Chapter 6 #2
I thought he would, after I married Demi, but he still holds this grudge against me. The baby has changed nothing, either. I can’t win with him and I know that now. I’m not sure anything would ever truly erase that particular black mark in his book.
After the server comes around and takes our orders, I catch Dad’s mutinous glare across the table. “I thought you were growing out your ridiculous hair. Going back natural.”
“I was going to.” I’ve touched up my terrible, criminally grown-out roots at last. It is all platinum again, just as I like it. Demi didn’t even comment on it. I don’t think she really cares at the end of the day. “But I like it this way better.”
“You look like a faggot,” he tells me, quite frankly.
I don’t flinch. I don’t even blink. “Okay.”
“Is that how you want to look?”
“I like how I look.”
This momentarily trips him up. His nostrils flare.
He’s getting that concerning, grayish-purple color to his mottled face again and for a moment I wonder if I’m literally giving him a heart attack with this small assertion of myself.
But it passes when he stops holding his breath—childish—and picks up his wine glass again.
“I don’t know why you would want to be confused for such a thing. ”
It is so, so tempting to just be out with it.
The words are on the tip of my tongue and begging to be given voice: I’m gay!
I love cock! I was balls deep in another man as recently as ninety days ago!
And God, how freeing would that be? Just to be done with the pretense.
It’s not like he really cares about me, because if he did, the rest wouldn’t matter.
He only cares about how I adhere to whatever impossible standard he’s set for me in his mind and how it adheres to his interpretation of his religion.
There is no point in trying to play nice with him when all he does is pick fights with me. I don’t even like him.
I’m always trying to keep the peace. Maybe it’s because I want to keep my relationship with him as intact as possible for the sake of my daughter.
So that she might have some connection to what’s left of my once happy and whole family.
Or maybe it’s because I’m still as cowed as ever, afraid of what might really happen if I do finally voice what I’ve kept smothered for so long.
“You know what I’m always saying,” he goes on. “Leviticus—”
“I know what fucking Leviticus says,” I snap, and Dad actually gapes at me. Rendered speechless by the blasphemy. “I’m sure God can find some love in his heart for a sinner like me. This might come as a surprise, but no one’s perfect. Not even you.”
“But do you ever go to church?” he returns, finding his voice once more. “Do you ever take communion? Do you ever go to confession? No, no, and no.”
“God doesn’t only exist in churches. He’s everywhere.”
Dad ignores this, because it doesn’t help him. “You never even went to confession after—you know.” His face is now going an interesting and perhaps concerning shade of red. “That disgusting thing you did before. I begged and pleaded and you wouldn’t go.”
Disgusting thing. “Did you go to confession about that?” I can’t help asking. “Genuine question.”
He’s clutching his wine glass so hard that I think he might actually break it. “That’s none of your concern, Luca.”
“Then why is what I do any of yours?”
“Because it happened under my roof.” Dad drops his voice to a harsh stage whisper that is hardly any quieter. He’s got a face like a ruddy thundercloud. “You sullied my house with your—your—”
“Fornicating? Sodomizing?”
“You think this is funny?”
“No. I don’t think it’s funny at all. I think it’s horrifying, what you did.”
“What I did? I have every right to take action in my own home.”
He’s got green eyes just like mine, my dad.
They’re so similar it’s like looking in a mirror if I ignore the face they’re set in, the leathery, sagging skin and the webs of broken capillaries on a nose that’s gone bulbous over the years.
All his anger and hate has aged him so much, made him ugly.
I stare into those eyes and wonder what Mom would think of him now.
As if Dad can sense my thoughts, he says, “I’m only glad your mother wasn’t around for that mess. It would’ve broken her heart. It might’ve killed her on the spot, anyway.”
Involuntarily I curl a hand in the fabric napkin laying in my lap. “I don’t think she would’ve cared nearly as much as you do.”
“You’re mistaken.”
“No, I’m not,” I say. “Mom was kind. She loved me.” She was a fucking saint. Keep her name out of your mouth.
“What are you saying to me right now?” my father demands. “Hm? What is the point of you saying these things? Are you just trying to upset me or are you saying something else?”
Just say it. Just tell him. Do you really want this man for your daughter’s papou? Would she miss out by not having him in her life? Would you?
You are your own jailer.
Darling Noel, wise beyond his years. My throat compresses at the very thought of him.
At the thought of denying him, even though he doesn’t want me, because I still want him.
I still love him and would do anything for him.
I would take a bat and hunt down the man who hurt him at Anathema, if he wanted me to—or even if he didn’t.
I’d raze his childhood home to the ground, if it helped.
I’d crawl to him. Over fire. Glass. An abyss.
I have had this realization far too late. I want to rewind back to that night and do it all so differently. Can’t, so I move forward instead. As I mean to go on. Like he would.
I level my father with my gaze. “I’m gay,” I say.
He stares at me, uncomprehending. There is a pause before he says, “What?”
“I had an affair with another man at the beginning of this year.”
He’s fumbling. Physically, mentally. He’s going for the nitroglycerin bottle in his pocket and his face is puce. He’s gaping like a fish, but nothing’s coming out. He shoves another tablet in his mouth and then lunges for his wine.
“I’m still in love with him,” I go on. “I’d still be with him if Demi hadn’t gotten pregnant. And if he ever takes me back, I’m going to be with him again.”
I don’t know if that will ever happen, but I can keep hoping, keep trying for it, because it’s the only thing I’ve ever I’ve ever felt secure in wanting.
Everything else I’ve ever done in my life has felt halfway like a mistake except for loving Noel.
I don’t know how I’ll do it—maybe I won’t, maybe there is no getting him back—but I know that I want it.
In my bones, in my soul, in my heart that has felt incomplete since I left him.
My father is staring at me. His skin color has faded to a slightly less alarming shade of red, his nostrils are flaring with every enraged breath he takes and his green eyes bulging from their sockets.
I think he is still groping for the words to appropriately decimate me with, to best express his disgust and disappointment.
His fist clenches the stem of his wine glass so tightly I fear he might shatter it.
Once upon a time I would’ve been scared, but now I’m just sick of it all.
“What?” I say in a low voice, with more bravery than I feel. “Are you gonna hit me again? You gonna turn my face into a pulp, too?”
He sounds strained when he says, “Get out of my sight, Luca. I can’t look at you anymore.”
I don’t argue or ask how he plans on getting home. I get to my feet, push in my chair and walk right out of the restaurant.