AllFreeNovel
Share Us
And maybe, like me, he’s wondering why this feels as right as it does.
CHAPTER21
NOAH
“Hey, Noah. Can I talk to you?”
I raise my pierced brow, turning away from the bonfire Kendall, Patrick, and I are sitting around to see Ian standing behind us. I groan. This is supposed to be counselor time. It’s close to lights out, and Ian should be in his bunk already.
I suck in a long deep breath, pressing my lips together as I kill my cigarette. “Sure. What’s up, buddy?”
Ian looks at Kendall and Patrick, his eyes wide and his freckle-covered cheeks pink as he looks back at me. “In private?”
I share a look with Kendall and Patrick, all of us seem just slightly weirded out and wary. Regardless, I can sense something is up. “Sure.”
I get up off the log I’m sitting on and gesture for Ian to follow me. We’re not far from the lake, so I take him just a little bit away from the other counselors. “What’s this about?”
Ian’s fingers twitch as he picks at his shirt. “I still haven’t heard back from my parents.”
“Dude,” I groan, running my hand down my face. “For the last time, I told you—”
“I want to go home.”
I rear my head back a little. This is the first camper who’s expressed not wanting to be here. Even though this might not be my thing, everyone else has seemed really happy so far. I take a closer look at Ian—his nervous little tell and his shaky fingers—and my blood runs cold. “Why? Is anyone giving you trouble?”
“No, not at all,” he says quickly with a shake of his head, but I don’t know if I believe him. Sure, the kids here are all relatively good, but there are kids like Bryce in the making that might be giving him shit. “I just don’t belong here.”
“Why’s that?”
“I think…when you gave ministry…I realized…”
I take a soft step toward him and place my hand reassuringly on his shoulder. “Come on, kid. Spit it out.”
“I’m gay!” he shouts, blurting it out so loudly and covering his mouth with a cringe when he realizes it.
I nod slowly. I’m not really too sure what to do. “Thank you for telling me that,” I say. “Is that why you want to go home?”
“I saw the way the other campers reacted when you came out,” he says nervously. “What if they find out about me?”
For a second, I’m angry. I’m angry that people like Jarred, Patrick, and Ian have to be so afraid to come out. But then I turn compassionate. I can see that it’s killing this kid, wrecking him from the inside out, and his fellow campers’ reaction to my coming out probably doesn’t help the situation.
I shake my head. “They won’t unless you want them to. What are you feeling right now?”
“Wrong. Scared.” His lips tremble as tears spring from his eyes. “Afraid that God will punish me.”
I let out a deep sigh. Poor kid. I hate this. I hate that anyone has to feel this way. “A lot of people that were raised in the church feel that way when they come out.”
“How did you move past it?”
I don’t know why, but I never felt like this when I came out. Well, I haven’t officially come out to my parents, but I never felt the need to. I’m out at school—I don’t try to hide my attraction to the men I pick up—but I’m surprisingly good at brushing away all the homophobic shit that’s sometimes thrown at me.
Even though I was raised in the church, I’ve never actually been afraid of God.
“I…” I shrug and tell him the honest truth. “I realized that if God was real, he’d love me for me, I guess.”
He cocks his head to the side, wiping at his tears. “So…so, God isn’t real?”
“I didn’t say that. Only you know what you believe,” I say firmly. I’m not in the business of trying to manipulate people into believing what I believe. That’s not cool. Kids are impressionable and Ian needs to know that he needs to come to his own conclusion. “If you choose to believe in God, believe in the version you want to believe in, but don’t let anyone tell you that there’s something wrong with you.”
