Read Divisions (Dev and Lee) for Free Online Page B

raspberry sauce, just the barely-sour cranberry. There’ll be nothing crunchy in the stuffing, I’m sure; I’ve had bland stuffing before. It’s not that the food won’t be good. It just won’t be what I’m used to.
    When I look back at Father, ending my exaggerated sniff, he takes my meaning. “Holidays aren’t about where we have them. They’re about being together. So we come here instead of going home.”
    “Where’s home?” I say, as he reaches for his drink.
    The glass of water was halfway to the end of his muzzle. He lowers it and takes his glasses off, rubbing them on his napkin. “There’s an apartment building close to work. I signed a lease yesterday. Anyway, you have your own home now.”
    The warmth of that remark doesn’t stop my tail from curling under the chair. “You know, they always tell us gay boys not to come out to the families at dinner. Don’t you have like a troubled marriage forum that tells you not to announce a divorce at Thanksgiving?”
    “It seemed more logical than going through the holiday with it hanging over our heads.” He replaces the glasses and drinks the water. “This isn’t easy for me.”
    “No, I know.” The tablecloth’s fabric is rough under my paw pads, bunching as I rub it. My whiskers twitch as someone walks behind me: a mouse, from the scent. I look around at the other tables, seeking a distraction. “Hey, you think that whole family there just didn’t feel like cooking? Or are they having their kitchen redone?”
    “Wiley, I don’t want you to look at this as something that’s about you.”
    My ears fold down. “Well, I
hadn’t
been.”
    He leans forward, with his elbows on the table. “When your mother and I met, we were both ambitious. She wanted to get away from her family, I wanted to go somewhere different. For a while, we were pretty happy. But we…sometimes when people think they want the same thing, it’s only because you can’t see how different the things you want really are.”
    “Did you read that in ‘Chicken Soup for the Estranged Soul’?” I snap my mouth shut. “Sorry. It just sounds like…” Like someone else talking out of my father’s mouth. “Like one of those things that doesn’t mean anything. What about ‘Sometimes the things you want change’?”
    “That too.” He taps the side of his muzzle. “How’s your football player? Devlin?”
    “He’s with his family.” I say it without intending the comparison, but of course we both make it, and both cringe in different ways. “They’ve got the whole clan together.”
    “So you’re not going to meet the extended family?”
    “God, no.” I laugh. “Even his brother didn’t want to meet me. His parents were the ones who insisted.”
    “Sounds like Mikhail, what little I know of him. How’s he doing?”
    “Fine,” I say. “I don’t bring up the head wound.”
    “You talk to him that much?”
    “Well.” I look down. “No. But I don’t bring it up, when I do.”
    Apart from getting to see Dev again—funny how we’d spend weeks apart, and now that I’m going to be living at his place, two days seems like forever—that’s what is most on my mind about tomorrow’s dinner. Mikhail ostensibly forgave me at the hospital, and Dev says he hasn’t said anything bad about me, but that just makes me think that he probably hasn’t said anything about me, period. But then, they did insist I come meet his brother. Maybe Mikhail is hoping Gregory can beat me up.
    I’d hoped this dinner would be relaxing preparation for that meeting. Instead I’m trying not to think about my parents’ marriage ending, which of course means that’s all I can think about.
    At least I’m distracting Father, if not myself. The corners of his mouth curve up. “That was one of the more surreal days of my life.”
    “Look at it this way,” I say. “How many people can say they met their son’s boyfriend’s parents in the hospital after their son won a