Cold Roses

In her living room, a blonde-haired woman put pen to paper. She scribbled away furiously; her hand beginning to cramp from all of the many documents she had – and still had yet, to sign. She took a swig from the glass of aged bourbon that was placed dangerously close to the paper which she wrote upon.

In the doorway, her young son appeared. His form was dwarfed by the frame, and his presence was not noticed by his mother; too busy in her own affairs to pay attention to anything but the area directly before her.

"Mum?" The boy spoke.

The woman perked up out of her daze; her annoyance very visible on her face. "What?" She anticipated an answer.

Somehow completely oblivious to his mother's irritation, the boy ruffled his hand through his hair. "I think..." He wanted to find the correct words to say. This had been weighing on his young mind for a while.

"I think I like boys, the way that you do."

There wasn't a second of quiet, before the expression on his mother's face became that of shock – rather than anger. The pen which she held loosely in her right hand now snapped, from the amount of force which she applied to it.

"Excuse me!?"

A brown-haired man waited by his blue rotary phone. Anxiously, he tapped his fingers on the table in front of him; there was a visible frown on his face, although his eyes couldn't be seen behind the fringe obscuring them.

He stood in his living room; it wasn't the same home in which he had grown up in, but instead, it had been passed down to him when he had become of age.

Dread rose in his chest; this was a conversation which he hadn't wanted to have with anyone – especially not his wife. The ringing of the phone was agonising to him; the world seemed to slow down with every subsequent ring. Throughout the entire thirty second ordeal, he warred with himself as to if he even should say what he was about to.

He wasn't doing this because he was cheating on her, in fact, he'd rather remain single until he had finished university. This wasn't a necessity, he had thought. However, the more time passed – the more he realised that the sooner he talked to Julie regarding this topic, the less damage that would inevitably result from it.

He mused of his daughter; she was coming up on a year old now. When he had seen her short red hair, and mismatched eyes for the first time – he had felt love unlike anything he had ever experienced in his life.

He wished that he was able to tell Julie in person. However, between her and Margot living in Australia, and his university life, he was too busy to make the long trip.

Telling his wife was necessary. Margot's safety was necessary. If he could ensure that his daughter was kept away from his side of the family, then that was the kindest thing he could do for her.

In a way he was grateful. He didn't need to tell any kind of lie to get that end result.

His thoughts were finally interjected, as Julie picked the phone and greeted him.

"Hello?" Her soft voice came through the speaker.

"Julie, it's me. How are you both?" The man replied, a solemn smile now in place of his frown.

The pair exchanged platitudes, and rather than his anxiety rising further – the man's determination to tell the truth grew. Eventually, there came a point in the conversation where the man felt ready to come clean.

"There's something which I need to tell you." He had interrupted a rather lengthy silence. In his nineteen years of life, he'd never quite understood when it was correct to speak. "I can't keep lying to myself, anymore."