Page 56 of Mimosa

“Dad, shut it.”

“Have more respect!”

Ignoring him, Murphy went on. “What I had to do, and it wasn’t easy, was to see that the time he grew up in and the way they were, it’s ingrained in him to dislike anything that doesn’t…go with the flow. Swimming against the current was always wrong to the older generations, and it’s no different for your father. He was raised in a place where they still, to this day, well…you know what they do with gay men and women.”

Mims knew well. “I get that. I forgave him for hating my sexuality long ago. What I can’t forgive him for, is him hating me. I’m his kid.”

“You have that right,” Murphy said.

Mims was miserable over the decision. His family, his found family, however, was there for him. No matter what.

“If my other family was like you all, maybe I’d be running there.”

Sonny grabbed his hand and said, “That is why people have chosen families. We can’t choose the families we’re born into, Mims. We can take them for how they are, or we can leave for our own mental health, or even somewhere in between. The point is, choosing a family is different.”

Cosmo added, “Sometimes we don’t have a choice. Like me, I didn’t. And Mims, well, he didn’t either. His family tossed him out.”

“True,” Sonny said. “Okay, Mims, before you eat out your own guts about this, would they let you in the door if you did show up?”

“Gee, I don’t know. Nadia didn’t…she didn’t say they would or wouldn’t.”

“That’s where you start, then,” Murphy said. “Ask if you show up, if you would even be allowed in the damn door.”

Haze surprised them all. “What you do, either way, babe, is write the old man a letter. Write down all your feelings, every single one, and put them all into words. Tell him you love him, you hate him, you’re hurt, you’re healed, whatever. Thank him for being a part of the reason you’re here and anything he did do for you along the way of your raising, but then dig in, tell him everything he did that hurt you. Then, when you’ve got all those words down, burn the thing. Burn it and know that those words are traveling to the other side, where he’ll soon be.”

“Burn it?”

Nodding slowly as he set down his fork, he whispered, “You’re too good a person, Mims. If you ever told him everything he did to hurt you, that would be what you could never live with. It would eat you alive, especially because you could never take it back, because he’d be gone.”

Mims slid off the stool and moved around the corner of the island to Haze, who’d turned on his stool. Mims hugged him as he silently cried and he felt hands on his back as everyone moved around him.

Later, Sonny walked with him to his room and went inside the door, looking around, smiling sadly. “I am sorry.”

“For?”

“I should have said what your friend did.”

Mims grabbed his hand and yanked him to the bed, and there they sat together, Sonny holding him. “I’m going to go, but with them. I’d go with you, but that would be like rubbing his nose in it.”

“Oh, so going with five other gay men is easing him into the idea.”

Mims giggled and said, “I’m not in love with them.”

It was the first he’d said it out loud. Sonny didn’t push him away, didn’t stomp out of the door, and he also didn’t change the subject. That was a good sign.

Then a better sign happened. “Yeah, I guess the moony way you gaze at me, and the way I’d be on the watch for anyone hurting you because we’re desperately in love wouldn’t be the best idea.”

Mims laughed and snuggled closer. “I guess not.”

“By the way, I’m glad I’m the only one you’re in love with.”

“Ditto.”

Sonny lay there with him all night, holding him. When he’d wake for a moment, and felt Sonny there, he knew he could take on the world…or his father.

When Sonny was ready to leave the next morning, Mims held him tightly by the back door. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. I’ll be glad when this is over. I hate them and hate what they’re doing, but I have to play along, and that’s the hardest part of all this. Being able to get away and have…have something good waiting for me, it helps. A lot.”

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