Where Nerves End

by L. A. Witt

“I am so sorry. I swear, I—”

  “It’s… it’s okay. I know you didn’t set out to tell him.” He sounded winded, as if I’d punched him in the gut. “He probably would have caught on eventually anyway, but….” Michael chewed his lip. “How did he react?”

  “He was surprised. Kind of shell-shocked, I guess. Didn’t quite see it coming.”

  Michael cringed again.

  “I feel awful,” I said. “I’m used to talking to him about anything, and this time….”

  Michael took my hand in his and brought it up to his lips. Meeting my eyes, he said, “I understand. If you’ve been anywhere near as stressed and confused over all of this as I have, I can’t really blame you for talking to him. Wasn’t as if you were outing me for spite.”

  “God, no.” I clasped my fingers between his. “I would never—”

  “I know.” He released my hand and reached for my face. “I’ll talk to him. We’ll talk to him. He’s a reasonable guy.”

  Smirking cautiously, I said, “Are we talking about the same Seth?”

  “Okay, maybe reasonable isn’t the right word….”

  Our eyes met again, and we both laughed.

  As my humor faded, I touched his face and said, “So you’re… you’re really not upset?”

  He shook his head. “We’ll settle things with him. For tonight, I’m just glad we’ve settled things with us.”

  “Me too.” I brushed the pad of my thumb across his cheek as I drew him toward me. “Another night of that, I think I might have lost it.”

  “You and me both.” Michael cradled the back of my head in one hand, wrapped his other arm around me, and welcomed my kiss. And that kiss went on. And deepened.

  And slowly, silently, with nothing holding us back, we made love again.

  Chapter 20

  WHEN I finally dragged my ass out of bed at quarter to eleven the next morning, I found Michael in the kitchen, drumming his fingers on the side of a steaming cup of that horror he called tea. He had a shirt on for once, and he looked… nervous?

  “You all right?” I asked.

  “Yeah. I, um, called Daina on my way home from dropping Dylan at school.” He took a deep breath, then released it slowly and met my eyes. “She’s on her way over.” He gulped. “Would you, um….”

  “Do you still want me to be here?”

  “Please.” He rested his hands on my waist. “I could be overreacting. I don’t know. I mean, Daina’s a great woman, but she does share some of her family’s views.”

  “Homophobic?”

  “Not necessarily. She adores Seth, but I’m not so sure how she’d feel about Dylan living with Seth. Or with me, for that matter, once she knows.” Rubbing the back of his neck, he sighed. “God, I have no clue.”

  I kissed his cheek. “Either way, I’ll be here.”

  “Thank you.” He kissed me back, then let me go so I could pour myself some coffee.

  As I pulled a cup down from the cupboard, I said, “What the fuck is with you and Daina and Seth all having tight-ass families, anyway? I could have sworn LA was pretty progressive.”

  Michael snorted. “Oh, the people there think they are. Not so much, believe me. Besides, the reason the three of us met in the first place is because our families went to the same church.”

  “Ooh.”

  “Yeah. It was actually one of those progressive liberal churches you’d expect in California,” he said. “But our families were all insanely uptight and conservative, so they kind of banded together.” He paused, sighing. “Mine and Daina’s weren’t nearly as bad as Seth’s, though.”

  “Thank God for that,” I muttered. “I don’t think families get much worse than those assholes.”

  “No kidding. I’m definitely not looking forward to coming out to my parents. Not at all.” A mischievous grin tugged at his lips. “Now, Daina’s parents? I might have to tell them solely for the entertainment value.”

  I laughed. “You would, wouldn’t you?”

  “Maybe….”

  “Uh-huh.”

  He chuckled, but then his humor faded. “That’s assuming Daina doesn’t get upset.”

  “Do you think she actually will?”

  “I’m really not sure,” he said quietly. “I keep going back and forth, thinking she’ll flip and thinking she’ll be fine. If I was only a friend, she’d probably be okay with it. She thinks it’s a crime what Seth’s family did to him.” He paused, reaching up to rub the back of his neck again. “And maybe she’d even be all right with it if we were still married without kids. But with Dylan in the picture….”

