Jumbo by Todd Young

great cook Jake Walker was, how he was a trained chef, and how nobody had to know why he was living with them. Saying they could tell people he was a hired hand, someone who was helping out now that Mitchell’s mom had gone.
    “Mitchell. You know you can talk to me. We’ve always talked things out. If you’re keeping something to yourself, if there’s something happening, then I want to know about it.”
    “I’ll tell you sometime, Dad. It’s just ... I’m angry.”
    “Angry with me?”
    “Yes.”
    “Can we have that conversation?”
    “If we have to.”
    His father stood up. “The first thing to say Mitchell is that I love your mother. We’re very good friends. We’ve got on very well for the last twenty years or so, though obviously, she’s angry at me now.”
    “Do you blame her?”
    “No.”
    Mitchell sat in silence while his father walked to the fireplace and back again. He sat down and leaned forward.
    “I loved your mother when I married her. I didn’t know then that I was ... gay. And honestly, Mitchell, I didn’t know for the first few years of our marriage. Things aren’t as simple as that. There was passion—”
    “Dad.”
    His father stopped for a moment. “I know it’s hard to think about your parents ... making love, but we certainly did, Mitchell. I’m not an exclusively gay man. Your mother and I were very young when we married — barely out of high school. I was confused. I knew I had feelings for men, but — it was a different world, Mitchell. Not as easy as it is now.”
    “What? The 80s? It must have been practically the 90s, Dad.”
    His father sat back in his chair. He fell deep into thought. “Okay, Mitchell. You’ve got a point. I certainly could have followed my inclinations, my strongest inclinations, but I didn’t. Your grandmother and grandfather are very traditional. There was no way I could do that — there was no way I felt I could do that,” he added quickly.
    Mitchell took a deep breath and closed his eyes. If only his father knew what he was dealing with. If only his father knew .... Here, Mitchell stopped, struck by the fact that he was dealing with the same conflicts himself.
    He relaxed a little and allowed his father to continue.
    His father told him that his mother and he had married and had two children before his father could admit to his mother how he truly felt. They had spoken about it when Mitchell was a child, practically a baby, but they had decided, together, that they would do the best thing for their children, or what they thought was the best thing: stay together. They slept in the same bed, and there had been times when they had had sex, though they had both decided on no more children. They planned to wait until Mitchell had turned eighteen, and then, and only then, to separate.
    “Last year your mother spoke to me. She said that you were too immature, that we should see you out of your final year of school. And I agreed.”
    “And so why ...?”
    “I’m getting to that.” His father took a breath. “I met Jake through Alan Williamson. The two of them were together, but Jake was working right next to me, in the building next door. We began to meet for lunch — and from there, well, something happened. We fell in love.”
    There was a long silence.
    “And I’d been waiting for so long,” his father said, sounding suddenly choked, “that I just didn’t want to let this time go by.”
    Mitchell felt shaky, but he didn’t know what he could say or do. His father wiped his eyes with the heels of his hands, and Mitchell said, “It’s all right, Dad. I understand.”
    His father nodded, though he was obviously struggling with himself, trying to rein in his emotion.
    “Your mother was — is — angry with me because I broke the agreement we made: not the original one, but the one we made last year to see you through school.” His father hesitated. “And I think she’s angry because I’ve found someone, when she’s always been