I gestured vaguely to Henry with one hand, curling the fingers of my other hand tightly around my Dr. Pepper. "He reacted fine," I said, speaking up. "My mom reacted fine. My little brother, Pete, all your friends at school, they reacted fine, didn't they?"
Frank squirmed a bit, rolling those honey-hazel eyes of his. "That's not the same, Gerard, can we just talk about it later?"
"Why can't we talk about it now?"
He glanced across the room at Henry. "Just- please, Gerard."
"Fine," I said, sighing. "Whatever. We'll talk about it later."
The three of us fell into silence.
Henry stood up and excused himself to the kitchen.
"Mikey and your mom reacted fine because they already knew about your sexuality," Frank said, suddenly, as soon as Henry was out of the room. "Pete was okay with it because he's not straight, anyway, and the other guys at school were okay with it because they all already knew that Pete isn't straight, so there wasn't much new about me."
"But...?"
Frank was looking at his can of Pepsi, staring at it like the page of a book, like it was suddenly the single most interesting object in the whole entire world. "But my mom is one of those people who makes jokes about stuff like that," he told me. "She makes lesbian haircut jokes and she laughs at gay guys like they're a joke, too. It's so stupid. I think she thinks anyone who likes someone of the same gender is instantly an idiot. What if she- well."
"What if she makes jokes about you, too?" I asked, finishing his sentence.
Frank glanced up at me sadly, nodding. "What if she hates me for who I choose to love?"
I sighed at his choice of wording. "Frank, your mom doesn't approve of a lot of things you do and say..."
Frank laughed a dry laugh. "I've noticed."
"Yeah. But, well- why let this be the line at which she breaks you? Why are you letting your sexuality be the point at which what she says finally gets to you?"
He turned his head and I was left staring at the back of his head for what felt like the millionth time.
"Gerard," he said, voice trembling slightly. "She's always gotten to me, about everything. She makes me hate myself; she makes me want to die."
I chewed the inside of my lip for a few seconds. "Why are you sleeping here the next few nights, then? If you don't like her, I mean?"
He paused for a long moment, and I stared at him, at his soft, curly mop of black hair, but he just kept looking away.
"Frank?"
"It's not important," he said, eventually.
We stopped talking after that.
---
I went home alone.
I'd stood with Frank on his front porch- "Your mom can't see us, Frank," I assured him, when he denied kissing me goodnight.
He put his hands on my chest, the tips of his fingers touching my collarbones, and I sighed as he glanced at the window nearest us and said, "We don't know that for sure," and just hugged me instead, his cheek pressing against my neck, mine against his hair.
It was the first time in a long time that I'd entered my own home without either Frank already being there, or Frank trailing close behind me, and Mikey noticed that, too.
Chapter Twenty-Three - Gerard's POV
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