Page 40 of Breaking Free
“That’s not true. He loved you.”
I keep my eyeroll in check, but my frustration grows. “He loved torturing me. He got off on being able to push me around until I got bigger than him. He was a bully with a god complex, and he was only tough if he was beating up on his wife and kid. He didn’t love me. He hated me. Especially when I came out. You don’t remember the names he called me? You don’t remember him telling me I’d go to hell?”
Mom starts to cry, dabbing at her eyes with a napkin.
“I’m sorry, Mom. If you need to remember him in a fictional light in order to grieve and move on, that’s fine, but I can’t. You don’t know a lot of what me and him went through in the years leading to me moving out. I will not be sad that he’s gone and I won’t pretend he was decent. I’m sorry for you and what you’re going through, but that’s it.”
She nods. “Okay. I understand.” After wiping her tears, she looks me in the eye. “I’m sorry for not doing more. I just didn’t know what to do.”
“It’s fine,” I say a little tersely before softening my tone. “I know now that there wasn’t much you could do, and if you ever did, you’d pay for it.”
“I know it’s weird to miss him, or be sad he’s gone. I know that,” she says, dissolving into tears again. “But I don’t know another life. I don’t know how to survive. He did everything.”
“To keep you from doing anything.”
She nods, grabbing another napkin for her nose. “I know.”
I get up and walk over to hug her. “I love you. I’m sorry for making you cry.”
She shakes her head. “I’m sorry for bringing him up when I know how you feel.”
We stay in an embrace for a while until she eventually says she’s okay, and I go back to my seat. We enjoy the rest of dinner with talk about school, football, the gossip she’s gotten from Ms. Anne next door, and her plans for the garden.
Before I head out to work, I get a text from Jay.
Jay:Hey. That guy I was telling you about? He’s down to meet you.
I briefly think about Trevor,but remember he said he doesn’t want anything to happen between us again. Maybe it is time to meet someone else.
18
On Tuesday,Jay texts me after my second class and tells me to meet him in the cafeteria. I usually take food to the library and work there while I eat, but I figure it won’t hurt to mix it up a little.
The room is massive, with tons of tables everywhere, luckily my phone beeps with a text from Jay, telling me where to go.
I find him and a few others on the opposite end, near a window. “Hey.”
“Hey, man. I just realized I’ve never seen you in here.”
“My class gets out at eleven-twenty, and I usually grab something I can take to the library.”
He looks at his watch. “So you’ve had twenty minutes already. When’s your next class?”
“I have another twenty minutes.”
“Damn, I wish I scheduled my classes farther apart for lunch purposes. I only have fifteen minutes now, because I was fucking around after my last class.”
I laugh. “I just use the time to study.”
“Well,” he says, putting his hand on the other guy’s shoulder. “This is Matthew. Matthew, this is Dominic.”
“Hey,” I say, tilting my head up as my eyes take him in.
“Hey.”
He’s definitely cute. His face is soft and smooth, and his warm brown hair is wavy and fairly long, curling up around the base of his neck.
“Matthew isn’t into football, but I give him a pass because he’s into wrestling.”