Sebastian
Chapter Nineteen
The forks and knives scraped against the porcelain plates in the dining room.
The meat was juicy, the gravy was sweet and salty, and the cabbage salad was crunchy.
All of these things made sounds that seemed too loud in the deathly silence of the room.
A chair moved an inch and sounded like an earthquake now that my ears were adjusting to this coffin we called my childhood home.
Eryn sat next to me, bumping her knee into mine as if to acknowledge how awkward this entire evening was.
Dad had said the graces before eating. He asked the Lord to protect his children from the sinful influences of the modern world, pointedly looking at me afterward. If I hadn’t ripped my heart out to set the one guy I loved free, I would have thought Dad was starting to suspect me.
This way, it hardly mattered. I was going to be alone because nobody in the world deserved to be pulled down into this vat of toxic waste.
As I looked around the table, my heart sank lower.
I didn’t know what to do in two days when I had to return to Northwood.
Would I even bother returning? What for?
To see the consequences of what I’d done to Tyler?
To chase the puck until the last game and then search for work washing dishes or bagging groceries?
Maybe I was better off here, drawing lines for a battle over Eryn’s future.
I might help give her a chance to escape.
I looked at Mom. Her hair was perfectly still, curled overnight, and dyed brown.
Her red lipstick framed her lips in a pinched, almost angry way.
Since I was a child, she had been teaching me the differences between men and women, who did what around the house, and what was expected from each in life.
She was perfectly happy with the division of labor based on sexist ideas.
I half-expected her to discourage Eryn from reading.
Michael was here. He’d made a point of attending nearly every dinner while I was home.
Becoming a general practitioner was the greatest achievement of humankind, according to him.
There was nothing more noble. Even more so, there was nothing as challenging.
He was the most important, knowledgeable, and wisest person in any room at any time. To him, there was no question about it.
And Dad, at last, who had been rubbing his hands whenever there was silence, pondering, mulling, contemplating, and finally spitting out some homophobic bullshit as though someone had asked his opinion.
It was safe to say that I hated my life.
It was also fair to say I deserved nothing less.
They were right about one thing. I’d shot my shots and they had all missed the mark. I wasn’t particularly good at anything except sharing the spotlight with someone better and drawing happiness from those who could create it out of thin air. Like Tyler.
I gritted my teeth when I thought about him. Every single time his face floated before my eyes, I wanted to cry and smash stuff.
“Stop playing with your food,” Dad said gruffly, his fuse shorter than ever.
It took me a little while to realize he had spoken to me. Had I been playing with my food? I looked at the plate and saw how I’d separated the peas from the carrots, how the strings of cabbage weren’t touching anything else, and how the bits of meat were sorted by size. “Mm.”
Dad exhaled through his nose. Few people could portray frustration with as little gesture as my father.
“May I be excused?” I asked in a flat tone. “I’m not hungry tonight.”
“The Lord has given us this meal, Sebastian,” he began, but I already knew the story.
“The Lord has also invented refrigerators so we can eat the leftovers later,” I murmured.
Eryn chuckled and choked, then cleared her throat and grabbed the glass of water to hide her grin.
If anything could lift my heart a little, it was her.
“Now, you listen to me, you ungrateful, petulant boy,” Mom snapped while Dad’s face turned crimson.
“What is the meaning of this?” Dad demanded.
Michael sat straighter if that was possible. He was so stiff I was beginning to wonder if a ventriloquist had an arm up my brother’s ass, parroting Dad’s words at me at all times. “Is this what they’re teaching you at Northwood?”
I rolled my eyes. “Yes, Michael. It’s from Table Manners 101.”
“You stop this nonsense,” Mom said in a threatening tone.
Oh, but it felt good. A little rebellion when all else was lost. It made something flutter deep inside of me. Could my life get any worse? Even if I returned to Northwood in two days, would I ever find a shred of happiness again? I doubted it. I might as well take every chance at a chuckle I got.
“No, no,” Dad said, mediating all of a sudden, his hand raised to request silence at the table.
Of course, a man would expect all others to fall quiet when he had something to say.
But those opinions weren’t part of my mother’s lessons on gender.
