“This is Sami, my…” What even were they?What would bother Jack without being presumptuous?“Person.”
Wait.No.That sounded more intimate than he had intended.The side-eye Sami regarded him with seemed amused rather than appalled.He knew what Baz had meant!
“Oh.I-I see,” Jack stammered.
Sami freed his hand from Baz’s abuse and offered it.“It’s nice to meet you, Mr.Hadley.”The words oozed with that outrageously easy charisma.
“Call me Jack.It’s a nice surprise meeting you too.”Whatever he was thinking, if there was a part of him that was bothered to learn both his kids were queer, he was smart enough not to say anything.That was growth, Baz supposed.
Joel ushered them to the living room and promised coffee and snacks.Like that would ease the tension.
Baz sat on the far end of the leather couch, thigh to thigh with Sami.
Jack stopped by the side table.With a trembling hand, he picked up a picture frame; Eevee and Joel’s wedding photo.Baz knew it well.Eevee in her white princess dress and floor-length veil, hugging Joel in his light-pink suit.Their foreheads pressed together, the river skyline (with the Trump Tower pixelated, naturally) as their backdrop.Jack clutched his chest.
“Oh, honey, you were a beautiful bride.I’m so sorry I missed it.”
“Yeah,” Eevee said neutrally.
Oh, please.“I’m not,” Baz declared.The ceremony had been perfect.Barely twenty people had watched them exchange their vows, intimate and beautiful.There had been no space for hatred.
Jack nodded, slowly placing down the frame.“I deserve that.”
“You think?”
Some snark didn’t begin to compare to, oh, from the top of Baz’s head, being abandoned as a teenager—the squeeze of his knee pulled Baz away from his tangent.Sami’s hand was a steady weight, grounding him to the floor.
Right.Second chances and all that crap.
“Baz—I mean, Sebastian.I know there’s nothing I can say to make up for how I failed as a parent.”
“Agreed.”
“But there are some things you don’t know that I’d like to explain, if I may.”
Baz crossed his arms in front of his chest.This had better be good.
Jack took a seat on the opposite end of the L-shaped sofa, elbows on his thighs.“Your mother was a deeply troubled person.”
That was his great defense?It would have been funny if it wasn’t so sad.
“You’re blaming her.How original.”
“I’m not.I blame myself for seeing the signs and not doing enough to help her.But I tried.Do you remember the trip she went on a few months before she died?”
Baz remembered the part where her great adventure had ended in the span of a few days because Jack had needed her too much to let her have fun.He remembered how lifeless she had looked on her return.
“What about it?”
“That was when I took her to rehab for the first time.She checked herself out after two days and vanished.I was looking for her day and night.Some colleagues found her high out of her mind in a homeless shelter a few days later.She refused to go back to rehab.I let her blame me so that you kids wouldn’t be alarmed to see her back so soon.She struggled with demons she never let me see, Baz.And I hoped loving her would be enough to help her through, but… against some things, we are powerless.”
Baz blinked against the heat in his eyes.“Did you love her as much as you loved Eevee growing up?”
“Baz,” Eevee hissed.It was a valid question!If he had denied Mom to be herself, no wonder she had demons haunting her.
“I’m so sorry, son.I really am.I tried to help your mom, and this whole trans business after she died, it was just too much.And that’s not an excuse, I know that.I’m sorry I made you two run away from me.But seeing how far you’ve come without me now, I couldn’t be prouder of you.”
“You have no right to be proud of us!This happened in spite of you, not because.”
