“His writing is going well?” she asked as Matt rinsed a plate she’d handed him and put it in the rack. They had a dishwasher now, but he doubted they used it very much.
“Seems to be.” He wondered then if anyone else knew about Oliver’s secret pen name. If his parents knew or if Chance and Miles knew.
“Okay, what’s going on? You’re never this quiet when it comes to Oliver,” she told him as she washed another dish, before handing that to him as well.
Obviously, his mother was out for blood tonight. “I don’t know what you want me to say, Ma. He’s writing. He’s happy. He’s doing what he was meant to do the way we always knew he would. He’s still funny and caring and loyal as a man can be. He’s…” Matt shrugged. “He’s Ollie. He’s special. He always will be.”
The dish in his mother’s hand slipped out and splashed into the water beneath. A soft gasp pushed past her lips and Matt turned toward her to see what had happened.
Her lips made a soft “O” before her chin began to quiver gently. “Oh, Matty.”
He heard the knowledge she thought she knew in those two simple words. Heard the surprise there, with a hint of sadness she likely didn’t know teased the edges.
“It’s nothing, Ma.”
“No…it’s something. And honestly, I don’t know how I never saw it before. Maybe when you were teenagers, I wondered. Viv had said something was going on, but then you went off to New York, and the thought never entered my mind again. You’re in love with him, aren’t you?”
The truth had always been there, a seed Matt refused to plant or let get any sunlight. He kept it hidden in the deepest, darkest places inside of him. It didn’t matter if Oliver had feelings for him too because there was a part of Matt that would never feel good enough for him. Pretty wasn’t pretty forever. Shine faded, and beneath was a dullness that Matt didn’t know how to see past. He didn’t know what he had to offer someone like Oliver. So, he told his mom what he’d been telling himself since he was young, “No, Ma, I’m not in love with him.”
“It…it would be okay if you were. You know that, right? You know that your father and I love you and support you. We want nothing more than for you to be happy.”
The thing was, Matt didn’t know how to be happy. He knew how to fake it. He got close enough to touch the edges of happiness at times—the symphony, spending time with Ollie, the euphoria he felt when he first moved to New York and was determined to make his dreams come true, but real happiness had yet to penetrate his walls.
At the same time, he also knew what his mother told him was true. They did love him and accept him and want him to be happy. But that didn’t mean it wouldn’t make the divide between them even larger. “I know…but can you imagine how much more awkward this night would have been if Oliver had been here with me as my boyfriend? It’s bad enough that he doesn’t know how to talk to me but—”
“Is that what you think, Matthew?”
“That’s what I know,” he replied. “And it’s what you know too.”
“Your father isn’t good at talking to anyone. He’s not even the best at talking with me. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t love us.”
Again, Matt knew that was true, but it didn’t change the fact that he needed his father to be able to speak with him. He needed to hear his father tell him he loved him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
It was the night before Matt’s photo shoot. He told Oliver they had to be there at five the next morning because he had to go in for hair and makeup beforehand. It was strange hearing Matt talk about those things, those typical parts of his life and career—the same way edits and plotting were a part of Oliver’s days.
The difference was, Matt spoke about it with dread in his voice, like he was on trial, the jury had finished negotiating, and he knew the odds were against him.
He was nervous, he had been all day. If Oliver was being honest, he’d admit that Matt had acted differently since they had sex Friday night, but could he really blame him? A lot had gone down between them that night, things that needed to be said but things that also profoundly affected their friendship.
Going to his parents’ house hadn’t helped though Oliver knew it wouldn’t.
He looked over at his friend who sat at the other end of the couch, flipping through the channels of the television neither of them was really watching.
“Come on,” Oliver told him before he stood and held out his hand.