Saugatuck Summer (Saugatuck, #1)(20)
“You’re welcome.” He set the salad on the breakfast bar between our plates. An honest-to-God Caesar salad, all garlicky, with croutons and flakes of Parmesan and the leafy kind of lettuce that had some actual flavor. “I figured someone should make you a birthday dinner, since I assumed you weren’t going to see your family.”
“Oh. Yeah.” I smiled awkwardly, pouring the wine and then slipping onto one of the barstools. We dug into the salad while we waited for the garlic bread to cook and the lasagna to set. “They sent me a card, left a message on my phone. That’s no big deal, but thank you anyway.”
“I suppose I’m just trying to understand how your family could be so rigid that you think you have to cut yourself off from them just to be yourself.” Brendan hitched himself up on the barstool beside me. “Is this a recent thing? Did they think you’d outgrow your orientation, gender expression, whatever it all is—you’ll have to forgive me if I don’t quite understand the nuances and issues at play here. Sexuality and gender identity aren’t my field.”
I sighed, spearing shreds of romaine lettuce. “I don’t think I realized how much pressure they were putting on me to conform until recently, but it’s been there all along. I just wasn’t . . . aware enough to pick up on it.”
“Like what?”
“Like they kept trying to steer me away from my own interests. Not blatantly. It wasn’t like, ‘you can’t do that, it’s a sissy thing and you need to be a boy.’ It was more like . . . they’d find excuses not to support me in the things I tried to do, or convince me it wasn’t worthwhile. I remember when I was in the eighth grade, I was accepted into a very exclusive regional choir. It was a big accomplishment. But rather than being proud of me, all I heard for the whole year was how much of an inconvenience it was for them to take me to rehearsals once a week, and if I wanted to do an extracurricular activity, why didn’t I try out for sports instead?”
A crouton crunched and crumbled on the tip of my fork as Brendan regarded me, his brow drawn down. “How could they not have been proud of you?”
I shrugged. “They didn’t like it when I drew attention to myself. That, and they’d just . . . try to strip away my enjoyment in things by making them seem warped. Like, one time my choir director worked one-on-one with me after school to prepare my selection for state Solo & Ensemble Festival. But then I got a long lecture about how I shouldn’t do that anymore or people might get the wrong idea, and then his career would be ruined. Like they thought I’d, I don’t know, seduce him or something. Same thing when I got accepted to work with one of the best vocal coaches in the city for private lessons. Not only was it a waste of money and an inconvenience to drive me to the lessons, but once they found out I’d be working alone with him, they started insinuating all sorts of Bad Touch shit, if you know what I mean. Making it into something dirty. Because, you know, kids don’t work alone with their music teachers without creating a scandal. But I was queer, so obviously he was going to molest me or I was going to molest him or . . . I don’t even know.”
I dropped my fork in disgust and took a long drink of my wine. My palate wasn’t nearly educated enough to tell if it was a good wine or not, but it tasted okay to me. Brendan watched me soberly, nodding encouragement.
“Getting involved in swimming was something I started to get them off my back about sports; it just turned out I actually liked it. But it still wasn’t enough.”
Brendan squeezed my shoulder in passing as he rose to pull the garlic bread out of the oven. “Go on. I’m listening.”
“I remember one time, I kind of passed out in the kitchen. I’d been working really hard because I had the lead in the musical, see, and with my job and trying to keep up with schoolwork, I hadn’t been eating or sleeping much. So, I got dizzy and just . . . dropped. Hit the floor, just for a couple seconds. And when my head stopped buzzing, my uncle was yelling at me, as if I’d done something to piss him off. He said if I couldn’t even set the table without keeling over, I should be getting more exercise instead of wasting my time in choir and theater. Because dancing three hours a night, five nights a week totally doesn’t count as exercise, right?”
Brendan sighed, sliced off a few pieces of garlic bread, and brought them to the counter in a basket covered by a napkin, then returned to scoop squares of lasagna onto plates. “Could it be he was just frightened at you fainting, and handled it badly? I know I’d be terrified if Morgan did that in front of me.”
That was the sort of thing my shrink always said. Nice and neutral. I shrugged. “Yeah, maybe.”
“Still,” Brendan murmured. “It wasn’t fair for him to react that way.”
Something in my chest lurched, and it had nothing whatsoever to do with my attraction to Brendan. He believed me. He didn’t assume that I must have been wrong and my aunt and uncle must have been justified in whatever they did, which is what everyone else I knew had done whenever I’d tried to explain. In my family, my aunt and uncle could do no wrong. Hell, the closest I’d ever come to someone believing me was my therapist, who listened but never offered opinions about the situation, so I never knew if she agreed that it was wrong or not.
But Brendan . . . Brendan was just like them. Well educated. Well-off financially. Successful. Prosperous. Intelligent. He was in their league, the kind of person they’d respect, and he was on my side.