Hunter, page 6
We stood out there for a bit, just watching the herd. This had been one of my favorite things as a kid. Hell, I’d loved everything about the ranch as a kid, even the grunt work like mucking out stalls and picking rocks out of pastures. I’d worked on the farm during summers all the way through my senior year, and sometimes I missed the slower pace.
Maybe after I retired, I’d think abut getting some property and a couple of horses. We’d see how my body was holding up by then.
At around three, people were due to start showing up. I dusted myself off and headed up to the house where everyone would be gathering while Meghan went to shower and change clothes. By the time the first cars came rolling into the driveway, she and I were both presentable, and the annual Fourth of July celebration kicked off.
This part was always a mixed bag. It was great to see family again, but as soon as people started showing up, the dread started coiling in the pit of my stomach. Maybe I’d get lucky this year. Maybe things would be okay.
It started off great, as usual. My cousin Ashley had brought her boyfriend, and it was kind of cute seeing him get starstruck over me and Cousin Mark. The kid was maybe seventeen, and apparently he was into both hockey and football, so his brain short-circuited a bit when he realized Ashley had not, in fact, been lying about who her cousins were.
Ashley’s younger brother, Danny, was a big hockey fan too, but he wasn’t very talkative. He never had been. When he was little, he’d go off with the other kids and play or do whatever, but now that he was fifteen, he hung around with the adults. He’d sort of hover at the edges of the conversation, listening intently whenever the topic was hockey, though he’d drift away once it shifted to a different subject. Uncle Allen had tried to get him to play hockey over the years, but Danny had been content to watch. Ditto with football and baseball.
“I need to find that boy a sport,” my uncle had grumbled at some family gathering or another. “All he does is sit in his room and draw.”
I’d once tried to make conversation with my cousin by asking about his drawings, but he’d quickly clammed up and said he wasn’t very good. I wasn’t going to push him to show me his work if he didn’t want to, so I’d let it drop.
Today, Danny chilled at the fringes while Ashley’s boyfriend excitedly asked me and Mark about our respective teams. The conversation was fun—Mark and I had a longstanding game of trying to one-up each other with stories of locker room shenanigans, and one of these days, I was going to top his story about successfully convincing one of his college teammates that the locker room was haunted. Someday, damn it.
But when the Deacon family converged, one thing was as predictable as the rising sun. Much like all roads led to Rome, all conversations eventually and inevitably led to one particular issue.
So unsurprisingly, it wasn’t long before someone got started. I’d barely opened my second beer before Ashley’s boyfriend asked about my team’s recent Cup win, and my uncle didn’t let the grass grow:
“Shame they keep turning every story about it into something about that fruit who scored the winning goal.” Allen rolled his eyes. “They make it sound like he singlehandedly won the Cup without any help from his team all season.”
I laughed uncomfortably, because fuck me, really? “It’s his second season as a professional player. A Cup-winning goal is a pretty big deal.”
“Uh-huh. And that’s why every picture and article about him has rainbows all over it.” He huffed a sharp, annoyed breath. “What are they trying to do? Turn hockey into a damn Pride parade?”
Cousin Jake laughed. “Can’t they just go figure skate like they used to do? Ugh. Why they gotta make hockey woke too?”
I swallowed the nausea rising in my throat. Right then I noticed that Danny had vanished like a mirage, having likely slipped away as soon as the conversation had taken this turn. I envied the kid, since I couldn’t bail quite as easily. “It isn’t like Dane can control what journalists say about him. Gay or not, he’s a damn good hockey player, just like Smith and Warner.”
“Like to see how well they play against Smith and Wesson,” my uncle muttered into his beer.
I gritted my teeth. I wanted so, so badly to call him out this time. I was seriously outnumbered, though. There were too many people chuckling along or rolling their eyes like “Oh, Uncle Allen” while still smirking because even though the comment had been dark, they thought it was funny.
The conversation went on, with my uncle quipping about “those queers” while everyone else either egged him on or tried to one-up him. I was ashamed of the fact that there’d been a time when I’d have played along, but that time was over. The jokes and comments had always made me uncomfortable for reasons I’d never allowed myself to understand, even when I’d played along myself, but this time, I knew why.
The thing was, my uncle and my dad both bristled at the idea of gay people shoving their lifestyles down our throats, but more and more, it was bothering me how much my family fixated on the subject. They didn’t just wrinkle their noses at the sight of a rainbow flag. They were like oysters irritated by grains of sand, but instead of turning the resulting snot into pearls, all they ended up with was endless conversations about how the LGBT community was too hard to ignore. How they were taking over simply by existing.
I hadn’t realized it before, but now that I was here as a closeted but out-to-myself gay man, it was impossible to miss how pervasive and exhausting the undercurrent of homophobia really was. No one could mention Daryl and Cathy without a sneer about their gay son. No one could ask about my career without some side comments about my gay teammates. Politics always circled around to gay rights. Movies always touched on the identities of actors. Every conversation in this family was like Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, except it was Three Degrees of Gayness. Everything. Every fucking thing.
