Abel turned to the backseat and looked at Bailey's sleeping body. "Do you know how hard it is not to kiss you right now?" Abel queried, his face breaking into its trademark grin. He moved his fingers from the steering wheel and slid them over to Nate's open palm. He ran the pads of his fingers along the lines of Nate's palm, tickling it.
"You'll get to kiss me soon, I promise. You might be bored of me by then." Nate sighed.
"Could never get bored; you're too much hard work. I can't wait to kiss you anytime I want. In the morning… Before work…"
"After work…"
"Before dinner…"
"After dinner…"
"Before bed…"
"During bed…"
"
After that
…" Abel's voice quivered with anticipation.
"Especially after that." Nate closed his eyes to savor the image that lingered in his mind.
Nate carried Bailey, still asleep, up the front steps of the porch and waved goodbye to Abel, watching as his lights disappeared into the cloak of night. He looked up at the stars for a second, letting their sparkle light his face.
He opened the front door and took Bailey straight to the bedroom, pulling off his tiny shoes and tucking him under the covers, wrapping him up like precious cargo. He flicked the night light on and whispered, "I love you, Bay," into the room, hoping that the words would absorb into the walls and into his son's heart. Then he stretched and walked into the kitchen, ready to make himself a cup of tea before he crashed into sleep.
His father was sitting at the table, illuminated by a lamp in the corner. Shadows danced across his strong, aged face, revealing his deep wrinkles and his forceful jaw.
"Who do you think you are, Nathaniel?" Bernard asked, his voice all old-Hollywood masculinity, like it had been pickled in cigar smoke and whiskey.
"What do you mean?" Nate replied, suddenly thrown from the cloud he'd been on. Nate couldn't help but feel like a teenager again; he wanted to run away and slam doors.
"You need to leave Abel alone. You're not allowed to drive back into town and pollute everything. Your way of life is not acceptable around here and you're confusing that good man. You destroy people's lives; God knows you destroyed mine and your mother's. We could hardly show our faces in this town after you left. And now you're going to do it to us again. It's selfish." Bernard lit up a cigar and inhaled sorrowfully, letting the smoke cascade out of his mouth and form a veil in front of his face.
Nate stood still, shell-shocked. He opened his mouth to speak, but couldn't form any words. His brain was unraveling and coming back together in all the wrong places. This was what he had been waiting for. It was the black cloud that had hovered on the horizon since his unexpected arrival back home. He inhaled deeply and calmed his nerves before speaking. "Look, Dad. I don't want to fight you. I never wanted to fight you. I just wanted us to get along. I still just want that."
"That's how you show me that you want to get along? By behaving disgustingly. By ruining the lives of people who have worked hard to build a reputation." Bernard voice growled like close thunder, almost shaking the room off its axis.
"I'm sorry for all of the things that I couldn't provide you as a son. Do you know what it was like for me growing up with you?" Nate asked, his voice cracking with more emotion than he wanted to.
"Yes, I do. You had everything: a mother and a father and food on the table and a roof over your head, and you went ahead and ran over it on some fanciful whim. On some stupid rebellion."
"I'm grateful for the things that I had growing up. I am. Now that I have Bailey, I get how hard it is
every day
. It never ends. But you have no idea how hard I tried to change. The hours I spent praying to be different. How much I just wanted to be what you wanted me to. I spent so long feeling guilty and watching the way you looked at me like I didn't belong. I would have done anything to have fit into your vision of what a family looks like, but I couldn't. If there had been a way, I would have done it." Nate felt like somebody had him in a vise, making it difficult to breath and exist in his own space.
"Don't give me that crap. You didn't try. You were always the same; you always made a point of being different, of making yourself look like a fool. You were an embarrassment then and you're worse now. Trying to seduce some poor guy who doesn't know anything about your lifestyle." Bernard slammed his fits on the table, making it rock on its legs.
