Got it from a friend. Running joke, he'd said.
I’d dismissed his remark at the time, but the more I studied the mug and the fact that it was sitting on the tray, the more I thought about things. Specifically, not what Del had said about the mug, but how he’d looked when he’d said it. Namely, how he'd looked at Uncle Curtis.
And how Uncle Curtis had looked at him.
I covered my mouth with my hand as one image after another began popping into my head. "Oh, God," I whispered, and I didn’t bother trying to hold back the tears.
How could I have been so foolish, so naïve… so fucking blind? I looked around the kitchen at all the little signs of Del that remained that I’d never really considered before. There was a second set of cowboy boots on the mat near the door. I'd assumed they were Uncle Curtis’s spare ones, or Xavier's, but now that I looked at them more closely, the feet were much too big. Del had been a big guy. There was a gray cowboy hat on the hook by the door that was lined up perfectly with Uncle Curtis’s white one.
I slid my eyes to Uncle Curtis. He was staring at Del's mug. Since Uncle Curtis had assumed I was asleep up in my room, it meant that he hadn’t put that mug out for me.
Which made sense, because he wouldn't have given something so precious to just anyone to use. No, the mug was sitting on the tray, probably because it was still sitting on the tray. He’d probably never moved it after Del had died.
"I'm sorry," I breathed. "I'm so sorry, Uncle Curtis." I reached my hand across the table to him. I was glad when he took it. It was a good sign that he wasn't going to hold my ignorance against me.
"How long were you together?" I asked. Del had been a part of Uncle Curtis's life from the time I’d been a kid. But I couldn't remember an exact time things might have changed between them. Uncle Curtis had always been a bachelor, but he and others had always laughed it off as him being a workaholic. I'd never ever seen anything to suggest any different.
But it was like Xavier had said.
I hadn't really looked.
"He started working here a few years before your grandfather died. I think we both knew right away, but neither of us acted on it. I was too afraid of what would happen if my father found out. He wasn't exactly the most accepting when it came to things like that. And Del really needed the job."
I didn't remember too much about Grandpa Brooks, but what I did remember was that he’d been a kind man. But I'd seen him through the eyes of a child. My heart ached for Uncle Curtis and Del.
"Times back then were really different than they are now," Uncle Curtis said sadly. "Once your grandpa passed, Del and I got to be together, but we knew what would happen if anyone ever found out. I guess we got accustomed to that way of life. Even seeing things change, like the government lettin’ people like us get married, we were still scared. Not so easy to come out of hiding when you been doing it for so long." Uncle Curtis took a sip of his coffee. He nodded slowly, like he was trying to convince himself as he said, "But we were happy. We had a lot of good years together."
"I wish you’d had more," I said softly. "I wish I'd been smart enough to see it."
"Brooks, son, you're one of the smartest men—"
"Not in this," I said before he could finish. I didn't want him making excuses for me. "I'm smart when it comes to books, and math, and learning. But all that other stuff, it's just all make-believe. I have no idea what I'm doing."
"You're not out?" Uncle Curtis asked carefully.
I chuckled because for some reason, it didn't surprise me that he knew I was gay. I shook my head and wiped at the tears that wouldn’t stop falling. "I guess our fathers weren’t so different," I said. "Or our need to please them."
"Yeah," Uncle Curtis murmured. He reached out to finger Del's mug. It was such an intimate moment, I felt like I was intruding. I almost got up to leave the room when Uncle Curtis looked at me and said, "You see Xavier out there?"
Heat suffused my cheeks. The denial seemed to clog my throat, but I wasn't sure if it was because I didn't want to lie to the man, or I was too caught up in what had happened when I'd seen Xavier. I nodded my head and dropped my eyes to the table.
"You okay?" Uncle Curtis asked. There were a million other questions behind that one, but I knew he wouldn’t ask them. At least not tonight.