Page 111 of Necessary Time

“Colin,” she greeted, voice tentative. It was the first time I’d actually talked with her since I’d told her I was interested in men and the familiarity of it brought tears to my eyes. I so desperately wanted for things to be okay between us that I could feel it in my fingertips, reaching and wanting.

“Hey, Mom.”

“I thought you would be here already.”

I licked my lips. “I’m…I’m on the way.”

“It’s getting late, and you said you didn’t want to come for dinner,” she said.

“I know. I don’t, I just…” I inhaled, curling my fingers around the steering wheel. “Before I come over, I need to know if you’re okay with what we talked about before.”

“We didn’t really talk about anything, Colin.” Her voice went tight and high-pitched, the way it often did when she was complaining about someone from church who’d brought store-bought cookies instead of homemade.

“My sexuality,” I said, spelling it out for her so there would be no confusion. “My attraction and interest in being with men.”

She sighed loudly into my ear. “Colin, just come over and we’ll talk about it once you’re here.”

“You’re either okay with it or you’re not,” I said.

“And we can talk about it when you’re here.”

“Mom.” I released my grip on the steering wheel, one finger at a time until both of my hands were in my lap. My knuckles were white, ringed with pink for how strong of a grip I’d had on the leather. “If it’s still a problem for you, there’s nothing for us to talk about.”

“You’ve just…Colin, you’ve never even really tried to find a woman, have you?”

With that simple sentence, my world crashed down. I closed my eyes as if it was a real thing, like I needed to shield myself from the inevitable debris field, but nothing happened. Her words hurt, of course, in my chest like she’d struck me with a hammer or a chisel, but the world outside was just as it had been before she’d said the words.

“I’m not coming over, Mom,” I said, voice cracking.

“Not today?”

“Not for a while.”

She sighed, like she’d expected it. Because after the first disappointment, what was one more?

I didn’t want to wait for her to say anything to me, so I told her I loved her and ended the call. I didn’t know what the future of my relationship with my parents looked like, but I realized it wasn’t something that I should build my life around. I’d lied to myself for so long because I was scared of their reaction, scared of letting them down, but in the meantime, I’d been letting myself down.

I was almost forty years old, and as the screen on my phone went black, it felt like the first thing I’d done for myself in my entire adult life.

Well, besides choosing Wesley, of course.

He was very much for me.

I fired off a quick text, asking how long he and Grayson were going to be at the races for, and he answered quick, telling me a little while longer. I asked if I could join them, and he offered to get me a drink when I was close. Swallowing back the bitter taste of the conversation with my mom, I turned the nav north and headed up the 405.

One of the songs Wesley liked talked about drives being shorter on the way home, and the drive away from my parents flashed by in the blink of an eye. I pulled into the parking lot of the pub just before five. The races were already over, but I recognized Wesley’s car still in the parking lot.

I found him and Grayson inside, tucked into the same booth he and I had shared the first time there. Grayson looked better than he had when I’d seen him in the morning, but there was still something off about him I couldn’t place. When Wesley saw me, he slid to the side, and I pressed against him, taking the beer he’d ordered for me and raising it in a toast to them both.

“How did it go?” he asked, dropping a kiss against the top of my shoulder.

“It wasn’t the worst case scenario,” I said, drawing back to the talk we’d had earlier in the day. “But it’s the way it has to be.”

“That doesn’t sound ideal,” Grayson said, voice almost slurred, but not quite there. He’d clearly been pacing himself, which had to be a good thing.

“It’s not,” I agreed. “But it’s how it needs to be.”

“Your parents not keen on your dating young Wesley?” Grayson arched a brow.