meet me on the football field

     Six words -- not even spoken words, but voiceless letters on a screen -- shouldn't have had so much power. Six words shouldn't have been able to make my heart beat so hard I could hear it. Six words shouldn't have made it so difficult to fill my lungs back up again.

     Six words sent me reeling.

     A loud crash of thunder reminded me that it was storming out, and it was almost too much to handle. I lay back on my bed and tried to take a deep breath, focusing on the blank white of my ceiling in the hopes that it would make my head stop spinning.

     Meet Jamie on the football field. In the rain.

     I couldn't go.

     The football field was where we'd had our first kiss (at least, the first one I could clearly remember). It was where I'd had my first sober kiss with any guy, the first time I'd ever felt anything real and exciting. So fucking exciting, I kept going back, kept meeting Jamie after games were finished and the field was empty. We hadn't even liked each other back then. Jamie had been nothing but a convenience; a sexy, mysterious, intriguing convenience.

    And then, somehow -- I don't really know how -- he became more than just a benefit. James Alexander became a person -- a real, flawed, absolutely aggravating person. And he somehow managed to piss me off until I fell for him.

     It all started on the school football field. In the rain.

     "I like storms. I like the sights and sounds. Not all of us want to frolic through the rain like we belong on the set of a cheesy musical."

     "The rain is the best part. I say don't knock it until you try it -- really try it. Come on . . . I'll prove it to you."

     "Um . . . No?"

     "You should. It's really nice. Your stubborn ass will thank me later."

     "Not interested."

     "Come on."

     "No."

     "Yes."

     "Go dance around by yourself."

     "No."

     "Yes."

     "No."

     "Yes."

      "Please?"

      "Yes -- wait --"

     I had laughed. Jamie had glared at me, but I'd held out my hand to him.

     And eventually, he had taken it.

     The enigma, the boy who stopped for nothing and no one, had taken my hand. And I had let it go.

      I had let him go. No, I had thrown him away, on that same football field, in the rain.

     I couldn't meet him there. There was too much history in one place. I would suffocate if I went.

     I had to go.

     I laid my hands over my face until everything was black. Shut the world out until everything stopped spinning, everything just stopped around me, in my head, and I could breathe easy again.

     Then I got out of bed.

The rain was coming down heavier when I got to the field. A burning feeling crawled down my limbs the moment my feet touched the track -- a molten brew of guilt, nostalgia, and regret that moved as slow as lava and scorched twice as bad. Something like homesickness.

     It pinned me in place. My feet itched to turn on the heels and carry me somewhere safer. But through the blanket of rain, I saw his blurry figure; Jamie, seated on the bleachers, watching me from afar. He was too magnetic to resist.

     He met me at the center of the field. By the time I reached him, I was soaked to the bone; for once, it didn't feel good at all. He was, too, and the sight of him like this, with his hair sticking to his forehead and his eyelashes coated with water, was too familiar.

     "Follow me," he said.

     Surprise and confusion tugged at my lips, but for the first time in a long time, I remembered Jamie's old don't ask questions rule. And for the first time probably ever, I followed it.

     He led me back, back, back behind the bleachers, away from the field itself. My confusion mounted, but my lips stayed sealed. Beyond the football field, the ground curved upward into a steep hill, crowned by trees and cut off halfway up its slope by a barbed wire fence. It was a hotspot for students who wanted to skip class and smoke -- the trees created a perfect hiding spot -- but nobody ever really went past the fence. There was nothing much to see.

    So, naturally — because he never did things the way others did — that was where Jamie took me.

     We hopped the fence with relative ease and trekked the rest of the way up the hill. I wasn't sure what I'd been expecting to see at the peak; perhaps a downward slope of forest or a grassy field, something untouched and unspectacular, but pleasant in the way that natural things were.

