunglasses from his eyes. They looked great on him, but his eyes were infinitely prettier.
“Dad and Eileen are splitting up,” I said without ceremony.
Exactly the way I had reacted that morning, I watched Asher’s face brighten, and then his mood dampen. Two opposite feelings, yet equally true. “What? Why?”
“I don’t know,” I said, assuming he wanted me to elaborate. “I mean, they haven’t been great to be around lately. You noticed that, right?”
Asher bit his lip guiltily. “I, uh, was a bit preoccupied. I wasn’t paying attention.”
I snorted, but it felt good that he was focused on me so much so that an entire marriage in the house could fall apart and he wouldn’t notice. Fuck, I made myself seem like a villain.
“Don’t be so quiet,” Asher said. “Tell me what you know.”
“Since the night they arrived, there were cold looks between them, tired sighs. You know how it goes. Well, this morning, I discovered that Dad has been sleeping in the living room. He said a lot about people changing, but nothing specific.”
Asher narrowed his eyes in thought. After a short silence, he looked into my eyes with determination. “That’s not gonna happen to us, right?”
I shook my head. “I won’t let it.”
He pressed his hand on my chest and felt my heartbeat. I had my hand on his waist, enjoying the softness of his skin. After a long while, Asher pressed his lips together. “I hate this for them.”
I wasn’t sure what to say. If they’d stopped making each other happy, it was better to leave the marriage. What was the alternative? They would only grow resentful of the time they had wasted in misery.
“But for us,” Asher said and let the words trail off.
“I feel the same way,” I said.
Did it change anything, though? We hadn’t grown up together. We hadn’t truly been a family to one another before this relationship. Did the divorce change anything that their marriage had changed first?
“I came out to Dad,” I said quietly. “Don’t ask me why. I don’t know.”
Asher leaned in and pressed a kiss to my lips. He didn’t ask questions. Instead, he just whispered, “Good. I’m proud of you.”
I didn’t know I needed to hear those words until he said them. But then, as he kissed me again, I rolled on top of him and kissed him harder. This was a kiss that carried all the promises that we wouldn’t drift apart and change the way our parents had. We could break the curse. We could be the ones who stood by each other and never let outside influences pull us apart. If we’d managed to find a way to be together in the hardest circumstances, we could find a way to stay together after this.
FIFTEEN
Asher
As the days moved in their lazy summer fashion, I watched the people around me. The four of us, a family held together by duct tape and prayer. The relationships that shifted and changed. In the span of a few weeks, everything that had been our world had turned upside down. For the first time ever, I found something that resembled happiness. The true kind that came from enjoying another human being so purely and completely that almost nothing could cast a shadow over it.
On the opposite end of things, the people who had once loved each other so passionately were barely capable of sitting at the same table with the electric feel of tension sparking us all. Mom was unhappy. In fact, she was so clearly unhappy that I was ashamed I hadn’t seen it sooner.
And George was tired. He was perpetually exhausted and on the verge of collapsing. Sure, he wore his easy smile and kept his tone light, but his eyes were older than they had been the last time I’d seen him.
Jordan was the oasis in this desert we called family. He was my well of tranquility. He was the embodiment of all my dreams. And a pillar on which I could see my future built.
Was it crazy to think up these grand plans in the hours when I was alone? Was it totally mad that I should hope to spend my life the way I’d spent these last few weeks? With him and all the things that came along with it. Laughing, fighting, sulking, fucking. I wanted it all until the end of time. The ambition was so big and bright that it made everything else pale in my mind. Everything I thought mattered was less important in comparison to holding onto Jordan.
