Callum
THIRTY-ONE
THEN
“What are you doing?” I hissed as Damien snuck into my room. Everyone was home.
“Everyone’s asleep,” Damien whispered. “I won’t stay.”
He moved silently, nothing more than a dark shadow gliding toward me. “I had to see you,” he said as he loomed over me, his face becoming more clear now that he was closer.
Damien said nothing else. He just reached for me, his hand cradling the side of my face, my neck.
I made myself take a deep breath, and then another, and despite trying my best not to reach for him, I did anyway.
I put my hand on his arm, caught between the urge to pull him closer and the need to make him go away.
Coming into my room in the middle of the night was risky. There’d be no logical explanation for why he was in here. But fuck logic. Fuck everything that wasn’t this. Damien was my everything. My oxygen. My sunshine.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I reminded him even as I pulled him to me. Even as I tilted my face up to angle for a kiss.
“I should be wherever you are.” He swooped down and kissed me.
It was so soft it made my stomach hurt. The truth was that I loved Damien so much I could barely think straight when he was around.
And he was always around. He and Sam were still the best of friends, even though Sam was kind of a dick to him sometimes.
Sam’s favorite thing was making shitty jokes at other people’s expense and if you got upset, he’d just whine that no one had a sense of humor anymore and act like he was somehow the victim, even though he’d been a flat-out asshole.
“You should go,” I said, making no move to let loose of him.
“One more kiss.”
Damien kissed me more than once. He’d have kissed me a thousand times if I let him. But after a while, I made him stop. It sucked to have to push him away, but he needed to leave before we got caught.
One day, we’d tell them about us. One day, we’d figure out how to have this and not lose Sam.
Well, for Damien to not lose Sam. My brother and I hadn’t been close in years, and our relationship only got worse the older we got.
I didn’t know what prompted the change, but I missed him sometimes.
And Sam was Damien’s closest friend. His only friend, really.
Damien had some acquaintances, but Sam was his ride or die.
His bestie. I understood why Damien didn’t want to ruin that.
Our plan was to think of a plan. Later, when we’d need a plan. Right now, we just needed to not get caught making out in my bedroom in the middle of the night.
Damien stole one final kiss, then left my room as silently as he’d entered it.
I didn’t sleep well that night.
Or the next.
On one hand, I was tired of sneaking around.
I wanted Damien to be my boyfriend. I wanted to be able to curl up on the couch with him and watch a movie.
I wanted the freedom to do boyfriend things.
It wasn’t like I’d be the first kid in my school in a same-sex relationship.
It happened all the time now, and I wanted that.
I wanted the freedom to be out and to have my boyfriend be out with me. But I wasn’t out, and Damien wasn’t out. Sometimes Sam tried to get him to go out with a girl, and it was getting harder for Damien to find reasons to say no.
There were so many secrets inside of me, and the longer I kept them, the bigger they got until it was starting to feel like they were taking up all the space, leaving no room for me to be myself.
I was nothing but my secrets now. I wasn’t Callum Weeks.
I was secretly gay Callum who was in love with his brother’s best friend and couldn’t tell anyone.
I was Callum, the dude-bro who laughed at shit that wasn’t funny and agreed with people when they said that Trish had the best tits in the school. I was Callum the liar. Callum the fake.
It was my Dad who made the dam break one particularly crappy afternoon.
He’d come home early and found me sprawled out on the couch, staring at a television that wasn’t on.
School that day had been rough. Some days were like that now.
Just an endless slog and everything that day had seemed increasingly pointless.
The fake friends. The pretending to fit in.
Even school itself seemed like a scam. Learn things, get good grades, go to college, learn more things, get good grades, graduate, make money.
Pay taxes. Feed the machine known as capitalism. Die, eventually.
Dad sat down next to me and put my feet in his lap. He held my ankles like he thought I might try to get away from him. It crossed my mind, but that meant I’d have to move, and that wasn’t going to happen. This was where I lived now.
“Is there anything you want to talk about?” Dad asked in that soft, patient voice of his.
Dad had always made me feel like I could tell him anything and through the years he’d proven me right. Even when I was telling him that I did something bad and felt guilty about it, he never got mad at me. He never yelled or lashed out. He just helped me through it.
I could tell him everything. About me. About Damien. All the secrets I’d been keeping. But when I opened my mouth, nothing came out. The trouble with not saying anything was that you got used to it.
When I didn’t answer, Dad quietly talked some more. “I don’t know what you’re going through, son, but I know you’re struggling.”
