Page 64 of Pippin & Nacho

With a deep sigh, pulling out some bravery from my nearly empty well that held things like strength, courage, and confidence, I told him. “My parents sent me to conversion therapy as a young teen. It… really fucked me up. They did all this…” I choked on my words. It was so hard to say, and I wasn’t sure I could go into details.

“You don’t need to elaborate. I’m familiar with the practice, and I’m sorry. No one should ever suffer that.”

“Thanks… so, ah, when my parents wanted to send me back, I ran and ran until the police picked me up. I lied about my family, and they threw me into foster care. I met Nate a few years later. Our foster father hurt me. They always hurt me. I annoy them. My brain…”

“Say no more. I get it. Then what?”

With another deep sigh, my story got easier, not just because I was finally telling it again, but because Cueball didn’t judge. In fact, he understood and was good at keeping me on track, reminding me of a more serious version of Nate.

“The last time I got hurt, Nate took me away from there. He always protected me and took care of me. I’ve always loved him. We lived on the streets for two years. It was hard. So hard. So fucking cold all the time. But he took care of me, held me, and earned money to feed us. He said it was better than me getting hurt by others and that he would eventually find us a home. It was so loud, though—”

“And how did you get off the streets?”

“Alpha. He helped us.”

Cueball nodded thoughtfully. “I like him. I can tell he’s a good man. So, you kept this all a secret because it hurts, right?”

“Yes, and people get frustrated with me.”

“I think you just need to be yourself and fuck the rest. Your friends will definitely still like you. But I see now how your Nate might need someone to talk to about this, not that telling your secret was right. Can you two talk to a therapist?”

My stomach bottomed out, and bile rose in my throat. “No, no, no… no doctors.”

“Ah, I get it. If you can’t talk to a doctor, I recommend you trust your friends. They will love you no matter what. I’ve come to know them pretty well, thanks to being friends with Stone. We’ve all had our share of pain, Pippin. You’re not alone, and you don’t need to suffer alone.”

“I didn’t… I had Nate.”

“And Nate feels alone, too, even having you in his life.”

My shoulders sagged. “I know.”

He was right. I put so much pressure on Nate, still…

“Do you think you can forgive him?”

I nodded. “Definitely. I love him, and I’ll never leave him.”

“Good, then you should tell him that.”

“Thank you, Cueball.”

Before he could respond, my phone in my pocket pinged from our group text with Alpha and our friends.

Johns Hopkins Hospital: We are reaching out to anyone who knows Nathaniel Lamont.

I couldn’t even read the rest of the message as the vertigo hit and the nausea rose.

He left me.

The February day dumped a foot of snow outside. Sam and I are huddled together on the floor of a homeless shelter. It’s so crowded, and they don’t have any beds left. There are so many people without homes, and so many more are still outside with nowhere to go.

We sit on our sleeping bags with bellies full of cold pizza donated by a local restaurant. It’s better than nothing, which happened some days. Sam and I have gone two days without eating. You wouldn’t think that’s very long, but two days is a lot before the gripping stomach pain takes over.

Sometimes the food we’ve scrounged is gross, and we’ve gotten sick from it, but you do what you can to survive.

I hate it like this. I wish I could do more for Sam. Living on the streets is far from ideal, and my only consolation is that Sam hasn’t been hurt by others again, not that there aren’t bad people on the streets either. We need to get out of this, having done this for far too long, but I didn’t know how. I’m still only a kid at seventeen with no education.

When I took him, I only had vague plans about what we would do. I didn’t think far enough ahead to figure out how to get off the streets once we were living on them. But it’s been nearly two years, and here we still are, with no home or job.

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