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That made two of us. “So have I.”
“Yeah?”
I nodded and cranked up the heat of the water, and I reached for the shampoo bottle. “The other night, I had a dream about your old man’s memorial. Remember I dragged you out of there and we snuck those fun-sized sandwiches behind the shed?”
He stopped for a moment, thinking back, and then he chuckled and joined me in the shower. “I haven’t thought about that in years. Then we got drunk in my old tree house.”
Oh yeah, we fucking had. Good times. In retrospect, it’d been dangerous as fuck. A tetanus hazard, not to mention some of the boards of the tree house had been rotten.
He stepped under the spray and grabbed the shampoo bottle from me. “I had a bizarre dream too—and I think it’s because I’ve been thinking about Noa coming clean to his mother.”
Another thing that’d been on my mind a lot.
“What was the dream?” I asked.
He poured shampoo into his hand and began massaging it into my hair. “It started out with what happened back in the day—when you told me you’d met someone who had a kid.”
Talk about a bittersweet memory.
“I’ve, uh…I’ve been seeing someone. Her name’s Christine. She has a little boy—I think he’s seven or eight. I haven’t met him yet, but she wants to introduce me this weekend.”
I’d rambled, nervous as shit, because I hadn’t come out to Lucian yet, even though I’d been fairly certain he’d had his suspicions. And I’d worried that he would call me out.
He hadn’t, but he hadn’t reacted to my news with a whole lot of enthusiasm either. He’d been a bit reserved. Cautious and formal in his politeness.
Getting together with Christine had been the biggest act of self-betrayal on my part, and I’d known from the get-go that she was never going to be more than a cover to appease my parents. She’d landed an internship at the law firm where I’d worked at the time, while she was in school to become a paralegal. She’d fit the bill. Wholesome, nice enough, definitely interested in me, and she shared my father’s passion for landscape photography. Perfect icebreaker when I’d brought her home to meet them.
What a fucking farce.
Then, being introduced to Noa…? He’d shown me a path I’d never thought I wanted to walk.
Even though all my wildest dreams had come true in the end, I’d truly loved being his stepfather, and I could miss some of those aspects now. And back then, there’d been no confusion either. Obviously. I mean, he’d been a child. A sweet, goofy, wild child who’d hid spiders in glass jars under his bed, acted like every piece of furniture was a drum, and he was an adrenaline junkie like me. A ball of energy who wanted to try everything.
And his honesty… Whether it smacked me in the face or rolled over me a tad more gently, I could always count on him to give it to me straight.
I reckoned it was the parent in me who didn’t so much miss being his dad, but I could miss his childhood years. Partly because our relationship had been so pure. We’d gone to museums, to games, to the zoo, and we’d gone skiing, swimming, hiking…
“It’s weird how that time was both the toughest and the easiest for me,” I murmured.
Lucian’s fingers in my hair were making me drowsy.
“How do you mean?”
I let out a breath and stretched out my legs between his. “When I was Noa’s dad, I never felt like I was hiding my identity. With him, I wasn’t lying—if that makes sense. I mean, my sexuality wasn’t the slightest factor in what I had with him. But, you know—soon as we came home from whatever activity, I had to put my mask back on. I had to pretend every moment with Christine.”
He hummed and scratched my scalp. “You tried to pretend with me too, KC.”
Like an idiot.
“But I would’ve done the same thing if I’d had your parents,” he sighed. “Good riddance.”
Yeah. Their memorial had looked a lot different from Lucian’s father’s. I’d been shell-shocked and relieved, the most bizarre combination. Unbridled joy had mixed with pent-up anger and resentment. Plus, a pinch of guilt, because I couldn’t lie. Over the years, throughout my childhood, I’d wished for them to get killed in an accident or…fuck, get hit by a bus. And then they’d actually died in a car accident.
You didn’t need to be religious to think, Had I done this?
I cleared my throat. “Tell me about the rest of that dream.”
“Huh? Oh—right.” He switched off the rain function and took the showerhead, and I tilted my head back. “I guess we can say a nightmare took over, because I dreamed that Noa was on his way to tell his mother about you two, and when he shows up—I don’t know if I drove him there or how I was even there—you’re the one opening the door. And I’m suddenly right next to Noa.”
