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Living your truth is important, but sometimes living the lie is what keeps you warm, fed, looked after … breathing.
Bryson Keller and I hold hands the rest of the way home. And I take my first step into quicksand.
I don’t want Bryson Keller to break my heart. I don’t want to be the cliché of a gay boy falling for a straight boy. But he held my hand. Bryson Keller held my hand, so what does that mean for me? What does it say about him? And what does it say about us?
I miss you, is that weird? I take a deep breath and decide to be honest. No, because I miss you too.
“Please, trust me,” Bryson says. “I need you to trust me. This is all scary and new for me, too.”
We’re in a city where no one knows us, standing at the cliff, waiting to jump. My eyes move to his lips. Right now there is nothing more that I want in this world than for Bryson Keller to kiss me.
“Don’t. Don’t apologize,” Bryson says. “Not for that kiss, never for that kiss.”
He breaks then. Whoever says that boys don’t cry—or shouldn’t cry—needs to walk off a very short pier into a shark-infested ocean.
“This all feels like a dream to me, you know?” He turns to look at me. My words hang between us heavy like rain clouds just waiting to burst. His face is serious, and his eyes never leave mine. He’s silent for a heartbeat. Then he reaches across and pinches me. “Ouch!” I rub the back of my hand. “What was that for?” “To remind you that it’s real.”
I can’t hold any of it back. I rip at my seams and everything spills out: all my sadness, all my anger, all my fear. I cry. Alone.
I cry in Bryson’s arms, and it is enough. As my world burns down around me. This, right here, is enough.
“And who said soccer was a gentleman’s game?” I tease. “No one,” Bryson says. “That’s cricket.”
Anyone who thinks that homophobia doesn’t exist in this day and age has never been the gay boy standing in a boys’ locker room.
It was real then. And it’s real now. I’m using my wish now. I wish you were here. I miss you.
