Brad waited with bated breath as Preston digested what he suggested. “So we’ll keep our hands off each other until class is over and I get my certificate?”

Brad chewed on his lip. “I meant … at all.”

Preston stared at him. Brad could tell he was still a little uncomprehending. “You mean—never?”

Brad nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “I just—I don’t think it would be a good idea.”

“What do you mean?” Preston looked like Brad had slapped him with a wet fish: hurt, stung, but also completely confused. “I get that we shouldn’t do anything if I continue to be your student. I totally get that. I’m relieved, honestly, that you want to keep coaching me, and I’m willing to keep a professional distance until we finish that up.

“I can’t be a good friend, or partner, or anything to anyone without finishing this, and I trust you as my coach with Katie, and I like to talk these things through with you.” Preston’s eyes were pleading. “But once I finish, and you’re not my coach anymore, I want to be with you. I want to date you.

“You want to date me too. I know you do. You—you kissed me back, we—I mean it wasn’t sex, but it sure was more than just making out. And when I talk with you … I know that it’s mostly about my issues, but it can’t just be that, can it?”

Brad could lie, and say that he didn’t want to be with Preston at all. He knew that might make it easier. To just let Preston think that it had been a one-off, that their time together meant nothing to him, and that he only cared about Preston as a client, as his coach.

He'd never been all that good at lying, though. He was surprised he’d kept the truth about his sexuality from his mom for this long. If this was going to end, he didn’t want it to end on a lie. He wanted Preston to know that he was truly cared for, and that Brad hadn’t been using him or lying to him beforehand.

“I like you,” he said. He gripped the edge of the desk that he was leaning on. The desk where Preston had kissed him just a few days before.

“I really do. You’re—you’re great. You drove me nuts when we first met, but you’ve got this sweet side to you, and you’re really trying and I’ll be honest, when you stood up for me, it was really hot.

“And I’d like to date you and get to know you better, once this whole thing wraps up. But I can’t.”

Preston’s eyes grew dark and shuttered, and Brad could see his jaw clenching. “You mean you’re still not willing to come out.”

“It’s not fair of me to ask you to date me in secret. That’s far too much pressure on you. Maybe if … you know, you lived in the city, and I could go see you there or something … but it would just be too hard, with my mom, and the small town we live in.

“You deserve to be with someone who will be loud and proud about who you are and who they are. You deserve someone who doesn’t have to hide that he’s with you.”

“Then why do you hide it?” Preston countered. “Don’t give me that excuse, ‘I’m not worthy of you because I’m not out’; you could be out if you wanted to.”

Brad could feel his throat closing up and his stomach twisting. “No, I couldn’t. Not with my mom.”

“Your mom?” Preston looked frustrated and confused, folding his arms in front of his chest. “What, is she a raging homophobe?”

“No, not that I know of.”

“Then why are you so worried?”

“It’s just … I don’t know her views.”

“You could ask her.”

Brad shook his head. “She’s a strict woman. You don’t know what it was like growing up in my house.”

“You know what it was like growing up in my house. Try me.”

Brad sighed. “My dad had a lot of problems with PTSD after he came home from his tour of duty overseas. It was tough on us.

“My mom finally insisted that he go to therapy, or he get out of the house. That she respected what he’d gone through, but he wasn’t allowed to inflict his pain on her, and he had to find a way to help himself, or at least handle his issues. That it wasn’t fair to himself, even, to keep it all bottled up and handle it in unhealthy ways.

“And she was right. That was how I learned about anger management, and how I knew that’s what I wanted to help people with.

“But she had her own issues, too. Mom has a way of looking at the world where this is the way it is, and you can’t change her opinion on it. It’s just black and white.”

“And you’re so scared of her opinion that you won’t even bother to ask what it is,” Preston said. He sounded disgusted. Brad could feel shame crawling up his spine like a spider.

“Look, I get that I’m not confrontational like you are—”

“This isn’t about being confrontational,” Preston interrupted. “It’s about being so scared that you won’t talk about the subject at all. I get that it’s hard to talk about something like this with someone you love.

“But for fuck’s sake, you don’t even know if she’s actually going to reject you for it. She might not care. And it doesn’t have to be a fight if you don’t want it to be. It can just be a discussion. That’s not avoiding anger, what you’re doing; it’s being a coward.”

Brad clenched his fingers around the desk. “I’m not a coward.”

“That’s exactly what you’re being,” Preston argued. “You’re deciding that you know what she’s going to think and say, even though you really don’t, and you’re choosing not to fight for yourself.

“Is hiding who you are going to make you happy? Is it going to help you? Or are you just going to suffer for—what, some noble cause? So that your mommy can be happy? Take it from me, suffering for other people is not how you want to live your life.”

“You make it sound like I’m condemning myself to prison or something.”

“Aren’t you? Metaphorically speaking?”

“My mom is my best friend,” Brad argued. “She’s the only family I have, and we’re close, and I worked hard to get us that close.

