Page 82 of Sweat

Sending me a sharp look, Rowan says, “I can’t go out with you, because I’m not gay.”

I can’t help but roll my eyes. “I’m sorry, but you’re like the gayest dude I’ve ever met. You literally got on your knees for me the first time I kissed you.”

I see the shift as soon as I get my careless words out. Feel it too, like the sudden drop on a rollercoaster that always has my mind half convinced I’m about to die for real. I don’t think I’m about to die now, but I do think I might have just fucked everything up for real.

Somehow, Rowan’s eyes seem to soften while his jaw goes rigid and his nostrils flare. The next thing out of his mouth is my worst fear. “Get out.”

“What?” I ask dumbly.

He pulls his hand out from under mine and pushes my shoulder toward the passenger door. “Get the fuck out. Get out of my car!”

“Stop, Rowan!” I grab his forearms to keep him from shoving me out the door, and I hold them tight enough for him to try to fight against it. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Iapologize a dozen times, tugging on his arms until I’m close enough to whisper it into his ear.

When he feels less rigid, I let him go, and he slumps back against his seat. His hands jump to the steering wheel and white-knuckle it like we’re going one-twenty. He’s breathing hard, brows pinched, but at least he’s not yelling at me to get out anymore.

I’ll get on my knees for him right here in this parking lot if it’ll help him forgive me.

After seconds that feel like hours, Rowan casts me a glare and says, “If you don’t like anything I do to you, you can say it.”

Exasperated, and halfway to tears, I exclaim, “I like everything you do to me! That’s the whole point. I like you. I wanna be with you. I don’t wanna fight. I just don’t get it. I don’t know what you’re afraid of. I already told you, I’ll never come between you and soccer. And your family seems like they’d be really supportive if we were—”

“They’re not my family. I live in the back of their garage with all the shit they’d throw out on the curb if they weren’t too lazy. They’re not my family.”

I understand the steel in his eyes for pain now, and even though I don’t know why it’s there, it settles inside me like a black cloud. I realize now that I’d been comfortable to treat the family Rowan lives with as his bona fide family because they seemed so much like a family anyone would want to be part of. But that’s not really how it works. Just like I can’t change the fact my dad is a deadbeat, Rowan can’t change who brought him into this world.

“Who are your family?” I ask, my voice turning small and hesitant.

Eyes on the windshield, watching a couple with children hustle through the parking lot, Rowan mutters, “Don’t have one.”

“What about your parents?”

“Don’t have any.”

“Who raised you?”

Shrugging, he answers, “People. Here and there. Doesn’t matter.”

“It matters if somewhere along the way, someone taught you that it’s not okay to accept yourself.”

He heaves a long, shuddered sigh, but his hands loosen from the steering wheel enough to tell me he’s calming down.

Careless again, I ask him a question I half expect him to ignore. “When did you realize you like boys?”

After a bit, he mumbles, “When I was…five or six, I guess. That’s when my memories begin.”

“Really?” I ask gently, wanting to reach out and take his hand, but too cowardly to follow through. Makes me think of when I had that boy crush at eight but hadn’t connected the dots. Makes me think of when I was twelve and Rowan himself planted the seed that would gradually bloom into an acknowledgment that eventually lead me here.

“The family I was living with at the time had a biological son who was, maybe, sixteen, and he was always walking around the house in boxers. He was never very nice to me, but I was kinda obsessed with him.”

Imagining that makes me smile, even though Rowan looks about as miserable as I’ve ever seen him. “When you were five?” I ask with some shock, since the human body hadn’t appealed to me for many years past that age.

The moment Rowan breaks down is right after his broken voice asks, “Can we please not talk about this anymore?” Tearsfall down his cheeks in rivulets, and he’s full on sobbing when he says, “I’ll go to the restaurant if you want me to.”

My chest hurts so badly that I can only assume it’s my heart breaking, and I pull on Rowan until he slings his arms around my neck and presses his face to my shoulder. He cries through my shirt while I hold him tight, whispering in his ear that he’s alright—that I’ve got him. Even though I don’t understand why he’s so upset, I have an idea now why he’s reluctant to tell the truth.

Something bad happened to Rowan.

He cries for a long time. The hard, choking kind that sounds like overwhelming grief. Eventually, his arms go slack, and he turns his head to swipe his wet eyes across my neck. He sits up, sniffles, and runs his hands over his reddened face.

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