Starting from Zero (Starting from 1)
“Anything’s possible if you’re willing to work for it.”
“Is this what you wanted when you were a kid in Minnesota?” he asked, spreading his arms open to the city lights flickering below. “A house on a hill in LaLa Land?”
“No. I wanted a farm outside of St. Paul, and I wanted to raise chickens.”
Justin let out a half chuckle. “Really?”
“Yeah. The plan morphed throughout my childhood, but I always thought I’d live near my folks. I left home for college when I was seventeen, and I never went back. I went for visits, of course, but…not to live. They assumed I got a taste of city life and fell in love. But that wasn’t quite it. I figured some things out about myself in New York and then LA. Things I wasn’t willing or able to change for them.” I shrugged my shoulders. “It was better to keep my distance.”
“You don’t think they would have accepted you?”
“I know they wouldn’t have. And they’d already lost a kid. I couldn’t do it to them.”
“Hmm. It’s the same for me and my mom. I told her I was bi when Rory came out, but I didn’t press her and make her believe me. She doesn’t talk to him, but I made the cut.”
“ ’Cause you didn’t have a boyfriend.”
“Right. You’re the closest I’ve ever had to one. I’m not giving you a label you don’t want. I’m just being honest. I’ve never spent this much time with another guy and felt like it wasn’t enough. This is new for me and I love it. But the hypocrisy weighs on me. The thing is…if she cuts me off, she’ll be alone. Literally alone. She has no one but me and a few friends from work.”
“That’s sad.”
“The sad part is that my brother is a great guy and his boyfriend is too. She’s missing out. It’s easy to say, ‘Her loss,’ but if she disowned me, I think the guilt would crush me. Does that even make sense?”
“All too well. I kept quiet for my parents’ sake, but it didn’t make me happy. If the timing was different, and my parents were from a more progressive era and hadn’t lost a kid, I might still live in Minnesota. I loved growing up there.” I pointed toward the heavens. “You could see the stars behind the stars at night. But I couldn’t be myself there. Not really. I stayed in LA because it was the path of least resistance. It was easier to pretend I was exactly who they thought instead of letting them know I was different.”
“Were you ever tempted to say, ‘Mom, Dad, I’m bisexual’?” He waved his hands over his head like a kid on a sugar high.
“No,” I deadpanned. “Bisexual has the word ‘sex’ in it. We didn’t talk about sex in our house. Ever.”
“Oh.” Justin raised his eyebrows. “When was the last time you visited?”
“Five years ago. I haven’t been home since they passed away. And I don’t know that I ever will.”
“You can go back when Zero’s tour hits St. Paul,” he said, kissing my cheek.
“Deal.” I put my arm around him and nuzzled his neck. “Come on. Let’s go inside. It’s getting cold and—”
“Hang on. You said your parents passed away within weeks of each other. What happened?”
“My dad was eighty-five. He died of old age. Mom died twenty days later of a broken heart.”
“Are you just saying that, or do you know or—”
“It’s not on her death certificate, but that’s what happened. She couldn’t breathe knowing he wasn’t there anymore. She couldn’t talk knowing he wasn’t in the room to hear her. She couldn’t move, she couldn’t feel, and for twenty days she didn’t eat. She had no reason to be if he wasn’t.”
Justin sucked in a breath. “That’s beautiful. That’s what we have to write.”
I held his face in my hands and kissed his lips. “We will.”
We made love that night. Slow, sweet, and tender. I watched him closely as I moved inside him, noting the way his long lashes fluttered and how he bit his bottom lip when he sighed. He wrapped his legs around my waist and dug his heels into my ass cheeks, silently requesting more. But not too hard this time. Not too fast. We weren’t in a hurry tonight. The gentle give and take felt like a conversation or a song. We moved in perfect harmony until our rhythm faltered and we fell apart in each other’s arms.
The sheer beauty of being so completely in tune with a lover was a first for me. And the look of wonder in Justin’s eyes made me think it was the same for him. We weren’t ready to put the feeling into words yet. It might make this too real. And it was already a little scary. Like finding yourself at the edge of a cliff where the view was incredible…and so was the fall.