23. Roman
CHAPTER 23
ROMAN
I walked in the house totally wrung out. A twenty-four-hour shift was a nightmare. It wasn’t the first one I’d pulled, it wasn’t even the longest one I’d ever worked, and it definitely wouldn’t be the last long shift I had to power through, but with the stress of Mama’s phone call…
“Daddy!”
Margot rushed toward me. Her face glowed with happiness and the biggest smile. I squatted down so she could run into my outstretched arms. She hit me so hard that I had to brace myself so we didn’t topple over. I wrapped her in my arms, squeezing her to me. I would never get tired of her rushing toward me like this. It wouldn’t be long before she outgrew it, and I wanted to soak up every one of them I could.
“Hey, punkin! How are you?” I asked, leaning back to kiss her forehead.
She smacked my cheeks lightly. Her hands cupped my face, and her smile grew like the Grinch’s heart.
“I’m reawwy good. Nana says I’m having a sleepover.”
I did a double-take. I closed my eyes, pushing away the rage that brewed in my belly. I took a deep breath, then asked. “I’m sorry, what?”
“Nana says I’m sleeping at Tori’s house tonight.”
A sleepover. This wasn’t something we allowed yet. Mama and I thought she was too young.
“Who’s Tori?” I asked.
“It’s her friend from school. Her mama is one of the pilots who does medical transports. The girl’s daddy is in FRG with me.”
“Mama, just because her father is in the Family Readiness Group with you doesn’t mean…”
“He’s a teacher, too, Daddy. He teaches the bigger kids.”
I sighed. At least he’d been vetted somewhat. Didn’t mean I was happy about my daughter sleeping in a strange man’s house.
I looked up at Mama, but the doorbell rang before I could say anything.
Mama moved toward the door as Margot squealed, “That’s them.”
I helped Margot get bundled up while trying to size up the couple getting ready to drive off with my child.
“Captain Ott?”
I looked at the Air Force pilot… Tori’s mom. She’d introduced herself as Ashley Mann. I stood up.
“Since I’m sending you off with my child, I think it best if you call me Roman.”
She smiled and glanced at the two little girls dancing around with Tori’s older sister staring at them.
“First time?” she asked.
I nodded, keeping my teeth locked together so the anger I felt toward my mother didn’t come spewing out and cover the poor, unsuspecting woman standing before me.
“It’s difficult, but I promise you, I’ll treat her as if she’s my own.”
As much as I knew that was meant to reassure me, it didn’t. I had no freaking clue how she treated her own children, so how could I know if that’s how I wanted Margot treated.
“Listen, I get it. You don’t know us from Adam. You don’t know how we treat our kids, so you don’t know if us treating Margot the same is a good thing,” Ashley’s husband, Jonah, said.
I chuckled. “Is it that obvious?”
Jonah smiled good-naturedly. “No, sir. I just remember being in the same position when Dani had her first sleepover. By now, we’re old hats at this routine.”
Ashley held out an envelope. “Inside, you’ll find our address, along with mine and Jonah’s cell numbers and the name and number of my commanding officer.”
I sighed deeply and took the envelope. I walked to the hall table, pulled out a couple of my cards, and wrote mine and Mama’s numbers on the back before offering one each to her and Jonah.
“Thank you for understanding. I’m off tomorrow, but if you ever need to find me and I’m not here, then I’m at Larmcy. I’m one of the ER docs.”
Moments and a few more pleasantries later, I waved goodbye to my little girl as she pulled out of the drive in a stranger’s car. When she was gone from my sight, I closed the door, and my jaw shifted to the side in anger. I was not okay with this.
“What the crap, Mama?”
“I wanted her out of the house so we could talk.”
“And you thought it was okay to throw out every rule we had in place about when Margot was allowed to begin sleepovers?”
“Roman, she will be fine.”
“That’s not the damn point, and you know it.”
I stalked off to the kitchen, grabbed the whiskey off the shelf, and poured a couple of fingers into a glass. I downed it and poured a couple more before turning back to her.
“You wanted to talk. So, talk,” I demanded.
She sighed, turning to the fridge and pulling the laptop down. She sat it on the table, spun it toward me, and opened it.
On the screen, there wasn’t anything like what I feared. It was my text messages with Gunnar. She wouldn’t have gotten his name from them because I had him listed as “G” on my phone, but there was enough there to know he was a guy and what we’d gotten up to.
“Are you gay?” she asked.
At least she didn’t beat around the bush.
I looked from the screen to her face and walked over to the table. I pulled out a chair and started following Ursula’s suggestions. Once I had another profile created and had password protected my own, I said, “What does it matter, Mama?”
“It matters because you hid it from me, Roman.”
“I’ve never hid anything from you.”
“But…”
“No, Mama. No buts. I’ve never hid anything from you. Not told you things, yes. Hid something? No.”
“Semantics, young man.”
“Fine, Mama. Then, let’s get rid of the semantics. Yes. Are you happy? Yes. I am gay.”
