Page 198 of Defend Me
“Don’t you know? You make my darkness disappear and no matter how many times it comes back, you’re right there to do it again. I still can’t promise you everything, but I promised you three things in that frat house. I promise I’m not going to drop you, I won’t get tired of you, and I’ll try not to ever hurt you. I still love your personality and the way you smile for me. Those things are never going to change. I have one more promise to make.”
“What is it?”
“I promise to give you my forever.Youare my forever.”
“God damnit, Brooks. I’m so glad I have this joint.”
“It wasn’t just for the memory.”
He shook his head and set it aside before he grabbed my face and pulled me into a kiss filled with every promise I’d ever made to him and all of the ones we’d make to each other for the rest of our lives.
I slipped the ring onto his finger and looked at it fondly. “I love you, Tilian Holoway.”
“This might’ve been where it happened.”
“What?”
“I think I started falling in love with you the moment I saw you standing there, looking at me with expectations that scared me at the time. You came up to me lit my world on fire. The light isn’t just mine. It’s yours. You lit the fucking match.” He kissed me again, then knocked me onto my ass to crawl into my lap. “I love you. I fucking love you. So fucking much.”
Thank the universe for colleges away from home. For sociology class. Football fields. Dimly lit dorm rooms. Bars with pool tables. Broken bongs. Sushi restaurants. Ice skating rinks with arcades. Frat parties. Lakes in the countryside. Long drives to nowhere. Sharpies and tattoo shops. Waterfalls and hiking trips.
Most importantly, thank the universe for this man who refused to give up, even when he had every reason to, the one who fought for me.
He made me brave.
He changed me.
He defended me from all of the things I couldn’t take on alone.
He made the silence less quiet.
I told him to never give me his heart. He took it a step further and traded his for mine.
I was going to keep it forever.
Epilogue
Travis
When I was fifteen, I met a boy. He was cute and probably too kind for his own good. We connected, then we kissed, and it was another nail in the coffin that was my life at the time. Normal life. Straight life.
I liked him. Problem was, we were at a camp from hell. I fucked up by talking to one of the counselors who was supposed to be safe.
They weren’t safe.Weweren’t safe.
I ruined everything for him. For me too, but I was lucky. After we were punished for our ‘crime’, my dad had a change of heart. He got me the fuck out of that place.
Not Sen. He suffered more than anyone should. He came back into my life and I was glad for it, but I felt guilty. It was probably irrational, but still.
It opened my eyes even more. I’d been a voice or gay men in sports for a while. As a major league baseball player who lived openly and unapologetically, I’d forgotten that these atrocities still happened.
Seneca Taylor reminded me of that.
I didn’t have the power to take down places like Dumont, but I also wasn’t the same fifteen-year-old boy. I wanted to remind the world that these places existed. Awareness was the first step in these sorts of things and since I had the ear of millions of people online, I thought it was my duty to at least speak up.
People like me and Sen, ones who were forced to hide and who were consumed by fear for too long, still existed and they weren’t just at Dumont. They were everywhere.
Funnily enough, I think I found one and it was at a baseball game of all places. The World Series. It was the second year I’d gone with Sen and all of his friends. Their group had all found love and it was nice to see how happy they were. I got us all a suite to watch the game from above, they invited their families- the ones who could- and it was a big deal.
There I was, catching up with them and drinking a beer, when I found someone staring at me. Really staring. I figured he recognized me; I wasn’t sure if it was from my team or my social media. There was obvious contempt in his eyes, but also more. I shouldn’t have been curious about it, but fuck, I was.
And fuck, it was going to end badly because he’s a goddamn asshole, but he also won’t stay away.
What the hell am I supposed to do about that?
