When I was a kid my mom would dress me up and take me to competitions, I was her sweet little angel, she would style my hair and do my make-up, I wouldn't ever place but it never stopped her from trying. Once I grew out of that she signed me up for every activity in the book, dance lessons, church choir, she even signed me up for JV Cheer-leading. But she couldn't control every aspect of my life no matter how hard she tried. Even when I was younger I knew it wasn't me, the things she wanted for me weren't things I wanted for myself, but I tried to make her happy for the most part. When I turned 16 things changed, I realized if I didn't stop things then I would have to live the rest of my life under her rule. I dropped out of cheer, stayed home from church, and started being more honest with myself. I cut all my long hair off, my mom freaked, I asked to be called Max, not Maxine. My mom would say it was "just a phase" that it was me being an angsty teenager, but it was far beyond that. I wasn't the girly type, I liked comics, shooter games, action movies, and well, girls. When I was about 8 years old in the church my parents had pressured me to befriend the pastor's daughter, her name was Angela (go figure), she was in the choir with me and we actually did become very close friends. We had a lot in common, read the same kind of stories, enjoyed hanging out with each other, but it wasn't until high school we found out we had even more in common than that, we fell in love. Since we had been close friends for so long my parents didn't see anything weird about us spending all of our time together, behind closed doors we were closer than we had been able to be with anybody else in our lives. She'd lay in my lap and I'd comb through her hair with my fingers and we'd talk about running away together and our future. When she kissed me it tasted like fireworks. I knew in my heart we were meant to be together and I wanted desperately to be able to be open with my family. One Sunday during the summer she had spent the night and in the morning I decided it was time. Angela gripped my hand as we walked out of my room that morning, my dad sat at the table behind his paper, my mom cooking dinner like usual. "I need to talk to you guys about something." I said quietly, my voice shaking. "About what dear?" My mom said still scrambling about the kitchen, not even glancing my way, my dad turned to the next page of his newspaper. "W-well can you sit down or something, it's really important." I heard the click of the stove turning off and she turned and sat at the table, Angela and I standing at the front, I felt like I did back on the stage during the pageants. My dad folded over his newspaper and set it on the table in front of him and looked up at me too, their eyes burning into me. "Well.." I glanced at Angela and she gave me a half smile, I could see how nervous she was too. "Angela and me, we, we're more than just friends." I said, vibrating violently. "Well yeah, you're best friends, you've been tighter than two kittens in a boot since you were young!" my mom said blindly, my fathers face sunk into a scowl as he was a great deal smarter than her and I saw his eyes drop to mine and Angela's grasped hands between us. "No, I mean, we're in love." I looked at Angela's face light up a bit as I said it," I like girls, I'm, I'm a lesbian." I tried to be as confident as I could. My mom looked confused looking back and fourth between me and Angela and there was a good few seconds before my dad pushed his chair out walked over and pulled me and Angela apart. It seemed slow motion as our fingers slid apart, I saw the worry in her face. "Angela, gather your things, I'm taking you home, and having a talk with your father." He pushed Angela to the hallway and turned to me. "And you, you won't be living in this house anymore, when me and your mother go to church I expect you to get together what you can and get out of my house. No daughter of mine is going to betray my God by being a ****." My mom was hysterically bawling into her hands on the table, not saying a word. My dad scoffed and looked towards the hall, "I can't even look at you." He walked into the hall and towards the front door. I ran to my room, tears streaming down my face. Angela was choking on tears placing her things into her duffle bag. I ran in and kissed her and kissed her again, hard. "I'll come for you, we can run away, we can be together." She held my face and smiled, she didn't reply. My dad barged into the room and grabbed her shoulder. Once again we reached for each other's hands and our fingertips barely touched one another, her eyes not leaving mine until she was around the corner. I could hear my mom bawling in the corner. I closed my door and packed a few suitcases of clothes, a few gifts Angela had given me and started calling people, friends, family, seeing if they had somewhere I could stay with no luck. I heard the front door opening and the heavy footsteps of my father coming down the hall, I heard him talking to my mother in the kitchen and heard the two pairs of footsteps going back down the hallway. From the front door I heard my dad yell "If you're here when we get back I'm calling the cops." I sat on my bed drenched in tears, where could I go? I placed a few other things like pictures of me and Angela into a bag, next to it was a photo of me as a baby sitting on my grandfather's lap, he had become estranged from my father. I picked it up and looked at it, I smiled, I looked so happy. I ran down the hall into my father's office rummaging through it to find a phone number or something to get a hold of him. I found a sealed letter to my grandpa that my dad never sent, it looked like a Christmas card from a few years prior. I grabbed the envelope and finished packing what i could carry. I had a backpack, a suitcase and a duffle bag and started walking down the road into town. I got on a bus and made my way towards Angela's house, I couldn't leave without her. I got off the bus and went down the street to her house I set my stuff on the porch and rang the bell, first there was no answer, so I rang it a second time, Angela's mom came to the door she opened it with a smile that fell off her face as soon as her eyes made mine. "You will leave this property immediately you spawn of Satan, trying to corrupt our only daughter, you won't drag her to hell, we can save her, but you, you will burn in hell alone." She slammed the door in my face before I could even open my mouth. I picked up my things and walked out the sidewalk, I looked up at the second story window to Angela's room and I could see her standing there crying, she wiped a tear from her face and made a heart with her hands, I made one back to her, I didn't know that was the last time I'd ever get to see her. I went back to the bus stop and waited for the next one to come, I showed them the