“God, Mom, you make me sound like such a loser,” I deflect, her calm, loving presence unable to cover up my own discomfort at having what is shaping up to be a pretty embarrassing conversation.

“You’re not a loser, Caleb,” she assures me. “You have a beautiful gift. I wouldn’t change anything about you.”

“But…” I lead, wobbling on the diving board again.

“But, when you’re a parent, you hope your child is…”

“Normal?” I finish for her, feeling like a failure. The genuine love she has for me is in every cell of my body, but that doesn’t stop my own body from producing disappointment like that’s the only thing it knows how to make.

“Yes,” she agrees sadly. “We love that you’re you, that you have this ability. But it might make things harder for you. Just like—” She stops herself mid-sentence and I fully understand how frustrating it must have been for Adam all those months. I badly want to know what she was about to say. And then, thinking of Adam helps me put the pieces together.

“Just like dating a guy might make things harder for me?” I grimace and I feel the cloying toffee of pity drip into my stomach.

We haven’t exactly had the Conversation yet, because I’m not sure how to have it. Or if we even need to. My parents haven’t asked and I haven’t told them, but we all know. Or at least, I think they know. If not, I may have just dropped a bomb on my poor mother. But I don’t feel any surprise from her, so I doubt it.

“We love Adam,” she says, squeezing my arm, and then that rickety uncertainty crops up again. “That is who you’re talking about, right? There’s not some other boy that we haven’t met that you’ve been secretly dating?”

I can feel that she’s teasing me a little—calling me out for not being up-front with her—but there’s also a genuine question in there.

“No, Mom,” I say, rolling my eyes, “there’s no other secret guy. It’s Adam. Just Adam.”

“Well”—she pats my arm again, extremely awkwardly this time—“that’s good. He is a very nice young man.”

“He is…” I start, trying to edge back to the point despite the fact that, now that I’m here, I really don’t want to have this conversation. Better to get it over with, though, I guess.

“He is a nice young man,” I echo, trying to find my words. “He is very nice. And … a man.”

I look up from my lap to see my mom’s bemused expression. She’s trying not to laugh at me and close to completely failing. I’m not worried anymore about this conversation going sideways but I really, really want to run from the room.