A New Kind of Denial

“Hello?” I answered, stumbling slightly from tiredness on my way to the hotel room’s balcony so I wouldn’t wake up Camron by talking on the phone. I slid open the door and rushed through it before I let in a whole bunch of cold night air that could also possibly wake up Camron. He needed as much sleep as he could get; having a broken leg and a messed up midsection really was wearing him out during the days.

“Hey Dad,” a voice said on the other end. It sounded like Gavin, but he barely ever called me or Camron ‘dad’. I didn’t recognize the number on the caller ID either, but I answered it because I figured that it must be important if they were calling at two in the morning.

“Gav?”

“Oh, yeah, sorry. I’m using someone else’s phone right now. Did I wake you up? You sound like you just woke up,”

“You did,” I chuckled. “But it’s alright. Don’t worry about it.”

“Sorry, I wasn’t sure where you guys were at, so I wasn’t sure what the time change was,”

“Don’t fret about it, Dear,” I smiled, thinking about how considerate he was, even over something so small. “So what did you need?”

“Well, I really don’t know how to say this, so I suppose I’ll just come out with it,” he said, taking a big breath as if to steady himself. “I found out who my birth parents are. And you’re my father.”

“how can I be your father? I’ve never had a child before,”

“You have though, you just didn’t know about it,” he answered my not so much of a question. “It was with Maebell Mendez, Jason’s cousin. I guess she found out she was pregnant about a week or so after you guys broke up and didn’t want to drag you back into things, so she never told you. Her family never knew she was pregnant either; she seemed to drop off the face of the Earth for a year and when she showed back up, she was slightly depressed for the longest time. Everybody asked her all sorts of questions, but she never gave any straight answers. Nobody knew why she was gone or what made her so sad when she came back , but it turns out that it was because she had me and made the decision to put me up for adoption.”

“Are you sure Jason didn’t know about it?” That was the only thing that I could manage to ask. I couldn’t really think of anything else besides that night way-back-when that Jason told me I should get out of the relationship before something happened, like her getting pregnant.

“He was as shocked as I was when she told him. Well,” he started, laughing a bit, “he didn’t faint like I did, but he was pretty surprised too. Why?”

“Because he mentioned something about her being pregnant one time. It had my mind racing for months, trying to figure out if it was even possible that she could be. I think it just got pushed to the back of my mind by a lot of other, more important things that were going on at the time,”

“Things? Like Camron’s fiancé‘s death?”

“Yeah, that and when we got shot at. Those were the main things,” I sighed, thinking back on that hectic time and the horrific events of it. I still felt a pain in my shoulder when I moved wrong or when the weather was odd. I smiled, remembering a good thing that occurred shortly after all the horrible ones. I looked back into the hotel room and saw the love of my life sleeping peacefully still. “But that’s also when Cam and I got back together.”

“Well, I’m pretty sure that Jason didn’t know she was pregnant. He was probably just saying the first thing that came into his mind back then. You know he does that a lot of the time anyways.”

“So you’re telling me that I’m your blood and adoptive father?”

“Yeah, I suppose that’s how it is,” he agreed, probably nodding his head in the way he normally did when he had a serious conversation and tried to listen intently. “So are we going to tell Camron about this?”

“Why wouldn’t we?”

“What would he say about you having a kid?”

I laughed, thinking about that situation unfolding. “He’d probably say he has one too.”

“You don’t think he’d freak out about it all?”

“No, I’d say not,” I shrugged, leaning against the glass door and pulling my jacket tighter around my body. “But wait; when we adopted you, your last name was Evans, not Mendez. Did she say anything about that whole thing?”

“Well, when she filled out my birth certificate, she didn’t want to give me your name without your permission and she didn’t want to give me her name so that I couldn’t find her, so she made up a fake name for the father and gave me that name,”

“Who did she say your father was?”

“Aaron Evans,”

“Really?” I laughed.

“That’s what she said. Why?”

“Back when we were in high school, there was a really famous actor named Aaron Evan Sharp, and a lot of the time he just went by his first and middle names,” I chuckled, remembering who used to be the star of every teen girl’s wet dreams. “So she probably just tweaked his name for the paperwork.”

“Wow, the creative juices were flowing that day,” he laughed sarcastically.

