Page 167 of Catch Me
“Nothing. Why are you here?”
“You weren’t at the game.” He just gestured toward the TV. “You watched it?”
“Yeah. I had a lot of stuff to work on, so...”
“Character design.”
“Yup.”
“Do you like it?”
“What do you want, Travis?”
The venom in his voice was different from the way he’d sounded the other day. It reminded me why I was here.
“Explain.”
“No,” he said.
Feeling bold, I moved in front of him. He kept his eyes on my chest instead of looking at me. I grabbed onto his shoulders and held him in place.
“Why not?” I asked.
“You smell like booze.”
“Celebratory, but it’s not why I’m here. I want your explanation.”
He shoved my hands away from him and walked toward the bed. “I don’t see the point.”
“Fine.”
I headed for the door, already regretting every thought that had brought me here. I’d known it was a mistake, and I should have listened to the reasonable voice that told me to stay the hell away—far away.
“They called me a faggot,” he said suddenly, his voice inflectionless.
I came to a stop immediately. Turning around, I studied his face. It was just as dead as his voice. When he looked up, there was something dark in his eyes that brought memories to my own mind—trees, counselors, blood on my knuckles.
Curling my fingers inward, I dragged my thumb across the scars. “Who did?”
“My friends. I outed myself to them. Meant to send a text to someone else, but I was on the phone with my dad and...” He shrugged. “I freaked out.”
“So, you ran because the assholes who weren’t actually your friends chose to act like assholes?”
I caught his phone out of the air when he tossed it at me. There was a text pulled up, dated from December.
I glanced at him briefly, then scrolled down. There were more messages from his dad, which he responded to once in a while, but mostly dismissive things.
“You said you’re mostly out,” I remembered. “Not to him.”
He shook his head. “I keep trying, but...I guess that’s the thing with parents like him. No matter how much you know better, some pathetic part of you still waits for them to say they’re proud. You still twist yourself inside out hoping they’ll notice, like that’ll make it mean something. Like if you just try hard enough, it’ll matter.” He looked down at the floor. “You’ll matter.”
Unable to stop myself, I stepped closer. I held the phone out, and he took it but didn’t pull his hand back. His thumb brushed across my knuckles once before I dropped my hand.
“It wasn’t just those guys,” he went on. “Their voices became his, and fordays, all I heard was him saying all of the things I’ve heard from him when he talks about Til. I heard the thingsIsaid to Til and to Alex and so many others. Maybe it’d be my penance for it, and I know I’ll have to face it someday, but back then, I was still clinging to this tiny sliver of hope that I could just stuff the truth back inside, even if it killed me.”
“You could’ve just told me,” I said quietly.
“I panicked. And I almost turned around, but I remembered how you told me you weren’t Kai, which made me overthink. I know that you would’ve been there for me, but at the time, I couldn’t reason that out in my head. I couldn’t begin to believe that I was worth that, especially for someone like you.”