“I lost out when my dad died. I wasn’t always home as often as I should’ve been, I was rebellious as a teenager, I didn’t call enough. I’m not losing out on a relationship with my other parent.”

“Would you ever lie to your best friend the way that you’re lying to your mom?” Preston pointed out. “You’d tell your best friend who you were.”

“What if it was someone I’d known from before I realized?” Brad countered.

“You’re only making it this complicated because it’s family,” Preston said. “We let family get away with shit we’d never let anyone else get away with. I don’t think you’d let Hank treat you this way, so why are you letting your mom, even unintentionally?

“And if your mom really cares about you, she wouldn’t want you to do this for her. She’d be upset to learn that you were hiding such a big part of yourself from her and holding it in—keeping it even from yourself.

“It’s not healthy. This whole time you’ve been telling me that I need to talk about my issues and face them, and you won’t face yours? What kind of double-standard bullshit is this?”

“It’s not a double standard,” Brad said, but the words felt hollow.

“How is it not?” Preston shot back. “You’ve got issues. They’re the opposite from my issues, but that doesn’t make them any less of a problem than mine.”

Brad scoffed. “My trying to be considerate of my mother and my relationship with her is just as bad as your anger issues that got you kicked out of your friend’s bar?”

Preston glared at him. “You know what? I admired you for how calm you were. I felt like I was all hard angles and you were soft, and I wanted to be more like you. I wanted to be with you. But now I see that you’re just a doormat.”

Brad knew that Preston was just angry—his jaw was clenched and his nails were digging into his arms—but that didn’t mean Preston didn’t believe the words he was saying, on some level.

“And what about you?” he shot back, feeling anger starting to bubble up inside of him as well, even as he tried to tamp it down and stay in control. “You’re going to have to forgive me if I take your advice with a grain of salt.”

Preston snorted. “Yeah, I know, I’m an asshole. I fight too much. But at least I fight for what I want and deserve. I haven’t been going about it the right way, but at least I’ve never let anyone walk all over me. I’ve never let myself be miserable when one tough conversation might fix it all.”

“So you stood up to your dad?” Brad asked. “You told your mom when he died that you’d find a way to get to college anyway because that was your dream, that she could sell the house and move into a small apartment with you near your school or something? Or did you just let her tell you that you couldn’t afford college, and that you needed to help her support each other?”

Preston’s eyes went a little wide, then narrowed. “Are you seriously comparing yourself, as an adult, to a high school kid who was never taught how to express his emotions?

“Yeah, I had some good role models that I should have paid more attention to, like Luke’s dad. Or my coach. Or the Sheriff, even.

“But I was a kid. You’re a grown-ass adult who’s a damn anger management coach. You should know better.”

“And what do you think I would gain?” Brad asked. “Are you seriously telling me that you’re better than my mother? That what I could get from you would be better than what I’m getting from her?

“Because, yes, I want a life partner. I want a husband, someday. But that love isn’t any more important than my family love. It’s different, but neither’s more important than the other.”

“You’d get to be yourself,” Preston insisted. “You get to hang out with the people you want to hang out with, without worrying about someone else finding out or someone judging you.

“If it wasn’t your mom, you’d find another excuse, wouldn’t you? You’d find someone else that would keep you from doing it instead.”

Preston finally unfolded his arms, hooking his thumbs into his belt loops instead. “And the thing is—I admired you so much, Brad. I really did. I thought that you were fantastic. But now I’m wondering—you preach all of this stuff to us in class.

“And I know that it’s supposedly about controlling our anger. But it’s really about being brave. Because anger is just an unhealthy way of trying to deal with our problems. And forcing yourself to be calm and approach the real issues that make you the way you are, that takes courage.

“I’ve felt terrified half the time we’re talking. But I thought you were better than I was. And now I see that you aren’t.

“You won’t fight for what you really want. You’re a hypocrite, because you’re insisting that all of us can be better and should be better, but you’re not holding yourself to those same standards. You’re letting yourself wallow in your own unhappiness, and making the rest of us do the hard and painful shit instead.”

Brad felt like his entire world was spinning around. That wasn’t—he didn’t feel like a hypocrite. He didn’t want to be a hypocrite.

Was that how Preston saw him? The look of anger—no, more than that, disappointment, perhaps even disgust—that he saw in Preston’s eyes was devastating.

Preston grabbed his jacket. “Don’t expect to see me in class next week.”

“What?” He wasn’t—he couldn’t quit. “But you’re so close.”

“I’ll start over somewhere else,” Preston replied, his voice laced with fury. “I’m not going to let anything stop me from getting back into Joe’s with my friends again; not you, not anyone. I’ll just drive to a place in the city.

“But I’m not going to take advice from you. Not when you won’t take your own. And don’t bother calling.”

Brad wanted to say something to make him stop—to make him stay—but he couldn’t think of anything.

Instead he just let Preston walk out of the door and out of his life.