I didn’t give him much reason to think that,” Bob said, to my complete and utter surprise.
Several clichés I had never really experienced happened at the same time. You could have heard a pin drop in the room, and you could have literally knocked me over with a feather. If I hadn’t been sitting, I think my legs would have gone out from under me.
“Bob, that’s not true. Jake knows that. Well, he knows that now,” she said.
“Now doesn’t matter as much as then,” he said, looking directly at me.
I couldn’t remember ever having the rug pulled out from under me that much except for the day Bob had caught me and Eric making out. I was dumbstruck. Nothing had gone as I’d expected since I’d come home. My mind seemed to have shut down from too many thoughts crashing into each other at the same time.
Eric reached for my hand, squeezing it tightly in support. “Hey, you okay?” he asked. I nodded. Was I blinking too much or too little? Eric took my chin and turned my head towards him. “Anyone home?”
Bob looked pained, and that broke me out of my paralysis.
“That look, though,” I said. “Tell me you didn’t freak out when you caught me and Eric. I’m still gay, by the way.”
“Car—, Jake, obviously he knows I’m gay and he’s never had a problem with it,” Eric said, ever the peacemaker.
Bob looked pissed off. That was more like it. That was the real Bob.
“Yeah, I wasn’t thrilled.” He lifted his beer bottle to his mouth, frowning when he found it empty. Danny quickly handed him another one. “Thanks,” he said. “Anybody would freak out a bit at catching their kid doing...that. No one wants to think about their teenager having sex, let alone having to see it.”
“We weren’t having sex, Dad,” Eric said. “Jesus. We were just making out.”
“Maybe,” I allowed. “But if I’d been a girl, would you have accused me of ‘corrupting’ Eric, told me to get the fuck out of your house and that he’d be better off never seeing me again?”
“Bob!” Maureen cried. “You didn’t!”
Bob frowned at me. “Yeah, I would have felt better about it if it was a girl. I handled it poorly. I admit it. Grownups make mistakes. I know you know that now.” He turned his whole body to look at Eric. “I didn’t want you to make your life harder than it had to be.” His voice pleaded for Eric to understand. “You were young. Experimenting. It’s hard enough making it as a pro athlete, why make it harder? And look at both of you, I was right. You’re both alone.”
I could see my crew biting their tongues and cringing from secondhand embarrassment for me and Eric.
“Not anymore,” I said with a glance at Eric.
Eric pushed his chair back from the table and stood. “I was alone because you made me feel like I should be ashamed of who I was! I stayed in a shitty relationship with Ryan because I didn’t think I deserved or could have better. Maybe Jake and I would have stayed together if you and the world hadn’t made me choose between the two things I loved the most. If I’d been braver. Maybe Jake wouldn’t have done the things he’s done if we’d just had a conversation!”
I put my hand on Eric’s arm, urging him back down to his chair. “We can’t know that. And Bob, as much as I want him to be responsible for my poor decisions, didn’t make me do anything.”
“Why did you do it?” my mother asked, drawing the attention away from Bob and Eric.
26 Carson
I’d had plenty of time to think about why I’d made the choices I had and why, now that money wasn’t an issue, I kept on doing what I did. You can’t study what motivates people and not apply that knowledge to yourself. “I did it because I was angry at everyone and everything.” Underneath everything else, that was the truth. “At injustice and inequality, and a world where the rich and powerful take what they want and we’re just supposed to sit back and say thank you for the crumbs. I kept doing it because I wanted to. I liked it and I am very good at it.”
“In my mind, I was no different from a Jeff Bezos stealing time and life from his workers to line his coffers. My methods were just different, more direct.”
“But—” Eric interrupted.
I stopped him with a