Chapter 31 #2
“Good. I’ll see you Monday, then. The you that knows how important this game and the next couple of weeks are. How much of a future he’s got if he finally does as he’s told. And this never happened.”
I don’t look at him. I find a point on the floor near my feet and focus there. Even when, after he takes a couple steps toward the stairs, he stops and adds, “Too bad you couldn’t make it the whole game. You were named Conference Freshman of the Year and Player of the Year.”
There’s no pride in his voice. No excitement. It’s like he was holding those over me, wanting to know first that he’s got me locked up and going nowhere.
“First person to ever get both at the same time. Congrats, little bro. You deserve it.”
I want to punch him. I want to punch the mouth that says those words— you deserve it .
I don’t want them. Not now. Not when I’ve got to look the cost of those awards in the face right now because he can’t stand who I am.
Not after I couldn’t help but show him the anger and sadness and defeat on my face and do nothing about it.
I’m just a broken person in a bruised-up body who lost.
And Vale sees it. Immediately, the second he catches my eyes as I walk back in, he sees what’s coming.
His eyes are red, tears trailing down his face. His arms are crossed over his chest. And he shakes his head back and forth, like he wants me to tell him he’s wrong. That he didn’t hear every single word that was said on the other side of the door.
I want to hold him one more time. To cuddle him, kiss him, call him baby .
I want one more dance with him, one more afternoon at a park kicking a ball around.
I want to do whatever I need to do to remember every single thing about him.
His favorite spots for me to kiss. The specific brown of his eyes.
The smell of his cologne that keeps my face nuzzled into his neck, and the smell of his shampoo when my face is resting on the top of his head.
I don’t want to let him go. I don’t want to admit that this is over.
I want to wipe away the tears on his cheeks.
I want so badly for this not to be what defines everything for us.
For this not to shatter all the good that happened because he threw himself into my life and I caught him—and, even more, he caught me too—only to ultimately have to drop him. To let him go.
“I’m so sorry,” I say, the words catching in my throat. I drop to my knees in front of him, wanting to touch him, to rest on him, to find our way to some version of us where we aren’t hitting this wall.
“This— It’s over, Vale.”
He shakes his head again, letting out whispered no s.
I can’t help it, I bring a hand up to his face, cradling his cheek as he cries, and I cry with him.
I wipe away a tear with my thumb, and it feels like someone is tearing apart my heart.
Maybe I should’ve fought. Done something .
Now that we’re here, I’d take a hundred more scars if it meant Vale crying one less tear.
“I’m sorry. And I want you to know if I could repeat this semester a million times over, the only thing I’d change is letting you in sooner. Letting me in sooner. And maybe one of those million times, it works out. But even if it didn’t, I’d still kiss you that night on that frat-house patio.”
“I would ask you to kiss me a million times over.”
“I … you were right. I saw the sun, and it’s you and every second I got that felt like actual happiness.
It was me telling you and P é rez and Kat, and myself, that I’m bi, and realizing how right that feels.
All the times I got to just be with you.
But that Allegory of the Cave didn’t have a happy ending. I guess I don’t get one either.”
Instead, I get to see the reality I feared hit me in the face. I get to stand here and be chained back up and try my best to bury something about myself that I fell in love with. And as smart as I thought I was being, I don’t think I get to escape again. I think this is it.
“I—I’ll never forget the feeling of standing in the sun. Of being in love with you, and how good and right it felt.”
Vale gets up from the corner of my bed. His hands drop, waiting for mine, helping me up, and, as soon as I’m standing, he hugs me, tighter than he’s ever hugged me before.
And, as I look into those beautiful brown eyes I fell for the second I saw them, he kisses me one last time.
I can taste the saltiness of our tears landing on our lips.
And, as much as I know I don’t deserve it, I hold him back. I hold him as tightly as I can with a single good arm, for only as long as he’ll let me.
“I don’t know anyone who deserves a happy ending more than you,” he tells me, still in my arms. “And I believe with everything in me that you’re going to get it. When you’re ready, you’ll realize your story isn’t ending. And that there’s a lot more good to get to, Gabi.”
I watch him walk to my door, calling out for him just as he reaches for the knob. “I—I asked you weeks ago, when this started, if, when I ended up breaking your heart, you would forgive me. Now that we’re here, will you?”
He lets out a sigh, looking at my bed and then at me and then back to the door in front of him.
“You’ll never need my forgiveness, Gabi.
It’s not me that you need to be asking that question to.
But, for what it’s worth, I told you the only stipulation I had was that you give me your whole heart.
