Allegro con fuoco

XXIV

Now, he had known he was playing with fire here, of course, but he still hadn't expected her to react quite like this. She dropped her chopsticks in her food, which was not like her at all, and her eyes all at once seemed to spit fire.
"They like... like each other?"
His heart sank, but at the same time he righted his back. I mean, he had said A now, right? He needed to say B? But to be honest, part of him could already kick himself. Why had he gone here, when he could have just kept this to himself and kept eating his rice? She would have been happy. He would not have been in trouble.
"Yeah. So they're an item now." he said resignedly.
She was quiet for so long, her face pale, her lips taut, that his heart started to beat out of his chest. Why did it suddenly feel almost like he told her about himself? Then she took a deep breath and picked her chopsticks up again.
"Eddy." she said, in her very stern voice. "I don't think I'm happy with you living that way, with two men who... who..."
The clear disgust on her face almost made him cry. Why had he even thought about the possibility of being out with her, back in Taipei? He knew this, didn't he? And if she was reacting like this to his friends being gay, being together, how would she react to the whole truth?
She would never accept him. Never. He could feel the tears pricking behind his eyes, but he managed to swallow them down.
"It's okay, mum." he said quietly. "You don't need to worry about it, nothing's really changed."
"Like hell it hasn't!" she suddenly half shouted. "Eddy. You should come live here again. I don't want this."
All at once he couldn't breathe. Wait. She wanted him to move back in?
What?
And he knew instantly what the good little boy he used to be would have done. He would have gone back, moved back into a room with a cracked mirror, to stare out of a window waiting for his love to come walking down the path. He would have ruined his own life, just to make hers better. But suddenly soft words that John had spoken floated through his head once more.
You can follow your own path.
He righted his back again, pulled his shoulderblades together. Then he shook his head hard.
"I'm sorry, mum." he said in a tone he didn't know he posessed. "I know how you feel about this. It's not how I feel, though. They are the same guys they've always been, and I love them both dearly. I'm not moving out. And I hope you can accept them for who they are, just as we all do. They deserve that."

He got up from the table, because he simply couldn't stay there. He walked over to the garden doors and looked outside, at the greenery, at the plastic table where he once sat with his friends. Would he still be welcome here now?
"I need to think." his mum said quietly behind him, but her tone was still deadly. And he knew exactly what that tone meant.
He was being kicked out.
But he was not backing down. Not anymore.
Never again.
"Okay, mum." he said as he turned around. He walked over and pressed a kiss to her black hair. It smelled of her shampoo, so familiar, and once upon a time so comforting. "Please. Don't be mad. It's all good."
He slowly walked out of the room, put his shoes on and left.
She never said another word.