“Doing your homework, darling?”
“Yeah,” he said lamely. “How was work?”
Mum rolled her eyes; Dad guffawed when he came into the kitchen and said, “She called me in her break to ask for a meat cleaver from the counter to do her boss,” he said. Normally, Jayden would have laughed—Mum’s boss was famous in their house for being a complete bitch—but now he felt too bloody scared.
“Cup of tea?” he offered and winced when his voice went through an octave in three syllables.
“Sure,” Dad said.
Mum frowned. “Is everything all right, dear?”
“Yep,” Jayden squeaked and swallowed harshly. She watched him with narrowed eyes. Mum had big blue eyes, not like Jayden. Darren was right, Mum was usually just fluffy and warm. Dad had always been the one laying down rules when Jayden was little, but Mum had this face, with narrowed eyes and a tight mouth, that was far scarier than Dad in a temper.
She was about two minutes from pulling the face, and Jayden turned entirely away from her to do the tea. He could do this. He had to do this.
“We still visiting your old man next week, love?” Dad asked, halfway in the fridge, and slowly the parental chatter built back up around Jayden’s back, and he willed himself to calm down. It would be fine. In the long-term. Even if they were upset, they weren’t going to do anything to him, and in the long-term, they’d adapt. They’d get used to it. It would be fine.
It would.
“…don’t know why you put up with the old bastard, I would’ve…”
Jayden’s phone buzzed in his pocket. When he slid it out, tuning out the usual half-argument, half-complaint from Dad about visiting Granddad Moore at the hospice, Darren’s awful command of English instructed him to get on w/ it bet u havnt yet xxx
“I need to tell you something,” Jayden mumbled.
“Go on then,” Dad said flippantly; Mum was sharper, and her eyes followed the phone as he slid it back into his pocket.
“What is it, dear?”
“I…” Jayden’s mouth worked silently, and he sat down. “Um. It’s important.”
Mum slid into the seat opposite. “Colin, come here. All right, darling, what’s going on?” she asked, once Dad had shut the fridge and sat down next to her. Their united front was unnerving, and when she slid a hand across the table to squeeze Jayden’s, he thought his heart was going to give out. This was terrifying.
“I need to…I need to be honest about…about me,” Jayden said, fumbling over the words. He was shaking; his fingers were trembling in Mum’s. His chest hurt, and his face hurt, and he had the horrifying suspicion that he was about to cry. “I’ve been…I’ve been scared to tell you, but I can’t…I can’t just keep it quiet anymore, and…and I…”
Mum took both his hands. “Darling, whatever’s happened, whatever you’ve done, just tell us. We won’t be angry.”
“Depends what he’s done.”
“Colin!”
“Hey, if he says he’s killed your old man, then I’m good. If he says he’s gone and run up a thousand-pound phone bill, I’ll strangle him with the line,” Dad said, shrugging unapologetically at his annoyed wife. Yet somehow the levity helped, and Jayden choked out a laugh around blurring vision.
“I haven’t done anything,” he said hoarsely. “It’s…it’s about me. I’m…I’m…”
“Just spit it out, kiddo, and we’ll deal with whatever it is,” Dad said calmly.
The quiet certainty—the unsaid support, even though he didn’t know yet, pushed Jayden over the edge, and he did exactly what Darren had said. “I’m gay,” he blurted out, and the first tears spilled over. “I’m gay, and I…I…”
“Oh, darling, come here,” Mum crooned, coming around the table to sit next to him and hug him. She hugged him a lot, but not like this, not pulling him right in to wrap her arms around him and squeeze all the hurt out. She hadn’t hugged him like that since he was about six. “It’s all right. No, listen to me, sweetheart, it’s all right. It is. Don’t cry, there’s nothing to cry about.”
Jayden clung to her, sobbing into her work blouse like a baby. She was hugging him. He’d said it and she was hugging him and she’d said it was okay.
He heard Dad get up, and buried his face in his mother’s shoulder, not wanting to see a look of disappointment or judgement or…
“Teenagers,” Dad grumbled and ruffled Jayden’s hair. “Can’t keep secrets to save their lives, then have a good cry when they finally spill ‘em. You want a cuppa, kiddo?”
