Better Than Home: Better Than Good Novella

We stood side by side, taking in the melee in our typical silent way. My dad was a man of few words. It was as if he began every day with a given amount and doled them out as needed. He was fun and could be pretty gregarious, but when his meter ran out, he was done.

I was a lot like him. I even looked like him, which didn’t make sense since he wasn’t my bio dad. But he’d married my mom when I was five, and he was the only father I’d known. He was smart, cool under pressure, patient, and steady. He didn’t raise his voice unless he needed to, and he was quick to find humor in awkward situations.

Dad was also very accepting. I knew I’d surprised the hell out of him when I came out, but he never asked if I was sure or made me feel less than. In fact, he was usually the one who ran interference with my mom, who I sometimes thought struggled more with my sexuality than I had. I lost count of how many times he urged me to “Be patient, Matt. She loves you. She just needs time to get used to change.”

A silence settled between us—the comfortable kind that reminded me of my youth. We could sit side by side on a dock with fishing rods for an hour at a stretch without saying a word. Being with someone who’d made an effort to guide me, raise me, know me had made a huge difference in my life.

“You know, we’re proud of you, son.”

“Thanks. It’s a nice house, huh?”

Dad glanced over his shoulder and nodded. “Yes, but that wasn’t what I meant.”

“Oh.”

“True success isn’t measured by the things you own, Matt. It’s the people you share them with. You and Aaron have good people here. I think that makes you a very rich man indeed.” Dad smiled, bumping my elbow companionably. “Now I’m going to grab a brownie before they disappear. Want one?”

I shook my head and swallowed around the sudden lump in my throat as a rogue childhood memory came at me out of nowhere.

Twelve-year-old me had obsessed over Star Wars Legos—the intricate sets that had seemingly millions of pieces and took a whole lot of time and patience to build. I’d asked for them for birthdays, holidays, and saved allowance money to buy them on my own. I remembered asking Dad to put another bookcase in my room so I could display the ones I had yet to build.

“You let your mind work faster than your hands, boy. Don’t worry about filling empty spaces, Matt. Worry is a misuse of imagination.”

His response had irked me at the time, but it made sense now.

Stay in the moment.

Right here. Right now.

I set my beer bottle on the deck railing and wove through the crowd to Aaron’s side.

“Hi. What are you—”

I captured his face in my hands and crashed my mouth over his. A chorus of catcalls and wolf whistles broke through the familiar butterfly feeling that never went away when I was near him. This probably wasn’t the best time or place for a public display of affection, but my timing was terrible today anyway—so why stop now?

I pulled back slightly, my hands still in his hair, and whispered, “I’m sorry.”

He blinked. “It’s okay, Matty. Let it go and—”

“Speech, speech!” Curt chanted. And then everyone was chanting.

Aaron gave a bashful half laugh. “Do you want to do the honors?”

I slipped my arm over Aaron’s shoulders and turned to our guests. “Hey, um…I’ll keep this brief. We just wanted to thank you all for coming today. As most of you know, our new house journey has been a wild ride. This time last year we were in New York and damn, we wanted to come home. We missed our friends and family and we were ready for something that felt more permanent. So we bought a house.”

I gestured toward the house, chuckling when everyone clapped. “Yay, us. Hey, I’m not gonna lie, it took a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to get here. It’s easy to lose sight of the endgame along the way when you’re covered in paint and your credit card is gasping from overuse. That was me, anyway. I was thinking to myself…I want this place to be perfect. I want the neighborhood to be safe and friendly. I want the drive to the city to be free of traffic and—”

“Give up, man!” someone yelled.

“I know, right? Long story short, the traffic sucks, but we do love the house and we’re looking forward to getting to know our neighbors.” I nodded at Todd and Jess, then glanced around the lawn with a wide smile. “But here’s the deal. In the midst of this roller coaster of a year, we’ve been thinking of home as a place we wanted to be. And it is, but it’s also the people we wanted to be with…all of you. Our family, our friends, our godchildren. We’re excited to start this new chapter here. It’s good to be home.”