    But when I looked over the other side of the hill, there was nothing pleasant about it. At the bottom of the incline was what looked like an abandoned construction zone. It stretched on for ages, right up to the edge of a distant forest. In some spots, the ground was flat and grey, already torn up by machines. In others, long-dead tree stumps littered the ground. There were mounds of dirt here, piles of wood there. In the cloudy, rainy, grey-black night, it looked haunted; when a flash of lightning lit up the destruction, it looked tortured.

     I wondered what could have been so important that this much land had to be ruthlessly uprooted, but not important enough to finish. And I wondered who had failed so miserably at the cleanup job.

     The slope going down was much steeper than it had been coming up; it was like the edge of a small cliff. Nothing too dangerous, but nothing I'd like to try my hand at climbing down, either. Jamie wasn't interested in climbing down, though. He lowered himself where he was, at the edge of the hilltop, sitting with his legs criss-crossed and his arms behind him to hold his weight.

     I wasn't sure why I hesitated for so long. Something about this -- every bit of this, from the intense slope of the hill to the dreariness of the view to the way Jamie's eyes lit up startlingly with every flash of lighting -- was almost as daunting as the football field itself.

     It was all too much like him. Sitting in the middle of the night in a pretty dangerous place to be during a thunderstorm. Staring out over destruction, soaking wet, with clothes and hair clinging to his body. It was so utterly chaotic and so utterly Jamie. I missed him so much it hurt.

     When I finally sat down, he didn't look at me.

     "When . . . when did you first come up here?" I asked him, loud in my head but barely audible in the rain.

    "When you dumped me," he said. There was no malice in it, but it pierced like a needle. Hearing it from him after all this time, feeling no better than I had the first time. For a moment, I thought that was all he was going to say. But then he continued.

    "I came back to the field that night, after Penelope fell asleep," he said. I could hardly hear him, but this time I couldn't tell if it was the rain or him. "I don't really know what I was looking for. You, I guess. But you weren't there, and I don't think I really expected you to be. But it hurt so damn much to be there, I don't -- I couldn't stay there. But I couldn't go home. God, I think I would've lost my fucking mind if I'd gone home. So . . . I looked for somewhere to go. And I found this place.

     "It was . . . perfect. I don't think I've ever seen somewhere so -- so miserable, I guess. Looking out over that," he gestured to the construction site, "All of that destruction and ugliness and brokenness . . . and sitting in the dark, in the saddest hours of the night . . . it started raining again, and, I don't know, there's no better place to just let go and be fucking pathetic."

     I looked at the side of his face, finding it impossible to swallow. He was almost glowing in the dark, pale as a sheet and too thin and frowning without even realizing it. He didn't look at me. Just took a deep breath and kept staring out over the barren land.

     "Storms were our thing, you know?" he murmured. "We were made in a storm. When we were together, were as explosive and lawless and . . . as beautiful as a storm. We fell apart in a storm -- like a storm. From here, I can watch it like it's a movie. I can see every flash of lightning and stare through the rain and feel the wind. It fucking killed me to be out here. I swear I could almost feel you, could almost see you when the lightning hit, and it killed me. I used to just come up here and let the rain soak me and think about you and cry until I was exhausted. It, um. It was -- it is -- a much less destructive form of-- of self-destruction, I guess."

    Jamie didn't look down, but I watched as his finger glazed over his knuckles. They were bony and white, scarred after so much abuse.

     "I come here when I want to feel so miserable it's like I'm falling apart. It sounds bad, and I guess it is, but . . . it's easier to feel sad when everything around you is sad, too. Not even the trees can judge you."

    He finally looked at me. His eyes weren't exactly welcoming, but they were sympathetic. He was inviting me to join him while warning me to stay at arms' length. "Sometimes it feels good to break your own heart," he said.

    I struggled to hold his gaze "And what if I don't need it?"

     "I think you do," Jamie said. "Today, in the cafeteria—"

     "I was fine," I said shortly. I didn't mean to snap at him. But it was easier than leaving myself open for him to read. "I am fine. I don't give a fuck what Zack, or anyone else, thinks about me. The only opinions I care about are the ones that matter."

