“I... I don’t know,” I tell her, though I’m not even sure what I mean by that. Because I do know what I want.

I want Brenden. I want me and him, together, every day. I want to love him, and take care of him, and listen to him babble about drag queen competitions on TV, and fuck him so well that he whimpers and trembles for me.

But I don’t know if I should go for it. Don’t know if he’ll forgive me. I don’t know how to make the right choice.

“Hurry up and decide,” May says. “I won’t wait much longer.”

With that, she spins around and walks out, leaving me standing here dumbfounded. And shit. I might not know what the correct choice is, but she’s right. I need to do something.

I start with my dad. Because regardless of what I decide about Brenden, my dad should know the truth about me. It’s way past time.

I think he knows I’ve been avoiding him, because when I show up on his front step and knock on his door, he looks surprised as he opens it. It might be strange that I knock on the door of my childhood home instead of using my key to let myself in, but we don’t have that kind of relationship. And I’m not sure who’s fault that is anymore. Probably mine.

“Hey,” I say. “Are you busy?”

He shakes his head. “Nah, just double-checking the books from when I was gone. Marty isn’t the most organized, but it looks like he did a good job.”

“Can I come in?”

When he steps aside for me, I walk past him and into the living room. It’s cleaner than it usually is, probably because he wasn’t living here for the last month. But there is a thick ledger spread open on the coffee table with a bottle of beer and bag of chips beside it.

I take a seat on the couch, and he plops down in his recliner. The silence stretches between us while I figure out how to start. Maybe I should have figured that out before I came, but honestly, once I got up the nerve to do this, I just needed to get over here before I lost it.

“I need to tell you something,” I say uneasily, scratching my jaw.

“Uh huh,” he says, already sounding unhappy. “And I’m guessing this has something to do with whatever shit was going on with you and Brenden and his family the other day, right?”

That catches me off guard, even if it shouldn’t, and anything else I might have said next flies out of my head.