the anatomy of love [BxB] COMPLETED

21

"What has been most on your mind lately?" Delilah takes a sip of her tea. This is Jackson's first official therapy session with her, and he's trying not to think about how much of a commitment he's made. His mother's face flashes briefly in his mind.

"Soccer, I guess, mostly," Jackson says, and my boss, Mr. Sawyer, he doesn't say, feeling hot just thinking about him. Delilah doesn't seem to notice.

"You play?"

"Yeah. For the school. It's been...tough, this year. I'm captain, or was, at least I will be when I care again or something, that's what my coach told me..." Jackson trails off, hating how rambling and insecure he sounds. But Delilah reacts with her usual profound stillness and nods slowly.

"Was captain?"

Jackson looks down at his hands, tightly folded, the knuckles white. He relaxes them, places the palms on his knees. He doesn't want to speak, he doesn't want her to know how much he cares about this.

Delilah switches tactics. "Do you care about soccer?"

"Of course!" Jackson can't believe that's a question. "It's everything to me. I mean, close to everything. I love soccer. I wouldn't be me if I wasn't playing. I'd be miserable. My childhood would definitely have been worse."

"How so?"

"Well," Jackson says, pauses, doesn't really know how to explain it, "soccer is a sport. I'm an athlete, as long as I played soccer. It gave me protection, in a way. Confidence. If that makes sense."

"Protection from what?"

He couldn't spell it out. It's not explicit. Stereotypes and biases find their way into the nuance of language and find their consequences in a dirty joke in the locker rooms. "I could be a boy. A regular boy."

"A regular boy?"

"You know. Not just gay."

"So soccer gave you an identity to be proud of?"

"Yes," Jackson says, then realizes what he's saying. "Wait, no. I'm proud of being gay too. Now. I wasn't, then. I went to a Catholic middle school and high school. It took me a while to realize it was okay."

"How did that environment affect you? Your relationships with other people?"

He knows all of this already, and he's lived through it, too. Why go back and relive it? Why bring out the old scars and reopen them?

"Do I have to talk about this? I mean, do you think it will help?"

Delilah briefly touches her necklace. He wonders what it means to her. "It's up to you, Jackson. Remember, I will only light the way."

"Right. Well, I guess going to Catholic school, especially during middle school, definitely had an impression on me. My first...my first experience with a boy was during choir. After rehearsal we would sneak into an abandoned classroom..."

"We?"

Jackson couldn't take his eyes off of her necklace, the turquoise encompassing his entire vision. The memories flooded his mind, a tsunami of emotion overtook him, and as if helpless he let himself get carried off in the current.

☆★☆

"...Alleluia, Alleluia..."

Mr. Walker brought his hands together and out, signaling the end of the song and the end of rehearsal. Jackson's mind skipped ahead to dinner at home and then his birthday coming up in a few weeks and he's gonna be thirteen! A teenager, finally.