     Like yours.

     Jamie didn't buy it for a second. "You are not fine," he said slowly. His words came with a sigh, like he was tired of this argument. "You weren't earlier, and you aren't now. Your brain might not care about what others think of you, but your body does. Or maybe it's the other way around."

    "You don't know what you're talking about," I said. My tone was cold; so was my body. The rain came down unceasingly ahead of us, but underneath the cover of the trees, the droplets fell inconsistently, fat and cold by the time they outweighed the leaves. A shiver ran its course down my spine, and I was starting to understand what Jamie meant when he said that this place was miserable.

     "I know you," Jamie said. "You might've walked out of the cafeteria with your head high and your shoulders straight, but —"

     "Are you about to tell me that my eyes said something different?"

     "I'm not that bad of a cliche," Jamie scoffed. "It wasn't on your face. But I know you. And I know that coming out is hard, especially the first time, and that couldn't have been an easy way to do it —"

     "It wasn't my first time," I cut him off. "Bryan knows. My family knows."

     Jamie sat up a little straighter and looked at me a little more intently. "Since when does your family know?"

     "Month or two," I shrugged, sluggish as if the rain was weighing down my shoulders.

     Jamie eased away from me as if to take me in, like somehow seeing me in my entirety would make it more believable. "How did I not know about that?"

     "Why would you." It wasn't a question.

     He stopped leaning away and stopped studying me like a memoir. A rumble of thunder sounded above, so deep it made my skin crawl.

     "How did they react?"

     I thought about the pamphlet my mother had left on my desk.

     "Not great, but I guess I shouldn't complain," was all I said. It was all I felt allowed to say, knowing how his life had been since he came out.

     Jamie sighed again, just as tired but twice as frustrated as before. "It isn't a competition, Liam. It never was."

     I started to respond, started to mouth some vague, expressionless, meaningless nothing to fill the air. But then I processed what he'd said, and my mouth fell shut, and lightning filled the air instead.

     It was so bright, and so close; the entire night sky seemed to turn white around us, bright enough to leave red spots in my eyes and striking enough to imprint the bolt in my vision for several seconds after it had passed. The thunder that followed was just as sudden and just as jarring; it passed in a heartbeat but was loud enough to make my ears pop, and it startled me so badly I visibly flinched, as if it was a physical thing that could hurt me. I felt Jamie jump beside me, too.

     Jamie's words carried a jolt not unlike the lightning, and it was with a jerking feeling between my ribs that I realized I'd underestimated him.

     It never was.

     I hadn't come clean to Jamie about my anxiety until it was too late. He had figured me out by then. But I guess he'd figured out more than just that; he had seen right through me, right into the part of my mind that hadn't wanted to share my problems with him because his were worse.

     It was never a competition for who had it worse.

     I couldn't hold his gaze any longer, so I looked at the construction site. Once, a stretch of trees had stood in its place -- one small strip of a great forest. I had never seen it in its prime; now, I would remember it for its desolation. Something lovely had once existed here -- had lived here -- and it had been obliterated for the sake of a cause that had never even been carried out. Now, all that was left was a bleak, dismal gravel desert.

     It was enough to suck the warmth from my skin.

     The loss of warmth wasn't enough, though. What was taken had to be replaced, and so worked the rain to smother me with ice. With my hair and my clothes hugging my body, I felt smaller than myself, meek enough to run and hide. The wind whipped against my cheeks like the slaps of angry palms; the cold soaked my skin until I could feel it all over -- in my blood, in my bones, in my mind.

     It's easier to feel sad when everything around you is sad, too. Not even the trees can judge you.

     "It's like they don't even know me anymore," I said. I hadn't planned to speak, hadn't found the words in my head yet, and yet there they came, pouring from my lips as water poured from the clouds. "My dad barely speaks to me, and it's like he can't bear to stay in the same fucking room as me, like I'm some kind of -- some freak he doesn't want to be around. My mom . . . she won't even look at me. I feel like she's not even there, and god she can be so cruel sometimes . . ."