Her face turned into a movie reel of the emotions she felt—disbelief, fear, confusion, anger. They flashed in rapid succession in a random shuffle until slowing to a stop in confusion. She looked up at me and I knew what the question would be.
“But Margot?”
Sighing, I scratched and rubbed my neck, trying to come up with a Mama-appropriate response. Finally, I settled on the truth without any details.
“Was an accident. Albeit a happy one that I don’t regret, but still an accident.”
“But how?”
I laughed. The woman was relentless.
“The same way most accidental pregnancies happen. I had sex with her mother.”
“But… if you are gay… I still…”
“Mama, leave it be. You don’t want the details.”
Telling my mother that I knocked up a one-night stand while screwing her and her boyfriend to fuck away all thoughts of the person I really wanted wasn’t happening.
“But you are gay?”
“Yes. I am.”
She nodded a few times, her eyes downcast as she scratched at the tabletop.
I waited.
And waited.
And waited.
She got up, walked out of the room without a word, and my eyes closed. My head dropped to my hands, my elbows resting on the table.
Emotions I couldn’t describe crashed over me like a tsunami. I locked my jaw, trying desperately to contain it all. It was useless, and a wail clawed at my throat. It eked out, barely a whisper of sound.
Her footsteps came back into the room.
“So, Carson?”
“What about Carson?” I mumbled the question, unable to look up at her.
“Is he… is he gay?”
My gaze raised to hers. “I don’t know, Mama.”
She looked at me skeptically, so I elaborated, “I really don’t. Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell isn’t something to mess around with.”
She nodded silently, chewing her lip and wringing her hands.
“But you’d like him to be?”
How the hell had she arrived at that conclusion?
“Where’s this coming from?”
She sighed, coming to sit with me at the table. She shocked me when she sat next to me. I feared she’d ever want to be close to me again. I threaded my fingers together and dropped my forearms to the table, resting my clasped hands before me. She placed hers over mine, and tears rolled down my face unnoticed until she pulled out the handkerchief she always kept on her, using it to dry my face.
She pressed the square cloth into my hand and sighed.
“Just answer the question?”
“I have. I don’t know. Now, why are you harping on it?”
“After opening the computer to what you left open and seeing the messages with that G person, I spent the day thinking, and the more I thought about it, the more I realized…”
“That you’re nuts? He’s not gay, Mama. We’re just friends. That’s all we ever were. It’s all we can be.”
The “humph” that escaped when she huffed told me what she thought of my opinion.
“Mama…”
“So, Margot was an accident, and you married her mama. How did you figure you’d get through life with a woman? That woman in particular?”
It was no secret: Mama hated my ex. I couldn’t say I blamed her. The abandonment and disappearing act took its toll.
I scratched my head as my forehead rested in my palms and sighed. Deeply. The breath I sucked in expanded my chest until a rib popped, and I yawned. The last twenty-four hours caught up to me hours ago, but I wanted this conversation over with.
“I’m bisexual, Mama, but men are my preference,” I explained.
Confusion colored her face once again, and she asked, “So it’s not a yes or no, true or false kinda thing?”
A chuckle burst free, and all the pain, fear, and sadness became a blended-up blurry mess for several minutes as I realized Mama hadn’t and wouldn’t turn her back on me.
“No, Mama. It’s a rainbow, but not like the ones where the colors touch but don’t mix—I mean, yeah, for some people, it is like that. Hell, for some people, it’s black and white. Gay or straight, but not for me. I’m attracted to both men and women, but more so men.”
Had it not been my mother I spoke to, I’d have said, I like pussy cats, but only where there’s a cock-a-doodle-doo or two along for the ride. But it was my mother, and that was a bit more than she needed to know.
Although, given she read my texts to and from Gunnar, she probably had a decent idea of the stuff I liked in the bedroom and out.
“So, you fall on this rainbow-colored spectrum somewhere close to the middle? Like a light on a dimmer?”
I laughed. “Yeah, Mama. That’s a pretty good analogy.”
“Well, I think you and Carson would make the perfect couple.”
My neck cracked with how fast it twisted to look at her. “Mama!”
She pointed at me and said, “I don’t like this G person, whoever they are. They aren’t the man for you.”
“Oh, yeah? And Carson is?”
Not that I disagreed with her. I didn’t. Couldn’t. He was most definitely the man for me. Whether it would work out that way was still to be seen, but he was who my heart wanted.
She shrugged. “Yes. He is. Y’all were always attached at the hip. You know each other. You care for each other. You can finish each other’s sentences, and I saw the way you looked at him when he was here. And he looked at you like a man dying of thirst looks at a tall, cool glass of water.”
I blinked, stunned and lost for words. “Umm… okay… that’s a lot to unpack. First off, I’m not seeing G anymore, not that it was anything serious to begin with or even headed that way. Secondly, I’ve laid eyes on Carson Wilcox once in the last ten years, Mama. Not to mention all the other reasons anything more than friendship wouldn’t work for us.”