And here I was, standing in the middle of it, realizing that this was my first time around my family since I’d uttered those words to Luca at Kramer’s wedding:
“I’m gay.”
I was gay, and I was with people who loved me but would hate me if they knew the truth. They would hate me, too. I’d always known that. I had never envisioned coming out to my parents without my father splitting my lip or blacking my eye, and to this day, I could feel the bone-deep horror when I’d woken up beside a man and realized that if my family ever found out…
Even thinking about it now, I shuddered. I’d bolted the morning after. Sworn it was a mistake. Hidden from myself. Slammed the closet door as tightly shut as I could and held it that way for years until I just couldn’t anymore.
Here now, surrounded by the people who loved me but hated what they didn’t know I was, I desperately wanted to beat feet back into that closet. I didn’t want to be gay. Not in this family. I was angry at myself—hell, I hated myself—for not being able to keep that closet door shut. How could I be so stupid? Didn’t I realize how much I had to lose? Because if my family found out, then I was going to find myself without a family. It was that simple.
I closed my eyes and sighed. I didn’t want to be gay. There’d been a few times in my life when I’d come close to giving in and accepting it, but all it ever took was one Fourth of July trip to renew my commitment to being straight.
And then how long before I gave up on trying to hook up with a woman, downloaded the Emerald City app again, and spent every possible opportunity balls deep in a man I hated myself for wanting? I’d never quite convinced myself that was healthy, but it had been my normal for a lot longer than I wanted to admit. I hadn’t wanted to be gay because I couldn’t be in my family, so I’d told myself and everyone around me, over and over and over, that I wasn’t.
“Whether you want to admit it or not,” Matt had finally said to me when we’d faced off in the locker room a few months ago, “there are five queer players on this team, Scott. You know it. I know it. The only one you’re lying to is yourself.”
That had shaken me to my core.
Of course he’d known more than anyone, since we’d slept together way back when, but my denial had been strong.
And Matt hadn’t stopped there.
“If I’m right and you’re queer,” he’d gone on, “then just own it. No one hates you for it except you. And the way you’re going, you’ll alienate everyone close to you. Then when you finally do admit one way or the other, it won’t matter because you'll be alone.”
That was the part that had really rattled me. All my life I’d been convinced I’d be alone if I came out, and I still believed that, but it had never occurred to me that it cut both ways. That I could finally work up the courage to come out, only to find out that there was no one to support me on the other side of the closet door because I’d shoved them all away.
I’d left the locker room that day with a sick feeling my stomach, and I’d sworn then and there that I was going to unfuck myself. I hadn’t known quite how—still didn’t—but something had to change.
Today, that determination was faltering. Everything Matt had said, he’d been right. I’d wanted to deny it all, but I couldn’t, because he’d been right on the money and we’d both known it. I’d been hell bent on making peace with it, but after just a little bit of time in the company of my homophobic family, the temptation was almost irresistible to pull the closet door shut again and reinforce it this time.
No, I told myself. I can’t. I’ve fought too hard to get this far.
As hard as it was, I had to stay on this path. I couldn’t let my family’s obsession with hating people like me drive me back into the dark. Not again.
And then an epiphany came like a clap of thunder from a clear blue sky.
I looked around, and I found Danny over by the food tables, leaning into the cooler to fish out a soda. In my mind, I ran through all the comments my uncle made. All the times Danny had quietly drifted away from conversations as soon as they turned controversial. I’d brushed it off for years as the kid being shy and not being comfortable with tension or confrontations, but… was there more going on here?
Under the pretense of hunting down some chips and dip, I casually headed up to the food tables, where Danny was wiping some water and ice off a can of Sprite. “Hey.”
He turned to me, and he drew back a little even as he smiled timidly. “Hey.”
I studied him. “Listen, um…” I gave our surroundings a quick sweep to make sure we were alone before I met his gaze. “Is everything okay? You ducked out in a hurry when we were talking hockey earlier.” I paused, then chanced, “When your dad started making comments about my teammate.”
Danny bristled, spine stiffening and features tightening. “What? No. I just…” He swallowed hard and shrugged. “I wanted to see if Mom needed help in the kitchen.”
“Oh. Okay, well, I know our family can get a bit weird about that stuff, but if—”
“I’m not gay,” he snapped with more insistence than I’d ever heard from him. “I was just helping my mom out.”
And then he stalked off, popping the tab on his soda as he headed back toward where people were hanging out.
Well. That was… different. It also didn’t really do much to shake my new suspicion that my cousin and I were both hiding the same secret. I had absolutely no way of knowing if my cousin was gay, though, and God knew I didn’t want to force it out of him. What I did know was that he was being raised in the same homophobic environment that had poisoned me into hating myself and avoiding myself for decades.
If he was gay, or bi, or whatever, he was in one of the worst situations I could imagine for figuring it out and accepting it. I should know.
So how the hell did I let him know he could safely talk about it with me? Especially when he’d personally witnessed me contributing to that toxicity his whole life?
I closed my eyes and sighed.
And here I thought I’d only hurt the men I’d fucked.
