Hugo’s face had nearly split from his smile, and he had to discreetly wipe away a few tears as Kevin finished up his final graduation platitudes. The students had been riveted and erupted into applause after the speech. But apparently Peder Magnus hadn’t been nearly as affected by his son’s brutal honesty.
“I don’t get why your dad wasn’t impressed with your words,” Hugo shared.
Kevin shrugged and gripped the armrest on his leather chair. “I talked about mistakes, and he’s all about perfection. It wasn’t positive was his main critique. It wasn’t the optimistic, team-building, success crap he was used to spewing at people in his job.”
“Thank God! Who needs that tripe? Honesty is a much better way to effect change, in my humble opinion, and every person fucks up. An internal locus of control is what leads to success after failure, not external bullshit speeches or motivational posters hanging on a wall. You showed our class that we were responsible for our own success, our own change.”
“That was my hope,” Kevin said with a shy smile. “I took a risk. I took a risk with the whole speech, but I did it for the kids in that room, not for my dad, for once. I did nearly everything for that man, up until that point.”
Hugo knew it was true, but he’d always seen Kevin’s speech as the beginning of his own new life, the beginning of his
out
life.
“It was brilliant. It was honest. How many times had we been told our high school years were our best years?”
“Nearly every day our entire senior year, if I recall correctly,” Kevin quipped.
“Exactly. I couldn’t wait to get out of there. Austin, too. They were far from my best years. College was about a hundred times better, and life just improves nearly every year. Sure,
I
have to pay my bills now, but shit, I’d rather do that and live where I choose rather than deal with the bullshit of hiding and lying about who I am.
“I know I was still discreet around Austin that summer, but in my head I was already making changes and plans about being out of the closet at the U. And it was partially because of your speech. Add to that the things my dad said before he died, and I was pretty much flaming my first year away.”
“Flaming? So you decided on painting flames on your dad’s shoes rather than the lightning bolts then, huh?” Kevin’s eyes crinkled in the corners as he gave a crooked smile.
Hugo laughed, high-pitched and full, his head falling back as he slapped a thigh. “I can’t believe you remember my dad’s eulogy.”
“I’m not the only master orator in the room,” he teased. “I remember because it was such an amazing visual to me. I could picture you literally painting on your father’s shoes because, at the time, I don’t think you really believed you’d ever be anywhere as great as you thought he was.”
Hugo leaned forward and met Kevin’s gray eyes, giving him a serious look. “I don’t think we’re meant to fill our dads’ shoes. Our dads’ shoes fit
their
feet, not ours.”
Kevin sobered, swiping his hand over his mouth, slowly pinching his lower lip between his thumb and fingers. “I know that now. I knew it a long time ago, but I’ve just recently learned to listen to the other voice in my head, the one that isn’t influenced by my father. It got louder after Dad died. I’m trying, Hugo, but I was never as strong as you. I’ve made some huge changes in the last year. I finally told Erin I wanted out. We’d practically been roommates since Finn was a toddler.”
“You don’t have to tell me about this if you don’t want to, Kevin.”
“No. You should know.” Kevin took a large swallow of wine, which finished off his glass, and he quickly excused himself to get the bottle from the kitchen so he could refill both their glasses. After getting resettled, Kevin faced Hugo straight on and took a deep, steadying breath.
“I wasn’t home much. I traveled for my job before I was promoted six months ago. Despite not wanting to with all of my heart and soul, I became like my father, so focused on success I lost sight of what was important. Absent. I’d like to think I wasn’t quite the prick he was, but….
“When the kids were born, Erin buried herself in their lives. All she talked about was what was happening with the kids. Not that I didn’t care. I really did. I was missing out on it because I was all across the country trying to sell fertility equipment to hospitals and clinics. I appreciated her updates. We’d Skype so I could talk to my kids and see Erin, say good night, at least. But we drifted apart. It’s hard to maintain a good marriage through a computer screen, especially when all she wanted to do was focus on the kids and never us.
“But then she started getting restless when Finn was about one, going a little stir-crazy. She wanted to move. For some reason she was suddenly convinced that if we moved to a different house, everything would be better with our marriage, with our lives.
