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“Sorry, I didn’t mean to—” I stammered.
“No, it’s fine. We had a nice time. I took him to the Italian place out past the hospital. What’s the name of it?”
Darci clapped her hands in excitement. “Nonna’s. We get takeout from there all the time at work. Ooh, how romantic.”
“What did he wear?” Doc asked with a devilish grin.
Charlie snorted. “Yellow trousers, purple button-up, and navy jumper. I believe his shoes were silver glitter trainers.”
Grandpa wandered over to stir the giant pot of gumbo on the stove. “Navy sweater, huh? Seems he toned it down a bit for you.”
Darci glanced at me. “I love how confident he is to be himself. That can’t be easy in a town like Hobie.”
“No, certainly not,” I agreed.
I caught Charlie sneaking a glance at me. “It’s not easy in many places. I’d imagine anywhere other than the biggest cities.”
I wondered not for the first time what it was like growing up gay in the isolated coastal area of Ireland where he lived. I was surprised he was as out and proud as he was. Maybe Ireland was more accepting than Texas was.
“Was it hard for your siblings, growing up gay here?” Charlie asked before realizing Doc and Grandpa might be better ones to ask. He glanced at both of them. “Or what about you two? I can’t imagine being out here a few decades ago.”
Doc and Grandpa shared a look before Grandpa answered. “It took us a while before we were brave enough to come out. For a long time, we let people believe I was simply the foreman on his daddy’s ranch. Liam was a physician in town, so everyone understood the ranch needed someone else looking after it once Mr. Wilde passed. Then people began to suspect we’d become close friends. It wasn’t until the kids were old enough to refer to me as Pop that people realized we were more than friends. Soon after that, we began to suspect our daughter Gina was gay. We realized we had to set an example and show her how to live out and proud. I won’t say it’s been easy, but it surely gets easier every day.”
He shot a warm glance at his husband. Doc looked at Charlie with a mischievous glint in his eyes. “It helps if you recruit all your grandchildren to the dark side and populate the town with your own little mini-gays. We’re still working on poor Hudson here, but so far the gay hasn’t stuck.”
Grandpa gasped and smacked Doc’s ass. “Hush. People will talk.”
Doc snickered. “They already think we turned them all gay, babe. Might as well have fun with it.”
My stomach lurched, and I couldn’t help but glance at Charlie.
This. This was exactly why I was scared to tell my family what I’d been going through with my attraction to Charlie. The speculation between nature and nurture, the idea some people had in town that my gay siblings had been influenced by my grandfathers. They joked about it, but I knew there was some part of them that worried about what people thought. And how in the world could I come out as questioning at the age of thirty-five without starting up all that chatter and speculation again?
Charlie didn’t look over at me, and I closed my eyes in relief. I wasn’t sure I could handle making eye contact with the only person in the room who knew how I might be feeling about this right now.
The rest of the evening progressed with an uneasy balance of Darci trying her hardest to be friendly to Charlie and Charlie trying his hardest to resist. It was a losing battle. Darci Ames was the kind of woman who’d become a nurse to help people feel better. She had one of the biggest hearts I knew, and her greatest wish was for people to be happy and healthy. Resisting her charms was almost impossible, and sure enough, by the end of the evening, Charlie was agreeing to Darci’s suggestion to visit an Irish pub she knew of in Dallas.
“You’ll love it, I promise,” Darci gushed. “They have excellent meat pies and a woman who plays a gorgeous fiddle on the weekends. I’ll finally have someone who can sing with me. Hudson refuses to sing even though he has a lovely voice.”
“You had me at ‘meat pies,’ woman,” Charlie said with a soft smile. “Let me know when you want to go, and maybe we can impose upon Hudson’s brother for an overnight at his flat. He said I was welcome to come back and stay anytime.”
I felt the familiar jangle of jealousy at the idea of him being cozy with my brother Saint, but I knew it was stupid. Even this night, Charlie had implied his interest still lay with me. And if that was the case, I needed to decide what, if anything, I wanted to do about it. It was time for me to stop acting like a bear with a thorn in its paw and do something.
