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“She did?” Everett asked, his pretty mouth pulling into a grin.
“Yep. Since it wasn’t already embarrassing enough to be the teacher’s kid, I had to befriend the new girl because my mommy made me.” I chuckled as I remembered the stern look my mother had given me when I’d declared that I couldn’t be friends with Grace because she was a girl. The memory of my mother threatened to overshadow the moment, so I had to force it away. “The strange little girl with the weird accent became my best friend in the entire world. From that moment on, we were inseparable. I took a lot of flak for it when we were older. She did too, but it didn’t matter.”
“But you were never together?”
“No, I knew I was gay pretty early on and Grace accepted that. At first, when I realized what it meant that I only felt for boys what I should have felt for girls, I used my friendship with Grace to test the waters… to try to prove to myself that what I was feeling was a mistake… that I was normal, I guess. It was selfish and cowardly and could have ruined the friendship,” I admitted.
“You didn’t tell her right away,” Everett guessed.
I shook my head. “She kissed me once after this party when we were both fifteen. I think a part of me desperately wanted to like it. We didn’t actually talk about starting dating, but I could tell it was what she wanted. I was too afraid I’d lose her if I told her the truth.”
“What happened?”
“She found out anyway. Saw me kissing a guy from my wrestling team one day. She was understandably upset and confronted me. That’s when I told her the truth.” I paused as I remembered that moment. “She was the first person I ever told.”
“She forgave you.”
“Eventually,” I said. “I think it was hard for her to separate out loving me like a friend versus loving me like a boyfriend. Having her accept me for who I was made it easier to ask others to as well. My parents, the kids at school.”
“How did your parents take it?”
“Even though I’d never told them, they’d pretty much already known. I hadn’t really realized it at the time, but they’d been laying the groundwork for a long time so that when I was ready to come out to them, I could. Not using specific pronouns whenever we’d talk about me finding love for the first time, showing their support for members of the LGBTQ community from the time I was a little kid, even when it was still considered taboo… I was really lucky.”
“And the kids at school?”
“Not as accepting, but luckily I was a big kid, so few guys were willing to follow up their taunts with their fists. I had a few friends who stuck up for me and Grace, and she was just a barracuda when it came to anyone trying to mess with me.” I grabbed my beer and took a sip. “After high school, I joined the Navy while Grace went to college to study interior design. Even though we weren’t in the same cities for a lot of years, we still kept in touch. She wasn’t real close with her parents, so she spent most of her holidays with mine, and I came home as much as I could. It wasn’t until we were both nearing forty that she admitted that something was missing from her life.”
“A baby,” Everett said.
“She’d dated a few guys here and there, had even been engaged once, but she’d never been particularly lucky in love.”
“What about you?” Everett asked. His hand was resting along the back of the couch like mine was. I barely managed not to grab him when one of his fingers briefly brushed one of mine.
“What about me?” I asked as my entire being seemed to focus on that brief physical contact. In the days since I’d embraced him in an attempt to comfort him while showing him the bedroom he’d be using in the guest house, Everett had been careful not to have any kind of physical contact with me. I’d figured I’d frightened him with my forwardness and had resolved to back off a bit, but even that tiny touch was wreaking havoc inside of me and it was all I could do not drag him forward onto my lap.
“Were you ever lucky in love?”
I shook my head. “Nothing that stuck. There were a couple of guys here and there who I thought might go the distance and want the house, the kids, the white picket fence. But saying they wanted those things with me and actually being willing to tell the world they did were two different things.”
I saw Everett stiffen and I cursed myself for my words. He began to draw his hand back, so I quickly grabbed it. “Everett, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean anything by that.”