Jayden mumbled a yes, and Mum smoothed down the hair that Dad had disturbed. “We suspected, sweetheart.”
“We knew, Livvy, let’s be honest about this.”
“You’re not…?” Jayden didn’t know how to finish the question. Didn’t know what he was really asking, even. “It’s…?”
“Darling, we have suspected—all right, Colin—we’ve known for a few years now, and it’s never changed anything. You’re our son. You’re my little boy, even if you are taller than me now and you’d eat us out of house and home if we let you…”
“He’s been doing that longer than he’s been a pouf, Livvy.”
“Colin!”
Jayden laughed wetly and let go of her to scrub at his eyes. “I don’t mind, Mum.”
“Still.” She shot Dad a dirty look. Leaning against the counter, Dad shrugged. “Anyway,” she said, smoothing down Jayden’s hair again and cupping his face. “You’re our son, and that will never change. I am always going to love you just the same, and if one day you bring home a boy that makes you happy, then I will love him too. It doesn’t matter, darling.”
“The kids at school know?” Dad asked bluntly, plunking a mug down in front of Jayden and returning to his seat.
“They guessed,” Jayden admitted. “I mean…Charley knows-knows. I told her. And I told Darren.”
“Who?” Dad asked.
“The musician Jayden worked with on the Christmas play,” Mum said.
“What, the St. John’s kid with the crazy hair who was round the other week?”
“Yeah,” Jayden said. For a half-second, he toyed with the idea of finishing this confession, of telling them about him and Darren, but then he realised that firstly, he’d cry all over again, and secondly, Mum would immediately insist on having Darren over to meet him formally, as her son’s boyfriend, and Darren would probably implode at the mere thought of it.
And oh God, what if she wanted to meet his parents?
That sealed it. Jayden kept his mouth shut. He’d have to talk to Darren about that first.
“Why?” Mum asked. “You only met him in September.”
“He asked,” Jayden said, and bit his lip. “You know how he’s got, like, no filter? He just out and asked, and I didn’t figure there was any point lying. He’d probably guessed already, and…”
“And you’re a bad liar,” Colin supplied.
“Thanks, Dad,” Jayden scowled.
“Telling it like it is, kid.”
“He gave me the courage to do this, actually,” Jayden admitted and blushed when Mum squeezed his arm. “I just…he’s the first guy I told. Ever. And he didn’t freak out or act like I had leprosy. And it felt…it felt good to have someone who knew, so I figured maybe…”
Mum made a funny noise and hugged him again. Across the table, Dad simply watched, but Dad didn’t do poker faces, and the calm expression was as valuable as Mum’s hugs. He didn’t care. He genuinely didn’t care, and Jayden felt bruised with the emotional upheaval.
And loved. He’d never admit it to either of them, especially Dad, but he felt so overwhelmingly loved right now that it felt like his chest was going to burst.
Chapter 21
Jayden’s first clue that something was up was when Mum went out on Saturday evening without Dad.
Saturday evening was ‘their time.’ Usually they went to the pub with some friends, but sometimes Dad would take her out for a proper date, and they’d come home
in the early hours all giggly, and Jayden would put his pillow over his head and sing the entire plethora of songs from Grease very loudly in his head to drown them out.
But that Saturday, Mum went out without him.
“That’s because you and I need to have a serious talk, kiddo,” Dad said when Jayden shot the closing front door a suspicious look. “Kitchen table. You want a beer?”
Jayden followed him into the kitchen and eyed the fridge dubiously. Mum didn’t like him drinking, but Dad was more relaxed. “Okay,” he said.
Dad slid a cold bottle of Carlsberg across the table towards him, followed by the bottle opener after he’d cracked his own open. “Our secret,” he said and clinked the bottles together.
“So, um, you wanted to talk to me?”
Dad wasn’t the kind of man anyone would assume talked about anything. He was in his mid-forties, stocky and balding, rough around the edges from a life in a butcher’s shop and then behind the meat counter in Morrisons. He had a season ticket for Chelsea, had a secret thing for Coronation Street, and forgot Mum’s birthday every year without fail. The last time they’d had a proper organised, pre-planned, sit-down ‘talk’, it had been the one about what ‘adopted’ meant, and why the term ‘Dad’, technically speaking, was wrong.
