“Oh.” Another sniff followed by a zip, and then more rustling. His mother always carried a fine linen handkerchief in her purse. He imagined her dabbing her eyes with it now. “Aubrey, I… I want to apologize to you.”
Aubrey had been gearing up to explain falling for his cohost, but this derailed him completely. “Again?”
She laughed wetly. “I haven’t apologized for this yet, and it’s important.”
Aubrey sat again. “Okay.”
“I want to apologize for how I scolded you when you were younger, when you….”
“When I slept with any guy who’d look at me twice?” Aubrey suggested.
His mother sniffed in acknowledgment. “I always disapproved of your lifestyle—not your sexuality, Aubrey. I love you, and that includes the fact that you’re gay. But I hated that you slept with so many men, and I never made a secret of that. You probably thought it lowered my opinion of you and—well, I suppose it did. I’m working on that. But that wasn’t the reason I hated it.”
“Okay,” Aubrey said again, even more off-balance and unsure how to protect himself against the blow he sensed was coming.
“The truth is I was afraid for you.”
Afraid…? Of…? “What, Mom? I don’t get it.”
She sighed. “When you came out to us, you were already a world-class athlete. You took a lot of pride in your body, and you put a lot of value on it. I worried that if you… if you only ever loved with your body, you would believe your heart wasn’t worth anything.”
Aubrey was stunned into silence. His eyes burned with tears—at finally understanding his mother’s objections and at how close she had been to the truth. He took a sharp breath. “You might have been right to worry.” There. Half of the hard stuff out of the way. “If I hadn’t met Nate….”
“Nate?” She perked up. “Nate Overton? Your cohost?”
“Former cohost,” Aubrey reminded her. “We’ve been seeing each other for a while.” He loved her, and he was trying to repair their relationship, but she didn’t need details.
“Tell me about him,” she demanded. “I know he’s handsome and you have good chemistry, so you can leave that out.”
Aubrey smiled, thinking about him. “What do you want to know? He’s close to his family. He used to be married, but he’s not anymore. I wasn’t involved,” he added hurriedly.
“Oh, Aubrey. Of course not. I know you better than that.”
Aubrey had slept with a few married men, actually, but he hadn’t known until after the fact. But those memories were better left in the past; they made him feel used. “Okay. Well. Nate is… he likes to cook? He plays in a coed rec hockey league on Fridays at the rink where I’ve been skating with Greg.” And now to steer the conversation to the advice portion. “He, um. He wants kids.”
His mother sucked in a breath. “So it’s serious.”
Aubrey bit his lip. He flexed a hand at his side to work out some of the tension. “It’s really new,” he said, which wasn’t a contradiction. “But yeah, it’s serious. And that’s the problem.”
“What’sthe problem?” she asked. “That’s not a problem. That’s wonderful.”
“It’s a problem because I just got fired, Mom. I’m not staying in Chicago.”
“Why not?” she countered. “It’s not like you need the work. You could stay if you wanted to.”
“The problem is,” he said, realizing as he did so that this was the crux of it, “that I don’t know if I want to.”
“Aubrey! Why not?”
He ran a hand through his hair. “Did I tell you I was helping Greg practice for Cirque? We choreographed a whole routine. Two executives came out to watch it, and I guess they saw us goofing off beforehand. They offered me a spot, maybe a choreography gig.” He swallowed. “I can’t just sit around, you know? I need to be involved. I’m not going to be able to skate forever, but choreography…. And there are so many other opportunities in Vegas….”
His mother hummed. “But Nate’s job is in Chicago.”
“Nate’s job is in Chicago,” Aubrey confirmed miserably. “And it’s only been a few weeks. Is that too soon to start something long distance? Asking him to move to Vegas is absurd, right?”
“Absurd is so relative.” He could almost see her shaking her head. “You’re sure this job is what you want?”
“No!” he exclaimed. “No, I’m not sure. But it’s an opportunity that’s not going to come around every day. Ever since Greg and I skated for his audition, I’ve been thinking about performing again. I’m not ready to give it up, I want… I have more to do, more to say, more to contribute. But how do I choose?”
