“I’m so proud of you,” she says, with a gentle smile and a squeeze to my arm, but she keeps walking without waiting for me to say anything.
I stand in the hallway for a second, letting the words sink in.
I’m so proud of you.
No matter what happens, I think I’m proud of me too.
By the time we call it, we only have the bigger furniture left that we’ll move tomorrow.
Mike and Nate have ended up in a twenty-minute-long conversation about music and his band that makes my heart feel too big for my chest. I catch Iris’s eye across the room, and she smiles like she feels the same way.
“Who’s ready for burgers?” Nate announces.
The kitchen is the only room in the house that isn’t empty at this point. The table and chairs are still there, and they decided to pack up the dishes tomorrow. It settles the thing inside me that’s been hurting since we walked through the door.
Nate moves around the kitchen, the last time cooking something in here. Mike leans against the counter and offers to help.
Nate gives him the tomatoes to slice, while Iris washes the lettuce, and I stand at the island with nothing to do but watch the most important people in my life all in one room and try not to make how much I love them obvious.
When we sit down to eat, Iris asks Mike more about his band, and he answers with his whole self the way he does. Everyone laughs at whatever he said, while I stare at the table.
My heart is hammering, and my palms are sweaty and won’t stop shaking. Mike reaches under the table and puts his hand over mine without saying a word, and I know what I have to do.
Nate’s telling a story about one of his players. Something that happened over the season. Mike is smiling beside me, his thumb moving back and forth over my knuckles.
I can’t hold it in anymore.
“I have to tell you something,” I blurt out, in the middle of Nate’s sentence.
The room goes silent, with all three of them looking at me, and I have no idea how to start. Every word I’ve ever rehearsed has disappeared. But I look at Nate, and he’s watching me, and I can tell he knows this is something serious. He’s got that lookhe gets when he’s worried about me. When he’s asking me what’s wrong.
Except this time, there’s nothing wrong.
It’s the opposite.
It’s Mike beside me, steady and warm and everything I didn’t know I needed. I look over at him, and he gives me a small smile and a nod.
I look back at Nate.
“Mike isn’t just my roommate,” I say, and it comes out clear. “He’s my boyfriend.” I take a deep breath.
“I’m gay.”
I watch Nate’s face, taking in what I said, his eyes moving from me to Mike, back to me.
Back to Mike.
The silence stretches, tense and terrible, all of us watching Nate for some sort of reaction, until he gets up from the table.
He pushes his chair back, stands up, and walks out of the kitchen without saying a single word.
I hear the back door open.
And then it’s the three of us and the empty chair across from me where my brother was sitting.
I knew this would happen.
Everything in me knew he wouldn’t accept me, that he would hate me if he knew, and I still decided to say it even though I knew exactly how he would react. It still feels like the floor has dropped out from under me. I still had hope.