     The air seemed to suddenly drop around me; it was even colder, and I was even smaller, and I wasn't shivering but shaking, so badly I could hear it when I spoke. The sky seemed darker, the site seemed grimmer, the thunder seemed louder, the rain seemed harsher, and I felt so much smaller. Colder and smaller.

     "She left this pamphlet in my room, and I just --" I pulled my knees up to my chest, hoping to find warmth in my own body, but there was nothing left to find. "I don't get it. God, it's so fucking confusing -- they never cared about this kind of stuff before. Shouldn't they . . . shouldn't they care less if it's me? It's like one thing changed and nothing else even matters anymore. I've been good, you know? I've been a good son, even with all of their bullshit, but they can't tolerate this one thing for me -- it's like I don't even matter anymore. I miss them so much, but it's like they don't miss me at all. How sick is that? That I miss them and they live in the same fucking house as me."

     Jamie just listened. Just sat there and listened and let me break my own heart.

     "The same white-picket-fence suburbia," I said, tilting my chin to look up at the stormy night sky. Water fell against my face, between my lips, against my eyes. The rain was lighter now, but it was still freezing cold. "This isn't how it's supposed to be. I'm supposed to be the poster-child football player with the pretty girlfriend. My brother and I are supposed to be best friends. My sister is supposed to be happy without a fucking pill bottle. My parents are supposed to love each other, they're supposed to fight sometimes but make up because they care too much to hold grudges. We're supposed to have family fun nights and go to each other's sports games and recitals. We're supposed to go on vacations together and take family photos where our dog runs in and messes it up and we're all laughing and . . . and I'm supposed to feel like I have control over my own damn mind and like I know what the hell I'm doing. . . everyone is supposed to be happy. But no one is.

     "And I fucking hate that part of that is my fault," I spoke around the aching in my lungs, the twist in my stomach. My voice sounded like I'd spent the night screaming, and I'd lost some of myself with every shout until all that was left was too mangled to look at. "I hate that Jacob might've been happier if I wasn't so oblivious, and that my parents might've . . . fuck, they never loved each other, but at least they used every extra bit of love they had on their kids, and I managed to ruin that. I think I just fuck things up . . . I think I'm really fucking good at that. I made you hate me. I think I might've made my own fucking parents hate me. For the first time in years, Jacob is letting me in, and I feel like I'm not doing enough, and I'm going to run out of time and things are going to go back to how they were and he's going to hate me."

     My eyes screwed shut. I couldn't tell if my heart had started beating erratically or stopped beating at all.

     "Bryan has always been an amazing friend and I've done nothing but leech off of him my whole life. And Stevie . . . fuck, I-- I need her, but all I do is burden her with my stupid problems, and maybe she's going to get sick of it and hate me too and I'll have no one, and I wouldn't even blame her because I think I'm starting to hate me."

     I didn't dare continue after that. For my own sake, because I was starting to feel small enough to disappear, and I was sure that with just a few more words, I would shrink into myself and be gone. I felt as if I had just run a marathon and come in dead last -- exhausted, defeated, breathless, and humiliated.

     Chest heaving with the effort of every breath, I opened my eyes to look at the sky again. That was when I noticed that it had nearly stopped raining, the downpour reduced to a measly drizzle. The frigid raindrops hit my face and seemed to evaporate on the spot. And yet the droplets that rolled down my cheeks were hot and thick. I wiped under my eyes and realized for the first time that I was crying.

     I hadn't cried since I came out to my parents. I hadn't allowed myself the weakness. But Jamie said he came here when he needed to just let go and be fucking pathetic. And there was no way I could hold it in now.