“Apparently,” I smiled, thinking about the fact that Gavin is my real, blood-son. That just amazed me. What a coincidence that I adopted my own son. But then there’s Camron; what would he really say about this whole situation?

~~~

“So Camron,” I started to say, staring into my cup of coffee later that morning. We were sitting on the hotel room balcony at the patio table, talking lightly and attempting to wake up fully.

“So Reese,” he mocked, chuckling lightly; a sound that still sent chills down my spine, even after twenty two years. His tone of face changed to loving from joking when he noticed something was affecting my sense of humor. His hand slid across the table to grip mine comfortingly as he tilted my chin up to look him in his eyes with his other hand. “What’s going on? You’re acting funny this morning. Something’s bothering you, isn’t it?”

“Well, its not so much bothering me as it is blowing my mind,” I sighed.

“Alright, so what’s blowing your mind?”

I sighed again, running my free hand over my face, trying to figure out exactly how to approach this. “What would you say if I told you I have a son?”

He just laughed at me. “I’d tell you that I do too.”

“I knew you’d say that,” I chuckled, almost in aggravation .

“You’re not talking about Gavin, are you?” he asked, his hand flying off of mine as if it were on fire. “So when did you cheat on me?”

“Oh don’t you even start that jealousy bullshit,” I warned, giving him the look. “First off, I’ve never cheated on you -”

“Yes you have,” he scoffed, crossing his arms over his chest. “Skye Roberts, your ex-girlfriend from high school.”

“That was nearly twenty three years ago!”

“You still can’t say you’ve never cheated on me, then,”

“Fine, how about this? I haven’t ever cheated on you after I kissed Skye,”

“Fine,” he scoffed again.

“As I was saying, second off, I was talking about Gavin. So don’t you go getting all jealous now.”

“You can’t be talking about Gavin,”

“And why can’t I, exactly?”

“Because you wouldn’t be acting like this over him. I mean, we both were when we first adopted him, but it’s been over fifteen years. You can’t be acting like a new parent over Gavin now, unless you’ve magically acquired amnesia or something of the likes. There is no possible way you are talking about our son.”

“Alright then; let me rephrase myself once again. What would you do if I told you that Gavin is my biological son?”

“I would ask when you cheated on me, just as before,”

“I told you, Camron, I have not cheated on you since Skye. And that was only a kiss; I would never do that, especially not to you. I love you too much to do that.”

“I love you too, but I just do not get how in the hell you can be Gavin’s real father,” he said, his voice squeaking. He was obviously exasperated. “He’s seventeen and we’ve been together for eighteen years. Or have you forgotten why we’re on this trip in the first place?”

“Have you forgotten how long it takes to actually have a baby?” I countered, getting angrier and angrier about his little temper tantrum. “And have you forgotten that Gavin is almost eighteen? Because I’ve done the math on all of this. I broke up with Mae about two months before you and I came back home and got back together. Three-ish years later, we adopt a little boy almost three years old. If Mae had her baby six or seven months after you and I got back together, at the time we adopted Gav, her little boy would have been nearly three years old. It all fits, Camron! Plus, Mae faked the father’s name on the birth certificate and named her boy Gavin Tyler Evans. Everything matches up. I’ve got to be Gavin’s father.”

“I am too!”

“I meant biological father, Camron!” I snapped. I didn’t mean for it to come out as nasty as it did, but I was getting fed up with the way he was dealing with the things I was telling him. He’s always been on the childish side and I’ve always been able to handle him when he gets into his moods. But even I couldn’t help but get frustrated while trying to handle him this time.

“I know that!”

“Then why’d you -?”

“Because!” he yelled, getting up as fast as he could with a broken leg. “God damn it! This is so fucked up! If only you weren’t - just never mind.”

“If only I weren’t what?” I screamed, jumping up to look him straight in the eyes. I couldn’t help but scream at him when he started pulling this shit. “If only I weren’t what? Say it!”

“No, it was stupid,” he muttered, shifting his eyes away.

“I want to hear it. I want to judge for myself how stupid it was,”

“I didn’t even mean it. It just started to come out,”

“I don’t care; I want to know, so tell me what you were going to say,” I commanded softly, but still forcefully.

“I was going to say ‘if only you weren’t bi’,”

“If only I weren’t bisexual?”

“Yes; I told you it was stupid,”

“Damn right it was stupid! If I wasn’t at least a little bit straight, Gavin wouldn’t even fucking exist! Or were you thinking on the other end of that spectrum? If I wasn’t homosexual then I wouldn’t be with you and you wouldn’t have Gavin because I would and I wouldn’t have put him up for adoption. And you know what? I don’t even know how bisexual I am anymore! See all those bikini clad girls out by the pool?” I asked, pointing down from the hotel room balcony. He looked down and just nodded as he looked back to me. “I don’t find any of them attractive. Usually they would at least set off a spark in me, but no matter how long I look at them, they don’t get to me one bit. I see nothing but skin and cloth and none of it turns me on. Now when I look at you or the other men, I feel it. Deep in my soul; I can feel it. I swear, Camron, I can’t even call myself bisexual anymore. I’m pretty sure that you not only turned me bisexual when I was sixteen, but now you’ve turned me completely homosexual when I’m thirty-nine.”