Twelfth Night by Racheline Maltese & Erin McRae

Author:Racheline Maltese & Erin McRae [McRae, Racheline Maltese and Erin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: gay romance
ISBN: 978-1-63476-494-0
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Published: 2015-08-11T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 5

WITH AN actual plan, not only for the holidays but for the future, John finds himself far more able to tolerate their rules about space and dating, even if he feels miserable when Michael isn’t with him.

It’s tolerable, at least, until John actually has to get in his crappy Saab and drive up to his parents’ house early on Thanksgiving Day. He may only be going up for a night because his show is only taking Thursday off, but Michael will be gone the whole weekend, and they’ll lose their weekly sleepover.

The choice between sulking about Michael and thinking about what the holidays used to be like is hilariously dreadful. Jenny’s family is in Colorado, and when they had Seb, before he got sick, they used to rotate the holidays between cities. The wave of sadness that hits him isn’t unfamiliar, but the realization of how big the gap is between the life he had and the one he’s now planning with Michael, is. He has to pull over to the shoulder of the road and spend a good five minutes taking deep breaths and talking himself down.

Michael may be glorious, but John’s never going to get Seb back or be married to Jenny again. The shape of that grief has evolved over the years but never really faded. Right now it’s hitting him all over again.

As he gets back on the road and drives up I-87, John considers calling Michael from the car, but he took the train out to Philadelphia late last night and probably isn’t even awake yet. Besides, as lovely and happy-making as Michael is, right now he’s a distraction from John figuring out how to tell his parents about him.

It’s not that he thinks they are going to freak out beyond obvious and legitimate surprise. It’s just that there’s no good way to start the conversation.

Three hours on the road isn’t, apparently, enough to figure it out. By the time he’s pulling into his parents’ driveway he’s kind of freaking out about the whole thing himself. He’s not sure if it’s that he’s a very good actor or that everything has been so hard the last few years that his parents don’t even notice—or at least don’t comment on—how awkward he’s sure he’s being. It’s a relief, except for how it doesn’t give him anything resembling an opening to talk about Michael.

Part of the Thanksgiving tradition, at least for the last few years, has been helping around the house with chores his parents really shouldn’t be tackling anymore. As John drags the ladder out of the garage so he can clear dead leaves out of the gutters, he knows he has to tell his parents about Michael simply because he needs to invite them to Christmas.

The air and the work are bracing, and it’s quiet outside the city. The stillness doesn’t make him miss Michael any less or give him any brainwaves for how to broach the subject of him. He wants to be

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