In the Language of the Flowers

| 34 |

✾ Water Lily ✾

{Gentle warning: NSFW ahead...}

"Was it because you're gay?" I blurted. Beau froze in the middle of drying the dish he was holding. He stared at me. 

"Huh?" he said. He raised one eyebrow really high and squinted at me. "Was what because I'm gay?"

"Your aunt. Is that why she didn't want you to live with them?" I said, squeaking the faucet off despite half the dishes still lying dirtied in the sink. 

Fuck it, I thought. Now was as good a time as any. Since I'd gotten home, Beau had been quiet. I felt like I couldn't talk to him, and I hated it. It was like we were so used to keeping our hearts in check, terrified of scaring each other away, that we forgot we even had hearts in the first place. They were just sitting there in the dark, beating angrily at their neglect. 

I just had to come out and say something, had to rip my heart out and show it to him even though it felt like doing so would inevitably end in me bleeding. 

"What brought this up?" he asked, finishing the plate. I watched his hands move. His fingers were so thin. The moment he set the plate down, I slid those thin fingers between mine. He smiled. "Your hands are soaking wet." 

I kissed his knuckles. "You can talk to me about it." 

His smile faded. He averted his eyes, instead staring at where our hands met. His fingers moved between mine playfully, falling into the gaps between them and hugging their curves. My hand felt warm despite the cold water. 

"Yeah. That's why," he confirmed. He was sad, but not in any obvious way. The emotion he slowly revealed to me was somewhere on the spectrum between shame and sorrow. I couldn't place where exactly...or maybe it changed from moment to moment. "My aunt told me that I was an abomination. Before mom died, she never said anything. I couldn't understand why she always acted so coldly towards me. I always assumed it was because she had a grudge against mom." 

Beau finally looked at me. His expression was bold, not broken. He held his head high. I stared at the spot where his elegant jawline dipped against his slender neck. His hair was getting long now. A few curls twisted down well past his ears, venturing farther than they ever had before. 

"Turns out, her grudge was against me," he continued, "but I'm lucky enough to be able to say that her words never really reached me. Not in any real way, at least. Never once did I believe her when she told me that my 'choice' is sinful or that my mother clearly must have done something wrong to raise such a boy."

"How come?" I asked. 

His hands froze once more. This time, he dropped my hand and crossed his arms over his chest. He leaned heavily against the counter. "Mom taught me better than to listen to people with closed minds." 

I closed my eyes, drawing my brow together. Emotion washed over me. My eyes ached suddenly, not with tears but with a mystery pain I hadn't ever felt before. Longing, I realized. Real, unsatisfiable longing. That's what I was feeling. Nothing as mundane as desire or lust or a little wish. It was something deeper, a cavernous hole in my life. It felt like somewhere along the way someone had stolen something from me, and I hadn't really noticed until it was too late.
Maybe, in that moment, the course of our reality drew dangerously close to a parallel one in which Vanessa Love Bryant was still alive. Because that's what I longed for so deeply it defied vocalization. I wanted more than anything to meet this woman, and the pain I felt at knowing that I'd never be able to do so made me feel like a long-forgotten child's toy.