Wedding Jitters - 1. Chapter 1

I gently pinned the white rose to my lapel. The mirror reflected a man I hardly recognised. Brown hair groomed to perfection, sitting obediently atop my head. A tuxedo jacket clung onto my shoulders, tapering into my slim waist. The crisp white shirt caressed the lines of my torso, tucking into a pair of tapered tuxedo trousers at my waist. The trousers ended without break below my ankles, revealing polished leather shoes. I smiled for practice.

“Trevor,” I heard my mother calling out from behind the door.

“Yes, mother,” I hollered, walking over to welcome her in.

The wooden door swung open to reveal a goddess. Deep purple swathed her petite frame, coming to an end at her knees. She stood atop wedges sandals that had her standing eye-to-eye with me. Her greying hair had been left in its usual bob, the ends curling slightly. Her face bore the marks and lines of her years but she wore them proud. Jade adorned her ears and neck.

Her favourite stone, I mused.

“Oh Trevor,” she gasped as she pulled me into her embrace.

The warmth that radiated from her had me tumbling through time: the smell of grass after rain, lullabies and kisses on my forehead.

I felt her bones through the fabric as I wrapped my arms around her torso.

How brittle they feel, I thought, remembering the sturdiness that had comforted me when I was a child and realised in that instant, that there was nothing I wanted more than to be that bright-eyed ten-year-old.

The warmth of my mother’s embrace dissolved as she pulled back. Her eyes glistened as she stepped aside to let my father in.

His grey hair had thinned further at the crown since the last time I saw him. Two deep blue eyes sat behind thick glasses like sapphires set in their sockets, lines creasing at the outer corner of his eyes.

“Father,” I greeted him.

“Son,” he nodded, smiling as he clapped me on my back.

His usually sharp and discerning eyes seemed unfocused: the same eyes which had narrowed and pierced through the half-truths I told as a child, extorting confessions from my guilty conscience.

I guided them to the couch in the room and sat with them.

“You’re getting married,” my mother said, looking wistful.

“Yes, I am,” I enthused, engaging my practised smile.

Father looked away.

“Actually… we have something to tell you Trevor,” she said, looking at me through a veil of thoughts.

“You’re not about to tell me that you don’t approve, are you?” I joked.

My words lingered heavily in the air as the silence weighed down my grin.

Mother saw my fallen face and interjected, “No, nothing like that.”

“It’s just we need to tell you something before you….,” she paused, “start a new life.”

“O…kay,” I said, wary.

“Just know that, no matter what, you’ll always be our son. We’ll always love you,” my mother rambled, looking flustered.

“Just tell me already,” I said impatiently, nerves tangling in the pit of my stomach.

My parents looked away as tension permeated the air.

“You were adopted,” my father finally said, their eyes still focused on objects in the far corners of the room.

Laughter burst forth from my lips as my parents turned round to look at me: Mother wringing her hands repeatedly as she fingered the golden ring that held her in an eternal promise while Father tapped his pudgy fingers against the top of his lap.

I gathered myself as the last of the laughter left my body in snorts and huffs of air.

“I already knew that,” I said, grinning widely.

“But how?” my mother asked, incredulous.

“Remember when I was twelve and came home asking if you could roll your tongue?” I asked.

My mother nodded as a look of confusion settled on my father’s face.

“Well, neither of you could, and I’ve always been able to,” I explained, rolling my tongue for emphasis.

“It’s one of those genetics things,” I explained, as I watched my mother and father pass looks of perplexity between each other.

“So you’ve known all this time?” my father asked, worried.

“Well, I slowly pieced it together from what everybody was saying about how we never looked much alike and the tongue-rolling incident pretty much confirmed it,” I recounted.

“We’re sorry we kept it from you for so long,” my mother apologised. I watched as the worry continued to cloud her eyes.

“I was angry at first, and frustrated. But you’ve never been anything but a mother and father to me. You’re always going to be my mom and dad,” I said, the last words coming out softly.

“I forgave you a long time ago.”

I waited for the relief to soothe the worry in their eyes. I waited for them to wrap their arms around me and tell me they loved me. I was left waiting.

