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“Agh!” I let out a growl of frustration and walked over to the island.
“What’s with you?” Tate asked. “Is this because I’m not out yet?”
I stopped moving.
“Yet?”
“You might want to sit down for this bit of news, but it’s gonna happen, Ree. I’ve done a lot of thinking the past few months. Well, to be honest, for years. But I think that I might be finally ready.”
“You can’t just think, Tate, you need to be sure. Someone like you, like me, in the public eye, there’s no taking it back.”
“I realize that.”
“No,” I snapped. “I don’t think you do. You don’t get the hateful emails, or the nasty comments on social media or?—”
Tate held his hand up. “I grew up in a household that was ten times worse. I’m sure I’ll be able to handle whatever shit comes my way.”
All my annoyance vanished at his blunt admission. I walked around the island to stand beside him.
“That’s the first time you’ve ever mentioned… I mean, I had an idea, but you never talk about your childhood,” I paused, “I’m so sorry.”
He didn’t look at me. Tate nodded and set the food prep aside.
“You’ve seen the scars on my back, and I’m sure you’ve speculated about how I got them. Even after plastic surgery, they’re still there. I’ll never get rid of them. Courtesy of my stepfather, Kenny, and his regular efforts to beat ‘the gay out of me’. And I use that term only because that’s exactly what he said to me. Usually accompanied by his leather belt or whatever weapon he could find during one of his rages.”
My stomach flipped over in the worst possible way, and the sudden, bitter taste of bile filled my mouth. Suspecting what had happened to him and hearing it were two different things.
Tate shook his head and then turned to me.
“My mom grew up in foster care and had me on her own when she was a teenager. She struggled all her life. Barely made ends meet. Until Kenny came along when I was fourteen. She’d been laid off the year before from her job at a local plastics factory, so she was desperate for a lifeline,” Tate paused and rubbed his beard. “And then our life of poverty became a living hell. See, I wasn’t into the usual shit he thought a boy should be into. And I wasn’t always this big. Until I hit my late teens, I was small and rail thin. I was an easy target for that bastard’s anger. He hated having a kid around. He hated kids in general. And gays, women, fuck, anyone who wasn’t a nasty, violent piece of shit like him.”
I reached for his arm. “Jesus Christ, Tay. How long did?—”
Tate inhaled sharply and shook his head.
“Years. Until I hit a growth spurt around seventeen and he backed off. Well, until I fought back. When I turned eighteen, I was done. I had some money saved up so I moved out. Worked two jobs to support myself in a one-room apartment in town. Told my mom to leave him, to come live with me but she refused. Just like she refused to go to the police all those years. In hindsight, I couldn’t blame her. Kenny was friends with the local sheriff, so what were the chances they would take her seriously? Then, about a year later, he… he beat my mom so bad—” Tate took a deep breath and paused, “So bad, she died as a result. He was arrested and died in jail shortly after.”
Tate finally looked over at me, his amber eyes welling up. He blinked the tears away before they could fall.
“My God, Tate. I… I don’t know what to say.”
“I don’t expect you to say anything. But I need you to understand, Ree. I’ve known, since I was thirteen, that I was gay. I knew then just as much as I know now. But there was no coming out for me in my situation. Not then, not when I first moved here, and not until recently. That vile, hateful shit he spewed at me for years is still lodged somewhere in the back of my brain. It created a fear within me that is the hardest fucking thing, outside of his beatings, that I’ve ever had to deal with.”
My vision blurred and tears spilled down my face.
Tate reached out to touch me, gently wiping the tears away. I wanted to hold his hand to my cheek, but I resisted the temptation.
“You’re ruining your makeup,” he teased.
I shook my head. “How can you joke right now?”
He shrugged. “Deflection is my survival mechanism.”
“Tate.”
“I was born Joshua Tate Hanratty, but he’s gone. I’m not that scared boy anymore.”
I jolted at the mention of his birth name.
