Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 131459 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131459 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
The only person on the planet he’d ever loved.
Corey said no more.
But then, he’d just said it.
Rhys jutted up his chin and walked out the door.
EPILOGUE
THE FIRST AND THE LAST
Tom
April…
New York City
Tom was sitting with Mika at the back of her living room in New York under the portrait of Rollo Merriman.
She was flipping through some paint samples (apparently, it was time to redo the entryway of her brownstone).
Cadence was three floors up, but they could hear the distant pounding of drums.
Tom was on the phone with his son.
“So, I’ve been thinking about it since I came out to you, and, well…everybody, and I need you to know that was why I was such an asshole to you,” Matt was summing up what they’d been talking about. “I knew you wouldn’t care. Mom wouldn’t care. But I got up in my head about it. I study medicine and I’ve studied sexuality. But I was convinced it was just a thing that guys did. A phase. Many men have same-sex experiences, even repeatedly, without them being homosexual. So I didn’t understand why it didn’t go away. Why I enjoyed being with women so much if I enjoyed being with guys so much. I understood the concept of bi, but even in the LGBTQ community, until recently, and there’s still an issue with it with some people, there’s a mono-centricity. You like guys, or you like girls. You’re trans, but you aren’t fluid. I was stuck in my head that I was supposed to like one, or the other. And I was into both.”
“And that was frustrating,” Tom deduced.
“And I took that out on you.”
“No, Matt,” Tom contradicted. “I’d fucked up and you were angry at me, and you were dealing with an identity issue on top of that. Don’t confuse the two. Because being angry at me meant you didn’t have me to come to in order to talk about this. So you had two reasons to be angry with me, and both were valid.”
There was quiet on the line, and then a soft, “Yeah, Dad.”
This did not feel good.
But at least they were on the other side of it. He’d hold on to that, mostly because he could hold on to it, seeing as Matt was sharing with him again.
And that did feel good.
“So where are you at now?” Tom asked.
He heard Matt chuckle. “Well, Indiana isn’t exactly a hotbed of open-minded thinking, so it’s not a free-for-all. But Indiana girls have it going on, and farm boys are nice to look at. I won’t settle here. But for now, I guess where I’m at is, I’m having fun.”
That made Tom chuckle too.
Though, of course Matt wouldn’t find another vet student or someone in architecture or engineering or even forestry.
He was into something else.
That was the father thinking about his son’s future, unwelcome if spoken out loud, so those thoughts were always kept in his head.
Because in the end, the only thing that mattered was that his boy was happy.
Nevertheless, Tom was a father, and there was some thinking that had to be spoken aloud.
“I hope I don’t have to tell you to be safe,” Tom warned.
“Jesus, Dad, I’m nearly twenty-five years old, and I lost my virginity at sixteen. You know that. You kept me supplied in condoms through high school and undergrad.”
He did know that, and he did do that (with Gen’s blessing).
Fortunately, he’d forged a relationship with his son where Matt shared.
And Tom was pleased as fuck they both had that back.
“Be safe,” Tom repeated. “Girls, guys, whatever.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Matt muttered. “I gotta study.”
“Right, I’ll let you go. Love you, Matt.”
“Me too. Later, Dad.”
“Later.”
They rung off.
Tom looked to Mika.
She had a cornucopia of shades of red held up toward him that almost gave him an instant headache, but he knew no matter which one she picked, the entry would be magnificent.
“Crimson Quarrel?” she asked, pointing a perfectly arched fingernail to one horizontal strip on a longer vertical one. “Or Rouge La Rue?” She pointed to another one. “And by the way, I’m giving up my day job and spending the rest of my life making up names for hues. Not only for paint, but makeup, wallpaper, fabric, you name it. On my tombstone, it’ll read, ‘She knew how to ridicule color with words, and someone paid her for it.’”
He grinned at her.
What he didn’t do was pick a color.
This was why she declared, “Your silence, of course, indicates you agree that we have to have a wall painted in a hue called Rouge La Rue.”
We had to have it?
She read his reaction.
“Please, Tom. Don’t pretend this isn’t your house as well as mine at this juncture. I have you now. You love me. Do you honestly think I’m ever letting you go?”
Christ.
If those drums weren’t sounding, in about five minutes, he’d be fucking her on the floor.