Page 23 of Weathering The Storm

Holy shit. He likes me.

I match the length of his sip, smiling like a goofball against the rim of the glass. It’s been over a week since I last got a full night’s sleep, yet I feel like I could swim the English Channel.

“How are you feeling?” I ask.

“Ah. I don’t—” He coughs a little. “That was pretty much the best thing I’ve ever felt in my life. So…”

If my grin gets any wider, I’ll have to hitch a ride to the nearest ER to have my face sutured back together.

“Well that’s great to know, but I was talking about the other part. The coming out part.”

“Oh.” He bites his lip. “Relieved, I think. It went differently than I expected, that’s for sure.”

I rest my hand next to his, weaving our gloved pinkies together as we watch the pale green ribbons of the Aurora ripple across the sky. “I was so fucking nervous the first time I told anyone. And afterward… it made me realize howangryI was. Angry I had to tell anyone anything. That I couldn’t just exist without having to explain myself.”

“Who did you tell? Your family?”

“No. Well, eventually. But the first person I told was my high school English teacher, Ms. Schnieder.”

“Must’ve been one hell of a teacher,” he says.

“Oh, she was. Tough grader. Zero tolerance for bullshit. I drove her crazy. Got a D in her class.” I chuckle. “That woman sent me to the dean’s office so many goddamned times—all well-deserved. I was actuallyindetention with her when her girlfriend stopped by to pick her up because her truck battery was dead.”

“Ah.” Nick nods.

“She was the first adult I’d ever met who waslikeme, you know? And she was just living her life.”

I’d gawked at Ms. Schnieder and her partner so blatantly, she definitely thought I was judging her. “Have you finished your homework?” she snapped, the smile melting off her face.

I had no intentions of doing my homework, but I stared at the blank worksheet in front of me anyway while I listened intently to the hushed conversation she had with the other woman. Not because it was interesting, but because it wasn’t.

They talked about going to the auto shop. What they needed to pick up at the grocery store for dinner. If the cat got its pills earlier that morning.

I wasn’t out of the closet whatsoever, but teenagers are assholes. By sixteen, I’d heard it all. Enough to know being gay wasn’t “normal”,Iwasn’t normal.

But my teacher was gay. And her life looked pretty damn normal to me.

“It took me a while to say anything. I didn’t know how,” I continue, “but the next time she gave me detention, I was the only one there. Couldn’t keep it all inside anymore.”

“Do you know Leo Welch? In your third period?”

“I know all my students, Mr. Rittenburg. Even the ones who aren’t constantly disrupting class. If you can’t work quietly even in detention, I’ll have to make a call to—”

“He’s my… um. We’re…”

“She sat down on her desk, and we ended up talking for the whole hour. I asked her what it was like, growing up gay in a small town in the 80s. She told me about how she hadn’t seen most of her family since she moved to Alaska from Montana, twenty years ago, and I told her everything. About the boyfriend I had at school. About how I didn’t know how to tell my folks and hecouldn’ttell his. About how all my friends would hate me if they found out the truth.”

Nick moves his hand over more, covering mine. “I never want to meet anyone who could hate you.”

I take a sip of brandy. “Well, it doesn’t matter. I lost touch with all of them anyway. Took a few years of therapy, but I’ve made peace with that time of my life.”

His fingers tighten reassuringly. “What made you decide to go?”

“Lot of things.” I haven’t told anyone this before, but having the parts of Nick no one else knows makes me want to give him those parts of myself, too. “My parents weren’t terrible or anything. They made sure I knew they loved me, but they were shocked. For a while, it was like they didn’t know how to treat me anymore. Audrey was my only support system, but then she moved out and went to college. Got busy with her own life. And going into commercial fishing was like jumping back into high school all over again. Worse, maybe. There aren’t a whole lot of openly gay guys around. Not any, that I’ve run into.”

He absently toys with the edges of the bandage wrapped around my hand. “Things are better now, I hope?”

“Right now? Yeah. I’d say things are pretty fucking good.”