This is a Not-So-Short Story, pt. 6

Previous installments:

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5
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He takes another deep breath. He did what he said he would do. Now he has to hope and wait to see where things will go. He knows that he burdened her with a lot. So, he would give her the time she needed to work on sorting things out.

She turns her back to him.

“Do you have enough clothes?”, she asks, still with an angry tone.

“Yeah, I’m OK.”, he responds.

“I’ll let you know when I’m ready to give you an answer. I don’t think I can hear from you before than.”, she says, quick and to the point.

He nods. It’s certainly more than he had feared, but it certainly wasn’t what he had hoped.

“OK. I’ll wait until you contact me.”, he says.

He fights every urge to blurt out that he loved her. As much as he truly knew it and felt it, he also felt that it might add insult to injury. However, he also felt like he needed to be clear with her about how he felt.

“Look, regardless of your decision, I love you.”, he says, unsure of her response.

She keeps her back to him as a tear streams down her face. She wants to respond, but she can’t. Something in her can’t let her say it.

She simply nods.

“I’ll talk to you later.”, he says.

“Yeah, talk to you later.”, she responds despondently.

He walks back out the door he walked in. And while he was physically the same person he was the moment he walked in, he felt like he was different. He did something massive, something that was seemingly impossible. He outed himself in every way possible. While the result of the conversation wasn’t the happiest, he had nothing he could really be sad about as well.

As he heard the door close behind him, he leaned against it for a moment. A big smile broke out across his face. He did it. He totally outed himself. He told her the whole truth. He could finally face people far happier than he had been for some time. He could face people with the same degree of happiness in the moments he shared with his boyfriend back when they started getting together in high school… possibly with even the same degree of innocence.

He takes a breath and composes himself.

“I can’t wait to get home and tell my boyfriend all about this.”, he thinks with a big, goofy grin.

He walks down the corridor and into the elevator. As the elevator doors closed, the last remaining threads of his old, neurotic self seemed to break.