Read Online Happy by Chris Scully - Free Book Online Page B

because Louie took one look at his face and tried to slide out of the
    booth. “It was nothing,” Peter assured him, quickly blocking his exit. “Just
    some mix-up with a vendor.”
    Louie’s eyes called him a liar. “I should go,” he said.
    “Why? Look, the spanakopita is here.” Peter noticed the golden brown
    spinach pie hadn’t been touched in his absence.
    “Peter,” Louie grumbled. “Don’t make a fuss.”
    “You’re the one making a fuss. I ordered this for you. Eat.” Peter slid
    onto the bench seat, which forced Louie to move back. He huffed in defeat
    but left a wide berth on the seat between them. Peter immediately closed
    the gap in case Louie tried to escape again, and began doling out wedges of
    spanakopita.
    Louie’s eyes narrowed in warning as their hips touched, and he pulled
    away, but he couldn’t go far. In the end he ended up crowded against the
    wall, silently poking at the spanakopita with his fork.
    Happy | Chris Scully
    46
    “Everything okay?” Adam asked, breaking the awkward silence.
    “Fine.” Peter raised the back of his hand to his cheek. She hadn’t
    really hit him hard enough to leave a mark, but he still felt as though he’d
    been branded. He signaled Annie to bring another round of beer. He had to
    work in another couple of hours, but if he ever needed a drink, it was now.
    “I don’t get it. Why does your mom have such a hate-on for Louie?”
    “I’m gay,” Louie said softly, not looking up from his plate.
    Joe frowned. “I don’t get that kind of reaction.”
    “She, ah, doesn’t know about you guys,” Peter mumbled into his beer,
    unable to look his friends in the eye. He might have neglected to mention it
    to his family.
    “Peter!” Adam exclaimed.
    “It wouldn’t matter anyway,” Louie said with a shake of his head. “It’s
    me. The fact that I’m gay. In the Orthodox Church, it’s not only a sin, it’s a
    perversion in need of correction.”
    Joe snorted. “This coming from the country that practically invented
    homoeroticism. Naked Olympic games? Greco-Roman wrestling?”
    Louie cracked a smile. “I know, right?”
    “It’s a different world,” Peter explained, focusing his attention on
    stripping the label from his new beer bottle. That rock was back on his
    chest; it might have eased up for a few hours, but it never went very far. This
    time it felt like the size of a boulder. “This is a church that still frowns upon
    marrying outside the faith.”
    “Coming out was almost as hard for my family as it was for me,”
    Louie added. “Maybe harder. Even if my parents accept me, even if my
    priest accepts me, there are other factions who don’t. Peter’s parents and
    mine know each other. They go to the same church. They’re all part of the
    same community. People talk. Gossip.”
    People like his mother. Peter turned and looked Louie in the eye. “And
    you’re okay with that?”
    He shrugged. “It’s the way things are. Do I like it? No, of course not.
    But I’m not going to undo two thousand years of theology. All I can do is
    live my life in a way that makes me happy and hope that things will change
    in time.”
    Peter swallowed. What would that be like? To do what you wanted?
    What made you happy? He didn’t even know what that was. He lost himself
    in thought, letting Joe and Adam and Louie carry the conversation as they ate.
    Happy | Chris Scully
    47
    Peter finished his second beer and debated a third. But the afternoon
    in the sun must have dehydrated him a bit because he was already feeling a
    slight buzz. He switched to water. At some point, he draped his left arm along
    the low backrest behind Louie’s shoulders. The tips of his fingers might have
    even brushed Louie’s neck occasionally, entirely by accident. There. Take
    that , Ma , he thought. He felt her eyes boring into him from the opposite side
    of the restaurant, but he didn’t care. He refused to look her way.
    Actually he couldn’t look her way because