“We were doing well financially, but if we moved, it would mean a higher mortgage. It was the housing boom, so properties were going fast and for a lot more than they were worth. We were already in Edina, which is about as pricy as you can get here, but we’d bought our house before any of the crazy housing bubble stuff happened. We were sitting pretty compared to a lot of our neighbors. I refused, but she kept working on me.
“She eventually convinced me to sell some stock to make a hefty down payment on this place instead, and we fixed it up.” Kevin gestured to the lake house, and Hugo followed his gaze around the beautiful home. “This was supposed to be a place to come and reconnect as a family, but it ended up being something else. Suddenly, I was working more hours to pay two mortgages and spending even less time at home. I wanted to sell this place, turn it around after all the updates and make a profit, but by that point, Erin refused to sell. When she was in junior high, her parents bought a cabin near Detroit Lakes, but they sold it about five years ago. I think that’s why she wouldn’t let this place go. She hung on for dear life because she never wanted our kids to fear water like she did growing up. I kept it because I wanted to make my marriage work. I wanted to keep my family together.”
Hugo took sips of wine, content with quietly listening and giving Kevin the chance to unload that he seemed to need.
“Anyway, that doesn’t really matter. I don’t know why I even brought all that up except, maybe I’m still trying to justify things to a fricking ghost. Dad told me to liquidate my assets and sell. What my wife wanted for our kids or our marriage be damned. It’s illogical, but Erin wanted our kids to grow up with water in their lives.” Kevin started laughing, but it wasn’t a kind or nice laugh. It was bitter and sad. “We live in the land of ten thousand fricking lakes. There’s water everywhere,” he said with a raised voice and hands gesturing in the air. When his palms came down and slapped on his knees, he shook his head and just looked sad.
Hugo moved to sit on the arm of Kevin’s chair, fingers caressing the soft skin at the nape of his neck. Why it felt so natural to do so was hard to pinpoint, but Hugo didn’t question it aside from his initial fleeting thought. They sat in silence for a few minutes; the only sounds they could hear were the children laughing with Summer down at the beach. It was a really good sound, and it seemed to shift Kevin’s mood slightly so he could speak again.
“I already felt like a stranger to my wife and kids, but all the extra work just made it worse. I could afford this place; I just didn’t realize the price I was actually paying. I know I screwed up.
“The crazy thing about it all is that Erin thinks it’s completely her fault too. With me always gone, the kids were it for her. I’d get home on a Friday or Saturday, and then she’d head out with her friends because she needed a break from being so kid-focused. Even though she loved being the classroom mom, PTA president, and all that, she also needed to be with other adults. I just wasn’t the adult she wanted to be with anymore.
“Long story short, if that’s even possible at this point.” Kevin chuckled as he squeezed Hugo’s knee in apology. “We went to couples therapy. We tried to salvage things. But there just wasn’t a way to do it. The fighting was starting to happen in front of the kids. Brooke was having problems in school, and Finn was wetting his pants again. It was the stress. Erin started getting these horrific migraines that would last for days. I was screwing my family up.” Kevin shook his head in defeat. “She’d been dropping subtle hints about letting our relationship go for months. I always blew them off, pretended I didn’t hear her. In therapy, I was fighting so hard to not have our marriage fail, but not so hard at trying to make our marriage succeed. When I realized I couldn’t even feel love for Erin anymore, I finally agreed to a divorce and suggested it in therapy one day.
“And to add insult to injury, five months after we separated I got a huge promotion at work which doesn’t require
any
travel, and I got a raise. Paying for both houses is easy now even with a simple forty-hour workweek. I’m around more for the kids, which I’m glad for, but I can’t do the same for Erin. There’s been too much distance for too long.”
Hugo didn’t know how to respond. He gave Kevin a slow nod while looking into gray eyes, trying to determine if there was anything
to
say in this situation, or would his words just sound empty? He finally decided he needed to say
something
.
“I know you said you’ve made a lot of changes. Did you finally agree to the divorce after your dad died?” he asked, fully anticipating the answer he got.
