Love Means No Boundaries - Andrew Grey

of the Southern night making themselves heard through the windows. Every noise in the house gave him hope, but as the hall lights faded and the house quieted, for the first time since he arrived, he spent the night alone.
    ROBBIE heard Joey come upstairs and stop outside his door. He’d been relieved when he didn’t knock and went to the room across the hall. He wasn’t punishing him. He just needed to think, and he couldn’t do that when Joey was next to him, touching him, loving on him. So Robbie got himself undressed and climbed into his bed. He heard a soft knock and his father’s voice from the doorway. He was so surprised. He couldn’t remember the last time his father had stopped by like this. “I’m sorry, you’re in bed.” It sounded like his father was going to leave.
“It’s all right, Papa.” Robbie repositioned himself on the bed.
    It didn’t matter to him, but he knew it made others more comfortable if he was looking in their direction as they spoke. “I wasn’t asleep.” Robbie heard his father’s heavy footsteps across the floor, and then the bed dipped as he sat down. “It’s been a long time since I was in here… too long. Maybe if I’d spent more time with you, you wouldn’t be… you know.” He heard his father swallow. “Gay.”
“Papa.”
     
“Robbie, would you call me Dad? You’re a man now, and you need to act like it. Papa is for children, and I think it’s time we all stop treating you like one.”
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    That was a bit of a shock. “Pa—I mean—Dad, you didn’t do anything to make me gay. It’s just the way I am. You and I tossing the ball or going fishing, or rastling alligators together.” He smiled and hoped his dad was smiling, too. “It wouldn’t have changed anything. I’d still be both gay and blind.”
“You’re not making this easy on me, are you?”
    “Why should I? In the last ten years, we’ve spent almost no time together.” Robbie suddenly wasn’t feeling particularly charitable. After all his father had largely ignored him for the past decade and it hurt. “Why, Dad? What did I do?” He felt his father’s hand on his shoulder. “Nothing, Son. You didn’t do anything. I just didn’t know how to deal with your blindness, and as time passed, it got harder and harder. Before I knew it, you were grown, and I didn’t know you at all any more.”
“So why now, Dad?”
     
“It took guts to tell your mother and I you were gay, and it took even more to invite the man you’re obviously in love with to visit us. I guess I realized that suddenly you weren’t a child anymore. You’re a man, and you need to act like one and take responsibility like one.”
    Robbie listened and wondered where his father was going.
“Meaning what, Dad?”
“Meaning I know Joey has probably asked you to go back with him.”
“And….”
“And,” Robbie thought he heard a smile in his father’s voice.
“I remember when I first met your mother almost thirty years ago.
Her father put me through hell, but she was the most beautiful and interesting girl I’d ever met. It took me years to get up the courage to ask her for a date and after that I trailed around after her like a 175
     
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    dog for two years until I convinced her to marry me. And the day she married me was the happiest day of my life until about two years later when we had you.” He sounded proud and sad at the same time. “The point is that I put up with your grandfather for years because I loved your mother and there was never a day it wasn’t worth it.”
“I don’t understand what you’re getting at, Dad.”
    “I know I’m not saying it very well, but what I mean is that love, true love, is worth what you have to pay for it.” Robbie felt the bed rise as his father got up. Then he was hugged, tightly. “I’m proud of you, Robbie, and I love you very much.” Footsteps followed, a switch clicked, “and you’ve got more courage than anyone I know.” Then his door closed.
“Wow.” Robbie was happily stunned. Was his father telling him to go? Somehow he didn’t think that was it. Maybe he was telling him he’d support him if he decided to go. His head started to ache, and he settled back into the bed, his mind racing with all kinds of thoughts and questions.
    Would his parents let him go? It sounded like his father wouldn’t fight him, but his mother was another matter. When he was gone, she called all the time, and since he’d