“Let’s give Sebastian an opportunity to explain himself. ”
I glanced at Eryn. Her grin was wiped away by the seriousness of Dad’s tone. Her face seemed hard, her teeth gritted, and her gaze focused on something on the other side of the room.
“Obviously, something is bothering you,” Dad said flatly. “You wouldn’t otherwise throw temper tantrums.”
I snorted. “This is hardly a tantrum.”
“Don’t play with my words, boy,” he growled. “Apologize to your mother.”
“What for?”
“That woman has spent hours preparing this dinner and you can’t be bothered to eat it,” Michael cut in.
“Oh, shut up, Michael,” I said.
My older brother threw his hands in the air. “He’s a lost cause, I’m telling you. They’ve completely brainwashed him. What are you thinking about, Sebastian? Your queer teammates?”
Mom choked on a sob.
“Michael has a point,” Dad said. “Your mind seems distracted. The longer you are exposed to that filth, the less of you we recognize. Now, listen here, Sebastian. Your brother wants what’s good for you. He has a right to be concerned. We all do.”
“You’re all obsessed,” I said. I’d made the worst possible mistake I could have the other day. I walked out on the wrong person.
Fuck. I wasn’t supposed to let those thoughts intrude on me.
You were setting him free. You don’t want to draw him into this shit.
But the more I told that to myself, the less I could believe it.
The selfishness in me was skyrocketing. I wanted him.
Even if I was weighing him down, I only wanted to hug him and hear him promise that everything would be alright.
He had the power to make things right. He had that easy swagger that lifted all the burdens like they were feathers.
He could blow them all away by doing little more than batting his eyelashes.
I loved him.
And that was why I had to send him away.
You wouldn’t drag someone you loved to sink with you, would you?
“All of you,” I looked between the three people who’d made my life bitter for years.
Eryn knew I wasn’t talking to her. As the words tumbled out of my mouth, it felt as though my lung capacity increased.
For the first time in ages, I inhaled completely and without an elephant sitting on my chest. “All you ever think about is gay sex, huh?”
Eryn swallowed a chuckle and received an angry look from Michael. His cheeks were growing pink while Mom fanned herself with a napkin. Dad’s fists closed tightly.
“Seriously, can you stop?” I asked. “Just for an hour, can you stop thinking about anal sex?”
“Sebastian, I’m warning you,” Dad tried.
“No, no. I have to say this.” It felt like holding a match over a pool of gasoline. How brightly can I make this fire burn? How hot would it get? “Day after day, you and Michael keep bringing it up. All you ever talk about is young men having sex with each other. Dad, are you gay?”
The chair flew and tumbled behind him as he shot to his feet.
In all honesty, fear injected itself into my bloodstream.
Even so, the sensation was too thrilling and liberating to stop now.
I was staring at the fire I’d lit. It was beautiful.
“It’s okay, Dad. This is the twenty-first century.
Nobody’s gonna judge you. I mean, you’re really interested in who my friends sleep with. ”
“Go to your room,” Dad squeezed through quivering jaws.
“And you,” I told Michael, his eyes blazing. “Do you really expect me to believe you went to an Ivy League college, joined a fraternity, and never stroked together with the gang?” Even I was horrified at the words coming from my mouth.
Mom whimpered to Eryn. “Go to your room. Now.”
Eryn didn’t move. She was eighteen and smarter than all four of us put together.
Michael seemed on the verge of a killing rage, but Dad only needed a hint of suggestion for his suspicions to rise.
“Is this true, Son? Is this what they do?” I adored how easy it was to spook his Puritan ass.
“Of course not,” Michael spat. “He’s possessed!”
I stood up abruptly, glancing at my little sister. I’m sorry, I mouthed before looking at Dad. “I’m not possessed,” I said. “But I am bisexual.”
Dad choked and Mom cried out like I’d stabbed her. Michael wore such a victorious smirk that it turned my stomach.
After a moment of silence, I felt something touch my hand. Something damp and cool. When her fingers twined with mine, I knew that my sister was holding my hand, a cold sweat breaking out over us both. Dad’s fury was fading and he began shaking his head.
“You are confused, Sebastian,” he pleaded. “You’re not the first to be confused. There are ways…there are ways, Son. We can help you. If you just turn back to the Light, we can…”