"Dad, Abel has been out as gay for years. His family basically threw a party in honor of his coming out! The whole town knows. Things don't disappear just because you don't want to acknowledge them." He took a breath. "I don't have a lifestyle. I left here as soon as I could, partly so you didn't have to see me every day. I ran away partly because I loved Joshua and, frankly, so I couldn't upset you anymore. Every time I tried to do something that I thought would make you proud, you threw it in my face." Nate felt old emotional stitches burst open.
Bernard laughed sarcastically. "You didn't fall in love with anybody. It isn't possible, so don't give me that. He's never coming back—for you or Bailey."
"I don't know about that, but you're wrong about the love."
"Then why did he leave you, if you loved each other so much?"
Nate felt like somebody had punched him in the face and he staggered a little, thrown off balance. He found his equilibrium and felt the dam inside of him, the one that had been holding the reservoir of aggression at his core, burst open. "Hey, don't you dare speak to me like that. Don't you dare. I had love, and it was important to me, and I was proud of it. It provided me with a life that I am so proud of. I gained for a long time before I lost anything. My love means something to me. It's mine to give. It belongs to me, and it's not yours to question."
Bernard barely moved under the weight of Nate's hostility. He inhaled more smoke and let it out slowly. "You don't know what love is. He left you because he didn't love you. Because two people like you cannot love each other. So Joshua left you, and so will Abel, and so will everybody you meet until you start making the right choices."
"Ten years later. We stood by each other for ten years. We have a wonderful son together. We showed love, which is more than I can say for you and Mom. She would have left decades ago if she knew what her life could be like away from you." Nate spat the last sentence out, his body taking over from his mind, forcing him to work on pure instinct.
"How could someone like you be a father to Bailey? How is he going to know right from wrong?" Bernard asked rising from his seat.
"Well, I'm a good person. Even though you have spent a lifetime trying to convince me otherwise. So I'm going to be a whole lot better father than you. I couldn't be worse."
"Get out of my house. Get your stuff and get out." Bernard's words fell like a dead weight.
A menacing silence filled the air, stagnant and thick, and Nate looked into his father's eyes for the first time as an adult. He searched for some regret, a glimpse of something kind, but he couldn't see it. They stood opposite each other, a father in front of a father, unmoving like an old Western shoot-out. Nate prayed that his father would budge just a little, sit back down and at least start talking again, just do anything that would buff the edges of his final words. Nate felt like a fool for walking into the house so joyful and hopeful. He felt like an idiot for believing that things might have changed, that not everything would have stayed exactly the same. Mostly Nate felt mournful for the relationship that he had never had with his father and for the connections that they would probably never make.
He hadn't realized it until that moment, but he had wanted to repair this bond more than anything else in his whole life. The longing for things to be different was unbearable. "Dad, please don't let the last words I hear come out of your mouth tonight be 'get out'."
Bernard shrugged. "Just go, Nathaniel."
Nate left the room, leaving behind the weight of things he wished he would have said. He turned on the light in the bedroom, and the darkness was ripped back. He looked towards the bed and panicked. Bailey was not lying under the covers, the duvet was pulled back messily, and his shoes were missing. Nate's eyes scanned every inch of the room in seconds, desperately searching for some glimpse of his son's innocent face. He pulled the covers back further and then ducked to look under the bed. He pulled open the wardrobe door and investigated behind the curtain. Then he ran into the hallway and looked up and down its length.
"Bailey!" Nate shouted, his voice hoarse with anxiety. "Bailey, please, where are you? Where are you, Bay?"
Ava ran out of her bedroom, wrapping a dressing gown around her body. Then Viola entered the hallway from the second guest room, yawning theatrically.
"What's happening, what's all the shouting about?" Ava asked, visibly startled by Nate's wild eyes and fear-stricken pose.
"Have you seen Bailey?" Nate demanded to them both, hitting a fever pitch of worry.
They both frowned and shook their heads, trying to understand the late-night drama. Ava looked instantly horrified and she followed Nate's lead in searching through each room shouting her grandson's name.
"I don't think he's here," Viola said, biting down on her bottom lip.
"Okay, you guys look in the garden, out the front, by Dad's boat. Anywhere you can think of. Maybe neighbors? And I'm gonna get in the car and drive around." Nate pulled his hand through his hair and tried to slow his frantic heartbeat, which reverberated in his eardrums.