  “She didn’t mind Dylan living with me, though.”

  Michael lowered his gaze. “She doesn’t know you’re gay.”

  I wasn’t sure what to make of that. “Oh.”

  He exhaled. “I should have told her, but I… guess I didn’t want to make matters complicated.” Laughing dryly, he shook his head. “That worked out, didn’t it?”

  I had no idea what to say.

  “Well,” Michael went on, “there’s only one way to find out what she thinks, I guess.”

  “Yeah. I guess there is.”

  I was halfway through my second cup of coffee and Michael had just put on another kettle of that foul tea when an engine outside turned our heads. It slowed, then idled, then cut off. A second later a car door closed.

  “You sure you want to do this?” I asked.

  Footsteps outside. Heels clicking on concrete, then hitting the wooden porch with an echoing thunk.

  “Not much choice now,” Michael said. The doorbell rang, and he took a deep breath.

  I stayed in the kitchen while he answered the door. The air pressure in the room changed almost imperceptibly as the door opened, then again when it closed. Muffled voices—friendly from the sound of it—murmured in the foyer. Then came the footsteps: the soft sound of Michael’s bare feet and the loud, deliberate crack of high heels on a hard floor.

  She stepped into the kitchen first. “Oh, hi, Jason. Nice to see you again.”

  “You too,” I said with a difficult smile.

  Behind the warmth in her greeting, she seemed uneasy. Whether or not she suspected anything in particular, she must have known there was a reason Michael had asked her here. A matter that needed to be handled in person instead of on the phone.

  She eyed me, him, me again, her lips taut and her posture stiff. My continuing presence was a wild card that seemed to unsettle her: Was I part of this? Had I simply not gotten the clue that now was a good time for me to get the fuck out?

  She looked at Michael. “So, you wanted to talk to me about something.” Her eyes darted toward me, and when I didn’t move, she tensed a little more.

  “Yes, I want to talk,” Michael said. “And I….” He glanced at me, and I gave him a nod that was, I hoped, reassuring. He laid his hands flat on the counter, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “I needed to talk to you. With Jason.”

  She swallowed. “About?”

  “Well,” he said. “I….”

  The room fell silent. Beside me, he tapped his fingers nervously on the counter, probably searching for the words. It was all I could do not to give his hand a gentle squeeze, but that would give us away and rob him of his chance to be honest with her about it.

  Her eyes flicked back and forth between us, and though she didn’t speak, the truth was clearly coming together in her mind. She knew. I could see it in her eyes as she searched mine, then his, then mine again for confirmation. Confirmation I couldn’t grant her and that could come only from Michael when he found the words.

  Finally Michael put his hand over mine on the counter, and the truth was out. What he couldn’t say verbally, he’d declared in that unmistakable gesture. I watched as their eyes met across the narrow kitchen.

  Daina jumped as if the contact between our hands had physically shocked her. “What’s….” Her eyes again darted back and forth between us. Barely whispering, she said, “Michael
, are you telling me you’re… gay?”

  He nodded slowly. Then he said, his voice no louder than hers had been, “Yes. I’m gay.”

  Her hands searched blindly for the counter behind her, and when they found the edge, she leaned heavily against it, wavering slightly as if her legs had forgotten how to hold her up on their own. After a moment one shaking hand rose off the counter and ran through her hair, and she suddenly looked… lost.

  Michael and I exchanged uncertain glances. This was the sinking-in, the comprehending. Lord knew what kind of reaction would follow once the words found their way into her mind.

  Evidently confident that her legs would hold her up, she folded her arms across her chest. It didn’t appear to be a hostile stance. If anything, she was hugging herself. Bracing herself.

  Finally she met Michael’s eyes. “How long have you known?”

  Michael and I released held breaths in unison. She’d skipped over denial—bypassing “What do you mean, you’re gay?” or “How can you be?” or “That’s impossible”—and jumped headlong into trying to get her head around it.

