Page 111 of Sweat

“When Matt and I got you out from under the bed, you told him your mom was at the match on Saturday. What happened?”

Hands shaking in my lap, Tommy finds them again and grips them firm.

“I—I don’t know,” I mumble meekly. “As soon as she said she was my mom, I sorta fell out of myself. I don’t think I heardone word she said after that. Then, I was running like I was being chased until I realized I was lost.”

“You should’ve called me. I would’ve found you.”

I want to tell him I didn’t want to put all my baggage on him, but the truth is, I just wasn’t thinking. When I quit running, my body went numb and my mind was in such a flurry I could hardly make sense of my phone screen while I ordered the Uber. I wasn’t thinking about Tommy. I was thinking about getting as far away from that woman as possible and burying myself into a hole so deep no one would ever find me.

But Tommy found me anyway.

“Did you recognize her?” Tommy asks when I stay silent too long.

“Yes, and no. I didn’t know who she was when she came up to me, but then she felt kinda familiar at the same time. Like maybe she was in some of my dreams growing up.”

Nightmares,I should’ve said.

Tommy nods but doesn’t speak, waiting for me to keep going, but the only thing I can think of to say is the thing I’m the most afraid to tell him.

Looking away from Tommy’s eyes, I focus on the rise and fall of his chest instead. “I know you think it’s dumb that I have such a hard time saying that I’m,ya know.”

“I don’t think it’s dumb,” he insists. “Look at me. I don’t think it’s dumb. I just wanna understand, so I can help make it less difficult. That’s all I want.”

I try looking back into his eyes, but it’s too hard right now, just like everything else. “I think the reason it’s so difficult is ‘cause of what happened to me.” Fear clams me up, unable to speak anything more until Tommy asks me what happened. It’s like my body won’t do what my mind wants it to until Tommy coaxes it out of me. Looking at him is suddenlyimpossible, so I turn my head to the wall instead. “I was, like, exploited.”

There’s a pause before Tommy asks, “Exploited?”

“You know. Molested.”

There’s a longer pause, and I can hear Tommy’s breaths grow louder and more purposeful, like each one is a conscious effort not to suffocate on what I’m telling him. “How old were you?” he eventually asks.

“Little. Like, really little. Too little for me to remember it happening. But I’d have dreams—nightmares—all the time when I was a kid, and that really fucked me up. I didn’t know why that stuff was in my head, or what it meant. I thought maybe it meant I was a bad person, because I thought only bad people had bad dreams, and I had bad dreams all the time. Dreams that would make me puke as soon as I woke up. Dreams that made me hate myself and make me wanna die.

“When I was in, like, eighth grade, I tried looking for my parents. That’s when I found out what happened and why I was taken from them. It made sense of my dreams, but it didn’t make me feel any better. It actually made me feel a lot worse. Realizing my biological father was in prison for doing the worst shit you can do to a kid, and he did it to me. That my biological mother had been locked up, too, for helping him do it.

“All I ever wanted was for someone to love me and to know what that feels like. I thought that because I’m gay, no one would ever love me. Until you. But now I’m scared that I can’t be what you need me to be, because I’m too fucked up. I’m scared I won’t love you right, because I’ve never loved anyone good before. I’m scared I’m gonna lose you, because I love you so much. I didn’t think I could love anyone like this. I didn’t think—”

The air expels from my lungs in a choked sob when Tommy collides himself against me, hugging me tight and holding my head to his shoulder.

“You’re not fucked up,” Tommy speaks against my head, his lips grazing my scalp with each word. “You’re mine. Hear me? You’re mine, and you always will be. I will always love you, Row.”

He says more things, but I don’t hear them over the retched sound of my crying. Even if I could hear them, I don’t know if I’m in the right headspace to process it all. All I know is that I told Tommy something I swore I never would, but somehow, he still wants me. Somehow, while I’m breaking down all over him, he makes me feel whole.

With Tommy’s hands rubbing stripes across my back, it shocks me how quickly I recover. How quickly my heart calms, my eyes dry, and my lungs breathe easier. When he leans back, he takes me with him, and he lets me lie half on top of him, my cheek on his shoulder and his lips against my head.

“Sweetheart,” he whispers, like that’s my name now. It feels ironic, since my heart only feels sweet when it’s beating for Tommy.

“Hm?”

“You know you didn’t deserve what happened to you, right?”

“I know.”

“You know you’re not a bad person, right?”

“I guess.”

“You’re lovable, Row,” he tells me. “You’re generous, supportive, protective, and beautiful. That’s all you. I’ve never met anyone as special as you. What happened to you…what those people did…that’s not who you are, and that’s not why you’re gay. You’re gay because you’re supposed to be loved by a man, and I’m gonna be that man. I’m gonna love you. I’m gonna take care of you whenever you need it, and I’m gonna help you get through this. Anytime you’re feeling any type of way about what happened, I’m gonna be here for you.”

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