Page 149 of These Secret Years

“But—”

“If I come out, and the NFL doesn’t want anything to do with me, then fuck them. Like really. Fuck them.”

“It wasn’t ever really the league you were worried about though, right? It’s the fans?”

“Fuck them, too.”

“Knight.” I have to get up. I need to walk. “We’ve barely been together two months⁠—”

“I fell for you two years ago.”

“And I’m not the same person, so take a breath.”

He raises his voice just enough to match my energy. “Whether you wanna be with me or not, it’s not gonna make me any less gay.”

“No, I know that, but I’m saying I’d personally be on board with the figuring it out plan. I don’t need to be out with you, and if being out is gonna fuck up the one dream you’ve ever had, then⁠—”

“Dreams can change.” He’s looking directly at me when he says that, and yeah, gotta admit, it melts me a little, but also—no.

“The one thing we’re not doing this week is going cliff diving, okay?”

He sighs heavily. “I think what I’m trying to say here is that I love you, and we’re going to figure this out. Whether I have to make different plans or whatever, but forget what I said before about it not being able to work, okay? That’s not on the table anymore.”

I circle right back to myself on that one. “And if I can’t ever have sex with you again?”

He stands up, too, and makes a slow approach, stopping a few feet away from me. “You said you wanted to.”

“I do,” I reply softly.

“Well, if that changes, let me know, and I’ll reassess.”

That sounds…perfectly reasonable.

“All right.”

“Okay. Well. Good talk. Wanna spoon on the couch for a little while and let me breathe on you? I brushed my teeth.”

I nod and take the hand he offers, letting him lead me over to the couch where he puts on ESPN and assumes the big spoon position with his mouth right behind my ear.

Chapter Thirty-Three

KNIGHT

Whether Sullivan wants to talk about it or not, my willingness to play in a league where the fans won’t have me is dwindling in inverse proportion to how much I need to be around him. Because who’s to say where he’ll wind up after college, where his music will take him? I asked him during spring break, and he said he figured either Hollywood or New York at first, probably New York, but that eventually, if he was successful, he could live anywhere.

I think that last part was supposed to make me feel better, but what it actually feels like is I’ve got one year left with him where we can be like this, and I keep thinking that maybe “like this” isn’t really good enough.

While we talk about everything all the time, one thing I haven’t really told him is how jealous I am that he was able to randomly come out to his mom and then move on with the conversation. That she, in a way, knows about me, but I can’t meet her, and I don’t know how to tell my parents.

There’s also this huge part of me that wants to introduce Sullivan to my family. My parents, my sisters, even my uncles who are like fathers to me, too. I’m not sure what my dad would think about it, not much probably, but I know I wouldn’t be exiled or anything. My mom and sisters would be fine—my sisters would probably like it. Kat in particular has a huge circle of queer friends in New York amongst the dance and theater crowd, and there was a point in high school where I wondered if I could take everything I’d learned in terms of bodily control and mastery and somehow translate that into dancing instead. But even I can admit that was only wishful thinking one or two times.

The truth is, I never thought I’d fall for someone. I thought my life was destined to be a series of semi-anonymous hookups because football was always meant to be my life partner, that was, for as long as I could play it. And then there was this second future I had in mind—the “after football” future where maybe my life could look different. However—that theoretical future is so far away—a decade at least—that wrapping my brain around it has always been like trying to grab water.

But I have found someone. Someone I love and want to be with as much as humanly possible, and I’ve found want that feels sometimes like compulsion born out of the protective part of me. Now, a future without Sullivan feels like an impossibility. Like something I can’t physically do.

Even talk of this summer when he said he would rather stay here in the apartment while I need to go home for at least a few weeks was almost enough to start a fight, but he calmed the room by saying he’d think about it. While thinking about it isn’t nearly good enough, what he said afterward—“I don’t want to be apart that long either”—was enough to make me believe he’d come up with a compromise.

Between us physically, April has been a month of good progress and false starts. Too often, he gets ahead of himself. He wants more than he can handle yet, and he doesn’t believe me, I guess, when I tell him that the fact that he wants more is good enough for me. That I’d be okay with him saying everything he wanted to do, then I’d go jerk off in the shower, and it’d practically be as good as if he did it himself, minus the freak outs or the panic attacks.