  He cleared his throat. “I, well.” He paused, glancing at me. “Not… not long. I mean, I suspected it for a long time, but I didn’t know for sure.”

  Her eyes flicked toward me again, then fixed on him. “So he’s the….” She swallowed. “The first?”

  Michael took a deep breath. “I, he’s—” He deflated a little, as if the shame had worn him down, and he let out a long sigh. “Yes, he’s the first. I kind of knew even as far back as high school, but after the way… after how we were all raised, I was afraid it was wrong. So I tried to pretend it wasn’t real.”

  Daina stared at the floor between us. “But you knew.” It wasn’t a question.

  “In the back of my mind. As much as I tried to tell myself it wasn’t true….” He nodded slowly. “Yes, I knew.”

  She hugged herself tighter, pursing her lips and furrowing her brow. Michael and I exchanged nervous looks again.

  His thumb moved across my finger, and Daina jumped again. It was then that I realized she’d been staring at our hands.

  Michael pulled his away, glancing at me with raised eyebrows as if to make sure I was okay with it. I nodded. Then he broke the silence. “Daina—”

  “Oh my God.” She laughed. I couldn’t decide if she sounded nervous, relieved, or if it was that humorless laughter that sometimes precedes violent rage. Shaking her head, she added, “I can’t believe I didn’t figure it out.”

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  She bit her lip, her focus distant for a second. When their eyes met again, the laughter was gone from her expression, but no anger took its place. “I feel so stupid, I—”

  “Daina, please, you couldn’t have known,” Michael said softly. “I’m sorry, I kept—”

  “No, no, it’s not that. It’s….” She paused, and when she spoke again, she spoke quickly, as if the thoughts were easier to sort this way. “It all makes sense. I mean, I beat myself up for years because I knew something was missing between us. I knew it, but I couldn’t figure out what it was, and I felt so guilty. All that time, I thought I was doing something wrong or that there was something wrong with me, and that’s why we couldn’t connect, and—”

  “Daina, you did—”

  “Let me finish,” she said. “I felt guilty, you know, with the divorce, and Dylan, and….” She locked eyes with him. “But now, now that you’ve told me this, I know I wasn’t doing anything wrong.” She paused, her blank expression unchanging for a moment. Then she exhaled and her shoulders relaxed as her lips pulled into a smile. “I wasn’t doing anything wrong. You weren’t doing anything wrong. We just weren’t meant for each other.”

  Michael nodded. “Yes, exactly. We couldn’t force it to work, and it wasn’t anyone’s fault that it didn’t.”

  Daina ran her hand through her hair again and laughed. “Michael, you don’t even know how much of a weight this is off my shoulders.”

  “Jesus, Daina, I had no idea….” He reached for her, and she threw her arms around him. The whole world was completely still and silent as the two of them embraced, and when he glanced at me over her shoulder, I smiled at him and he returned it.

  After they separated, Michael gestured for us all to sit at the dining room table. We did, Daina and I sitting across from each other with Michael between us.

  “So, how did this even get started?” she asked. “I mean, you told me you were moving in with a patient, so….”

  “Which was true.” Michael laughed softly and glanced at me. “That’s how it started. How we intended it to stay.”

  She released her breath. “I see.”

  “And I’m telling you now because I wanted you to know,” Michael said. “And I won’t go behind your back, but I….” His Adam’s apple bobbed once. “I want Dylan to know.”

  She tensed. “You want….”

  “I think he should know,” he said.

  “But….” Daina paused. “He’s a little young, don’t you think?”

  “He was younger when he met Lee.”

  “Well, yes, I know, but—” She cut herself off, pursing her lips as she stared down at her hands on the table.

  “But this is different?” Michael said.

  She gave an apologetic nod. “I’m not saying it’s wrong, it’s….” She looked up, her lips tightening with frustration as if she couldn’t find the words. “God, I don’t even know. But right or wrong, do you think he’ll understand?”

  “He will if we tell him. He accepted the divorce, he accepted you remarrying.” Michael glanced at me, then back at her. “He can accept this too.”

