Both parents looked at him expectantly, and the silence threatened to swallow up all of Paul’s practiced words. He fought to get the next words out.
“The thing is,” he said, “there isn’t going to be a nice girl for me. Ever.” He let that sink in.
Helen was still confused, but Paul could see understanding dawn in his father’s face.
“You mean you broke up with somebody?” Helen guessed.
“Not exactly, no.”
Holly squeezed his leg under the table and gave him a bolstering smile.
Paul tried again. “The thing is –”
“You’re queer,” Jack said flatly. The air left Paul in one big breath and he looked at his dad warily. The face he found was filled with comprehension, yes, but also incredulity and thinly masked disappointment.
Helen smacked her husband’s arm. “Jack! How can you say that about your son! That’s not what he means! Paul, tell him that’s not what you meant.”
Paul swallowed heavily. “It is what I meant. I’m gay, mom.”
This time Helen had no alternate explanation. Only silence.
At that moment, John popped by their table. “How’re we doing here, folks? Have you decided what you’ll be having?”
Steven broke the silence. “Give us a little more time?”
“Not a problem, take all the time you need,” John said. He patted Paul on the back as he left, and Paul knew in that moment that he told more than his parents his news.
Jack’s face was growing red and his jaw was ticking with the strain of clenching and unclenching, but he said nothing.
Not so his wife. “But, I don’t understand,” she spluttered. “How can you be — gay?” She whispered the last word, as if she was talking about cancer. “You’re so — well, look at you! You’re so tall and good looking and you have a beard!” she wailed.
Paul smiled sadly. “Not all gay men look the same, Mom,” he said gently.
“And facial hair is rarely one of the indicators,” Steven chipped in.
“Don’t make fun of your mother, boy,” Jack said sharply.
“I wasn’t!” Steven protested. “I just –” He gave up and sank back into his seat.
Helen wadded up her napkin and carefully blotted tears from her eyes. “I just don’t understand,” she said. “All this time…”
“Yes, all this time,” Jack said with a tight, gruff voice. “How long have you known this, exactly?”
“High school,” Paul admitted.
Helen gasped. “But, but your girlfriends! You went to prom with that nice Bannister girl! I have pictures of it!”
“I was trying to be a normal guy,” Paul said.
“You were normal,” Jack spat. “Then.”
Paul swallowed down his irritation at the implication. “Actually, I wasn’t. Not when I was hiding from everyone.” He looked at Holly and Steven. “I feel a bit more normal now.”
“I see,” Jack said shortly.
Another awkward silence descended. These silences were the worst part of this process for Paul. Wasn’t this supposed to get easier with practice?
“This is really hard for him, you know,” Steven said quietly. He looked at Paul. “Probably as hard as it was to keep this hidden, right?”
“And just how long have you known about this, Steven?” Jack asked. “Have you been helping your brother in all this hiding?”
“No! I didn’t –” He stopped himself and cleared his throat. “I’ve known for a few days.”
Jack nodded curtly and turned to Paul. “Well, I suppose there’s some small comfort that you’ve been lying to everyone all these years, not just your parents.”
“I haven’t lied!” Paul snapped. Which was, of course, a lie. And he knew it. But something in his father’s voice took him back to his teenage years when everything his parents said felt like an attack, whether that was true or not.
“Of course you’ve lied!” Jack thundered. “It’s a lie of omission! You let me believe my eldest son was –” He swallowed his unspoken words like they left a bad taste in his mouth.
Paul fought against the old urge to yell back. He and his dad hadn’t been adversaries in a long time, aided by the years and the physical distance between them. But they were both cut from the same stubborn-as-hell cloth, and Paul tended to lose his hard-won patience around Jack McDonnell.
And his dad had a point, much as he hated to admit it. He hadn’t been simply hiding. He had been lying — to himself and to everybody. He hated being caught in this lie. It felt exactly as it did when he was a kid and he found himself in trouble. He was defensive, indignant — and most of all, disappointed in himself.
He had assumed that the biggest sticking point for his parents would be the actual fact of his sexuality — the thing that his dad would find unbearably distasteful and the thing that would break his mother’s heart. Then there was the Irish Catholic thing; his parents were devoted church-goers. He expected some old-fashioned wrath of God, or at the very least a heaping helping of Catholic guilt.
But apparently, just as with Steven, the deception upset them most.
He refused to apologize for being gay, but he knew an apology was called for.
“I had my reasons for keeping this to myself,” Paul said quietly. “But I am sorry for not being completely honest with you both. I was worried about how you’d take it.”
Helen sniffed loudly and wiped her tears — and most of her mascara — from her face while Jack sat stone-faced beside her. She gave him a watery smile and reached across the table to take Paul’s hand.
“So, sweetie, do you have a nice, um, b-boyfriend?”
Though she stumbled on the b-word, Paul was relieved that he could always count on his mother to get right back on track.
He hesitated before answering her, and Holly gave his leg another reassuring squeeze. Did he have a boyfriend? One week ago, he would have said yes, happily. One week ago, he didn’t know about Ace’s frat boy on the side.
And yet, he wasn’t ready to say no. Wasn’t ready to officially, out-loud close the door on Ace. Even the thought of it — of his life with no Ace ever again — was enough to make his heart dangerously tight in his chest.
Finally, he cleared his throat. “Not exactly,” he said. “It’s more of a maybe. I hope.”
Holly’s smile widened, and he knew Operation Yenta to the Rescue was about to launch. Just as soon as he survived this lunch.
His mother perked up a little at the thought of a maybe boyfriend. He never thought he’d be so utterly grateful for his mother’s indefatigable push to see him mated. But it looked like — at least for now — she wasn’t put off by the idea that his mate would be a man.
His dad, on the other hand, looked entirely uncomfortable with the whole concept.
“Is this how it’s going to be now?” Jack asked tightly. “We’re going to talk about boy-” He stopped, unable to say the word. “No, no, I can’t. I need to –”
He stood abruptly. “Steven, your keys, if you wouldn’t mind. I assume your brother can give you a lift home.”
Steven handed over his keychain, and Jack held out his hand to Helen. “Let’s go, dear,” he said.
Helen bit her lip as if she wanted to protest, but she gathered her bag. She gave Paul an apologetic look as she hurried after her husband.
“Don’t forget,” she called out to Holly from the entrance, “we still need to talk about centerpieces!”
Steven and Holly stared at Paul in the long moment that followed. Paul just stared at his empty Guinness.
Once again, John magically showed up to fill the silence.