"Okay," Ava said. "And Nathaniel, everything will be all right."
Nate clawed at his car keys and ran out of the house, taking the steps two at a time. He slammed open the door and jumped into the car before throwing it in reverse and backing out of the drive like a madman. As he drove, Nate had the sudden thought to check his cell, and what he saw made him curse himself for not checking it earlier. There were seven missed calls from Abel and a text message. It read:
What happened? Bailey's safe with me at home. He heard your dad, he knows about Joshua. Get here soon. Be calm, the little guys upset and angry but he's okay.
Nate turned the car into a side path, put his head on the steering wheel, and sobbed with relief.
There was a steady yellow glow emanating from Abel's house when Nate pulled up to it. The whole place looked like a cabin from a fairytale, somewhere warm, messy and comforting that offered a happy return to normality after the wolf or wicked witch had been slain. Nate inhaled deeply and walked up to the front door, trying to calm his frazzled nerves. Abel opened it before Nate had the chance to knock and wrapped him up in a protective embrace. Nate took in the woodsy, lived-in smell of Abel's sweater and let himself get lost in it for a second.
"Where is he?" Nate asked pathetically.
"He heard your car on the gravel and ran into the bathroom. He's okay. I mean, he's upset. I don't think he really understands what happened, but he's hanging in there."
"Thank God he found his way to you. I don't want to think about what could have happened."
"Yeah, it was quite a shock to see his little face peering through the window. He must have incredible tracking skills. I know we only live a couple of minutes away, but the forest get me confused sometimes. What happened between you and your dad?" Abel asked, pulling Nate into the warmth of the house.
"What always happen between us? He just can't seem to give me even an inch. Shit, this is just so—shit. I wanted Bailey to find out from me. I wanted to at least try and explain in the right way." Nate sighed.
"I know. Why don't you go and talk to him and I'll get you a drink?" Abel put his hand on Nate's shoulder and squeezed gently.
Nate nodded and walked through the living room slowly, thinking of things that he could say to make the situation better. He felt thin and frail, like he could barely hold up his own weight, like his weary legs weren't capable of moving him through the small cabin. He got to the bathroom door and knocked on it gently. It looked like a dead-end, the end of the road. "Buddy? Are you okay? Can I come in for a minute?" he asked feebly, resting his palm against the cold wood of the door.
"No. I don't want to see you," Bailey shouted from the bathroom.
Nate sat on the floor. "Okay, well, can we talk for a little while?"
"No. Papa left you and now I am leaving you." Bailey's voice quivered with sadness.
Nate felt like he had been through a boxing match; his head was ringing and his skin felt hot and bruised. "I know that you must feel very confused and very sad. And I don't want you to feel those things, because I love you."
"I don't know why this happened. What did you do? Granddad said Papa is never coming back and you said he would." The sound of his little body sliding down the door and settling on the ground was audible in the hallway.
"I don't think that I did anything. I don't really have any answers for you. All I can tell you is that I love you more than I ever thought I could and I wish I could make this better for you. You are my son and you are the absolute most important thing in the world to me. I can't tell you how scared I was when I thought that you were lost." Nate spoke to the door, trying to reach through the barrier.
"I don't understand why Papa would have gone. I thought he was supposed to look after me." The sound of Bailey's gentle sobbing made Nate's heart feel like it was being ripped from his chest. It was the most painful moment of his whole life.
"I can't tell you what your papa is thinking, but I know for certain that he loves you and that he always wants you to be happy, and he would never do anything to cause you pain unless he felt like he didn't have any other choice. You know that he loves you."
"Have you spoken to him after he left?" Bailey asked, his voice thin.
"Ummm. I've tried a few times. I've left him some messages, but he might not have gotten them yet. As soon as he calls me, I will tell you. I want to do everything possible to make you feel better and safe. I want you to know that you are always safe when I'm around." Nate rested his forehead on the door in a desperate attempt to feel close to his son, to try to send some positive energy.