Yes, I Am

Chapter Eleven.

A soccer field was not just a lawn of neatly cut grass with two nets on either side. It was this sacred ground of worship for the thirty or so people involved, including the team, coach and extras. Every person had their eyes trained to the field like it was a matter of life and death, like if the team they were rooting for lost, the whole world would be sucked down into the pits of hell. It was intriguing, this devotion, and to what? Twenty two guys chasing around a ball. I remembered when I was very little, my father took me to a game and I sat there wondering why those guys' parents wouldn't get them a ball of their own so they would stop slaving after the one.

As incomprehensible to me as it was, soccer was something Caleb was very passionate about and I had promised him that I would make more of an effort to understand it. I had spent the last night reading about soccer so I could at least get a little of what was going on. When I had told Caleb that, he had smiled in a secretive way and ran over to his team huddled up on one corner of the field.

Now it was just five minutes to halftime and Caleb was rocking it. I still didn't understand exactly everything that was going on but I did decipher that my boyfriend was kicking ass major time. He was playing centre forward that day, something he had been quite excited about. His team was behind by one goal and he had passed the ball to his winger who cut back deftly, dribbled it sideways and passed it back to him. Right when the ball reached Caleb's foot, a player from the opposite team tried to snatch it. That didn't end up happening but his foot did get tangled with Caleb's and both of them slid a few feet forward like they were doing an air kick on the ground, falling heavily on their asses.

I jerked to a stand, my hand flying to cover up the involuntary gasp. Caleb and the other dufus were helped up by some of the extras sitting on the benches and dragged to the locker room. He was limping so badly, it looked like he broke a bone. The referee waited until they were off the field, called in the extras to fill in their places and the match resumed like nothing had happened. I couldn't decided what made me angrier, him getting hurt or no one seeming to care that he got hurt.

I ran down the bleachers two steps at a time. I didn't care if the whole world got to know I was gay. If my guy was hurt, I was going to get to him one way or another. At least that's what I told myself. When I saw a man, presumably the coach, exiting the locker room, I flattened myself against the wall behind the door. It was petty, I knew, but I didn't want to step inside until I was sure he was alone. I put my ear to the door and listened for any noise inside. When everything was eerily silent for a minute and a half, I hesitantly opened it.

Caleb was sitting on the floor against a locker, slumped forward so his hair fell over his face. His leg was outstretched and a bag of ice was covering his ankle. His clothes were sticking to him like a second skin because of the sweat and he was biting his lip so hard I was surprised it hadn't started bleeding yet.

"Hey," I said softly. "Are you okay?"

"It's just a sprain," he said dismissively, not even turning his head up to acknowledge my presence.

I pressed my lips together and did what I do best- damage control. "It should be on an elevated surface." I looked around for some support. The only thing I could see was a low bench on the other side of the room. I curled my fingers on the ledge underneath it and pulled. The damn thing didn't even budge. "Is it nailed to the ground or something?" I grumbled.

Caleb laughed. Even if it was at my expense, it felt good. "You laugh now but remember that your healing is dependent on my muscular prowess," I said, pointing an accusing finger at him like the heavy bench and my skinny arms was his fault.

I went around it and pushed it from behind, throwing my full weight on the stupid thing. This time it moved thankfully. I pushed it until it was over his legs, up to his knees. "This is going to hurt," I warned him.

He nodded bravely. He was underestimating the amount of pain. As gently as I could, I hitched his ankle up to the bench and readjusted the ice bag so it covered the swelling completely. To his credit, he didn't make a single noise and his face was red with the effort to keep shut.

"I'm fine," he gritted out when he saw me staring.

"If it's a sprain, the swelling should go down in a while," I said.

"And if the swelling doesn't go?" he said, a tinge of fear to his voice that he was trying hard to repress.

"Then it's a fracture," I replied. "But hey, I'm sure it's just a sprain. You're going to be fine."

"I can't play for the next three days anyway," he said sullenly.

"It's only three days. Better than a lasting injury," I said which, in retrospect, might not have been the best thing.

He was silent for a while before he suddenly lifted his head and spoke, "I play better than that, I swear."

"Shut up. You were amazing," I said.

He snorted. "We were losing. We probably still will. Our goalkeeper seems like he's intentionally letting the ball pass through, our best defender is not in the game, two of the players are out of form and I just made a complete fool of myself."

"You're being too hard on yourself. You are such a good player. Anyone can see that. And you getting hurt wasn't your fault; it was that asshole's who tackled you."

He shrugged. "We're still gonna lose."

"So you'll lose one game. So what? You've won so many. Isn't this the team that always gets their ass kicked by you?"

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "Yeah," he said reluctantly but he didn't sound like he meant it. That was the kind of defeated 'yeah' people say when they've lost an argument and have no reasonable points to put forward.

I pulled the sleeve of his jersey until he looked at me. "Why is this so important to you?"

"Because." He sighed. "You're so smart. You know everything about everything. I feel so inadequate- like a dumbass- around you. I guess I just wanted to show you I was good at something."

"I saw that. Caleb, you're not a dumbass. If you were, I would have driven you away the first time we talked. Bookish smart isn't all there is. You're street smart. You have common sense; something really rare in humans nowadays. You have a brain and you choose to use it. And your emotional intelligence is off the charts. You don't make me feel like shit for liking the things I like and not liking the thing you like. I'm the one who should be feeling inadequate, not you."

His lips twitched with a little smile. Even though this conversation wasn't entirely pleasant, I was glad it was at least distracting him from his pain. "I'm not smart. Do you know what it feels like to have to think before speaking all the damn time in case you say something stupid?"

"Oh my god, are you really saying that to me? It's like my tongue has to walk on eggshells around you. I'm always thinking I'd say something really dumb, like, I don't know, like I love you or something." I bit my tongue really hard inside my mouth, face reddening horribly at the realization of what I'd just said. I promptly hid it behind my hands, hoping I'd said it inside my mind and not out loud. "I just did that, didn't I?"

"A little bit, yeah," said Caleb in a strangled voice. I heard a little groan and the sound of him shifting forward. A minute later I felt him kiss my cheek and put his arms around me.

"That must hurt," I said. He must have had to bend his leg and put pressure on his ankle while shifting closer. All because of my dumbfuck of a mouth.

"Not anymore," he murmured.

That night, when I whispered to myself, "I'm gay. It's okay," it was a little less forced, my fists a little less clenched.