Page 112 of Sweat

Takes me a while to process all that. A minute, but maybe more. As long as I focus on the sound of Tommy’s heart gently beating beside my ear, I keep myself from crying again.

“As long as I never see that woman ever again, I’ll be okay.”

Stroking his palm up and down my arm, Tommy says, “Then that’s what I’ll work on. I won’t ever let her near you.”

I pick my head up and stretch my neck until my lips touch his. “Thank you.”

“I got you. Always.”

The kiss we share soothes my soul and tells me things are going to be alright.

“Will you do me a favor?” I ask.

“Anything.”

I uncurl my arm from around Tommy’s waist to pinch the t-shirt he borrowed from my stack of clean laundry. “Can you take this off?”

“Yeah.” He sits up enough to tug the shirt off, drapes it over the headboard, then lies back down.

Now, when I put my cheek on his shoulder, it’s only Tommy I smell, and it’s only his flesh I feel against mine. I lay my palm in the center of his smooth, bare chest and feel for his heartbeat.

“I love you,” he murmurs against my hair before kissing my head.

For the first time in my life, it’s easy to tell someone, “I love you too,” because it’s Tommy. And Tommy really is special.

27

Tommy

We stay up half the night, and for the first time, Rowan answers every question I ask. He tells me about his childhood, starting where his memories begin—the house with the hot teenager who pretended Rowan didn’t exist. He tells me about the bad families. The ones who starved him, neglected him, and called him names. He tells me about the good families. The ones who remembered his birthday, left gifts under the tree for him at Christmas, gave him lunch money, and got him to his soccer matches on time. He tells me about the in-betweens too. The families he was with for a month at most while he bounced around aimlessly, searching for another landing spot. They were kind, more or less, but open about not having the space for him in their home or hearts.

What a crazy notion…not having space for Rowan. While I spend these hours curled against him on a narrow bed fit for one, I know that making room for Rowan is the easiest thing in the world.

He tells me how he always knew he was gay, from as early as his memories begin. He always liked boys, never girls. Never even tried to date girls besides a handful of begrudging hookups that only made him feel worse about himself.

It’s another crazy notion to think that our relationship began with my ex-girlfriend basically forcing herself on him. Every extra detail of Rowan’s backstory makes me hate myself a little more for ever going after him. I dance my fingers down the side of Rowan’s face and wonder how I could have ever hurt this beautiful boy.

He tells me about Matt too. His tenth grade history teacher and the assistant men’s soccer coach at McClatchy High when Rowan started there.

“To be honest,” Rowan muses, “I had a crush on him my freshman year, but I eventually realized that’s because I had a very warped perspective on authority figures. He was the first adult to really give a shit about me in a way that resonated and felt good. He was like the older brother I never had, ‘cause he was always looking out for me. Until you, Matt was the only person I ever told about what my parents did.

“I turned eighteen during my senior year, and the family I’d been with wasn’t the best, so I was sorta homeless of a while. Couch surfing at friends’ houses or sleeping in the school when I could get away with it. I’d been spending the night in the locker room at school for a few days when I tried killing myself again, this time with a few hydrocodone and a bottle of Vodka I stole. I don’t remember this, but right before I passed out, I called Matt. He came and found me, and he took me to the hospital where I had my stomach pumped, and I was put in the psych unit for two weeks.

“After that, Matt let me come live with him and Xia, and I’ve been here ever since.”

“I hate you had to go through all that,” I tell him, even though it doesn’t come close to expressing the whirlwind of emotions spiraling in my head right now. Anger, sadness, and love in equal measure.

He shrugs like it’s no biggie, but behind his eyes, I know there’s a lot of hurt there. Not just from what his parents did, but that it took until he was already an adult to find something halfway stable, and that it took until now for him to feel safe enough to baby step out of the closet.

“It’s always darkest before the dawn, right?” he says. “I can feel it now, though. The dawn.”

Eventually, I fall asleep wrapped around Rowan, and the first thing I do when I wake up is research how to file a restraining order.

Rowan and I play hooky this morning and stay in. Xia brings us breakfast before heading out to work, and she says Matt got the kids’ pediatrician to write a doctor’s note explaining Rowan’s absence from practice and his classes. That’s some Dad-level magic if I ever saw it. But Rowan is determined to go to practice today. He doesn’t even seem anxious about it despite how juvenile our teammates have been about the kiss. Then again, Rowan isn’t one to let anything get between him and a soccer ball.

What’s shocking is when we get out of my truck in the student lot, Rowan glues his hand to mine and laces our fingers.

Submitting to the butterflies in my chest, I let it be. But when we cross from the parking lot to the Student Union side of campus, I ask Rowan if he’s sure about this.

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