This changes everything

Chapter 10: Parents

The next couple weeks were great. Things were good between me and Leah, we would spend a couple days together a week getting to know each other more, like our families, bad habits, favourite foods, and favourite movies.  

One of those days she spent raving about her parents and her brother. 

"They're my biggest supporters, even though I don't play for dad or Jacob's favourite team, do you have any siblings?" 

"No just me, my parents got divorced a few years ago, but dad and mum are still good friends" 

"Why did they get divorced?" 

"I guess my dad just wanted to come back to England, he didn't really have anyone in Canada except us and mum didn't want to, even though she's not really close with her family anyway" 

I lied to her about that.  It wasn't something I was proud of, but my life is complicated, my brother died and my parents got divorced almost right after.  There were some things she didn't need to know and this was one of them.  

Leah then had international break with the England national team.  They had qualifiers for the Olympics this summer and even though it's a Great Britain team it's usually mostly English players.   

Due to the international break I had the week off of my placement.  Most of the team plays at the international level and the few that stayed my professor said it wasn't worth it for me to come in and that I should work on my thesis instead. 

I also wanted to use this week to tell my parents that Owen and I split.  I told Leah she wasn't allowed to ask me on a date until I did.  I wasn't ready to tell them that I was gay, as I was still becoming comfortable with it myself, but telling them about Owen was a step in the right direction. 

---- 

It was a Thursday night and I sat on my couch working away on my thesis.  At this point I had made great progress and I was polishing my introduction.  I had been working on this part for a month.  It's a completely different version from when I started it a month ago.  I wanted it to be perfect. 

On this Thursday night I worked up the courage to call my dad and tell him.  I knew he would probably take the news better than my mum.  I could've called them together as they still get along but I wanted this to be separate conversations. 

He picked up the phone rather quickly. 

"Hello daughter" 

He would always refer to me as daughter, he thought it was funny. 

"Hey dad, what's going on" 

"Just spending some time reading the news with Molly" 

He tilted his phone to show the cat curled up beside him.  

"Dad I need to tell you something and you can't get mad" 

"What's up?" 

"Owen and I split" 

I blurted it out and I braced myself for whatever reaction was about to come my way. 

"Oh no, what happened" 

He seemed sympathetic. 

"He just turned out not to be a good guy, I'm sorry I know you and mum loved him, but I just wasn't happy" 

"Why are you apologizing?" 

I knew exactly why, but I could never admit the real reason. 

"I don't know"