Stars in Your Eyes(68)
When I first got back, my dad and I had a quick hello—serious, stern. We avoid each other when we can. We were never the type of family to sit down and eat meals together, which is probably for the best. He stays in his office while I eat on the living room floor with Emma. If we run into each other in the hall, we grumble an “excuse me” and pass by without meeting each other’s eyes.
I want to say something to him, but I’m not even sure what. I want to ask him, maybe, why I wasn’t enough for him to love me. I want to ask why me being gay changed his view of who I am, and the fact that I’m his son. It hurts. It still hurts, after all this time, but maybe I’ve gotten so used to the pain that I’ve learned to push it to the side.
I remember holding Logan as he screamed, releasing all the pain that’d built up inside of him, everything that he’d been hiding from himself. He’d scared me, the way he screamed, though I didn’t want him to know. He screamed like he was dying. Maybe he was. Maybe holding in that pain was ripping him apart. I wonder if I’m doing the same.
*
This change of pace is what I needed. I can pretend, for a few days at least, that I’m not the actor Matthew Cole, star of one of the most anticipated films. I’m just Mattie, sitting at a table with my mom and my sister, talking and laughing and loving their company. It’s good to hear how Emma is doing in school. She’s a lot better now. As I suspected, she just needed a couple of weeks to get to know her classmates, and now she’s friends with a group that she always hangs out with.
“We eat at the cafeteria together and we have movie nights and we study together in the library.”
“That’s great, Em.”
“Oh, and I’m gay,” she says.
I almost choke on my water.
My mom laughs. “Blessed with two gay children, huh?”
“When did you find out?” I ask her.
“Well, I don’t know if I’m gay,” Em says, “because sometimes I still like guys, too. Like, it’s constantly going back and forth. But one of the girls in our group, Ayana, is really beautiful and so smart and funny and I have the hugest crush on her.” Emma says all of this like she doesn’t care what we think, but she isn’t really looking at us, either.
“Thanks for telling us, Em,” I say.
No one ever has to tell another person about their identity if they don’t want to. It’s a gift that she invited us in, a sign that we’re trustworthy and safe enough for her to tell us. I hesitate. I wonder if she plans on telling our dad, too.
Maybe my hesitation makes my thoughts obvious. “I don’t know if I’m going to tell him,” Emma says. Her voice lowers. My mom smooths down her curly hair. “The way he treats you, because you’re gay…I don’t think I want him to know, just for him to treat me badly, too.”
“You don’t have to tell him anything. Not if you don’t want to.”
Emma shrugs with a twinge of sadness. It hurts, knowing she’ll have to deal with the same thing that I did. A part of me hopes that if our dad ever found out, he would realize that he can’t lose Em, too, and he would finally start to change. But maybe that’s too optimistic.
I slide off the counter’s stool and walk over to Emma and hug her. I pull away and she rolls her eyes at me with a grin, but I don’t mind. “I love you, Em. Okay?”
“Yeah, yeah,” she says. “I love you, too.”
*
It’s only been a couple of weeks, but I’m getting comfortable in Decatur. On Christmas morning we exchange gifts, and Em and I help our mom cook the traditional dinner. Cousins and my mom’s friends come over, pinching my cheeks and ruffling my hair and saying how proud they are of me, the movie star. Dad even comes out of his office and sits on the couch the whole day, though he barely speaks.
After Christmas, I sleep in until ten in the morning and play games on the living room floor day after day. It’s like the more I rest, the more tired I become, as if my body still has months of sleep to catch up on. I have to remind myself that, in just a couple of weeks, publicity is going to ramp up for Write Anything, and I’m going to be thrown back into the fast pace of LA. Besides Dave’s “Project X” schedule, I’ve gotten a separate schedule for the red-carpet premiere, six different photoshoots, multiple TV and radio appearances, interviews in magazines, and of course the promo tour, which will have me traveling to ten different cities. I got confirmation that Logan won’t be on the tour. I’m going to be trained on how to handle questions, especially surrounding him.
I’ve been texting with Logan on and off, trying to ignore the increasing panic when he doesn’t text me back as often. It’s possible that the excitement for our relationship has begun to wane. I have to ask myself, seriously, if my excitement has started to fade, too. I miss him, but it’s easier to see how consumed I was by him—consumed with wanting to save him. I already know that I can’t save Gray. He has to help himself, ultimately. But I can be there to support him, can’t I? As long as supporting him doesn’t become my entire life, my reason for being, overtaking myself and even my dreams—then we could make this work.
*
I get a text from Julie when I’m lying in bed, playing Animal Crossing on my Switch. We’ve been texting even more than I have been with Logan, but her latest message confuses me when it pops up on my phone. I’m so sorry, Mattie.