“Yeah. Coward until the end.”
“Kevin, don’t say that about yourself.”
He shrugged and sat forward in his chair. “I don’t know why it matters, but I’m pretty sure my dad would’ve seen the divorce as just another reason I was a failure. But it’s done. Well, almost.”
Hugo’s head swiveled quickly so he could get a better look at Kevin’s face. “What do you mean
almost
?” He could hear the concern in his own voice, the fear.
“We’ve been separated since last August, so eleven months. We’re just waiting for our court date before the divorce is final. We’ve already hashed everything out with lawyers, so it’s basically our day in court. That’s all.”
“And she has custody?” Hugo asked, not entirely sure about how custody worked aside from what he’d learned from his friend Carl who’d gotten a divorce after coming out in his forties. He saw his kids from time to time, but they lived with their mom.
“We’ll have joint legal and physical custody. I get them every other weekend, some Wednesdays, and we have a holiday schedule. We’re already trying to use the schedule we’ve agreed on to see how it works. I wanted the Fourth of July, but it was her holiday. That’s why I had to drive to get them yesterday. They were all visiting her parents earlier in the week.”
“Wow. Sounds complicated,” Hugo admitted.
“It is. I think we talk more now than we did during the last five years of our marriage. We get along better now too. That took some intense therapy sessions where we were both forced to grow up and shift our focus away from each other and on to creating a good working relationship for the kids’ sake. It’s like, once we were able to drop all the anger and resentment we’d held on to for so many years, we were able to go back to who we used to be. I don’t think we’d even liked each other, let alone loved each other, for years. But she’s a really great person. I like her now. I can even envision us being the great friends we started out as in college.”
“Not to be redundant,” Hugo said, “but wow. I have very little to say beyond that. Wow.”
Kevin chuckled and smacked Hugo’s thigh. “What, no war stories for you?”
Hugo shrugged but then decided to go for broke. “I haven’t had sex for over a year because of my cheating ex.”
“Why’s that?”
“It’s not a pretty story. We’d been together for three years, and I thought we were exclusive. So when he pushed to get rid of condoms, I didn’t really give it enough thought. It was just us, and it had been for well over two years. We didn’t ever bring anyone else into our bedroom. There were no random hookups. We went and got tested regularly and nothing ever showed up. It was stupid, I realize, now that I know he had regular fuck buddies that last year.”
“Man. That’s bad.”
“Yeah. You’re telling me.”
“How’d you find out?”
“Walked in on him fucking a guy without a condom on. I went to the doctor and told them what happened, and they considered PEP.”
“PEP?”
“Oh sorry. Postexposure prophylaxis. Basically, you take antiretrovirals if you think you might’ve been exposed to HIV, but it turns out I wasn’t, thank God.” Hugo always quickly added that last bit of important information when telling people this story.
“I’d say.” Kevin sounded relieved, but Hugo knew he needed to give him more reassurance considering what they’d already done together.
“They aren’t fun drugs to be on, and the doctor wasn’t sure it would help anyway, considering the timing. The exposure could’ve taken place months prior to me finding out because I didn’t know the history. I hunted my ex down and told him he had to get tested and that I wanted the results of every test he’d had in the previous year. He ended up going to the clinic with me and talking to the doctor I talked to. He admitted to bare-backing the kid I walked in on him with but said that was it. Supposedly, the kid was fresh off the farm when they hooked up.”
“I take it you weren’t convinced,” Kevin guessed.
“No. I didn’t know this kid, but I found him and talked to him. Turns out he really was as green as my ex said, and I took him to get tested. I told him to never let a guy he didn’t know and trust fuck him raw again.”
“I hope he listened.”
“Me too. Anyway, we were all clean, but it put me off sex for a long time. And I got tested every chance I had because I didn’t trust the results. Each time I tested, I expected to be positive, but I finally got to the point where I trusted the results.”
“That’s certainly a war story.”
“Of a sort.”
“Come on. Enough of the psychological mêlée in our heads. If we keep this up we’ll never eat. Let’s get the veggies on the grill now that they’ve had time to marinate.”