“I told Reverend Ron that you wouldn’t mind taking his daughter out on a date when she gets to town.”

The knife jumped away from the onion and nicked Burns right on the index finger. “Ow!” he said. “Wait, what? Who?”

His mom continued to calmly peel carrots. The peels curled into the sink. “His daughter, Delia. You remember her, don’t you? She used to be in the same Sunday School class. Oh, I wonder if she still has those curls?”

He sucked on his finger. The knife hadn’t gone in deep, thank goodness, but some onion juice must have gotten into it, because man, it stung. His eyes were already red-rimmed and burning.

“Mom, you can’t make dates for me. That’s creepy and weird.”

“He says she’s very nice. You know, she just graduated from college, and he says she’s going to be interning at Cray.”

Yeah, but Mom, she’s a girl.

He couldn’t say that part. Maybe in a few years, after he’d worked up the nerve.

His finger still throbbed. He needed to get a bandage on it before doing any more of the cooking, but his mother clearly wanted to talk about this.

“I’m really not interested in a blind date,” he said. He ripped off a piece of paper towel and pressed it to his finger.

“But Tommy, you never seem to find any nice girls here in town!”

Tommy. After all these years, she stilled called him by his little-boy name. He might have accepted Thomas, maybe even Thom (not Tom, that was his dad), but Thomas Burns III had always preferred being called by his last name.

Burns shook his head, and started towards the bathroom to look for bandages. “Mom, I’m not five anymore. You can’t set me up with girls, and you can’t call me Tommy.”

Oh god I sound like such a child right now.

She laughed, and finished chopping the onion for him with flicks of the knife, the blade tapping a staccato against the cutting board. “Fine, Burns. I don’t know why we never see you with girls from town. All these little dates you used to tell us about up in the city, and yet you never bring the girls down here.”

Because they don’t exist, Mom.

“Can we talk about my love life after I bandage my finger? I don’t want to die of an infection just because you’re busy meddling.”

That was apparently a comment too far; her face clouded. “I’m just saying, you seem lonely lately.”

When in doubt, mention having other plans.

“Besides, Karl and I have been talking about driving up to the mountains to do a little fishing, so I’m not sure I’d even have time to see her,” Burns said.

Oh, but that was the wrong thing to say, too. She squinted at him.

“Karl? I swear, that boy is bad news. You’re spending way too much time with him, Tommy. Or, Burns.”

“He’s my best friend, Mom.”

“He’s a communist, Tommy. All that talk about politics, it’s not healthy. I don’t think Jesus would like Karl’s outlook very much.”

Burns pressed the paper towel tighter onto his finger. “I imagine God has better things to do than worry about Karl’s politics.”

“I heard they threw him out of the ice cream parlor because he started giving a speech about animal rights.”

That made him laugh. “He does that stuff for shock value, Mom. He likes to get a rise out of people. Deep down, he’s a good guy.”

“He’s a lost soul, and I wish you would stop being so close to him.”

Burns had half a mind to defend Karl further. Everyone thought Karl was stuck up, full of himself, in love with his own crazy opinions, but they didn’t know him like Burns did.

Still, it wouldn’t do to defend Karl to his mom. Too risky. Did straight guys have to worry about this? Did they sit around wondering whether they were seeing their friends too much, just in case someone thought they were gay?

Probably not. Straight guys never worried about anything. Sometimes Burns thought he was going to get an ulcer, thinking about it.

In the bathroom, he poured antiseptic on his finger, wincing at the pain. It trickled off his finger, into the sink, making a soft gurgling as it went down the drain.

Oh hey, there’s a metaphor, he thought. His own life had been going down the drain lately, hadn’t it?

The plan had been a solid one: After he graduated college, he’d move back in with his folks long enough to save up some money and pay down his student loans. But that was going slowly, and sometimes it felt like he was never going to get out of here.

It wouldn’t have been so bad if he didn’t feel like he had to hide everything. Constantly checking his phone and PC to make sure he didn’t have any porn in his history, ignoring cute guys, measuring every word to make sure he didn’t sound too gay.

Man, the closet was fucking boring.

He put some antibiotic ointment on his cut, then wrapped a bandage around it. He was still working on it when his phone buzzed. He tried to reach for his pocket with his unbandaged hand, but had second thoughts when he realized his fingers were still covered in antibiotic ointment, and it wouldn’t wash off right away, so the phone kept going and going while he tried to de-slime his hand. By the time he’d wiped them dry on a towel, naturally the caller had hung up.

The screen said it was Karl, so he called him back.

“I am suffering from a great tragedy,” said Karl. “Do you want to grab something to eat?”

“Tommy, are you okay in there?” said his mom from the other side of the bathroom door.

“Dude,” he told Karl, “you don’t even know what tragedy is. Wait until I—”

She knocked again. “Tommy? Can I get you anything?”

“I’m on the phone, Mom!”

“In the bathroom?”

“You still there?” asked Karl.

“Sorry, my mom doesn’t understand that cell phones can work in the bathroom.”

“You’re in the bathroom, talking to me? Gross.”

“What was that?” said his mom.

He was going to go insane trying to hold two conversations at once. “Where are you?” he asked Karl.

“Downtown. You want to meet me at LuAnne’s?”

“Yeah, as soon as I can get past my mom.”

She was staring at him when he came out. “Who was it?”

“It was Karl.”

“You ran off to the bathroom to talk to Karl?”

He sighed and held up his bandaged finger, glad it was just the index one that he’d nicked. “I came in here to fix this up. Now, I’m going out.”

“Not to see him, Tommy? Aren’t you going to have dinner? The roast will be ready in just a little while.”

“I’m just going to grab something at LuAnne’s.”

She had already bustled past him into the bathroom, and was picking up the box of bandages he’d left out.

“You would rather have a greasy burger with that strange boy rather than a good piece of roast with your parents?”

“Oh, Mom, seriously, can we not have a whole conversation about it? You’ve said your piece about Karl, and I understand, but—”

She put the bandages back in the medicine cabinet. “I just think it’s funny how when I ask you to take out Delia—a perfectly normal, pretty girl you haven’t seen in almost twenty years—you’re full of mysterious plans that can’t possibly be changed, but a family dinner can be canceled at a moment’s notice!”

He’d never been so glad to get out of the house.