     The curl of warm fingers around my neck was shocking against my icy skin. I didn't fight -- didn't react at all -- as Jamie pulled me into him. I was bone-weary, too beaten and bloody to do anything but fall limp against him. I felt like one big open wound, raw and exposed and wholly unable to battle the onslaught of cries and sobs and whimpers that took me over. Jamie didn't stop me, didn't interrupt or say a word; he just brushed his fingers through my hair and let me fall apart, using his arms around me to hold the pieces together.

     He rode through it all with me, never so much as loosening his grip. He held me like we were more than ex-boyfriends for as long as he needed to, and even then -- even when my tears stopped flowing and my shoulders stopped shaking -- he held me a little longer.

     When I finally sat up, wiping at my face and taking deep breaths to steady myself, the clouds had cleared and the moon had taken its rightful place, making the night seem several shades lighter. Somewhere distant, the glow of a lightning strike illuminated somebody else's world. What seemed like an eternity later, a faint grumble of thunder tickled the clouds.

     "Are you," Jamie started to say, turning to face me. I sucked in a breath at how close we were. His words died on his lips, but he didn't lean back, and he didn't move the hand that was still on my neck. He cleared his throat and tried again. "Are you okay?"

     His eyes were red; he'd been crying, too.

     "No." I could barely get it out.

     Jamie nodded. "I know."

     "Are you?" I asked. He just shook his head. I got the feeling he didn't want to talk about it, so I didn't ask.

     He was close enough for me to see the green rings in his eyes.

     His thumb moved up and down over the cold skin at the back of my neck. I don't think he even realized he was doing it. Before I could think better of it, I raised my own hand to lay it over his wrist.

     Jamie's eyes fell shut. He tilted forward so that his forehead rested against mine, and I could feel him putting his weight on me. Leaning on me. He didn't want to talk about it. Just wanted me to hold him up for a second.

      He was an inch away. We were breathing the same air.

      Then I felt his nose brush against mine. I closed my eyes as he tilted his head, leaning closer, a breath away. His lips hovered over mine, so close that I could feel their shadow. I squeezed his wrist, tugging, waiting desperately for him to make that final push.

      He dropped his head to my shoulder. The sudden loss of contact drew a startled, starved gasp from my lips.

     "We should go," he said.

     "Jamie . . ."

      He sat all the way up, dropping his hand from my neck and putting a safe space between us. "I said we should go."

       I nodded numbly. My voice seemed to finally give up for good. Jamie stood up, brushing the back of his pants futilely. He offered me his hand, and when I wrapped my fingers around his, the fit of his hand in mine was so familiar, it rocked me from the inside out.

      We walked back to the fence without a word between us. My legs felt wobbly, but I didn't reach for his support. Climbing over the fence was hard; stumbling down the incline was harder.

     We made it all the way to the parking lot without so much as a glance at each other. It felt so foreign to stand so far apart after I'd broken down all over him minutes before. After we'd almost . . . It was as if everything had been left behind on the hilltop. I wasn't sure if I was even supposed to say goodbye, or if we were meant to disappear as if we'd never been together at all.

     If that was the proper etiquette, then I never stood a chance at being well-mannered — I wasn't the type to leave something like that without a trace. I didn't have it in me.

     I stopped halfway to my car and turned around. "Jamie," I called out; he was walking in the other direction, but he paused and turned at the sound of his name.

     The words thank you hung on the edge of my tongue. But they didn't feel right. Jamie had invited me to the hilltop to feel absolutely miserable, to shatter my guards until all that was left of me was a sobbing, shivering disaster; maybe the appropriate response would be fuck you. But he had also invited me to do something I hadn't even let myself do yet.

     Jamie stared across the parking lot at me, waiting. I couldn't see his expression in the dark. When I couldn't manage anything but to mutter his name again, he dipped his head in a nod. He understood; that was enough.

     He turned his back, and so did I. I climbed into my car feeling heavier and lighter at the same time, and I sat for some time with the engine humming. My hand held my chest as if my heart might try to jump out of me at any second.

