I’m desperately trying to find somewhere else to look, something else to focus on, but I can’t tear my eyes away from Conner. He has the frightened expression of a billy goat. Without even realizing it, I begin to stutter out some demonic mess of syllables.

Our parents are both staring at us oddly.

“Conner,” Ben says. “Say hello.”

“Did you boys already meet at school?” my mom asks.

“No,” I say at the same time Conner says, “Yes.”

Idiot! I think. Never give up any scrap of info to the enemy without being forced to.

“Oh,” I say, “Were you the guy I saw in the bathrooms—” I immediately stop, wondering if everyone else is thinking about how suggestive that sounds.

“No,” Conner says, growing more frantic. “It was outside, I think we passed each other going into school.”

“Yeah,” I say. “I remember now.”

Our parents are still watching, silent, as we unravel this fake ass story. I gulp.

“It’s good to meet,” I say, “officially.” 

“So good to meet you, Conner,” my mom says. “Everyone ready for dinner?”

I don’t know if I should go first, in front of everybody, or hang back with Conner. Would that be more suspicious? Or is it more normal to try and make friends with this supposed stranger? How the fuck am I supposed to know anything about male bonding?

“You just bumped me,” my mom says. I hobble backwards and rush toward the dining room table. 

“Sorry!” I say.

The next challenge: where to sit. I figure it’s better to do my own thing and make everyone else react however they want, so I sit on the far side, not sure if I want Conner to be respectful and sit away from me, or be crazy and sit next to me.

God. Now I understand why so many housewives take Xanax.

My mom sits down next to me, immediately neutralizing the Conner threat. My mind starts wandering to what might have happened if he’d sat next to me; bumped knees, grazing feet, jostling elbows…

I snap back into reality. Ben and Conner sit down across from us. I keep my head down, unable to meet Conner’s eye anymore.

“We really appreciate you two coming over here tonight,” my mom says. I don’t nod, or make any indication that I can even hear what she’s saying. “Ben? Do you want to start?”

Ben clears his throat. “Sure. As you boys know, we’ve been…seeing each other for about three months now.”

Three months? I had no idea it had been that long. Whenever my mom mentioned Ben, it seemed like some casual adult fling, like a stay-at-home mom just having fun.

“We met when I was coming out here to look at properties,” Ben continues, and I notice my mom beaming at him the whole time he talks. “I stopped at the diner in town, saw a beautiful woman working on a scarf while she waited for her food—”

“Ben,” my mom says, blushing. “Stop it.”

“—and I knew I had to say something. We hit it off, and then I kept coming up with new excuses to drive to town every week.”

“That’s why you made all those bizarre trips to check on ‘reliable tool stores?’” Conner says. It feels good to at least know I wasn’t the only one blindsided.

“The important thing is,” my mom says, “you both live here now. And Ben and I thought it was the right time for everybody to meet. It’s so important to both of us that this is okay with our kids.”

“What, are we going to vote like on Survivor?” I mumble. My mom shoots me a fierce look. But a small smile passes over Conner’s lips.

“I mean, I don’t know,” I say, because my brain has successfully managed to disconnect itself from my mouth. I’m talking just to rile things up, make something happen so it’s not just me who is feeling this craziness. “Divorce is a constant threat, as I’m sure you both know, and with kids and two jobs and mortgages, it’s even more complex. At this point, best bet for either of you would just be to embrace your fluid sexuality and run off to some mountain polycule and invest in non-heterosexual relationships, as I’m sure Conner would agree with—”

Conner immediately starts talking over me when he hears his name, speaking loudly for the first time this evening.

“That’s so funny, Dean, haha, but seriously, Cathy, Dad, I appreciate that you’re both trying to make this transition as not-weird as possible.”

Conner turns and gives me a death glare, and with the sudden, atmospherically heavy impact of a meteor crashing into me, I realize that Conner isn’t out of the closet.

“Ben has always told me how mature you are,” my mom says to Conner. “Should we start eating?”

I am growing more and more distant from myself. Conner isn’t out. He is sitting across from me, not next to me, even after we made out in a gay bar, and he isn’t out.

I stand up too quickly, making the plates shake.

“Honey?” my mom says.

“Stomach,” I say, gripping my belly, and I rush out of the room.