It was a two-pronged thing. The simple answer was that Dad wasn’t a talkative guy. Mum did all that. Dad waited until the talk was over, then offered the TV remote, a beer if Mum wasn’t looking, and some quiet company. The more complex one was that Dad was technically his stepfather—Jayden’s real father had taken one look at his pregnant, eighteen-year-old girlfriend and run a mile, never to return. Colin Phillips hadn’t come on the scene until Jayden was nearly two years old.
They had married when Jayden was four, and he’d been formally adopted at six after Mum had a breast cancer scare and didn’t want anyone to take Jayden away from his new father if anything happened to her. In truth, Jayden couldn’t remember a time before Dad. He was Dad. But it was also blindingly obvious, just to look at them, that they weren’t related by blood at all—and sometimes, given their lack of anything in common, Jayden thought that Dad remembered that a bit more than he did.
And then other times, when he’d slide a bottle of beer across the table and grumble about Mum’s habit of colour-coordinating the items in the fridge, he was just Dad, and none of that mattered.
Right now, Jayden wasn’t sure which side of the fence they were on.
“About this whole gay thing,” Dad said and Jayden winced. “Don’t give me that look, kiddo. Your Mum and I meant what we said. It doesn’t change anything, but it does mean we need to have a talk.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m not stupid, kid. You might have gone to your Mum about girl troubles, but I doubt you’ll be seeking either of us out for boy troubles, so we need to get some things sorted. The first one being that you can come to us with any worries you got, okay? I might squirm a bit, but you’re still my kid and it’s still my place to help you out.”
Jayden swallowed and nodded, picking at the label on the bottle.
“And that’s the second thing. I know Livvy went on at you about it, but I’m going to back it up now. This doesn’t change shit. You’re my kid, you have been since the first time your mum strapped your baby seat into the back of my car. My mates all said I was nuts for taking on a girl ten years younger than me with a toddler, but I did it anyway, and I’d do it all over again. Sure, you’re never going to look like me, and you get to avoid my family bullet of being bald by forty, but I raised you, I taught you everything I know, I bragged about you to my mates down the pub and at work, and I keep a picture of you and your mum in my wallet, ‘cause she’s my wife and you’re my kid. And my kid is gay, and I’m okay with that.”
Jayden swallowed even harder, the lump scratching in his throat, and nodded shakily.
“All right, enough with the emotional jazz. Why now?”
“Huh?” Jayden jerked his head up to stare at his father.
“Why the sudden urge to come out now? You know, I did some research of my own the other night. A lot of kids wait until university. Bit of independence, bit of stable footing in case their parents aren’t too happy. But not you. And I know you, kid, I know you were worried how I was going to take this.”
Jayden said nothing, picking at the label again.
“Is there a boy?”
“…Sort of.”
“Sort of,” Dad hummed. “Okay. Is there a boy you like?”
“…Yes.”
“And is he gay?”
“Yes.”
“And have you done anything about it?”
“Not…really. Well. I don’t…know where it’s going, yet.”
“And I’m not an idiot, Jayden. Stop lying out your eye teeth.”
Jayden went red.
“So there is a boy, and you have done something about it. Without the graphic detail, thank you, I’m new to this—what have you done about it?”
“You can’t tell Mum,” Jayden insisted, and Dad raised his eyebrows. “I mean…I was so…okay, I was so worked up about…telling you two—about me—that I kind of wanted to leave…that bit for a little while longer. You know, like…let you get used to the idea, before…introducing you.”
“Right.” Dad exhaled heavily. “So my sixteen-year-old son has a boyfriend.”
Jayden bit his lip and took a mouthful of beer to hide it. “Yeah. Sort of.”
“Sort of? You do or you don’t?”
“Well…we’re dating. I’ve kissed him. But, you know. It’s new. Newish,” Jayden worried at his lip.
“You done more than kiss him?”
“Dad!”
“Serious question,” Dad said ruthlessly, and Jayden felt so flushed he thought his face was going to catch fire.
“No!” he cried.
