I never dared to ask how long or strongly those feelings had dwelt inside of him, maybe because the matter was still a bit iffy and uncertain to me, to him, and to us.
Sometimes I would even wonder if my worries were valid.
I knew that when people started talking, words could always get mixed up, thrown around, added in and out, and twisted until they had no reselmblence to what they once were.
I also knew that things weren’t always as they appeared, and the whole saga could be a huge misunderstanding that my father was afraid to talk about for fear of telling me the truth. What if there was another secret entirely, and he was really not gay at all?

I mean, I had no actual proof. It wasn’t as if he had told me himself, or I found him with another guy.
As I look back on it now, I realize that I was trying to tell myself these things when the truth resided inside of me for the longest time.