Will Horton looks for understanding after finally coming out to his parents on “Days of Our Lives”

Yesterday, I posted the moment where Will Horton blurts out to his parents: “I’m gay!”

Today’s scenes feature their reactions.

“I’ve been wanting to tell you guys for awhile. I was afraid and I didn’t know how,” a vulnerable Will tells his parents.

Sami, of course, makes it all about herself.

“I don’t understand. Why would you say that you’re gay? I’m your mother, I would know,” she says. “You have some crazy idea in your head that you’re gay.”

She says Will he is “going through some confusion” but Will’s dad, Lucas, knows that’s not the truth.

“He’s not confused,” he tells his ex-wife. “He’s trying to tell us the truth about himself.”

Sami won’t look at Will and says “I just can’t do this right now” then flees the apartment.

With Sami out of the way, dad and son have a very moving heart to heart. Lucas asks a lot of the questions you want a parent to ask when you come out to them: “Are you sure?” “How long have you known?” He asked about the ex-girlfriends and if he was “pretending” with them. When Will tells him he’d been ‘trying so hard to be straight,” his dad says: “I’m really sorry that you had to go through that alone.”

Lucas later admits to Will that he “kind of had a feeling that you might be gay” after seeing him with Sonny awhile back and asks if he and Sonny are a couple.

Will laughs and says: “Sonny and I are just friends. Just because two guys are gay doesn’t make them a couple.”

Meanwhile, Sami is having a heart-to-heart of her own with an unlikely confidant: her ex-husband EJ.

“I feel like I’m the world’s worst mother right now,” she tells EJ. “It never crossed my mind. I feel like an idiot.”

EJ has some very perceptive things to say about Will being gay.

“This is not about you,” he tells Sami. “This is about William right now. He needs you. … Go to William Samantha and listen to him. Listen.”

When Sami tries to blame Will being gay in her own poor parenting, EJ says: “Don’t be absurd. People are born gay. You can’t control whether they’re attracted to a man or a woman. … If poor mothering led to children being gay, then all of [Will’s parental grandmother] Kate’s children would be running around waving rainbow flags at pride festivals.”

Sami makes clear to EJ that she did not run from the room because she is rejecting Will: “I love my son. It doesn’t matter what his sexuality is. … I should’ve known. I couldn’t stand there and face the fact that I failed him again.”

The cast, in particular Chandler Massey as Will, are top-notch in these scenes. He straddles the bridge between snarky and vulnerable in a very believable way. Even though Will is emotional, Massey conveys to the audience how much Will has grown. He accepts himself and doesn’t feel like there is anything wrong with being gay.

“It’s just who I am,” he says.

It’s a powerful message to send.