loved the way my room was soundproofed. It gave the perfect illusion that I was at one with the world. No distractions. No problems.
“I’m feeling better.” I nodded. “I felt really homesick this morning.”
“Is there any reason in particular why you’re homesick?”
I hesitated to answer. From the first day when I’d reluctantly agreed to the therapist poking into my emotions, she’d made it clear that she wasn’t here to talk about anyone else. She wanted to help me. Ashton. And so far, we hadn’t really talked about Callum.
“Remember, you can always be honest, Ashton. This is a judgment-free zone.”
That was a relief after coming from a world where I was constantly found lacking. At first, I’d been skeptical about her judgment-free zone policy, but so far, she’d listened patiently to everything I’d said to her. She’d never berated me for the stupid decisions I’d made.
“I miss Callum,” I said, holding her steady gaze. “I miss waking up beside him in my bed, the way he comforts me.”
“And that’s fine, but we’re here to work on you being okay with waking up in bed alone and finding ways in which you can comfort yourself.”
“But why do I need to get used to that when I’ll have Daddy Callum once I leave here?”
I blushed when the honorific left my mouth. We’d never brought up that aspect of my relationship with Callum before. She didn’t even flinch. She just smiled at me in understanding.
“What I’m preparing you for, Ash, is to be equipped to handle life alone. If you can do that, half the problems in your relationship will already be solved.”
I couldn’t say I fully understood everything she wanted from me, but together we’d found techniques that worked to keep me less anxious and craving a drink. With a sigh, I nodded.
“Can we at least talk about Callum today?” I asked.
“Sure, what do you want to tell me about him?”
I startled at her response. She always gently directed our conversations back to myself whenever I brought up Callum.
“Umm, actually, can we just get back to me?”
She nodded, her smile widening, and although she didn’t say it, I could see from the smile that she was proud of me for choosing me.
“Tell me about how your coming out went.”
My coming out? It was so long ago. What did any of that have to do with the present? I asked her as much.
“I’m here to let you see how all the small things added up to the way you internalize events in your life, Ashton. Remember at the beginning what I asked you for?”
“Your trust.”
“Right, trust in my training and my decades of experience that I know what I’m doing.”
Trust. I could do that.
“It was actually very anticlimactic,” I said.
“How so?”
“It’s just that I agonized over it a lot before I told my family. There were these two guys who they discovered sucking off each other in the locker room, and everyone made such a stink about it. I thought for sure my parents would object. I mean, when they heard about it, they thanked god that for the first time it wasn’t me in trouble.”
“And what happened when you told them?”
I shrugged, but the truth was I didn’t feel so calm about the whole thing. I’d been so disappointed that day.
“My father patted my head and said, ‘That’s okay, son. At least you’re wealthy.’”
“And how did that make you feel?”
“Dismissed. I hated it.”
“But why? So many men in your position would’ve liked to receive the acceptance you got from your family.”
I dropped my gaze to my knees. “I suppose, but that’s not the way I took it. Their acceptance. I just thought they didn’t care one way or another. Like I could’ve been a unicorn and they would’ve still patted me on the head.”
“If they’d given you a hard time about it, would you have felt better?”
“Yes, at least then I would’ve known they cared. That they saw me.”
How fucked-up was that? There should no questioning how to take my parents’ reaction to me being gay. They’d accepted me. So had Jake. They’d never once made me feel like shit or made fun of me. They’d never tried to get me to change my mind or anything. And I should be grateful for that.
Instead, all I could dwell on was that if they’d even questioned me once about my choice, then I would’ve felt they were really interested in me as a member of the family.
The time with my therapist flew by. It