  She took a deep breath but said nothing.

  “Daina, I understand why you’re concerned.” Michael kept his voice gentle. “But I don’t want him growing up thinking this is unusual or wrong. The way you and I were both raised.”

  Still silent, she chewed her lip.

  “What if he is gay?” he said.

  Daina’s head snapped up, her eyes wide. “What?”

  He shifted a little. “If he is, hypothetically, would you want him to grow up thinking there’s something wrong with him? The way Seth and I both did?”

  She bristled, setting her jaw. “We haven’t told him it’s wrong, Michael. I’m only suggesting we wait until he’s a bit older. Until he’ll understand.”

  “And you don’t think it will make him wonder what we think of it if we waited so long to tell him?”

  She sighed. “I guess I’m worried about overloading him, I….”

  “Daina,” Michael said softly, “I want Dylan to know that his father’s seeing someone, and I want him to know there’s nothing wrong with that. If by chance our son is gay, I don’t want him to think it’s abnormal.” He pursed his lips as if he was trying to decide what to say, but the tautness above his jaw suggested he was simply collecting himself. “I can’t be the reason my child has to be confused through high school, ashamed through college, and hating himself until he’s suddenly in his midthirties explaining who he really is to his ex-wife.”

  The shakiness of his voice sent my heart into my feet, and the stunned expression on Daina’s face mirrored my own.

  She stared at him, lips parted, neither breathing nor speaking.

  “I spent twenty years knowing that I was gay,” he said, barely whispering. “And pretending I wasn’t because I was raised to believe it’s wrong. I kept it from myself, from my family, and from you.” He laced his fingers between mine. “Whether Dylan turns out to be gay or not, I want him to know it’s okay.” His voice cracked slightly as he added, “I need him to know.”

  Daina exhaled and shook her head. “Jesus, Michael, I had no idea you went through that.”

  “No one did,” he said. “So do you understand why I want to do this?”

  She nodded. “Can… can I at least be there when you talk to him?”

  “Of course,” Michael said. “I think we s
hould both be there.” His gaze slid toward me. “Actually, I think we should all be there.”

  I ran my thumb along the side of his hand and turned to Daina. “You don’t mind?”

  She shook her head. “No, I think Michael’s right.”

  “It won’t overwhelm him?” I asked. “If we’re outnumbering him?”

  “No,” she said. “This was how we did it when Lee and I were dating. All three of us were there to talk to Dylan. It seemed to work all right.” She turned to Michael. “Didn’t it?”

  “Yeah. Hopefully it will this time too.”

  Hopefully it would.

  AS MUCH as they both wanted to get it over with, it took Michael and Daina a little time to work up the nerve to actually tell their son. Finally, on a Wednesday evening, I went with Michael to pick up Dylan from his mom’s. He was quiet the whole way and kept his eyes focused on the road, though he occasionally glanced at me. His hand rested on my leg, and I squeezed it gently, offering what reassurance I could.

  I wished there was something I could say to ease his nerves, but I’d been in Dylan’s shoes. I was four when my parents divorced, six when my dad remarried, and nine when my mom did. My world had been thrown off its axis every time my folks had sat me down to explain some new development. I struggled to imagine how I would’ve felt hearing Mom say she had a girlfriend or Dad say he had a boyfriend, and quietly tried to convince myself I wouldn’t have been as stunned, jarred, and taken aback as my parents had been when I told them I had a boyfriend.

  Michael took his hand off my knee so he could steer with both hands as he headed off the freeway.

  “You all right?” I asked.

  He swallowed. “Nervous.”

  “You’ll be fine,” I said. “Just breathe. And don’t run us off the road.”

  He laughed, which at least meant he was breathing, and shot me a playful glare.

  A few minutes later he pulled into the driveway of a gray two-story at the mouth of a cul-de-sac not unlike mine. As he turned off the engine, Michael took a deep breath.

  “Well,” he said, “here we go.”

  Daina met us at the door. “Hey. Ready?”