"I never once said we had the greatest country in the world. I'd still be in Australia right now if it wasn't for... for..." Jake trailed off and looked down at his lap. Shit, he didn't even know how to put it in words anymore. 'The affair' cheapened what he and Joey ended up having together, and trying to inject more intimacy into it cheapened what he'd had with Alice for a long time before he started seeing Joey. "New York's not my home, Jacksonville is, and it's very different to New York. But all my siblings are here now. Even Sonny. Rosie's a mommy, and Jules is nursing her husband through cancer and taking care of his son who has health issues too, so this is where I need to be."
He drew in a deep breath and let it out in a rush. "Yes," he replied with no hesitation. "I didn't do any of this because I thought what we had went bad. I didn't do it because I was too chicken shit to tell you I wasn't in love with you anymore. I was. We were happy. We had fun. You know what I truly believed Joey started out as? Just fulfilling some sort of bisexual need to sleep with a guy. I thought I was helping him out because he was so closeted and trapped that he didn't think he had any avenue to explore being gay. He was married, he was in the military, and despite what we did, he had a lot of values at heart. He wasn't just going to go trawling Oxford Street for a twink to get his rocks off with. He chose, instead, to bury that prominent part of him away to try to keep making his marriage work somehow when he didn't love her because he's gay. He's not bi, Alice, he's gay. A gay person trying to pretend to be straight for anyone but themselves, it's painfully hard. I felt for him. I wanted to help him. I know it sounds stupid to think, oh jumping into bed with him, what a hard way to help him... not. That night of our Christmas party when Carissa got blind drunk and embarrassed him, I could see him visibly cringing at it. I took him up to the roof for some fresh air and gave him another beer. When he started opening up to me, I realised how much in pain he was, how much he had belittled who he was for the sake of other people. We didn't just jump into bed together. We talked for hours up there, and he told me everything from his childhood to how hard he worked in the military, watching people die because they were too injured for him to save, how Carissa was spending all his hard-earned money leaving him to have to work harder to foot the bills of her spending. How he had known for years he was gay but he tried to tell himself it was just a phase. I couldn't just walk away with a 'Well, nice chatting with you, mate, catch you later and don't forget to enjoy the party pies before you leave'."
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He drew in a deep breath and let it out in a rush. "Yes," he replied with no hesitation. "I didn't do any of this because I thought what we had went bad. I didn't do it because I was too chicken shit to tell you I wasn't in love with you anymore. I was. We were happy. We had fun. You know what I truly believed Joey started out as? Just fulfilling some sort of bisexual need to sleep with a guy. I thought I was helping him out because he was so closeted and trapped that he didn't think he had any avenue to explore being gay. He was married, he was in the military, and despite what we did, he had a lot of values at heart. He wasn't just going to go trawling Oxford Street for a twink to get his rocks off with. He chose, instead, to bury that prominent part of him away to try to keep making his marriage work somehow when he didn't love her because he's gay. He's not bi, Alice, he's gay. A gay person trying to pretend to be straight for anyone but themselves, it's painfully hard. I felt for him. I wanted to help him. I know it sounds stupid to think, oh jumping into bed with him, what a hard way to help him... not. That night of our Christmas party when Carissa got blind drunk and embarrassed him, I could see him visibly cringing at it. I took him up to the roof for some fresh air and gave him another beer. When he started opening up to me, I realised how much in pain he was, how much he had belittled who he was for the sake of other people. We didn't just jump into bed together. We talked for hours up there, and he told me everything from his childhood to how hard he worked in the military, watching people die because they were too injured for him to save, how Carissa was spending all his hard-earned money leaving him to have to work harder to foot the bills of her spending. How he had known for years he was gay but he tried to tell himself it was just a phase. I couldn't just walk away with a 'Well, nice chatting with you, mate, catch you later and don't forget to enjoy the party pies before you leave'."