Even his throaty, raw voice felt like a caress. A featherlight kiss landed at the corner of my mouth, the delicious scratch of his stubble on my skin delivering on every single promise. “Heaven is full of…aah, so nice…nubile young men.” His roving tongue nuzzled into the sensitive dip behind my ear. “Not middle-aged, buttoned-up anaesthetists.”
My head fell back and he dragged his tongue across the hinge of my jaw, chuckling at my responding whimper. Kissing—something else Matt Leeson bloody excelled at. “You’re so much more than that, Alex,” he breathed. “And just so you know, every single one of those buttons is coming undone.”
In the nick of time, he pulled back before one of us did something stupid, like suggest sex across the cramped front seats. Steamed up, in more ways than one, I pressed a switch and the passenger side window rolled down, letting in a gust of cool air.
“Just like old times, eh?” The edges of Matt’s mouth curled with amusement as I tugged at the front of my shirt, letting the night breeze waft across my damp skin.
“I’m just someone’s dad, Matt. I have a mortgage, and peach-coloured bedroom curtains that match my eiderdown. A shed full of power tools and a lush green lawn. I’m not a man who snogs other men in cars. So I reckon I’m the one hallucinating, not you.”
Matt laughed and we kissed again, petted really. Explored with our lips and tongues. Talked nonsense to each other between kisses. Giggled in the darkness. Neither of us attempting to take it further.
“Thank you for date number two,” Matt said eventually. “But you had better head back. Ryan will think I’ve kidnapped you.”
“You were great with him. I don’t know what’s going on at the moment, but he forgot all his troubles this afternoon.”
“He’ll share with you when he’s ready. I can see how close you are, but he’s not as straightforward as you were at that age. He looks like you, but he’s definitely not as…secure.”
I sighed. “No, he’s not. I blame myself. Samantha and I messed up. We thought trying to shield him from the saga of our marriage ending was the right thing to do. We thought it was for the best, that he was too young, that he wouldn’t understand. I wish we’d have been more open from the start. Now he doesn’t trust us.”
“Are you going to tell him about you and me?”
“You and me.” My heart thudded. Christ how I liked the sound of that. “Is there a you and me, Matt?”
Laughing lightly again, he leaned across for a final brush of his lips against my temple. “There’s always been a you and me.”
“Then I have to tell him, Matt. I’m not keeping any more secrets from him.”
“I’d understand if you didn’t, you know. I could hide in the shadows.”
I gave my head a firm shake. “I don’t want you to. God knows how he’ll react, or what he’ll think. Nor how he’ll deal with it with his friends. But we’re not hiding.”
Matt kissed me again, more gently this time. “You always did face things head-on. I used to love that about you. How you were brave enough to kiss me, even when you couldn’t understand why you wanted to do it. How you faced Brenner.”
These days, kids could find so much help online about how to come out to their parents. Personal stories from other young people who’d taken the plunge—some good, some bad, some ugly. Many, many that were heart-breaking. And thank goodness, a slew of life-affirming ones. Pictures of parents displaying their LGBTQ badges with pride.
But not much the other way around. No tips on the best way a normal, boring dad like me should break the news to his sixteen-year-old son he’s bisexual.
“Telling Ryan is scarier than both of those things.”
“You’ll find a way.”
LENNY VALENTINO
(THE AUTEURS)
Date number three? A trip to The Tank Museum. It just so happened that the world’s largest collection of twentieth century military armoured vehicles was situated roughly ten miles from my house. Matt’s idea of heaven, and my idea of an excellent opportunity to spend the day in close proximity to Matt.
My mother has always said a parent is only as happy as their least happy child. After I’d parked the car in The Tank Museum carpark and we tried to fathom how the ticket machine worked, my good humour fled, to be replaced by a sensation not too many steps away from all-out panic.
Can you pick me up from school, dad? Like, now? I’m not ill but I need to come home. And I want to stay at yours because mum will worry and get in a state.
God, how little he knew me if he believed I wouldn’t. I felt physically sick. Matt read the text with his chin resting on my shoulder.
“It’s fine, babe. You need to go. The Tank Museum will still be here another day.”
Ryan’s school was closer to The Tank Museum than Matt’s place, so I drove directly there. The file in my mind labelled all-the-things-that-could-go-wrong had burst open, and as I screeched across a set of traffic lights turning to red, I worked my way through it. Every conceivable horrific scenario coursed through my head—twice Matt had to encourage me to slow down. I was in grave danger of collecting my first ever speeding ticket.
What if Ryan had been bullying someone? Taking drugs? Sniffing glue? Stealing? Doing that thing with aerosol deodorant cans? None of those sounded like my well-behaved boy, but what did I know? He’d been so secretive lately. I’d put it down to normal teenage hormonal swings, but what if it wasn’t? What if he’d done something bigger? Oh my God, like sending dick pics to girls? I’d read about boys doing that sort of thing. Online harassment. Christ, what if he’d got Chloe pregnant? Ryan wasn’t old enough to be a father!