There is not a single, tiny doubt in my mind that you gave me anything less than that. ”
You’ve still got it. I don’t want it back. Guarda mi coraz ó n.
T ú eres mi coraz ó n.
It’s just after midnight when I reach for my phone in the dark after hearing a ding.
I haven’t left my room since Vale left. I’ve barely left my bed, only getting up to use the bathroom a couple times.
When P é rez and Kat popped in with food and asked where Vale was, I didn’t have it in me to tell them what happened, only that I messed up, knowing I looked like I’ve been crying nonstop.
And when Pops and Mom dropped by with even more food, Pops asking me again where Vale was, I made up an excuse, saying that he needed to get back to his place.
And it’s Pops’s name and face I’m expecting to see on my screen, checking in on me one last time before he goes to sleep.
Instead, it’s a text from Vale. No words, just a link to Google Drive.
I click it, and I’m taken to a folder filled with forty, fifty, maybe sixty pictures and a handful of videos.
Some of just me that Vale’s taken, some of him I’d taken using his phone or sent to him from mine, and a lot of the two of us.
In my bed together, in my truck, eating, studying, at the river, of me napping and holding him tight to me, of us lying on the grass in the park after teaching him more moves, of him feeding me some of his raspa.
For when you have to act like none of this ever happened and want a reminder that, yeah, we did.
I’m crying again. Looking at every picture of us, at pictures I took of Vale while thinking about how he’s the cutest boy in the entire fucking world.
At pictures of me, smiling or asleep or being caught checking him out.
Especially those, when there was absolutely no hiding that I was falling in love with him the whole time.
I love you so much.
I love you and I gave you up for something that, as good as I’ll ever be, won’t ever love all of me.
Thank you for sending these to me.
I don’t get a text back after that. Whether he went to sleep or he decided that he’s done talking to me for the night, he doesn’t answer.
I know because I don’t get any sleep. I spend hours looking at the pictures, crying, holding on to the pillow we’d share or the hoodie he gave me that smells like him and imagining it’s him here with me.
I keep looking at the pictures until my eyes are hurting.
Until suddenly it’s Sunday morning and everything about my life feels shattered and stolen.
I feel more powerless than I ever have in my entire life.
I turn around, my face planting into my pillow, and I yell.
And it feels so good to yell. To remember how angry I am at that guy who kicked me and ended my shutout and at Barrera and his fucking ultimatums. I pick up my arm, my shoulder and chest still bruised and stinging when I do, and I embrace that pain.
I slam my hand down on my mattress and yell some more into my pillow.
I yell for how sad I am. For how weak I am.
Because, at one point, I was able to almost have everything, but now I have nothing.
I yell, and I slam my arm down, and I yell some more from how much this hurts. I want it to hurt. Again and again and—
“Gabo,” P é rez calls out from behind me, rushing to my bed and landing on top of me, careful to not put his weight on the half of my body I’m doing enough extra damage to myself. He grabs my arm and holds it, his other arm wrapping around my stomach.
“Hey, I got you,” he says, hearing my yells turn into more cries. “I got you. Let it out. Just don’t hurt yourself anymore. I’m right here.”
I stop moving, but it takes minutes for me to force my heart rate down and the tears to quit coming out.
P é rez stays with me, sitting on my bed, his hand on my back, but without the pressure now that I’m not actively hurting myself.
My cheek is pressed into my pillow and I take in the half of it Vale might’ve been on right now, in another future where he refused to leave because he wanted to take care of me.
Instead, there’s just empty space and the wall. Instead—
“He’s gone. I … I ended it.”
The words sound like half-truths. Barrera stays living in my head, his threats loud and playing over and over again.
I had to end it. I was careless. But I don’t mention him.
Mostly because I know that P é rez would leave right now, go find our captain, and do his best to bring the fight I couldn’t.
But this is all for an option that’s the least chaotic, the least dramatic.
The least likely to break my squad with me at the center of it all.
“Why?” He carefully but quickly crawls into that space, his eyes big in shock, and he sounds just as surprised. Almost hurt, even. “What happened?”
I shrug, biting through the little bit of pain from moving my shoulder. “Maybe I never deserved him in the first place.”
P é rez lets out a bothered breath through his nose, shaking his head.
“Gabo, you … I don’t know what it’s like to be in your shoes.
I don’t know half of what you’ve gone through just to look as happy as you did whenever you were around Vale.
But I do know you made him happy. And I know how important he was to you. Don’t think so low of yourself, papi.”
“I just— I wish I could’ve done more.”
“I know,” he says, just louder than a whisper as he scoots close and hugs me. “I know.”