“I could never forget that I’m yours, Ma’am.”
She’d never asked him to call her that. It had slipped out of him the first time they were together, an automatic expression of polite address, and her reaction had been electric. He didn’t call her Ma’am all the time. Just when he wanted to watch her eyes grow dark with arousal and see her nipples grow tight. It was his version of her asking him to wear panties.
“Answer me,” his father says with a thump of big fists on the table, drawing Reese’s attention back to the present.
Reese shrugs. “I’m not wearing girls’ clothes, Dad.”
“You’re wearing makeup.”
“It’s just…a thing.” Reese shrugs.
“You look like a fairy.”
“I’m not wearing wings.” Reese grins, but his father doesn’t. There’d been plenty of times when Dad had been able to take a joke, but it seems more and more like he’s set on turning into a grumpy old man who never laughs at anything. “Dad, c’mon. It’s a pink tie and a little eyeliner. Not a big deal.”
“You’ll be out all night in that pink tie, doing what? Wasting your money and your time.”
“It’s fun, Dad. That’s all.” Reese tugs at the knot of the tie. “Here, I’ll take it off, if it offends you so much.”
When he shifts, he can feel the softness of the cotton riding up his ass crack. The panties are meant to fit Corinne, too small on him. She’s right about how they keep him constantly reminded of her.
“Never mind,” his father says. He shakes his head in disgust and waves a hand in Reese’s direction. Dismissing him. “Go out. Go waste your time and your money, come home with a sick belly. You already have the sick head.”
Reese had been backing out of the kitchen to avoid the tirade, but this stopped him, dead still. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
His father won’t look at him. He keeps his attention on the paper spread out on the table in front of him. The after-dinner cigarette smokes in the ashtray. Stinking. Reese’s father looks at what’s in front of him so he doesn’t have to see his only child.
“Dad.”
His father gives another of those dismissive waves, but Reese isn’t going to let him get away with it this time. He steps closer to the table, forcing himself into his father’s line of view until the old man looks up with a long sigh rooted so deep in his guts it seems to take forever to slip from his lips. Reese puts his hands on the table and leans forward, trying to catch his father’s eyes.
“What did you mean? Sick in the head?”
Finally, looking pained, his father raises his head. “Go. Just go. And if you’re going to stumble in with the stink of alcohol on your breath tomorrow morning instead of being ready to help with the milking, you might as well just stay out and not come home.”
“Are you kicking me out?”
“I’m sure,” his father says with a slightly curled lip, “that one of your boyfriends can give you a place to stay, if you need one.”
Reese doesn’t know what to say to this. A dozen responses rise to his tongue and are swallowed, making no sense. He can’t wrap his head around this accusation that feels like it must’ve been building inside his father for a long time.
“I have a girlfriend.”
“Sure, you do. That’s why you bring her around so much.”
Reese hasn’t brought Corinne around because she works nights, because his parents are old-fashioned and might not understand about her being a few years older, they would ask her embarrassing questions about if she goes to church and if she plans to marry him and push out babies. Even if Reese can’t imagine his life without Corinne as part of it, they aren’t anywhere close to that sort of relationship commitment yet. It’s occurred to him that she might not want to actually marry or raise a family with him. She’s never talked about it, never even hinted. In another couple of weeks, they’ll have been together for an entire year.
“I don’t bring her around because I’m afraid you’ll be rude to her.”
At this, his father looks up. His glasses have slipped down his nose. Tufts of hair burst from his ears, his nostrils. His eyebrows have grown immensely thick and gray. All of his dad’s hair has turned gray, and Reese discovers he can’t remember when that happened.
When’s the last time they went to the diner together for breakfast? Reese can’t remember. When’s the last time they did anything but snipe at each other? Reese can’t remember that, either.
He’s sure his dad’s going to say something so Reese can combat it. They can have a fight. It’ll be a little ugly, but Reese might be able to get some of the things off his chest that have been bothering him for a long time. His dad will yell and scold and accuse.