The evening finally ended. I’d only had a couple of beers, the second one almost three hours ago, so I was fine to drive. I told my parents I’d meet them back at their place, and then I took off.
I didn’t go straight home, though.
Instead, I drove out to one of the back roads that hadn’t been developed yet, and I found a place to pull over beside some pastures. I wouldn’t stay long. My parents would freak out if I didn’t show up, and besides, it had been a long day. I needed some sleep.
But first, I needed a minute.
As the engine idled, I closed my eyes and ran my hand through my hair. What a day. What a fucking day. And it wouldn’t be my last visit this summer—my cousin Kelli was getting married soon, and since I adored her, I wouldn’t miss her wedding for the world. No matter how much I did not want to come back to Rexburg for a long, long time.
Very little about today was surprising, but it hit me hard. It was like listening in on a conversation where people were saying the most unimaginably awful things about me without realizing I was there. Except I’d been part of the conversation. They’d known I was there. They just hadn’t known they were talking abut me.
And, quite possibly, about my fifteen-year-old cousin.
My throat tightened as I thought about how many times I could have grown a spine, stepped up, and called someone out. I could have told them they were wrong, and that there was something messed up with them for being so obsessed with other people’s sexuality. Even if I hadn’t gotten through to them, I could have maybe left an impression on my cousin. At best, he’d see me as someone he could come to if he was gay. At the very least, maybe it would be enough to make him question everything he’d been fed about LGBT people.
If I’d said something. Even once.
But I hadn’t.
I couldn’t.
Because standing my ground would cost me too much.
That was the worst part: I loved my family, and I didn’t want to lose them, but if they found out the truth, they would hate me and…
Fuck. No matter what, even if I did fully accept who I was, I couldn’t come out because I’d lose my family. I’d lose everyone.
But I’d lost myself for so long, and I didn’t want to go back to that.
In the past, every time I’d seen my family, I’d hated myself even more, and when I’d booked Gentlemen afterward, I’d felt awful during and even worse after. Like I’d been punishing myself somehow and needed to punish myself even more. It was irrational and masochistic, and I could only imagine the horror on any therapist’s face if I ever spelled it all out.
Today, I felt that strong pull back toward the closet and that burning need to fuck a man while reminding myself how wrong it was, and how dirty and disgusting I was for being that way. I had that urge to hire someone, fuck him, and tell myself it was out of my system, once and for all, just like I did every time before.
But for the first time, I fought that urge.
I didn’t want it to be out of my system. I wanted sex with a man more than I had in a long time, but not to punish myself. No, I was going to embrace what I was and what I wanted. The next time I had sex with a man, I was going to enjoy it like I had that night with Hunter. I might even look him in the eye while I did it, because I was—I would be—unashamed.
I wasn’t ready to tell the world or my family I was gay—I wasn’t sure if I’d ever be ready for that—but I’d finally come close to accepting what I was. I refused to let that go without a fight. I’d come too damn far to retreat.
But oh my God, this scared me more than anything ever had.
Chapter 6
Hunter
The pain was bad today. Holy shit.
I’d been told when I was diagnosed that most men with fibromyalgia didn’t have the generalized pain that women did. No one could really explain why, which I chalked up to no one really seeming to know much about the disease in the first place, never mind how it affected men or why two of us were in the same car accident but only one’s injuries led to this stupid disease. But all of that was a rant for another day.
What I did know was that, as anyone who’d ever engaged in online debate could attest, “most men” did not mean “all men.” As it turned out, I was one of the lucky dudes who had days where things just randomly hurt. Sometimes all over. Sometimes in one place. Sometimes it was the result of what a guy in my online support group called the “bullshit butterfly effect,” where a seemingly benign thing would snowball into full-body fuckery. Like the time I’d stubbed my toe, which had led to my foot cramping up, which had led to me limping, which had pissed off my opposite knee. Then my lower back had decided to join the party, and long story short, it had ended with one of the worst stiff necks of my life. From stubbing my toe.
Today, I had no idea if there’d been a butterfly. Maybe I’d slept wrong. Maybe I’d been stressing about something. In fact, that was probably it. Rachel, Leo, and I had been up late last night, wringing our hands over finances, worrying aloud about which of our cars (which were all in worse shape than I was) would give up the ghost first, and trying to strategize how we were going to cover bills and food next month. We’d stocked up on groceries at Costco after Scott had paid me, and we were good on rent, but none of that would last forever. Leo’s hours had been cut again, Rachel’s car insurance was due, and day camp was over, which meant Ginny wasn’t getting two meals a day on her friend’s parents’ dime.
We’d even floated the idea—again—of selling one of the cars. If nothing else, we could probably sell mine or Leo’s for scrap and score a little bit of money. Plus that would be less gas, maintenance, and insurance.
Except Rachel and Leo worked odd schedules and their jobs were in opposite directions from the house. I had to be able to go to clients wherever they lived—Seattle, the Eastside, even as far south as Tacoma or north to Everett. Public transit was crap here, so none of us could rely on it as much as we needed to. Uber and Lyft would get expensive enough that we might as well just keep the cars.
