Page 20 of If the World Was Ending

“Sure.” Colby swam to the edge of the pool and pulled himself out.

Hunter had opened his eyes and was watching him. Colby paused to shake out his hair, and Hunter laughed. “Dude!”

He held his hands up to shield himself from the water droplets flying everywhere. “Sorry.”

Colby grabbed his towel and then the beer from Hunter’s outstretched hand. Hunter picked up his own open beer and took a long sip while Colby wrapped the towel around his waist and sat on the edge of the lounger next to Hunter. “How was your day? Hopefully better than mine.”

“I doubt it,” Colby replied and took a long sip of the beer. “I had to go to my parents’ place for a family gathering.”

“Where do they live?”

“Oceanside. It’s?—”

“Near San Diego. They filmed parts of the original Top Gun there,” Hunter interrupted and flashed Colby a quick smile. “My mom’s favorite movie from her teenage years. She made me watch it more than once.”

“Yeah. The house they used is still there, by the beach. It’s falling apart though.”

“So it was a bad time? Going home?”

“Always a bad time.” Colby sighed and stared at the pool. It was getting very dark, but there were solar lanterns peppered around the grounds that were illuminated now. “My parents and I don’t… we had a falling out. Well, my dad and I did. I think my mom knows about it, but she likes to pretend she has no clue. Anyway, we don’t… my dad doesn’t like me.”

It always made his chest tight to think it, and saying it aloud made that tightness worse. He took another sip of his beer and picked at the loops of terrycloth in his towel. Hunter was staring at him, he could tell, but he didn’t look over. “Did you never get along? Has he always been a dick or something?”

Colby shook his head no, but stopped and shrugged instead. “I mean, my dad is a bit self-absorbed, but he wasn’t mean or violent or anything. In fact, he’s easy to get along with if you meet his expectations.”

“What are those?”

“Be sporty. Be smart. Be prom king material,” Colby grumbled and didn’t add his father’s most important criteria—be straight. “I got good grades in school, mostly, but the rest of it, nah.”

Hunter didn’t say anything. He just stared at Colby and nodded, so Colby went on because it felt oddly good to vent to someone who had no clue. “He’s an ex-baseball player, and so he wanted us in sports. Mostly baseball, but Brodie played football, and that was fine. He’d go to games and cheer. Atlas stuck with baseball and also went with pitching, which made him the favorite. Quitting sports at thirteen and spending my birthday and Christmas money on a guitar dropped me down to least favorite quick.”

“I’ve heard about parents like that,” Hunter said. “Didn’t know they actually existed, though.”

“So yours are cool?”

Hunter let out a bit of a breathy laugh at that, and his lips turned up in a smile. “I wouldn’t go that far. They divorced when I was, like, eight. Dad did the typical ‘throw gifts at me and hope for the best’ single-dad thing. Mom was more… tough. She didn’t care if I did theater instead of sports in my spare time, as long as my grades were all at the top of the class and I went to church with her on Sundays. She got into religion after the divorce, and she made me go, but she wasn’t like a zealot about it. She used to let my girlfriend spend the night my first year of college and didn’t comment when she came out of my room and not the guest room in the mornings.”

“Oh, my parents knew the pool house was our Playboy mansion and didn’t care. Mom even made sure to stuff it with condoms,” Colby informed Hunter but didn’t add, as long as we were only banging girls, which was definitely a fact.

“So, it’s you and two brothers?”

“Yeah. Both older. I had a younger sister named Freya, but she was stillborn. Had a thing called a true knot in her umbilical cord.” Colby really didn’t need to share those details with Hunter, and to ensure he shut up, he drank more of his beer.

“Wow. That’s horrific. Sorry.”

“Mom never got over it. She really wanted a girl. She had the name picked out since before Atlas was born.” Colby cleared his throat and glanced at Hunter, who seemed riveted by all this. “You? Siblings?”

“Only child. Adopted.” Hunter ran a fingertip over the mouth of his bottle. “I think I was a last-ditch effort to save the marriage, and it didn’t work. Dad has a kid from his second marriage, so I guess I have a stepbrother. I never see them, though. I see my dad. He used to come to my school stuff, take me out on weekends, and even came to LA once for a long weekend. My parents aren’t fans of my career. My mom’s very level-headed and strategic. She’s a paper-pusher in a government job. She’s not at all creative. Doesn’t draw or sing or write or act. We have nothing in common, literally. Dad is more of a performer because he’s in politics. He’s the mayor of his town, which is forty minutes from Downtown Montreal, where my mom lives. He thinks it’s okay for me to try this out now, but tells me that at some point I’ll have to be realistic. They’re both chronically worried I’ll end up homeless and destitute, but neither actively stops me. At the moment.”

“Adopted, huh?” For some reason, that intrigues Colby. Hunter nods but doesn’t add anything else. Colby used to wish he was adopted because maybe then there would be someone out there who he shared blood who would accept him.

“So what happened between you and your dad?” Hunter asked, leaning his head back and staring up at the inky sky.

Fuck. Colby couldn’t talk about it. Could he? Explaining the whole story would out Atlas, and outing people was a horrible thing to do. Also, it would kind of make it seem like Colby was gay. And Colby wasn’t sure that would be accurate. He certainly hadn’t had sex with a man. Or even kissed one. He just… he got off to gay stuff. But he hadn’t done gay things with someone. So… “You don’t have to tell me. I’m being a nosy bitch. Sorry.”

“No. I just… well, it’s complicated.” Colby picked at the label on the bottle. “When I was sixteen, my brother Atlas did something… My father didn’t approve of it, so Atlas said I did it. And my father believed him. Without even thinking about it.”

Colby could feel Hunter staring at him, but he didn’t look up. He studied a wildflower that had bloomed up between the stones that edged the pool. “Like crashed the car? Accidentally lit something on fire?”