“I’m fine.” The response was automatic. And a big fat lie, but Dad knew that too. He knew almost everything.
“You’re not fine, I don’t think. I think… I think you’re depressed.”
I wanted to insist that I was fine, but I couldn’t muster up those words. Instead, something inside of me snapped in half.
“I’m not depressed.” I closed my eyes so I wouldn’t have to see the look of disappointment or disgust on his face when I told him. “I’m gay.”
I waited for the shoe to drop. For Dad to get up and start shouting at me. Even though he’d never so much as raised his voice to me. I expected hatred. I got compassion.
“That was brave, Callum. I’m proud that you were able to share that with me.”
He sat there like it was no big deal that I’d just come out, and he’d dropped pure acceptance in my lap while I stared at a blank screen.
I didn’t feel brave. I’d told literally the safest person on the planet.
I still couldn’t tell him my other secret.
That I was so in love with Damien that it made it hard to breathe sometimes when he and Sam were in the room.
When Sam was around, I made myself scarce.
It was too hard to watch him be best friends with Damien.
To get to casually touch him. Talk to him whenever he wanted.
It made me jealous, and I hated feeling that way.
It was a dumb emotion, but I could only turn it off if I turned everything else off too.
“You know, Callum. I had a friend who was a lot like you.” Dad’s voice caught, and he cleared his throat.
This got my attention, and I shifted so I could lie on my side and watch Dad as he spoke. He had this faraway look on his face, and then a sort of soft, sad fondness tugged his lips into a smile and then yanked it away again.
“He was a bit of an introvert, and he got sad sometimes. I’d ask him if he was okay, and he’d always say yes. I never pushed. I never pried. I never helped. I took him at his word. And one day, he ended it.”
It was like Dad dumped a bucket of ice cold water on me. I wasn’t—
“I don’t think of stuff like that,” I told him as horror continued to sweep through me.
“If I asked you to talk to someone, would you?” The worry etched into Dad’s face made him age a decade or two.
“I don’t want to.” It was the honest truth. “I’d rather take a cheese grater to my face, if I’m being honest.”
“Well, that’s not a step I’d recommend adding to your beauty routine.” Dad cracked a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “I won’t try to make you, but the option is there if you need it.”
“I’ll be fine. I promise.” It would be better one day when I could tell everyone I was gay and that I was in love with Damien.
Dad held my gaze like he was looking for signs of deception. Eventually, he nodded. “Did you need a hug?”
My heart squeezed tight, and for a split second I couldn’t breathe.
“Yeah.”
I didn’t have to say anything else. Dad moved as fast as I’d ever seen him. One second I was lying on the couch and the next, Dad had yanked me to my feet and into his arms. He squeezed me tight as if he could get all my secrets out if he squished me the right way.
It almost worked too.
“I love you, Callum,” Dad said, his voice thick with emotion. “I’m proud of you, and I’m also worried about you.”
“I’m okay.” I actually meant that one, I realized.
Yes, I was still living under a wet blanket.
Yes, I still missed Damien and wished we could be out together.
But no one even knew Damien was bi. Even if I came out to everyone, no one would know about him.
Revealing one secret only left room for more to take their place.
“Can you tell Mom what I told you? I don’t… it’s just…” I couldn’t explain why I didn’t want to tell her in person.
“Coming out is hard, and personal, and you don’t have to tell your mother just because you told me. But if you want her to know, yes, I can help you. I will always help you. All you have to do is ask.” Dad squeezed me tighter and when he let me go, finally, it started to feel like I might be okay.
Telling Dad about me had lifted some of the weight off my chest. It freed up just enough space inside myself so I could breathe again.
It didn’t last, because Dad patted me on the shoulder and told me he was going to start dinner. I said that I had homework to do, which was a lie. All I did was schoolwork and obsess about when I’d get to sneak some time with Damien again.
My life happened in bursts, and in between, I waited. At school, I was on and alive and then I’d come home and wait for Damien to be able to get away from Sam. And those moments in between were getting harder and harder to bear.
I’d always imagined that falling in love would feel good. And it did. Loving Damien was as easy as breathing. It was everything else that was hard. The secrecy. The stolen moments. Not being able to share it with anyone. And the longer it went on, the harder it got.
But then he’d do things like sneak into my room at night and kiss me, and I’d forget all about the time I spent in limbo.
Everything else fell away when he was near.
It was a destructive cycle. All highs and lows with no middle ground in between to let me catch my breath. It wasn’t sustainable, and I knew it.
But I didn’t know how to stop.