Chapter 32

“I’m not ashamed of you,” I told Ryan.

“I didn’t say you’re ashamed ofme, I said you’re ashamed to be seenwith me. There’s a difference.”

I struggled to defend myself against his accusations, telling him that our relationship presented a different set of challenges for me because I’d never dated someone whose age wasn’t close to mine. “It’s hard for me to be with you and have people think I’m your father or your uncle or…something else,” I admitted.

“Why do you care what people think? I don’t.”

I cared for a variety of reasons. Aside from the father/uncle thing, I worried that people would look at me with him and see something awful and pathetic: an old lecher taking advantage of a younger man. Ryan had the luxury of being young enough to dismiss appearances, but I was old enough to know that they didmatter.

“Besides,” Ryan continued, “you had to know what you were getting into when you started seeing me.”