“Pish. The heart knows what it wants, and you can’t tell me you don’t feel something for him. That you’ve not always felt something for him.”
“Mama, he’s a Navy SEAL. He’s never home. He could be killed at any moment, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policies forbid it, and oh, yeah, he’s not gay.”
“Are you sure?”
“Pretty sure, Mama.”
“I think you’re wrong.”
“Mama, you read my messages with him, didn’t you?”
“Well, they were right there.”
I stared at her for several moments. The things I wanted to say stuck in my throat and threatened to choke me. The violation I felt before had nothing on what I felt now.
I stood and walked away, afraid I’d say something I should keep to myself.
“Roman? Where are you going?”
I ignored her. She didn’t deserve an answer. At this point, I didn’t know if she deserved anything from me, least of all the restraint I showed in not unleashing the anger and frustration raging through me like a torrential flood. Flood waters were scary: they came out of nowhere sometimes and decimated everything and anything they touched. That’s what I felt inside because of her invasion of my privacy.
“Roman!”
I spun around.
“What right did you have? Hmm? I want to know what right you had to read his messages to me or mine to him?” I yelled at her.
She stepped back, her hand over her heart. Her eyes widened. Fear drained the color from her face.
I’d never hit her. Or anyone. Yes, I was a soldier, trained to maim and kill, but I didn’t think I could do it unless those I loved were threatened. My father could be an asshole, and while I didn’t think he ever hit her, I knew he had it in him if provoked in just the right way. Not that it gave him the right to do so. No one had that right, but I knew we all had a point where the right trigger or incentive could turn us from who we’d always been to something dark and dangerous.
“Never again, Mama. Don’t ever invade my privacy like this again.”
“I’m sorry, Roman. It was there in front of me, and I was reading them before the logical part of my brain piped up. By that time…”
“What else did you snoop through? When else have you done something like this?”
“Never. I promise you, this is the first time.”
“The only time. It best never happen again, Mama.”
“It won’t. I don’t understand why you got so upset. You already knew I read the messages with that G character. I’ve never seen you like that. It was like a switch flipped. What’s the difference?”
“I don’t give a shit about G.”
“But you do care for Carson?”
“I love him. Okay? I. Fucking. Love. Him.”
“Then why haven’t you told him?”
“We lived in fucking West Virginia, Mama. The town was homophobic. Some of it was ignorance. Some of it was handed down from generation to generation, but some of it was hatred. Blind fucking hatred, and had I come out, especially after all the shit that happened with Dad, I’d have been lucky to make it out of that town alive.”
“But what about after?”
I closed my eyes and said, “He’s straight, Mama. So, I screwed my way through college and med school. That’s how Margot got here. A drunken one-night stand with a bi-curious guy and his girlfriend. Okay? All because I love a man who will never love me, who will never want me.”
“Oh, baby!”
She came at me, and I kept her at arm’s length. I couldn’t let her touch me, because if I did I’d lose it.
“No.”
“I hate seeing you hurt like this. Wouldn’t it be better to cut him out of your life for good and move on?”
“I’ve tried that. What do you think all the one-night stands and the guy here were about? They were an attempt to rid my mind and heart of Carson Wilcox, and it didn’t work. None of it. It just made me feel like shit for betraying him and my feelings for him. It made me long for him even more. So, I’ll take what I can get because being his friend is better than nothing.”
“Roman, baby, that’s no way to live. It’s a half-life.”
“A half-life is better than no life, Mama,” I sighed and kissed her forehead. “I’m going to bed. I’ve been up for over thirty hours. I’m exhausted.”
She nodded, pulling me down to kiss my cheek. My feet dragged on the floor as I shuffled up the stairs and into my room. I shut and locked the door behind me, falling back against it.
Raising my hands to my uniform shirt, I worked the buttons through the holes as I undressed. The slow, simple, methodical task wasn’t enough to keep the thoughts of what my life would be like if Carson didn’t return my feelings.
Long, lonely days and nights stretched out in front of me.
Raising Margot on my own without a partner.
Watching my friends pair off and get married.
Living a life of one-night stands and hook-ups with strangers I met online while longing for more.
Bleak and sad was putting it mildly. Sighing, I shrugged out of the shirt and pulled off the white tank I wore under it. My dog tags bounced against my chest as they flopped out of the neck of the tank.
I wrapped my hand around the tags, pulling the metal ball chain tight against the back of my neck. The tags were a tangible reminder of the obstacles I faced as a gay man. Some days, they were a source of honor and pride, while others, like today, they felt like a noose, squeezing the life out of my soul.
Lifting them, I contemplated removing them. Maybe I’d feel a little better about my future if I did. Removing them felt wrong, though. I’d never taken them off. Not once since they dropped over my head had they been removed. I huffed, letting them fall back to my chest before sliding into bed. I was too tired for this shit.
My eyes shut, and sleep took me before my head hit my pillow.