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Chapter 1: Refuge (edited)

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Note to self, your mother is not okay with gay people, I thought to myself as I was laying back in the guest room of my best friend's house, my hands balled into fists and over my eyes. Don't cry, don't cry. The mantra kept repeating in my head, but it didn't make that one solitary tear stop.

I thought back to all the events of the last few hours

I walked nervously into the kitchen, wringing my hands out of shear terror.

"Err. Mom?" I said as I approached her petite, 5, 2" figure. Even though my height was sitting at nearly seven foot, this tiny, little woman could still instil a terror in me in a way that no one else could. Although this was the woman who singlehandedly ran the church Sunday School every Sunday and would preach her religious views every time someone stepped foot in her house, she had strict views on what was tolerated or not. Maybe her Sunday activities made her even more strict, if that's even possible. This is what scared me.

"Oh good, you're back! I am just finishing off diner. Mac 'n Cheese! It's still your favourite, right?" she threw a smile over her shoulder.

"Oh, for sure! Especially the way you make it." I looked around me, almost as if to ensure no one else was around, even though I knew it was just the two of us. Dumbass. Dad had disappeared years ago, and since then, it's just been mom and I.

"Mom, could we talk?"

"Sure, love. I just need to get this." She swiftly pulled the pan out of the oven and slipped off her oven mitts, her motions fluid and graceful. "What going on, love?"

I sat down on one of the bar stools with the flowery pattern that we kept in the kitchen, " I realised something a little while back, but I've been too scared to talk to you about it."

"Love, we worked through your father leaving. We even worked through all the bullying of your friend in Grade Eight. We can work through anything." She softly cupped my cheek with her hand.

I pulled my face out of her hand and looked down into my hands and mumbled, "I think I'm gay."

She lifted my chin up so I would look at her, her expression giving nothing away, "What do you mean you think you're gay?"

I sighed, knowing she wouldn't like this and dreading the outcome. But I knew this would come out and it's better if she heard it from me, "You're right, I shouldn't say it that way. Mom, I'm gay."

"Jeremy, you had better be joking." She crossed her arms and looked up at me with a stern expression, "You know my views on this topic. Please just say that you are joking."

I looked into her eyes and saw the tears beading up in her once warm green eyes. I say once warm, because they seemed to be getting colder by the second.

"Mom, I'm not making a joke here! I'm gay. I like men!"

She leant back against the counter and put her head in her hands her shoulder length hair falling over her face, "Get your stuff and get out of my house." She muttered.

"Mom, please..." I tried to reason with her, but she cut me off.

"I told you to get out" She threw her hands away from her face and pointed to the door, red faced with anger, "I will not have a heathen living under my roof!" she punctuated her statement with a stomp of her foot.

She walked back to the Mac 'n Cheese and started cutting it into neat little squares with the spatula, just like she had done since before I can remember.