"Liz..."
Liz turns, when one of her friends alerts her, to see Luke coming in through the garden side gate. Her heart lightens as soon as she sees him, he remembered!
"Sweetheart! You came!" She says, greeting him as he holds his arms out to give her a hug, a big smile on his face as he sees her coming towards him.
"I couldn't miss your big day. Where's Dad?" Luke had already scoped out the garden before he came in, not seeing his father anywhere.
"He's in the house watching the game with all the other men..." Liz tells him, rolling her eyes. Their party this year has coincided with one of the biggest AFL matches of the season.
"Here..." Luke gives her a roll of paper tied up with a ribbon which Liz unwraps.
"Luke this is beautiful," Liz says, a lump forming in her throat seeing a pencil drawing of herself with their old dog, Molly, who had died a few months prior.
"Are you alright, are you eating?" Liz asks him, rolling the drawing back up to protect it.
"Does it look like I'm starving?" Luke opens his jacket with his hands in the pockets, looking down at himself.
"Well, you are staying for dinner?"
Luke cocks his head at her, he wasn't going to stay, "That depends if Dad wants to see me."
"Of course he wants to see you, he's as upset about this as you are!" Liz assures him.
"Really?" Luke's sceptical.
"Of course! He wants you to come home, like I do."
"I want to come home," Luke says, surprising himself. He hadn't thought he wanted to, but coming back here, to all the familiarity...
Liz nearly bursts into tears, instead she hugs him fiercely, relieved that her worries that Luke might never come home again were unfounded. "God Luke, it's so good to hear you say that! Let's go tell him!"
"Wait!" Luke comes back to reality with a bump. "What about his rules?"
"Which rules?" Liz asks with trepidation, her joy slowly dissipating.
"The ones where I can't go out or see Michael..." Luke reminds her. "...Or talk about my disgusting lifestyle?"
"I don't think he meant it quite that way."
"What did he mean?"
"I think he just wants everything to be the way it was," Liz explains.
"But it can't be the way it was. I'm not the way I was," Luke replies, realising for the first time how much he's changed since just a couple of months ago. He doesn't feel the same, doesn't think the same...sometimes he doesn't recognise the old Luke. Coming out completely changed his life, his outlook, the way he views himself and others. He can't go back inside the closet. He needs his Mum to see that.
"And I don't want you to be anything other than who you are," Liz reassures him. "I just...I need to consider the needs of this whole family, not just your desires. You have to understand that..."
"Liz! Liz!" Andy calls from inside the house. Luke moves to the side of the path to let her through, not saying a word as she goes, before leaving through the garden gate once again. Nothing has changed at home yet he's changed completely. He knows that now. He can't go back.
~~~
Michael arrives home with his new trainer, kissing him until the guy is breathless in the lift.
"Wow," the guy breathes, coming up for air.
"That's just the warm up..." Michael assures him as he lift grinds to a stop.
YOU ARE READING
Queer as Muke
Fanfic"The thing you need to know is, it's all about sex. It's true. In fact they say men think about sex every twenty-eight seconds. Of course that's straight men. With gay men it's every nine." Twenty nine year old advertising executive Michael Cliffor...
