Page 76 of Sapphire Storm

“What did they do?” Roman asked, only inches away from himnow.

“When I got there, they were waiting for me in the livingroom. A guy I’d been chatting with online, a guy I’d decided not to hook upwith, had figured out who I was and sent our entire chat session to my parentsto get back at me. Including the nudes I’d shared with him. It was all laid outright there. There was no denying it.

“I had two choices, they said. I could go to a reparativetherapy camp recommended by their pastor, or I could never set foot in theirhome again. They would also stop paying my tuition to Davidson, cancel thepayments on my car, and instruct everyone in the family to have no furthercontact with me. And since they were the richest members of the family, it wasvery likely everyone would agree. They weren’t angry as they said it. Theywere…resigned. As if we’d arrived at something grim but inevitable, and theywere making the best of a terrible burden.”

Roman’s jaw was slack. “What did you say?”

“I asked them how long I had to decide. They said fivehours. Then my mother looked me in the eyes and explained to me that what shewas doing was the loving thing because it was impossible for two men to trulylove each other. She conceded that they could have sex, sure. Provide eachother withsinful pleasure, as she called it. But they could nevertruly open their hearts to each other the way a man and a woman could becausethat wasn’t God’s design. And by forcing me to make this choice, she was sparingme a lifetime of delusion and loss and emptiness and disappointment. It wasbigotry, plain and simple, but she made it all sound so…sophisticated. So wellthought out.

“So I told them to give me a little while to make up mymind, then I walked the neighborhood for hours. And I sobbed. I sobbed becausetheir masks had dropped and finally I’d seen the cold, bigoted, disapprovingparents I’d been living with for years. Given how ready they’d been for theconversation, I realized this had been it, the whole time. The thing they’dloathed about me. And it had all ended with my mother, who showed the world asmuch tenderness as a kitchen knife, lecturing me on the true nature of lovewhile my future hung in the balance. It was almost more than I could take.”

“So you went to New York,” Roman whispered.

“No.” Ethan shook his head. They’d reached the hardest partof the story, and it felt like there was an apple lodged in his throat. “I wasgoing to go along with it. I went back to the house to tell them. Yes, I’d goto their crazy clinic so long as they didn’t yank the rug out from under me.But I was late. Five minutes late and they’d already boxed up everything frommy old room and put it out on the front walk. And I realized what it was reallyabout. What it had always been about with them.”

“What?” Roman asked.

“The neighbors. They wanted the neighbors to see themthrowing me out in case any gossip spilled about my predilections.That’swhen I went to New York.”

Roman looked stunned.

“But it haunted me for years, how close I came to killingmyself for them. And for what? Their coldness? Their money? Their empty,hypocritical lectures? Not every family heals. Donnie’s right. Sometimes wehave to make our own. Some exist so they can throw us out and set us on the rightpath. But I guess what I really want you to know, what I need you to know, isthat my relationship with them was long dead before I went to them and got thatcheck, so you shouldn’t blame yourself. You can’t blame yourself.”

“I’m so sorry, Ethan.”

“It’s haunted me ever since, the things my mother said.About how two men can only give each other pleasure and not love.”

“Eventually you found out she was full of shit though,right?” Roman was inches from him now, a pleading look in his eyes. “Eventuallyyou found out she was wrong.”

Ethan turned and looked into his eyes. “Today, Roman. Ifound out today at the glider port when you looked at me and I realized youwanted to share something that gave you joy. That’s when I realized my motherwas wrong. When you taught me how to touch the sky.”

Was it possible to put down a weight you didn’t know youwere carrying?

The kiss Roman gave him suggested it was. That’s how he feltas they rode back to the hotel, as they settled into bed together, as they strokedeach other to sleep, as brisk winds through the open deck door cooled theirentwined bodies.

When he felt a gentle kiss against the back of his neck, sawmorning sun through slitted eyes, he thought he was dreaming at first. ThenRoman let out a little sniffle and laid a hand briefly against his shoulder.Half asleep, he wondered if he was getting a cold thanks to the sleevelessturtleneck he’d worn the night before. When he heard a door shut, he assumedRoman was going to the bathroom and fell into a pleasant series of dreams.

Restless Roman,he thought with a lazy smile.

Later—he wasn’t sure how much, at first—his eyes opened to asun-filled room. The bed next to him was empty. And cool. No sounds came fromthe bathroom. He rolled over, saw the drape fluttering in the breeze throughthe open deck door. Then he noticed something else.

An absence.

Roman’s bag was gone.

He swung his legs to the floor, telling himself Roman couldhave tidied up and moved it to the floor of the closet. But it wasn’t there oranywhere else in the room. And when he stepped into the bathroom, he saw theguy’s toiletries were gone as well. Saw, with a growing sense of terror, thatall traces of him had been removed.

There had to be an obvious explanation. Another big,exciting plan for their day.

When he picked up his phone off the nightstand, he saw atext message from Roman. Surely that would explain everything. It read:

Bye whore. Now you’ll know how my mother felt.

21

Ethan had only been hit twice in his life—aroundhouse punch during a bar brawl his freshman year of college that hadlanded him on his back and left him seeing stars, and an accidental elbowstrike to the jaw during a sparring match in a Thai boxing class when he livedin New York.

This pain was worse.

---