“Okay,” Dad nodded. “So you’ve kissed him. Are we talking first kiss, are we talking closing the door and using Saturday evenings for yourselves?”
Jayden thought he was going purple. “We haven’t had sex, Dad, all right? God, we’ve not even…done anything. Like that.”
“All right,” Dad said evenly. “Now I’m not going to give you the sex education talk all over again. You know what it’s for, you know about STDs, and I think we can agree nobody has to worry about getting pregnant. If you need to know the mechanics of it, I can pick you up some leaflets at the clinic tomorrow, but frankly, I think you’ve figured that part out.”
Jayden huffed an exasperated laugh. “Yes,” he said. “I’ve…worked that part out.”
“But,” Dad continued, “that doesn’t mean you don’t take precautions. I’m not your mother. I’m not going to pretend for a minute that you’re some innocent kid anymore. You’re sixteen, and if you haven’t gone the whole way with this boy yet, then we can just count ourselves lucky we had this chat in time.”
“Yeah, well, Mum thinks I should wait until I’m like twenty-five.”
“She’s just anxious because of what happened to her,” Dad said gently. “But you’re a smart kid. You’re a confident kid. I think you’re old enough and mature enough to make that decision for yourself when you want to have sex. And if that first time is with a steady boyfriend who cares about you, then that right there is an ideal situation. I’m not saying jump right into it and go nuts, but I am saying that there’s nothing wrong with it, long as you both want to.”
Jayden nodded.
“But I will say you don’t be stupid about it,” Dad said firmly. “I’m talking condoms, Jayden. I can pick up a couple of packets at the walk-in clinic tomorrow. And I want you to talk to this boy about what he’s done before. If he’s had boyfriends—or girlfriends, or whoever—before you, they’re called tests, and you get them done at the clinic at St. Anne’s across town. And you get him tested, because there’s no such thing as too safe, and condoms break, or you forget them, or whatever.”
Jayden could feel himself going scarl
et again. This wasn’t, frankly, a talk he’d ever imagined having with his father. Ever. In a million, million years.
“And just some personal advice, kiddo…make sure you know this guy before you go sleeping with him. Guys are guys, straight or gay, and there are a lot of guys out there who want nothing but the sex. And you’re worth more than that.”
“D—he’s not like that,” Jayden interrupted. “He’s not. He’s…he’s nothing like that.”
“Good,” Dad said. “You gonna tell me any more about him?”
Jayden shrugged.
“You met him at school?”
Jayden snorted. “No. As if!”
Dad cracked a smile. “Yeah, thought that might be a bit unlikely. Where, then?”
Jayden shrugged again.
“Okay, I get it, you don’t want to spill yet.” Dad leaned back in his seat. “I mean it, Jayden. It’s normal and it’s healthy and it’s fine to want to have sex with someone you like at your age. But wait until you’re ready, don’t let anyone pressure you into it too soon, and keep yourself safe. Long as you do those three things, it’ll be fine. Hell, it’ll be a lot of fun.”
“Daaaad.”
“Just telling it like it is, kiddo,” Dad chuckled, taking a long swig from his bottle. “And if this kid hurts you, I get first dibs on breaking his fingers.”
“No, you don’t,” Jayden said flatly. “Thanks,” he said finally. “I mean, I’m never talking to you about sex with my boyfriend ever again, and if you breathe a word of this to him, I will actually tear up that adoption certificate, but…thanks.”
“No problem, kid. And I’ll make you a deal. You tell your Mum about this boyfriend of yours by the end of the month and invite him over so we can meet him, and I won’t breathe a word about him to her. We can pretend like I didn’t know a thing. ‘Cause you know as well as I do that there’ll be hell to pay if we keep secrets from Livvy.”
“That’s not fair!”
“Hey, I never agreed to not tell your mother. You just demanded I didn’t.”
“You’re my father!”
“Doesn’t mean I’m always on your side, Jayden. One day you’ll learn I fear your mother’s temper a lot more than I fear your sulking.” Dad grinned, then drained the rest of the bottle and rose from the table. “All right, I promised your mother I’d catch up to her and the rest of harpies from the shop. You okay here?”
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