Page 19 of These Secret Years

I nod. “Thanks. Obviously, I won’t either.”

“Good.”

“Good?” I ask.

“I just mean, I don’t want a reputation from day one that I’ll blow a closeted football player in the woods, you know?”

I stare at him, mystified.

“I’m still figuring things out.”

“Yeah. No. I get it.”

He holds out his hand like he wants me to shake it. “Friends?”

I hesitate, unsure if I want to commit to that. But I‘d be an asshole not to, so I finally shake on it. “Friends.”

Overall, it’s a perfect night, and I wouldn’t change a single thing about it. Not the endless rounds of UNO or the creepy tunnel. Not the splinter I get carrying the wood back to the campfire or the jokes Sullivan and I laugh off for coming out of the woods together.

Even the next morning, when I’m slightly hungover and much too exhausted to run drills with any skill or grace, I wouldn’t change anything.

Knowing where the guys I’m playing with come from and what their dreams and fears are bonds us as a team from day one. Next year, when it’s our turn, we’ll be unstoppable.

Chapter Five

SULLIVAN

Summer

Adrian’s estate is gated and sprawling. Bloomfield Hills is an affluent Detroit suburb, and it’s beautiful, home to old, old money and a fancy country club. For the first time since I’ve been coming to this place, I feel like exactly what I am when I arrive.

A whore.

Adrian can dress me up and put me in a fancy car, but it doesn’t change the purpose I serve, or the way my stomach sinks when I pass through the gates.

This time of year, everything is in bloom, and the grounds smell like fresh-cut grass, peonies, and money. I’ve never asked, but I have to assume Adrian is a nepo baby. There’s no way an orchestra conductor can afford all this on a city salary. His wealth shocked me the first time I came here. Now, I only feel complicit in it.

He looks displeased when he opens the door. “You’ve lost more weight.”

“Nice to see you, too.”

With a grimace, he steps aside to let me in, taking my rolling suitcase as I pass into the elaborate foyer.

Without another welcoming word, Adrian says, “Go upstairs and undress. I’d like to know what else you’ve done to yourself.”

I nod. These inspections have been a regular thing since the weekend I spent here over Christmas break when he saw I’d pierced my ears. I bear it because I learned quickly that resisting it is pointless.

Not that I’ll escape punishment, but the punishment is worse when I fight it, and the threats escalate. It becomes more difficult to keep him happy, and if I serve one purpose on this earth these days it’s keeping Adrian Frazier happy.

Maybe happy is the wrong word, I think as I climb the stairs with a straight back and my chin up. Reassured fits better.

There’s only one change besides my weight that he’ll find, and I think he might actually like it compared to some of the other things that have pissed him off over the school year.

Freshman year of college was a sort of fever dream of self-discovery. Or attempts at it. I can’t shake the feeling I’m still searching for something. What I have learned, more than anything, is that this so-called relationship between me and Adrian is not what I hoped it was. It’s something much viler. It’s wrong, and I’m in too deep to make it right.

When I arrive in the room designated as mine, I go into the en suite and take off my shirt. Avoiding my own reflection, I take off my pants and underwear, too. I run the shower as I study my newest tattoo. Covering the inside of my left forearm is an abstracted version of my first violin, including the crack around the f-hole I superglued on my own. I still have the violin at home. It makes the shittiest sound, but it reminds me of a time where music meant freedom and good, beautiful things.

I’m too far gone to reclaim my innocence, but I can remember it.