     My fingers wrapped around the gearshift and I leaned my head back against the seat, letting out a sigh through my nose. Just when I was about to shift into reverse, there was a knock on my window.

     Jamie stepped back when I turned, holding something soft in his hands. I rolled down the window, and he extended it to me.

     "I never gave this back to you," he said. Instead of reaching out to take it, I examined the thick, navy folds of the fabric until I recognized my hoodie. It was a few years old and fading with wear, something I had bought from Stevie's college when she first moved out three years ago. Come August, it would be my college, too. The University of Pittsburgh.

     I peered out at Jamie. His skin was dry, but his shirt and hair were still damp and clinging to his small figure. A leftover gust of wind brushed past, and I saw him shudder.

    I shook my head. "Looks like you need it more than I do," I said. "Don't worry about it." He looked ready to argue. "I'll probably get another one when I leave."

     Any protest died on Jamie's lips. His eyebrows rose just barely when I said those last three words, like this was the first time he'd considered that I would be moving soon. He chewed on his lip for a few slow seconds, eyes downcast. Then he pulled the hoodie on over his head. "Thanks. And, um, thank you for earlier. For shutting Zack up, I mean."

    I brushed him off and forced a smile. "It was long overdue."

   Jamie hesitated to leave, and I took the moment to selfishly drink in the image of him in my clothes. Then he turned to go.

    But before I could roll the window back up, Jamie's fingers curled over the door frame.

    "Your parents don't hate you. They're shocked and they're responding all wrong, but they don't hate you. Believe me, if they hated you, you would be absolutely sure of it, and you wouldn't be able to wait for the rain to break down. Maybe they need time, maybe they need a push . . . but they don't hate you."

     "Jamie, I—"

     "I'm not finished," Jamie snapped. "Let me finish."

     I closed my mouth.

     "However badly you want to be close with Jacob, he wants it just as much. There's no point in rushing it, because it won't work like that. But if he wants it as bad as you do — and I promise you, Liam, he's fifteen and sad and lonely, he does — he won't let it all fall apart just because you're . . . leaving. Rome wasn't built in a day, and it sure as hell wasn't built easy.

     "Bryan, he's here with you for the long haul. Anyone with eyes can see that. You guys are a perfect match, so stop focusing on what you think you're doing wrong and remember how good of a friend you've been to him all these years. He won't give up on you any easier than you'll give up on him.

     "And Stevie, she needs you as much as you need her. You were the first person she called when she got back from Vegas. Unless you think she's more delicate than you are — which I think we can agree she isn't — she can stomach whatever you throw at her. Just because she's there for you doesn't mean she'll tire of you. So get that out of your head."

     He paused, and I thought he was finished. But then he took a breath, tapping his fingers against my car door, and added, "I . . . I don't hate you. Not anymore, not — I don't think I ever did. I really, really wanted to, I was so mad. But I can't even say that anymore. So . . . yeah."

     He finished with a huff, shuffling his feet uncomfortably and crossing his arms over his chest. I couldn't tell whether he was trying to shut me out or reign himself in.

     Thank you finally seemed appropriate, so that was what I said. Jamie gave me a tight-lipped smile in response.

    "And, um," he trailed, looking off to the side as if there was anything there but an empty parking lot. He tucked his hands into the sleeves of my hoodie and wrapped his arms further around himself, and I almost wanted to tell him to go to his car and warm up, but I was hanging on his every word. "If you ever feel like you need this again, you can come back . . . it's never not worked for me. . ."

    A self-conscious crease formed between his eyebrows. "I mean, obviously you can come here if you want. I don't own the place. I just, uh . . . I just mean that if you feel like you need to let go, or whatever, and -- and you don't want to be alone . . ."

     "Same to you," I said to put him out of his misery. "Just text me."

     Jamie nodded, still staring off into empty space . "Okay."

     As he walked away, for real this time, I wondered if either of us would ever take the other up on that offer.