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“Ryan’s a big boy now. Let’s listen to what he has to say.”
Taking his cue, Ryan sat a little straighter next to me and began to talk. We all began to talk, all four of us. Like rational adults, almost as if we knew what we were doing. No sly digs, no point-scoring, just three grown-ups and my nearly-grown-up, navigating our way through the first of his adult problems. Later, Ryan would head over to Sam’s anyway, but discussing this together was important. By the time we signed off, having talked for over an hour, we had a plan. Which gave Matt plenty of time to turn my neat box hedge into a leafy cock and balls.
We dropped Matt home first, on the way over to Samantha’s. I wanted another snogging session across the front seats, like we’d done before, but with Ryan in the back we settled for a quick hand squeeze in the dark and a promise to phone later. Our late-night bedtime phone session had become almost routine, and I’d never slept better.
“Does Matt live in a caravan?” Ryan asked as we drove away, craning his neck to look up through the windscreen. He’d slipped into the vacant front seat after Matt had said goodbye.
“Yeah.”
“Very cool. He’s really nice, isn’t he?”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “He is.”
We drove in silence for a couple of minutes. I hadn’t wanted Matt to leave tonight. I wanted him to stay and clear up the kitchen with me after we’d eaten. Maybe sort the recycling while I put the dustbin out for tomorrow. Mundane stuff: my aspirations were set comfortably low. He could watch the news and weather, sitting on the sofa with me. Or talk to me while I tried to concentrate on a rugby league game and not his cold feet warming in my lap. And then we’d head up to bed.
“I know what I meant to ask you, Dad. Why are all the tins in the kitchen cupboard turned upside down and facing backwards?”
“I’ve no idea, sweetheart. I must have unpacked the shopping that way.”
Some men’s love language translated into bunches of garish flowers and sugary chocolates. Matt’s calling cards shone so much brighter and sweeter. I wanted to shout my love for him from the roof tops. What had he said about difficult conversations in cars and a captive audience? Well, no time like the present.
“You know Matt and I were best friends at school, right?”
Ryan nodded. “Yeah. He must have been way cooler than you are, though.”
“He was. He still is.” I smiled at my son despite my racing pulse. Maybe I should pull over. Negotiating traffic and building up to telling your son you were in love with another man were possibly mutually exclusive events.
“We were…um...it’s hard to explain.”
I should have asked Matt’s advice on how to broach this. He seemed to manage to find the right words for everything. Ryan stared straight ahead, likely only half-listening, caught up in his own worries. I plunged ahead.
“Anyway. We were a bit more than friends. He was my…um…I suppose he was my boyfriend. Although it was a secret. We didn’t tell anyone, things were…um…a bit different in those days. A bit less open. Grandma and Grandad never knew, they still don’t. You’re the first person I’ve ever told.”
I drew to a halt at a set of traffic lights and the stop-start fuel saver cut in, shutting off the engine, so my jaw-dropping statement didn’t even have bland background mechanical noise to soften it. A yawning silence followed as we waited for the lights to switch to green. Ryan hadn’t moved a muscle. We were less than five minutes away from Samantha’s house; if he didn’t say something soon, then he’d be getting out of the car. And maybe, if I’d made him uncomfortable, not coming back to stay with me for a while.
“You know when you and Mum used to argue,” he began dully, still not meeting my eye.
God, yes, did I ever. Arguing was a nice way of putting it. I had a wealth of strong and varied emotions associated with the tail-end of my failed marriage. Guilt about Ryan overhearing our blazing rows featured heavily. Looking back, our late-night screaming matches, often triggered by nothing at all, had been happening months, years even before Mike had entered the fray. Not only had we been amateur parents, but we proved to be amateurs at splitting up, too. Even our noisy slanging matches lacked spice; always following the same old script. Samantha’s disappointment rung in my ear almost daily: I was dreary, I was a fuddy-duddy, I never surprised her, I…
“She used to shout that you should have stuck with whoever the hell you were still bloody in love with, and that she was a fucking idiot to have ever thought you’d change.”
I winced. Christ, that my son had been party to all that hatred. And more than once, as he quoted his mother verbatim. The endless venom we spat between us, in a loop, on repeat. Night after night, the same old tune, neither of us having the balls to take the next logical step. Until one of us finally did. Until Mike. I pulled over to the side of the road. I risked crashing the car otherwise. Tears blurred my vision.
“Is Matt the person she was talking about?”
I nodded, too choked to speak.
“I thought it might have been. You and he are like a married couple around each other. A happily married couple, obviously,” he corrected. “Like Grandma and Grandad.”
“Yeah.” I rubbed my face. “It’s Matt. Don’t get me wrong, Ryan, I loved your mum. We weren’t perfect. I tried, we both did, but…”
But what? I watched my son as he processed the whole heap of adulting I’d unexpectedly dumped in his lap, his face set in a familiar, serious expression. For a few fleeting seconds, I was even exotic in his eyes. Not as plodding and predictable after all. Until he remembered that explaining your dad had a boyfriend to your sixteen-year-old mates might make you stand out from the crowd, at an age when you were trying your utmost to blend in. After a minute or so he turned to me, his cheeks flushed with embarrassment.
“So…er…you and Matt. Is he going to be your boyfriend again?”
“Yes.” I gave him a quick nod. “Yes. I’d like him to be. I hope that’s okay.”
“Sure.” He shrugged. “He’s a good guy. You always seem so straight though. Not straight as in…not…um…gay,” he added by way of clarification. “Although that too. I mean straight as in, you know, boring.”
