Page 111 of These Secret Years

“I’m also what?”

She sniffs, wiping an arm across her brow. “Important to me. And your father. We love you so much.”

“Then just fucking support me. Stop telling me I’m making a huge mistake.”

“I don’t think you’re making a mistake,” she says in a whisper. “You’re not understanding.”

“Then what?” The way things are going with my parents, I might be moving back to Missouri this summer.

“Just don’t waste this time, okay? Study what you want to study and play ball. You can do both. But I also hope you have a life outside of football. Because once you’re in the NFL, you belong to them. Remember that, okay?”

Okay, well, that resonates. And it makes me think of Sullivan. “I will.”

“Okay,” she says softly. “Okay. Thank you for listening and not blowing up at me. I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

She picks up her phone from the counter, and her finger shakes as she types in the code for the house and texts it to me. “I hope you have a nice night.”

I give her a long hug before I go.

Sullivan does call that night. He’s alive, and he’s sad, and we talk for two hours about everything except what happened today. He says he loved the song, and I make him promise to call me tomorrow.

He does.

Chapter Twenty-Four

SULLIVAN

The summer is mostly a nightmare, although, it could have been worse. Adrian and Quinn didn’t organize a party with important people and present me as the dessert, which was my greatest fear. Quinn did have friends over, but as usual, Adrian wouldn’t allow any of his friends to touch me.

Quinn, however, was still allowed to fuck and humiliate me in front of them, but at least it wasn’t a gang bang. Quinn’s Detroit friends are more like who I picture when I imagine the gay club scene. They snort a lot of coke, they’re always offering me and their friends poppers, and I take whatever I manage to get my hands on when Adrian isn’t looking. They’re harmless, but they’re wild and obnoxious. Quinn always wants to show off for them. They call him maestro, and it’s disgusting, but they all just laugh and laugh and then blow each other while I get fucked on the nearest convenient surface.

Still, nothing that happened was worst-case scenario, and having dodged that bullet, I felt like I could breathe again.

Until the day I was ready to go back to Missouri.

That morning, Adrian showed me several videos of a young cellist. The boy was in a high school orchestra in Detroit. He was around fifteen or sixteen, and Adrian asked for my opinion on his performances.

“I can’t really tell,” I told him. “Not with the whole orchestra playing.”

“Ah,” he said. “Then watch this one.”

In the fourth video, the boy was alone, and I recognized the space he was in. Adrian’s office in Detroit, which was the first place he ever asked me if I was interested in private lessons.

“What do you think of him now?”

“What do you want him for?” I’d asked.

“I might give him an audition when he graduates. He’s on the verge of homelessness.”

Seeing the innocent boy made me wonder who’d come before me, and if this was who would come after. And what would that mean for me?

“Perhaps when you visit in the fall, we could meet with him together. He’s shy, but I think he’ll like you.”

How had I not seen it coming? I wasn’t following the rules. I wasn’t satisfying him the way I used to. While physically I was there, I’d lost all the fawning admiration for him I once had, and it was naive of me to think he’d let that go without a punishment.

All I could say was that I would rather not meet him. Adrian responded with a hum, and he closed his phone. “Cut your hair, will you? I’d like you to look like a promising young man when I see you next.”