About two months prior to my coming out of the closet, my parents absolutely adored Claire—especially my mother.

     Since I was the youngest of three daughters—my sisters already moved out of the house and they barely came back home—Mom kind of developed this predilection to girls that were about two or three years older than I was, and were part of my social circle.

     Claire used to come over everyday after work, which pleased my parents very much because I wasn't that much of a social person. She had broken up with her boyfriend by that time; and I honestly didn't care about her being with a guy before me. All that mattered to me was her being with me.

     Needless to say, they were very happy that I had someone in my life whom I could call a friend.

     Little did I know that my father would scream bloody murder when he'd walked in on us at the living room getting too comfortable a few weeks after Claire and I started hanging out.

     We were watching some chick flick and Claire's head was on my chest and I was running my fingers through her hair. I leaned down for a quick peck on the lips, then out of nowhere, I heard my dad scream, "What the fuck, Alexa?!"

     After that, he threw Claire out and called her horrible, discriminating names that had me crying my eyes out. Every slur he had called Claire was like a dagger through my heart because it felt like he was calling me those names, too.

     My eyes had been red and swollen and they stung really bad. I felt cold and numb, and all I could think about was how helpless and apologetic Claire's eyes had been when she was being kicked out of the house.

     As if all of what happened was her fault—she was putting all the blame on herself and not me.