Caffrey Aloha

Chapter 13

Henry had gone to put their guitars in the car. He'd promised they could hang out and listen to some of the other groups perform, and he should have only been in the parking lot for a minute. For some reason he was just standing there by his car, lost in thought. Neal ran up, laughing with sheer joy at a day where everything was going their way. He told Henry the girls were still waiting for them and said, "C'mon," but Henry just stood there. "I'm telling you, they're smoking hot, and they are seriously into us. C'mon."

"No," said Henry.

"What, are you gay or something?" Neal teased.

Henry's hands were clenched. "Maybe."

Neal stared at him in shock. "Huh? You're joking, right?"

Henry walked around the car and opened the driver's door. "I'll pick you up in a few hours."

"Wait!" Neal had yelled, but the motor roared to life and the car sped away. When Henry returned, Neal tried to talk about it. "I'm sorry," he'd said.

"Shut up," Henry said.

"There's nothing wrong with it, I mean, if that's what you –"

"We are not talking about this," Henry insisted. And that had been his stance for the next eight years.

Now they were finally going to have this conversation. "You invited me here so you could say it. You know you have to put it into words," Neal insisted.

"I'm gay! All right?" Henry stood abruptly and paced around the deck, prowling like a tiger. It's as if he were the same twenty-year-old picking up the thread of that long ago conversation, uncertain and ready to lash out in pain. "There. Are you happy?"

"Are you?" Neal asked.

Henry came to an abrupt stop. "I don't know." He ran his hands through his hair. "Maybe not yet, but I can see the path to get there. It's a start, anyway."

"A start is good," Neal said, keeping his voice calm. Henry needed calm right now, until that old pain and fear subsided. "You know I always wished I'd handled it differently, back then. It wasn't that it made a difference to me either way. It was just a shock. By the time I was thinking clearly, you wouldn't touch the subject with a ten-foot pole. Why wouldn't you talk about it, after you came back?"

"Are you kidding? You were barely eighteen. I thought if anyone found out, they might think I was taking advantage of you. People say some ugly things now. There was even less tolerance then. I didn't think I could stand it if someone accused me of..." He shuddered.

"We claimed to be brothers most of the time," Neal pointed out. "It felt real, even before we knew it was real."

"But we didn't have any proof we were brothers, just a couple of fake IDs. It wasn't a risk I was ready to take. And... Hell, I wasn't ready to admit it to myself." He plopped down onto one of the padded bench seats. "I mean, I knew. Deep down I'd known for a while but I still wasn't ready to say it."

"I thought maybe you'd talk to me about it when you finished your master's. Some of those electives you chose focused on gender roles and sexuality. And there was that paper you wrote about the impacts of keeping sexual orientation a secret."

Henry nodded. "By the time I graduated I was getting more comfortable with... everything. I might have come out, but then I had the wild idea that it was a good time to reconnect with Dad."

Yeah, Robert's homophobia would have been a setback.

"You know the last thing he said to me?" Henry added. "There in the warehouse holding a gun to my head, after all the times he'd accused me of being gay, for once he finally asked me."

Neal remembered. Robert had said something the rest of them couldn't hear, and Henry had nodded. And then Robert had announced to everyone that he was going to clean up his mistake, meaning that Henry was too flawed to be allowed to live. It was difficult to keep his cool in the face of that memory. Neal realized he was clenching his fists and made an effort to relax. "You remember Agent Travis Miller?"

Henry thought a moment. "Sounds vaguely familiar."

"He tends to stay in the background, but he was with us when we found where Robert had stashed you and Angela after kidnapping you. Travis specializes in tech and communications. We confiscated the phone of Robert's accomplice, and Travis was trying to pull data from it when Robert called that number. He decided to answer, to see if he could learn anything about where Robert was hiding out, and during the conversation Travis revealed that he's gay."

Henry winced in sympathy.

"We have another agent – Diana Berrigan – who's upfront about it. Her first day on the team, everyone knew. Travis tends to tell people one-by-one, when he thinks they're ready to hear it, and from what he's told me he endured a lot of bullying in high school. Between that, and his own experiences talking to Robert, he probably has a good understanding of what you've gone through."

"Listen, I don't need you to set me up –"

"No, that's not where I'm going," Neal interrupted. "Travis is already in a relationship with a good friend of mine at Columbia. But the thing is, if you want to talk to someone... you know, someone other than me..."

"Someone who understands what it's like to be gay and come out. I get it. Thanks. That could be helpful."

"Who else knows?" Neal asked.

Henry took a deep breath. "I came to terms with who I am and Dad's reaction to it while I was in India. Since I was traveling with Pops, I told him. I'd already been talking to him so fervently about rights and benefits for gay employees at Win-Win, I think that helped ease him into it."

"Did he tell Julia?"

Henry nodded. "Other than that, you're the only person I've told. I didn't want to make a big announcement until after the wedding. That day – this whole vacation really – was about Mom and Joe, and I didn't want to steal the spotlight. But I made a New Year's resolution..." He rolled his eyes at Neal's expression. "Yeah, not really my thing, but this year it seemed appropriate. I'm going to tell everyone in the next few weeks; family, co-workers, they'll all find out." He paused and drank deeply from the soda can. "I think Mom will be the least surprised. She knows me well, she's a psychologist, and she used to run interference when Dad went on a rant about me doing something he thought was gay, like trying out for a school play."

Neal agreed. Even if she hadn't guessed, he trusted that Noelle would be understanding and supportive. He was about to ask who Henry planned to tell next, when he realized the boat had been sitting in the same position for a while now, with the motor off. "Pops said you picked our destination?"

Henry gestured toward the shore. Dominating the view was the Rainbow Tower. "Seemed appropriate."

"I don't think coming out is what people mean when they talk about going over the rainbow," Neal teased, and with that comment Henry finally seemed to relax. If they could joke about it, they were going to be okay. "Are you going to yell at Angela and everyone else when you tell them?"

"Nah, I saved all the pent-up angst for you. I'll be calmer with everyone else."

"You're welcome," said Neal.

"Yeah, whatever."

"I almost thought you were going to tell me over Thanksgiving."

"Uh-huh. You and all your hints about closets. Real subtle, kiddo." Henry leaned back on the bench seat, hands behind his head, and looked up at the sky. "I considered it, but chickened out. Plus we were guests of the Burkes. I realized I needed a place like this, where I could vent and yell and get it all out there without anyone rushing in to ask what's wrong."

"There's nothing wrong with you." Neal put his feet up. "Well, you're kind of ugly..." They bantered for a while, and were both smiling when the yacht returned to the dock.

As they were walking into a Korean-Hawaiian fusion restaurant to meet everyone for dinner, Henry tensed up again. "Listen, I appreciate your support," he said. "But I understand if you're not comfortable hanging out the way we used to, once people know."

Neal stared at him in shock a moment and then, in full view of their families, pulled him into a hug and muttered, "You're still my best friend, even when we're not in Oz anymore."