chapter 7

"I'm so sorry...about Saturday," he said.

"You..." I knew something happened. Something I did.

"I...I raped you."

"You what!?" I exclaimed.

"I...I didn't even ask if you wanted to...you know. You sounded like I was hurting you, but I didn't stop. It just felt so good. I'm sorry." He was shaking. He thought he raped me? I wanted to laugh, but he was really afraid he hurt me.

"You didn't..."

"You're just so much smaller than I am and I wasn't thinking about what you might have wanted and I just forced you to have sex with me." This was like the most he had ever talked.

"Toby, I wanted to have sex with you."

"You did?" he asked.

"I would have told you if I didn't. I thought I wasn't, uh, go...good at it. I thought that's why you left so fast."

"I didn't...," he started.

"No." I saw his face shine with relief. His handsome freckled face was then covered in a blush of embarrassment.

"I'm so happy."

"Can I kiss you?" I asked. He gave me a half-smile and I felt his lips on mine.

He asked me about when we did have sex. He asked if I liked that he was a bigger guy. I thought it wasn't obvious, but I guess it was.

I told him the truth. I did like it. He wasn't freaked out about it. He said he liked it too. I told him I liked watching him eat. He laughed and told me he was good at that.

I remembered Buck and told him I was thinking about coming out. I wasn't going to let Buck own my life. I was in charge of my future. I held my world in my own hands. Toby said he'd do it too; admit he was gay to everyone. Toby was perfect, absolutely perfect.

"Mom?" I called. I could smell coffee in the house. Toby had just dropped me off.

"Hi Leo," she said.

"How was your trip?" I asked.

"Fine, I'm just tired." She didn't look tired. She looked amazing, like a woman who had just gotten back from a five star resort in some beautiful country.

"Can we talk?"

"Okay." She poured herself a mug of coffee and sat at the kitchen table.

"You already know I'm gay," I started.

"Yeah," she said. She picked at the nail polish on her fingernail like what I was saying was old news and that I was boring her.

"Well, I was hoping you might want to meet my boyfriend."

"Boyfriend?" she asked incredulously. She had stopped focusing on her nail polish and looked up at me. She smiled.

"Yeah, his name is Toby."

"Toby?" she said in a sort of disgusted way. She sipped her coffee. "Sounds dumb..."

"Mom!" I shouted. "That's so rude."

"I knew a Toby. He was a complete idiot. Just because he was cute he thought everyone loved him. We went out for a bit." She sighed, almost happily, before she gave a disinterested chuckle. "I'll never forget Toby Jacoby."

"My boyfriend is a Toby Jacoby..."

"He must be forty!" she shouted. "What the hell is wrong with you?""

"My Toby is only eighteen."

"You're dating Toby Jacoby's son?"

"I guess so?" I said, uncertain. There could definitely be more than one Toby Jacoby...one that wasn't the son of one of my mom's high school flings.

"That's hilarious."

"Mom, why is that so funny?"

"Toby Jacoby is like that Buck kid you told me you don't like." No! That meant he was a homophobic, abusive psychopath. Toby's dad would never be okay with me and Toby. I couldn't let him tell his father.