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35
Three days had passed since I’d run into Noah outside the gym and then had my revelation in my bedroom. Noah had barely spoken more than a couple of words to me since, not that I blamed him. I knew that we were both keeping our distance from each other until these feelings went away.
Except they weren’t going away. Not on my part, anyway.
My head hurt, I couldn’t sleep, and my thoughts were going round and round in circles. I couldn’t concentrate on anything, and I was so fucking miserable all the time.
I needed to see my mum.
She was still at work when I parked my VW Golf on the driveway of the red-brick semi-detached in Purley, south London, early Friday evening. Using my key, I let myself into the house and made my way straight up to my childhood bedroom. It had been redecorated when I moved out, the blues and blacks I’d preferred as a teenager replaced with soft greys, but my mum had still kept some of my stuff in here. There was a shelf containing my football trophies, and my old PS4 games were still piled on the bookshelf, with the PS4 itself next to the TV that sat on the desk. The noticeboard still held the ticket I’d kept when I’d gone to see England play Poland in the World Cup qualifiers, and just above it was a printed photo of myself and a group of my school friends, right after we’d finished our final exams and left school for good. On the bedside table was a framed photo of me with my dad on the beach, taken during a summer holiday to St Ives in Cornwall when I was five. He was holding my arms above my head, both of us grinning, with a huge sandcastle in front of us.
A wave of sadness and nostalgia hit me, and I collapsed onto my bed, suddenly exhausted. Fuck, I hadn’t realised just how much I’d needed to get away until I was back in the place I’d grown up.
I closed my eyes, and the memories came. Snapshots from my life, flashing through my mind—my dad, my mum, family and friends, and later, girls.
How did Noah fit it into it all? How could I have not realised that there was this part of me, the part that made me want him? I’d always known I wasstraight. I hadn’t even considered another way.
Until him.
He’d shown up in my life and completely blindsided me, and everything had changed.
There was a lump in my throat, and it was getting bigger the more I thought about it all. I’d been pushing these feelings back—I’d locked them away, unable to face them, but now they were spilling out of me.
I blinked hard. My vision grew blurry, and the first tear fell, running down my face and soaking into my pillow.
Curling into a ball, I bit down on my lip, trying to stifle the tears, but another fell, and then another.
“Liam?”
I hadn’t even heard the footsteps in the hallway or my door opening, but as I lifted my face from where it was buried in the pillow, I saw my mum.
“Oh,Liam.” She sank down onto the bed, and even though we weren’t normally affectionate with each other, she didn’t even hesitate to wrap one arm around my back and leaned down to kiss my head like my dad used to do when I was a kid.
I fucking broke.
Right there in my childhood bedroom, with my mum holding me, I cried. Cried like I hadn’t done for years.
When I eventually stopped, I swiped my hand across my face and raised my eyes to my mum’s. “Sorry,” I whispered.
“Liam, no. You have nothing to be sorry about. What’s wrong, love?” She smoothed her hand over my hair, concern written all over her face.
“I’ve—I’ve messed everything up.” My voice cracked. “Everything’s gone wrong, and I don’t know how to fix it.”
Her eyes took on a steely look that I’d seen directed at people on my behalf before. If there was anyone who wronged me in her eyes, she’d go to war. “Tell me everything, and we’ll fix it.”
“I don’t even know where to start.”
“The beginning is a good place,” she suggested gently.
“O-okay.” I cleared my throat. “It started when I was parking my car at uni, and this guy crashed into me…”
The story spilled out of me, everything that had happened. Minus the sex details, because that was not the kind of thing I wanted to share with my parent.
At the end, I was so fucking wrung out that I felt like I could just curl up and sleep for a week. I looked up at my mum, hopeless.
“Liam…” She gave me a sad smile. “It sounds to me like you have very strong feelings for this boy.”
“But, Mum, how could I?” My fucking voice cracked again, and fresh tears filled my eyes. “How could I not know that I liked boys until now? What if people look at me differently? What if… Will you still love me if I’m… If I’m g-gay? Bi? Whatever I am? Would Dad still love me if he was here? I—I know he wanted me to settle down with a girl.” Fuck, I was crying again now.