address on the envelope and they took me there. It was a bit outside of town, much different from the suburb I had spent my whole life, there were lots of trees and flowers and the house was cute and small. I stood out front for the longest time, trying to decide what I was going to say, wondering if he'd remember me, or if he'd accept me. I heard the door creak open and a more shriveled version of the man in the picture peered out. "Are you just gunna loiter in front of my house all day or what?" He said sternly. I glanced down at the ground then back at him, "Oh, I- I'm sorry, I don't know if you rememb-" "Of course I remember my only granddaughter, Max" He smirked and came off the porch towards me with his arms open. "Oh." I opened my arms and received the warm sweet hug. "What are you doing here... with luggage?" he looked down at the bags, I instantly started crying. "I'm, I'm so sorry, I didn't know where else to go, I-I can't go back home..." I broke down in front of him. "Oh sweety, no no, it's ok, of course you can stay with me, please come in." he grabbed my duffle from my hand and took my hand and led me into the house. He fixed me a cup of tea and sat next to me in the living room in his recliner. I told him everything, I felt obligated. He sighed, I figured he was about to tell me he didn't want me there, or that he'd start yelling or something. "I don't know where I went wrong with that boy of mine..." he shook his head. "You can stay here as long as you want, I mean hell, I welcome the company! After your daddy stopped talking to me a few years ago it's been awful lonely." I smiled, sniffled, and sipped my tea. "If you haven't talked to him in so long how did you know I go by Max now?" "Ah, well just because we didn't talk didn't mean I didn't want you in my life." He pulled up a laptop from next to his chair, opened it and turned it towards me, on the screen was my social media account. "You know this technology is amazing these days, I kept watch over you, your dad, and your mom, so at least I could see you every once in a while." He smiled and I smiled, the picture on my profile was a picture of me and Angela.
I had stayed with him since then. He became the father figure I never had, and my best friend. I learned the reason my father had broken ties with him was because he was a distinguished scientist and my grandma had been a hardcore Christian, they both taught him each side thought they never fought about it and my father chose my grandma's side, once she passed away my father became really bitter towards him and just talked to him less and less until not at all. My grandpa said he'd always been a stubborn boy but he still loved him. I tried tracking down Angela online but she had disappeared, I later learned that her and her family moved out of state and last thing anybody heard from her she was being sent to a camp where they "take the gay out of you" one of our mutual friends had told me. I started going to a school where I only had to go once a week and do most of the work and learning at home, with my grandpa's help I graduated a year early. My grandpa and I watched tons of old movies and would talk for hours, we'd discuss scientific theories and he'd teach me a lot. He had a giant library full of books on every topic and he taught me so much. A while after graduating I got a part time job at a coffeehouse down the road from my grandpa's house even though he told me I didn't need to waste my time with that because he'd take care of me. It wasn't long after that the tables turned and it was me taking care of him. At first he was having a harder time getting around, he started having to use a walker, I started doing the cooking and cleaning and he'd always tell me . "Oh don't you fuss over me." Later he had to get an oxygen tank to help him breath as everything made him out of breath. He would still drag himself into the library and work on stuff he was writing and tell me about the universe with his weak raspy voice. He'd cough a lot and I'd run to him with water, "Oh don't you fuss over me." It got to a point where he would lay in bed all day long and I would bring him his books from the library and he'd type away on his laptop, I'd hear him strain trying to get out of bed and I'd have to help him to the bathroom, weakly, he'd laughed and between breaths he'd say "Oh, don't you, fuss over, me."One morning I went into his room with breakfast on a tray, "Alright I got the good stuff Pops" he didn't move. I set down the tray on his nightstand and saw his oxygen mask on it. He didn't look right. I went over and touched his skin and it was cold, I turned him over and his eyes were closed, I put my hand under his nose and there was no breath coming out. I touched his cold neck and couldn't find a pulse. I cried and through my tears called an ambulance. When they got to the house they told me he had passed in his sleep, his mask likely fell off and he stopped breathing, but his mask was on his nightstand so I knew he had taken it off himself. I opened his laptop and saw on the document he had been writing the last paragraph had been stopped mid sentence, he'd tabbed down a few lines and wrote, "She called me to heaven. Don't you fuss." My face in my hands I wept for longer than I can remember. I picked up the phone in the kitchen and dialed my old home number, the line rang, and rang, I could feel my voice quivering before I even spoke. "Hello." I heard the deep baritone of a voice I hadn't heard in over a year. "It's-" I didn't want to say who I was, I didn't want to feel the hurt of him hanging up on me, a tear rolled down my cheek "Yes? What, who is this?" he said sternly. "I'm sorry to tell you your father has passed." I waited a few seconds, hoping I could hear some sadness in his voice, some humanity so I could say who I was, so I could try to see them again, I'd passed the house a million times and looked at it longingly, just wanting to knock on the door. There was several seconds of silence. "Hmm, good." He hung up. I took the phone and threw it at the ground and the plastic casing shattered on the tile. I sunk down the wall onto the floor and held my knees pressing my face into them, screaming and crying into them. A lawyer came the next day and told me everything my grandfather had planned for after his death, he donated some of his money to a few charities but most of it was to go to me, even the royalties he got from the several books he wrote would go straight into an account that was now mine, the house, everything in it was mine as well. None of this was comforting to me. He wanted to be cremated and so that's all we did, I didn't hold a funeral, I didn't think he'd want one anyways, we were both lonely, we were both all the other had. I picked up the urn from the mortuary and buckled it into the seat next to me, "I'll take care of you Pops."
Oh ho ho I'm not funny.
