Complementary Colors by Adrienne Wilder

finish high school?”
    “I did.”
    “And let me guess, the star player on your football team.”
    Roy rubbed the back of his neck.
    I leaned over the table. “I’m willing to bet half your team would have bent over and spread their cheeks for you.”
    His elbow caught his cup and coffee sloshed all over the table. Roy ripped out a handful of napkins from the dispenser to soak it up.
    “Did you marry your high school sweetheart?”
    He wouldn’t look at me.
    “Were you King and Queen at your prom?” His silence was all the confirmation I needed.
    He waved the waitress down for a refill. She topped mine off as well.
    Roy finished mopping up the mess. She carried it away.
    “Wow, you were right after all.”
    “About what?”
    “You’re not a Boy Scout, you’re a goddamned hometown hero.” The coffee was bitter again so I added more cream. “So with a fairy tale beginning, how come you didn’t get your happily ever after?”
    “I wasn’t happy.”
    “How come?”
    “Because I should have never married her.”
    “Then why did you?”
    “It’s what you were expected to do.” He picked up my empties again. “Get married, have kids. Being gay was a city folk problem, rooted in a godless life.”
    “Pray the gay away, huh?” A shadow passed behind Roy’s eyes. “Is that why you got married? Because you thought it would just go away?”
    “I don’t know.” He turned his coffee cup around and around. “Maybe I just didn’t realize I had a choice.”
    “And then you did?”
    “Yeah. Only it was ten years too late.”
    “How could it be too late?”
    “Becky had fallen in love, and I didn’t do anything to stop her. I took ten years of her life where she could have been building a family. Ten years where she could have had someone who loved her back. I loved her, just not the way she wanted me to.”
    “According to you, she wasn’t exactly fit for parenthood.”
    “I made her that way.”
    “Yeah right.”
    “No. I did. I ruined her. I didn’t mean to, but I did.”
    “How?”
    “Like I said, small town. A lot of people blamed her for me being gay.”
    “Why?”
    “Same reason people blame the wife when the husband cheats.” Roy shrugged. “She had to be doing something wrong, or it wouldn’t have happened.”
    “You could have blamed the divorce on her cooking, and she could have blamed it on you snoring.” I waved a hand. “Or something like that.”
    “I tried. I sat her down, and I told her the truth. Only it didn’t go very well. She was really upset and confided in a friend about what I’d said.”
    “And that friend told a friend?"
    He nodded. “Her family found out. Next thing I knew, I was getting divorce papers for infidelity. She had cops who were brothers, cousins who were attorneys, an uncle who was the magistrate judge. I screwed up so I let her have everything and left.”
    “You didn’t screw up. Trust me. A lot of people find out too late they can’t change who they are.” Most of the men I took to my bed were married.
    “And that’s why I screwed up. I knew it in my gut, but I thought I could ignore it.”
    “But she accused you of cheating, and you didn’t…did you?”
    “Of course not. She was my first and….” I was sure he was going to say ‘only’. He shook his head. “It was just her way of trying to save face. Instead, it only made things worse. I broke all the good things in her and what was left…”
    “Maybe you didn’t break her. Maybe she just didn’t have to pretend who she really was anymore.”
    I think Roy was about to argue, but our waitress reappeared with a fresh pot of coffee and Roy’s hamburger. To me, she said, “Jacky is bringing yours.”
    Jacky—at least I presume it was her since that’s what her name tag read—lowered a large bowl of steaming substance, topped with more substance. I think it was onions, or maybe cheese. There were a few green things that could have been jalapeños, but it all ran together in