Sasquatch to the Moon

41: What Could I Do?

i'm just gonna say this: this is 5k words. I'm trying not to break 100 chapters so this is all one piece. If i was still at like, idk, thirty chapters, I would have broken this into two segments because this is an exhausting length. 

HÅKON

I wasn't lying when I told him he gave me bad ideas. Lots of them. A whole array. An entire setup of shitty decisions.

One of which I was hoping would happen tomorrow but appears to not be, from the looks on my parents faces when I show up at noontime to help my dad disassemble some remaining things from the wedding.

"Before we start,"

Haha, fuck.

My dad keeps talking. "We want to ask about the boy you brought home."

I tighten up my posture, slipping my hands into my pockets to fiddle with the little slip of paper he left in my sleeve last night. "What about him?"

They take a moment but my mom continues. "He's your..." She makes a face. "lover. Isn't he?"

I consider for a moment. I could deny it, keep going in a weird situation with them not knowing the first thing about me and living peacefully, being able to come back for family functions albeit awkwardly, but there. Or I could be honest. Or I could come out to them.

"And?" I manage.

They stare blankly at me and I catch that they didn't get what I meant.

"So what if he is, I mean, it doesn't really bother you." I try to come up with something to say. "It's not like you're going to care if I told you I think your relationship isn't right, so why would you be able to weigh in on mine?"

"Because," my dad takes a deep breath, ready to gaslight the shit out of me. "Because our relationship is allowed and yours is not."

"It's legal," I mutter. "It's been legal since the 80s. Even before that it's been allowed here. And it's been proven countless times that the one phrase that says it's a sin is just a mistranslation."

"Mistranslation or not, it's still not natural." Dad tries with me.

"Homosexuality has been recorded in almost every living species." I stare directly at the floor, too scared my voice is going to break over itself out of nervousness. "Just say you're homophobic and be done with it."

"So what if I am?" Dad starts. "It's not right, it's not natural, it's not normal, it's simply something you're doing as a passing interest to get a rise out of us."

I mentally shake off my nerves. I ignore that these aren't just random other hockey players but in fact my parents. With one, almost monumental deep breath, I work up the courage to do anything in this situation. "I've been gay since the second I started breathing, you wanna tell me when this passing interest is going to stop? It's been 26 years!"

"It's a mental illness!"

"It's just another thing about me!" I shout back, eyes closed, pretending this is just someone random, faceless people I'm yelling at for no reason. "Just like my height or my eye color, I'm just gay and that's that."

"But it's in your head and you can change that! Why haven't you changed that! Do you want to be a disappointment? Do you want to go to hell?" His voice is shrill, too harsh, too much of a lot of things and it's cutting through my thin veil of imagination. I'm not quite as strong at imagination as Milo. 

"Because you can't change it?" I stare blankly at the floor. 

"Yes you can." My dad slaps his hand on the table and I step backward, looking up, image broken.