“That’s just like you, Trevor,” my mother said, “so forgiving.”

She held my gaze: a worried, loving look

“Why can’t you be that way with yourself?” she whispered.

I looked at her, confused.

“We’ve always known you were gay,” she said.

A silence stretched out between us. My jaw tensed. I pressed my lips together. A steel wall slammed down inside me.

“Don’t do that,” my mother cooed, as she reached out to stroke my face.

“Don’t fight yourself anymore. Don’t run away.”

She slid over to my side and put her frail hand around my shoulders, pulling my head down onto her bony shoulder.

The comfort of her fingers running through my hair and the warmth of her arms made me feel like a child again: lost and unsure.

My jaw twitched, lip trembled and the wall inside me crumbled. Strength slowly leeched out of my pores as I leaned against my mother: her aged bones holding up my limp frame. Numbness flooded my body: my mind wandering through a narcotic haze.

“You don’t have to do this,” her voice floated to me.

“Don’t do this to yourself.”

“Don’t do this to Gladys.”

“You deserve to be happy.”

“You deserve more.”

I heard her words but their meaning eluded me. I just lay on my mother’s shoulder, staring blankly into space.

Cold hands grasped the sides of my face, shaking gently. My eyes focused on the face in front of me. Lines creased her forehead: evidence of her years, grey eyes gazed at me; pain and love swirling behind a layer of unshed tears.

“I love her,” I said flatly.

“Do you love her enough?” my mother asked.

There was no judgement in her voice. There was neither disappointment nor disdain. She just asked.

I looked away.

“Why would you think I am gay?” I asked, my voice shaking with a mixture of anger and fear.

“We heard you,” my father spoke.

He removed the glasses that balanced delicately on the bridge of his nose and pinched the corner of his eyes together. He returned the instrument of sight back to its position and sunk into the couch cushions, shoulders slumped in fatigue.

“When you were fifteen, we heard you crying out in your bedroom. We watched as you thrashed about in your sleep, heartbroken. We knew not to wake you. You were in such a delicate stage: so insistent on being independent. You spoke in your sleep, ‘I don’t want to be gay, I can’t.’ and we watched as you cried, ‘I’m not!’” my mother explained, tears finally falling unwillingly from her eyes, clinging to the sides of her face.

“Immediately, I knew I didn’t care. I wanted to tell you it didn’t matter, that I’d love you anyway. But you had a difficult adolescence; you were so angry, so stubborn. Each time I brought up something to do with it, you would be so aggressively defensive. I just wished I would have broached the subject directly,” she continued, her eyes darting to her hands.

“Why didn’t you?” I asked.

“We thought you’d come to terms with it. You seemed happy when you left for college. You seemed determined. We waited for you to come home with someone. We waited for the opportunity to tell you how it didn’t matter. We waited for the day that we could look back and laugh at how we always knew. But the day never came,” my father replied.

I watched the two of them lean in, waiting for a response, waiting for me.

“I was afraid,” I confessed, shame and guilt weighing down my gaze.

“My own parents didn’t fucking want me,” I cussed.

I lifted my eyes. Hurt flickered in their eyes.

I lowered my voice, “And then, you came along and gave me such a beautiful family. You showered me with love. You made me who I am.”

Memories flooded my senses as the joy that emanated from them elicited a smile.

“And despite everything you tried to tell me about loving me no matter what, I couldn’t believe it. I wanted to. I really wanted to. But I couldn’t. I was so afraid,” I continued, my voice cracking.

A teardrop broke the surface of the pool that gathered in my eyes, rolling quietly down my cheeks, leaving a trail of itself behind with every inch, eventually running out.

“I just didn’t want to ruin the one beautiful thing I had.”

A warm hand clasped my own, squeezing it tightly.

“I just want to be alone right now,” I pleaded.

“We understand,” my mother replied, eyes downcast.

Then, she looked back up at me.

“But you have a choice to make, Trevor,” she said.

As they rose and walked towards the door, Mother turned her head, looking at me piercingly with her grey eyes.

“This time, choose you,” her voice pleading, as the door clicked shut.