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I smiled. “To be honest, I kind of had a crush when I met him, too. But he was with Cage and Cage is great. Also, he introduced me to Lou.”
“Oh yeah, Mr. Rucker is great. He got me my scholarship here.”
“But, you still kind of have a crush on Quin?”
Cali lowered his head and turned red.
“Listen, I get it. So, does that mean you’re… gay?”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“Maybe.”
“Maybe, like you don’t want to admit it? Or, maybe, like you really don’t know?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted bashfully.
“It’s hard to tell, right? You meet someone of the same sex and they’re great. So, then you start to think that you could never have feelings for someone of the opposite sex again.”
“Right?” Cali said with a big smile.
“I obviously know the feeling.”
Cali paused.
“So what are you going to do about Lou? We could still go mess Sey up if you want. We could make him less pretty.”
“He is annoyingly pretty, isn’t he?” I joked.
“Pretty much,” Cali said with a laugh.
“Yeah, but Lou made his choice. If he wanted to be with me, he would have chosen me. He didn’t. What else can I do?”
“You could fight for the man you love?”
I thought about that.
“I could. But he knows how I feel about him and what I want. I even think he might feel the same about me. But maybe loving someone isn’t enough. He needs to want to be with me. If he doesn’t, what am I supposed to do?”
“Fight.”
I looked at Cali and smiled.
“You’re gonna make some guy a great boyfriend one day. Not Quin, though. He’s spoken for,” I teased.
Cali blushed.
Thinking about what Cali said as the night went on, I realized that he might be right. The one thing I could do was fight for Lou. But hadn’t he kissed me first? Didn’t that mean he liked me back? And, didn’t that also mean that he chose Sey because the two of them made more sense together?
Sey was an openly gay guy from an old Tennessee family. What’s more, Lou’s family, who hated me, loved him. And didn’t his mother say that they wouldn’t pay for Lou’s tuition if he didn’t choose Sey? If I fought for Lou and won, wouldn’t I be ruining his life?
So, what did I do about Lou’s offer to help me find my brother? I still loved Lou. It’s because I can’t be with him that I rejoined the football team.
I needed a way to channel my anger and went to Coach asking for a second chance. There were a few players out with an injury that day so he let me practice with them. When he saw me running through tackle dummies like they were made of straw, he invited me back. I’ve been leading the country in sacks since.
Football wasn’t enough, though. I needed more to take my mind off of Lou, so I told Claude I was in on his business idea. That led to a discussion about marketing. And that led to research that said that the only way to get Snow Tip Falls added to maps was to incorporate the town.
Incorporating a town is a big deal. There is a ton of work involved. I had to get people to sign a petition that I sent to the State. They had to approve it. And now I have to organize an election to decide on the town’s charter.
